Richard Cottingham’s Double Life
Eberhardt’s death marks Cottingham’s earliest documented murder; both were 18 at the time. As he continued killing, he played the part of family man. He married a woman named Janet in May 1970, and they had three kids together. During the day, he worked as a computer operator. By night, he trolled the streets, hunting for victims. By the late ‘70s, more than a dozen women and girls were dead, with his sadistic impulses morphing from sexual assault and strangulation to mutilation and decapitation.
Authorities did not link many of the crimes because his modus operandi kept changing. Some victims were stabbed, others drowned. The ages of the victims varied from 13 to 33. Also, there was no such thing as a serial killer profile for local law enforcement to consult.
On May 22, 1980, Cottingham checked into the Quality Inn motel in Hasbrouk Heights, N.J., with sex worker Leslie O’Dell. For several hours, he sexually abused and tortured O’Dell. Her muffled screams were loud enough that motel staff heard and called the police. Cottingham was arrested. Soon enough, he was linked to other cases. After multiple trials, he was convicted of five murders and is serving multiple life sentences.
He has since been connected to more than 20 deaths but has been slow to admit to any in particular.
The Cold Case Hunt
Robert Anzilotti, a detective with the Bergen County prosecutor’s office, took on multiple cold cases in 2000 and became determined to solve them. One of those cases belonged to Nancy Vogel. The young mother of two was sexually assaulted and strangled in 1967. Her nude body was found between the front and back seats of her car.
In 2003, Anzilotti began talking to Cottingham. He plied Cottingham with pizza from the inmate’s favorite spot and played cards with him. It took about six years of coaxing before Cottingham finally confessed to murdering Vogel. By 2021, he had detailed five other murders.
“He’s definitely a game player," forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland says of Cottingham tells A&E Crime + Investigation. "There’s always a price. They find ways to try to get something for themselves, so there’s always this sort of cat and mouse game going on. I think he drives pleasure from that because even though he’s in prison, there’s this little bit of control left.”
In addition to discussing the crimes, Cottingham spoke of what drove him. In the A&E documentary The Torso Killer Confessions, Cottingham told Anzilotti, “Most of those times, I wasn’t out there looking for something. I’d be on the way to work, and they just happened to be there.”
Ramsland describes Cottingham as a sexual sadist: “Often sexual gratification is about the fact that he trolls somebody, and he’s inflicting pain, and he’s taking pleasure from their response and reaction. Sexual sadists are typically people who want to experience that domination of another person. They can feel powerful over them. That is very arousing.”
Upon finding a victim, Cottingham said he changed. “When I would do these things, it was almost like a different person doing it,” he said in The Torso Killer Confessions. “I would go into what I used to call ‘the zone.’”
Ramsland says sexual sadists “go into an altered state. When their adrenaline is really pumping, they almost can feel detached from their bodies in a way. Some of them have even described it as ‘watching myself do this.’ It’s not unusual for him to say something like that.”
Anzilotti told Cottingham he was retiring in 2021. “Cottingham didn’t want him to retire because this is a game he was taking pleasure in. He still has these little pockets of control,” Ramsland says.
American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years, 1950-2000 author Peter Vronsky spoke to Cottingham at the same time Anzilotti was getting to know him. Vronsky, who maintains a comprehensive website on Cottingham and has written about him in three books, tells A&E Crime + Investigation, “I speak with Cottingham on a daily basis and visit him in person at the prison hospital a few times a year.” In addition to repeating the confessions Cottingham gave Anzilotti, Vronsky says, “I assisted police and prosecution in the last 11 Cottingham confessions from 2021 to 2025.”
The latest one was that of Eberhardt’s murder. "Our family has waited since 1965 for the truth," her nephew, Michael Smith, said in a statement. "To receive this news during the holidays—and to be able to tell my mother, Alys' sister, that we finally have answers—was a moment I never thought would come."
Vronsky feels like his work with Cottingham hasn't ended: “My current relationship with Cottingham and the cold case investigations have not yet run their course.”
