Notorious serial slayer Richard Cottingham has been linked to yet another vicious murder — confessing to the cold-case killing of an 18-year-old New Jersey nursing student, police said this week.
Cottingham, 79, who is known as the “Torso Killer” and is serving a life sentence for a string of murders dating to 1967, has now admitted to butchering teenager Alys Eberhardt in Fair Lawn on Sept. 25, 1965, Fair Lawn Police Chief Joseph Dawicki said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
“Alys was a vibrant young nursing student who was taken from our community far too soon,” Dawicki wrote. “While we can never bring her back, I am hopeful that her family can find some peace knowing the person responsible has confessed and can no longer harm anyone else.
“This case is a testament to the dedication of our officers and to the fact that law enforcement never gives up in the pursuit of justice,” the chief added.
Cottingham was married with three children and working as a computer programmer for a health insurance company in New York at the time of his arrest in 1980.
He was busted after a maid at a Times Square area motel heard a woman screaming inside his room and called cops, who found the victim alive but handcuffed, with knife wounds and bite marks on her breasts.
Two other women hadn’t been so lucky — firefighters responding to a blaze at the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on West 42nd Street in December 1979 found their bodies with their heads and hands cut off.
The details of his horrifying crimes shocked the nation, with his exploits detailed in the Netflix series, “Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer,” which was released in December 2021.
Cottingham was initially convicted of six murders between 1977 and 1980 in the Big Apple and New Jersey, earning the nickname “Torso Killer” for the way he carved up some of his victims.
He was sentenced to life in prison — but pleaded guilty in 2022 to five more murders, this time Long Island women who were killed between 1968 and 1973.
In all, he has been tied to at least 18 murders, but investigators believe he could have mutilated as many as 100 women — with Eberhardt only the latest that he has admitted to.
