Episode Details

For years, women disappeared from the streets, hotels, and neighborhoods of New York and New Jersey while Richard Cottingham lived an outwardly ordinary life as a husband, father, and computer operator for an insurance company.

Behind that façade was a serial killer.

Cottingham became known as the Torso Killer, the Times Square Killer, and the Times Square Ripper because of the extreme mutilation found in some of his crimes. His confirmed murders stretched from the 1960s into 1980, and investigators have continued linking him to cold cases decades after his arrest.

He was finally arrested in May 1980 after hotel employees heard the screams of a young woman he was attacking and called police. That arrest ended his active killing career—but it did not end the investigation into how many women he had murdered.

Over the decades, Cottingham has confessed to additional killings, some dating back more than sixty years. In January 2026, authorities announced that he had confessed to the 1965 murder of 18-year-old nursing student Alys Eberhardt, a New Jersey cold case that had remained unsolved for six decades. He has claimed responsibility for as many as 80 to 100 murders, although that staggering number has never been independently proven.

Now in his late seventies and still incarcerated, Cottingham continues to reveal information about murders long thought unsolvable—leaving detectives to determine where confession ends and truth begins.

This is the true crime story of Richard Cottingham, the Torso Killer—a serial murderer who hid behind an ordinary suburban life while leaving behind a trail of victims, cold cases, and confessions that investigators are still unraveling more than forty years after his capture.

• Sources used for this podcast
• Support the show
• JOIN THE  HITCHED 2 HOMICIDE IN-LAWS AND OUTLAWS
• Send Kris and Rob a Message
• START KRIS CALVERT'S BOOKS TODAY FOR FREE
• H2H WEBSITE H2H on TWITTER H2H on INSTA

Richard Cottingham, Torso Killer, Times Square Killer, Times Square Ripper, Richard Cottingham serial killer, Torso Killer murders, Times Square murders, New York serial killer, New Jersey serial killer, Alys Eberhardt, Richard Cottingham victims, Times Square true crime, 1970s serial killer, New York true crime, New Jersey true crime, serial killer confessions, cold case murders, true crime podcast

#RichardCottingham, #TorsoKiller, #TimesSquareKiller, #TimesSquareRipper, #SerialKiller, #SerialKillers, #NewYorkTrueCrime, #NewJerseyTrueCrime, #ColdCase, #ColdCaseSolved, #TrueCrime, #TrueCrimePodcast, #TrueCrimeCommunity, #CrimeHistory, #Hitched2Homicide

 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.