It has been four years since I posted here. Last time I posted in June 2022 announcing that serial killer Richard Cottingham had been indicted in "a twelfth murder."
As of January 2026, he is now confirmed in twenty murders between 1965 and 1980, with eighty still remaining to be resolved from the approximate 100 he plausibly claims.
I had the privilege and honor to conclusively identify nine Cottingham victims so far in New Jersey and New York (Lorraine Kelly and Mary Ann Pryor had been identified as suspected Cottingham victims prior to my arrival on the scene) and I assisted law enforcement in New Jersey and New York in a total of eleven Cottingham cold case closures between 2021 - 2026, including the oldest cold case closure in American history using perpetrator DNA (as opposed to familial), the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick in Valley Stream, Nassau County, New York, whom I identified as a Cottingham victim in 2021 and which resulted in the first indictment of Cottingham since the 1980s. He pleaded guilty on December 5, 2022, and confessed to an additional four murders in Nassau County from 1972-1973.I have been interviewing Cottingham now for eight years since first sitting down with him in Trenton State Prison in February 2018 with my late investigative partner Jennifer Weiss, who tragically passed away in May 2023.
Much has been learned about Cottingham over the span of those confessions and the data on his MO and signature and closed case information has been aggregated to
Torso Serial Killer Project while his suspected cold cases in New Jersey, New York, and New York City are aggregated and mapped on
NYNJ PD Cold Case Portal
Cottingham is now 79-years old and in frail health, with at least a dozen re-opened cases under investigation by police from New Jersey and New York, who are not exactly racing the devil to confront and interview him with the exception of a few dedicated detectives from select jurisdictions.
