Inside my strange friendship with a notorious serial killer… and how our daily calls led me to victims of decades-old murders

When forensic historian Peter Vronsky speaks about the man who allegedly decapitated and murdered up to 100 victims, he fondly refers to Richard Cottingham as ‘my serial killer.’

Cottingham, now 76, was a married father of three from New Jersey and computer programmer who led a sadistic double life – family man by day, serial killer by night – during the 1960s and ’70s.

He was branded ‘The Torso Killer’ and the ‘Times Square Ripper’ for his gruesome crimes where he mutilated, terrorized and tortured his victims during a killing spree that lasted 13 years and spanned New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Long Island.

In May 1980, his trail of murder ended after he was caught torturing a victim in a hotel room and was subsequently arrested. 

He was convicted of the murders of 19 women, though Cottingham himself claims to have murdered between 85 and 100. 

His bushy white beard, rotund belly and easy smile has an uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus.

Each day at around 2 pm, Vronsky gets a call from Cottingham at the South Woods New Jersey State Prison – the pair have been in contact for years.

They talk about the weather, the news, reminisce about the ‘lost New York’ of the ’60s and ’70s, how good the hot dogs were at an NYC institution and where you could get the best pastrami sandwich.

Criminologist Peter Vronksy (left) pictured with serial killer Richard Cottingham (right)

Vronsky explains that Cottingham ‘does not respond to direct questions about the murders.’

‘Things casually come out in hours of long conversations. I have helped identify for police a number of victims in chats like that,’ he said.

‘We might be talking about where the best pastrami sandwiches were to be had in the 1970s, and he would casually describe a victim he left on the route to the pastrami place.’

Vronsky (pictured) explains that Cottingham ‘does not respond to direct questions about the murders’

Vronsky, an expert in espionage and criminal justice history, said that Cottingham ‘is kind of gaming me, yet at the same, time things come out.’

‘He has sometimes accidentally led me to victims, but also on several occasions, led me directly to victims by describing directions turn by turn as I followed them on Google Maps Street View,’ Vronsky told the Daily Mail.

It was one of those vivid descriptions that led Vronsky to identify the unsolved murder of Diane Cusick, a 23-year-old dance teacher who went shopping at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, Long Island, in 1968 and never returned home.

Vronsky passed along the intel from Cottingham to police, and the confession along with preserved DNA led to Cottingham’s indictment for Cusick’s murder in 2022.

Vronsky explained he also helped identify four other victims for police: Mary Beth Heinz, 21, Laverne Moy, 23, Sheila Haiman, 33, and Maria Nieves, 18.

Vronsky said Cottingham was a highly praised and valued employee for 14 years at Blue Cross Insurance. He is pictured in his work ID from the 1970s

Vronsky’s work was recognized by Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly when they announced Cottingham’s guilty plea in Cusick’s murder and his admission to the four other killings.

During a December 2022 press conference, the DA said Vronsky’s work ‘helped both law enforcement and the media cast a light on this man’s depraved actions in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s.’

Vronsky spoke candidly when he told the Daily Mail that his relationship with Cottingham is not an easy one to describe, and compares it to that of ‘a deep undercover investigator, except the subject is aware he is being investigated.’

‘For sure he enjoys our conversations, especially when they are not focused on the subject of murder,’ Vronsky said.

‘[Cottingham] describes murders that he had perpetrated, and I have to figure out what he is describing,’ he added. 

‘If I come to him with a murder I suspect him of, he would say to me, “You are wasting your time,” or he’d say that if it is him, he wouldn’t speak.’

In June, Vronsky was the keynote speaker at the New Jersey State Police and New Jersey Homicide Investigators Association 30th Annual Advanced Homicide Conference.

At the event, he presented his four-hour case report on Cottingham and his potential link to other cold cases. 

‘That’s the big question – since 2009 Cottingham claims he murdered 85 to 100. We have now identified 19 conclusively. Who are the other 80?’ he asked.

‘That’s what I came down here for, to argue dozens of cases still outstanding that nobody has been investigating.’ 

The body of Mary Beth Heinz (left) was discovered on May 10, 1972, near a creek in Rockville Centre. Pictured right: Diane Cusick, 23, who was found duct-taped in the back seat of her car at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream in February 1968

Sheila Heiman, 33 and a mother of three, was bludgeoned to death on July 20, 1973, in her Woodmere, Long Island, home and discovered by her husband 

During his stop in the Garden State, Vronsky went to visit Cottingham hoping to get another admission. He described the killer as being in poor health, and said he was in the prison’s palliative care unit.

‘I am making my final attempts to identify and sort out as many victims as possible,’ he said, adding that Cottingham calls these his ‘perfect murders.’

Vronsky first met Cottingham on December 2, 1979, when he was a 23-year-old aspiring filmmaker photographing New York’s punk rock scene.

Unknown to Vronsky at the time, Cottingham had just committed a double murder at a hotel – decapitating the heads and hands of two sex workers before setting the mattresses on fire and fleeing the scene.

Vronsky was in the lobby at The Travel Inn waiting for the elevator when Cottingham ‘caught his attention.’

‘He annoyed me by holding up the elevator on his floor, as I waited for it in the lobby,’ he recalled.

‘I assume he was holding it up to see if the fire he set was taking hold. So when he came down, I gave him a “what took you so long to get on an elevator” look.’

Richard Cottingham is seen above in an old mugshot

Vronsky created a chart (pictured) that is a historical and investigative-judicial chronology. Numbers 10 – 19 in the green portion were the confessions Vronsky was able to get from Cottingham from 2021 – 2022 with the help from a victim’s daughter, Jennifer Weiss 

He remembered Cottingham’s outlandish stare and odd hairstyle.

‘His eyes were out of focus,’ Vronsky said. ‘He wasn’t looking at me – but rather through me.’

Eighteen months later, when Cottingham was on trial in New Jersey and indicted in New York for the Torso Murders, Vronsky realized who he met.

‘I recognized the haircut and remembered the guy on the elevator,’ he said. ‘Of course I had no idea.’ 

He remembers Cottingham rushing past him and felt the soft bag he was holding that brushed up against him – the bag was holding the pair of heads.

The duo have now been in communication for seven years after being introduced by one of the victims’ daughters. 

Jennifer Weiss’ mother, Deedeh Goodarzi, was a sex worker who was one of the victims at the Travel Inn Hotel.

‘Jennifer inspired him to talk to us about other murders he committed that I would then manage to identify,’ Vronsky said.

Vronsky shows a photo gallery of previously unsolved cases that he has helped to close

Vronsky said Weiss (pictured right with him), who died of a brain tumor in May 2023, forgave Cottingham for the brutal murder of her mother 

Sadly, Weiss died in May 2023 from a brain tumor. She was 45, leaving behind a husband and three young children. Before her death, she forgave Cottingham for her mother’s murder.

Vronsky describes Cottingham as an ‘outliler’ among serial killers and believes there is no serial killer like him. 

‘He had no pattern or MO. Cottingham’s MO was no MO, that’s one of the reasons police for 13 years never knew there was a serial killer out there,’ he said.

During one of their most recent conversations, Vronsky said Cottingham, who used to be an avid reader but watches more television these days because of his ailing eyesight, said he ‘loves the Sopranos,’ which were ‘shot on his home turf.’

He also shared that one of his favorite recent movies is Law Abiding Citizen starring Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx. 

The story centers around a father who is traumatized when his wife and daughter are murdered and sets out on a course of revenge.

‘Cottingham considers himself the serial killer in that movie playing games with police,’ Vronsky said.

Adding, ‘He is the American werewolf, for real… hardworking father-of-three by day, torso killer by night. Except, every night of the month [is] a full moon for him.’