There's a theory about how New Jersey native Richard Cottingham, known as the "Torso Killer," managed to get away with killing so many women and girls in the 1960s and '70s.

It was a different era: no cellphones, no license-plate readers and far fewer surveillance cameras. But investigators were also missing something else – the framework to recognize what they were dealing with.

Serial killers were considered rare, and the idea itself wasn't well understood.

"He was a serial killer before we really had that concept of serial killers that we have today," said Peter Vronsky, a Toronto-based forensic historian and author who speaks with Cottingham by phone nearly every day.

"We didn't have profiling. We didn't have DNA and nobody had cellphones," Vronsky said. "Guys like Cottingham could kill at will, and nobody even knew they were out there."

Modus operandi

For years, law enforcement did not connect Cottingham's murders.

Vronsky said investigators had a naïve notion that killers of multiple victims had a modus operandi, an established way of committing their crimes.

"That's not the case at all. He strangled, stabbed, battered, drowned, suffocated," Vronsky said. "He didn't have one method of killing."

Vronsky estimates he's visited Cottingham about 50 times at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, where the serial killer has been incarcerated for decades.

The author said he's assisted law enforcement in obtaining 11 murder confessions from Cottingham from 2010 to 2025.

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圧倒的な耐久力とバフ性能！新生バンブスパックでスタートダッシュを決めろ毎日の伝説 ·

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A former Bergen County resident, Cottingham, now 79, preyed on victims across North Jersey and New York City in the late 1960s and 1970s.

In 2014, Cottingham told Bergen County investigators he had killed women in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and Florida.

Cottingham became known as the "Torso Killer" after some bodies were found dismembered, with heads, breasts and limbs removed.

Authorities say he led a double life – working days for Blue Cross Blue Shield and raising a family in North Jersey.

At night, investigators say, he hunted vulnerable women and girls, often attacking and killing them in hotels, motels and other secluded places.

His crimes came to an end in 1980, when a hotel maid heard screams, interrupted an attack at a Times Square-area motel and called police.

"I wasn't stupid, until the end," Cottingham told detectives.

Cottingham was convicted of multiple murders and sentenced to life in prison. He has been incarcerated since 1981, serving sentences for five killings.

No remorse

Investigators have tied Cottingham to at least nine murders, though he has claimed responsibility for many others, perhaps 80 or more.

Cottingham told investigators in 2014 that he had trouble remembering one victim from another. For every person that he killed, he said there were 30 he let go.

"I was out there every night like an animal," he told detectives.

Vronsky said Cottingham has no idea why he killed, noting that he was able to charm his victims "into a position of vulnerability."

"If you ask him why, his response would be, 'Sometimes there just is no why,'" Vronsky said.

Vronsky suspects the murders are the result of a brain injury "as opposed to a kind of behavioral issue."

Searching old newspapers in Bergen County, Vronsky said he was able to confirm that Cottingham suffered a head injury when he was 4 years old.

"He ran into a moving car, headfirst," Vronsky said, adding he believes Cottingham suffered a frontal lobe brain injury.

Researchers in neuroscience and forensic psychology have long noted that the frontal lobes – the brain's executive control center – play a key role in judgment, impulse control and social behavior.

Damage to these areas, whether from trauma, stroke or other causes, can lead to loss of inhibition, poor decision-making and difficulties controlling aggressive impulses, according to medical research.

Some academic research has linked frontal-lobe dysfunction to violent and criminal behavior.

A review published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry found that abnormalities in prefrontal brain regions were more common among violent offenders than in nonviolent controls, suggesting that impaired executive function may be one factor in serious antisocial acts.

After all these years, does Cottingham have any insight into the irreparable harm he's caused?

"He knows that for every person he killed, at least five or more lives were disrupted," Vronsky said. "But he does not have feelings of remorse. He admits that."

Cottingham instead has what Vronsky describes as "cognitive remorse." He knows what remorse is, and that he should feel it. But he doesn't.

"So, he's aware. What he's attempting to do is somehow set right in any way he can the things that he has done by confessing," Vronsky said.

Confession

Late last year, Cottingham admitted he murdered Alys Jean Eberhardt in her Fair Lawn home on Sept. 25, 1965.

Eberhardt, who suffered a skull fracture and was stabbed more than 60 times, was discovered by her father, Ross, on the living room floor of their home on Saddle River Road.

Fair Lawn Police Chief Joseph Dawicki said two detectives began visiting Cottingham in prison in the spring of 2021 to build a rapport and try to solve cold cases.

Over more than four years, detectives conducted in-person interviews with Cottingham and developed relationships with two of his confidants, including Vronsky.

In November 2025, Vronsky told investigators that Cottingham was in poor health – bedridden and suffering from a number of ailments – and wanted to confess about additional murders.

Vronsky said Cottingham has long-term diabetes, a heart condition and kidney problems.

He nearly died in October 2025, underwent surgery and decided to start talking about unsolved murders.

Fair Lawn Detectives Eric Eleshewich and Brian Rypkema interviewed Cottinger twice, the last time in December 2025.

During the final interview, Cottingham made a full verbal confession and later signed a written statement where he admitted to killing Eberhardt.

Along with his admissions, Cottingham provided corroborating details leading up to the crime, described the inside of the house, and gave detectives information about Eberhardt's murder that was not publicly known.

Vronsky said Cottingham knew the entire layout of the home, both inside and out.

"He recalled that there was no water in the swimming pool in the back of the house," Vronsky said.

The serial killer had followed Eberhardt, 18, from the Hackensack Hospital School of Nursing, where she was a student.

"He saw her at random in the parking lot. He frequented that area," Vronsky said, noting that two other victims disappeared from the same area.

Cottingham used a fake police badge to convince Eberhardt to let him in the house, saying he needed to speak with her father.

He went on to brutally murder her, stabbing her more than 60 times.

The killer was still in the house when Eberhardt's father came home through the front door, which caused Cottingham to flee through the back door, Vronsky said.

Eberhardt's brother, Lynn, told NJ Advance Media the family is grateful for the confession.

"It's nice that he finally took responsibility," Lynn Eberhardt said, recalling that he had been serving with the U.S. Coast Guard when he was told his sister was dead.

Lynn Eberhardt said he wished his father had lived long enough to learn of the killer's confession. Ross Eberhardt died in 1986.

"We were disappointed that it dragged on. But it's nice to finally have closure," Eberhardt said.

Life in prison

Like many inmates, Cottingham adapted to life on the inside, Vronsky said.

"I wouldn't say he thrived, but he lived in prison, and it wasn't exactly suffering that he was going through," Vronsky said.

"He's very affable, he's friendly, he's got a good sense of humor," Vronsky said. "All those things kept him in good stead with other inmates."

"Of course, that was how he lured so many of his victims as well," Vronsky added.

Today, Cottingham is suffering from a number of ailments that make life behind bars more difficult than before.

"He has lost all control over his own body," Vronsky said. "He can't get out of bed. He's immobilized. He is in pain. He's facing the end, and not in the best of conditions."

"I would say his punishment really has begun only recently as his health has declined," Vronsky said.

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History is rather...dark. There are so many disturbing facts buried in our history books and education that it is often shocking to learn the world isn't all sunshine and rainbows. I have been tasked with taking you on a journey to learn some of the darkest facts you may never have heard before.

Here are 21 dark facts so disturbing that they will have you second-guessing whether or not to share with anyone else:

1. Horsehair worms are parasitic worms that can hijack their host's nervous system. The horsehair worm will make the host jump into water, forcing it to drown so the adult parasite can reproduce and complete its life cycle. Breathe easy. These worms are NOT parasites of humans.

2. Vampire bats exchange puke blood. You read that right. To be more specific, if a vampire bat goes days without eating, they will regurgitate and swap blood with a partner, which can be a life-saving act against starvation. Very disappointed we haven't seen this in a horror romance yet.

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3. The expression "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" has quite literal origins. A decapitated chicken in the '40s kept running around despite losing its noggin. With the brainstem intact, the headless body can continue to function briefly.

4. You can visit Einstein's brain bits at the Westphalian Museum of Natural History. That's right. There is a glass plate containing a microscopic section of Albert Einstein's brain tissue. More like E equals MC yourself out the door with all that mess.

5. If you ever climb Mount Everest, you might see people who attempted the climb years ago. That's because more than 200 dead bodies are still up there. The corpses are likely preserved beneath the snow, and because of Everest's harsh conditions, they are unlikely ever to be found.

6. After the mass suicide that led to the death of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult, the Nikes the dead members wore have now become collector's items. An unworn pair was put on eBay with an asking price of $6,660. As you can imagine, Nike was not too pleased about a tragedy like this being used to profit from their brand.

7. You probably know plenty about the sinking of the Titanic, but did you know that on April 14, 1912, Captain Edward Smith canceled a scheduled morning lifeboat drill? If he had prepared the passengers and crew to better handle a disaster, a better evacuation plan could've saved more lives.

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8. In 1346, the spread of the Bubonic Plague can be partially credited to the Mongol army, which catapulted the corpses of plague-infected soldiers over the city walls of Caffa. The Siege of Caffa is the oldest example of biological warfare recorded in the past 2,000 years, as the diseased bodies helped spread the Black Death.

9. According to FBI statistics, approximately 450,000 to 500,000 homicides occurred in the United States since the year 2000. That means, as a country, we average anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 homicides per year.

10. Postmortem fetal extrusion, also known as "coffin birth," is a very rare but very real phenomenon. It's when gases build up in the abdomen of a dead pregnant person, which naturally pushes the fetus out of the birth canal. Tiny bones were once found in the medieval grave of a dead woman.

11. Have you ever misplaced something? Well, the United States currently has at least THREE nuclear bombs missing. It is believed that at least three nukes lie somewhere at sea across the globe due to sunken carriers and aircraft. Careful where you swim next time, unless you want to start World War III.

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12. An estimated 8.7 to 11.4 million military deaths were suffered by the Soviet Union in World War II. That's the most soldier casualties in a war ever. For comparison, 407,316 U.S. military service members died in WW2, and an estimated U.S.-high 620,000 to 750,000 military fatalities in the American Civil War. The Soviet Union as a whole suffered an estimated 27 million deaths because of World War II (soldiers and civilians in total).

13. There have been cases where farmers go missing because they have been eaten by their livestock. Every case is different, but in 2020, a Polish pig farmer who went missing was reportedly eaten by his own animals—specifically, the pigs.

14. Chainsaws weren't invented for Leatherface. They were invented for doctors...for delivering babies. It was meant to be a new tool to make delivery faster and easier, though it was never used for childbirth (thankfully). Imagine going in for childbirth, and Dr. Johnson whips out her handy-dandy Commercial Grade 67 Big Daddy Chainsaw. That's right. You sprint for the exit.

15. A German man, Armin Meiwes, put out a classified ad seeking a person willing to be killed and eaten by him. You guessed it. A total stranger named Bernd Brandes fully consented to the act. Meiwes was sentenced to life in prison.

16. A tree can grow inside of you. Rare? Yes. Impossible? No. There have been cases, including a 75-year-old U.S. man who said he was told by doctors that an inhaled pea seed had split and sprouted in his lung. Imagine thinking you have a tumor, and it turns out Groot is growing inside of you.

17. Who ya calling "shrimp"? Well, a pistol shrimp's shockwave-inducing snap is so powerful that when it snaps its specialized claw shut, it creates a high-velocity cavitation bubble that collapses to generate a blinding flash of light, extreme heat, and a stunning sonic shockwave. If a human were near one when it happened, it could cause a mild, harmless sting, but be thankful these are little fellas.

Related: "32 Disturbing Secrets People Shared From Their Past Jobs"

18. Does your town ever put up a new building, and while they're naming it, say, "We should sacrifice a few thousand people?" That's essentially what happened with the Aztecs. At the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan's re-consecration, the Aztecs sacrificed thousands of people in a span of four days. The exact number is disputed, but it is still an alarming example of mass deaths due to a place of worship.

19. Honey bees have eye hair. Like, THOUSANDS of tiny eye hairs that are called setae. Ew.

20. Popular rhythm-and-blues singer Johnny Ace died backstage during his concert at the City Auditorium in Houston, Texas, on Christmas Day. The cause? Gunshot wound after he was playing with the seemingly unloaded firearm during the intermission of his show. Some of his last words were: "It's okay! Gun's not loaded...see?"

21. And lastly: Atum, the ancient Egyptian god, created life through masturbation, according to the Heliopolitan creation myth. This led to the Pharaohs stripping down and ejaculating into the Nile River as part of a fertility festival. If you're wondering where to start with Egyptian mythology, Atum comes first...and hard.

Do you have a dark fact you'd like to share with the class? Comment below and tell us all about it!

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An early memory of mine: My father calls me over to the television, points to the screen, and tells me, "Look, it's your mother." I see her, my mother, certainly my mother, beautiful, young, standing on the edge of a rooftop pool in a canary-yellow bathing suit, in full eye shadow. I'm watching her image through a telescopic gunsight. She dives in the pool and lazily does the breaststroke until, finally, a shot is fired. It hits her back. Her body flips over in the pool, her mouth a perfect gasping oval, and blood billows from the wound. My mother gurgles as she drowns. Free jazz plays.

I know that my mother, my actual living mother, is in the kitchen as I'm watching this, but the scene I'm watching is also alive, and the thought of her being murdered, particularly somewhere as wonderful as a swimming pool, overwhelms me. My belly hurts. I cry with my mouth open. I don't want to stand. I don't want to sit. My father laughs and calls me by my nickname: "Buzzy, it's a movie!" I know that, though I can't say it through my tears, but I also know that somewhere, on some timeline, my mother is dead. She's been shot by a man on a roof with a long black gun. Some loser without a face. My father, definitely drunk, calls to my mom, who comes to comfort me. Her soft hair, her good smell, and her long arms come too. But I sense for the first time, discernibly, that much of her is unknown to me.

My 19-year-old mother had recently started modeling when she shot the iconic opening scene to Dirty Harry. In it, she's snipered by a psychopathic serial killer named Scorpio in a rooftop pool. Other than feeling awkward trying on many bathing suits for a male stylist, having him choose one that was so "busty," she had a wonderful time. She says all the men on the set—and it was all men on the set, obviously––were perfect gentlemen. "Didn't Clint Eastwood kiss you when the camera stopped?" I ask, having her recount the story on a recent phone call. I remember her mentioning that detail when I was a kid. Action was called, and "Detective Harry Callahan" crouched next to her blanketed, recently murdered corpse. Cut was yelled, and Clint Eastwood leaned down and kissed her on the mouth. "Oh, yes, he did kiss me!" she tells me, sounding embarrassed, "but that was just a bit of fun."

Recently, I looked at the Dirty Harry Wikipedia entry to see if it mentions her scene. Indeed, the first line of the plot section describes a woman getting snipered in a rooftop pool by a psychopath. She is not credited. It's a legendary scene in a movie, an opening described in Quentin Tarantino's Cinema Speculation, and yet she is unnamed almost everywhere, her purpose reduced to an anonymous but iconic moment of violence, perpetually dying but looking good while doing it. In some ways, it's a portent to what happened in her career, which started off swimmingly and ended abruptly––but not to what happened in her life.

There's always been a narrative around my mother in her family: She makes questionable choices. She's a flake, but we love her! From a young age, I remember getting the message from family members that she'd all but thrown away her career, gotten door service to the gates of heaven, said fuck it, and decided to walk back out. Her career moves weren't the only choices people questioned; her love life was another oft-maligned arena. She and I had a close but fraught relationship during my adolescence. I resented the volatile men she seemed to center our lives on and that we were often in financial distress––so there were times when I agreed with these assessments of her character. There's still plenty I wish had been different back then. But even as a kid, I intuited that it was more complicated than I knew, that her chaos stemmed from somewhere I couldn't quite reach yet. As an adult, I began understanding from the inside why a person might do things that seem like nonsense at best, dangerous at worst. I could relate to her in that way. The things I didn't understand about her relationships or the pivots she made in her career––she had her reasons. I started to ask her about them.

Growing up in a rich suburb of Los Angeles, my mom was fascinated by show business. She went from being a toothy string bean of a kid with uneven bangs to a real head-turner. She became driven early, took acting classes in early high school, then landed a Disney movie by responding to a print ad in the Los Angeles Times. Her 5-foot-10 height was a deterrent to casting her in lead roles, so while visiting a friend in Connecticut, my mom went into New York City on the train one day, walked into Seventeen magazine, and asked the people there if she could model. They told her absolutely, and they connected her with a talent manager in California. Within her first year, she had done magazine spreads, TV commercials, print ads, and Dirty Harry. Two big-time modeling agents came out to L.A. to woo her. She signed with Eileen Ford and moved to New York City.

When summer hit during her first year in New York, my grandmother came out to visit my mom. My mom had just received a great payday from a Maybelline TV commercial, and she felt charmed. The two of them borrowed a convertible and drove out to Long Island, where Eileen Ford had her weekend place; she threw fancy parties out there, all very socially curated. Directors, business people, actors, models—Ford hosted 12 or 15 people at a time for an entire weekend. At dinner, my mom sat next to a charming man. All she could remember about his connection to Ford was that he "read as rich" and had previously dated a model. My mom and the man flirted throughout the meal, then he asked if she wanted to go for a car ride down to the beach. She thought they'd take a walk, gather shells, watch the waves recede. Instead, he pulled over someplace remote, locked the doors of his car, slid over to her side of the front seat, pressed himself onto her, and raped her. She punched at him and yelled no. He didn't stop. He finished. They drove back. My mom went up to the guest room at Eileen's where she was staying with my grandmother. My grandmother chatted with her, asking how the car ride was. It was fun, my mother told her from the bathroom, where she was trying to wash the night off.

Returning to the city after that weekend, my mom didn't feel well. Fear was her new idle state, like a skittish animal had chosen her body as the spot to nap with one eye open. She was fitful, listless, and wandered around the city on long walks, crying. One weekend, before a job she was booked on for a Monday as a dark blonde, she used Sun-In at the beach—then showed up to the shoot with her skin ruddy tan and her hair a new shade. The photographer was not happy. These kinds of things––silly things––started happening a lot. She wasn't thinking straight, she says. She was not as motivated. She started to avoid her agent. She met a new group of friends, and some of them partied too hard. She got sick with a recurring case of mesenteric adenitis and was hospitalized at Lenox Hill. She remembers her manager, who also represented Cybill Shepherd, was befuddled by the change in her and told her that the difference between my mom and Cybill was that Cybill would cut off her grandpa's balls if it meant she'd get a part, and my mom, well, my mom didn't have that kind of drive. She stopped booking much, went on fewer auditions, stopped making much money. She eventually had to move out of her nice place on the Upper East Side into a place that felt like a storage unit. In the next 18 months, she decided to give up on New York and move back to California. Everyone in her life was confused, but no one thought to ask what was really going on. "I wasn't diagnosed or anything, but I was having a nervous breakdown," she tells me. "And I felt so guilty." Now she knows she didn't do anything wrong.

"Your mother is a lovable flake." Of course, the change in circumstances, the failures, the types of choices she began to make are a mystery when the rape is removed from the narrative. It's as though she was hit at a stoplight by a drunk driver in her brand-new BMW––then kept telling people she purposefully crashed her car. She describes trying to pursue show business again a few years later, in her late 20s, and while she still got work sometimes, it wasn't as easy; the doors didn't fling open as they once had. "Some things in life, you don't get second chances," she says. In her early 30s, my mother met my father on the set of a B horror film they starred in together. Her first memory of him was how coked out he was every day on set and that he was dating another woman. But he was also goofy, intense, theatrical. Six months later, they were married, and they stayed that way, through much turmoil and violence, for 15 years.

My mother and I talk very openly now and have worked a lot on our communication with each other, but it wasn't always that way. Even after my dad left, things were often in chaos. A new man arrived, one I hated; we had a wild, unmanageable menagerie of pets; we moved to a random new state. While my father terrified me even in absence, I resented my mother for rearing us in environments that felt uncomfortable and unsafe and for blaming me for difficulties in the household when I would act out as a struggling kid. It was hard for me to understand why she made choices I felt weren't in the best interest of me and my brother.

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稲盛氏に論破・叱責され目が覚めた。経営者がバランスすべき2つの背反ビズヒント ·

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When I became an adult, my view of her shifted as I found myself drawn to men (unsurprisingly, I suppose) who were like my father: guys with substance-abuse issues and untreated mental illness who could switch from being spirited and lovable to cruel, scary, unpredictable. I, too, got involved when I should have sprinted in the opposite direction. I, too, stayed when I should have left. The more work I've done on myself to distance myself from those bad instincts, the more I've learned about the impact of trauma on a young mind—and the more compassion I have for us both. When you've got unhealed wounds, you can make pretty piss-poor decisions without knowing it's happening. The damage, the resulting lack of self-esteem, the fear—rational and irrational both––is often the driving force of decision-making. When I ask my mother about certain choices she made when I was a kid, she says she was just trying to get by, she was financially unsound, she didn't have many options, she couldn't go crawling back to her parents. She did the best she could, she tells me. There are things she regrets. Understanding doesn't eclipse the past or take away pain. I have spent much of my life contending with my childhood. But our relationship is in a continuous, committed state of repair.

Stories of young people sidetracked or ruined by sexual violence are an indelible part of the cultural fabric, looming, as American as the Hollywood sign. "All those women who came out during the #MeToo movement, all the Epstein girls—I know exactly how they felt," my mom says now. She knows the rape was something that changed her life, and it wasn't the last time she experienced gender-based violence. Yet still she describes herself as being stupid about her life choices and lacking the necessary intrinsic confidence to really make it in show business. "To me, to be a girl who walks into Seventeen magazine and asks them if she can model isn't lacking confidence," I tell her, and she says she guesses that's true. She lost herself after something egregiously cruel and degrading occurred at her fancy agent's summer party. "You were a child," I say.

My mother's story is not one that ends badly. It's one of great perseverance and a unique willingness to change and grow over time, however messily. She lives happily in Vermont, a mother, a fabulous grandmother, a retiree, a partner with a truly kind husband, a gardener, a lover of animals, a true eccentric, a member of her church's "Green Team." Recently, I edited the Wikipedia entry for Dirty Harry. For no other reason than she deserves to be there, I added her name to the cast myself. Diana Davidson, the Swimmer.

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Recently, we wrote about secrets people are hiding from their families — and the BuzzFeed Community chimed in with some *piping* hot secrets family members had kept from them! Here are 26 wild family secrets that were uncovered.

1. "My family kept who my biological father is from me. It wasn't until I did a DNA ancestry test that I found out that my biological father was my mother's high school chemistry teacher. It was a big scandal at the high school. The teacher was also the girl's varsity basketball coach and had been sleeping with several girls from the team. Not only did I find out who my father was, but I also found three half-siblings."

—Anonymous

2. "When I was 21, I wanted to do some volunteer/missionary work with a local church organization. They required that I get medical history on both my mother's and my father's side of the family, for insurance purposes. When I talked to my parents about this, they weirdly said they would talk it over and get back to me. Huh? Okay, I guess...The next day, I was playing street hockey with my friends, when I got a page from them (back in the days of pagers) to call them. So, I did, and they told me I needed to come home, right away. When I got there, there was my oldest sister, sitting with them in the living room. They all told me they had something very important to tell me. Turns out, the woman I had believed for 21 years to be my oldest sister was my biological mother."

"She had gotten pregnant with me when she was 17, by her then-boyfriend who was 19. Turned out the guy was seeing other women at the time, and dumped her, so she never told him she was pregnant. When she finally told her mom, (my grandmother ) who was also pregnant with her youngest, and due at the same time, they decided they would give birth together, and my grandmother would raise both babies as twins to save face. They were a very religious family."

—Anonymous

3. "My dad once had an affair. The woman he was seeing gave him a gun. My mom found it, but he had an excuse, of course. Eventually, it came to light where the gun was from. I don't know if a plan had been hatched to kill my mom, my sister, and me. It didn't work out anyway because his other woman was shot in the face by her husband before he took his own life. He left a path of destruction everywhere he went."

—Anonymous

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4. "When I was two, my bio mom took off, never to be heard from again. Growing up, my whole life I would always ask about her, ask to see her, ask if my dad knew where she was, and if she wanted to meet me. To this day I have the few small gifts she gave me as a baby. I was always told he had no idea where she was, she vanished and I probably would never see her again. Fast forward and I'm an adult. I tracked her down thanks to some internet sleuthing and found out I also have four siblings. Long story short, the secret was that my father never lost touch with her and always knew where she was and how to get in contact with her. In fact, she lived less than 10 minutes away from me for years."

"He just made the decision that I would be better off without her and she didn't care to fight it, so he lied to me for most of my life. It would have been nice to know my family, especially my siblings. I was raised as an only child with no real extended family and as much as I would love a close relationship more than anything, we're not all close. They're all grown and have their own life, and their own life together that I'm not really a part of and it stings. One of my siblings is my absolute favorite person in the world and we are close, but I barely know the others and it breaks my heart. I know she could have tried to see me or build a relationship and he was doing what he thought was best to protect me (he was sort of right…) but he's gone now and so is the majority of my family so it hurts being alone knowing that I have immediate family out there."

—Anonymous

5. "That the guy my mom lived with when I was a teenager was a cocaine dealer. I was too naive to realize it, but it's so obvious in hindsight. He would set us kids up with free limousine rides and the driver would buy us junk food at gas stations if we asked. He would have a different new car every week. He had a revolving door of 'friends' visit the house. He had a lot of rich friends, and I met a lot of them while they were at work in the offices. I'm also sure he attempted to traffic me. He offered me all sorts of expensive gifts to date his 'friends.' I always turned them down because I had a boyfriend plus I'm not materialistic and I wasn't interested in gold jewelry or cars. It was two decades before my mom came clean about it all."

—Anonymous

6. "I was born with a brain condition that was diagnosed when I was 11 years old. My parents sent me to the best neurosurgeon in North America at that time. After looking at the images, the doctor determined that my condition was too serious and that I was likely to die on the operating table. My parents were told to take me home and let me live with the condition until I died. My whole family knew that I could suddenly die, except me. My parents never told me. At 16, I had a small hemorrhage and the doctor I had at the time recommended surgery. I survived with partial paralysis. My sister told me several years later that she would always get tense when the phone rang because she was unconsciously waiting for a phone call to say I had died."

—Anonymous

7. "My grandmother recently died and my mother had done one of those DNA things. Turns out, my grandmother had a child in secret and gave him up for adoption. He found us shortly after her death. But crazy thing is that he lived and grew up in the same town my mother did and they never ran into each other. Sadly, when he contacted us, he was dying of brain cancer and died days before we could meet him. We live in Florida now and he was still in our hometown. My grandmother took that secret to her grave."

—Anonymous

8. "My grandfather, who had helped raise me from the age of 10 due to having been removed from my mother and stepfather's home for severe physical, emotional, sexual, and psychological abuse, was a convicted sex offender, and there was a distinct possibility I was born from incest."

"Thankfully the DNA test I took showed I wasn't, but it was a frightening possibility. I was an adult when I learned of this, and a number of other things. But this one was the most shocking. He was an Army veteran from the Vietnam War, and was 'honorably' discharged the year I was born. Come to find out, he was forced to retire because the Army found out about the charges against him. The only reason I found out was because I was renting a property to him and he was preparing to move to another town. He was drunk and was talking to me about being worried about not being able to move. When I asked why, he just bluntly said, 'Because I'm a registered sex offender. I was in jail for two years after you were born because I was having sex with your mother.' To say I was shocked was an understatement. This was a man I regularly had let watch my two boys, that I had the utmost respect for. And to make matters worse, that meant the state Child Protective Services, knowing he was a sex offender, placed me in his home as a preteen. My mother confirmed the story, and admitted it was consensual (yuck), and after the DNA test was clear, I cut the entire family out for keeping me in the dark. The sad thing is, that wasn't the only revelation that night. Come to find out, he had been sleeping with my ex-wife before he got with the woman he was moving in with."

—Anonymous

9. "That my maternal grandfather (whose home we often had sleepovers at as children) molested my mother and aunt their entire lives, leading to my mother having an abortion at 12 years old with my grandfather's child. AND THEY STILL LET ME SLEEP OVER AT HIS HOUSE."

—Anonymous

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10. "My best friend's mom had her phone tapped and listened to our conversations all through high school. She would periodically call my mom to tell her everything I'd ever done. (First time I smoked weed, lost my virginity, stole some candy, skipped school, normal teenage things.) My parents somehow found out about it. That really messed me up when I found out the truth years later."

—Anonymous

11. "After my mom and my uncle (her brother) died, my sister, who is interested in genealogy, looked into my mom's father's side of the family. He died when my mom was 16 so we never knew a lot about his extended family. My grandmother lived to be 93 so she told us a great deal about her family. After much searching, my sister uncovered a real scandal. My grandfather had another family a few hours away, including a daughter. Unfortunately, my mom's half-sibling and her mother had passed away many years before my mom. We will never know if my mom, my uncle, or my grandmother for that matter, had any idea and if they did, why they never told us."

—Anonymous

12. "I have two older brothers I didn't know about until I was 15. They were from my dad's first marriage and his ex-wife had cut off all contact after the divorce and basically told them all sorts of lies about how my dad was an awful person who hated them, never wanted them, etc…turns out she was an alcoholic and one of the 12 steps is to make amends to the people you hurt, so after 20 years she tells my brothers the truth about my dad. I got to meet the oldest in 1993, he died a couple of years later. I didn't meet the other one until 2009…he's 15 years older than me and I look pretty much exactly like him. But that's still a whole lifetime everyone missed knowing each other for."

—Anonymous

13. "A few years ago my sister and I were contacted by a random guy that turned out to be my full-blood brother. Parents had put him up for adoption before we were born and never told anyone about it. Now we have a relationship with him. A week ago I heard from a second one. He was born after my younger sister and put up for adoption. They didn't tell us about him when we found out about the first one."

—Anonymous

14. "When I was about 11, my sister went to live with my aunt across the country. She was 16 and got into a lot of trouble: guys, sneaking out, alcohol, you name it. She and my dad fought all the time, then one day I'm told she's going to live with my aunt."

"It turned out that there was a special school/rehab out there she asked to go to, but I wasn't told this until many years later…I can see why they wouldn't want to tell a kid but the only thing I saw was my sister fighting with my dad and then her being sent away. I'm not upset with my parents or anything but I would have liked to have known the truth so I didn't fear getting sent away any time I got into trouble."

—Anonymous

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15. "Through an Ancestry email my sister found out that we had a sister that we did not know about. After inquiring, my sister found out that my parents had a first child and put her up for adoption before they were married. Not that unusual for the 1950s, but the devastating news was that the two eldest sisters were told about her, but my one sister and I were not. For a time in the 1970s, my parents had a relationship with her and her husband and children. My two eldest siblings met her also. Other family members either met her or knew of her existence. When we tried to discuss the betrayal (not of the adoption, but the fact two siblings knew about her and two didn't) with our mother we were rejected and then shunned by the whole family for 'attacking' our mother."

"My mother passed away a few years later without ever contacting us again and we each received a copy of a new will stating that my sister and I were disinherited. I feel like my whole life was based on a lie."

—Anonymous

16. "My mother had a brother who was in prison when he was young. Apparently, he was only two years younger than my mother. Found out he existed only after he died and I was contacted as I was his next of kin. He died alcoholic, lonely, and owning only the clothes he was wearing."

—Anonymous

17. "I was raised as an only child by a single (divorced) mother. After about four years of age, we never saw, heard from, or received support from my father. It wasn't until my own daughter went away to college and was working on alumni records on the internet that she accidentally found who she thought was my father. When she came home on break she presented me with the info and I wrestled with whether or not go contact him. After much soul-searching, I decided to contact my father. It turned out that the person wasn't my father but a brother I never knew I had. Not only did I learn that my father was deceased but that I also had a total of four brothers, two older and two younger, and a sister who died as a child."

"Seems my father wasn't such a nice guy, had multiple wives, none of whom he treated well, which is why my mother was so hurt and decided to cut all ties with my father. I suppose this is why she kept my siblings a mystery. Imagine finding out you aren't an only child in your forties."

—Anonymous

18. "I have an older half brother (birth dad's side, I'm my mom's only child) in another country. My dad didn't even tell me. He told my now ex boyfriend when I left the room one day."

—Anonymous

19. "My brother had a bachelor party a few weeks before his wedding. His group of friends were nice to your face but kind of sleazy in reality. A few of his friends were in committed long-term relationships or married. My cousin attended the bachelor party, I didn't as I was out of the country. Turns out the brother of the bride brought a ton of coke and weed to the bachelor party. My cousin had some weed but was very aware of his surroundings. Late into the night, the bride's brother had ordered sex workers."

"Two came and a few of the guys went into the rooms with them, even my brother. One of the friends missed this opportunity and was upset so he ordered two more sex workers. A total of seven sex workers came to the house throughout the night. My cousin was so shocked with this that he ended up leaving. My brother was worried he would snitch so he and a few friends left the Bachelor party very late into the night in a car to find my cousin, and yes they were under the influence. My cousin went home safely and my brother contacted him first thing in the morning and asked him if he remembered anything from last night; of course, he said no as he was scared of potential threats. My brother called him a few times to make sure he wouldn't say anything and that it would be a big problem for my cousin if he did. My cousin obviously told me right away and I confirmed it with another friend who ended up staying there but didn't partake in the activities. 

Since then I have lost all respect for my brother but I still keep in touch with him out of familial obligations. I was never that disgusted or horrified of someone's choices until then. His poor wife doesn't know to this day. To make things worse, one of his friends had a bachelor party and the same thing happened again that my brother took part in while married. I never looked at him the same way again."

—Anonymous

20. "My grandma had a child in the '60s that she was forced to give up for adoption because she was a teenager living at home, and already had one kid. Most people in her life didn't even know she was pregnant. After she had the baby, she saved up to get her own place and would check on the baby every day to make sure they were still there. When she finally had everything in order she went to get her kid and they had already been adopted out. She says she was so heartbroken that she never wanted to talk about it again. Almost 15 years ago a girl, my cousin, reached out to my mom on Facebook saying she thought she was related to us. Everything came out in the open and we met them. At first I think it was heartbreaking for my grandma all over again but now she has even more grandchildren, and she loves it!"

—Anonymous

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21. "The person I call Dad moved in when I was two, right after my biological father (whom I've never met) moved out after the divorce. My dad became the father figure of the household and financially supported us five kids, but was never romantically involved with my mom. In fact when I was four, my mom's much younger boyfriend also moved in and we all lived together until my teenage years when they broke up. My family tree in elementary school was me, my mom, my dad, and my mom's boyfriend, something I thought to be completely normal at the time. As the youngest 'oops baby,' I was talking to my much older brother one day, wishing I was my Dad's biological daughter. I thought about that a lot for some reason. He came clean and told me that my mom had an affair with who I call Dad, got pregnant with his baby, subsequently got an abortion, then got pregnant again immediately after that with me, but this time with her husband (our biological father)."

"My brother said after my birth in the hospital, my mom handed me to who I call Dad and said 'Here is your daughter.' Did I also tell you my biological father was my Dad's boss at the time? I learned that twist too. I'm in my 40s now and always knew myself to have the best Dad ever. We're very close and I am grateful for this sequence of events. Bless him for loving and treating me as his own anyway, knowing my mom purposefully aborted his. But wow, that's just cold. I know my biological father to be an abusive sociopath and my mom is a vain, self-absorbed controlling narcissist, so unfortunately I can't say I'm surprised by this. But I do like to think my mom knew she was giving he and I a better life by appointing him as my dad. Funny enough, he and my mom did eventually get married and are still together."

—Anonymous

22. "Every illness my mom ever had, my parents kept from me. Heart attack? Didn't know. Second heart attack? Didn't find out until much later. Cancer? Didn't tell me. I know they felt like they were protecting me (I'm an only child), but I wish they would have been more upfront about it and let me figure out how to deal with it, instead of not knowing and being shocked when I heard about it from someone other than them."

—Anonymous

23. "My father had a relationship with the grade one teacher in my elementary school. The relationship continued for 48 years. It was a not-so-secret secret. When he was dying in hospice my mom never left his side. The staff saw this as love and devotion. The truth was, my father wanted to call his girlfriend to say goodbye and my mom wanted to have the last hurt. He was put on morphine and only then did she leave. Hospice called two days later to say he died. Mom didn't go back to collect his things and she never mentioned him again."

—Anonymous

24. "I found out my mom was having an affair on her girlfriend (who has raised me since I was a baby). I can't remember how I found out, I've repressed a lot of those memories but it caused a major impact on my relationship with my birth mom. Her affairs have left me traumatized as her boyfriend was abusive and no one in my family did anything to help me even though they knew I found out and was in danger every day until I was 18. I've since moved in with my other mom and have a strong relationship with her."

—Anonymous

25. "A few years ago I did the DNA testing and someone showed up that I had never heard of that was a very close match to me — they shared about 50% of my genetics. I asked my mom about it and she didn't know. I asked my dad and nope, he didn't know either. After my father passed away some of my cousins came for the service. I asked if anyone knew who this guy was…turns out he's my brother (my cousin had figured it out) but no one knows if my dad knew because he never mentioned him to anyone. He's six years older than me and born in the town my dad was living in at the time when he was 19. Surprise! I have a brother!"

—Anonymous

26. And finally, here's a fam secret that goes WAY back: "I am into family tree research. This is actually about dad's family. My paternal great-grandmother was the result of my great-great-grandfather impregnating his 13/14-year-old stepdaughter. My great-grandmother was then raised and presented to the community as the daughter of him and his wife, but that wife was my great-grandmother's grandmother, not her birth mother. She only found out who her mother was at age 17 on her wedding day when her older half-sister ( jealous her younger half-sister was marrying) ... revealed who her birth mother actually was."

"She ran to him in tears and told him she would understand if he did not want to marry a bastard, he said nonsense nothing your sister says is going to stop this marriage. This drama echoed down through the next three generations of the family. That same great-great-grandfather who impregnated his stepdaughter emotionally abused the half-sister and neglected her while showering my great-grandmother with his total devotion. He caused the sisters to be rivals for his attention, rather than normal sisters growing up in the same home. He hurt his children through both actions and inaction. My dad and aunt didn't learn the truth of their grandmother until they were in their early twenties and grandpa's older sister told my aunt the truth resulting in grandpa going into a red-faced rage yelling at her. So many lies causing so much drama across three generations of the family. Family secrets can metastasize like cancer if not removed."

—Anonymous

Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.

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