Florida plastic surgeon accused of killing attorney in his office defends himself in murder trial
An unusual trial is underway for a Florida plastic surgeon, accused of murdering an attorney he’d opposed in court and disposing of his body in a dumpster before prosecutors say it ended up at the landfill.
Clad in an orange jail jumpsuit, Dr. Tomasz Kosowski, 47, is representing himself in court as he faces a first-degree murder charge with the possibility of the death penalty. He’s waived his right to a jury – the judge presiding over the Pinellas County trial is set to decide the doctor’s fate.
Kosowski was arrested in March 2023 in connection with the disappearance of attorney Steven Cozzi. He has remained in jail and insists he is innocent.
The two men met through a legal dispute.
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Cozzi had worked on a civil lawsuit beginning in 2019 involving money allegedly owed to Kosowski for work he’d done tied to personal injury cases. Cozzi helped represent the corporate clients Kosowski was suing.
During years of litigation, Kosowski developed a hostile attitude toward Cozzi, according to court records. He blamed Cozzi for his problems in the case and demanded that the attorney be removed as defense counsel, records show.
"He made a bunch of completely unwarranted, inappropriate accusations about Steve throughout the litigation," said Jake Pillsbury, an attorney who worked with Cozzi on the case.
Cozzi had told others that, during a deposition, Kosowski approached him in a restroom and "called him a scumbag" and "that he [Kosowski] was going to win," Pillsbury said in court.
Those close to Cozzi began to worry about his safety.
Cozzi’s husband, Michael Montgomery, had suggested arranging for "some kind of on-site security," if Cozzi had to meet with Kosowski again.
On March 21, 2023, Cozzi and Kosowski both were scheduled to attend a teleconference hearing at 10 a.m.
Before that, it was a normal Tuesday morning, Montgomery said. Cozzi brought him his morning coffee and they had a short conversation before he left for work. That was the last time he’d see him.
About 10 minutes before the meeting, Cozzi left his phone, keys, wallet, and other items on his desk and went to the office restroom.
He never showed up for the scheduled teleconference.
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Later, Cozzi’s boss entered the restroom and found spattered blood, court records show.
Security footage from the day Cozzi disappeared shows a subject arriving in a silver Toyota Tundra around 8:30 a.m. The prosecution alleges it was Kosowski.
A man wearing dark gloves entered the building where Cozzi worked carrying a box "large enough to conceal a human body," according to investigators.
At 10:22 a.m., the same man exited the building pulling a wagon covered with a reddish orange blanket.
The man could be seen struggling with the weight of the cart while pulling it to the truck, records show.
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That day, the Tundra was driven to Kosowski’s home in Tarpon Springs, Florida, videos pieced together from multiple surveillance cameras showed, according to court records.
On the way, the truck passed a Flock camera that captured an image of "a red bag or blanket in a cart that appeared to contain what resembles a human body located in the bed of the truck," according to arrest records.
Two days later, investigators arrived at Kosowski’s home with a search warrant and found the Tundra in the garage with blood in the truck bed, on the driver’s side headrest, on the driver’s side floorboard and on the garage floor.
Cozzi’s DNA was found in the Tundra and Kosowski’s garage floor, court records show.
In the search of Kosowski’s vehicles, investigators found a ballistic vest with a "substantial amount" of blood on it. They also found one iPhone and a "burner phone"––the term for an inexpensive, prepaid device meant to be discarded.
Law enforcement officials also found a vest meant to be worn by a medical first responder, sheriff's office patches, a foldable bike, a gas can, $282,000 in cash, two passports and black, industrial-sized garbage bags.
Investigators also found a black duffel that the prosecution has called "a murder bag." Inside, there were lighters, a Taser, scissors, brass knuckles, a crowbar, ski masks and a Guy Fawkes mask.
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The bag also contained a syringe, a needle and a vial of succinylcholine, a paralytic drug. It was labeled in a way that connected it to Kosowski’s plastic-surgery office in Miami.
After Kosowski was arrested, police informed him they’d be searching his body to collect possible DNA and fingernail clippings, and would be taking photographs of him, the prosecution said.
After that, camera footage from inside the patrol car shows Kosowski struggling to bring his hands from behind his back, underneath his feet and up to his face.
He then began to "meticulously suck on each of his fingers," a member of the prosecution team told the judge.
"He's using his tongue and getting up underneath it and slurping. He's using his teeth almost as a nail file, trying to destroy any trace of evidence that might bring him back to Steven Cozzi."
The prosecution argues that Kosowski began planning the killing long before he allegedly murdered Cozzi.
More than a month before the attorney’s disappearance, Kosowski allegedly visited Cozzi’s home without his knowledge and photographed a car in the carport, according to the prosecution team.
Kosowski also visited Blanchard Law Firm where Cozzi worked. He drove around the building and took photos multiple times before Cozzi’s disappearance, the prosecution has alleged.
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In early March 2023, Kosowski began searching Cozzi and Montgomery online, seeking information about their wedding and records about previous and current addresses, prosecutors said.
An employee of the building that housed the Blanchard Law Firm told investigators that a week before Cozzi’s disappearance, she found a man in a mask hiding in the office utility closet.
Suspicious, she asked him why he was there, court records show. He told her it was because of a power outage and walked away.
She watched him leave in a grey Toyota Tundra, investigators said.
Fingerprints matching Kosowski’s were later found in that closet.
Investigators never found Cozzi’s body.
On the day Cozzi disappeared, Kosowski’s cellphone was allegedly tracked traveling toward his second home in Miami. He pulled off on a dirt road in South Florida near the Everglades where there’s a dumpster, court records show.
Records of his cellphone’s location show he returned to the dumpster two days later, the prosecution alleges. The team argues that Kosowski returned to the garbage collection container to see if it had been emptied.
Law enforcement later investigated the dumpster and a K-9 trained in human detection alerted on it, indicating the presence of human remains. But a body was not found.
Investigators tracked down the garbage truck driver who collected that dumpster on his route. He remembers that day.
"It was a smell that he had never experienced," a member of the prosecution team told the court.
"He described that smell as vile. He had to crush the trash back in his garbage truck so many times, because the stench was so overwhelming––and this is someone who is a garbage truck driver."
The day he drove that load, the garbage truck driver stopped at a store to buy air freshener because he "could not stand the scent that was in his nose while he was driving around," the prosecution said.
That smell was "Steven's body decaying in the Florida heat for two days."
Video captured by a camera mounted on the garbage truck captured the load from the dumpster tumbling into the truck. That footage shows "a lot of black industrial-sized garbage bags, similar to the ones that Dr. Kozowski had in the trunk of his car," a prosecution team member told the judge.
Video shown in court shows bags falling into the truck that are "consistent with a human body," the prosecution team said.
Law enforcement officers visited the landfill where the garbage truck dumped that load, but it was more than a week after it was deposited.
By that time, more than 6,000 tons of compacted garbage had been piled atop the load.
Still, in an attempt to recover the body of Cozzi, they sifted through the landfill for days, officers testified in court.
"His hearse was a dump truck, and his burial site… is at the Collier County Landfill," a prosecutor told the court.
The prosecution team has called dozens of witnesses to testify before Judge Joseph Bulone.
In July 2025, a written plea of not guilty was submitted by an attorney representing Kosowski at the time. In that plea, he requested a trial by jury.
More than a year later, on Aug. 31, Kosowski told the court he’d changed his mind and wanted a judge to decide his fate.
His trialbegan on Sept. 14.
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For the first three days of the trial, Kosowski sat mostly quiet, blandly staring at witnesses, taking notes and giving short answers to questions from the judge. On the fourth day, he began cross-examining some of the prosecution’s witnesses who had presented evidence.
He has objected to evidence obtained from his body, from his Toyota Corolla and from his residence, according to court records. His motions to suppress the evidence were denied.
On Sept. 18, the fifth day of his trial, he asked the judge to strike a key witness’s testimony about DNA evidence. He argued that the witness, a DNA expert, didn’t provide enough of his own interpretation of the numbers.
Bulone denied the motion, but said Kosowski could challenge the DNA findings in closing arguments.
Fox News Digital was not able to reach Kosowski for comment.
The trial is set to resume on Sept. 22.