What to know
- A 76-year-old serial killer who is serving a life sentence for killing nearly half a dozen women and girls in New Jersey and New York since the 1960s admitted Monday to strangling a woman in the parking lot of a County mall. Nassau more than 50 years ago and confessed to four other murders, prosecutors have announced.
- Richard Cottingham, who is currently serving a life sentence in New Jersey State Prison for his previous convictions, is responsible for as many as 100 murders in recent decades. He pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree murder in the February 1968 murder of Diane Cusick, a case in which he was charged last June.
- The so-called “Torso Killer” or “Times Square Killer” also confessed to four other previously unsolved murders from the 1970s.
NEW YORK – A 76-year-old serial killer who is serving a life sentence for killing nearly half a dozen women and girls in New Jersey and New York since the 1960s admitted Monday to strangling a woman in a county parking lot. Nassau Mall more than 50 years ago and confessed to four other murders, prosecutors have announced.
Richard Cottingham, who is currently serving a life sentence in New Jersey State Prison for his previous convictions, is responsible for as many as 100 murders in recent decades. He pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree murder in the February 1968 murder of Diane Cusick, a case in which he was charged last June.
The so-called “Torso Killer” or “Times Square Killer” also confessed to four other previously unsolved murders from the 1970s. These include the murders of Mary Beth Heinz and Laverne Moy in May 1972 and July 1972, as well as the murders of Sheila Hyman and Marita Rosado Nieves in 1970. He will not be prosecuted further in those cases, but another 25-year sentence will be added to his current life sentence as part of the plea deal filed on Monday.
Cusick was a 23-year-old dance teacher and mother of one son when she was found beaten, raped, and duct-taped in her car in the parking lot of Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream at the time.
It had been two days since Valentine’s Day.
Cottingham allegedly pretended to be a security guard or police officer so that Cusick would accompany him. Detectives have long believed he did the same to other murder victims. Last summer, five open cases involving Cottingham’s DNA saw further evidence. It is unclear whether four of those five cases were the new victims identified on Monday.
Though he has been behind bars for decades, prosecutors say he continues to work to provide answers to the victims’ families.
“Diane Cusick, a mother of 23, called her parents on the night of February 15, 1968 to tell them she was going to the mall to buy some shoes. He never came home,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said announcing the June indictment. “Cusick was allegedly tied up and killed by Richard Cottingham.”
“It was only through advances in DNA technology that the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office and our partners at the Nassau County Police Department were able to solve this 54-year-old cold case and identify a suspect in the tragic death of Mrs Cusick,” Donnelly added. “Today we make a promise to the surviving daughter: we will bring her mother’s killer to justice.”
Cusick, for example, had gone to the mall the day she died to buy some dancing shoes. Her parents reported her missing when she didn’t come home. They were the ones who found her car in the mall parking lot, and they were the ones who found her body in the back seat.
But it was Cusick’s daughter, Darlene Altman, who was with police Wednesday when they announced the indictment.
“I never thought I’d see this day, but all of these people have gotten justice for my mother,” her daughter Darlene Altman said. “It was overwhelming to see him on video in court with a dead stare.”
Cottingham, one of New Jersey’s most notorious serial killers, was nicknamed the “Torso Killer” because he was known for dismembering his victims, according to NorthJersey.com. He admitted to killing at least a dozen women since the 1960s.
Cottingham pleaded guilty last year in New Jersey to the 1974 murders of two teenage friends who went to the mall one day to buy bathing suits and never returned.
The teenagers, Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, were among at least a dozen victims linked to Cottingham over the years. She admitted to killing nine women in the 1960s and 1970s, but the number of murders is believed to be higher.
In the early 1980s, Cottingham was convicted of killing five women, three in New York and two in Bergen County, and in 2010 he confessed to killing a woman in northern New Jersey in 1967. He has been incarcerated since 1981.
Cottingham claimed responsibility for as many as 100 murders. Pryor and Kelly were found five days after their disappearance: their battered, naked bodies discovered face down in the woods of northern New Jersey. Kelly was reportedly found wearing a bracelet and necklace that read “Lorraine and Ricky,” a reference to her boyfriend.
Pryor was unveiled wearing a gold cross, a gift from her godfather.
