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Richard Cottingham, age 76, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the February 1968 death of Diane Cusick during a virtual appearance in Nassau County Court on Monday, Dec. 5.
Cottingham, who became known as the “Torso Killer” after dismembering two of his victims in a Times Square motel in 1979, also admitted that he killed Mary Beth Heinz, Laverne Moye, Sheila Heiman, and Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves in Nassau County in the early 1970s.
According to prosecutors, Cusick, then a resident of New Hyde Park, was an instructor at a dancing school in Oceanside.
On the evening of Thursday, February 15, 1968, she told her family that she was going to the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream to buy a pair of dancing shoes, prosecutors said.
At approximately 10:30 p.m., her parents became concerned that their daughter had not returned home. The parents drove to the shopping center and discovered their daughter’s Plymouth Valiant car in the parking lot of Green Acres Mall, they added.
They found Cusick’s body in the backseat of the car. An adhesive band was found over her mouth and her hands were bound.
She was pronounced dead at 1:40 a.m. on February 16, 1968. The medical examiner determined that Cusick was asphyxiated due to strangulation.
Cottingham, a former computer programmer and married father of three from Lodi, New Jersey, was identified as a suspect in Cusick’s killing in early 2022, when a DNA profile was generated from evidence that was retested by the medical examiner.
By then, he had already been jailed for over four decades, having been tried and convicted for three murders in New York, along with several others in New Jersey.
He is currently serving multiple life sentences at the South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey.
In court Monday, Cottingham also confessed to four additional killings in Nassau County in 1972 and 1973.
Among the victims are Mary Beth Heinz and Laverne Moye, who were both strangled and tossed over a Rockville Centre bridge, prosecutors said.
Heinz was 21 years old and working as a mother’s helper at a home in Bellmore at the time of her murder. Her body was found in May 1972 floating face down in a muddy stream in a wooded area on Maine Avenue.
Moye’s body was discovered by an 11-year-old boy two months later, in July 1972, in the same area as Heinz’s body. The 23-year-old St. Albans, Queens resident was a mother to two children, according to prosecutors.
Cottingham also admitted to bludgeoning 33-year-old Sheila Heiman to death inside her North Woodmere home in July 1973. The mother of three was found dead by her husband in the home’s bathroom.
Police said she had suffered multiple lacerations to her skull, a fractured jaw, and a lacerated jugular vein.
The body of Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves was found in a weeded area of Jones Beach in December 1973. Police said the 18-year-old had been strangled to death before being left in plastic bags wrapped in a gray blanket.
For pleading guilty in Cusick’s death, Cottingham was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. As part of his plea deal, prosecutors granted him immunity from prosecution in the four other killings.
Cottingham has admitted to killing at least a dozen women since the 1960s, and has claimed to be responsible for up to 100 murders, NBC New York reports.
“Serial killer Richard Cottingham has caused irreparable harm to so many people and so many families,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said.
“Today, he took responsibility for the murder of five young women here in Nassau County between 1968 and 1973," Donnelly continued.
"He overpowered, assaulted and brutally murdered them to satisfy his craven desires. Thankfully he will spend the rest of his life in prison where he belongs.”
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