The so-called “torso killer” or “Times Square killer,” who claims to have murdered up to 100 people in New York and New Jersey, pleaded guilty Monday to the 1968 murder of Long Island single mother Diane Cusick, and also admitted to the murders of four other women in Nassau County between 1972 and 1973.
Richard Cottingham, 73, is already serving a life sentence in New Jersey state prison for murdering nearly a dozen women and girls in the 1960s. He allegedly often posed as a mall security guard and he would approach victims in parking lots, accusing them of stealing before launching his violent attacks.
In a five-decade break in the case, Cottingham was charged earlier this year with the murder of Cusick, 23, a dance teacher and mother of a four-year-old daughter who had gone to the Green. Acres Mall in Valley Stream just to buy new dance shoes.
Her parents reported her missing when she didn’t return, and her father was the one who found Cusick beaten, raped, and duct-taped in the backseat of her car in the mall parking lot just two days after Valentine’s Day that year. .
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Appearing virtually from a New Jersey prison for the Nassau County Court hearing, Cottingham was sentenced to 25 years to life behind bars for Cusick’s murder.
Richard Cottingham and the victim Diane Cusick.
(Nassau County District Attorney’s Office)
He received immunity from prosecution for the other four murders he admitted to as part of his plea deal in Cusick’s death. Those were the murders of 21-year-old Mary Beth Heinz on May 10, 1972; Laverne Moye, 23, on July 20, 1972; Sheila Heiman, 33, on July 20, 1973; and Marita Emerita Rosado Nieves, 18 years old, on December 27, 1973.
Richard Cottingham makes a virtual remote appearance in court in Mineola, New York, Monday, December 5, 2022. The serial killer known as the “Torso Killer” admitted Monday to killing a 23-year-old woman outside a facility Long Island commercial. in 1968 and four other women decades ago.
(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
“It was only through advances in DNA technology that the NCDA and our partners at the Nassau County Police Department were able to crack this 54-year-old cold case and identify a suspect in the tragic death of Ms. Cusick,” said Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly. she said herself in June, announcing the indictment. “Today we make a promise to her surviving daughter: We will bring the killer of her mother to justice.”
Randi Childs, daughter of Sheila Heiman, holds a photo of her mother and father as she speaks at a press conference after Richard Cottingham made a remote appearance in court in Mineola, New York, Monday, December 5, 2022. Cottingham, the serial killer known as the “Torso Killer,” admitted Monday to killing a 23-year-old woman outside a Long Island mall in 1968 and four other women decades ago, including Sheila Heiman.
(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
“I never thought I would see this day, but all these people got justice for my mother,” Cusick’s daughter, Darlene Altman, said in June. “It was overwhelming to see him on video in court with a dead stare.”
Victim of the torso killer Sheila Heiman.
(Nassau County District Attorney’s Office)
Altman told News 12 that he would be flying from Florida to attend the court hearing on Monday.
DNA evidence reportedly linked Cottingham to the murders of the other four women killed in Nassau County.
Darlene Altman, daughter of Diane Cusick, reads a statement with prosecutor Jared Rosenblatt by her side in court in Mineola, New York, Monday, December 5, 2022. Richard Cottingham, the serial killer known as the “Torso Killer,” admitted Monday to killing Cusick, a 23-year-old woman, outside a Long Island mall in 1968 and four other women decades ago.
(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Cottingham, a former Manhattan computer programmer and father of three, has claimed he was responsible for as many as 100 homicides, though authorities in New York and New Jersey have officially linked him to only a dozen so far. He has been incarcerated since 1980 when he was arrested after a motel maid heard a woman screaming inside his room. Authorities found the woman alive but handcuffed and with bite marks and stab wounds.
Torso killer victim Mary Heinz.
(Nassau County District Attorney’s Office)
He was convicted in the early 1980s of murdering five women, three in New York and two in Bergen County, New Jersey. In 2010, he allegedly confessed to the murder of another woman in northern New Jersey in 1967, WNBC reported.
Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly speaks as District Attorney Jared Rosenblatt looks on during a press conference after Richard Cottingham appeared remotely in a courtroom in Mineola, N.Y., Monday, December 5, 2022.
(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Last year, Cottingham pleaded guilty to the 1974 murders of two New Jersey teenagers, 17-year-old Mary Ann Pryor and 16-year-old Lorraine Marie Kelly, friends who had gone to the mall to buy new bathing suits but they never came back. Five days after they went missing, their bodies were found naked and beaten in the woods of northern New Jersey.
The victim of the torso killer, Mary Heinz, seen in an old school photo.
(Nassau County District Attorney’s Office)
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He was nicknamed the “torso killer” because he allegedly dismembered victims in some cases. In a December 1979 case, he beheaded and severed the hands of two women, believed to be sex workers, at a Times Square hotel before setting the hotel room on fire, according to Newsday.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
