Richard Cottingham, nicknamed the “Torso killer” was charged on Wednesday with a new murder dating back to 1968 in the United States.
One more name to the tragic list of the “Torso killer”. On Wednesday, Richard Cottingham was charged with the murder of 23-year-old Diane Cusick in 1968. Her body was discovered bound with tape and she was strangled to death and then dumped inside his car on Long Island. Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said the man was charged with first-degree murder.
“Diane Cusick, a 23-year-old mother, called her parents this evening February 15, 1968 to tell them that she was going to buy shoes at the mall. She never came back,” she said. She explained that it was advances in DNA testing and scientific technology that allowed police to identify a suspect “in this tragic death”. “We made a promise to his daughter today. That we will obtain justice for him,” said the prosecutor, adding that the child was 4 years old when his mother was killed. “I never thought I would see this day,” the victim’s daughter Darlene Altman said at a press conference Wednesday after Cottingham was arraigned in Nassau County Court, WNBC reports. “I had given up, but all these people got justice for me and for my mother”.
He admitted to several murders
In April 2021, Richard Cottingham had already pleaded guilty to two new murders of teenage girls, Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, killed in 1974 in New Jersey. Like Diane, the two young girls had left their home to go to the mall to buy bathing suits for a beach holiday. Witnesses at the time said they saw the teenage girls hitchhiking and getting into a man’s car. They had promised their families to take the bus. Their bodies were discovered five days later, naked in a wood. “He is relieved that this cloud which has weighed on his head for so many years can fly away”, commented in 2021 the lawyer for the murderer, affirming that he had “serious regrets”.
Months earlier, the man admitted to strangling 18-year-old Irene Blase, 15-year-old Denise Falasca and 13-year-old Jacalyn Harp between 1968 and 1969. In total, he claims to be responsible for at least 100 homicides but authorities in New York and New Jersey have only officially linked him to 11 so far, including the two murders in 1974. He was arrested in 1980 when a motel maid overheard a woman screaming in her bedroom. Authorities found her alive, but bound in handcuffs and suffering from bite wounds and stab wounds. Richard Cottingham owes his nickname “Torso Killer” to the way he cut up the bodies of his victims. Richard Cottingham, who has already been sentenced to more than 200 years in prison, dismembers them.