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On Monday, December 5, incarcerated serial killer Richard Cottingham pleaded guilty to the 1968 murder of Diane Kusick, as well as the cold case slayings of four other women.
Known as 'The Torso Killer', Richard Cottingham, 76, was initially convicted of five murders in the 1980s, after investigators discovered he was responsible for the murders of multiple women across New York and New Jersey.
In 2009, after insisting upon his innocence for decades, he began to confess to several other murders. New York authorities have linked him to at least 17 homicides.
The Associated Press reported that on Monday, Richard Cottingham formally confessed not only to the murder of Diane Cusick, but also to those of Laverne Moye, Sheila Heiman, Mary Beth Heinz, and Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves.
Richard Cottingham is currently serving life sentence
Born and raised in New York City and New Jersey, Richard Cottingham came from a fairly privileged background. After graduating high school in 1964, he began to work as a computer operator at Metropolitan Life, where his father was Vice President.
While Cottingham was implicated in his killing spree much later on in life, his home life and minor arrests indicated that he had a history of abusive and violent behavior. In 1978, his wife filed for divorce, claiming that he had subjected her to psychological abuse and abandonment.
Throughout the 70s, he was arrested several times for crimes ranging from drunk driving to shoplifting, as well as the robbery and unlawful imprisonment of a woman he was having intimate relations with.
Cottingham's activities as 'The Torso Killer', however, were only discovered in 1980, after he was accused of kidnapping, torturing, and abusing 18-year-old Leslie Ann O'Dell in Manhattan. After authorities began to investigate the case, they discovered physical evidence that linked him to two other murder victims.
Over the years, as Cottingham confessed to the murders, investigators linked him to a killing spree that most likely began with the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick. In many cases, Cottingham's victims were vulnerable young women who were soliciting on the streets for money. In many cases, their body parts were discovered severed or dismembered.
Diane Cusick's brother, Jim Martin, condemned Cottingham's actions in court on Monday.
Martin said:
“Like it was nothing he strangled the life out of my beautiful sister. I just wish myself or my brother would have found you in the streets, and we would have torn you apart.”
When asked by Judge Caryn Fink if he wished to plead for forgiveness, Cottingham replied, 'no'.
As per the Independent, The District Attorney in Nassau County, Long Island, will not prosecute Cottingham for the additional four murders, as he is already serving life in prison on nine other homicide-related convictions.
