Costa was born on August 2, 1944 and lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the tip of Cape Cod, where he was known in the local drug scene and had a following among younger people.
In January 1969 Patricia Walsh and Mary Anne Wysocki, both in their early twenties, came to Provincetown and rented a room. They disappeared. Their dismembered remains were found in March in woodland at Truro, near a plot where he cultivated marijuana. He had their car.
Those named in the record are Patricia H. Walsh and Mary Anne Wysocki, Susan Perry, Sydney Monzon, Bonnie Williams, Diane Federoff, Barbara Spaulding and Christine Gallant.
He was arrested on March 6, 1969, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment on May 29, 1969. He hanged himself in his cell at Walpole on May 12, 1974.
Two earlier deaths, in California in 1968 and of a woman in Massachusetts, and further disappearances, have been attributed to him, which is the range of four to eight. Neither was charged.
The case attracted writers rather than investigators. Kurt Vonnegut, who lived on the Cape, wrote about it for a magazine, and a great deal of what circulates comes from the two competing books published soon afterwards. Both were written at speed and neither is a court record, and the larger victim figures come from them.