Richard Cottingham Pleads Guilty to the 1968 Murder of Diane Cusick and Admits Four More Long Island Killings
The "Torso Killer" was sentenced to 25 years to life for killing the 23-year-old dance teacher at a Valley Stream mall, and was given immunity for four 1970s murders he confessed.
Published
Diane Cusick called her parents on the night of February 15, 1968, to say she was going to the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream to buy a pair of dance shoes. She was 23, the mother of a 4-year-old girl, and she taught dance to children. She never came home. Her parents went looking, found her car in the mall parking lot, and found her body in the back seat. She had been beaten, raped and bound with duct tape. It was two days after Valentine's Day.
Fifty-four years later, on Monday, December 5, 2022, Richard Cottingham, the serial killer known as the "Torso Killer" and the "Times Square Killer," pleaded guilty in Nassau County Court in Mineola to second-degree murder in her death. Appearing by video from a New Jersey prison, where he was already serving life, he was sentenced to 25 years to life. He had been indicted in the case that June.
He also admitted, as part of the plea, to four killings on Long Island that had never been solved, and in exchange he was given immunity from prosecution for them. According to Fox News, the four women were Mary Beth Heinz, 21, killed on May 10, 1972; Laverne Moye, 23, killed on July 20, 1972; Sheila Heiman, 33, killed on July 20, 1973; and Marita Emerita Rosado Nieves, 18, killed on December 27, 1973.
"Today is one of the most emotional days we've ever had in the Nassau County district attorney's office," District Attorney Anne Donnelly said at a news conference, joined by relatives of the victims. "In the case of Diane Cusick, her family has waited nearly 55 years for someone to be held accountable for her death." Cusick's daughter, Darlene Altman, read a statement in court. Randi Childs, Sheila Heiman's daughter, held up a picture of her mother and father as she spoke to reporters afterward.
How the case was solved
Police believe Cottingham posed as a security guard or police officer, followed Cusick out to her car, accused her of stealing and overpowered her. She weighed 98 pounds. The medical examiner found she had been beaten about the face and head and suffocated, and she had defensive wounds on her hands. Investigators collected DNA evidence at the scene, but in 1968 there was no way to test it. "It was only through advances in DNA technology," Donnelly said when she announced the indictment, that her office and the Nassau County Police Department could solve the case. At the time of the killing Cottingham was working as a computer programmer for a health insurance company in New York.
He was convicted in the early 1980s of murdering five women, three in New York and two in Bergen County, New Jersey. In 2021 he pleaded guilty in New Jersey to the 1974 murders of two teenage friends, Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16. He has claimed responsibility for as many as 100 killings.
The four 1970s killings Cottingham admitted in Mineola were not prosecuted; under the plea agreement he received immunity for them, so they are admissions, not convictions. Reports spelled two of the women's names differently (Moye or Moy; Heiman, Hyman or Haiman), and gave his age as 76 (NBC New York) or 73 (Fox News). His claim of up to 100 killings is his own; NBC New York reported that he had admitted to murdering at least a dozen women.
Sources
- Infamous 'Torso Killer' Admits Murdering Long Island Dance Teacher, 4 Others, NBC New York, Pei-Sze Cheng
- NYC 'torso killer' pleads guilty to 1968 murder of Long Island woman Diane Cusick, admits to killing 4 others, Fox News, Danielle Wallace (with the Associated Press)