Where is Richard Cottingham now? 'Torso killer' to plead guilty to brutal murders of 5 Long Island women
Warning: This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some, readers' discretion advised
NASSAU COUNTY, NEW YORK: The notorious serial killer, also known as the "Torso Killer" due to the way he dismembered several of his victims, is scheduled to enter a guilty plea on Monday, December 5 in the grisly killings of five Long Island women. Having been found guilty of murdering six additional women between 1967 and 1980, Richard Cottingham, 76, has already been serving a life term in New Jersey.
According to Newsday, the former computer programmer and father of three is now anticipated to confess to the 1968 rape and murder of dance instructor Diane Cusick as well as the killings of four additional women in Nassau County in 1972 and 1973. 23-year-old Cusick went to Valley Stream's Green Acres Mall to buy shoes but didn't return home. She was discovered slain. The DNA analysis ultimately connected Cottingham to her death. In June, charges were filed against the mass murderer in connection with Cusick's death.
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At the time, Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly stated that she believed the DNA match to be the oldest one to result in a prosecution in the country. Cottingham is slated to enter a plea on Monday in a courtroom in Mineola, New York, appearing remotely from the New Jersey jail where he is currently serving a life sentence, as per New York Post.
Even though he has claimed responsibility for up to 100 murders, most of those have not been connected to him. The homicides of two women, whose dismembered bodies were discovered at a motel close to Times Square in December 1979 missing their heads and hands, are among the murders to which Cottingham has been connected. Deedeh Goodarzi, a 22-year-old sex worker, was one of the butchered victims; the identity of the other young woman is unknown. When he was arrested in 1980, Cottingham had three children, was married, and was employed as a computer programmer by a health insurance firm in New York. He was apprehended after a maid at a motel in New Jersey heard a lady screaming inside his room. Police discovered the 18-year-old victim alive but handcuffed with bite marks and knife cuts to her breasts. His horrible deeds were described in the "Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer" Netflix series, which debuted in December 2021.
Cottingham is being detained in Bridgeton, New Jersey's South Woods State Prison. AEtv reported that Cottingham looked remarkably like Santa Claus in a court photo from April 2021 with his shaggy white beard and a plump tummy. Cottingham was characterized by the New York Daily News as "too ridiculously normal to be a serial killer."