Cottingham also led investigators to assume he was guilty of the death by supplying facts about the case, such as claiming he was near the crime site at the time of the murder.
On New York’s Long Island, the so-called “Torso Killer” has been linked to the death of a lady discovered in the parking lot of a shopping mall fifty years ago.
Richard Cottingham, who is thought to be one of the most prolific serial killers in the United States, was arraigned Wednesday on a second-degree murder charge in connection with the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick.
Cottingham pleaded not guilty from a hospital bed in New Jersey, where he is already serving a life sentence for other murders.
Authorities think that Ms. Cusick, age 23, left her employment at a children’s dancing school and then stopped at the Green Acres Mall in Nassau County to purchase a pair of shoes when Mr. Cottingham followed her out.
The suspect is believed to have impersonated a security guard or police officer, accused the victim of theft, and then overpowered her, according to Nassau County Police Detective Captain Stephen Fitzpatrick.
He further stated that she was “brutally beaten, raped, and murdered in that vehicle.”
She had defensive wounds on her hands, and DNA evidence was collected at the scene.
However, there was no DNA testing at the time, and the case finally fell cold.
At the time of Ms. Cusick’s death, Cottingham was a computer programmer for a health insurance business in New York.
In the 1980s, he was convicted of murder in both New York and New Jersey, but the law did not require him to produce a DNA sample, as it does now.
In 2016, when he pled guilty to another murder in New Jersey, his DNA was extracted and submitted into a national database.
47 years ago, Cottingham pled guilty to the murders of Mary Ann Pryor, age 17, and Lorraine Marie Kelly, age 16.
In 2021, authorities in Nassau County, located east of New York City, got information that a man believed to be responsible for deaths in the county was in custody in New Jersey.
They recommenced DNA testing on cold cases and discovered a match with Cottingham.
Cottingham allegedly led investigators to assume he was responsible for the homicide by supplying facts about the case, including that he was near a drive-in theatre that was adjacent to the mall at the time of the murder.
However, he refrained from directly confessing to the murder of Ms. Cusick.
He was not always an elderly man with frailty.
This week, Cottingham requested to be arraigned by video stream from a hospital in New Jersey due to his bad health and bedridden condition.
Anne Donnelly, the district attorney of Nassau County, stated, “He is a dangerous predator, and despite his current appearance in a hospital bed, he was not always a frail elderly man.”
“At the time he murdered Ms. Cusick, he was only 22 years old. He was powerful, even stronger than these women, and violent.”
Cottingham, who was dubbed The Torso Killer and The Times Square Killer, previously claimed responsibility for up to one hundred deaths.
Officially, New York and New Jersey authorities have only tied him to a dozen murders, including that of Ms. Cusick.
Since 1980, when he was arrested after a motel maid heard a woman crying in his room, he has been incarcerated.
