đ 2022-12-06 ââ12:27:42 â Paris/France.
Richard Cottingham appears on a video call in Mineola, NY (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
A serial killer known as " The Torso Killerwhich was already convicted of 11 homicidesadmitted on Monday that he also killed five women on Long Island in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Richard Cottingham was sentenced on Monday to a sentence of between 25 years and life imprisonment for having killed Diane Cusick23, murdered in February 1968 after buying shoes at the Green Acres mall in Nassau County.
As part of a plea deal, Cottingham received immunity from prosecution for the other four murders. The 76-year-old inmate was in court via video call from a New Jersey jail.
âToday is one of the most emotional days we have ever had at the Nassau County District Attorney's Office,â District Attorney Anne Donnelly said at a press conference where she was joined by several relatives of the Cottingham victims. " In the case of Diane Cusick, her family waited nearly 55 years for someone to hold her accountable for her death.".
Donnelly said that Cottingham, who is considered one of America's most prolific serial killers, "has caused irreparable harm to so many people and so many families, there's not much I can say to them for comfort them."
Richard Cottingham and Jennifer Lewis, who befriended his mother's killer, to solve the case of other victims (Photos: The New Jersey. Composition Infobae)
Cottingham claimed he was responsible for up to 100 homicides. He has been behind bars since 1980. He is known as the "Torso Killer" because he allegedly cut off the heads and limbs of some of his victims, authorities said.
Authorities believe Cusick quit her job at a children's dance school and then stopped at the mall to buy a pair of shoes when Cottingham followed her to her car. They believe he posed as a security guard or police officer, framed her for theft, then overpowered the 90-pound woman. Cusick's body was found on February 16, 1968.
The medical examiner concluded that Cusick had been punched in the face and head and that she had suffocated. He had defense wounds on his hands and police were able to collect DNA evidence at the scene. However, at that time, there were no DNA tests.
Cottingham's DNA was entered into a national database in 2016 when he pleaded guilty to murder in New Jersey. In 2021, Nassau County police re-ran DNA testing on the murdered women's cases and found a match with Cottingham.
At the time Cusick was murdered, Cottingham was working as a computer programmer for a health insurance company in New York.
The other four women Cottingham confessed to on Monday were murdered in 1972 and 1973.
Donnelly said when detectives questioned Cottingham at the jail, he gave them information about those four cases that only the killer could know.
The victim's only daughter was present at the murderer's guilty plea today, which took place via video link since he was admitted to a hospital, and thanked the authorities for continuing to seek justice for his mother over the years.
Netflix's new documentary series 'Crime Scene' examines the notorious case of Richard Cottingham, who left a bloody trail of victims between 1967 and 1980. Cottingham targeted sex workers in Times Square before torturing and mutilating their bodies, often leaving only their torsos as evidence. Picture: Netflix.
In 2020, a woman befriended Cottingham, visited him in prison, gained his trust and got him to confess to a few more deaths. The women Jennifer Weissand is the daughter of one of the victims of the torso assassin, Deedah Goodarzia 23-year-old prostitute of Kuwaiti origin, mother of a four-month-old baby who, years later, would face her mother's killer in prison.
An investigation into the criminal mind, in this case that of Cottingham, is what a Netflix documentary on the "murderer in the chest" attempts. They are laudable attempts to enter a sinister and unpredictable maze, attempting to elucidate a perhaps silly question: how come someone who was possibly born to be a concertmaster of the Liverpool Symphony Orchestra ends up beheading women in a flea market in New York? The results of this research are always meager, but the reconstruction of horror is always effective. Cottingham must feel in the glory: the recognition took time, but it finally came.
The Netflix documentary begins with the murder of Goodarzi and another girl, never identified, because that night Cottingham killed twice. And then he goes through his horror story.
The crimes committed by Cottingham did not have the informative display that other serial killers did, such as Jeffrey Dahmer, that cannibal that he kept the remains of his victims in the freezer at home, nor as John Wayne Gaycy, the killer clown who killed over thirty boys and buried them in the basement of his house.
If Cottingham feels society has been unfair with his crimes and continues to fail to recognize his abilities, Netflix saves him from oblivion, returns him to a role he didn't have, to a recognition his criminal mind didn't have. don't demand, but appreciate. Maybe now sleep easy.
(With information from AP and EFE)
Continue reading:
The horrific case of the âtorso murdererâ: he raped, mutilated and beheaded prostitutes and Netflix saved him from oblivion
SOURCE: Reviews News
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