Young mom was strangled outside a mall in 1968. Serial killer now charged, NY cops say
A convicted serial killer has been charged 54 years after a young mother was found dead, bound and strangled outside of a mall in New York, according to police and media reports.
Diane Cusick’s worried parents found her body in the backseat of her car after she never made it home from going out to buy dancing shoes, the Nassau County District Attorney’s office said in a June 22 news release. Cusick taught dance at Long Island school and was 23-years-old when she died.
Now, Richard Cottingham, 75, who resides at a state prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey, is charged with second-degree murder after advancements in DNA technology connected him with Cusick’s death, the district attorney’s office said.
Cottingham, who has been infamously called the “Torso Killer,” has served prison time since 1980 following convictions for five other murders, PIX 11 reported. He once told a criminal historian he had murdered more than 85 women.
The cold case involving Cusick goes back to the evening of Feb. 15, 1968, when she called her parents and said she was going to the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, the news release said.
Cottingham is accused of posing as a “security guard or police officer” at the mall to lure Cusick “to go with him,” NBC New York reported.
The district attorney’s office said in the release that when Cusick’s body was discovered, she had “an adhesive band” placed “over her mouth” and her hands were tied.
She fatally “asphyxiated due to strangulation,” according to a medical examiner, the district attorney’s office said.
Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly said in a statement that “we make a promise to (Cusick’s) surviving daughter today: we will bring her mother’s killer to justice.”
In early 2022, DNA linked Cottingham to Cusick’s death after the Nassau County medical examiner retested case evidence in 2021, the release said.
Cottingham appeared in court on June 22 for an arraignment and pleaded not guilty to the murder charge against him, according to the district attorney’s office. He is set to return to court on Aug. 18.
If convicted, Cottingham faces up to 25 years in prison, according to the release.
This story was originally published June 22, 2022 at 5:23 PM with the headline "Young mom was strangled outside a mall in 1968. Serial killer now charged, NY cops say."
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