He pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping them for days before drowning them in a motel’s bathtub.
The teenagers were last seen on Aug. 9, 1974. They were found five days later. Their nude, beaten bodies were discovered face down in a wooded area of North Jersey’s Bergen County.
Torso killer convicted of 1968 murder
On Monday, the serial killer appeared remotely at the hearing on video from his prison. As part of the plea arrangement, he admitted to killing Cusick. And he also confessed that in the late ‘60s and early ’70s he murdered five women on Long Island.
He was granted immunity for 4 of the murders and received 25 years for Cusick’s death.
This brings the number of his confirmed kills to 16. Cottingham claims to have murdered up to 100 women.
Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly and prosecutor Jared Rosenblatt held a news conference outside the courtroom. They were joined by some of the Torso killer’s family members.
Darlene Altman, daughter of Diane Cusick, was only a toddler when her mother died. And she felt that after a lifetime she at least knew what happened to her mother.
