HOW MANY MORE?

New Jersey’s ‘Torso Killer’ Linked to Yet Another Brutal Killing

Diane Cusick, 23, was found suffocated in the back of her car after she had been raped at Long Island’s Green Acres Mall.

Richard Cottingham, a 75-year-old serial killer who is serving a life sentence for multiple murders and sexual assaults, has been linked via DNA to yet another brutal rape and killing 54 years ago, sources told PIX11. The victim, 23-year-old mother Diane Cusick, was found suffocated in the back of her car with 2-inch-wide adhesive tape wrapped around her neck and mouth after she had been raped at Long Island’s Green Acres Mall. Cottingham’s indictment for her murder is expected to be announced in Nassau County on Wednesday, PIX11 reported. While Cottingham has only been definitively linked to 11 murders, he once told the author of American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years 1950 to 2000 that he’d killed 85 to 100 women. Six jurisdictions in New York and New Jersey are still probing cold cases they believe he could be linked to. Cottingham was nicknamed the Torso Killer after he tortured and killed sex worker Deedeh Goodarzi and an unidentified teenager who were found with their heads and hands severed.