NEW YORK — A convicted serial murderer known as the “Times Square Killer” whose savage string of sexually charged murders stretched from New Jersey to Manhattan for nearly 15 years confessed Monday to the half-century-old homicides of five women on Long Island.
Richard Cottingham, 76, who is also known as the “Torso Killer,” is already serving time in New Jersey State Prison in Trenton for 11 homicides committed between 1967 and 1980.
Dressed in a medical gown, he appeared via video in Supreme Court in Nassau County from a prison hospital ward and pleaded guilty to the 1968 murder of dance teacher Diane Cusick. He also admitted to killing four other women in 1972 and 1973.
