The families of the victims of one the nation’s most prolific serial killers — who have spent decades desperate for information about the murders of their loved ones — have finally begun getting answers.
Richard Cottingham, a former computer programmer who had been given various monikers — the Times Square Killer, the Torso Killer, the New York Ripper — was convicted of five grisly New York and New Jersey murders and three violent assaults between 1977 and 1980 in three trials that ended 1984. His m.o. included raping his victims before torturing and mutilating some by removing their heads, hands and breasts.
“This guy is a manipulative monster who loves control,” Alan Grieco, a retired chief of detectives with the Bergen County prosecutor’s office in New Jersey, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “The number of women he killed and assaulted has to be one of the highest of any serial killer.”
watch our detailed video about the “Time Square Killer”
Despite solving those five homicides, detectives believe that Cottingham — who is serving multiple life sentences in New Jersey’s South Woods State Prison and has boasted to have killed between 80 to 100 women — is responsible for other cold case crimes.
After his conviction, detectives spent years visiting Cottingham in prison and plying him with pizza and games of poker in an effort to get more information out of him.
Their efforts began paying off in 2010 when he started admitting — often in exchange for immunity— to more than a dozen unsolved homicides stretching back to 1967, including five murders he admitted to orchestrating in 2022.
Darlene Altman, 59, is one of a handful of family members who have finally been given some semblance of peace by the recent confessions from the aging killer, who, at 76, now spends most of his days in a wheelchair in the prison infirmary.
Altman was three years old in 1968 when the body of her mother — 23-year-old Long Island dance teacher Diane Cusick — was discovered in the back seat of her car at a shopping mall near her home. She had been raped, beaten, and strangled.
“I had pretty much given up hope of getting any answers,” admits Altman, who spent years telephoning police on the anniversary of her mother’s murder, desperate for any updates they could provide.
“But now I’m praying every day that they get him to tell more so other families can get some answers. It’s not closure. It’s not going to bring anyone back, but it’s something.”
People Magazine Investigates: The Times Square Killer, a special two-hour episode, airs on ID and streams on Max Monday, Sept. 18 at 9/8c.
