Suffolk DA starting fresh probe of 1966 slaying of Selden woman found in car

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said his office’s Cold Case Unit has begun a fresh investigation into the 1966 murder of a Selden widow.

But he said it would not be appropriate for him to consider granting immunity to serial killer Richard Cottingham in exchange for information about Marilyn Simons' death until that probe is completed.

Linda Greco of Holbrook, Simons' daughter, asked Tierney’s office to give immunity to Cottingham after Cottingham suggested in correspondence with her that he was involved in the slaying of her mother nearly 60 years ago.

Cottingham, known as "The Torso Killer" because he dismembered some of his victims, has been linked to 19 murders in New York and New Jersey and is serving multiple life sentences at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey.

"A reexamination of the murder of Ms. Simons has begun," Tierney said in a statement to Newsday. "Of course, no decision to give immunity to a convicted serial killer will be made until after a comprehensive review of evidence and only after all leads are exhausted."

Greco declined to discuss her mother’s death or the investigation with Newsday, but she told WNBC that she began corresponding with Cottingham in 2022, after he admitted fatally strangling a dance teacher in 1968, and to the slayings of four other women, in Nassau County Court. "I don’t want him prosecuted," Greco told WNBC. "I just need to know so my mother can rest in peace."

Greco said she contacted Cottingham because she wanted to find out if he was responsible for the murder of her mother, who was found dead in her car in 1966.

"I am truly sorry for all of the grief I have brought to you and your family," Cottingham wrote in a cryptic message to Greco in December, according to WNBC.

Newsday was unsuccessful in its attempts to speak to Cottingham. He has not confessed to the killing, but he told WNBC that he would tell all he knows about Simons' murder if he received immunity from Tierney’s office. "I think she would be very happy with what I have to say," he told the news outlet, referring to Greco.

Newsday reported in 1966 that a rabbit hunter discovered Simons’ body sprawled in the front seat of her car on a wooded Selden road. She had been stabbed and strangled, Suffolk police said at the time. A garment had been stuffed in her mouth and a garter was looped around her neck, but authorities said that was a setup and she had not been sexually assaulted prior to her death.

In December 2022, Cottingham pleaded guilty in Nassau County Court to second-degree murder in the death of dance teacher Diane Cusick, 23, of New Hyde Park. At sentencing, he also acknowledged murdering Mary Beth Heinz, 21, of Mineola; Laverne Moye, 23, of St. Albans; Sheila Heiman, 33, of North Woodmere; and Maria Emerita Rosado Nieves, 18, of Manhattan, between 1972 and 1973.

Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly said in 2022 that her office agreed not to prosecute Cottingham for four of the slayings as he was already going to spend the rest of his life in prison. Nassau County Judge Caryn Fink sentenced Cottingham, who appeared in court virtually with his attorney from a New Jersey prison, to 25 years to life for the death of Cusick.

"Serial killer Richard Cottingham has caused irreparable harm to so many people and so many families," Donnelly said when Cottingham was sentenced. "Today, he took responsibility for the murder of five young women here in Nassau County between 1968 and 1973. He overpowered, assaulted and brutally murdered them to satisfy his craven desires. Thankfully, he will spend the rest of his life in prison, where he belongs."

Suffolk police have had an open investigation into Simons’ murder since 1966, Tierney said in his statement. The district attorney’s Cold Case Unit, created last year in the wake of the 2023 arrest of Gilgo Beach homicide suspect Rex A. Heuermann, began a comprehensive review of the evidence in Simons’ death earlier this year.

Simons’ case is one of approximately 300 cold cases from a 55-year time span — 1965 to 2020 — under review by the Cold Case Unit, Tierney said.

"Like the Gilgo investigation, these reexaminations start from the ground up, with a comprehensive look at all of the evidence," Tierney said.

Newsday's Robert Brodsky contributed to this story.