Tony Costa
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Tony Costa (August 2, 1944 – May 12, 1974), also known as the Cape Cod Vampire, was a serial killer active in Massachusetts during the late 1960's.
Biography edit
Costa was suspected of killing seven women: Bonnie Williams, Diane Federoff, Barbara Spaulding, Sydney Monson, Susan Perry, Patricia Walsh, and Mary Anne Wysocki but convicted of killing only two: Walsh and Wysocki. On February 8, 1969, while looking for the bodies of Patricia Walsh and Mary Anne Wysocki, police discovered Susan Perry. Perry had been missing since the previous Labor Day.
Perry's body had been cut into eight pieces. When Wysocki's body was found about a month later, her torso and head had been buried separately. Not long after, Walsh and the rest of Wysocki's body were found in a forest clearing that Costa had used for growing marijuana. Human teeth marks were found on their bodies and evidence of necrophilia was also found.
Costa described the murders of Walsh and Wysocki in his unpublished novel, Resurrection, written while he was in prison. In his account, Costa and a friend named "Cory" were out with the two women consuming LSD and Dilaudid. Cory then shot Walsh and Wysocki. Costa claimed he was able to subdue his friend and upon realizing that Mary Anne Wysocki was still alive used a knife to end her suffering. According to Costa, he and Cory buried the bodies.
The novel also describes the deaths of Susan Perry and Sydney Monzon as due to drug overdoses. Costa claims it was Carl, his alter-ego, who dismembered and buried their bodies and that he had no knowledge until after their deaths.
The media attention was so great that Kurt Vonnegut (whose daughter Edith had met Costa) compared him to Jack the Ripper in an article in the July 25, 1969 issue of Life Magazine. The author said, "The message of his letters to me was that a person as intent on being virtuous as he could not possibly have hurt a fly. He believed it."
On June 12, 1969, Costa was arraigned on charges of murder for three of the deaths. In May 1970 he was convicted of the murders of Mary Ann Wysocki and Patricia Walsh and sentenced to life in prison at Massachusetts' Walpole Correctional Institution. Four years after his incarceration, Costa committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell.