Tony Costa - 1969 Murders

1969 Murders

The case gained international attention when district attorney Edmund Dinis, in comments to the media, claimed "The hearts of each girl had been removed from the bodies and were not in the graves…Each body was cut into as many parts as there are joints." Dinis also claimed that there were teeth marks found on the bodies. These claims produced a stream of national and international media outlets into local Provincetown, Massachusetts. The media attention was so great that Kurt Vonnegut (whose daughter Edith had met Costa) compared him to Charles Manson in his collection of essays Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons.

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 bodies were found in a forest clearing that Costa had used for growing marijuana. This "garden" of marijuana plants and the greater case inspired the true crime book In His Garden, by Leo Damore.