Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: Tony kept a manual for taxidermy in his back pocket,
Speaker 2: and it was really his guidebook on how to commit murder.
Speaker 2: He didn't look at women as human beings. He looked
Speaker 2: at women as pray.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
Speaker 1: true crime podcast tenfold More Wicked and the co host
Speaker 1: of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
Speaker 1: around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
Speaker 1: are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
Speaker 1: crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
Speaker 1: stories with details that have never been published. Tenfold More
Speaker 1: Wicked presents Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make,
Speaker 1: good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories
Speaker 1: behind the stories. In the late sixties, a serial killer
Speaker 1: stalked women in New England. His name was Tony Costa.
Speaker 1: He was unusual because he spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: drawing in his victims. We've heard this story from a
Speaker 1: woman who cost A babysat, but this is a different account.
Speaker 1: Journalist Casey Sherman tells me the story from his book Helltown,
Speaker 1: The Untold Story of a serial Killer on Cape cod.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about this book. Is it different than the
Speaker 1: other books that you've done? How does it stand out
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 2: This book is much different from anything else that I've
Speaker 2: ever done. And I was really inspired when I wrote
Speaker 2: this book by two of the characters that I write about,
Speaker 2: Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer. Now, these are writers that
Speaker 2: really explored in pioneered new journalism back in the late
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties and early seventies. And what that means is
Speaker 2: taking a real event and then, you know, sprinkling in
Speaker 2: some fictional dust along the way to provide some connective
Speaker 2: tissue between the storylines. So, you know, I've never done
Speaker 2: that before. I've written, you know, sixteen books prior to that,
Speaker 2: and those are all very hard investigative journalism. This book
Speaker 2: Held Town. I feel like I needed to pay homage
Speaker 2: to these two writers by providing some context that otherwise
Speaker 2: I probably wouldn't have added in previous books. Now, you know,
Speaker 2: with Helltown, I write against a landscape and a backdrop
Speaker 2: of the turbulent nineteen sixties, nineteen sixty eight, nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2: You know, in nineteen sixty eight, the Summer of Love
Speaker 2: is a distant memory. At that point, You've got the
Speaker 2: assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, You've got
Speaker 2: the bloody Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, the inauguration
Speaker 2: of Richard Nixon, chap equittic with Senator Ted Kennedy, Woodstock,
Speaker 2: the moon landing, and ultimately the Manson murders in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: And so I really leaned in to the time and
Speaker 2: the place so that I could give the reader a
Speaker 2: feeling that they may not feel of reading a straight
Speaker 2: journalistic approach to a story like this.
Speaker 1: Well, and this is such a harrowing personal story. We've
Speaker 1: heard it from Lisa Rodman, who was the serial killers,
Speaker 1: one of his charges, one of the people who he
Speaker 1: took care of. But this is really a big, deep
Speaker 1: dive into the psyche of this guy. Before we talk
Speaker 1: about the story, tell me about your sources and what
Speaker 1: you used to build this world of ultimately nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine Provincetown.
Speaker 2: Sure, And that's a great question, Kate, because you're only
Speaker 2: as good as as the material that you can gather
Speaker 2: when you're tackling a project like this. Now, I grew
Speaker 2: up on Cape Cot in the early nineteen seventies, late
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies, and I'd heard of this story about these
Speaker 2: murders that took place in Provincetown in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty nine. I never really paid too close
Speaker 2: attention to it because it really wasn't treated on Cape
Speaker 2: Cott or anywhere else as real, devastating in historic and
Speaker 2: notorious crime, you know. And I'd put on my Luke
Speaker 2: Skywalker costume in the nineteen seventies and go trick or treating.
Speaker 2: That's when I'd hear the name Tony Costa, a serial
Speaker 2: killer we ultimately wrote about in Helltown. It was. He
Speaker 2: became almost the boogeyman to kids growing up on the Cape.
Speaker 2: But during the pandemic, my brother Todd, who was a
Speaker 2: great muse of mine and collaborator throughout my entire career,
Speaker 2: just called me one day as I was working on
Speaker 2: a writing project and he said, Casey, it's a beautiful day.
Speaker 2: Stop what you're doing. We're going to get a six
Speaker 2: pack of beer and drive the Cape and just hang
Speaker 2: out like brothers, and we did, and we had a
Speaker 2: beautiful time together, and we went from village to village
Speaker 2: until we ultimately ended up in Provincetown, and I remember
Speaker 2: driving down Commercial Street at the height of tourist season
Speaker 2: and all the storefronts were shuttered. So we began to
Speaker 2: talk about the ghosts real and imagined in Helltown, and
Speaker 2: ultimately we're landing on landmarks that we knew Tony cost
Speaker 2: that had lived in, had worked in, and that many
Speaker 2: of his victims had been seen at the last time
Speaker 2: of their lives. So after that day, I decided to
Speaker 2: go back to my writing office here and start to
Speaker 2: do a deep dive on the cost of story to
Speaker 2: decide whether or not I felt like it was worth
Speaker 2: my time to write as a book. And you start
Speaker 2: with documentations, so going back and getting all of the
Speaker 2: first hand, primary source documents that you can find, and
Speaker 2: you know, none of the court records were ever digitized
Speaker 2: here in Massachusetts based on the cost of case. So
Speaker 2: going through you know, official channels to get that information
Speaker 2: was exhausting and not very productive. But fortunately for me,
Speaker 2: there were several investigators who were still around who covered
Speaker 2: the case, who kept all the case fops, and as
Speaker 2: an investigative journalist, part of your job is to gain
Speaker 2: the trust in the comfort level of these people so
Speaker 2: that they can share their information with you. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I was privy to well over three thousand court documents,
Speaker 2: crime scene documents, crime scene photos, and ultimately an unpublished
Speaker 2: manuscript written by the killer himself, Tony Costam.
Speaker 1: Wow, that must have been so eye opening for you.
Speaker 2: It was, and it allowed me, you know, and I
Speaker 2: think it allows the reader to go into these murder
Speaker 2: scenes in Helltown really through the eyes of the killer
Speaker 2: himself because many of the descriptions are taken from that
Speaker 2: unpublished manuscript. So you're seeing what Tony Costa saw, you're
Speaker 2: feeling what he felt, and ultimately I was able to,
Speaker 2: you know, understand the motives behind these murders.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and get started on the story. Where
Speaker 1: does it make sense for you to start with this story.
Speaker 2: Let's go back to nineteen sixty eight nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2: As I had mentioned, it was a very tumultuous time
Speaker 2: in American history. And you know, once I focused on
Speaker 2: Tony Coster, I tried to find out, you know, who
Speaker 2: he was and you know how he was able to
Speaker 2: seduce and manipulate you know, so many young women. He
Speaker 2: was a very charismatic figure, very similar in ways to
Speaker 2: Charles Manson. In fact, a little known fact about this
Speaker 2: whole story is Tony Coster and Charles Manson knew each other.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: They were living in Hayde Ashbury in San Francisco in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven. I know for a fact that they
Speaker 2: had gone to the same parties, breathed the same air.
Speaker 2: So two evolving killers sharing time together. I don't necessarily
Speaker 2: think they talked about their plans for the future, so
Speaker 2: to speak, but just you know, to see this evolution
Speaker 2: and to see these two men, you know, so closely
Speaker 2: connected in terms of, you know, what they were doing
Speaker 2: and how they were able, as they mentioned, to really
Speaker 2: manipulate and seduce you know women who again, you know,
Speaker 2: the Helltown is dedicated to the victims here, and you know,
Speaker 2: I really wanted to provide agency to the women that
Speaker 2: were murdered. These women weren't statistics, they weren't numbers. They
Speaker 2: were young women who had families, who had hopes and dreams,
Speaker 2: and all of those hopes and dreams were stuffed and
Speaker 2: snuffed out by a sadistic serial killer. My aunt, nineteen
Speaker 2: year old Mary Sullivan, was the youngest and final victim
Speaker 2: of the notorious nineteen sixties Boston strangler murder spree. So
Speaker 2: I know this world very well. I reinvestigated my aunt's
Speaker 2: murder for fifteen years, and the aized that it wasn't
Speaker 2: just one killer murdering these women, but several killers under
Speaker 2: the guise of this Jack the Ripper type character resurrected
Speaker 2: to stock the women of Boston. And what that told me, Kate,
Speaker 2: was that, you know, there are more men that are
Speaker 2: capable of committing these crimes, whether the crimes of passion
Speaker 2: or crimes of evil. And I think for Tony cost
Speaker 2: was really a crime of both. You know, if you
Speaker 2: look at Tony Costa, you're looking at somebody that is,
Speaker 2: you know, the living, breathing embodiment of the Hitchcock character
Speaker 2: Norman Bates from Psycho. Tony Costa had a love hate
Speaker 2: relationship with his mother. He was raised by a single
Speaker 2: mother after his father was killed at sea during World
Speaker 2: War Two, and when Tony was about five or six
Speaker 2: years old, his mother began to date again and got remarried,
Speaker 2: had another child, and all that love that had been
Speaker 2: given to one child alone had to be spread out
Speaker 2: through the entire family. And I think that really, you know,
Speaker 2: created a chasm in Tony Costa's brain. And I think
Speaker 2: at that point, you know, he hated his mother, he
Speaker 2: also loved her, and as he began to evolve with
Speaker 2: the psychotic thoughts, he did what a lot of serial
Speaker 2: killers do is that they begin to work on smaller animals.
Speaker 2: So Tony Costa, you know, for example, Kate, if you
Speaker 2: had a pet in Tony Costa's neighborhood just south of
Speaker 2: Boston in the early nineteen sixties, well, you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of those pets went missing, and that's because Tony
Speaker 2: Costa would take the pets, kill them, dissect them, and
Speaker 2: perform taxidermy on these pets. And you know, you see
Speaker 2: that with a lot of the different killers that are
Speaker 2: profiled by the FBI, by myself and by others, the
Speaker 2: evolution of a killer. And when Tony Costa was sixteen
Speaker 2: years old, he had sexually assaulted a teenage girl in
Speaker 2: his neighborhood, and at that point there was an ability
Speaker 2: or an opportunity to provide him the help that he
Speaker 2: needed at the time put him away and give him
Speaker 2: some real psychiatric care. But his mother pleaded with a
Speaker 2: judge to be lenient on him, to let him go,
Speaker 2: and if he did so, she was going to send
Speaker 2: him to live with a family in Provincetown, which is
Speaker 2: what the judge ultimately did. But Tony cost That did
Speaker 2: not get the help that he needed. Instead, he began
Speaker 2: to evolve and grow as a serial killer.
Speaker 1: When he writes about his childhood, how is he framing
Speaker 1: all of this? Is he saying this was the beginning?
Speaker 1: He's he lamenting things? Or how does he talk about
Speaker 1: what happens with his mother and the family and everything.
Speaker 2: You know, I mean, he's a victim in his own tragedy.
Speaker 2: And you know, the interesting thing when you get into
Speaker 2: the psychology or psychology rather of Tony cost is that
Speaker 2: he had a split personality and they call that, you know,
Speaker 2: the ego splitting in psychoanalysis. So Tony Costa was able
Speaker 2: to blame these very little murders of women on somebody else,
Speaker 2: another personality that he had growing inside him. So even
Speaker 2: when he's writing this unpublished book, he's blaming these murders
Speaker 2: on this personality that he created for himself.
Speaker 1: And you believe that or is this just something that
Speaker 1: he is doing to mitigate the things that he's done.
Speaker 2: No, I believe that there was ego splitting there, and
Speaker 2: you know, the psychiatrists at the time believed it as well.
Speaker 2: I also had access to twelve hours of audio taped
Speaker 2: interviews with Tony Costa done by his attorneys in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine, so you know, I really got a sense
Speaker 2: of who he was. And he was clearly very smart,
Speaker 2: clearly very charismatic, incredibly brutal, and certainly thought he was
Speaker 2: smarter than his victims, and also law enforcement that was
Speaker 2: trying to catch him.
Speaker 1: Well, tell me what happens. So he is instead of
Speaker 1: going into psychiatric care, he goes to Provinstown to live
Speaker 1: with a family member. How old is he, what year
Speaker 1: is this, How far behind are we before he starts
Speaker 1: killing people? And how does it go for him?
Speaker 2: This happens in the you know, early nineteen sixties. He
Speaker 2: sent as a high school student to Provincetown. Once he's there,
Speaker 2: he's you know, it's a very small school of Provincetown
Speaker 2: High School. He enrolls, he gets a few friends, but
Speaker 2: he's very shy. He falls in love with a thirteen
Speaker 2: year old girl named Avis Costa eventually Costa, and he
Speaker 2: impregnates her and marries her when she's fourteen. So Costa's
Speaker 2: just graduating high school, marries this underage girl because she's pregnant,
Speaker 2: and begins a life of alleged happy matrimony. But there's
Speaker 2: anything but happiness in the cost of household. You know,
Speaker 2: he's very controlling of his young again underage teenage wife.
Speaker 2: She's I feel like she's a great victim in this
Speaker 2: entire as well. And he begins, much like a lot
Speaker 2: of people did in the mid to late nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: experimenting with drugs, and he certainly became the pied piper
Speaker 2: in the drug scene and province down in the late
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, which you know, elevated his popularity amongst young people,
Speaker 2: and that's why he was able to gain friendships with
Speaker 2: a lot of these young women who were part of
Speaker 2: that scene. Tony Costa was somebody that was well read
Speaker 2: and studied a great deal. When people spoke to him,
Speaker 2: he sounded like the actor Tony Curtis. He was very aerodyite,
Speaker 2: and he always kept a source and a dictionary with
Speaker 2: him because he was always training himself to learn new
Speaker 2: words to sound, you know, to speak in a mid
Speaker 2: Atlantic accident. That he had seen his heroes on the
Speaker 2: big screen use and I think that was you know,
Speaker 2: unique and certainly alluring and exotic for you know, some
Speaker 2: of these girls that grew up on the Cape, he
Speaker 2: was able to gain their trust.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, what is he doing for work?
Speaker 2: He was he was a laborer. He was a carpenter.
Speaker 2: I mean, Tony was really good with his hands, so
Speaker 2: he worked at a lot of the different businesses in Provincetown.
Speaker 2: There's a very famous hotel right on Commercial Street in
Speaker 2: Provincetown called the Crown and Anchor In Tony was the
Speaker 2: handyman at the property, lived on property for several months.
Speaker 2: So his reputation grew as somebody that you know was
Speaker 2: very good building houses or at least maintaining the properties.
Speaker 2: So you know, he earned a nice living for himself.
Speaker 2: But you know, he was also very heavily involved in
Speaker 2: drugs and that ultimately caused his downfall.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, what's the first big thing that happens in
Speaker 1: Tony Costa's life.
Speaker 2: Well, the first woman that goes missing in Provincetown was
Speaker 2: a woman named Sidney Monsen was anineteen year old recent
Speaker 2: high school graduate from East Ham or Nawson High School
Speaker 2: who was living in Provincetown with her boyfriend and her
Speaker 2: sister lived nearby. She was bubbily, had a bright future
Speaker 2: ahead of her, always saw her future in California. She
Speaker 2: was very artsy, and she read a great deal and
Speaker 2: she became friends with Tony Costa, and Tony was the
Speaker 2: last person that saw her alive. She goes missing in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight and nobody looks for her and Kate really,
Speaker 2: that's one of the most disturbing things I found out
Speaker 2: about this case was that women were disappearing on the
Speaker 2: outer cape and sometimes their own families didn't care. Law
Speaker 2: enforcement certainly didn't. And it was a time where young
Speaker 2: people were, you know, fleeing, you know, getting hitchhiking to
Speaker 2: California or to New York City in Greenwich Village, so
Speaker 2: there wasn't a lot of focus on where these young
Speaker 2: women were. And the police officers in Provincetown and Truro,
Speaker 2: you know, anytime Sidney mons and his name was mentioned,
Speaker 2: they rolled their eyes and just thought, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 2: she's another hippie who decided to leave Provincetown. She didn't
Speaker 2: decide to leave Provincetown. She was taken from Provincetown and
Speaker 2: buried under Shalloworth, nine miles away. Several months later, another
Speaker 2: young girl goes missing. Her name is Susan Perry, again,
Speaker 2: nineteen years old, graduate of Provinstown High School, falls in
Speaker 2: love with Tony Costa. She goes missing, and Tony Cossa
Speaker 2: spreads your rumor around town or a story that you
Speaker 2: know She's traveled to Beankxico with friends to see the
Speaker 2: Summer Olympics in Mexico, which was completely you know, erroneous.
Speaker 2: She was murdered in the same way that Sidney Monsen
Speaker 2: was and the break in the case Kate happened in
Speaker 2: early nineteen sixty nine January of that year, where two
Speaker 2: young professional women decide to drive from Providence, Rhode Island,
Speaker 2: to Cape Cod for a weekend get away in the
Speaker 2: middle of winter, and they turn up at a boarding
Speaker 2: house in town where Tony Costa was living at the time.
Speaker 2: They were introduced to Tony by the landlady. Tony offers
Speaker 2: to guide them around Provincetown, you know, off season, because
Speaker 2: he knew where all the good bars were and where
Speaker 2: you know, tourists were likely to gather and they become
Speaker 2: very trusting of Tony Costa and what happens to them
Speaker 2: is they go missing and Tony's life begins to unravel
Speaker 2: after that.
Speaker 1: Boy, so you've got already for women. Is this all
Speaker 1: on the same year you said in sixty eight or
Speaker 1: is this spills into sixty nine?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sixty eight and sixty nine, So I would say
Speaker 2: in the span of about eight months, for women go missing?
Speaker 1: What is it about Tony's life that allows him to
Speaker 1: do things like that? So it sounds like he is
Speaker 1: sort of a tradesman who can go from job to
Speaker 1: job and his wife is stuck at home with a
Speaker 1: young child, is at what's happening, and he's so overbearing
Speaker 1: and controlling that he can just walk in and walk
Speaker 1: out whenever he wants.
Speaker 2: Well, Tony had complete freedom at the time because he
Speaker 2: was separated from his wife Davis. So Tony was living
Speaker 2: either at the Crown and Anchor hotel or CouchSurfing with friends.
Speaker 2: He was a bit of a vagamond. There was anything
Speaker 2: to really tie him down. He didn't have a relationship
Speaker 2: with his children or his wife, so he could come
Speaker 2: and go as he pleased. So two young women in
Speaker 2: the twenties, Patricia Walt and Marion Wisaki, decide to go
Speaker 2: on a weekend from Providence, Rhode Island, to Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: And they do so because they've been under pressure from work.
Speaker 2: They're also very sad that Richard Nix has just been
Speaker 2: inaugurated as president. So there's a lot that they want
Speaker 2: to kind of break from reality with. So they decide
Speaker 2: to take pat Walsh's Blue VW Beetle to Provincetown for
Speaker 2: the weekend. And you know a lot of people do
Speaker 2: travel to the Cape off season because the tourists had
Speaker 2: gone at that time, and they really get the streets
Speaker 2: to themselves. And these two young ladies book themselves at
Speaker 2: a boarding house where Tony Costa has happens to be
Speaker 2: living at the time. They're introduced to Tony by the landlady,
Speaker 2: and again Tony is very friendly, very smart. You know,
Speaker 2: these women are well read as it is Tony. So
Speaker 2: they hit it off very quickly, and as the women
Speaker 2: begin to have a great night in Provincetown in late
Speaker 2: January of nineteen sixty nine, Tony Costa starts to stalk them,
Speaker 2: and he's following them from bar to bar, and he's
Speaker 2: watching them have the time of their lives. Well, he
Speaker 2: sits in the background sipping key ante and that was
Speaker 2: his drink of choice. It sounds very handible, lecturesque, but
Speaker 2: that's exactly what Tony Costa drank at the time. According
Speaker 2: to his unpublished manuscript, and the day after having a
Speaker 2: great evening in Provincetown, the young women wake up and
Speaker 2: they see a note on their door from Tony or
Speaker 2: Antone as he called himself. Tony Costa had asked Pat
Speaker 2: Walsh and Mary Anne Waisaki to drive him to his
Speaker 2: employer's house to pick up a work check. These young
Speaker 2: ladies were expecting company later in the day. They had
Speaker 2: a friend who was going to meet them in Provincetown,
Speaker 2: so they had time to kill and unfortunately, so did
Speaker 2: Tony Costam. He got into the back of their Volkswagen Beetle.
Speaker 2: They rambled out of Provincetown down Root six, a beautiful
Speaker 2: picturesque two lane mini highway toward Truro and Tony Costa
Speaker 2: told them that he wanted to show them his marri
Speaker 2: want a garden now again, this is nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 2: sixty nine, marijuana was illegal in Massachusetts, but every young
Speaker 2: person was certainly indulging at the time. So the women said, okay,
Speaker 2: and Tony koss that took them first to an ancient
Speaker 2: cemetery in Truro and they were looking at all the
Speaker 2: unusual engravings on the tombstones and drinking wine and getting high.
Speaker 2: And it was a great early afternoon for the three
Speaker 2: of them until the two women decide that it's time
Speaker 2: to get back to Provincetown. And what they don't understand
Speaker 2: is not only does Tony cause to have marijuana stashed
Speaker 2: in the woods, but he's got a two killing weapons,
Speaker 2: a knife and a handgun a pistol, and he goes
Speaker 2: into the woods and he extracts those weapons and he
Speaker 2: faces these two women on a desolate, quiet dirt road
Speaker 2: in the middle of the woods, and he kills them both.
Speaker 1: That's terrible, just to think that these four women in
Speaker 1: less than a year have gone missing and are murdered
Speaker 1: and buried. And what I think is interesting about this
Speaker 1: story is the investment that Tony Costa makes, which to
Speaker 1: me is very different than other serial killers. You know,
Speaker 1: he is spending time. It's a risk he's spending time
Speaker 1: with these women, these two women, right, I mean people
Speaker 1: have seen them together. At the end, they know each other.
Speaker 1: He is identifiable. If they are discovered, their bodies are discovered,
Speaker 1: and the alarm is sounded, the police are probably going
Speaker 1: to want to talk to him. Where someone you know
Speaker 1: nearby to ask witnesses. So it's interesting. It's to me
Speaker 1: not the traditional mo of the serial killer who stalks
Speaker 1: the person he doesn't know, like a BTK or a
Speaker 1: Ted Bundy. So it's interesting. He really has invested time
Speaker 1: in this.
Speaker 2: He's invested time in this. You know, he's a bit
Speaker 2: of a sloppy killer. But I think this is where
Speaker 2: the ego splitting alterier personality of Tony Costa K's in.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a likelihood that Tony Costa didn't even
Speaker 2: realize what he was doing at the time, so he
Speaker 2: could perform in public as if he didn't know what
Speaker 2: was going on, because a part of him did not
Speaker 2: know what was going on. Of course, when the alarm
Speaker 2: bells are sounded and the police finally decide to take
Speaker 2: a serious look in the disappearances of the two women
Speaker 2: from Providence, Rhode Island, Tony Costa's name is the first
Speaker 2: name mentioned by the landlady in Provincetown. So there's a
Speaker 2: direct connection between the prime suspect and the two missing women.
Speaker 2: But again, Tony Costa thinks he's smarter than the investigators.
Speaker 2: So instead of shying away from the case and staying
Speaker 2: in the shadows, Tony Costa goads the investigators. He's sending
Speaker 2: them notes, He's confronting them in the middle of the
Speaker 2: police station, proclaiming his innocence because he never thinks that
Speaker 2: the bodies of those two women and the two other
Speaker 2: victims are ever going to be unearthed, because he believes
Speaker 2: he's hidden them so well.
Speaker 1: And are they all in the same woods or are
Speaker 1: they in different woods?
Speaker 2: You said, Truro, Right, Yeah, I said true, So they're
Speaker 2: all in the same woods. In fact, many of the
Speaker 2: victims were buried in the exact same plot. Their remains
Speaker 2: were stacked on top of each other like cords of wood.
Speaker 2: And again, that's really how Tony Kusa treated these women.
Speaker 2: He didn't look at them as human beings.
Speaker 1: Is there some sort of an emotional connection between Tony
Speaker 1: and these woods? I mean, I know there's marijuana, but
Speaker 1: is there any significance to it.
Speaker 2: To him, I think there's really you know, besides the
Speaker 2: fact that it was a very remote area of Cape
Speaker 2: Cod really off the beaten path. There wasn't necessarily a
Speaker 2: personal connection with him took those area of woods, but
Speaker 2: he's he certainly lured other women to those areas. In fact,
Speaker 2: there was a Provincetown high school student whom he lured
Speaker 2: there about a year prior to that, with the same
Speaker 2: promise of you sharing some marijuana with her in the
Speaker 2: woods and doing what young people do. But instead he
Speaker 2: brought with him a bow and an arrow, and he
Speaker 2: actually shot her with a bow and an arrow, shot
Speaker 2: her on the shoulder. Unfortunately, she didn't report that to
Speaker 2: police at the time, and he was allowed to continue
Speaker 2: and evolve as a killer.
Speaker 1: What would have been the connection that police would have
Speaker 1: made forensically in nineteen sixty nine between Tony Costa and
Speaker 1: any of these four victims had one of them been discovered.
Speaker 2: These women had their pocketbooks on them. Tony Costa buried
Speaker 2: their personal belongings in the woods outside where he had
Speaker 2: buried the bodies, But investigators early on in the case,
Speaker 2: you know, discovered his you know, a rope that they
Speaker 2: were able to test for blood samples and you know,
Speaker 2: the blood it was very similar to the blood of
Speaker 2: one of the victims. So this is really early, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of DNA analysis. So the forensics in this case
Speaker 2: were quite strong. Tony Costa's fingerprints were on the vehicle
Speaker 2: that the women were driving at the time. Tony Costa
Speaker 2: claim that the women had sold him the vehicle and
Speaker 2: offered a bill of sale that he had written, so
Speaker 2: they were able to do handwriting analysis as well, which
Speaker 2: he was able to disprove any idea that these women
Speaker 2: were selling a vehicle of any kind to Tony Costa.
Speaker 2: And so you've got this incredible case evolving, and you go,
Speaker 2: you know what really drove me to the story, Kate was, again,
Speaker 2: I didn't really want to focus on not necessarily just
Speaker 2: a serial killer story as a writer. I wanted to
Speaker 2: explore the dark fascination that writers have with their subject matters.
Speaker 2: So while these murders are happening on the outer Cape,
Speaker 2: two well known writers become darkly obsessed with the crimes,
Speaker 2: Norman Mailer, who was living in Provenstown at the time,
Speaker 2: and Kurt Vonnegut, who was living forty miles south in Barnstable,
Speaker 2: and it was interesting. At the time nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 2: sixty nine, Norman Mailer was a household name. He had
Speaker 2: been a best selling author since The Naked and the
Speaker 2: Dead in the late nineteen forties. He was kind of
Speaker 2: the heir apparent to Ernest Hemingway, both in his writing
Speaker 2: style in his larger than life personality. Kurt Vonnegut was
Speaker 2: the exact opposite. Nobody knew who Kurt was. He had
Speaker 2: already published several books, but he was a very unknown
Speaker 2: writer in the late nineteen sixties, and he was just
Speaker 2: about to publish what would become his opus, Slaughterhouse five,
Speaker 2: which would catapult him into worldwide fame. But Kurt stumbles
Speaker 2: upon this case because his daughter Edie is hanging out
Speaker 2: with a group of hippies in Provenstown, so it was
Speaker 2: young girls go missing. He's really kind of concerned and
Speaker 2: worried about his own daughter's safety. And Kurt Vonnegut was
Speaker 2: also a crime reporter in Chicago back in the late
Speaker 2: nineteen forties early nineteen fifties before he moved to Cape
Speaker 2: god So Kurt put on his investigative hat and began
Speaker 2: to look at these cases, as did Norman Mailer, and
Speaker 2: Mailer was really more interested in how somebody a la
Speaker 2: Tony Costa, you know, could explode and commit these types
Speaker 2: of crimes. Because Norman Mailer had tried to kill his
Speaker 2: wife in nineteen sixty two in New York City and
Speaker 2: was never brought to trial because his wife never brought
Speaker 2: charges against him. So he was a man who was
Speaker 2: skating on the razer's edge of sanity and darkness, and
Speaker 2: here it was blossoming around him and the embodiment of
Speaker 2: Tony Costa.
Speaker 1: If we go back to that time in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: we have these four women who are missing, and you say,
Speaker 1: once the police and parlvements down, get it together and
Speaker 1: start realizing that they need to put some things together.
Speaker 1: You said they went and talked to Tony, because he
Speaker 1: was the last person to say these two women, Is
Speaker 1: that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they went to talk to Tony, and Tony, you know,
Speaker 2: was vehement in his denial of any responsibility. He said
Speaker 2: he knew the women. He said that the women had
Speaker 2: told him the Volkswagen Beetle. Of course, the investigators didn't
Speaker 2: believe a word of it, and one of the investigators
Speaker 2: even gave Tony some sage advice, you'd better find a
Speaker 2: defense attorney very quick because we're going to ultimately find
Speaker 2: these missing women and the direct link team is going
Speaker 2: to be pretty apparent. But that took almost two months
Speaker 2: for investigators to put all the pieces together that ultimately
Speaker 2: brought them to the National Forest in Truro where they
Speaker 2: stumbled upon these death pits and they were able to,
Speaker 2: you know, find the remains of again not only Pat
Speaker 2: Walsh and Marry and Waisaki, the two women that they
Speaker 2: were looking for, but Susan Perry and Sidney Monsen, two
Speaker 2: women that had gone missing but certainly no alarm bells
Speaker 2: had been raised by their families. So now Costa is
Speaker 2: accused of formers and immediately State police dispatch a unit
Speaker 2: to Boston where Tony Costa is hiding at the time,
Speaker 2: and they arrest him very quickly without incident.
Speaker 1: So they find him in Boston where he's been hiding
Speaker 1: and they arrest him. What happens with the wheels of
Speaker 1: justice turning at this point.
Speaker 2: Well, they bring him back to Cape cod and the
Speaker 2: district attorney at the time, Ed Denise, was a political animal,
Speaker 2: and he amplified the murders that Tony Costa had committed.
Speaker 2: The murders that Tony Costa had committed were brutal on
Speaker 2: their face, but Ed Denise, the prosecutor, began to call
Speaker 2: Tony the Cape God vampire because he told the press
Speaker 2: that he was not only murdering and dismembering these women,
Speaker 2: but he was also biting them and leaving his teeth
Speaker 2: marks in their in their bodies. And that was that
Speaker 2: was the only thing about this case that was not true.
Speaker 1: Because he wanted publicity.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's that's exactly what he did. He was looking
Speaker 2: at this case as a to catapult him back to
Speaker 2: national prominence. You know, in a way, Tony Costa was
Speaker 2: also doing the same thing. Tony Costa wanted to be
Speaker 2: a star, he wanted to be famous. He you know,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned covering this case. To me, he's the
Speaker 2: most brutal serial killer in American history. The victims and
Speaker 2: what he did to them certainly are proof of that.
Speaker 2: But in late summer in nineteen sixty nine, Charles Manson
Speaker 2: and his family begin murdering famous people in California, which
Speaker 2: takes the Tony Costa murders completely out of the headlines,
Speaker 2: and Tony Costa would write his lawyer about this, you know,
Speaker 2: not understanding why he wasn't generating the same publicity and
Speaker 2: the same notoriety as Charles Manson was.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the criminal case, and Aed Denise
Speaker 1: is preparing his case against Tony. He goes on trial
Speaker 1: for how many all four or just two?
Speaker 2: He went on trial for two murders, which really upset
Speaker 2: the families of the other two victims here, Susan Perry
Speaker 2: and Sidney Mansea. But Ed Denise wanted a sure thing
Speaker 2: and he knew that he had enough evidence to try
Speaker 2: Tony Costa for the murders of Pat Walsham, Mary and
Speaker 2: Waisaki because he had physical evidence to tie him to
Speaker 2: the case. He had witnesses that tied him to the case.
Speaker 2: With the other two women, they had been clearly dismembered
Speaker 2: and buried, but the way that they had been killed,
Speaker 2: you know, because they had been buried for so long,
Speaker 2: they couldn't determine their cause of death. That's why Denise
Speaker 2: didn't pursue murder charges against Tony Costa, because he didn't
Speaker 2: think that they would stick. So these women were basically
Speaker 2: victims in absentia. In the Tony cost the trial, but
Speaker 2: it was the most sensational murder trial in Cape Cod
Speaker 2: history at the time. You know, Cape Got is a
Speaker 2: very sleepy, quiet place where you know, normally trials are
Speaker 2: disputes between landowners, farmers or fishermen. Here you would have
Speaker 2: a criminal trial that talks about cannibalism, necrophilia, murder. You know,
Speaker 2: these things had never even been discussed, certainly in open
Speaker 2: conversation with anybody on Cape God. So you know, not
Speaker 2: only was the jury absolutely horrified by it, but also
Speaker 2: you know, the press and the public were as well.
Speaker 2: And here is Tony Costa, this mild mannered killer that
Speaker 2: you'd look at and you'd think, much like Ted Bondy, Well,
Speaker 2: there's no way he could have done this, There's no
Speaker 2: way he could be capable of such violence. But he
Speaker 2: certainly was.
Speaker 1: So he is on trial for killing Patricia Walsh and
Speaker 1: Marianne Waisaki. What is the weakness of the case. Are
Speaker 1: there any weaknesses in Denise's case against him?
Speaker 2: They're really I mean, you know, as much of a
Speaker 2: slam dunk case as you could possibly find. You know,
Speaker 2: what I thought was interesting is, you know Tony Costa's
Speaker 2: defense obviously he you know, never admitted to the murders,
Speaker 2: at least during trial, but he wanted to expose drug
Speaker 2: culture in itself and how drugs, you know, American society,
Speaker 2: we're doing things detrimental to society and young people, and
Speaker 2: that's what his attorneys really wanted to focus on, almost
Speaker 2: you know, guilt by insanity. And so the case goes,
Speaker 2: you know, several days. It's extremely explosive. There are witnesses,
Speaker 2: including Tony Costa's ex wife, Avis, because they were divorced
Speaker 2: by the time the trial actually came around, and the
Speaker 2: testimony was just graphic, horrific and something that people had
Speaker 2: never heard before.
Speaker 1: So the trial proceeds, and what is his demeanor? What
Speaker 1: is your impression of him in court?
Speaker 2: He's watching again a play where he plays the hero, So,
Speaker 2: you know, Tony Coster is very attentive, especially when his
Speaker 2: wife is on the stand. He's very combative against not
Speaker 2: only the prosecution but his own defense for not really
Speaker 2: focusing on ulterior suspects, including a young man named Corey
Speaker 2: Devereaux who was a high school student, small time drug
Speaker 2: dealer in Provincetown at the time. But Corey Devereaux is
Speaker 2: the name that Tony Costa co opted for his altered ego,
Speaker 2: and of course, you know, the defense would never you know,
Speaker 2: there wasn't any evidence to suggest that, So the defense
Speaker 2: had to maintain that, you know, this was a crime,
Speaker 2: you know, committed by somebody who could not tell right
Speaker 2: from wrong because they were heavily influenced by psychotropic drugs.
Speaker 1: Well, we know that he was responsible for four. Has
Speaker 1: he been able to be tied to any other murders
Speaker 1: that you know of?
Speaker 2: Yes, So two women that he knew in San Francisco
Speaker 2: in the summer of nineteen sixty seven had gone missing
Speaker 2: while he was out there. I believe their whereabouts may
Speaker 2: have been corroborated, or these women may have been found
Speaker 2: years later. But there's another victim here. Her name was
Speaker 2: Christine Gallant, a young woman that Tony Costa met in
Speaker 2: Provencetown in nineteen sixty eight, was dating her. She had
Speaker 2: moved back to New York City because she had a
Speaker 2: job that I believe at Columbia University's a librarian. Tony
Speaker 2: Costa spent some time with her down there, and she
Speaker 2: ends up dead in the bathtub. And it's interesting that
Speaker 2: the medical examiner at the time, the Junior Medical examiner
Speaker 2: in charge of this case was doctor Michael Now Michael
Speaker 2: Boden everybody knows, became a very celebrated forensic pathologist. He
Speaker 2: testified in the ORJ. Simpson case. He's had his own
Speaker 2: television show on HBO. I've known Michael for years. Michael
Speaker 2: didn't understand that Christine also had a very violent, murderous boyfriend.
Speaker 2: So you know, I believe that Tony Costa killed Christine
Speaker 2: Gallant physically overdosed her and drowned her in her own bathtub.
Speaker 1: That's just because of what you know about his personality.
Speaker 1: He never wrote about Christine.
Speaker 2: Well, he wrote about her quite extensively, but not the
Speaker 2: way she was killed. He always shot away from that.
Speaker 2: I think if there was anybody that Tony Costa truly
Speaker 2: loved in his warped world, it was Christine. And you know,
Speaker 2: in his crazy demeanor, he loved her enough to kill her,
Speaker 2: at least according to him.
Speaker 1: So as the trial comes to a close, what is
Speaker 1: the jury left with as far as evidence. There's physical
Speaker 1: evidence and anecdotal evidence against Tony in a case that
Speaker 1: you think is sort of a slam dunk, and then
Speaker 1: Tony his defense is what give me a quick summary
Speaker 1: of the defense.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it shocked the entire jury and everybody
Speaker 2: in the courtroom where Tony Costa demanded that he speak
Speaker 2: to the jury before deliberations, and at that point Tony
Speaker 2: Costa confessed and admitted to the crimes. For a brief
Speaker 2: moment in time, Tony Costa said he was the killer
Speaker 2: of these young women, but blamed these murders on the
Speaker 2: drugs that he was taking at the time, hoping that,
Speaker 2: you know, he would be placed in a psychiatric hospital
Speaker 2: as opposed to Walpole State Prison.
Speaker 1: What was the jury's reaction to all of that?
Speaker 2: They were surprised that he was willing to speak, But again,
Speaker 2: you know, Costa was never shy. He was always in
Speaker 2: your face and ready to articulate his message, and he
Speaker 2: certainly had the opportunity to do that. And the judge
Speaker 2: came back, or the jury rather with a very quick verdict,
Speaker 2: and that verdict was guilty on all accounts.
Speaker 1: Wow, is he sentenced to life in prison or what's
Speaker 1: the sentence?
Speaker 2: He was sentenced to life in prison. So he went,
Speaker 2: you know, right from Cape cod to a number of
Speaker 2: different smaller prisons before eventually heading to Walpole State Prison.
Speaker 2: In Massachusetts, which was the most secure and notorious prison
Speaker 2: in Massachusetts at the time.
Speaker 1: Did he die there or what was his so?
Speaker 2: Tony Costa was committed suicide in prison in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: and when the prison officials entered to sell he was
Speaker 2: found hanging by his bunk. They found his unpublished manuscript
Speaker 2: and there are a number of different books that he
Speaker 2: had read over time. He was very heavily influenced by
Speaker 2: the occult. And as I said, there are similarities between
Speaker 2: Manson and Costa because they were able to not only seduce,
Speaker 2: you know, young women and murder them, so to speak,
Speaker 2: but they were able to seduce others to join them
Speaker 2: in their cause. You know, I don't think that Tony
Speaker 2: Costa committed the murders of these women alone, because the
Speaker 2: cleanup was too messy. Tony Costa couldn't have done it himself.
Speaker 2: I do think that there are so called family members,
Speaker 2: if you will, and I mean that by saying that
Speaker 2: there were you know, friends and associates of Tony Costa
Speaker 2: at the time who again looked at him much like
Speaker 2: Chrales Manson's family looked at him, and I think they
Speaker 2: were able to help him cover up these evil deeds.
Speaker 1: What do you think ultimately tripped up Tony Costa? Is
Speaker 1: it that he got to know the two victims who
Speaker 1: he went on trial for killing.
Speaker 2: Well, he got to know all the victims, you know.
Speaker 2: I think Tony Costa's arrogance tripped him up. At the
Speaker 2: end of the day. I think he planned on killing
Speaker 2: other women and you know, wouldn't have been stopped unless
Speaker 2: the families took these disappearances seriously. But Tony Costa took
Speaker 2: advantage of the dime because you know, teenagers and young
Speaker 2: people were leaving their families, They were leaving their hometowns
Speaker 2: and just going across country and going around the world
Speaker 2: in an era that was care free. And again in
Speaker 2: the era before cell phones, before email, before computers, where
Speaker 2: you know, if you managed to get a written letter back,
Speaker 2: you know, to your parents, who to your loved ones,
Speaker 2: that happened few and far between. Yeah, So Tony Costa
Speaker 2: took advantage of that particular time in American history.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
Speaker 1: right production. Our Senior producer is Alexis Amrosi. Our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Speaker 1: Curtis Heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive
Speaker 1: produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow
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