Cape Cod Confidential

The Tony Costa Cape Cod murders

The "other" Truro murders nearly 40 years ago
And it may have a new ending soon

FEBRUARY 1969 -- About seventy-five men were gathered at nine-thirty at the same place where the VW was last seen, some woods not far from the Old Truro cemetery. From there the search party would fan out into the cold, snow-dusted woods crossed by slippery trails and leaf-packed hollows.

[Truro Police Chief Harold] Berrio led half of the searchers to one side of the dirt road; [state police detective Lt. John] Dunn took the other side. An hour later, Berrio announced, "My side's clear" and prepared to leave.

Around eleven-thirty, on an embankment twenty feet from Old Proprietor's Road, two members of the Truro Rescue Squad came upon a depression some four feet long and two feet wide which had sunk eight inches below the surrounding ground; a piece of olive green cloth was protruding from the bottom of the hollow.

[State police Trooper Edgar] Gunnery used a pick to break open the crust of frost to a depth where the soil softened, turning sandy. When Dunn pulled the cloth free, he discovered it was the strap of a standard army duffel bag, with the initials "U.S." stamped on one side. An odor emanated from the empty bag and the broken ground at Dunn's feet -- "like something rotten," Gunnery observed, noticing a red spot on a hook connected to one end of the duffel bag's strap.

Gunnery dug deeper into the ground. At a depth of twelve inches, he uncovered a white object with the appearance of bone, which he suspected could be the portion of a deer buried in the woods by a hunter. Loosening the damp, clinging soil, Gunnery pried the bone free. Connected to its terminus was a human foot.

-- From In His Garden by Leo Damore

The saga of Tony Costa 

There was a time when, if you mentioned the words "Truro" and "murder," the first thing that came to mind was not Christa Worthington. No, in the decades before that tragedy, the first thing that would pop into your mind if you were a Cape Codder was "Tony Costa."

 Susan Perry's body was the first one found

The first body, Susan Perry, was discovered on Feb. 8 when police were looking for the bodies of two other women, Patricia Walsh and Mary Anne Wysocki. Perry had disappeared the previous Labor Day. Her body, which had been cut into eight pieces, was considerably decomposed. A month later police found the head and torso of Wysocki in a large hole not far from a cleared plot that had once grown marijuana. Not long after that, the rest of Wysocki's body and the corpse of Walsh were discovered. These bodies also had been mutilated with a knife, although they had apparently died from gunshot wounds. Underneath them was the dismembered, decomposed corpse of Sidney Monzon.

The four women had known, in varying degrees, Antone Charles "Tony" Costa of Provincetown. Costa, authorities learned, was intimately familiar with the area where the bodies had been found. It had been Costa who had been cultivating marijuana in the area. He also used the woods as a hiding place for his drugs.

What had led authorities to the woods in the first place had been the discovery of an abandoned Volkswagen van that belong to Walsh. Not far from the van police found a torn cover of Volkswagen van owner manual. Police laboratory tests identified Costa's fingerprints on the cover.

While the discovery of the bodies caused a sensation, it was apparently the district attorney, Edmund Dinis, who turned the case into a media firestorm. "The hearts of each girl had been removed from the bodies and were not in the graves, nor were they found," Dinis announced at a press conference. "A razor like device was found near the graves. Each body was cut into as many parts as there are joints." Dinis also said that teeth marks had been found on the bodies.

Was he the "Cape Cod Vampire"? 

"The press is bad, but the tourists are even worse."When a reporter asked if this was the work of a "Cape Cod vampire," Dinis nodded. And with that, the media furor had suddenly been whipped into a frenzy.

While Dinis' comments made for great copy, they were all completely untrue. The hearts had not been removed, although some organs were missing from at least one of the bodies. No cutting device had been found, and the remark about as many body parts as joints was wild hyperbole, if not physically impossible.

Dinis managed to transform the murders into an international story. Press from all over the nation descended on Cape Cod. "The press is bad," Provincetown Police Chief Berrio said, "but the tourists are even worse."

Dead in his cell at 29 - suicide or murder? 

His lawyer attempted to paint him as psychotic, but Costa would have none of that...Antone Costa's "garden" had become a tourist trap (something that reportedly continues to this day). Curiosity seekers flocked to the Truro woods, hoping to find the graves or worse, one of the victim's joints that had been overlooked by police. Rumors of satanic worship, which persist to this day, began to shroud the case.

Costa was tried and convicted of two of the murders in May 1970. His lawyer attempted to paint him as psychotic, but Costa would have none of that. At the conclusion of his trial the alleged murderer gave a rational, intelligent speech to the jury that must have convinced them he was not only a killer, but also terribly sane. The judge sentenced him to spend the rest of his life at Walpole prison.

-- In His Garden

Costa never confessed to the killings, unless you happen to subscribe to Daniel Webster's belief that "suicide is confession." The closest he came to admitting his involvement in the deaths of the four women was in Resurrection, a "factual novel" about the killings that he wrote while in prison. According to Resurrection, Costa did not commit the murders; responsibility for their deaths fell to "Carl," a pseudonym that Costa used for a friend. Carl allegedly shot Mary Anne Wysocki and Patricia Walsh in the Truro woods. Susan Perry and Sydney Monzon supposedly died of a drug overdoses, one in the woods and the other in Carl's apartment. Both were dismembered after their deaths, Costa claimed, and buried later. In the case of the latter two women, Costa's novel claimed he had no involvement in their deaths other than the knowledge that they had happened.

Costa is buried in Provincetown in an unmarked grave next to his mother. There are those today who remember him. Some believe he was innocent, and that the real killer has never been captured.

Most of the information for this column came from Leo Damore's (on right) In His Garden, a true-crime book published in 1981 and currently out of print. In His Garden reprinted several sections from Resurrection, Antone Costa's unpublished "factual novel" of the murders. A small excerpt can found here.

[EDITOR's NOTE] Many Cape Codders very close to the Tony Costa case are still alive, some only in their mid-fifties, and new tales are now emerging which may turn Tony Costa into more of an "undertaker" than a serial murderer.

 Still others say Costa killed and additional two dozen women on the West Coast before the Truro murders.

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