In the quiet winter of 1969, a 23-year-old White female teacher named Patricia Helene Walsh and her friend, Mary Ann Wysocki, also 23, sought a weekend escape in the seaside town of Provincetown, Massachusetts. They checked into a guesthouse where they crossed paths with a 24-year-old handyman named Antone Charles "Tony" Costa. After a night of socializing at local bars, the two women were never seen alive again.
Their failure to return home to Providence, Rhode Island, prompted their
parents to alert the authorities, launching a search that would uncover a series of gruesome discoveries. The investigation first led police to Patricia's abandoned Volkswagen van in a wooded area in Truro. A wider search of the area soon unearthed a shallow grave containing the mutilated remains of not only Patricia Walsh and Mary Ann Wysocki but also two other young women. The autopsies revealed that the victims had been dismembered and had suffered gunshot wounds.
Suspicion quickly fell upon Tony Costa. He had been seen with Walsh and Wysocki on the night they disappeared and was known to frequent the wooded area where their bodies were found, a place where he cultivated a marijuana patch. Further investigation tied him to Patricia's van, as he had inquired about having it repainted. Personal belongings of the two women were also found in Costa's room.
Costa was arrested and, in May 1970, stood trial for the murders of Patricia Walsh and Mary Ann Wysocki. Despite his pleas of innocence, a jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison. While incarcerated, Costa was suspected of being responsible for the deaths of several other women, though he was never convicted of those crimes. In 1974, Antone Costa died by suicide in his prison cell, taking the full truth of his horrific acts to the grave.
