A 75-year-old Bedford man has been sentenced in the decades-old killing of a ten-year-old girl in West Springfield.
Donald Mars appeared in Hampden County Superior Court Thursday and pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of Betty Lou Zukowski in May of 1966. Zukowski left her home after getting a phone call from a friend but she never returned to the house and her parents called police.
Her body was found four days later by the Westfield River and investigators determined she died from multiple blunt-force injuries to the head, a skull fracture and drowning.
Mars was 17-year-old at the time and had been linked to the case since 1997 but was not arrested until 2022.
District Attorney Anthony Gulluni recounted the confession:
"During the interview his mood changed considerably, and he said, "that she hurt him more than he ever hurt her". The defendant, without prompting from the investigators, acted out the crime. He stood up, hunched over, and made a striking motion downward four times with his left arm, and then admitted that he hit Betty Lou with a rock. He sat down again and was very emotional, sobbing loudly. Investigators asked the defendant whether the rock was "a little bigger than a softball," and the defendant replied, "Yes".
The judge accepted his guilty plea yesterday and sentenced him to 30 months in prison.
He must also register as a Level Three sex offender.