Bedford sex offender pleads guilty to 1966 killing of 10-year-old

Betty Lou Zukowski, 10, left her Chicopee home and never returned nearly 60 years ago. Her body was found four days later, in nearby West Springfield, and the case sat unsolved for decades.

Now, a 75-year-old man has pleaded guilty in connection to the 1966 killing, the Hampden County District Attorney announced Friday. 

Donald Mars, a current Level 3 sex offender living in Bedford, was indicted on a first degree murder charge by a grand jury in 2022. Mars pleaded guilty to manslaughter, DA Anthony Gulluni said. He was sentenced to 2 and a half years in prison, 2 years of probation, and another registration as a Level 3 sex offender.

Mars, who was 17 at the time of Zukowski’s murder, was convicted of child rape and indecent assault in 1995, according to the state sex offender registry. 

Mars: Betty Lou Zukowski “hurt him more than he ever hurt her.”

In 1966, Zukowski left her home after receiving a phone call from a friend, she had told her mother. Her parents reported her missing, and police began to search for her.

Four days later, boys fishing in the Westfield River found her body with injuries to her head and skull, prosecutors said. The medical examiner determined that she had most likely died of drowning. 

At the time, investigators thought Zukowski must have gotten into a car with someone she knew, who may have killed her. Police released a composite sketch of the person to last see her alive, but the trail went cold, the DA said.

Police tried to solve her murder again in the 1990s, which led investigators closer to Mars, but he wasn’t arrested. One witness pointed to his senior yearbook photo, and his mother told investigators that Mars had admitted he’d thrown a rock that killed a little girl, the DA said.

Mars also admitted to the killing to his ex-wife around 1987 amidst a nervous breakdown, she allegedly told investigators.

In 2022, detectives interviewed Mars, who, after briefly serving in the Navy, was living in the Veteran’s Administration Building in Bedford. Mars was using a walker and gave an emotional and turbulent interview to police, the DA said in Friday’s announcement.

Prosecutors said that when asked about Zukowski, Mars denied knowing her or doing anything to her. He then began to cry, told multiple different versions of the killing, and even acted out the crime without prompting from investigators, prosecutors said. 

“I’m not crying because of Betty Lou. I’m crying about my whole life,” he said at one point, according to prosecutors, and went on to say that Zukowski “hurt him more than he ever hurt her.”