Kelly Morrissey disappearance: 'You always have hope,' parents of Lynbrook girl who went missing in 1984 say

The indictment of a Center Moriches man earlier this month in the rape and killing of 16-year-old Theresa Fusco in 1984 has brought new hope to the family of another Long Island teen who went missing around the same time.

When the parents of Kelly Morrissey heard that a Nassau County grand jury voted on Oct. 14 to charge Richard Bilodeau, 63, with rape and murder in Theresa's killing more than 40 years after the fact, their thoughts immediately turned to their missing daughter. 

Kelly, who was 15, was last seen heading to the neighborhood arcade, Captain Video, in Lynbrook on June 12, 1984, six months before Theresa was reported missing, according to reports at the time.

Unlike Theresa, Kelly was never seen again dead or alive. Both cases have baffled investigators for decades. Two teenagers found Theresa’s body in December 1984, buried under a pile of dead leaves and shipping pallets by the Long Island Rail Road tracks.

“You always have hope,” said Iris Olmstead, Kelly’s mother.

Three men, John Kogut, Dennis Halstead and John Restivo, were charged and convicted of killing and sexually assaulting Theresa, but nearly two decades later they were released from prison after DNA evidence from a vaginal swab failed to match any of the suspects.

The men sued and Halstead and Restivo each won multimillion-dollar settlements for their wrongful convictions.

'We never get anywhere'

For Paul Olmstead, who married Kelly’s mother in November of the year Kelly went missing, said Kelly’s case has always been tied to Theresa’s, but with little promise of closure.

Kelly had written in her diary that she had dated Kogut, and there was also a reference to Restivo’s address, Newsday previously reported. The men were suspects in Kelly’s disappearance and the death of another teenage girl, Jacqueline Martarella, 19, of Oceanside, in 1985, Newsday previously reported.

From the initial coverage of the cases to the appeals and exoneration of the men and their lawsuit, most articles mention Kelly and Jacqueline in passing, always noting there has been no resolution.

“There's been several people over the years who have wanted to talk to us, but then everything leads to a dead end, and it just brings everything all up again. We never get anywhere,” Paul Olmstead said recently during a phone interview. He said that months ago, the family gave Nassau County police permission to speak to a TV producer about the case, but nothing new developed.

Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said investigators continue to dig up leads on missing persons and unidentified murder victims, although she did not speak about these specific unsolved cases.

“There are cases where we go for many years, maybe even decades without leads, but my office and our partners will not stop,” Donnelly said during the recent news conference announcing the charges in Theresa’s case. “My prosecutors are always looking for justice for victims of crimes. We are always searching for answers.”

Attempts to reach Jacqueline’s family were unsuccessful. She went missing on March 26, 1985, after the three men had been questioned by Nassau police about Theresa’s death. Jacqueline’s body was found naked in April that year by the golf course of the Woodmere Country Club. Like Theresa, she had been strangled, police said.

A $5,000 reward had been offered by investigators for information leading to an arrest, but the money has never been collected.

Restivo’s defense attorney, Theodore Robinson, asked prosecutors years later to compare DNA on Jacqueline’s body with DNA from Joel Rifkin, a convicted serial killer who was active in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it’s unclear if that test ever was done.

Another girl goes missing

A petite, 4-foot-11 teenager weighing 95 pounds, Jacqueline was last seen leaving her friend’s house on East Lexington Avenue in Lynbrook around 7:30 p.m. She was heading to her job at Burger King, wearing a beige down jacket, blue jeans and a pink and gray blouse. Jacqueline’s mother had died years earlier and her brother said at the time that the job had given her an avenue to open up again. He said she had saved up more than $2,000 to buy her first car, a 1979 Camaro.

All three of the teenage girls were just developing their independence when they went missing.

Theresa, a junior at East Rockaway High School, worked at the snack bar at Hot Skates, a couple of blocks from her home. She was fired on Nov. 10, 1984, the night she went missing.

Kelly occasionally hung out at the roller rink. She worked part-time at a venetian blind factory while she entered her freshman year at Lynbrook High School.

On the night she went missing, she had dinner with her family and told her mother that she wanted to meet up with her friend Gail Cole, 19, and hang out at the arcade for a little while, her mother told Newsday in 2008.

Kelly, who was wearing a pink sleeveless sweatshirt, jeans and a gold chain around her neck, promised her mother she would be back by 10 p.m. to study for an exam the next day.

Cole told Newsday in 1985 that she, Kelly and another girl would sometimes go to Halstead’s apartment, where there was beer and marijuana. Halstead was in his 30s at the time.

Neither Halstead nor any of the other men cleared in Theresa’s killing were ever charged in connection with Kelly’s or Jacqueline’s cases.

A Facebook tip did not develop

The Olmsteads said there have been sightings and leads over the years, but they never amount to anything.

For years after Kelly went missing, Iris Olmstead drove around with a missing person poster for her daughter taped to the window of her Jeep.

She gave investigators her own DNA with the hope it would match Kelly’s in a law enforcement database or a newly developed lead.

In 2010, a tip from a Facebook group prompted police to take a fresh look at the case, but nothing developed.

Detectives went to Washington state to follow up on a reported sighting, Kelly’s mother told Newsday recently, but it turned out to be a dead end.

The detective "interviewed the girl and he said he didn’t know Kelly, but from her picture, he could have sworn it was Kelly, but it wasn’t Kelly.”

Other rumors have swirled about her being in the Midwest or working in a supermarket in Long Beach, Newsday reported in 2008. Nassau investigators reportedly excavated land in upstate New York, but never found her body.

“Is she still alive somewhere, or is she deceased?” Paul Olmstead said. “We just don't know. But there is nothing, nothing to indicate anything.”