Richard Bilodeau indicted in killing of Lynbrook teen Theresa Fusco in 1984

Nassau County prosecutors said they believe they have finally solved the 1984 killing of 16-year-old Theresa Fusco, a homicide that has frustrated investigators for more than 40 years.

Richard Bilodeau, 63, who works the evening shift at a Suffolk County Walmart, pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder in the second degree at his arraignment on Wednesday. One count was for intentional murder and the other for murder during a rape.

His arrest comes more than two decades after three men, who had been imprisoned for more than 17 years for the crime, were released after advanced DNA techniques showed no link between them and DNA from a vaginal swab of the victim. One of the then-suspects, John Kogut, had given police a confession to the murder that he later recanted.

Fusco disappeared on Nov. 10, 1984, after being fired from her job at the snack bar at Hot Skates, a roller rink in Lynbrook. She was found dead from strangulation later that year.

"For over 40 years, the identity of the DNA from a vaginal swab taken from Theresa Fusco was unknown," Assistant District Attorney Jared Rosenblatt told the court. He said that when investigators matched the DNA with Bilodeau, they went out to talk to him at the Walmart. The prosecutor said during their conversation in July, the investigators remarked to him how current times are different from 1984.

"Yeah, people got away with murder," Rosenblatt said the defendant responded. "Well, Mr. Bilodeau, it's 2025, and your day of reckoning is now."

Bilodeau, of Center Moriches, was remanded to the Nassau County jail and his attorney said he reserved the right to make a bail application at a later date.

"I just met Mr. Bilodeau this morning," defense lawyer Daniel Russo said. "We have a lot to talk about."

Outside the courtroom, Russo pointed out this is the second time the prosecutor's office has brought charges in connection with Fusco's killing.

"Nassau County tried three people for this murder and they were all exonerated," he said. "For the last 15 years, there's been nothing. Mr. Bilodeau pleaded not guilty and professes his innocence."

Nassau prosecutors, working with the FBI, started watching Bilodeau in 2024 after developing what they said were "multiple investigative leads."

In February of that year, they got DNA off the straw from a smoothie Bilodeau had thrown away in Suffolk County. The genetic material from the straw matched the DNA from Fusco's body, according to the district attorney.

"The DNA in this case led us straight to Richard Bilodeau," District Attorney Anne Donnelly said.

On Tuesday, a grand jury indicted him.

Fusco's father, Thomas Fusco, appeared alongside Donnelly at a news conference on Wednesday.

"I can only say it's heartbreaking to go through this over and over again," he said. "But this seems like a finalization, and I'm very grateful, very grateful for me and my family [for this] to come to an end. This feels like a finalization."

Theresa Fusco's mother, Connie Napoli, who testified at the previous trials, died in 2019, the same year Hot Skates shut down, the district attorney said.

Her father said he believed investigators would find his daughter's killer.

"I only loved her and I miss her. She lives in my heart. As you can see," Fusco said, pulling a photo of his daughter out of his breast pocket. "I never gave up hope. I've always had faith in the system."

Fred Klein, who originally prosecuted the case for the Nassau County District Attorney's Office, said Wednesday: "I just hope the family gets justice for Theresa and some sense of closure."

At the time of the crime, Bilodeau was 23, driving a coffee truck and living with his grandparents on Treadwell Avenue, a mile from Hot Skates and the victim's house, prosecutors said on Wednesday. Donnelly said no one who knew or was associated with Theresa Fusco at the time recognized him.

Nassau County police in 1984 initially treated the case as a missing persons investigation because another of Fusco's friends, Kelly Morrissey, 15, had also gone missing on June 12 that year. Her whereabouts are still unknown in 2025, officials said.

Nearly a month after Fusco's disappearance, some teenagers playing near the Long Island Rail Road tracks between Rocklyn Avenue and Park Place — an area known as "The Fort" — found her body partially buried under leaves and shipping pallets. She had been strangled with a rope and sexually assaulted, police said at the time, and her face had been beaten.

The medical examiner found no signs of trauma to her genital area but there was evidence of sex before her death.

The murder made headlines across New York. Fusco, a junior at East Rockaway High School, was not seen as a typical runaway. She liked ballet and tap dancing, according to her mother, and hoped to become a dance teacher after school. By all accounts, she led an ordinary teenage life.

"She always called home," her godfather, Dean Gardiner, told Newsday shortly after her disappearance. "She was very close to her mother."

After Morrissey and Fusco went missing, another girl, Jacqueline Martarella, 19, of Oceanside, disappeared March 26, 1985. Her body was found a month later on the Woodmere Country Club golf course, according to reports.

Long Islanders then began referring to the "Lynbrook Triangle," like the Bermuda Triangle — a place where people would mysteriously disappear.

On Wednesday, prosecutors said there's no indication Morrissey's disappearance was tied to Fusco's death. But Donnelly said if they find a lead in the other cases, they'll pursue it. 

"My prosecutors are always looking for justice for victims of crimes," she said. "We are always searching for answers."

It wasn’t until three months after Fusco's body was found that police interviewed a man with a history of mental health issues who told them a friend, John Restivo, had told him he knew who killed her.

On March 5, 1985, Nassau County detectives picked up Restivo and took him to police headquarters, where they questioned him for two days. A lawsuit he later filed against police alleged they had beaten and choked him until he confessed, according to civil case records.

The confession convinced a judge to allow a wiretap on the phone of Restivo’s friend, Dennis Halstead, who was recorded on a 20-second segment of the wire, saying "yeah" when asked if he had killed Fusco.

Police also picked up Kogut, a part-time employee in Restivo’s moving company, who had dated Morrissey. After 12 hours of questioning, Kogut signed a confession to Fusco's killing and said the other men had raped her.

According to the prosecutor’s theory in the case, the men had been returning from a moving job when they saw the teenage girl walking the four blocks back to her house in tears after being fired for not properly cleaning tables at the skating rink.

The men got her into Restivo’s blue Ford van and took her to a cemetery, where they raped and killed her when she threatened to tell police what had happened, authorities said.

They then dumped the body, hiding it by the train tracks under a pile of dead leaves and some pallets, authorities said at the time. Police said they found a cord and strands of hair that matched Fusco's in the van.

All three men were charged with the teen’s rape and murder.

Kogut, who had written a seven-page confession along with professing his guilt on videotape, was convicted in June 1986. Restivo and Halstead were charged with rape and murder and tried and convicted in December of that year.

During the trial, Restivo told the jury his van had been up on blocks the day of the murder and that he had been sanding the floors of his new home before going to bed at 10:30 that night. Halstead also took the stand, telling the court he was being sarcastic when he said "yeah."

It took the jury 13½ hours to convict the pair after the seven-week trial.

"There was no concrete evidence," jury foreman Thomas Osborne told Newsday at the time. "Nobody had their minds set when they went in there. We just sat down and debated."

The three men were sentenced to more than 30 years to life behind bars.

The Innocence Project in Manhattan, which challenges wrongful convictions, took on the cases of the three men, arguing the original physical evidence did not prove their guilt and that more advanced DNA techniques, which found  the vaginal swab taken from Fusco was not linked to any of them, proved their innocence.

The Nassau district attorney joined in the motion to set aside the verdicts of the three men. In June 2003, after more than 17 years in lockup, the men were released. Prosecutors, citing Kogut's written and videotaped confession, chose to retry him in 2005. State Supreme Court Justice Victor Ort, in a bench trial, found him not guilty.

In 2006, the men sued the county, the district attorney and police for wrongful conviction and malicious prosecution. 

Kogut sued separately from the other men, but failed to convince the jury in the civil trial and lost the case. Restivo and Halstead prevailed in their federal lawsuit against Nassau County. A jury awarded them each $18 million.

Terry Maroney, a law professor at Vanderbilt Law School and one of the attorneys who challenged Kogut's conviction, said the men were "put through hell" for a crime they never committed.

"Everyone suffers when somebody is wrongfully convicted, especially for a horrible crime like this," Maroney said. " ... It's terrible when the system makes so many mistakes that it compounds the original loss."

Messages left with Restivo, Kogut and Halstead and their respective families were not returned.

Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, said he spoke to Restivo Wednesday and described him as "relieved."

"Even when you file a civil suit and win, and you're exonerated with DNA evidence, until they find the person who really did it ... there's always going to be some people that will think 'he got away with something,'" Scheck said.

Maroney said the three defendants were surprised to learn about the new arrest and needed time to digest the news before speaking publicly.

Adele Bernhard, who represented Halstead in his post-conviction appeal while running Pace Law Schools' Criminal Justice Clinic, said Nassau police relied exclusively on the confession of a suggestible young man following hours of intense interrogation.

"And once they got that, they were like dogs with a bone. You couldn't shake them," Bernhard said. "They believed in this confession, which was completely ridiculous and there was nothing you could do to convince them that they didn't have the right people. "

Newsday's Robert Brodsky contributed to this story.