On the evening of June 12, 1984, 15-year-old Kelly Morrissey left her Lynbrook home after dinner and did not return. Five months later, on Nov. 10, 1984, 16-year-old Theresa Fusco, who worked at the Hot Skates roller rink, disappeared after her shift. In the pre-cellphone era, when teens spent evenings at malls and rinks, it was easier to vanish without immediate alarm.
Kelly and Theresa had become close after Kelly’s family moved to Lynbrook. Friends recall nights at Hot Skates, mall hangouts and pen-pal letters. Kelly’s disappearance was initially treated by police as a possible runaway, though her family feared foul play. When Theresa failed to show up for a planned sleepover and missed school, concern mounted. Nearly a month after she vanished, Theresa’s body was discovered near the Long Island Rail Road tracks by Hot Skates: she had been beaten, raped, strangled and buried under leaves and pallets.
Investigators in 1984 had little to work with: no murder weapon, few clear forensic leads and DNA testing that lacked modern precision. Hair and sexual-assault samples were collected, but the technology of the time could not identify a suspect. Attention centered on local men who mixed in the teens’ social circle, including 21-year-old landscaper John Kogut, who had briefly dated Kelly. After lengthy questioning, Kogut gave a videotaped statement implicating himself and two others, John Restivo and Dennis Halstead, in Theresa’s attack. Authorities charged the three men, and by 1987 they were convicted and given lengthy sentences.
The convictions offered Theresa’s family the appearance of closure, but modern advances in forensic science would soon upend that outcome. In 2003 DNA testing that was unavailable in the 1980s excluded Kogut, Restivo and Halstead and instead pointed to an unknown male. Their convictions were overturned and the men were released after nearly 18 years behind bars. The reversal devastated Theresa’s loved ones and raised serious questions about the original investigation.
Central to the controversy was Kogut’s videotaped confession. His defense maintained it was coerced after an extended interrogation during which Kogut was reportedly awake for nearly 30 hours; he later recanted. His lawyer depicted him as vulnerable because of limited education and substance issues, and said police misrepresented polygraph results and pressured him to confess. Prosecutors had relied on the confession and other circumstantial evidence, but in a 2005 bench trial the judge ruled the videotaped admission unreliable and Kogut was acquitted; charges against Restivo and Halstead were dropped soon after.
The overturned convictions produced civil suits against Nassau County. Two of the exonerated men eventually received damages; Kogut did not. For Theresa’s family, the exonerations reopened grief and uncertainty: if those men were innocent, who had killed Theresa?
The case lay unresolved for years while forensic science continued to progress. Evidence collected in 1984 was preserved; when genetic genealogy and more sensitive DNA analysis became available, investigators reexamined the unidentified male profile from Theresa’s evidence. FBI scientists and genealogists traced that DNA profile to Richard Bilodeau of Center Moriches. In October 2025, Nassau County authorities announced Bilodeau, then 63, had been arrested and indicted in Theresa’s murder.
Prosecutors say their surveillance led them to collect discarded trash, including a smoothie cup with a straw, and DNA recovered from the straw matched the previously unidentified sample from Theresa. At the time of the killing Bilodeau was 23 and lived roughly a mile from both Hot Skates and the Fusco home. He has denied the charges. At the time of his arrest in 2025 he was working stocking shelves at a Walmart; friends and Theresa’s family did not recognize him as someone connected to her.
Defense attorneys for Bilodeau acknowledge the DNA match is the central piece of evidence but challenge its interpretation and the case’s fraught history. They point out that decades earlier prosecutors had minimized the significance of the unidentified DNA when moving forward against Kogut, Restivo and Halstead. They say past investigative errors and prosecutorial decisions will be relevant if Bilodeau goes to trial, and they have indicated they will contest chain of custody and the provenance of the biological material.
Theresa’s exonerated defendants and their advocates warn that Bilodeau’s defense may attempt to redirect blame back to them, a prospect that reopens old wounds. Kogut’s former attorney has said the earlier miscarriages of justice left harms that “have no ending.” The county’s handling of the original prosecutions and later settlements remains a tense backdrop to the new indictment.
Bilodeau is not charged in the separate unsolved cases of Kelly Morrissey or Jackie Martarella. Kelly remains missing since 1984. Jackie, who disappeared from Oceanside in March 1985 and whose body was found on a Woodmere golf course in April 1985, was also raped and strangled; that case remains unsolved. Families of those victims continue to seek answers and hope any new leads might help resolve the other tragedies.
Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said the DNA match supplied the scientific certainty investigators lacked for decades. Defense lawyers counter that science does not answer every question and that the county’s earlier decisions are material to how this case is viewed. Both sides are preparing for a contentious trial in which the origins of the evidence, investigative conduct and the reliability of decades-old forensic work are likely to be closely examined.
For people who grew up in Lynbrook, the roller rink and suburban routines of the 1980s are reminders of lives overturned by violence. Friends who remember Theresa as guarded and not sexually active reject past suggestions that consensual encounters might explain forensic findings used in earlier prosecutions. Theresa’s family and friends say Bilodeau’s indictment offers a long-awaited chance for answers, but the announcement also reopens painful memories and legal battles.
If Bilodeau is convicted, some hope it will bring finality to Theresa’s case and potentially point to leads in other unsolved local killings. If not, the community will continue to grapple with unanswered questions and the legacy of wrongful convictions. For now, DNA recovered from a discarded straw has produced a new suspect in a 41-year-old murder and reopened a painful chapter in Lynbrook’s history.