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Four decades after prosecutors sent the wrong people to prison for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl long Island Girl, dna This item found in a discarded straw has led to the indictment of a new suspect.
Richard Bilodeau, 63, of Center Moriches, was arraigned Wednesday on two counts of murder. there is Fusco.
The high school junior disappeared after leaving her part-time job at a Lynbrook roller-skating rink in November 1984. Her naked body was found buried under leaves in a wooded area near the rink a few weeks after the attack.
Three men were convicted of the murder and spent several years in prison before being acquitted dna evidence in 2003. They sued for wrongful imprisonment, and were awarded $18 million each.
Fusco’s father, thomasMineola was one of those in court as Bilodeau pleaded not guilty and was sent to the county jail.
After the hearing, he said it was “heartbreaking” to remember his daughter’s death “over and over again”, but expressed hope that the arrest was the “final look” in the ordeal.
“I loved her and I miss her. She lives on in my heart, as you can see,” Fusco said, pulling a photo of Theresa out of his jacket pocket during a news conference with prosecutors. “I never lost hope. I always had faith in the system.”
Bilodeau’s attorney, Jason Russo, declined to comment, saying only that he had met with Bilodeau shortly before the court hearing.
Prosecutors said Bilodeau was 23 and living with his grandparents when Fusco was killed. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to 25 years to life imprisonment.
County authorities began tracking Bilodeau last year after developing “numerous investigative leads.”
In February 2024, investigators recovered a cup and straw that they said Bilodeau had used and thrown away at a smoothie café in neighboring Suffolk County. DNA extracted from the straw matched a sample taken from Fusco’s body in 1984.
“The past is not forgotten,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said at a news conference after the hearing. “We will never stop fighting for the victims. My office is committed to bringing justice to Theresa and her family.”
During the indictment, Assistant District Attorney Jared Rosenblatt said that investigators went to talk to Bilodeau at his workplace after matching his DNA with crime scene evidence.
At the time, he said, Bilodeau told investigators: “Yes, people got away with murder.”
“Okay, Mr. Bilodeau, it’s 2025, and your day of reckoning is now,” Rosenblatt said in court.
Fusco’s murder attracted widespread attention in 1984, partly because she disappeared around the same time and area along with two other teenage girls, one of whom was Fusco’s friend.
15-year-old Kelly Morrissey disappeared in 1984 and was never found.
The body of Jacqueline Martarella, 19, of Oceanside, was found the following year at a nearby country club golf course.
The three men who were wrongly convicted of Fusco’s murder worked together as movers and one of them had dated Morrissey. DNA testing, which was not available in the 1980s, later proved that someone else had raped and murdered her.
In a lawsuit seeking compensation, lawyers for the two men argued that they were victims of police misconduct.
A federal jury agreed that the lead detective in the case, who had by then died, had both fabricated evidence and hidden other evidence from prosecutors.