NASSAU COUNTY, New York — Authorities on Long Island believe they have closed a murder case that had been open for more than 40 years.
In November 1984, 16-year-old Theresa Fusco disappeared after she was fired from her job working the snack bar at Hot Skates, a roller rink in Lynbrook and, on Wednesday, the Nassau County district attorney’s office charged a 63-year-old man, Richard Bilodeau, with second degree murder.
Fusco’s body was found buried under leaves and shipping pallets. Police said she had been strangled, sexually assaulted and beaten.
The murder stunned her Nassau County community, especially when two other teens went missing in the same area, which became known as the Lynbrook Triangle, a local take on the Bermuda triangle, known for its disappearances.
Three men were charged in Fusco’s death, convicted and sentenced to more than 30 years in prison.
The men insisted they were innocent, and, in 2003, DNA technology caught up to the case and confirmed semen found on the girl’s body was from another man.
One of the wrongly convicted, John Restivo, told GMA in 2003, “For years … someone would ask me ‘how I’m doing today?’ I’d say ‘not good, I woke up on the wrong side of the wall this morning.’ Yesterday I was able to say, I woke up on the right side of the wall this morning.”
A discarded smoothie cup was the critical piece of evidence that allowed investigators to solve the nearly 41-year-old murder case that Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said “sent shockwaves through the tightknit Lynbrook community” and a fear that young women were at risk.
Investigators had been surveilling the suspect for months when a break came in February.
Bilodeau went to get a smoothie not far from his home in Center Moriches. Investigators recovered the discarded cup and straw from the trash and brought it for testing.
“The DNA from that straw, Richard Bilodeau’s DNA, was a match,” Donnelly said. “The DNA in this case led us straight to Richard Bilodeau.”
In 1984 Bilodeau was a 23-year-old living with his grandparents in Lynbrook, a mile from Hot Skates, a mile from where Theresa Fusco lived.
Bilodeau pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder charge. Donnelly said he denied knowing Theresa, “but science proves otherwise.”
Bilodeau lived by himself in Center Moriches and worked nights at Walmart, according to the district attorney’s office. He was arrested Tuesday. Donnelly said he had been under investigation since early 2024.
“Through his denials that he had ever known her name, who she was, he made kind of a flippant comment about the 1980s. He said, ‘people got away with murder.’ Well, I’ll tell you something, Mr. Bilodeau, I’ve got you now,” Donnelly said.
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