Richard Bilodeau: Fusco Murder Charges, DNA Evidence, and Defense

Richard Bilodeau, a 63-year-old man from Center Moriches, New York, was indicted in October 2025 on two counts of second-degree murder in the 1984 rape and strangling of 16-year-old Theresa Fusco in Lynbrook, on Long Island. Investigators identified him through forensic genetic genealogy and then confirmed the match using DNA recovered from a smoothie straw he discarded, which prosecutors say was a “100% match” to semen collected from Fusco’s body more than four decades earlier.¹ The same biological evidence had already upended the case once: three other men spent roughly 18 years in prison for Fusco’s murder before DNA testing excluded them and led to their exonerations in 2003.²

What Happened to Theresa Fusco in 1984

Fusco left her job at the snack bar of Hot Skates, a Lynbrook roller rink, on the night of November 10, 1984, and was last seen walking toward her home about four blocks away at roughly 9:45 p.m. She never arrived.³ Her body was found nearly a month later, on December 5, 1984, in a wooded area near the Long Island Rail Road tracks close to the rink, buried under leaves and shipping pallets.⁴ An autopsy found she had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Vaginal swabs taken at that autopsy preserved the biological evidence that would drive every later turn in the case.

The Three Wrongful Convictions

Nassau County police interviewed roughly 400 people before arresting 21-year-old John Kogut in March 1985. After nearly 18 hours of interrogation, Kogut signed a confession written by lead detective Joseph Volpe that contained no information police did not already have, and he named two acquaintances, John Restivo and Dennis Halstead, who were arrested that June.² All three were convicted in 1986 on the confession, jailhouse-informant testimony, and hair evidence an analyst said was “microscopically similar” to Fusco’s. Kogut was sentenced to 31 and a half years to life; Restivo and Halstead each received 33 and a third years to life.³

A later federal civil trial found that Volpe had fabricated the hair evidence and buried exculpatory leads. Experts testified the hairs showed “post-mortem root banding,” a decomposition pattern that takes seven to eight days to form, meaning they could not have come from a live abduction and were likely transferred from autopsy specimen envelopes.⁵

Repeated DNA testing over a decade consistently excluded all three men. In 2003, a previously untested vaginal swab produced a single unknown male profile matching none of them, and on June 11, 2003 their convictions were vacated.² Prosecutors retried Kogut using his confession and a theory about white blood cell counts timing when the semen was deposited. At a bench trial in December 2005, Judge Victor M. Ort found him not guilty, and charges against Halstead and Restivo were dropped days later.⁶ That unknown male DNA profile stayed unmatched for the next twenty years.

How Investigators Identified Richard Bilodeau

In 2023, the Nassau County Medical Examiner’s Office and the FBI sent the 1984 evidence to Othram, a Texas forensic laboratory, which used Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing to build a comprehensive DNA profile from the decades-old sample.⁷ The FBI’s Investigative Genetic Genealogy Unit then used that profile to search for relatives of the unknown suspect, and the genealogical trail led to Bilodeau.¹

Nassau County prosecutors and the FBI placed Bilodeau under surveillance starting in early 2024. That February, investigators followed him to a smoothie café in Suffolk County, watched him buy a drink and throw out the cup and straw, and pulled the items from the trash. The DNA extracted from the straw matched the 1984 crime scene profile.¹

The Charges

Nassau County Police arrested Bilodeau at his Center Moriches home on October 14, 2025. The next day, District Attorney Anne Donnelly announced a grand jury indictment on two counts of second-degree murder, one for intentional murder and one for murder during the course of a rape. Bilodeau pleaded not guilty at his arraignment before Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Helene Gugerty and was remanded without bail.⁸ “The DNA in this case led us straight to Richard Bilodeau,” Donnelly said.⁹

Who Richard Bilodeau Is

In 1984, Bilodeau lived with his grandparents at 16 Tredwell Avenue in Lynbrook, roughly a mile from Hot Skates and about a mile from Fusco’s home, and worked on a coffee truck about a mile from where her body was found.⁸ By the time of his arrest he was living alone in Center Moriches and had spent the previous 12 years working the evening shelf-stocking shift at a Walmart in Riverhead.¹⁰

According to Donnelly, no one in Fusco’s family or circle recognized Bilodeau as someone connected to her in 1984.¹⁰ CBS News described him as someone who had “seemingly always lived below the radar.”⁴ When investigators questioned him about the killing, Bilodeau allegedly remarked, “People got away with murder back then.”

The Defense’s Argument

Bilodeau’s attorneys, Daniel W. Russo and William J. Kephart, have built their defense around the fact that the DNA match is the only evidence against him. In a 40-page brief filed in March 2026, the defense wrote that prosecutors presented “no eyewitnesses, no confession, no surveillance footage, no fingerprint impressions, no murder weapon, no phone evidence, no digital or other data evidence connecting Mr. Bilodeau to this crime.”¹¹ Asked by CBS News what else linked their client to the murder, both attorneys answered: “The DNA. That’s it.”⁴

The defense has also questioned the condition of the 1984 sample, pointing out that it “showed little, if any, signs of decay, as would be usual for a sample left in the elements for more than two weeks,” and has cited grand jury testimony from a medical examiner who said she did not observe typical signs of rape and a forensic examiner who said sperm tails normally degrade within 24 hours.¹²¹¹ Russo has pointed to the earlier wrongful convictions as reason to doubt the current prosecution’s confidence. “I don’t know how now in 2025, because you were able to put a name to that DNA, suddenly none of that matters anymore,” he told CBS News.⁴

Prosecutor Tracy Keeton has argued the opposite reading of the same evidence, telling the court that “the only reason his DNA was inside the deceased was for a nefarious reason.”¹³

Where the Case Stands

Justice Gugerty denied the defense motion to dismiss in April 2026, ruling that “the evidence presented was legally sufficient to support each of the crimes charged” and that there was no defect in the grand jury proceeding.¹² On June 2, 2026, the judge ordered Bilodeau to provide two buccal swab samples for comparison to the crime scene evidence and allowed the defense to take a separate sample for independent testing. She also declined to limit the use of the DNA to the Fusco case, leaving open the possibility that it could be run against other investigations.¹³

Bilodeau remains in custody and is scheduled to return to court on July 22, 2026.¹³ Thomas Fusco, Theresa’s father, attended the October 2025 arraignment and described the indictment as a long-awaited finalization after 41 years. “I only loved her, and I miss her,” he said. “She lives in my heart.”¹⁴

1
CNN. Theresa Fusco Suspect Indicted Cold Case
2
National Registry of Exonerations. John Kogut, Dennis Halstead, John Restivo
3
Innocence Project. John Kogut
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CBS News. Theresa Fusco Case – 48 Hours
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FindLaw. Restivo v. Hessemann
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Centurion Ministries. Halstead, Dennis
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DNA Solves. Theresa Fusco – Nassau County 1984 – Richard Bilodeau
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Nassau County District Attorney. Richard Bilodeau Indictment Announcement
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ABC News. Man Charged Murder 40 Years After Teens Killing
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Newsday. Richard Bilodeau Theresa Fusco 1984 Killing
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Newsday. Theresa Fusco Murder Dismiss Charges Richard Bilodeau
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Newsday. Theresa Fusco Murder Case Richard Bilodeau Trial
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Newsday. Theresa Fusco Murder Richard Bilodeau DNA Sample Order
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Fox 5 New York. Long Island Cold Case Richard Bilodeau Charged Theresa Fusco