U.S. News
A Discarded Straw Solved a 1984 Murder — 40 Years Too Late for Three Innocent Men
By Erica Coleman · May 1, 2026
Three men — John Kogut, Dennis Halstead, and John Restivo — were convicted in 1986 of raping and murdering Theresa Fusco, a 16-year-old Long Island girl who disappeared after leaving her job at a roller rink on November 10, 1984. They each served approximately 18 years in prison. Their convictions were vacated in 2003 after DNA testing found that the semen recovered from Fusco’s body did not match any of them. Two were awarded $18 million each in wrongful conviction settlements.
The man prosecutors now say actually killed her was working overnight shifts at a Walmart in Suffolk County when investigators began watching him in 2024.
CBS News’ 48 Hours aired its episode “The Killing of Theresa Fusco” last Saturday, reconstructing a case that has stretched across four decades, three wrongful convictions, and a DNA breakthrough that came from a piece of trash.
Richard Bilodeau was 23 years old in 1984. He lived with his grandparents in Lynbrook — about one mile from Hot Skates, the roller rink where Theresa worked, and about one mile from the Fusco family home. He operated a mobile coffee truck in the area at the time. None of Theresa’s friends or family recognized his name when prosecutors showed it to them 40 years later. He had no criminal record.
By 2024, Bilodeau was 63, living alone in Center Moriches, working nights at a Walmart. Investigators had spent years building a DNA profile from evidence collected at the original 1984 crime scene — a profile that had never matched anyone in criminal databases. Using investigative genetic genealogy, the FBI’s forensic genealogy unit constructed a family tree from the DNA profile and eventually identified Bilodeau as a potential match through distant relatives.
Then they watched him.
In February 2024, investigators observed Bilodeau leave a smoothie cafe in Suffolk County carrying his drink. They watched him throw the cup and straw in the garbage outside his house. They retrieved it after he walked inside.
“The DNA from that straw, Richard Bilodeau’s DNA, was a match to the sample that was taken from Theresa’s body,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said at the October 2025 press conference announcing his arrest. “We got the guy.”
Bilodeau was arrested October 14, 2025, and charged with two counts of second-degree murder. He pleaded not guilty. His attorney has said that the earlier wrongful convictions in the case demonstrate why caution is warranted and that Bilodeau “has spent the last 40 years without an arrest.”
Theresa’s father, Thomas Fusco — her mother died in 2019 without seeing this day — stood with prosecutors at the press conference. He reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a small photograph of his daughter.
“It’s heartbreaking to go through this over and over again, but this seems like a finalization and I’m very grateful,” Thomas Fusco said. “I loved her, and I miss her. She lives in my heart.”
The case against Bilodeau is pending. A judge has ordered him to provide a buccal swab — a DNA sample from inside his cheek — to allow direct comparison with the crime scene evidence. Trial has not been scheduled.
The three men who served 18 years each for a crime they did not commit are alive. The woman who was killed when she was 16 has been dead for 41 years. Her suspected killer, prosecutors say, lived a quiet, invisible life — no record, no notoriety, no consequence — for four decades. A smoothie straw changed that.