After 40 years and 3 overturned convictions, arrest made in murder case thanks to smoothie straw
Written by admin on October 17, 2025
Officials in New York state announced charges Wednesday in the 1984 rape and murder of a Long Island teenager after, they said, the suspect’s DNA was recovered from a discarded straw.
Richard Bilodeau, 63, was arrested more than two decades after a judge overturned the murder convictions of three other men who served 17 years in prison in the killing of Theresa Fusco, 16.
Bilodeau was arraigned in a Nassau County courtroom Wednesday on two counts of second-degree murder, including one count alleging he committed the crime during a rape, the district attorney’s office said in a news release.
Bilodeau pleaded not guilty.
“Theresa Fusco’s life was violently stolen from her 40 years ago, and since then, her family has suffered an enduring pain and the lingering question of who committed such a heinous act,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said in a statement.
Donnelly attributed the charges to “remarkable advancements” in forensic science and DNA analysis and the “relentless pursuit of justice by my cold case homicide prosecutors and investigators.”
In an email, Bilodeau’s lawyer, Daniel Russo, said his client maintains his innocence.
He pointed to the overturned convictions and said: “If ever a case exemplifies that someone accused of a crime is entitled to the presumption of innocence, it is this case. There are four decades worth of investigatory leads, tips, evidence and trial transcripts to review.”
The 1986 rape and murder convictions of John Restivo, Dennis Halstead and John Kogut were overturned in 2003 after DNA testing revealed that a profile recovered from a vaginal swab did not belong to the three men, according to the Innocence Project, which worked on their cases.
That profile could not be identified, the Innocence Project said.
Kogut was acquitted after a second trial, the Innocence Project said. The charges against Restivo and Halstead were dismissed.
Fusco was last seen leaving the roller-skating rink where she’d worked in Lynbrook, roughly 30 miles east of Manhattan, on the night of Nov. 10, 1984, according to the district attorney’s office. Her body was found in a wooded area nearly a month later. She had been raped and strangled.
Bilodeau lived with his grandparents in Lynbrook a mile from the rink, the district attorney’s office said.
Local and federal authorities put him under surveillance him last year after they developed multiple investigative leads and recovered DNA from a cup and a straw he used at a smoothie cafe in Suffolk County, the district attorney’s office said.
The DNA matched a sample taken from Fusco’s body at the time of the murder, the release said.
Tim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.
