Post Mortem | The Killing of Theresa Fusco

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1:28Erin Moriarty:Welcome to Postmortem. I'm your host, 48 Hours correspondent, Anne-Marie Green. And today we are discussing the cases of Teresa Fusco and Kelly Morrissey, two teenagers, teenage girls, who went missing in 1984 in Linbrook, New York. That's a suburb in Long Island. Now, after a suspect confessed to Teresa's murder and then implicated two other men, seemed like the case was closed. But about 19 years later, advances in DNA technology overturned their convictions and pointed to another unknown suspect. Joining me today is 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty. Erin, you worked on this case, but over your years of working for 48 hours, you've actually covered a number of wrongful conviction cases.

2:16So have you, Anne-Marie. And it is a passion of mine. This case is yet another reminder of the cost of a prosecutor getting it wrong. When you convict the wrong suspects, not only does that allow the real killer to go free, but often puts the family and friends through years of hearings and trials. And that's the centerpiece of this story, because it's what the family and friends of Teresa, Kelly, and another victim, Jackie, have gone through in the decades since their disappearances. And I should point out, since 1984, so over 40 years.

2:55Erin Moriarty:Absolutely. I mean, this is a nightmare for any family, but this process, it's like sort of ripping the scab off over and over again. And really, you know, they're still waiting for a resolution, which we will get to. But I want to remind everyone, listen, if you haven't watched or listened to this episode, the killing of Teresa Fusco, Go check it out and then come on back so we can talk about it. So, Erin, on June 12th, 1984, 15-year-old Kelly Morrissey left her home after dinner. She's going to meet a friend, and she's last seen at a payphone near a Shell gas station in Lindbrook before she disappears.

3:33Erin Moriarty:After about five months, 16-year-old Teresa Fusco goes missing after she leaves her job at a local roller rink. How unusual was it to have two teenagers go missing within a few months? Anne-Marie, this was very unusual. What made it even more unusual, these two girls knew each other. And back in the 80s, kids went out regularly and they played late at night. It was a completely different world when people still thought that bad things didn't happen. These cases that happened so close to each other really did shatter the sense of safety in this area. I should point out that Lindbrook wasn't a small town.

4:20It had a population of about 20 ,000 back in the 80s. And it was very close to New York City, but it still was a suburb. One of our colleagues who worked on this story actually grew up very close to Lindbrook. And she told us that Lindbrook felt like a small town because everybody went to the same movie theaters, ate pizza at the same pizza spots. And it did seem like everybody went to this roller rink called Hot Skates. And that's where Teresa worked.

4:51Erin Moriarty:I mean, it kind of reminded me a little bit of where I grew up, you know, in the suburbs of Toronto. And we had the roller rink that everyone went to. And every once in a while, they would have DJ night. And it would all be, you know, 15, 16, 14 year olds. And everyone felt safe because it was just a bunch of kids. But, you know, to talk about the case, when Kelly's mother, Iris, realizes that Kelly has not returned home, Iris and her husband, they call the police. And then the police tell them that because Kelly hasn't been missing for at least 24 hours, they're not going to take a report. Investigators believe she was just a runaway.

5:29They did not take the case that seriously. And they, at that time, found no reason to think that Kelly was a victim of a crime. Kelly was last seen on a payphone. And so our thought is, well, why didn't the police find out who she was talking to? Well, data for the payphones back then were not easily tracked. Back in 1984, of course, there was no social media, digital footprints. Right. No ring cameras, no text messages, no cell phone tower pings that cops could trace. All of those things that we now kind of take for granted that help solve cases. Back then, it was boots on the ground. It was knocking on doors.

6:17It was word of mouth, physically retracing the last steps of a missing person.

6:23Erin Moriarty:So, in fact, it wasn't until Teresa Fusco disappears that Kelly's case actually gets a second look. This is nearly six months after Kelly went missing. Teresa's body is discovered near Long Island railroad tracks. She's been beaten. She's been strangled. She's been raped. And police start to look at the possible links between the two cases. That is when they zero in on John Kogut. He's a 21-year-old landscaper. Detectives say that he dated Kelly for about a week or so. And in the course of your reporting, I'm curious about whether you learned anything else about him. So they questioned him twice.

7:08The first time he denied any involvement or knowledge of either Kelly's disappearance or Teresa's murder. And then according to Kogut's former legal team, And I should point out, these are not the lawyers who represented him back then, but represented him when he had a retrial. This is what they told us, that police picked up Kogut for a second round of questioning. They had asked whether he would be willing to take a polygraph, and he said yes. When they picked him up, he told them he had been drinking and smoking marijuana. The officers notified their higher-ups, but they were told to still bring him in for questioning.

7:49Now, again, what we've been told is that Cogart told police that at the time of Teresa's disappearance, he said he had an alibi. He had been hanging out with his girlfriend, drinking beer. And his girlfriend did corroborate that alibi. She even testified to that. But obviously, like the police must not have believed him because they continued to press him. and then after nearly 12 hours of questioning and 18 hours in police custody, and keep in mind, he had been awake almost 30 hours, that's when he made a videotape confession. He said that on the night that Teresa went missing, he had been with two friends, Dennis Halstead and John Restivo, driving in Restivo's van when they saw Teresa walking home from hot skates.

8:42She had gotten fired that night and left early. Kogut then also said that after she got into the van, he claimed that Restivo and Halstead raped her, but that he was the one who killed her. He gave stunningly specific details about how he wrapped a rope around her neck.

9:02Erin Moriarty:Well, that is what struck me about this confession, the remarkable level of detail. And so you can't help but to think who would make this up? I'm going to be honest. It's a pretty convincing interview. And I talked to Paul Castellero about that. Now, he is the attorney who represented Kogut, not the first trial, but when Kogut was tried a second time. He says that videotaped confession was staged. According to Castellero, Kogut was exhausted and just wanted the interrogation to stop. Castellero says that Kogut also disavowed that confession within a day once he talked to a lawyer. But as anyone who sees that videotaped confession, that confession seemed to be the nail in his coffin at trial.

9:56Erin Moriarty:John Kogut, Dennis Halstead, and then John Restivo, they're all charged with Teresa's murder. All three of them plead not guilty. But then a trial, police also testified that they recovered two hairs belonging to Teresa in Restivo's van. And then, of course, they testify about Kogut's detailed confession. All three men, Kogut, Halstead and Restivo, they were all convicted and they were sentenced to more than 30 years to life. But then nearly 19 years after Teresa was killed, there was a stunning twist in the case because of advances in DNA technology. We saw it in the hour. What more can you tell us about how that unfolded?

10:40Well, you know, what was interesting and very impressive is that the investigators early on did take a swab after they found Teresa's body. There was no DNA at trials back then, but they took a swab. They couldn't identify it initially. Around 2003, there were more sophisticated testing, and it told a very different story. In this case, all three men were excluded by those tests, and a complete profile of a fourth unidentified man was present. So as you can imagine, John Kogut, John Restivo, and Dennis Halstead's convictions were all overturned at that point.

11:23Erin Moriarty:This reminded me when I watched it of a case that I worked on for 48 hours a while back. It was one of the first ones I ever did. It was about the murder of Angie Dodge. This is in Idaho Falls in 1996. She was an 18-year-old. She just moved into her apartment, her brand new first apartment, and she was killed in the apartment. Investigators found DNA at the scene, and then they start to zero in on a guy named Christopher Tapp. After hours and hours of interrogation, he falsely confesses to being at the scene of the murder. And he spent many, many years in prison. Eventually, he was released, and later, he was fully exonerated.

12:04And in the end, the advances in DNA technology,

12:08Erin Moriarty:genetic genealogy eventually identified the killer. There's a man named Brian Dripps who eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. But it really sort of got me thinking about the way interrogations are conducted and whether anything has changed. Anne-Marie, there's no question that we're seeing more and more cases like this. I mean, it breaks my heart because these officers think they have the right person. They pressure them. They confess. And then later on, after these guys have all gone to prison, genetic genealogy or DNA shows that they got the wrong guy. What I am finding, I think you are, too, that many more of these interrogations are being videotaped or at least audiotaped.

13:02And best practices include not interrogating someone for hours and hours. so I think it is better but I don't think it's fixed yet

13:22welcome back

13:24Erin Moriarty:well in 2003 the Nassau County District Attorney Dennis Dillon decided to retry John Kogut, Dennis Halstead and John Restivo for the murder of Teresa Fusco starting with Kogut, who pleaded not guilty again. And this time, Kogut decided to take his chances with a bench trial, which means there's no jury. It's a single judge that is going to decide his fate. But now, as we've been talking, there is new evidence that shows that the DNA did not match him or any of the other men, which means that the prosecution needs a different strategy. What's their strategy in the retrial? So the prosecution had to explain away that unknown DNA by saying, well, then Teresa must have had consensual sex with someone before she was attacked and killed.

14:19Remember, she was 16 years of age and family and friends all told us that they were horrified when prosecutors rewrote this narrative about Teresa. According to her best friend, Teresa had always wanted to wait until marriage to have sex, and she wasn't sexually active. But prosecutors said, well, investigators had tested so many men in the area without finding a match, so the DNA just simply can't be relevant. We would find that person if it was. And they said it doesn't matter what the DNA says. We have John Kogut confessing. According to the prosecutors, that was the most important evidence, even more important than the DNA.

15:11Erin Moriarty:So then what's the approach for Kogut's defense attorney? You know, he has to try to convince a judge to completely ignore this very detailed confession. And that is very hard to do, as we know. But Paul Castellaro, who represented Kogut during the retrial, he was able to kind of pull apart the prosecution's argument bit by bit. For one thing, he says that that tape confession was like a play. It was theater. One detective was off camera monitoring him. And when Kogut, you actually see this, when Kogut can't even remember the last name of one of the, you know, co-defendants, the officer gives it to him.

15:56Um, Castellero says that police lied to him about the polygraph and brought in an expert who said, in fact, that he did pass the polygraph. And then there was the issue. If you remember those two hairs that the cops said that they had found on the floor of John Restivo's van, that sounded terrible. I mean, how would her hair end up in the van? Well, Castellero argued that there was testing that revealed that those hairs displayed this certain decomposition that is only present when the hairs are attached to a person who's dead. And so he argued that he believed that the police took the hairs, this is awful to hear, from the medical examiner's office, from the autopsy, and then put them in the car.

16:52Prosecutors, of course, denied that the hairs were planted. But when you read the judge's decision, he was persuaded by the defense. What's more, the judge found the confession not credible. So in the end, Kogut's gamble paid off by having just a judge and not a jury because the judge found him not guilty of murder. And And eight days later, the DA dismissed the charges against Restivo and Halstead, and they were never retried a second time.

17:27Erin Moriarty:All three men initially sued Nassau County and police officials. They lost. And then John Restivo and Dennis Halstead, they pursue another civil trial against Nassau County and police officials without John Kogut. And they are awarded$18 million each, essentially a million dollars for each year that they spend behind bars. But Kogut receives nothing. Why did he receive nothing at all? Well, Anne-Marie, we can't absolutely say, but defense attorney Paul Castellaro believes that it was that confession that stopped him from getting money. But there's nothing in the record. I should point out that Kogut didn't go completely empty handed.

18:20He did receive some money from a state fund, but it was much smaller than what his co-defendants got, Halstead and Restivo.

18:31Erin Moriarty:I mean, I sort of understand because kind of on one side, perhaps none of this would have happened to all three of them if he did not confess. Right. But then kind of on the flip side is he is the one that had to endure all of these hours of this interrogation, not to mention spending all those years, nearly two decades behind bars for a crime he didn't commit. I'm glad he got a little something. Do we know how all three men are doing today? We wanted to interview all three. All three did decline. Restivo, according to Castellaro, when he was convicted and went to prison initially, had stayed in touch with a girl he went to high school with.

19:14And she stayed a friend. And when he got out of prison, she was in Florida and he went there. And from what I heard, he stayed there. But according to Barry Sheck, who co-founded the Innocence Project in New York, told me that to this day, Restivo still fears that the police could come back and arrest him. Think about that. 40 years afterwards, you never really get your life back.

19:43Erin Moriarty:On October 15, 2025, this is nearly 41 years after Teresa Fusco was killed, Nassau County DA Ann Donnelly announces that they have indicted her killer thanks to the advances in genetic genealogy. And that unidentified DNA sample that was found was matched to a 63-year-old. His name is Richard Bilodeau, I think. Is it Bilodeau or Bilodeau? Because it's written Bilodeau if you're a French speaker. Anybody who watches The Hour will know that I changed my pronunciation because everyone gave us different pronunciations. The prosecutors told me it was Billadeau. But when I interviewed the defense attorneys, they said it is Billadeau.

20:31And the defense attorneys say that's how he pronounces it. And so I'm going with Billadeau. But you do hear me in The Hour pronouncing it Billadeau, Billadeau.

20:41Erin Moriarty:Well, I mean, do we know anything about this person, how he could have crossed paths with Teresa, just anything? We don't know a lot. Remember, Anne-Marie, this is pretrial. Nobody's sharing a lot. The prosecutors wouldn't reveal or couldn't reveal whether there was any evidence that Bill Adieu and Teresa Fusco knew each other. None of her friends had ever heard the name. Even his own defense attorneys don't know much about him. They said he does like online gambling. What we do know from prosecutors is that the FBI matched the unknown DNA sample, the one that had always existed, to Bilidu in 2024.

21:28They were able to confirm his DNA was a match after they obtained a discarded straw from a Slurpee cup that was connected to Bilidu. At the time of Bilodeau's arrest, he had been working at a Walmart and he was stocking shelves. But at the time of Teresa's killing, he was 23, older than what she was, and living close by to her in Linbrook. Bilodeau has pleaded not guilty. And if he doesn't take a plea deal and he does go to trial, then we're going to learn a lot more. because the prosecution has, get this, 150 boxes of electronic discovery to go through.

22:14Erin Moriarty:And then what about Kelly Morrissey? I mean, is there any kind of update or advance for her case and her disappearance, anything? No. We had mentioned at the beginning of this podcast that Kelly Morrissey initially had been viewed as a runaway. And now, according to retired Detective Freddie Goldman, it is now viewed as a homicide. And he said that officials do believe the cases might be connected. But we know that Bill Adieu has not been charged in Kelly's case. And in the hour, we also learn about another victim. She's a 19-year-old. Her name is Jackie Martarella. She goes missing in March of 1985 in Nassau County.

23:04Erin Moriarty:Her body is found. She has been raped. She's been strangled, just like Teresa Fusco. Are investigators looking at Bill Adieu in connection with Jackie's case? Bill Adieu has not been charged in the case of Jackie Martarella. But according to what we heard from Freddie Goldman, back then and even to this day, they had another suspect in mind. They brought him in for questioning and he moved to the south of France and that seemed to end the investigation. You know, one of the things you mentioned at sort of the top of this is that this really underscores the kind of prolonged and protracted pain that families feel.

23:53Erin Moriarty:Teresa's family thought they had some sort of resolution. And then nearly two decades later, that all blows up for them. What really struck me was talking to Teresa's friend, Lisa. She told me just how involved she had to be in this case. Keep in mind, so she testifies at Kogut's original trial. She has to testify at Restivo and Halstead's original trial. There were other hearings that she said she also had to testify. Then Kogut is retried, and she's probably going to have to testify again if Bilodeau goes to trial. It's never ending. That's what Teresa's father told us. That's what Teresa's brother told us, the idea that her murder has never been resolved.

24:44It just makes everything so much tougher for this family.

24:49Erin Moriarty:Yeah. I mean, I don't think you ever really move on, but you do sort of figure out ways to cope. But how can you cope without a resolution? I know that Kelly Morrissey's family talked to us because they're hoping if somebody knows something and they see this story, maybe, maybe they'll come forward. It's 40 years. It's time. Erin, thank you so much. Talk to you soon, Anne-Marie. Of course. If you like this episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Chicago, when winter winds or city noise have you craving a real escape, Belize is waiting. Imagine crystal blue waters, world-class snorkeling, ancient Maya sites and jungles alive with adventure, all just a few hours away.