Charges Filed in 41-Year-Old Cold Case: 16-Year-Old Theresa Fusco’s Murder in Lynbrook, Long Island Reinvestigated

In Nassau County, New York, a decades-old murder mystery has finally been unraveled, providing closure to a case that has haunted the community for over 40 years.

It all began in November 1984, when 16-year-old Theresa Fusco vanished after losing her job at Hot Skates, a roller rink located in Lynbrook. This week, the Nassau County district attorney’s office brought charges against Richard Bilodeau, a 63-year-old man, accusing him of second-degree murder.

Fusco’s remains were discovered beneath a pile of leaves and shipping pallets, revealing she had been brutally strangled, sexually assaulted, and beaten.

The murder sent shockwaves through Nassau County, particularly as it coincided with the disappearances of two other teenagers in the same region, an area that became ominously dubbed the Lynbrook Triangle, drawing comparisons to the infamous Bermuda Triangle due to its mysterious vanishings.

Initially, three men were arrested, convicted, and sentenced to over 30 years in prison for Fusco’s murder.

However, they maintained their innocence, and in 2003, advances in DNA technology exonerated them by identifying that the semen found on Fusco’s body belonged to a different individual.

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.