For decades, authorities struggled to find out who had killed Theresa Fusco, a Long Island teenager who in 1984 was raped, strangled and left in the woods near the roller rink where she had worked at the snack bar.
Three men convicted in the case were exonerated in 2003, and two won hefty payouts for their wrongful convictions. Now, four decades later, Nassau County authorities say they finally have the real killer, thanks to DNA evidence.
On Wednesday morning at Nassau County Court in Mineola, N.Y., two detectives walked in a man with graying hair wearing a dark T-shirt, sweatpants and sneakers, his head bowed amid a scrum of cameras.
The man, Richard Bilodeau, 63, was arraigned on charges including second-degree murder. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison, said Anne T. Donnelly, the Nassau County district attorney.
As of his arrest on Tuesday, Mr. Bilodeau was living on Long Island and had worked for 12 years stocking shelves at a local Wal-Mart. When detectives asked him why his DNA matched a sample found with Theresa’s body in the 1980s, he replied, “People got away with murder back then,” according to a prosecutor, Jared Rosenblatt.
On Wednesday, Mr. Rosenblatt recounted the exchange in court and then clapped his hands down on a courtroom table and said, “Well, Mr. Bilodeau, it’s 2025, and your day of reckoning is now.”
Mr. Bilodeau pleaded not guilty. Outside the courtroom, his lawyer, Daniel W. Russo, noted that the authorities had already bungled the arrests of the men originally charged and cleared and that Mr. Bilodeau “has spent the last 40 years without an arrest.”
Mr. Russo said he had taken Mr. Bilodeau’s case only hours earlier. “There’s a lot of stuff to go through,” he said.
Ms. Donnelly said the arrest had been made possible by “remarkable advancements in forensic science and DNA analysis.”
“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,” she said.
Theresa’s mother died in 2019 but her father, Thomas Fusco, now elderly and walking with a cane, was at Mr. Bilodeau’s arraignment.
He winced as he craned to look at Mr. Bilodeau and grew emotional as Mr. Rosenblatt recounted how Theresa had clocked out for the final time at the roller rink.
When Mr. Fusco came to pick her up, “Theresa was not there,” Mr. Rosenblatt said. Mr. Fusco nodded vigorously, took a deep breath and appeared to fight back tears as his lower lip trembled. “Her mother and father could not find her.”
Ms. Donnelly did not say how Mr. Bilodeau became a person of interest four decades later.
Nassau County detectives and federal agents began monitoring Mr. Bilodeau last year, and in February 2024 recovered a cup and straw he had discarded at a smoothie shop, according to her office. DNA from the straw matched the sample taken from Theresa’s body in 1984, prosecutors said.
At the time of the murder, Mr. Bilodeau had been living with his grandparents in Lynbrook, roughly a mile from both Hot Skates, the roller rink, and Theresa’s home, prosecutors said.
Theresa, a 16-year-old student at East Rockaway High School who lived in Lynbrook, not far from the New York City border, was last seen on a November evening leaving Hot Skates in tears because she had just been fired.
A month later, a block from the rink, two 14-year-old boys playing in the woods spied her body under a wooden pallet covered by leaves. Police said at the time that there were ligature marks around her neck and that she had been strangled, beaten and sexually assaulted. Officials recovered DNA evidence.
Theresa’s killing drew wide attention partly because she disappeared around the same time and place as two other girls, one of whom — Kelly Morrissey, 15 — had been Theresa’s friend.
The three men convicted in Theresa’s killing insisted they had been framed by coerced confessions and unreliable testimony by jailhouse informants.
Their cases drew the attention and assistance of Centurion Ministries, which fights wrongful convictions, as well as Barry C. Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project, which uses DNA technology to exonerate the wrongly convicted.
Advanced testing helped clear the three men: Dennis Halstead, John Kogut and John Restivo. They were released in 2003 after more than 17 years in prison and sued Nassau County. Mr. Restivo and Mr. Halstead were awarded $18 million apiece.
At a news conference after Wednesday’s arraignment, Ms. Donnelly put her hand on that of Mr. Fusco, the victim’s father.
“It’s heartbreaking to go through this all over again,” Mr. Fusco said. “But this seems like a finalization.”
He reached inside his suit jacket and from a pocket over his heart drew out a laminated photo of Theresa smiling, her skin glowing and her hair thick and dark.
“I loved her and I miss her,” he said. “She lives in my heart, as you can see.”
Corey Kilgannon is a Times reporter who writes about crime and criminal justice in and around New York City, as well as breaking news and other feature stories.
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