More than 40 years after the murder of Long Island teenager Theresa Fusco, prosecutors say the man responsible is finally behind bars.
Fusco, 16, went missing in 1984 and was later found raped and killed in Lynbrook. Advances in DNA and a discarded smoothie led to an arrest.
Richard Bilodeau, 63, appeared in court 41 years after Fusco was murdered. Prosecutors called it a day of reckoning. He faces two counts of murder. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years to life in prison.
“We got the guy”
In 1984, Bilodeau was living in a Lynbrook house with his grandparents, a mile from where Fusco left her job at a roller rink and was later found raped and strangled.
“Science and DNA evidence doesn’t lie,” Nassau County DA Anne Donnelly said. “We got the the guy.”
“I never gave up hope,” Theresa’s father Thomas Fusco said. “I loved her, and I miss her. She lives in my heart.”
He said the cold case brought him four decades of heartbreak.
Prosecutors credit the break in the case to DNA.
The case has already seen three wrongful convictions, men who each spent 18 years in prison, until DNA exonerated them. They sued for wrongful imprisonment, and two were each awarded $18 million.
In 2024, investigative leads identified Bilodeau, who had been living in Center Moriches and working overnights at a Suffolk County Walmart. Police retrieved a cup and straw he threw out at a smoothie shop.
“The DNA from that straw, Richard Bilodeau’s DNA, was a match to the sample that was taken from Theresa’s body,” Donnelly said.
“He said people got away with murder back then”
When questioned by police, Bilodeau denied knowing Fusco.
“He said people got away with murder back then. Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Bilodeau. It’s 2025, and I got you now,” Donnelly said.
“There is a ton of stuff for us to go through. It’s going to take some time. As you know, Mr. Bilodeau professes his innocence. He pled not guilty,” defense attorney Daniel Russo said. “He has spent the last 40 years without an arrest.”
His neighbors in Lynbrook told CBS News New York they were not surprised, remembering him as “a troubled young man.”
Prosecutors credit retired detectives who came back to help go through 150 boxes of old case files, along with tremendous advances in science, for enabling them to close cases and bring about justice.
Friends and family of the victim told investigators they did not recognize Bilodeau as anyone she previously knew before the night of her disappearance in November, 1984.
