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Impact x Nightline - Season 4 - Episode 11: Under His Spell
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00:02It was the height of the roller disco craze. Saturday nights were spent on eight wheels.
00:09Lindbrook, Long Island, just 20 miles from Manhattan, was no different. On a crisp fall
00:16night in 1984, young people crowded to hot skates without a care in the world.
00:23But within days, they would be living in terror, one of their own,
00:28vanished. Now, you definitely think twice not to walk alone.
00:33Teresa Fusco was only 16 years old when she was killed in Lindbrook.
00:36Her nude body had been found along the Long Island Railroad tracks near her home.
00:40It's a sense of fear has permeated through this community.
00:44It was a murder that has haunted the town for 40 years.
00:4816-year-old Teresa Fusco found strangled to death, beaten and naked, buried under leaves and shipping powers.
00:56It was almost unbelievable. There was a loss of innocence.
00:59And she's like, it scares me. We walk with our keys in between our finger.
01:03Three men rounded up and convicted for the murder.
01:08But decades later, authorities zero in on someone who had never been on their radar.
01:13I can only say it's heartbreaking to go through this over and over again.
01:17Why'd you kill us?
01:18Let me tell you something, Mr. Blodo. I got you now.
01:22Just how did DNA from this straw left in the garbage upend the investigation?
01:29We're in the laboratory where breakthrough science meets investigative work.
01:32There's an unbelievable number of crimes that have been unsolved.
01:36Justice is not a luxury. It's a basic human right.
01:40But there are even more twists to the mysteries buried deep in memories here.
01:44We certainly felt at that time there was a connection with Teresa's murder and Kelly missing.
01:52And then right after that, my sister disappeared.
01:55Are the disappearances of two other young girls in Limbrook linked to Teresa's murder?
02:01Do you believe these three cases are connected?
02:03I don't believe in coincidences.
02:18Basically, every town in Long Island has a train station.
02:22The Limbrook community, it's a suburb. It's working class.
02:27A lot of firemen, policemen. It's a great place for a kid to grow up.
02:31We would walk everywhere. You never were afraid of anything.
02:35The year was 1984.
02:38Think leg warmers and lots of neon.
02:40From big hair to bold style, shopping malls reigned supreme.
02:45And when Footloose hit the big screens, the title song quickly became the soundtrack of Teenage Freedom.
02:58And in Limbrook, ask any teen where the heart of the town was.
03:02They'd point to this popular roller rink, Hotskate.
03:05What are you doing tonight?
03:07I knew it was a younger crowd than me. Mostly girls, I think.
03:1116-year-old Theresa Fusco had dreams of becoming a ballerina.
03:16But like any other young person, she started small working at the Humble snack bar at Hotskate's, just blocks away
03:23from her house.
03:25It was easy, local, familiar.
03:27All that changed on November 10th, 1984.
03:32The last we know is that she left Hotskate's.
03:35She was a little upset because apparently she had just gotten fired.
03:38She was a little emotional and she was walking home.
03:41And then she went missing.
03:43For nearly a month, neighbors formed search parties, scouring the streets and the cemetery right across from Hotskate's.
03:50But nothing could prepare the community for what happened next.
03:55On December 5th at about 4pm, two teenage boys see a pile of debris and underneath, a human foot sticking
04:04out.
04:05Theresa's body was found along the Long Island Railroad train tracks, just blocks from Hotskate's and her home.
04:16She was naked.
04:17There appeared to be strangulation marks on her neck.
04:20And then when they were able to do the autopsy, we found out that she had been sexually assaulted.
04:26The murder shook this tight-knit town.
04:30There was a loss of innocence to the teenagers that this doesn't happen in our town.
04:36It was the second time in five months that a young woman in the area disappeared.
04:4216-year-old Kelly Morrissey of Lindbrook.
04:44In June 1984, Theresa's friend Kelly Morrissey vanished.
04:49Kelly was last seen walking on Earl Avenue in Merrick Road, just over a half mile from where Theresa's body
04:55was discovered.
04:56I tend to feel that it is, that it is connected and I've kind of felt it really all along,
05:02especially after Theresa, that they were connected.
05:06To this day, Kelly's mother still remembers that special friendship between the two girls.
05:12They were close.
05:12They were still friends when Kelly disappeared and Theresa was murdered.
05:18Kelly's mother, Iris, and Paul Olmsted were dating at the time.
05:22Described Kelly as a typical 80s teen, happy-go-lucky and beloved by many.
05:27Theresa often hung out at their home.
05:30When all we girls, when they'd bring their friends home, I couldn't remember one name from the other, so they
05:36were all married.
05:37He called them all married.
05:38I called them all married.
05:40Their home, once full of laughter, would go quiet.
05:44When Kelly suddenly disappeared one rainy night.
05:48We wonder, you know, did somebody pick her up?
05:50I mean, it really was poor.
05:52It's not like her not to come home.
05:54She didn't run away.
05:55She didn't have any money.
05:56And her paycheck was still at her job.
05:59And her new clothes were there on the bed.
06:01We ended up with missing person posters.
06:04We put them wherever we could.
06:06The community's panic only increased when a third local girl, 19-year-old Jackie Martarella, disappeared while walking to work.
06:14Police also say that the strangulation death of 19-year-old Jacqueline Martarella is not connected to the Fusco murder.
06:21Police, however, say the murders are somewhat similar.
06:25Do you believe these three cases are connected?
06:27I will only say I believe there has to be some connection.
06:30It's too familiar.
06:31They're all the same age.
06:33The Martarella body was also found covered with, you know, leaves.
06:37Three cases, three young girls gone within nine months.
06:41So eerily similar to the Bermuda Triangle, the area became known as the Lindbrook Triangle.
06:48It bothers me because, like, I walk alone at night, you know, and it just, like, scares me.
06:52It's supposed to be a good town.
06:53What's going on?
06:54My mother taught me not to trust people.
06:56I mean, yet alone in Lindbrook, you never would walk alone.
06:59But now, you definitely think twice not to walk alone.
07:02We walk with our keys in between our finger.
07:04Just, you know, like, even if we're just walking around anyway, we always walk with our keys just in case.
07:09Jackie thought she was very streetwise and could handle pretty much any confrontation
07:13because she was into martial arts.
07:17Marty Martarella is Jackie's older brother.
07:19Jackie was only 4'10", and she would show me that she could kick above my head.
07:25So I'm like, well, that doesn't mean you're going to fight off the world, you know.
07:30But she's like, oh, you're worrying too much about me.
07:33He was 21 years old when his sister vanished.
07:36While walking to start her night shift at a nearby Burger King, she was working part-time to save money
07:42to get a car.
07:43Jackie was sort of shy with some people and very outgoing with others.
07:48But around her friends, you know, I'd hear them in the house blasting music, dancing around and stuff.
07:53The close timing surrounding his sister's disappearance and Teresa's sparking alarm amongst his family.
07:59The day Jackie went missing, I recall my dad calling me and said that Jackie never showed up to work.
08:06So that was right away, that's not her.
08:09Jackie was very, very responsible.
08:12I believe there was posters up for reward for information.
08:16And then next thing I see, there's ones like that up for my sister.
08:20Have you seen this girl?
08:22I didn't sleep at all.
08:24Nearly a month later, headlines in local newspapers broke the grim news.
08:29Marty says his father was never the same.
08:32He was a wreck.
08:33He was very upset, you know.
08:36He couldn't believe it.
08:37Nor could I, you know, all my step-brothers and sisters, you know.
08:41You never think it's going to happen to you.
08:48Jackie's body found in a marshy area of a private golf club.
08:52It was so badly decomposed, investigators could not collect viable DNA samples.
08:58Undeterred, Marty went searching for answers.
09:01Since the beginning, since the day Jackie disappeared, I wanted justice.
09:06At the same time Marty set out on a quest to learn who killed his sister, investigators were hot on
09:13the trail to crack Theresa's case.
09:18The crime scene had yielded little forensic evidence, aside from a DNA sample collected from Theresa's body.
09:26But back in the 80s, DNA forensics was in its infancy.
09:30The suspect that authorities were looking for was hiding in plain sight at this house on Treadwell Avenue, about a
09:39mile from the crime scene.
09:41But under intense pressure to find who killed Theresa, investigators instead hone in on three local men.
09:48This was a big deal case, and they were being accused of a violent, awful rape of a young woman.
09:58And so the stakes were really high.
10:02Dennis Halstead was a 31-year-old local contractor and father of five children.
10:08Basically, they were on a fishing expedition, and I guess they were just trying to fabricate everything and put a
10:14case together.
10:15Their focus turned to John Restivo, who owned a moving company.
10:19I never met the girl in my life, and I have no criminal records.
10:22You know, that was like a figment of an imagination of a cop.
10:26During an hours-long interview with police, Restivo mentioned a local landscaper, John Cogut, an on-and-off employee of
10:34his.
10:34Authorities then brought the 21-year-old in for questioning.
10:38We saw, um...
10:42Theresa Fusco.
10:43Theresa Fusco walking down the block.
10:46Cogut was subjected to 18 hours of intense interrogation.
10:51Police told him he failed law-detector test after law-detector test,
10:55and bombarded him with allegations that he, Restivo, and Halstead had abducted, raped, and murdered Theresa.
11:01And they are just brow-beating him, telling him that they have all this evidence, physical evidence that points to
11:08him.
11:08Over and over, Cogut denied any involvement in the case.
11:12It just went on and on and on, and it came to a point where it was just a blur.
11:16What they did to poor John Cogut, sweet Jesus, and this is not a guy who is a big criminal.
11:23Cogut says officers described the murder in excruciating detail.
11:27It's scary because you know that they're not letting you go.
11:31They're not letting you go until they get what they want.
11:34They've isolated him.
11:35Police are coming in one after another.
11:37They're throwing photographs of him, of the crime scene at him.
11:41Photographs of Theresa Fusco lying there, strangled.
11:44At a breaking point, Cogut signed a seven-page statement handwritten by a detective.
11:50The sixth version of events given by Cogut, implicating Halstead, Restivo, and himself.
11:57The cops correctly figured out he was going to be the one who was going to be the easiest to
12:03crack.
12:04That's when officers turned on the camera.
12:07John had said they'd give over at home.
12:09So as she turned, she said, sure.
12:12And I opened the back door, because I was in the back of the van.
12:15And she got in.
12:17But when John got finished with her, I took her, and I put her outside on the blanket.
12:21We all agreed before that she had to die.
12:27John Cogut's false confession would seal the fate of all three men.
12:33Authorities searched a van owned by Restivo.
12:36They say several strands of Theresa's hair were found in it, along with Cogut's confession.
12:41The hairs were enough to convince a jury to put the three men away for 33 years to life.
12:49You never want an innocent person to go to jail.
12:52But I believe that they felt very strongly when they had the confession that they had the right three men.
12:59The Nassau County Police Department told Impact, because Theresa's case is still ongoing,
13:04quote, we're unable to provide comment at this time.
13:12Ann Donnelly grew up in Nassau County, was a sophomore in college when Theresa went missing.
13:19I remember hanging up the phone and sitting there in my dorm for a couple of minutes going,
13:24wow, that's a piece of my childhood that was just taken away.
13:27She was elected district attorney four years ago.
13:32Do you think your office, though you weren't in charge at the time, made a mistake in this case?
13:37In charging the three of them?
13:39Yes.
13:39No, I believe they had the probable cause and the belief that they had the right three people.
13:44In the 90s, Kate Drummond and the nonprofit Centurion Ministries took on the effort to free the three men.
13:51We're not geniuses.
13:53And in fact, we don't even have access to all the information they have.
13:57And yet, we correctly assess that this is an innocent person in prison and proceed and ultimately get them exonerated.
14:06From the beginning, she says, the case was all about the DNA taken from Theresa's body.
14:12There was a surprising number of intact swabs.
14:15And all, of course, it took was one to completely eliminate all three of them.
14:22Once we got the result, we were on a good roll.
14:24The test had proven the three men were not a match for any of that DNA.
14:30Defense attorneys for Halstead, Kogut and Restivo are demanding that their clients be set free.
14:35After fighting to get them released for about a decade, the convictions were overturned in the summer of 2003.
14:41And the three men were finally free.
14:44I'm feeling great.
14:46I've been waiting for this thing.
14:48It's been very tough, but we all stick together.
14:50He's our glue and our family.
14:52That night when I'm in my hotel room alone and I just completely fall apart.
14:56But it's tears of joy.
14:59I mean, real joy.
15:00Three men who knew each other are trying to rebuild their lives.
15:03The trio appeared on Good Morning America the very next day.
15:07When you look back at the 18 years, is it anger?
15:11Is it bitterness?
15:13There will naturally be anger and bitterness.
15:16It's something that I'm going to deal with.
15:22But I just want to go on with my life and try to make it through one day at a
15:27time.
15:28Because it's going to take a long time to build my life.
15:30For years I was saying, if somebody would ask me how I'm doing today, I would say, not good.
15:34I woke up on the wrong side of the wall this morning.
15:36So yesterday I was able to say, I woke up on the right side of the wall this morning.
15:40You said that one of the startling things to you was a cell phone?
15:43Cell phone, yeah.
15:46Modern technology, huh?
15:47Everybody has their hands stuck up to their head.
15:51Looked like something out of Star Wars?
15:53Yeah, something like that, yeah.
15:54Kogut was later tried again.
15:56The charges based largely on his confession.
15:59Some of the stuff that they were reporting didn't make any sense.
16:03Like the hair banding that comes from a corpse that's in John Restivo's van where they supposedly raped her and
16:11then took her out and dumped her.
16:13According to Kogut's false confession, Teresa was in Restivo's van for just minutes after she died.
16:19But an expert claimed that the hairs found in the van could only come from a body that had already
16:25started to decompose.
16:27I mean, preposterous.
16:29Kogut was later found not guilty.
16:32Halstead and Restivo sued Nassau County and each won an $18 million settlement.
16:38I'd like to thank God for Mario Como vetoing that death penalty legislation in the early 80s because if he
16:45hadn't done that, me and Dennis might not be sitting here today.
16:48Mess my damn life up.
16:51Damn life's too.
16:53Kogut's suit against the county was unsuccessful.
16:56What I would like to see from Nassau County is a full-throated apology with details about the harm they
17:04did and how wrong they were in picking these three men.
17:07And having them serve this, these draconian sentences, their lives were shattered by this.
17:16So it becomes once again, not a solved case, but a cold case.
17:22Nearly four decades had passed since Teresa's murder.
17:25Her case no longer in the headlines, but a killer still on the loose.
17:30Then in 2023, the Nassau County Office of the Medical Examiner and the FBI send the now dust-covered evidence
17:38to this lab in Houston, Texas, breaking the case wide open.
17:49This first room is where we do DNA extraction.
17:52So this is where the evidence comes in and we extract DNA.
17:56We're building the infrastructure that is going to be able to solve every case that has DNA everywhere.
18:04Every case everywhere?
18:06That's the hope and we believe that it doesn't matter if your case is at the FBI or it's at
18:13a tiny little sheriff's office in a rural town.
18:16We want to be able to give the same quality of technology and advancement to that agency so that that
18:24case gets the same probability of being solved quickly.
18:27Here at Offroom Labs, a private forensic technology company, founders David and Kristen Middleman are using cutting-edge technology to
18:37solve thousands of cold cases around the country.
18:40When you get evidence from a crime scene, it's never a single source.
18:43It's always a mixture.
18:45There are always contaminants.
18:47The DNA is degraded.
18:48We've been able to identify perpetrators from crime scenes, even from mixture DNA, with less than 15 human cells.
18:56Even if it was 30 years old, 40 years old.
18:59We work with evidence, number one, that has historically been considered unusable, not good enough for testing.
19:05And then when we do work with that evidence, we're reading not tens of markers, but rather hundreds of thousands
19:10of little DNA markers,
19:12so that we can make very precise and certain conclusions about what happened at a crime scene.
19:18So far, their technology has helped close hundreds of cases and provided leads to thousands more.
19:24Like identifying the Jane Doe known as Peaches and her toddler whose remains were found during the Gilgo Beach homicide
19:31investigation.
19:33Cases which had often been cold for decades.
19:36What's the oldest case you guys have?
19:381881.
19:391881?
19:40Yeah, we had a woman.
19:41We built a profile for a woman that was found at a barn buried.
19:45Across the U.S., there are nearly 350,000 unsolved homicides.
19:52The duo believe their system is sophisticated enough to solve them all.
19:57The longer it takes to get answers in a case, the more people that suffer.
20:00There's a radiating amount of damage that is applied to the victim, their family, the friends of the family, society
20:07at large.
20:08And so it's important to essentially ensure all cases can be processed to certainty very quickly and cost effectively.
20:15How important is their work to what you all were able to accomplish here?
20:18The work that they're doing has allowed us to identify two bodies that we haven't been able to identify in
20:26over 25 years.
20:27It led to another cold case being solved.
20:31Richard Cottingham, who is a serial killer, had killed this woman.
20:35And after we arrested him for her death, we were able to solve three more deaths of women in Nassau
20:41County.
20:42And this advancement in science is paramount to getting cases like this resolved.
20:49And what about those DNA swabs from Teresa's body?
20:53Not only did they prove Cottingham or Steve-O and Halstead were innocent, they were key to building a genetic
21:00profile of Teresa's potential killer.
21:02So if you're related to this person and you had uploaded your DNA for any reason, whether you were arrested
21:11or you did 23andMe or something else, we would see a familial contact.
21:18In 1984, according to Ann Donnelly, Richard Bouladeau had been living with his grandparents about a mile away from hot
21:26skates and Teresa Fusco's home.
21:28He was a 22-year-old man living in Limbrook, driving a coffee truck.
21:33He had a troubled past. He had a couple of run-ins with the law.
21:36Nothing major, serious, but definitely troubled and lived very close to the crime scene.
21:45And then he kind of went off the radar.
21:47After getting the DNA profile, authorities in Nassau County, along with the FBI, started surveilling Bouladeau in 2024, 40 years
21:56after Teresa was murdered.
21:57He had been living alone about 50 miles east of Limbrook.
22:02You have to test his DNA directly to the DNA that was recovered at the crime scene.
22:07One day he went to get a smoothie and he drank it and threw the cup and straw into the
22:13garbage.
22:14The detectives retrieved it. We recovered the DNA from the straw and it was a match.
22:20Do you have anything to say for yourself?
22:22Why'd you kill her?
22:26More than a year and a half later, police arrested Bouladeau, now 63, and working the night shift at a
22:33Walmart.
22:33The detectives had texted me and asked me to call them and they said the arrest was being me.
22:41I was very excited and I like, you know, in a way felt we were all redeemed.
22:47We still have no connection, no response or anything from the police or what have you.
22:51They've never called to ask if Kelly knew him or we knew him or ever heard of him.
22:57Right.
22:58Never heard of work.
22:59Billadeau was charged with second degree murder. If convicted, he faces 25 years to life in prison.
23:06For those who would say, if the legal system got it wrong the first time and sent three innocent men
23:14to prison,
23:14why should they believe you now that you got it right this time?
23:18Because science doesn't lie. Science is what this case is based on.
23:24I think it's important to note that we didn't have this science back in the 80s, but we have it
23:29now and we're going to use it.
23:31As we spoke with the defendant, he made kind of a flippant observation about the 1980s.
23:37He said people got away with murder back then.
23:41Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Billadeau, it's 2025 and I got you now.
23:47Mr. Billadeau professes his innocence. He pled not guilty today. He has spent the last 40 years without an arrest.
23:53In a statement to Impact, Billadeau's attorney adding in part, this incident took place over 40 years ago
24:00and three men were convicted after trial and served almost two decades in prison before being exonerated.
24:07If ever a case exemplifies that someone accused of a crime is entitled to the presumption of innocence, it is
24:14this case.
24:15When we were able to make the announcement and make the arrest, I actually had friends who I grew up
24:20with calling me and saying thank you for bringing that closure.
24:24Teresa's father, he was beyond thankful.
24:29The 82-year-old right by the D.A. side.
24:33I miss her. That's all I can say. She lives in my heart, as you can see.
24:40When I spoke to him, he came into my office and he said, do you mind if I give you
24:47a hug for not giving up?
24:52He's like, now I know who killed my daughter.
24:55Teresa's father may now have some closure, but for Kelly Morrissey's family, their loved one has never been found and
25:02is presumed dead by law enforcement.
25:04Do we think of Kelly? Absolutely, there's no question.
25:07Oh yeah, every day. Always something reminds me.
25:11Even though it's 40 years later, she's still a 15-year-old.
25:14You know, you don't think of her as a 60-year-old.
25:18So sometimes you see a young, teenage, blonde girl and think, oh, it could be Kelly.
25:24If there's somebody out there that knows what's happened, please come forward and give us some kind of indication really
25:32as to what happened.
25:33So that we can, we can put this to rest.
25:37The case also remains unsolved for Jackie Mattarella, her brother Marty refusing to move on.
25:44It's absolutely exhausting when you don't know.
25:47Because your mind is constantly trying to seek out avenues of, you know, something to make sense of it, which
25:54never happens.
25:57Is there any expectation that the public can expect some movement in the case of the two other teenage girls
26:04who went missing at about that same time?
26:05We're looking at what evidence we have. Detectives notes the situations from the time. So we have to see.
26:12Is there DNA evidence that you can re-examine now in those two cases?
26:17Unfortunately, no. Martarella's body was found, but there was no DNA. It was too deteriorated.
26:24Kelly Morrissey's body has never been recovered.
26:27Is Richard Bilodeau a person of interest in those two cases?
26:32I couldn't say at this point.
26:33Your words say one thing, your eyes say something else.
26:36I have very expressive eyes. I will only say I believe there has to be some connection.
26:41I don't believe in coincidences.
27:12Until next time.
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