Hey, there're folks. It is Saturday, October the eighteenth, and police this week made an arrest in the brutal rape and murder of a teenage girl. It only took them forty years and a smoothie straw to make the arrest. And by the way, this is a crime that three other men have already been convicted for and they were exonerated of. And welcome everybody to this episode of Amy and TJ Robes. Cold cases are one thing takes so
long for families to get justice. The idea that there were three other men that went to prison for decades for this same crime that they did not commit.
This is a story that is hard to believe.
It's heartbreaking for so many people.
The family of the victim, sixteen year old girl, of the three men who were convicted for her murder, that spent more than a decade behind bars, seventeen years in prison for a crime they did not commit, and this all came to light. It wasn't lost on us that this all came to light on a week where we have executed five people for murders and it was supposed
to be six because one has been stayed. But this is all just to me a highlight a highlighted moment in time where we can say, hey, our justice system is flawed.
Hey, look we know it is. No system is perfect. That's fine. But when you talk about people losing decades of their life and a mistake like this, may I mean, look, this was a brutal enough crime that it's not beyond the imagine that this is a crime in some places that someone could have gotten the death penalty.
This happened in New York, so it would have been more unlikely that that would have happened.
So that we understand and we get but if a mistake like this can be made that it takes us twenty years to realize our mistake, then man, it scares the hell out of you.
This is a fascinating story. It's a cautionary story, and it's a story that I think everyone needs to hear. This is the story of a sixteen year old girl. Her name was Teresa Fusco. She was found raped and strangled to death in a wooded area on Long Island. This happened in nineteen eighty four. Her body was found on December fifth. She was just leaving work. In fact, she left work in tears. She was working at a roller skating rink and she had just been fired and
she left in tears. She thought that was the worst thing that could have happened her. At sixteen and just moments later, yes before ten pm, she was abducted by someone and at one point police thought it was three men. But this week police have arrested sixty three year old Richard Billdeaux and charged him with two counts of second degree murder and one count of murder during the course of a rape. And this was forty one years in the making this arrest.
Look, and we just mentioned this is right, they're arresting someone. I guess they didn't know to be looking for anybody else for the past couple of decades because there were three men convicted of this after this young lady was found murdered and they went to prison. And it wasn't until and because of yes, advances in DNA testing that
we are here that proved that those three men. Now, at the time that DNA testing was done, they didn't necessarily have another suspect that this left them too, But they knew these three men were not involved based on DNA found on that young lady's body. So a couple of them got I can't remember the amount, but million dollar settlements.
Eighteen million dollars apiece. So they were convicted. And look how often we put so much stock into coerce confessions, unreliable testimony by jail house informants. But that is how they were convicted. And yes, as you mentioned, advanced DNA testing cleared these men, Dennis Halstead, John Cogut, and John Restivo.
They sued two of them.
Restivo and Halsteed were awarded eighteen million dollars apiece for the seventeen years more than seventeen years they served in prison for a crime they did not commit. And thank God for DNA testing because that is the reason why these men were exonerated, and it is the reason why now Richard billdeou behind bars.
How many more, I mean, I know there are people who are there organizations dedicated to this type of work to exonerate folks, but how many more?
Really?
It eighty four? I mean that was that was a while back, sure, forty years, but man, we've learned so much more and it was so I don't want to say easy what the journey was like to get them exonerated. But like a test, here is this, here's the test, test this, and we'll have our answer about guilt or innocence. It just like this should be accessible to everybody. This just should not happen. I hate it for those men.
Yes, I mean, this is the kind of story where you want to go and give your time to the Innocence Project, which devotes that organization devotes its resources into DNA testing specifically because that is irrefutable. When you have someone that is clearly exonerated by or clearly responsible for based on DNA evidence, I mean that is that is the type of evidence that can absolutely change the outcome and should change the outcome.
Of a trial.
So we move forward. Here we are now, so how do they get this guy? Well, as far as police go, they say they got a tip, and they've actually been they've had their eye on this suspect at least since early last year, and so they have been following him around, keeping an eye on him. But again, the key to this case, Robes, which has exonerated three men, is DNA. So DNA was key in following this guy around and
trying to figure out ropes. And we've seen some of this We watched a lot of true grime stories, and we've seen this one play out before.
You know that this is going to be a movie or a made for TV movie or a docu series, because this has all of the hallmarks of it. So Richard Bilodeou, he's sixty three years old now, but starting last year or even beforehand, they started surveilling him. As TJ just said, they actually in February watched Billodeou get as smoothie from a cafe in Suffolk County. When he finished, he threw the cup and the straw in the trash.
Investigators went into the trash can, pulled out the cup and the straw and used it to test it for DNA and guess what. That DNA sample tested positive as a match to the DNA found on Fusco's body.
We mentioned she was raped, so they.
Had DNA from the killer who raped her, and it matched Billadel sixty sixty three.
He was twenty three at the time of the murder.
And they went back and looked at the time of Wow, I just it's so sad.
Sixteen years old, sixteen.
Year old Teresa Fusco at the time of her murder, Billigo was living with his grandparents less than a mile away from where she lived and from the roller rink where she was last seen alive. So he was at the time at the place. And now they have the DNA linking him.
I mean, this is a this is an incredible story. I don't know which way to go with, right, the family has peace after all of these years. You have all these characters, now the family involved. You have the family, the victim, those three men being exonerated, and then the family friends, people who have been around this guy for the past forty years.
Yeah, so here's what we know about him.
He has been living on Long Island for the last forty years, and for the past twelve years he's been stocking shelves at a local walmart. So here's this guy who's now being accused of this horrific, heinous crime, and he watched three other men pay for his crime. Clearly he saw that all go down. But here's something really interesting.
When detectives finally confronted him about this DNA match from him to the victim, Reportedly, according to detectives, he replied, they said they asked him, why why does your DNA match a sample found with Teresa's body from the nineteen eighties. Here was his response, people got away with murder. Back then, DNA testing was not around, and it was almost as if he was kind of.
Bragging about it at that point.
Now he has now pleaded not guilty this week and he is proclaiming his innocence. But according to investigators, that is what he said when he was confronted with the evidence.
I mean, I'm what that means. Maybe we'll see that on one of the true crime documentaries from the interrogation room and see how that all went down. But that's he had to be to a point that he thought that call would never come and that knock would ever come on the door. Now, I wonder if he had been keeping up with his story of the past several years and knew that these men had been exonerated, and maybe he had been sweating for a little while. But
forty one years. Again, we've seen a few true crime stories of this nature, but forty one years.
He had to have thought he had gotten away with it. Think about it.
Those three men, their convictions were overturned in two thousand and three. That's twenty two years ago. So for twenty two years, the men first served seventeen years, then twenty two years has gone by.
So maybe he was sweating it for the first few years and now for the past decade. Really he might have forgotten about it. Again. I say forget it, what I mean, not to forget something like that. But rome's to think he's been living forty years and working around people. This was a horrific thing done to a sixteen year old girl. This was awful. This is monstrous stuff. And he went about life, he was interacting with people. I'm
sure he worked with people. Somebody hired him, and what are those people thinking.
His neighbors have been talking saying he was always scary. They told their kids to stay away from him. People talked about his weird, strange, bad energy. So it's always after the fact, of course, people are like, I always knew something was up with that guy. But people have definitely been speaking out and speaking up about how he was a creepy guy and they always felt a little uneasy and didn't want their kids around him. It's kind
of interesting when people give off a certain energy. So, of course, easy to say after the fact, easy to say after his arrest, but they're certainly speaking up and he has maintained his innocence despite I mean, can you imagine the last thing he was thinking as he ordered that smoothie, finished it and threw it in the trash. Can can you imagine he would never in a million years have thought that was going to be his undoing.
Look, it says you always have. It is the presumption of innocence until you are proven guilty. His lawyer, I thought was kind of if anything could be kind of funny and how he said it. He said, look, three people have been exonerated in this case. If this is ever a case of not rushing to judgment, this would be it makes a good point, like, okay, whatever it
looks like, but we will defend our client. But this case is a very well it's obviously close to us here in New York because Long Island's right across the way. But this case and the timing of it coming smack dab in the middle of a stretch of time in this country where we had six executions in eight days. Oh wait, there actually were only five because would you believe, folks, yes, one of them was stopped. Why because there's a question about the guilt or innocence of the man who's on
death row. Stay with us.
We continue talking about this unbelievable and truly unbelievable and fascinating case about the death and the murder of sixteen year old Teresa Fusco. What happened forty one years ago in nineteen eighty four on Long Island and New York. Three men had been initially convicted, spent seventeen years behind bars before being exonerated by DNA evidence.
And now they say.
Police believe they finally have the man in custody who they believe killed Teresa all those years ago, because DNA evidence connects him to the crime. And look, we talk about how it's fascinating, We talk about the larger conversation about getting things right and how flawed our justice system is, and certainly the higher level of executions we're seeing in this country. But I also just want to point out
the human element of this. And my god, her father, Teresa Fusco's father, was at the bail hearing this week of this man who's now finally been arrested for his daughter's death. And I was wiping away tears reading about this father and seeing the picture. There's Thomas Fusco said that this arrest and of course the trial and ultimately he hopes the conviction will bring closure finally for him and his family. But he said this, I never gave
up hope. I've always had faith in this system. But before I leave this earth, I'm very happy that since my ex wife's not here, she passed away back in twenty nineteen, and that I'm here with my family and the district attorney. And he pulled out a picture, a laminated photo of his daughter that he says he carries in his jacket pocket with him, and he said, with his lip shaking, she still lives in my heart, as
you can see all these years later. The emotion that washed over him, it was just it was so moving to think about just the unbelievable toll this had to have taken on him and his entire family and everyone who loved her.
Yeah, they haven't been at peace. It's been tumultuous. I don't know. I didn't wasn't familiar enough with the story that I don't know if there were all always questions about the guilt of these three men. I don't know if the family thought that was their closure and it was done or not. But then to think when those men are exonerated, that was twenty years ago and they've been now, it's almost like she's murdered all over again.
There's a killer has been on the loose this whole time, and so I can't imagine the ups and downs that look waiting five years for closure is one thing. This is you got closure twenty years ago just to be told no, that wasn't it, and now you're getting it again. I mean, your heartbreaks for those folks.
Heartbreak, and then also to think that three men paid a price that they didn't deserve to pay.
You'd also feel terrible about that.
Maybe how you felt about those men at one point. I wonder if there were every any apologies relationships or not that they need to apologize to those men, but it's just if they ever reached out in some way. That's this. They were in jail for nearly two decades for a crime they did not commit that should never ever happen, ever ever.
Happened, But thank goodness, it was able to be righted. Not that you could ever get back those years, but at least they were just imprisoned. And I hate to say that I'm not minimizing at all their experience. But I say this with the perspective of capital punishment.
Yeah, because we are as we sit here on a Saturday now. Two days ago, a guy in Texas was supposed to be dead and he's still alive right now because of a stay of execution. We've covered this plenty. Robert Robertson was supposed to be the first person executed after a shaken baby syndrome conviction, if you will, And there are questions now because there are new science. This wasn't DNA, but science evolved to where what he was convicted on and the science they use is considered junk science.
So that mistake, yes, could have cost a guy his life two days ago. In this country, we should always pump the brakes and be sure. I know everybody on Cell Block D says they didn't do it. I know that's the joke, but sometimes guys on blog B and C and A and elsewhere have a very good point. We have to take these seriously and on all capital punishment. If there's f oh, we just take a beat. If we need two more weeks to figure this out, we should always do that, you know.
And it reminds me.
Look, I'm not saying that Lance Shockley of Missouri, who was also executed this week, was innocent in any way, shape or form, but he till the moment he was pronounced dead at six thirteen pm this week and Missouri claimed that he was innocent.
Again, plenty do I'm not saying just take their word for it, but there are questions about that illegal questions well, the Supreme about the case.
Three justices felt like he should have gotten a new tribal.
If Soda Mayor says there's a question that he didn't get all his his the rights do, then I'll listen to that. I'll listen to the Yes, that's fine. When somebody's life is on the line, I'll listen to that, Yeah,
for sure. But it's just funny that this case comes up this week on the same week that we have seen I guess a life spared because we decided to take a beat and look at new evidence, and now we're seeing that hearing this case that three men, their lives, you could argue, were spared that well, that DNA had never been tested. Who was out there yelling and screaming
in their corner and rooting for them? I don't know if they had good enough lawyers, maybe there was an Innocence Project, but ma'am, more of this work needs to be done, and I be done. And I applaud any of you all out there from the Innocence Project on who do this work, because it is critically important.
Work and we all, we all can't even imagine what it would be like to be the family members left behind when someone who we loved was brutally murdered. Of course, everyone wants justice, but we want to make sure we get it right, and so this story just was such a glaring example of that very very thing. So Richard Bilodeaux,
we will follow the story. He is supposed to be back in court on November twenty first, and we will bring you the very latest on that if he is convicted, he will face twenty five years to life in prison, and certainly we hope that the family of Teresa Fusco finally finally gets the justice and peace that they have been waiting for for far too long, for these past four decades. Thank you so much for listening to us. Everyone.
I'm Amy Robot alongside TJ. Holmes. We will talk to you soon