00:00:06
Welcome to Postmortem. I'm your host 48 Hours correspondent Ann Marie Green. And
00:00:11
today we are discussing the cases of Teresa Fusco and Kelly Morrissey, two teenagers, teenage girls who went
00:00:20
missing in 1984 in Lynbrook, New York. That's a suburb in Long Island. Now, after a suspect
00:00:26
confessed to Teresa's murder and then implicated two other men, seemed like the case was closed. But about 19 years
00:00:34
later, advances in DNA technology overturned their convictions and pointed to another unknown suspect. Joining me
00:00:42
today is 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty. Erin, you worked on this case, but over your years of working uh for 48
00:00:50
Hours, you've actually covered a number of wrongful conviction cases. So have you, Ann Marie, and it is a passion of
00:00:57
mine. Um this case is yet another reminder of the cost of a prosecutor getting it wrong. When you convict the
00:01:06
wrong suspects, not only does that allow the real killer to go free, but often puts the family and friends through
00:01:13
years of hearings and trials. And that's the centerpiece of this story, because it's what the family and friends of
00:01:21
Teresa, Kelly, and another victim, Jackie, have gone through in the decades since their disappearances. And I should
00:01:28
point out since 1984, so over 40 years. Absolutely. I mean, this is a nightmare for any family, but this process, it's
00:01:36
like sort of ripping the scab off over and over again. And really, you know, they're still waiting for a resolution,
00:01:42
which we will get to. But I want to remind everyone, uh listen, if you haven't watched or listened to this
00:01:48
episode, The Killing of Teresa Fusco, go check it out and then come on back so we
00:01:53
can talk about it. So, Erin, on June 12th, 1984, 15-year-old Kelly Morrissey left her home after dinner. She's going
00:02:02
to meet a friend, and she's last seen at a payphone near a Shell gas station in Lynbrook before she disappears. After
00:02:11
about 5 months, 16-year-old Teresa Fusco goes missing after she leaves her job at
00:02:19
a local roller rink. How unusual was it to have two teenagers go missing with just within a few months?
00:02:27
Ann Marie, this was very unusual. What made it even more unusual, these two girls knew each other. And back in the
00:02:34
'80s, kids went out regularly, and they played late at night. It was a completely different world when people
00:02:42
still thought that bad things didn't happen. These cases um that happened so close to
00:02:48
each other really did shatter the sense of safety in this area. I should point out that Lynbrook wasn't
00:02:55
a small town. It had a population of about 20,000 back in the '80s. And it was very close to New York City, but it
00:03:05
still was a suburb. One of our colleagues who worked on this story actually grew up very close to Lynbrook,
00:03:11
and she told us that Lynbrook felt like a small town because everybody went to the same movie theaters, ate pizza at
00:03:19
the same pizza spots, and it did seem like everybody went to this roller rink called Hot Skates. And that's where
00:03:27
Teresa worked. I mean, it kind of reminded me a little bit of where I grew up, you know, in the suburbs of Toronto,
00:03:33
and we had the roller rink that everyone went to, and every once in a while they
00:03:37
would have DJ night, and it would all be, you know, 15, 16, 14-year-olds, and everyone felt safe cuz it was just a
00:03:45
bunch of kids. But, you know, to talk about the case, when Kelly's mother, Iris, realizes that
00:03:51
Kelly has not returned home, Iris and her husband, they call the police, and then the police tell them that because
00:03:58
Kelly hasn't been missing at least 24 hours, they're not going to take a report. Investigators believe she was
00:04:05
just a runaway. They did not take the case that seriously, and they at that time found no reason to think that Kelly
00:04:13
was a victim of a crime. Kelly was last seen on a payphone. And so our thought is, oh well, why didn't the police find
00:04:21
out who she was talking to? Well, data for the payphones back then were not easily tracked. Um back in 1984,
00:04:31
of course, there was no social media, digital footprints, Right. >> no ring cameras, no text messages, no
00:04:39
cell phone tower pings that cops could trace. All of those things that we now kind of
00:04:45
take for granted that help solve cases. Mhm. Back then, it was boots on the ground. It was knocking on doors. It was
00:04:54
word of mouth. Physically retracing the last steps of a missing person. So, in in fact, it wasn't until Teresa Fusco
00:05:03
disappears that Kelly's case actually gets a second look. This is nearly 6 months after Kelly went
00:05:10
missing. Teresa's body is discovered near Long Island railroad tracks. Uh she's been beaten. She's been
00:05:17
strangled. She's been raped. And police start to look at the possible links between the two cases.
00:05:24
That is when they zero in on John Kogut. Uh he's a 21-year-old landscaper. Detectives say that he dated Kelly for
00:05:33
about a week or so. And in the course of your reporting, I'm curious about whether you learned
00:05:40
anything else about him. So, they question him twice. The first time he denied any involvement or knowledge of
00:05:48
of either Kelly's disappearance or Teresa's murder. And then, according to Kogut's former legal team, and I should
00:05:56
point out these are not the lawyers who represented him back then, but represented him when he
00:06:02
had a retrial. This is what they told us, that police picked up Kogut for a second round of
00:06:08
questioning. Uh they had asked whether he would be willing to take a polygraph, and he said yes.
00:06:14
When they picked him up, he told them he had been drinking and smoking marijuana.
00:06:19
The officers notified their higher-ups, but they were told to still bring him in
00:06:24
for questioning. Now, again, what we've been told is that Kogut told police that
00:06:29
at the time of Teresa's disappearance, he he said he had an alibi. He had been hanging out with his girlfriend drinking
00:06:36
beer. And his girlfriend did corroborate that alibi. She even testified to that.
00:06:44
But obviously, like the police must not have believed him because they continued to press him.
00:06:51
And then, after nearly 12 hours of questioning and 18 hours in police custody, and keep in mind he had been
00:07:00
awake almost 30 hours, that's when he made a videotape confession. He said that on the night that Teresa went
00:07:08
missing, he had been with two friends, Dennis Halstead and John Restivo, driving in Restivo's van when they saw
00:07:16
Teresa walking home from Hot Skates. She had gotten fired that night and left early.
00:07:21
Kogut then also said that after she got into the van, he he claimed that Restivo
00:07:28
and Halstead raped her. But that he was the one who killed her. He gave stunningly specific details
00:07:35
about how he wrapped a rope around her neck. Well, that is what struck me about this confession, the remarkable level of
00:07:44
detail. And so you can't help to but to think, who would make this up? I'm going
00:07:49
to be honest, it's a pretty convincing interview. Um and I talked to Paul Castellano about that. Now, he is the
00:07:56
attorney who represented Kogut, not the first trial, but when Kogut was tried a second
00:08:03
time. He says that videotape confession was staged. According to Castellano, Kogut was exhausted and just wanted the
00:08:14
interrogation to stop. Castellano says that Kogut also disavowed that confession within a day once he talked
00:08:21
to a lawyer. Mhm. But as anyone who sees that videotape confession, that confession
00:08:29
seemed to be the nail in his coffin at trial. John Kogut, uh Dennis Halstead, and then John Restivo, they're all
00:08:37
charged with Teresa's murder. All three of them plead not guilty, but then at trial, police also testified that they
00:08:43
recovered two hairs belonging to Teresa in Restivo's van. And then, of course, they testify about Kogut's detailed
00:08:51
confession. All three men, uh Kogut, Halstead, and Restivo, they were all convicted, and they were sentenced to
00:08:59
more than 30 years to life. But then, nearly 19 years after Teresa was killed, there was a stunning twist
00:09:08
in the case because of advances in DNA technology. We saw it in the hour. What more can you
00:09:14
tell us about how that unfolded? Well, you know, what was interesting and very impressive is that the investigators
00:09:21
early on did take a swab um after they found Teresa's body. There was no DNA at trials back then, but they took a swab.
00:09:30
They couldn't identify it initially. Around 2003, there were more sophisticated testing, and it told a
00:09:38
very different story. In this case, all three men were excluded by those tests, and a complete profile of a fourth
00:09:48
unidentified man was present. So, as you can imagine, John Kogut, John Restivo, and Dennis Halstead's convictions were
00:09:58
all overturned at that point. >> This reminded me when I watched it of a case that I worked on for 48 hours a
00:10:05
while back. It was one of the first ones I ever did. It was about the murder of Angie Dodge.
00:10:10
This is in Idaho Falls in 1996. She was an 18-year-old. She just moved into her apartment, her brand new first
00:10:16
apartment, and she was killed in the apartment. Investigators found DNA at the scene,
00:10:21
and then they started to zero in on a guy named Christopher Tapp. After hours and hours of interrogation,
00:10:29
he falsely confesses to being at the scene of the murder. And he spent many, many years in prison. Eventually, he was
00:10:37
released, and later he was fully exonerated. And in the end, the advances in DNA
00:10:43
technology, genetic genealogy, eventually identified the killer. It was a man named Brian Tapp, who eventually
00:10:50
pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. But it really sort of got me thinking
00:10:55
about the way interrogations are conducted. And whether anything has changed. Ann
00:11:05
Marie, there's no question that we're seeing more and more cases like this. I mean, it breaks my heart because
00:11:11
>> Yeah. these officers think they have the right person, they pressure them, they
00:11:17
confess, and then later on, after these guys have all gone to prison, genetic genealogy or DNA Mhm. shows that they
00:11:26
got the wrong guy. What I am finding, I think you are, too, that many more of these interrogations are being
00:11:34
videotaped or at least audiotaped. And best practices um include not interrogating someone for
00:11:42
hours and hours. Um so, I think it is better, [music] but I don't think it's fixed yet.
00:11:54
Welcome back. Well, in 2003, the Nassau County District Attorney, Denis Dillon, decided to retry
00:12:02
John Kogut, Dennis Halstead, and John Restivo for the murder of Teresa Fusco. And starting with Kogut, who pleaded not
00:12:10
guilty again. And this time, Kogut decided to take his chances with a bench trial, which means there's no jury, it's
00:12:18
a single judge that is going to decide his fate. But now, as we've been talking, there is new evidence that
00:12:25
shows that the DNA did not match him or any of the other men, which means that the prosecution needs a different
00:12:33
strategy. What's their strategy in the retrial? So, the prosecution had to explain away that unknown DNA by saying,
00:12:42
"Well, then Teresa must have had consensual sex with someone before she was attacked and killed."
00:12:50
Remember, she was 16 years of age, and family and friends told us that they were horrified when prosecutors rewrote
00:12:59
this narrative about Teresa. Um according to her best friend, Teresa had always wanted to wait until marriage
00:13:07
to have sex, and she wasn't sexually active. But prosecutors said, "Well, uh investigators had tested so many men in
00:13:16
the area without finding a match, so the DNA just simply can't be relevant. We would find that person if it was." Um
00:13:27
and they said, "It doesn't matter what the DNA says. We have John Kogut confessing."
00:13:35
According to prosecutors, that was the most important evidence, even more important than the DNA. So then, what's
00:13:42
the approach for Kogut's defense attorney? You know, he has to try to convince a
00:13:47
judge to completely ignore this very detailed confession. And that is very hard to do, as we know. Uh but Paul
00:13:55
Casselliero, who represented Kogut during the retrial, he was able to kind of pull apart the prosecution's argument
00:14:03
bit by bit. Uh for one thing, he says that that tape confession was like a play. It was theater. Uh one detective
00:14:12
was off camera monitoring him. And when Kogut, you actually see this, when Kogut
00:14:18
can't even remember the last name of one of the, you know, co-defendants, the officer gives it to him. Um
00:14:27
Casselliero says that police lied to him about the polygraph and brought in an expert who said, in fact, that he did
00:14:35
pass the polygraph. And then there was the issue, if you remember, those two hairs that the cops said that they had
00:14:43
found on the floor of John Restivo's van. That sounded terrible. I mean, how would her hair end up in the van? Right.
00:14:51
>> Well, Casselliero argued that there was testing that revealed that those hairs
00:14:57
displayed this certain decomposition that is only present when the hairs are attached to a person who's dead. And so,
00:15:08
he argued that he believed that the police took the hairs, and this is awful to hear, Mhm.
00:15:14
>> medical examiner's office, from the autopsy, and then put them in the car. Prosecutors, of course, denied that the
00:15:23
hairs were planted, but when you read the judge's decision, he was persuaded by the defense. Huh. What's more, the
00:15:32
judge found the confession not credible. So, in the end, Kogut's gamble paid off by having just a
00:15:41
judge and not a jury, because the judge found him not guilty of murder. And 8 days later, the DA dismissed the charges
00:15:52
against Restivo and Halstead, and they were never retried a second time. All three men initially sued Nassau County
00:16:01
and police officials. They lost. And then John Restivo and Dennis Halstead, they pursue another a civil trial
00:16:08
against Nassau County and police officials without John Kogut. And they are awarded $18 million
00:16:16
each. Essentially, a million dollars for each year that they spend behind bars, but
00:16:23
Kogut receives nothing. Why did he receive nothing at all? Well, Ann Marie, we can't absolutely
00:16:32
say, but defense attorney Paul Casselliero believes that it was that confession that stopped him from getting money. But
00:16:41
there's nothing in the record. I should point out that Kogut didn't go completely empty-handed. He did receive
00:16:50
some money from a state fund, but it was a much smaller than what his co-defendants got,
00:16:57
Halstead and Restivo. I mean, I sort of understand because kind of on one side, perhaps none of this would have happened
00:17:05
to all three of them if he did not confess, right? But then, kind of on the flip side is he is the one that had to
00:17:11
endure all of these hours of this interrogation, not to mention spending all those years, nearly two decades,
00:17:19
behind bars for a crime he didn't commit. I'm glad he got a little something. Do we know how
00:17:25
all three men are doing today? We wanted to interview all three. All three did decline. Restivo, according to
00:17:33
Casselliero, when he was convicted and went to prison initially, had stayed in touch with a girl he went to high school
00:17:41
with, and she stayed a friend. And when he got out of prison, she was in Florida, and he went there, and from
00:17:48
what I heard, he stayed there. But according to Barry Scheck, who co-founded the Innocence
00:17:56
Project in New York, um told me that to this day, Restivo still fears that the police could come back and arrest him.
00:18:05
Think about that. >> Wow. Yeah. >> 40 years afterwards, you never really get your life back. On October 15th,
00:18:12
2025, this is nearly 41 years after Teresa Fusco was killed, Nassau County DA, Anne Donnelly, announces that they
00:18:21
have indicted her killer, thanks to the advances in genetic genealogy. And that unidentified DNA sample that was found
00:18:30
was matched to a 63-year-old. His name is Richard Billa Dew, I think. Is it Billa Dew or Billa Doe? Because
00:18:38
>> It's It's written Billa Doe if you're a French speaker. Anyone who watches the
00:18:42
hour will know that I changed my pronunciation because everyone gave us different pronunciations.
00:18:49
>> Right. The prosecutors told me it was Billa Doe. Okay. >> Uh but when I interviewed the defense
00:18:55
attorneys, they said it is Billa Dew, and the defense attorneys say that's how he pronounces it. Okay.
00:19:02
>> And so, I'm going with Billa Dew. But you do hear me in the hour pronounce it
00:19:07
Billa Doe, Billa Dew. Well, I mean, do we know anything about this person? How he could have, you know, crossed paths
00:19:14
with Teresa? Just anything. Uh we don't know a lot. Remember, Ann Marie, this is
00:19:20
pretrial. Nobody's sharing a lot. The prosecutors wouldn't reveal or couldn't reveal um whether there was any evidence
00:19:31
that Billa Dew and Teresa Fusco knew each other. None of her friends had ever heard the name. Even his own defense
00:19:39
attorneys don't know much about him. They said he does like online gambling. What we do know from prosecutors is that
00:19:47
the FBI matched the unknown DNA sample, the one that had always existed to Belladieu in 2024.
00:19:56
They were able to confirm his DNA was a match after they obtained a discarded straw from a Slurpee cup that was
00:20:05
connected to Belladieu. At the time of Belladieu's arrest, he had been working at a Walmart and he was stocking
00:20:13
shelves, but at the time of Teresa's killing, he was 23, older than what she was, and
00:20:20
living close by to her in Lynbrook. Um Belladieu has pleaded not guilty. And if he doesn't take a plea deal and he does
00:20:30
go to trial, then we're going to learn a lot more because the prosecution has get this,
00:20:37
150 boxes of electronic discovery to go through. And then what about Kelly Morrissey? I mean, is there any kind of
00:20:46
update or advance for her case and her disappearance? Anything? No. Um we had mentioned at the beginning
00:20:53
of this podcast that Kelly Morrissey's initially had been viewed as a runaway. Um
00:21:02
and now, according to retired detective Freddy Goldman, it is now viewed as a homicide. And he said that officials do
00:21:13
believe the cases might be connected, but we know that Belladieu has not been charged in Kelly's case. And in the hour
00:21:21
we also learn about another victim. She's a 19-year-old. Uh her name is Jackie Martarella.
00:21:27
She goes missing in March of 1985 in Nassau County. Her body is found. She has been raped. She's been strangled
00:21:36
just like Teresa Fusco. Are investigators looking at Belladieu in connection with Jackie's case?
00:21:43
Belladieu has not been charged in the case of Jackie Martarella, but according to what we heard from Freddy Goldman,
00:21:52
back then and even to this day, they had another suspect in mind. Uh they brought
00:21:58
him in for questioning and he moved to the south of France and that seemed to end
00:22:04
the investigation. You know, one of the things you mentioned at sort of the top of this is
00:22:12
that this really underscores the kind of prolonged and protracted pain that families feel.
00:22:20
Teresa's family thought they had some sort of resolution and then nearly two decades later that all blows up for
00:22:27
them. What really struck me was talking to Teresa's friend Lisa. Um she told me just how involved she had to
00:22:37
be in this case. Keep in mind, so she testifies at Coget's original trial. She has to
00:22:43
testify at Recivo and Halstead's original trial. There were other hearings that she said she also had to
00:22:52
uh testify. Then Coget is retried and she's probably going to have to testify again if Belladieu goes to trial. It's
00:23:02
never-ending. That's what Teresa's father told us. That's what Teresa's brother told us.
00:23:08
The idea that her murder has never been resolved. It just It just makes everything so much tougher for this
00:23:15
family. Yeah. I mean, I don't think you ever really move on, but but you do sort
00:23:21
of figure out ways to cope, but how can you cope without a resolution? I know that Kelly Morrissey's family talked us
00:23:28
because they're hoping if somebody knows something and they see this story, maybe
00:23:34
maybe they'll come forward. It's 40 years. It's time. Erin, thank you so much. Talk to you soon, Amory. Of course. Um
00:23:45
if you like this episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcast or Spotify.