October 22, 2025 • 41 mins
On November 10, 1984, 16-year-old Theresa Fusco was fired from her job at the snack bar at the Hot Skates roller skating rink in Lynbrook, on the south shore of Long Island, New York.
She was seen leaving in tears at 9:45 p.m., to walk to her home four blocks away. She did not come home, however.
On December 5, 1984, her naked body was found covered with leaves and debris in a wooded area not far from the roller rink. An autopsy revealed Theresa was raped and died as a result of ligature strangulation.
Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack explain how three men were convicted and sent to prison for a rape and murder they did not commit, and how evidence found at the time of the murder brought about the arrest of a man more than 40 years after the crime.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.07 Introduction, cold coffee
05:55.58 Theresa Fusco, 16
10:40.20 Body found nearby wooded area
15:33.76 1984 autopsy led to arrest in 2025
19:10.03 Getting a false confession
25:05.93 Evidence of trauma, strangulation, blunt force trauma
30:37.56 3 men go to prison for a rape murder they did not commit
35:03.84 Case starts off cold in 2005
40:02.17 Prosecutor says the match is100%
42:25.42 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body diaries, but Joseph's gotten more. I've heard said, particularly
over the last few years, that it's never a good
idea to drink your calories. It's an interesting thought. First off,
you don't get the enjoyment of actually ingesting your food,
(00:24):
I think, and there's there's kind of this this idea
of ingestion and then digestion with your food. You know,
the process that your body goes through to drink one's
calories is really kind of a shortcut, not there's something
metabolic about it that I don't know, inhibit your ability
(00:45):
to maintain a healthy weight. I see a lot of
my students drinking these coffee drinks, and you know, I'm
seeing figures that are in the thousands and thousands of calories.
And listen, I'm not a cold, cough kind of guy,
never have been. I drink coffee for a couple of purposes.
First to start my day, Secondly to wake up so
(01:09):
that I don't kill people, and.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Third because I enjoy the warmth of it. But I
have been known in the past to imbibe in the
occasional smoothie and they've got all varieties that are out there,
But you know, never have I ever had a smoothie
and thought this could put my freedom at risk. Today,
(01:39):
we're going to discuss a case involving a smoothie and
the straw that was found within an empty cup, a
straw that held evidence that actually closed out a cold
case that had been opened for over forty years. I'm
(02:03):
Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybacks. Dave. You drink
cold coffee. I've seen you. You and I have actually
had coffee together on air. You know, we'll sit there
and toast at each other every now and then. You know,
I love my coffee. I know you love yours. You
ever drink cold coffee at all?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I do not drink cold coffee.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
It's you know, I drink cold tea and hot tea,
but I do not drink cold coffee.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
YEAHS not my thing. Man. I've got these students that come,
you know, come into my classes and they've got these gigantic,
gigantic cups filled you know with the stuff, and they'll
be whipped cream on it and all kinds of stuff,
and it looks it looks grand. Uh. But you know
I look at that and I think grand. Yeah, I
would it costs about a grand I like milkshakes too,
(02:51):
but I know that if I drink one every day,
you know, it would not be good for me. Have
you ever had smoothies at all? Have you ever tried smoothies?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
You're going down a path that I really feel bad.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Look, man, just so you know, I don't eat vegetables
and I eat ice cream, so I think that anything
that is a smoothie, yeah, I'll go with my ice cream,
or I'll drink a shake. I'll drink ice I'll do that,
but I really don't do the expensive drink thing.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
And it's yeah, it really is like every time and
I mean this, okay, little insight here. Yeah, I see
a drink that costs five or six dollars, smoothie of
frozen drink, whatever it is. And my first thought is
I could buy a canister of Maxwell House or Boulgers,
you know, And I just can't do that. I cannot
(03:38):
break myself into it. And to be honest with you,
I don't particularly care for them. When somebody buys me something,
I try to be kind and oh thank you, but
it's like I save your money, you know. Really, Why
there's a hose pipe, I'll get some water out of
that I'm good.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah, no, kid, now I'll feel the same way. I
just couldn't and listen. And this is a shameless plug here.
My family actually owns a coffee company.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Oh amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
I know a beat a roasting company down and friends.
You can order it online, by the way, a beat
a roasting company. And so when I when I've got
the inside when I got the inside line on coffee,
you know, that's who I'm going to go to them,
go to my fan and have them ship it to me.
I like to make it all.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
I've got to put that in the body of the
stuff today so you guys will know what I'm talking about.
And handless plug away. It's his family and it's awesome.
And I was very much prepared, Joe. I was prepared
to say, oh, really good, thanks, it was awesome.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I was thinking.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I was like, I actually started not making it when
people were over.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Now they can get the soldiers.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Oh you're hoarding it.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah I did.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Well, I can tell you. Yeah, we're we're literally right now,
as we're as we're chatting, we're we're closing it on
the end of October, Dave, I have it on good authority.
I used to tell my my kids. I've I've actually
got Santa's phone number. And so I've got Santa's phone number.
I see, I see a basket of a beta coming.
You're so just keep that in mind.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Pretty excited about all right, take let's grab this show
by the heels here of Joe. This is one of
these topics that comes up. It deals with DNA, and
it deals with a crime scene. It deals with evidence
and holding onto it for a long time. It also
deals with something that we have been involved with with
(05:23):
regard to Authram, you know, helping solve or actually provide
answers to families after years. I mean, what we've seen
Authrom do is just remarkable. It's such a change of
the way crime is dealt with today. Crimes that happened
forty fifty sixty years ago people thought they got away
with it, and they're ending up in jail during their
(05:44):
twilight years. We've got that scenario playing out today. A
sixteen year old girl, Teresa Fusco, she was from Lynnwood,
New Jersey. She's working at a skating ring, working at
the snackshack inside a skating ring.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Loved it.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
She was a dancer, okay, working part time. She was
a nice, beautiful, sixteen year old girl. Teresa was also
a virgin, and I will tell you, for those of
us who grew up in the seventies and the early eighties,
that was not a very common occurrence. And the fact
that she was tells me a lot about who she was.
(06:22):
And the reason we're talking about her today is because
she lost so much in the space of one night.
She got fired from the snack shop at the skating rink.
She had an argument with an assistant manager. So imagine this.
You're working for minimum wage and you've got another minimum
(06:42):
wage worker who has kissed but enough to get into
an assistant manager position, and they're making your life miserable,
and you get into a disagreement and the assistant manager
fired from Think about it, an assistant manager at the
snack bar inside a skating rink. I mean that's one
step up from, you know, the lowest of the low.
(07:05):
I mean, think about And she got fired, fired, this
beautiful girl, And so she's crying. It's nine forty five.
She's walking home. She lives four blocks from the skating rink,
a normal path to walk.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
She never made it. Now.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
At first, her mom didn't get really worried because she
was going this is in the day before we had
cell phones.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Oh, matter of fact, it's really the day before kids
had beepers too.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
And as a sixteen year old, you know, she had
gone done her job, she was going to stop by
a friend's house and might spend the night. So Mom
didn't even think about it till the next morning when
she woke up and realized Theresa had not been home,
and she calls her friend or is she still with you? No,
she never came over last night. Immediately they knew right
(07:52):
then we got problems, and they did. Teresa Fusco vanished
in the NIME four when she left as skating rink.
We don't know what happened to her that night, in
the following days and the weeks is the investigation went.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
It was crazy, Yeah, it really was.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
And and like you said, there there was no way
back during that, you know, analog period of life, non
digital world, where you could actually track somebody down. Do
you remember, I don't know if your mom was ever
a member of them, but do you remember phone trees
where there would be a list a list of phone numbers,
(08:30):
you know, where moms would call, you know that sort
of stuff. I know a lot of our friends out
there can identify with that. And but the chill that
would run up and down your spine if you're a
parent and there's you know, first off, you know, we
kind of take it for granted. Now we've got CCTV everywhere,
We've got cell phones, we've got traffic traffic light, image
(08:55):
imagery possible. You know, all these things that didn't exist.
People could, in fact in nineteen eighty four literally fall out,
fall out of society and never be known of again.
And the fact that through our friends at Authram at
this point in time, that there has been a resolution
(09:17):
in this case all these years later is nothing short
of a miracle, I think, because what are the odds
And what's fascinating is that with this child's father, who
by the way, is still alive, Mister Fusco is still alive,
and he said, I never I never gave up. I
(09:41):
never gave up. I never lost faith in the system.
And faith in the system nowadays is one of those
things that's really hard to muster. I think we see
successes with people like Authram. What people don't understand is
that Authram is a private entity. Okay, it's not the
(10:02):
it's not the government. Now, the government calls them in
to consult and uh, you know, do consultations on cases
and that sort of thing, but they're they're not a
government entity. And it took advances in technology, and it
took it took cold case investigators that were still still
(10:22):
had an investment in this moving forward, and also some
kind of interesting things along the side. I say interesting.
It's kind of a disservice, but kind of tragic things
alongside as well.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
It wasn't a cold case for long. They had it
solved pretty quick, Joe. They had an arrest. Well here's
what happened though. Okay, she goes missing November tenth, that's
the night she doesn't make it home, last seen crying
as she leaves, fired by the assistant manager. Four weeks later,
December fifth, she is found under leaves, buried in brush
(11:00):
not far from the skating rink in a wooded area.
Now I don't know the actual geography, but that's how
it has explained. And I'm thinking somebody nabbed her right then, now, Joe,
there is and I really wanted to find out from
you what all of the evidence meant, because it sounded
to me like she was killed fairly quickly after she
(11:23):
left the skating rink, but some of the evidence might
indicate otherwise.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yeah, I think that you're right. Let me throw out
one more thing here that's kind of chilling as well.
Have you and anybody in the sound of my voice,
have you ever had a feeling when you walk out
of an establishment that you were being watched, or that
you were that somebody had their eye on you. Maybe
(11:52):
you were in an establishment you made eye contact with
them and it wasn't like positive eye contact, like a
familiar kind of face. I really it seems to me
that in this particular case, the perpetrator was, in fact,
first off, aware that she worked there, aware that she
(12:14):
was probably commonly on foot. They would have to have
a familiar sense of this area, may have even been
a patron of the skating rink, may have even bought snacks,
you know, at the snack bar where she worked. She's
sixteen years old, and I don't I know you've been fired.
(12:35):
You've expressed this actually on air before. It's one thing
when you get fired when you're an adult, but you
talk about putting blinders on you're sixteen years old and
someone you really feel like you've been gutted at that
point in time, because it's one of your first jobs,
maybe your first job ever, and you've built it all
(12:56):
up in your mind. You've got this great job, or
to you, it's a great job. You're making some money,
and then all of a sudden you're embarrassingly dismissed. Yes,
she would have blinders on, Dave. As she's walking out
of this place, she's going to be so laser focused
on the fact that she's just been, you know, traumatized
(13:17):
by what's happened. And she's a sixteen year old girl.
I trust me, I used to have a sixteen year
old girl in my house, and I understand the emotion.
She wouldn't see a perpetrator coming her way. Dave. That
so sad, it really is. And I begin to think
about the speed at which this would have taken place.
(13:41):
Because you think about the location of her body, that
it is in a wooded area, that's probably it's a familiar,
familiar area to the perpetrator, maybe even to her. Maybe
there was a path at some point in time you
could have cut through, you know, a kid, there were
a lot of cut throughs in my neighborhood where you
(14:02):
could walk through an area. Some of them were wooded
that maybe you were only familiar with, or maybe that
somebody in the area that resided there as well would
be familiar with. There's no light, it's dark, it's nighttime,
and you get overtaken in an area. This She's just
(14:23):
to lay it out plainly for you, Dave. She was
assaulted in a way that, as you had mentioned, would
have taken some time. She was beaten, she was also strangled,
and then she was raped. And the rape in this
particular case is very significant in a sense that the
(14:49):
perpetrator actually left left their calling card relative to her,
because it's the exam that came up later in the
wake of the discovery her body in the evidence that
they found the trauma that she had endured. It was
those bits of evidence that they collected at that autopsy
way back in nineteen eighty four that would eventually lead
(15:14):
to the arrest of a suspect, but not before some
other folks were damaged along the way. It's one thing
(15:38):
to be falsely accused of something and you protest I
did not do this, I did not do this. You're
lying about me, you're lying to other people about me,
And no matter how much you protest, it's not going
to change the attitude of the person that is necessarily
accusing you. They've made up their mind many times already
(15:58):
along the way, or the people that they're shouting this
to about you, that you did in fact do something
that you were falsely accused of. But how much more so, Dave,
when you're thinking about the local authorities that can put
the I don't know, for lack of a better term,
the strong arm on you. They threaten you with beating,
(16:20):
or they threaten you with incarceration until you finally they
deny you a phone call. They deprive you of water,
you know. And that's, by the way, that's one of
the tricks that's used many times. I don't know if
you know this with extended interviews. One of the things
that happens is that the people that are conducting the
interview will actually walk in with a bottle of water.
(16:45):
Maybe there's two people in the room, and the interviewer
will be sipping on the water, and the interview will
go on for a protracted period of time, the people
being the person being interviewed it's not offered water. And
then finally they'll say, look, I'm getting really thirsty. Can
have a bottle of water? Yeah? Yeah, sure, we'll get
you one first. Can you answer? Can you answer that?
(17:07):
Let's go back over this one more time and guess what.
They'll also do the same thing, and it doesn't have
to be punches. They can also do the same thing
with bathroom breaks. I don't know about you. I mean,
you know, Kim and I travel extensively. We're always on
the road, and dude, at this, at this season of
my life, I got to stop more than I wish to.
But you know, you're sitting there in a chair. You've
(17:29):
also you've got people that are implying that you've done
something wrong. Not just wrong, you've committed a homicide that's
going to make anybody want to avoid their bladder. You're
sitting there and they're not responding to your request to
go to the bathroom. Yeah yeah, yeah, we'll get to
that in just a moment. And what this is building
up to, it's those small little things along the way
(17:51):
that urge this person. Listen, I've got to get relief.
I'm thirsty, I've got a pee, I've got to do this.
I'm hungry. I'll you get to the point where you'll
say just about anything just so you can get relief.
And certain people know how to press those buttons, Dave.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Just so you know, I came about getting involved with
crime coverage and things like that at an early age,
being impacted by news things happening around me. Man, some
murders come to mind. When I was a very small child.
As an adult, I actually was the prime suspect in
a crime that I didn't commit. Wow, And I've been
(18:28):
in that chair, knowing I'm innocent, knowing I didn't do anything,
and I sat there and now I tell everybody, you
just need one.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Word, lawyer. Yeah, don't talk, lawyer.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
They lie, they cheat, they steal, they will do everything
they can because they you're look, man who doesn't want
an easier day at work? Okay, we have a crime,
We got a suspect, he looks good for it. Break him,
ither spend two hours of break you can get into
or I gotta go out and actually work. And so
I again, just lawyer, that's it. Don't talk. You're not
(19:06):
going to do yourself any good. Tell him the truth, Okay,
tell them the truth. And shut up. That's all I
ever tell anybody. But that's if you're innocent. If you're guilty,
I don't do what you want. But if you're innocent,
tell them the truth and stop.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
Get a lawyer because they will trip you up. And
when you find out people spend time in prison for
confessing to a crime they didn't commit. How difficult Joe
is it for a regular Joshmo me? You called to
jury duty and the prosecutor says, we have this painous
crime and we have a suspect who has admitted it.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
He admitted he did it.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
It was only after he found out that he might
spend the rest of his life in jail that he
has taken back his admission of guilt, his confession. But
we've got him on tape. He confessed.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah. Yeah, And you know a jury, a jury's gonna
think that's gold. I mean they are, you know, their
conclusion is, well, these people were the badges. These people authority,
the people that are in charge of the grand jury,
those people that are prosecuting the case, the people the
guy that's sitting on the bench in the funny looking dress.
They're all about justice, right, and sometimes it didn't work out,
(20:20):
and Dave three, not one, not two, but three guys
in this particular case rolled over on this case and
they they wound up spending double digit time in prison
for a heinous, heinous act that they didn't do.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
There was a rape murder of a sixteen year old, virgin,
beautiful young girl. And as a father of daughters, I
know what that dad, I know what he went into
this thinking of his daughter and how much more he felt,
and then knowing that it was stolen. And there are
three guys who actually are wanted for our good, for
(20:59):
the crime, and they're brought in, they go to trial,
and you've got in nineteen eighty four when the crime
took place, in nineteen eighty six, when they got the conviction.
Our technology is not where it was ten years later.
It certainly wasn't where it was twenty years later. Oh,
they were not idiots in nineteen eighty four. In nineteen
(21:21):
eighty six and science was really growing in the field,
they had some strong evidence, Joe. They did have it
that the police did. Some of it was so good
that it actually worked to free the men wrongly convicted.
But again, remember they were still dealing with a sixteen
(21:42):
year old girl who was doing nothing more than walking
home from work after getting fired by some assistant manager
at a snackshack, and she gets raped and murdered, and
going back to this show, they couldn't find her.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Why could they not find her?
Speaker 4 (21:57):
I mean, you've got a limited pathway to where her
body was and where she was headed. It wasn't like
she was taking miles away.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
It wasn't.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Is there a reason that they had trouble finding her?
Speaker 4 (22:09):
Do you think maybe she was kept somewhere and abused
for a while and then taken out and hit and
killed and then dropped there later on?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Well you know, yeah, I guess it could be possible, however,
to be able to marry up the changes in her
body with what they were visualizing at time. And of
course they have not released this data yet because this case,
as we know, is still being adjudicated, but it has
Here's the interesting thing. It has previously been adjudicated, but
(22:39):
none of those records are available for us to view.
But yeah, it would, and it is a protracted period
of time. Let's back up just a second and consider
when when this young young lady went and disappearing. Teresa disappeared.
You know, Teresa disappeared back on November tenth in nineteen
(23:01):
eighty four. She was not found until December the fifth,
So that's a protractive period of time. Yeah, almost a month.
And when she's found, she's found, you know, kind of hidden,
hidden beneath brush that's been stacked on her and they
described it at the time as leaves. Again, I think
(23:22):
that that goes to that goes to the speed at
which this perpetrator tried to cover up her body. It's
not like he went out with a shovel and dug
a hole or even dug you know, into the earth,
or or created a depressed area. He essentially just kind
of piled stuff up on top of her. Is that
(23:43):
enough to block someone's view of her? And what is
their assumption? They know back then, they would have known
that she would have been a pedestrian, She would have
been on foot. Why aren't she going out and looking
to see if she anywhere in walking distance? Maybe their
(24:05):
idea was she stepped out into the parking lot and
she was snatched and she's disappeared. She's just vanished off
the face of the planet. Was there a boyfriend that
maybe she was involved with Hey, let me ask you this.
Do you think that snack snack assistant manager was questioned?
I don't know, you know, kind of there's one part
(24:26):
of me that hopes he was the dad, and me
hopes that he was. He was brought in and questioned extensively,
you know, to find out, well, what can you tell
us exactly what did happen? We heard that she left
here crying. How do you explain that? You know? So
had they exhausted every possible lead at that point. I
(24:47):
think that, you know, it's an interesting proposition that you
put forward here with her, because you're thinking, well, was
she held captive somewhere to the point where the guy
may have got and tired of her being around, or
he felt like it was too risky to keep her around,
so he disposes her, disposes of her in the most
(25:09):
effective manner. I know that that her I'll put it
to you this way. I know that the evidence of
the trauma was still there to the point where they
could appreciate it. We're talking about evidence of strangulation, we're
talking about evidence of blunt force trauma. Because they're saying
(25:31):
she was beaten, they don't say if you know if
she had a fractured skull or anything like this. But
we know that that trauma existed. And oh, by the way,
they did rape kit. They did a rape kit on
her and retained the results from that, so they there
was actual seminal deposition into her body. However, I got
(25:57):
to say, these three other individuals that were named, charged, prosecuted,
and sentenced to prison where they spent what was it like,
eighteen years of their life in prison for this crime
they did.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
They were convicted in nineteen eighty six, and it was
two thousand and three when they got the DNA back.
But still, even in the case of one of the guys,
you know the way that they got them to back
up a minute before we go full on, they were
in jail for all that language I cannot imagine for
the life of me chan cannot But they have three guys.
They've got mister Koga. I'm trying to remember his first name,
(26:41):
John Cogut. John Coget's a twenty one year old guy,
and he was charged March twenty sixth, nineteen eighty five.
So we're talking three and a half months after this
crime has taken place, nearly four months rather and He's
twenty one years old. He's arrested and charged with second
degree murder and rape. He's a former resident of the
(27:01):
area and was living in New York.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
He is a suspect. When they interviewed four hundred.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
People, he's just a guy that strikes their fancy as
somebody who, yeah, he might have done it. Police say
he confessed and that they say this, twenty one year
old John Kogat confessed and implicated two of his friends,
twenty six year old John Restivo and thirty one year
old Dennis Halstead. Now, when I was thirty one, Joe,
I did not have a twenty one year old friend
(27:31):
that I would have done anything with just saying.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
No, no, so no, absolutely not.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
So that just they hit me odd anyway, but anyway,
so the police say they they confessed, that all three
said they never did it, and they never confessed.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
So I don't know what, you know, We don't know
what's going on.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
What we do know is that they went to trial
and they tried mister Kogat first by himself, and then
they tried the other two guys together and they all
ended up convicted. And you know, you mentioned the interrogation
and what happens. You know, you're priving you have a
bathroom water. Police said that there were three polygraph examinations
(28:10):
and that Koga thought that though he was told that
he failed, the polygraphs said he was innocent. They told
him he failed over and over. You've had three polygraphs, John,
And I know you say you didn't do it, but
you know what, nobody can't fool a polygraph right by
the way, I've been in that chair. I've been in
that polygraph chair with detectives looking at me through a
(28:35):
one way mirror or two way mirror where they can.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
See you but you can't see them.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Yeah, And they give you brochures to look at while
you're waiting, and the brochures tell you how accurate, how
you can't fool the polygy. It's to psych you out
before you take the polygraph. It's such a mental nightmare
this guy three times and commenced him. You're going down, man,
You're going down for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Well imagine and as brutal as this case was in
this little community and it's kind of a village out
on Long Island where they lived. And again, you know,
the population of Long Island is very dense. It wasn't
as dense back then as it is now, but still dense.
This has made the news, you know, and you can
(29:21):
imagine just the parents around the area. And I'm not
talking about Teresa's dad or mom, or her family or
associated family. I'm talking about all the families. You have
something like this that happens in a quiet area where
it and you know, reports of the day reported that
this just absolutely rocked the community. They wanted, they wanted
(29:45):
somebody that they could take. I'm sure the DA wanted
somebody they can take and say you're responsible for it.
So not only did they get one, they got three.
They get three people and so that, you know, that
kind of makes it. It dies down. But you know, Teresa, Teresa,
(30:06):
I submit to you, was victimized again. She's victimized by
the system. So you've got these these three men who
have been falsely accused and falsely convicted and falsely imprisoned.
You've got Teresa who suffered through this horrible trauma. Her
(30:28):
dad and her mom since that night that she disappeared
the next morning have been suffering and languishing with this
all the way up until nineteen eighty six. When there's
a conviction and these guys are sentenced, they are also
victims in this case. Can you imagine you get this
relief after the horror that you suffered from finding out
(30:54):
what was done to your daughter, You get this little
bit of relief, This little beam of sunshine comes in
and says, Okay, at least we know who did this.
And you're told by the police that they know who
did it. You're told by the prosecutor that you know
who did it. You've got a judge, you were probably there.
They adjudicated this person guilty. They're sent away, and you're
(31:17):
given this false sense of reality. And then all of
a sudden, new testing comes to light. All these years later,
in two thousand and three, these guys have been cooling
their heels in jail and they're cut loose. Now, I'd
be very curious to know, how can you, as a
(31:38):
department police prosecutor, go to the home, if you have
the intestinal fortitude and the courage to do it, go
to mister Fusco's home, knock on his door, have him
come to the door, stare him in the face and
say we got it wrong, we got it wrong. Your
(31:59):
daughter's killer might still be out there, if they are
still alive. But all this time, in the name of
justice for your daughter, we've kept three men deprived of
their families, deprived of ever having a family, perhaps, deprived
of their freedom to come and go. We've deprived them
of their freedom all this time, and you are deprived
(32:23):
of justice. Teresa with her death, you know, she furnished,
furnished information by what was left within her body. When
(32:47):
they did this rape exam on her, this rape kid Dave,
they were able to discover that there was a seminal
sample left behind ejaculate from within her. And one of
the things that we do in the morgue is and
I've described this before, but we do swabs at autopsy.
(33:10):
We do smears on little glass slides, and we also
retain the swabs as well. We allow those to air dry,
and they're sent into the crime lab where they're tested.
I think the big question here, because in eighty four
you would not have been doing DNA testing, only swabs.
I think the only thing that you could have really
been looking for some of the things forensically you had
(33:32):
been looking for, is to see if the sperm or
if there was any motility to the sperm. You know,
were they moving or was the guy shooting blanks. Secondly,
you'd want to know if the guy was a secretor
a secretor is something that we would do in the
past where I think it's the number I can't remember there.
(33:55):
It seems like it's like forty percent of the population
or secretors and what that means. And various body fluids,
including like saliva and semen. You're gonna find red blood cells,
and in those red blood cells you can do blood typing. Okay,
but even with blood typing you can only narrow it
down so far. You know the rarest blood types like
ab NAG, and I think that's like one in I
(34:18):
don't know, one hundred and forty nine people have ABNAG.
It's not like, you know, you're looking at DNA and
you're talking about numbers that are millions, billions and trillions
or quintillions, or you know, there's fanciful numbers that they
throw out there like that. So I really wonder what
they did as far as testing goes with that rate
(34:38):
kit all those years ago. I do know this, they
retained it, and boy, I'll tell you what these years
later they hit the jackpot, didn't they d tell me.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
What they found, Joe?
Speaker 4 (34:48):
What did they find when they they pulled this out
and they start looking at this case again because again
remember now we got the two thousand and three four
five period when the three guys get out of jail
on the DNA evidence. Yeah, but that just means that
we've now got an unsolved crime that is now twenty
one years old because it's two thousand and five when
(35:10):
COVID finally gets cut loose. The murder happened in November
nineteen eighty four. And so here we are, we're back
at square one. The only thing we know for sure
is the three guys that were in jail for the
last eighteen years for this murder didn't do it. So
where do you go from there? You pull the rape
kit out and start looking, Well.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
You can start looking. I think the first place that
you would have gone to, and you've heard this before,
is you'd go to the code of database because this
is a violent rate. You know, many people opened that
an individual that will commit this level of violence, this
kind of sexual assault like this, they get a taste
for Dave and that that can't stop with just one
(35:51):
and The idea is, as it turns out, the perpetrator
had no priory. There was apparently no previous relationship between
between her and the perpetrator, the guy that turns out
to be the perpetrator. So you're thinking, well, if he
will randomize a sixteen year old, who else has he
(36:13):
randomly attacked over the same period of time and is
there evidence that he could been in the code of database?
Did they press forward with that at that limited amountain time?
Because this predates what has now become the utility of
you know, investigative genetic genealogy, and so not only do
(36:37):
you have that sample that's left behind, but once technology
gets caught up with this, you know, the FBI now
has their own IgG team that works for the FBI.
But yet they still as well, they should have to
consult with our friends at Authoram and buddy. That's what
(36:57):
they did. They went to the Metalmans there in the Woodlands,
Texas and said, look, we've got a case here. We've
already you know, the locals have already wrongfully convicted three
fellows that have been languishing in prison. They've already paid
through the nose for two of them. But yet they're
still an unanswered question about who's ultimately responsible for Teresa's death?
(37:21):
Can you help us? And of course, you know, don't
ever present AUTHORM with a challenge because they'll pick you
up on it. If there's money to be thrown at it. Yeah, yeah,
and you're going to have to defeat those numbers. And
so you know, they hop right on this, and they
use open source DNA. They don't go into twenty three
and meteris and all that. There are certain databases that
are open and Buddy, when they did, they got to hit,
(37:46):
They got to hit. They built out, they built out
a family tree on the suspect that had left behind
had left behind DNA. And what's fascinating is that the
cops actually did the right thing here. They had a
name and they went and sat on him, didn't they? Dave?
Speaker 4 (38:07):
And I think the part about this that I love
and I whenever we mentioned AUTHORM, I think you're really
good to point out that they're not funded. They have
to raise money every time they do a case, and
they got to get seventy five hundred bucks and then
some just to start working on it and their backlog.
But the work they do is capable of producing this
(38:29):
where they can narrow it down and say, okay, just
like they did with Coburger. You know, that case came
down to we know it that the person who left
this here is related to this fella, is the son
of this person. I mean, they narrow it down that far,
and then they get a name and they start watching him.
They're watching Richard Bildeou and they're waiting to see when
(38:52):
we can get what we need.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
And they finally get it. You started off the show talking.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
About cold cough and smoothies, the old coffee and smoothies,
and I knew that we were going to end with
cold coffee and smoothies.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
But you know, justice.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
Delayed is not always justice denied, but it sure isn't
the same. No, And when you're talking about something for
this family to go on for forty one years, three
men to lose half their lives, I mean, it's just
this is a tragedy on so many levels. But forty
one years later, Joe that's straw from a smoothie led
(39:34):
police to sixty three year old Richard Bildeau.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, and he has just been hooked up on charges.
I mean this is very recent now. His trial has
not taken place, yet he is not convicted. But interestingly enough,
the prosecutor who stated that they had no involvement in
the original case, and of course they make the argument
(39:59):
that technology has now caught up with with this case
to the point where they're saying that it is a
one hundred and this is the prosecutor saying it. Not
Joseph Scott Morgan and not brother Dave Mack. This is
the prosecutor saying that this is a one hundred percent match.
(40:20):
So they're going to take him to court. And what
they're going to take him to court with is they
are going to They're going to take in a wheelbarer
full of data numbers that will require geneticists to sit
on the stand and look those jury members in the
eye and be able to say, you know that, within
(40:45):
a reasonable scientific certainty, this is the perpetrator. I guess
in closing with all of this, I would I would
probably say, will the prosecutor, even though they weren't part
of the original trial the office was, will the prosecutor
have the intestinal fortitude to look at that jury and say,
(41:08):
first time out, we got this wrong. We admit that
we got this wrong. This time we have it right,
I hope that they're willing to do that. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is bodybags
Body diaries, but Joseph's gotten more. I've heard said, particularly
over the last few years, that it's never a good
idea to drink your calories. It's an interesting thought. First off,
you don't get the enjoyment of actually ingesting your food,
(00:24):
I think, and there's there's kind of this this idea
of ingestion and then digestion with your food. You know,
the process that your body goes through to drink one's
calories is really kind of a shortcut, not there's something
metabolic about it that I don't know, inhibit your ability
(00:45):
to maintain a healthy weight. I see a lot of
my students drinking these coffee drinks, and you know, I'm
seeing figures that are in the thousands and thousands of calories.
And listen, I'm not a cold, cough kind of guy,
never have been. I drink coffee for a couple of purposes.
First to start my day, Secondly to wake up so
(01:09):
that I don't kill people, and.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Third because I enjoy the warmth of it. But I
have been known in the past to imbibe in the
occasional smoothie and they've got all varieties that are out there,
But you know, never have I ever had a smoothie
and thought this could put my freedom at risk. Today,
(01:39):
we're going to discuss a case involving a smoothie and
the straw that was found within an empty cup, a
straw that held evidence that actually closed out a cold
case that had been opened for over forty years. I'm
(02:03):
Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybacks. Dave. You drink
cold coffee. I've seen you. You and I have actually
had coffee together on air. You know, we'll sit there
and toast at each other every now and then. You know,
I love my coffee. I know you love yours. You
ever drink cold coffee at all?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I do not drink cold coffee.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
It's you know, I drink cold tea and hot tea,
but I do not drink cold coffee.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
YEAHS not my thing. Man. I've got these students that come,
you know, come into my classes and they've got these gigantic,
gigantic cups filled you know with the stuff, and they'll
be whipped cream on it and all kinds of stuff,
and it looks it looks grand. Uh. But you know
I look at that and I think grand. Yeah, I
would it costs about a grand I like milkshakes too,
(02:51):
but I know that if I drink one every day,
you know, it would not be good for me. Have
you ever had smoothies at all? Have you ever tried smoothies?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
You're going down a path that I really feel bad.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Look, man, just so you know, I don't eat vegetables
and I eat ice cream, so I think that anything
that is a smoothie, yeah, I'll go with my ice cream,
or I'll drink a shake. I'll drink ice I'll do that,
but I really don't do the expensive drink thing.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
And it's yeah, it really is like every time and
I mean this, okay, little insight here. Yeah, I see
a drink that costs five or six dollars, smoothie of
frozen drink, whatever it is. And my first thought is
I could buy a canister of Maxwell House or Boulgers,
you know, And I just can't do that. I cannot
(03:38):
break myself into it. And to be honest with you,
I don't particularly care for them. When somebody buys me something,
I try to be kind and oh thank you, but
it's like I save your money, you know. Really, Why
there's a hose pipe, I'll get some water out of
that I'm good.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah, no, kid, now I'll feel the same way. I
just couldn't and listen. And this is a shameless plug here.
My family actually owns a coffee company.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Oh amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
I know a beat a roasting company down and friends.
You can order it online, by the way, a beat
a roasting company. And so when I when I've got
the inside when I got the inside line on coffee,
you know, that's who I'm going to go to them,
go to my fan and have them ship it to me.
I like to make it all.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
I've got to put that in the body of the
stuff today so you guys will know what I'm talking about.
And handless plug away. It's his family and it's awesome.
And I was very much prepared, Joe. I was prepared
to say, oh, really good, thanks, it was awesome.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I was thinking.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
I was like, I actually started not making it when
people were over.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Now they can get the soldiers.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Oh you're hoarding it.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah I did.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Well, I can tell you. Yeah, we're we're literally right now,
as we're as we're chatting, we're we're closing it on
the end of October, Dave, I have it on good authority.
I used to tell my my kids. I've I've actually
got Santa's phone number. And so I've got Santa's phone number.
I see, I see a basket of a beta coming.
You're so just keep that in mind.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Pretty excited about all right, take let's grab this show
by the heels here of Joe. This is one of
these topics that comes up. It deals with DNA, and
it deals with a crime scene. It deals with evidence
and holding onto it for a long time. It also
deals with something that we have been involved with with
(05:23):
regard to Authram, you know, helping solve or actually provide
answers to families after years. I mean, what we've seen
Authrom do is just remarkable. It's such a change of
the way crime is dealt with today. Crimes that happened
forty fifty sixty years ago people thought they got away
with it, and they're ending up in jail during their
(05:44):
twilight years. We've got that scenario playing out today. A
sixteen year old girl, Teresa Fusco, she was from Lynnwood,
New Jersey. She's working at a skating ring, working at
the snackshack inside a skating ring.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Loved it.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
She was a dancer, okay, working part time. She was
a nice, beautiful, sixteen year old girl. Teresa was also
a virgin, and I will tell you, for those of
us who grew up in the seventies and the early eighties,
that was not a very common occurrence. And the fact
that she was tells me a lot about who she was.
(06:22):
And the reason we're talking about her today is because
she lost so much in the space of one night.
She got fired from the snack shop at the skating rink.
She had an argument with an assistant manager. So imagine this.
You're working for minimum wage and you've got another minimum
(06:42):
wage worker who has kissed but enough to get into
an assistant manager position, and they're making your life miserable,
and you get into a disagreement and the assistant manager
fired from Think about it, an assistant manager at the
snack bar inside a skating rink. I mean that's one
step up from, you know, the lowest of the low.
(07:05):
I mean, think about And she got fired, fired, this
beautiful girl, And so she's crying. It's nine forty five.
She's walking home. She lives four blocks from the skating rink,
a normal path to walk.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
She never made it. Now.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
At first, her mom didn't get really worried because she
was going this is in the day before we had
cell phones.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Oh, matter of fact, it's really the day before kids
had beepers too.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
And as a sixteen year old, you know, she had
gone done her job, she was going to stop by
a friend's house and might spend the night. So Mom
didn't even think about it till the next morning when
she woke up and realized Theresa had not been home,
and she calls her friend or is she still with you? No,
she never came over last night. Immediately they knew right
(07:52):
then we got problems, and they did. Teresa Fusco vanished
in the NIME four when she left as skating rink.
We don't know what happened to her that night, in
the following days and the weeks is the investigation went.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
It was crazy, Yeah, it really was.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
And and like you said, there there was no way
back during that, you know, analog period of life, non
digital world, where you could actually track somebody down. Do
you remember, I don't know if your mom was ever
a member of them, but do you remember phone trees
where there would be a list a list of phone numbers,
(08:30):
you know, where moms would call, you know that sort
of stuff. I know a lot of our friends out
there can identify with that. And but the chill that
would run up and down your spine if you're a
parent and there's you know, first off, you know, we
kind of take it for granted. Now we've got CCTV everywhere,
We've got cell phones, we've got traffic traffic light, image
(08:55):
imagery possible. You know, all these things that didn't exist.
People could, in fact in nineteen eighty four literally fall out,
fall out of society and never be known of again.
And the fact that through our friends at Authram at
this point in time, that there has been a resolution
(09:17):
in this case all these years later is nothing short
of a miracle, I think, because what are the odds
And what's fascinating is that with this child's father, who
by the way, is still alive, Mister Fusco is still alive,
and he said, I never I never gave up. I
(09:41):
never gave up. I never lost faith in the system.
And faith in the system nowadays is one of those
things that's really hard to muster. I think we see
successes with people like Authram. What people don't understand is
that Authram is a private entity. Okay, it's not the
(10:02):
it's not the government. Now, the government calls them in
to consult and uh, you know, do consultations on cases
and that sort of thing, but they're they're not a
government entity. And it took advances in technology, and it
took it took cold case investigators that were still still
(10:22):
had an investment in this moving forward, and also some
kind of interesting things along the side. I say interesting.
It's kind of a disservice, but kind of tragic things
alongside as well.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
It wasn't a cold case for long. They had it
solved pretty quick, Joe. They had an arrest. Well here's
what happened though. Okay, she goes missing November tenth, that's
the night she doesn't make it home, last seen crying
as she leaves, fired by the assistant manager. Four weeks later,
December fifth, she is found under leaves, buried in brush
(11:00):
not far from the skating rink in a wooded area.
Now I don't know the actual geography, but that's how
it has explained. And I'm thinking somebody nabbed her right then, now, Joe,
there is and I really wanted to find out from
you what all of the evidence meant, because it sounded
to me like she was killed fairly quickly after she
(11:23):
left the skating rink, but some of the evidence might
indicate otherwise.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yeah, I think that you're right. Let me throw out
one more thing here that's kind of chilling as well.
Have you and anybody in the sound of my voice,
have you ever had a feeling when you walk out
of an establishment that you were being watched, or that
you were that somebody had their eye on you. Maybe
(11:52):
you were in an establishment you made eye contact with
them and it wasn't like positive eye contact, like a
familiar kind of face. I really it seems to me
that in this particular case, the perpetrator was, in fact,
first off, aware that she worked there, aware that she
(12:14):
was probably commonly on foot. They would have to have
a familiar sense of this area, may have even been
a patron of the skating rink, may have even bought snacks,
you know, at the snack bar where she worked. She's
sixteen years old, and I don't I know you've been fired.
(12:35):
You've expressed this actually on air before. It's one thing
when you get fired when you're an adult, but you
talk about putting blinders on you're sixteen years old and
someone you really feel like you've been gutted at that
point in time, because it's one of your first jobs,
maybe your first job ever, and you've built it all
(12:56):
up in your mind. You've got this great job, or
to you, it's a great job. You're making some money,
and then all of a sudden you're embarrassingly dismissed. Yes,
she would have blinders on, Dave. As she's walking out
of this place, she's going to be so laser focused
on the fact that she's just been, you know, traumatized
(13:17):
by what's happened. And she's a sixteen year old girl.
I trust me, I used to have a sixteen year
old girl in my house, and I understand the emotion.
She wouldn't see a perpetrator coming her way. Dave. That
so sad, it really is. And I begin to think
about the speed at which this would have taken place.
(13:41):
Because you think about the location of her body, that
it is in a wooded area, that's probably it's a familiar,
familiar area to the perpetrator, maybe even to her. Maybe
there was a path at some point in time you
could have cut through, you know, a kid, there were
a lot of cut throughs in my neighborhood where you
(14:02):
could walk through an area. Some of them were wooded
that maybe you were only familiar with, or maybe that
somebody in the area that resided there as well would
be familiar with. There's no light, it's dark, it's nighttime,
and you get overtaken in an area. This She's just
(14:23):
to lay it out plainly for you, Dave. She was
assaulted in a way that, as you had mentioned, would
have taken some time. She was beaten, she was also strangled,
and then she was raped. And the rape in this
particular case is very significant in a sense that the
(14:49):
perpetrator actually left left their calling card relative to her,
because it's the exam that came up later in the
wake of the discovery her body in the evidence that
they found the trauma that she had endured. It was
those bits of evidence that they collected at that autopsy
way back in nineteen eighty four that would eventually lead
(15:14):
to the arrest of a suspect, but not before some
other folks were damaged along the way. It's one thing
(15:38):
to be falsely accused of something and you protest I
did not do this, I did not do this. You're
lying about me, you're lying to other people about me,
And no matter how much you protest, it's not going
to change the attitude of the person that is necessarily
accusing you. They've made up their mind many times already
(15:58):
along the way, or the people that they're shouting this
to about you, that you did in fact do something
that you were falsely accused of. But how much more so, Dave,
when you're thinking about the local authorities that can put
the I don't know, for lack of a better term,
the strong arm on you. They threaten you with beating,
(16:20):
or they threaten you with incarceration until you finally they
deny you a phone call. They deprive you of water,
you know. And that's, by the way, that's one of
the tricks that's used many times. I don't know if
you know this with extended interviews. One of the things
that happens is that the people that are conducting the
interview will actually walk in with a bottle of water.
(16:45):
Maybe there's two people in the room, and the interviewer
will be sipping on the water, and the interview will
go on for a protracted period of time, the people
being the person being interviewed it's not offered water. And
then finally they'll say, look, I'm getting really thirsty. Can
have a bottle of water? Yeah? Yeah, sure, we'll get
you one first. Can you answer? Can you answer that?
(17:07):
Let's go back over this one more time and guess what.
They'll also do the same thing, and it doesn't have
to be punches. They can also do the same thing
with bathroom breaks. I don't know about you. I mean,
you know, Kim and I travel extensively. We're always on
the road, and dude, at this, at this season of
my life, I got to stop more than I wish to.
But you know, you're sitting there in a chair. You've
(17:29):
also you've got people that are implying that you've done
something wrong. Not just wrong, you've committed a homicide that's
going to make anybody want to avoid their bladder. You're
sitting there and they're not responding to your request to
go to the bathroom. Yeah yeah, yeah, we'll get to
that in just a moment. And what this is building
up to, it's those small little things along the way
(17:51):
that urge this person. Listen, I've got to get relief.
I'm thirsty, I've got a pee, I've got to do this.
I'm hungry. I'll you get to the point where you'll
say just about anything just so you can get relief.
And certain people know how to press those buttons, Dave.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Just so you know, I came about getting involved with
crime coverage and things like that at an early age,
being impacted by news things happening around me. Man, some
murders come to mind. When I was a very small child.
As an adult, I actually was the prime suspect in
a crime that I didn't commit. Wow, And I've been
(18:28):
in that chair, knowing I'm innocent, knowing I didn't do anything,
and I sat there and now I tell everybody, you
just need one.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Word, lawyer. Yeah, don't talk, lawyer.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
They lie, they cheat, they steal, they will do everything
they can because they you're look, man who doesn't want
an easier day at work? Okay, we have a crime,
We got a suspect, he looks good for it. Break him,
ither spend two hours of break you can get into
or I gotta go out and actually work. And so
I again, just lawyer, that's it. Don't talk. You're not
(19:06):
going to do yourself any good. Tell him the truth, Okay,
tell them the truth. And shut up. That's all I
ever tell anybody. But that's if you're innocent. If you're guilty,
I don't do what you want. But if you're innocent,
tell them the truth and stop.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
Get a lawyer because they will trip you up. And
when you find out people spend time in prison for
confessing to a crime they didn't commit. How difficult Joe
is it for a regular Joshmo me? You called to
jury duty and the prosecutor says, we have this painous
crime and we have a suspect who has admitted it.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
He admitted he did it.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
It was only after he found out that he might
spend the rest of his life in jail that he
has taken back his admission of guilt, his confession. But
we've got him on tape. He confessed.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah. Yeah, And you know a jury, a jury's gonna
think that's gold. I mean they are, you know, their
conclusion is, well, these people were the badges. These people authority,
the people that are in charge of the grand jury,
those people that are prosecuting the case, the people the
guy that's sitting on the bench in the funny looking dress.
They're all about justice, right, and sometimes it didn't work out,
(20:20):
and Dave three, not one, not two, but three guys
in this particular case rolled over on this case and
they they wound up spending double digit time in prison
for a heinous, heinous act that they didn't do.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
There was a rape murder of a sixteen year old, virgin,
beautiful young girl. And as a father of daughters, I
know what that dad, I know what he went into
this thinking of his daughter and how much more he felt,
and then knowing that it was stolen. And there are
three guys who actually are wanted for our good, for
(20:59):
the crime, and they're brought in, they go to trial,
and you've got in nineteen eighty four when the crime
took place, in nineteen eighty six, when they got the conviction.
Our technology is not where it was ten years later.
It certainly wasn't where it was twenty years later. Oh,
they were not idiots in nineteen eighty four. In nineteen
(21:21):
eighty six and science was really growing in the field,
they had some strong evidence, Joe. They did have it
that the police did. Some of it was so good
that it actually worked to free the men wrongly convicted.
But again, remember they were still dealing with a sixteen
(21:42):
year old girl who was doing nothing more than walking
home from work after getting fired by some assistant manager
at a snackshack, and she gets raped and murdered, and
going back to this show, they couldn't find her.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Why could they not find her?
Speaker 4 (21:57):
I mean, you've got a limited pathway to where her
body was and where she was headed. It wasn't like
she was taking miles away.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
It wasn't.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Is there a reason that they had trouble finding her?
Speaker 4 (22:09):
Do you think maybe she was kept somewhere and abused
for a while and then taken out and hit and
killed and then dropped there later on?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Well you know, yeah, I guess it could be possible, however,
to be able to marry up the changes in her
body with what they were visualizing at time. And of
course they have not released this data yet because this case,
as we know, is still being adjudicated, but it has
Here's the interesting thing. It has previously been adjudicated, but
(22:39):
none of those records are available for us to view.
But yeah, it would, and it is a protracted period
of time. Let's back up just a second and consider
when when this young young lady went and disappearing. Teresa disappeared.
You know, Teresa disappeared back on November tenth in nineteen
(23:01):
eighty four. She was not found until December the fifth,
So that's a protractive period of time. Yeah, almost a month.
And when she's found, she's found, you know, kind of hidden,
hidden beneath brush that's been stacked on her and they
described it at the time as leaves. Again, I think
(23:22):
that that goes to that goes to the speed at
which this perpetrator tried to cover up her body. It's
not like he went out with a shovel and dug
a hole or even dug you know, into the earth,
or or created a depressed area. He essentially just kind
of piled stuff up on top of her. Is that
(23:43):
enough to block someone's view of her? And what is
their assumption? They know back then, they would have known
that she would have been a pedestrian, She would have
been on foot. Why aren't she going out and looking
to see if she anywhere in walking distance? Maybe their
(24:05):
idea was she stepped out into the parking lot and
she was snatched and she's disappeared. She's just vanished off
the face of the planet. Was there a boyfriend that
maybe she was involved with Hey, let me ask you this.
Do you think that snack snack assistant manager was questioned?
I don't know, you know, kind of there's one part
(24:26):
of me that hopes he was the dad, and me
hopes that he was. He was brought in and questioned extensively,
you know, to find out, well, what can you tell
us exactly what did happen? We heard that she left
here crying. How do you explain that? You know? So
had they exhausted every possible lead at that point. I
(24:47):
think that, you know, it's an interesting proposition that you
put forward here with her, because you're thinking, well, was
she held captive somewhere to the point where the guy
may have got and tired of her being around, or
he felt like it was too risky to keep her around,
so he disposes her, disposes of her in the most
(25:09):
effective manner. I know that that her I'll put it
to you this way. I know that the evidence of
the trauma was still there to the point where they
could appreciate it. We're talking about evidence of strangulation, we're
talking about evidence of blunt force trauma. Because they're saying
(25:31):
she was beaten, they don't say if you know if
she had a fractured skull or anything like this. But
we know that that trauma existed. And oh, by the way,
they did rape kit. They did a rape kit on
her and retained the results from that, so they there
was actual seminal deposition into her body. However, I got
(25:57):
to say, these three other individuals that were named, charged, prosecuted,
and sentenced to prison where they spent what was it like,
eighteen years of their life in prison for this crime
they did.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
They were convicted in nineteen eighty six, and it was
two thousand and three when they got the DNA back.
But still, even in the case of one of the guys,
you know the way that they got them to back
up a minute before we go full on, they were
in jail for all that language I cannot imagine for
the life of me chan cannot But they have three guys.
They've got mister Koga. I'm trying to remember his first name,
(26:41):
John Cogut. John Coget's a twenty one year old guy,
and he was charged March twenty sixth, nineteen eighty five.
So we're talking three and a half months after this
crime has taken place, nearly four months rather and He's
twenty one years old. He's arrested and charged with second
degree murder and rape. He's a former resident of the
(27:01):
area and was living in New York.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
He is a suspect. When they interviewed four hundred.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
People, he's just a guy that strikes their fancy as
somebody who, yeah, he might have done it. Police say
he confessed and that they say this, twenty one year
old John Kogat confessed and implicated two of his friends,
twenty six year old John Restivo and thirty one year
old Dennis Halstead. Now, when I was thirty one, Joe,
I did not have a twenty one year old friend
(27:31):
that I would have done anything with just saying.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
No, no, so no, absolutely not.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
So that just they hit me odd anyway, but anyway,
so the police say they they confessed, that all three
said they never did it, and they never confessed.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
So I don't know what, you know, We don't know
what's going on.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
What we do know is that they went to trial
and they tried mister Kogat first by himself, and then
they tried the other two guys together and they all
ended up convicted. And you know, you mentioned the interrogation
and what happens. You know, you're priving you have a
bathroom water. Police said that there were three polygraph examinations
(28:10):
and that Koga thought that though he was told that
he failed, the polygraphs said he was innocent. They told
him he failed over and over. You've had three polygraphs, John,
And I know you say you didn't do it, but
you know what, nobody can't fool a polygraph right by
the way, I've been in that chair. I've been in
that polygraph chair with detectives looking at me through a
(28:35):
one way mirror or two way mirror where they can.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
See you but you can't see them.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Yeah, And they give you brochures to look at while
you're waiting, and the brochures tell you how accurate, how
you can't fool the polygy. It's to psych you out
before you take the polygraph. It's such a mental nightmare
this guy three times and commenced him. You're going down, man,
You're going down for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Well imagine and as brutal as this case was in
this little community and it's kind of a village out
on Long Island where they lived. And again, you know,
the population of Long Island is very dense. It wasn't
as dense back then as it is now, but still dense.
This has made the news, you know, and you can
(29:21):
imagine just the parents around the area. And I'm not
talking about Teresa's dad or mom, or her family or
associated family. I'm talking about all the families. You have
something like this that happens in a quiet area where
it and you know, reports of the day reported that
this just absolutely rocked the community. They wanted, they wanted
(29:45):
somebody that they could take. I'm sure the DA wanted
somebody they can take and say you're responsible for it.
So not only did they get one, they got three.
They get three people and so that, you know, that
kind of makes it. It dies down. But you know, Teresa, Teresa,
(30:06):
I submit to you, was victimized again. She's victimized by
the system. So you've got these these three men who
have been falsely accused and falsely convicted and falsely imprisoned.
You've got Teresa who suffered through this horrible trauma. Her
(30:28):
dad and her mom since that night that she disappeared
the next morning have been suffering and languishing with this
all the way up until nineteen eighty six. When there's
a conviction and these guys are sentenced, they are also
victims in this case. Can you imagine you get this
relief after the horror that you suffered from finding out
(30:54):
what was done to your daughter, You get this little
bit of relief, This little beam of sunshine comes in
and says, Okay, at least we know who did this.
And you're told by the police that they know who
did it. You're told by the prosecutor that you know
who did it. You've got a judge, you were probably there.
They adjudicated this person guilty. They're sent away, and you're
(31:17):
given this false sense of reality. And then all of
a sudden, new testing comes to light. All these years later,
in two thousand and three, these guys have been cooling
their heels in jail and they're cut loose. Now, I'd
be very curious to know, how can you, as a
(31:38):
department police prosecutor, go to the home, if you have
the intestinal fortitude and the courage to do it, go
to mister Fusco's home, knock on his door, have him
come to the door, stare him in the face and
say we got it wrong, we got it wrong. Your
(31:59):
daughter's killer might still be out there, if they are
still alive. But all this time, in the name of
justice for your daughter, we've kept three men deprived of
their families, deprived of ever having a family, perhaps, deprived
of their freedom to come and go. We've deprived them
of their freedom all this time, and you are deprived
(32:23):
of justice. Teresa with her death, you know, she furnished,
furnished information by what was left within her body. When
(32:47):
they did this rape exam on her, this rape kid Dave,
they were able to discover that there was a seminal
sample left behind ejaculate from within her. And one of
the things that we do in the morgue is and
I've described this before, but we do swabs at autopsy.
(33:10):
We do smears on little glass slides, and we also
retain the swabs as well. We allow those to air dry,
and they're sent into the crime lab where they're tested.
I think the big question here, because in eighty four
you would not have been doing DNA testing, only swabs.
I think the only thing that you could have really
been looking for some of the things forensically you had
(33:32):
been looking for, is to see if the sperm or
if there was any motility to the sperm. You know,
were they moving or was the guy shooting blanks. Secondly,
you'd want to know if the guy was a secretor
a secretor is something that we would do in the
past where I think it's the number I can't remember there.
(33:55):
It seems like it's like forty percent of the population
or secretors and what that means. And various body fluids,
including like saliva and semen. You're gonna find red blood cells,
and in those red blood cells you can do blood typing. Okay,
but even with blood typing you can only narrow it
down so far. You know the rarest blood types like
ab NAG, and I think that's like one in I
(34:18):
don't know, one hundred and forty nine people have ABNAG.
It's not like, you know, you're looking at DNA and
you're talking about numbers that are millions, billions and trillions
or quintillions, or you know, there's fanciful numbers that they
throw out there like that. So I really wonder what
they did as far as testing goes with that rate
(34:38):
kit all those years ago. I do know this, they
retained it, and boy, I'll tell you what these years
later they hit the jackpot, didn't they d tell me.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
What they found, Joe?
Speaker 4 (34:48):
What did they find when they they pulled this out
and they start looking at this case again because again
remember now we got the two thousand and three four
five period when the three guys get out of jail
on the DNA evidence. Yeah, but that just means that
we've now got an unsolved crime that is now twenty
one years old because it's two thousand and five when
(35:10):
COVID finally gets cut loose. The murder happened in November
nineteen eighty four. And so here we are, we're back
at square one. The only thing we know for sure
is the three guys that were in jail for the
last eighteen years for this murder didn't do it. So
where do you go from there? You pull the rape
kit out and start looking, Well.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
You can start looking. I think the first place that
you would have gone to, and you've heard this before,
is you'd go to the code of database because this
is a violent rate. You know, many people opened that
an individual that will commit this level of violence, this
kind of sexual assault like this, they get a taste
for Dave and that that can't stop with just one
(35:51):
and The idea is, as it turns out, the perpetrator
had no priory. There was apparently no previous relationship between
between her and the perpetrator, the guy that turns out
to be the perpetrator. So you're thinking, well, if he
will randomize a sixteen year old, who else has he
(36:13):
randomly attacked over the same period of time and is
there evidence that he could been in the code of database?
Did they press forward with that at that limited amountain time?
Because this predates what has now become the utility of
you know, investigative genetic genealogy, and so not only do
(36:37):
you have that sample that's left behind, but once technology
gets caught up with this, you know, the FBI now
has their own IgG team that works for the FBI.
But yet they still as well, they should have to
consult with our friends at Authoram and buddy. That's what
(36:57):
they did. They went to the Metalmans there in the Woodlands,
Texas and said, look, we've got a case here. We've
already you know, the locals have already wrongfully convicted three
fellows that have been languishing in prison. They've already paid
through the nose for two of them. But yet they're
still an unanswered question about who's ultimately responsible for Teresa's death?
(37:21):
Can you help us? And of course, you know, don't
ever present AUTHORM with a challenge because they'll pick you
up on it. If there's money to be thrown at it. Yeah, yeah,
and you're going to have to defeat those numbers. And
so you know, they hop right on this, and they
use open source DNA. They don't go into twenty three
and meteris and all that. There are certain databases that
are open and Buddy, when they did, they got to hit,
(37:46):
They got to hit. They built out, they built out
a family tree on the suspect that had left behind
had left behind DNA. And what's fascinating is that the
cops actually did the right thing here. They had a
name and they went and sat on him, didn't they? Dave?
Speaker 4 (38:07):
And I think the part about this that I love
and I whenever we mentioned AUTHORM, I think you're really
good to point out that they're not funded. They have
to raise money every time they do a case, and
they got to get seventy five hundred bucks and then
some just to start working on it and their backlog.
But the work they do is capable of producing this
(38:29):
where they can narrow it down and say, okay, just
like they did with Coburger. You know, that case came
down to we know it that the person who left
this here is related to this fella, is the son
of this person. I mean, they narrow it down that far,
and then they get a name and they start watching him.
They're watching Richard Bildeou and they're waiting to see when
(38:52):
we can get what we need.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
And they finally get it. You started off the show talking.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
About cold cough and smoothies, the old coffee and smoothies,
and I knew that we were going to end with
cold coffee and smoothies.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
But you know, justice.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
Delayed is not always justice denied, but it sure isn't
the same. No, And when you're talking about something for
this family to go on for forty one years, three
men to lose half their lives, I mean, it's just
this is a tragedy on so many levels. But forty
one years later, Joe that's straw from a smoothie led
(39:34):
police to sixty three year old Richard Bildeau.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, and he has just been hooked up on charges.
I mean this is very recent now. His trial has
not taken place, yet he is not convicted. But interestingly enough,
the prosecutor who stated that they had no involvement in
the original case, and of course they make the argument
(39:59):
that technology has now caught up with with this case
to the point where they're saying that it is a
one hundred and this is the prosecutor saying it. Not
Joseph Scott Morgan and not brother Dave Mack. This is
the prosecutor saying that this is a one hundred percent match.
(40:20):
So they're going to take him to court. And what
they're going to take him to court with is they
are going to They're going to take in a wheelbarer
full of data numbers that will require geneticists to sit
on the stand and look those jury members in the
eye and be able to say, you know that, within
(40:45):
a reasonable scientific certainty, this is the perpetrator. I guess
in closing with all of this, I would I would
probably say, will the prosecutor, even though they weren't part
of the original trial the office was, will the prosecutor
have the intestinal fortitude to look at that jury and say,
(41:08):
first time out, we got this wrong. We admit that
we got this wrong. This time we have it right,
I hope that they're willing to do that. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is bodybags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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