admin
Forty-one years after a Long Island teenager was raped and murdered, prosecutors finally announced an indictment that points to a new suspect — a bitter reminder that justice can arrive late but does eventually arrive for victims who had been forgotten. The accused, 63-year-old Richard Bilodeau, was indicted in mid‑October 2025 after investigators say DNA taken from a discarded smoothie cup and straw matched genetic material preserved from the 1984 crime scene.
Theresa Fusco vanished after leaving her part‑time job at the Hot Skates roller rink in Lynbrook on November 10, 1984, and her body was found weeks later, raped and strangled and buried beneath leaves in a nearby wooded area. Authorities say Bilodeau lived less than a mile from the roller rink at the time and that investigators began surveilling him in 2024 before recovering the discarded cup and straw in February of that year. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on October 15, 2025, and is due back in court as the case moves forward.
This case is especially grim because justice went so badly off the rails the first time around: three men were convicted in 1986 only to be cleared by DNA testing years later, leaving behind shattered lives and a community betrayed by a system that rushed to judgment. Two of those wrongfully convicted men later received large settlement payouts after their exonerations — a bitter price for investigators’ mistakes and a cautionary tale about the consequences of sloppy, hurry‑up prosecutions.
Patriots who love law and order should be furious at the failures that allowed innocent men to rot behind bars while the real killer walked free, possibly living ordinary lives in plain sight. This isn’t a call to cheer the administrative state; it’s a demand that police, prosecutors, and elected officials stop playing politics with prosecutions and focus on disciplined, thorough investigations that protect the innocent and punish the guilty. Accountability matters, and taxpayers deserve honest, competent law enforcement, not headlines about overturned convictions and multi‑million dollar settlements.
At the same time, we must credit modern forensic science and the dogged detectives who refused to let this case die in a cold case file. The use of preserved DNA and the patience to surveil and gather fresh samples — even one tossed cup in 2024 — is a testament to what happens when investigators keep pushing for the truth instead of bowing to office politics or media pressure. Our justice system should encourage and fund that perseverance so more victims’ families can get answers.
Thomas Fusco and Theresa’s relatives have spent decades without closure, and no indictment can erase the time stolen from them; still, the development in October 2025 offered a measure of relief and the hard promise that memory and persistence can outlast bureaucratic failure. Families like the Fuscos deserve better from their institutions — not just belated headlines, but a system that values victims and preserves evidence properly from day one. The long wait for news is a stain on local leadership that must be addressed.
This moment should spur concrete reforms: prioritize evidence preservation, bankroll cold‑case units, protect against tunnel vision in prosecutions, and restore a culture that demands results over optics. Conservatives know that supporting law enforcement does not mean tolerating incompetence; it means insisting on excellence, transparency, and consequences when officials fail the public they serve.
Justice delayed is not justice denied, but it’s a hollow consolation for a family that lost a daughter and for men who lost years behind bars because someone decided to cut corners. Let this indictment be a wake‑up call to elected prosecutors across the country: get it right, honor victims, and stop letting politics and sloppy work undermine the cause of justice for hardworking Americans.
