Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Postmortem. I'm your host, 48 Hours correspondent Anne-Marie Green. And today we are discussing the cases of Teresa Fusco and Kelly Morrissey, two teenagers, teenage girls who went missing in 1984 in Linbrook, New York. That's a suburb in Long Island. Now, after a suspect confessed to Teresa's murder and then implicated two other men, Seemed like the case was closed.
But about 19 years later, advances in DNA technology overturned their convictions and pointed to another unknown suspect. Joining me today is 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty. Erin, you worked on this case, but over your years of working for 48 Hours, you've actually covered a number of wrongful conviction cases.
So have you, Anne-Marie, and it is a passion of mine. This case is yet another reminder of the cost of a prosecutor getting it wrong. When you convict the wrong suspects, not only does that allow the real killer to go free, but often puts a family and friends through years of hearings and trials. And that's the centerpiece of this story.
Because it's what the family and friends of Teresa, Kelly and another victim, Jackie, have gone through in the decades since their disappearances. And I should point out, since 1984, so over 40 years.
Chapter 2: What happened to Theresa Fusco and Kelly Morrissey in 1984?
Absolutely. I mean, this is a nightmare for any family. But this process, it's like sort of ripping the scab off over and over again. And really, you know, they're still waiting for a resolution, which we will get to later.
But I want to remind everyone, listen, if you haven't watched or listened to this episode, The Killing of Teresa Fusco, go check it out and then come on back so we can talk about it. So, Erin, on June 12th, 1984, 15-year-old Kelly Morrissey left her home after dinner. She's going to meet a friend, and she's last seen at a payphone near a Shell gas station in Linbrook before she disappears.
After about five months, 16-year-old Teresa Fusco goes missing after she leaves her job at a local roller rink. How unusual was it to have two teenagers go missing within a few months?
Anne-Marie, this was very unusual. What made it even more unusual, these two girls knew each other. And back in the 80s, kids went out regularly and they played late at night. It was a completely different world when people still thought that bad things didn't happen. These cases that happened so close to each other really did shatter the sense of safety in this area.
I should point out that Lindbrook wasn't 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 still was a suburb.
One of our colleagues who worked on this story actually grew up very close to Lindbrook, and she told us that Lindbrook felt like a small town because everybody went to the same movie theaters, ate pizza at the same pizza spots. And it did seem like everybody went to this roller rink called Hot Skates. And that's where Teresa worked.
I mean, it kind of reminded me a little bit of where I grew up, you know, in the suburbs of Toronto. And we had the roller rink that everyone went to. And every once in a while, they would have DJ night and it would all be...
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Chapter 3: How did DNA technology change the course of the investigation?
you know, 15, 16, 14 year olds. And everyone felt safe because it was just a bunch of kids. But, you know, to talk about the case, when Kelly's mother, Iris, realizes that Kelly has not returned home, Iris and her husband, they call the police. And then the police tell them that because Kelly hasn't been missing for at least 24 hours, they're not going to take a report.
Investigators believe she was just a runaway. They did not take the case out seriously. And they at that time, found no reason to think that Kelly was a victim of a crime. Kelly was last seen on a payphone. And so our thought is, well, why didn't the police find out who she was talking to? Well, data for the payphones back then were not easily tracked.
Back in 1984, of course, there was no social media, digital footprints, no ring cameras, no text messages, no cell phone tower pings that cops could trace. All of those things that we now kind of take for granted that help solve cases. Back then, it was boots on the ground. It was knocking on doors. It was word of mouth, physically retracing the last steps of a missing person.
So, in fact, it wasn't until Teresa Fusco disappears that Kelly's case actually gets a second look. This is nearly six months after Kelly went missing. Teresa's body is discovered near Long Island Railroad tracks. She's been beaten. She's been strangled. She's been raped. And police start to look at the possible links between the two cases. That is when they zero in on John Kogan.
He's a 21-year-old landscaper. Detectives say that he dated Kelly for about a week or so. And in the course of your reporting, I'm curious about whether you learned anything else about him.
So they questioned him twice. The first time he denied any involvement or knowledge of either Kelly's disappearance or Teresa's murder. And then according to Kogut's former legal team, and I should point out, these are not the lawyers who represented him back then, but represented him when he had a retrial. This is what they told us, that police picked up Kogut for a second round of questioning.
They had asked whether he would be willing to take a polygraph, and he said yes. When they picked him up, he told them he had been drinking and smoking marijuana. The officers notified their higher-ups. But they were told to still bring him in for questioning. Now, again, what we've been told is that Kogert told police that at the time of Teresa's disappearance, he said he had an alibi.
He had been hanging out with his girlfriend, drinking beer. And his girlfriend did corroborate that alibi. She even testified to that. But obviously, like, the police must not have believed him because they continued to press him. And then after nearly 12 hours of questioning and 18 hours in police custody, and keep in mind, he had been awake almost 30 hours.
That's when he made a videotape confession. He said that on the night that Teresa went missing, he had been with two friends, Dennis Halstead and John Restivo, driving in Restivo's van. When they saw Teresa walking home from Hot Skates, she had gotten fired that night and left early.
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