The Confession Takers Part 4: “No Evidence of Foul Play”

Andy Summers / Gordon Sumner – (Murder By Numbers)(The Police)

On June 12, 1984, 15 year old Kelly Morrissey disappears from Lynbrook, Long Island. (South Shore Nassau County) She was going to a video store – never seen again.

On November 10, 1984, another teenager – Kelly’s close friend Theresa Fusco – also disappears in Lynbrook near where Kelly Morrissey disappeared. Theresa is last seen leaving her job at the local roller rink. Kelly and Theresa are devoted friends. Theresa is crying about the still missing Kelly when she leaves the roller rink. 

The Confession Takers (Nassau Cops) publicly state that they do not have any evidence of foul play or that the two disappearances are somehow linked.

On March 26, 1985, Jacqueline Martarella vanishes from nearby Oceanside. She is walking to work at a nearby Burger King. “She was just starting to come out of her teenage shell” her brother stated. “She just bought a stereo. She planned to attend secretarial school. She was saving to buy a Camaro.”

The police speculate Jacqueline is a runaway.

On December 5, 1984, a month after she disappeared, the body of poor 16-year-old Theresa Fusco is discovered in a wooded area of Lynbrook. Naked. She is half buried with leaves and a wooden pallet near the Long Island Rail Road tracks. 

The medical examiner determines Theresa’s cause of death as ligature strangulation; semen found on vaginal swabs demonstrate that she had been raped. And the Confession Takers (Nassau Cops) say “Maybe there was a bit of foul play here.” Now the police rightly believe the victim’s death to be connected to similar crimes involving the disappearances of other young women.

The pressure is on Nassau cops. 

By March 1985, the police focused their investigation on a Dennis Halstead, who they believed to be associated with poor Kelly Morrissey who disappeared just before Theresa. Early in March 1985, a young man named John Restivo is interviewed as part of the investigation. Restivo mentioned being acquainted with a John Kogut, who sometimes worked for Restivo’s moving business.

In late March 1985, the Confession Takers bring Kogut – who lacks an ounce of intelligence – to police headquarters for a polygraph examination. After three polygraphs, a detective allegedly analyzed Kogut’s “polygraph charts.” 

Multiple officers interrogate Kogut for twelve (12) hours. The cops repeatedly tell Kogut that he failed the lie detector tests. Kogut is assaulted with accusations that he, John Restivo, and Dennis Halstead abducted, raped, and murdered Theresa Fusco. Ultimately Kogut signs a confession that is handwritten by a detective. The “confession” is the sixth version of facts allegedly recited by Kogut.

According to version six of this particular “confession,” Restivo, Kogut, and Halstead were driving in Restivo’s van. They came upon the victim, who got in the van voluntarily. Halstead and Kogut stripped the victim. Halstead raped her. When they arrived at a cemetery Restivo stopped the van. Restivo then raped the victim. During the rape Theresa Fusco drifted in and out of consciousness. She regained consciousness after the final rape. She became “frantic.” So Kogut who was the only one of the three that did not rape Theresa strangled her with a hard nylon rope.

Based on Kogut’s alleged confession, the Confession Takers search Restivo’s van where several hairs are recovered. The hairs are tested in a forensic lab. They belong to Theresa.

On April 22 1985, the nude body of 19 year old Jacqueline Martarella is found on a golf course in nearby Woodmere. The cause of death is ligature strangulation. She is found in twelve foot high grass near a green. By the time they find her she is badly decomposed. But the fact that she had been sexually assault is clear. Her brother lamented “we knew she didn’t run away.” The police say to each other “fucked that one up too.”

Woodmere and Oceanside are both right smack dab next to Lynbrook. Ray Barone and the gang from Everyone Loves Raymond live in Lynbrook – I believe Raymond’s parents are dead now … the actors that played them are dead. A nasty serial killer lived in the Lynbrook area too it appears. Maybe he died of old age too. 

Finding Jacqueline Martarella should have been a hint. Theresa and Jacqueline disappeared from the same area. They were found in the same area. They were both victims of sexual attacks. Both died from ligature strangulation. The were both found nude. And the killer wants to make sure the bodies are not found. Theresa is found under leaves and a pallet in the woods. Jacqueline is found in 12 foot high marsh grass. It takes a month to find them. They never find Kelley.

They had Kogut, Restivo and Halstead before Jacqueline goes missing. When they found her murdered just like Theresa – the same M.O. – they should have known they had the wrong young men. Moreover the killer(s) was still out there looking to do it again and again and again.

John Restivo and Dennis Halstead were tried together for rape and murder in November 1986; John Kogut had already been tried separately and convicted of rape and murder in March 1986.

The prosecution argued that the two hairs found in Restivo’s van were corroborative of Kogut’s confession. An analyst testified that two hairs found in the front passenger seat were microscopically similar to those of the victim. The hairs appeared identical to the victim’s from “root to tip, including artificial treatment.”

The defense presented the testimony of hair comparison expert Dr. Peter DeForest. DeForest testified that the hairs found in Restivo’s van displayed an “advanced banding.” This is a condition caused by bacteria eating away at the interior of the hair shaft. Advanced banding occurs only after death. Importantly “advanced banding” only occurs when the hair is still attached to the decomposing body. This meant that the victim could not have deposited the hairs while allegedly in Restivo’s van because she was allegedly immediately dumped.

At the time of trial, research on advanced banding was relatively new. Studies were yet to be published about it. So the Nassau District Attorney called its own expert. He testified about the limits of contemporary research, and argued in closing that “for all anyone knows, banding occurs right after death, as when the heart stops and the lungs stop working and the blood settles.”

In addition to Kogut’s confession and the two hairs, the DA presented the testimony of multiple witnesses who alleged that they had heard Restivo and Halstead make incriminating statements. The Nassau County and Suffolk County District Attorneys’ Offices always cut deals with creeps that allegedly overhear things in jail etc. It’s obligatory.

Both men were convicted.

An organization called Centurion Ministries began working on behalf of all three defendants in 1994. The Innocence Project came aboard on Restivo’s case in 1997. In the post-conviction proceedings that secured the defendants’ release, Kogut was represented by Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and Centurion Ministries and Halstead was represented by Pace Law School’s Postconviction Clinic. In cases where co-defendants may have the slightest potential to point fingers at each other – like Kogut did – for appearance purposes they will often have separate lawyers. But the Innocence Project did the heavy lifting. 

There were multiple rounds of DNA testing over a ten year period. All three men were repeatedly excluded as contributors of the semen found in Theresa. The prosecution initially argued that the samples tested (vaginal slides) were not the “best” samples available. They could have therefore failed to detect semen from the defendants present on the original swabs.

Either you have semen or you don’t. And why did you say you had it in the first place.   

The defense team obtained property records from the police department which led to the discovery of an intact vaginal swab that had never been tested. STR testing on the spermatozoa on the vaginal swab matched a single unknown male profile from the prior testing. This again excluded all three men.

The defense also secured an affidavit from the District Attorney’s expert witness, who testified in 1986 regarding the hairs found in Restivo’s van. The District Attorney’s former expert changed his tune. The expert now concluded, based on 20 years of research and expertise, that the hairs displayed “post-mortem root banding,” – you remember the “banding” – which is a hallmark of decomposition. This decomposition only occurs while hairs are attached to a corpse that has been dead for at least 8 hours, if not days or weeks.

The banding on these hairs was similar to those found on dozens of hairs taken from the autopsy of Theresa that had been in unsealed envelopes in a police department laboratory for months. Because the victim was only alleged to have been in the van for a few minutes after death, the District Attorney’s own expert concluded the hairs could not have been shed during that time. The hairs were instead autopsy hairs that were commingled with others from the van – whether through negligence or misconduct. Experts have to be nice. But …

In other words Nassau cops planted the hairs in the van. The three boys were “flaked.” 

Based on these results, all three convictions were vacated in June 2003. All three defendants released. The big problem for the taxpayers is that each man spent 18 years wrongfully and falsely imprisoned. They got fucked. And so would the taxpayers. But wait.

John Kogut faced retrial. This retrial was based largely on his idiot confession. At trial, the prosecution sought to rebut the DNA evidence by arguing that the victim, who was said by her mother and best friend to be a virgin, had consensual sex with an unknown male prior to her rape and murder.

Hold on a second ... 

Kogut’s alleged police confession stated that Halstead and Restivo raped Theresa. Now police are saying this poor virgin was promiscuous and happened to have consensual sex before she was kidnapped, raped and killed. But only the earlier consensual sex semen showed up on the swab. What brave new world is this where the prosecution argues that the victim of a sexual attack is a whore who selectively displays DNA?

Kogut’s lawyer argued that the confession was false. He won a motion to have expert testimony on false confessions admitted for the first time in New York State.

Shortly thereafter, Assistant District Attorney Fred Klein – I went to some of his seminars – said in court that the case against Restivo and Halstead should be dismissed because he could not prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Klein once said of criminals “they are some of the most stupid people on earth and that’s how we catch them” at a seminar I was forced to attend.

What about you Klein. Are you a criminal? 



In April 2014, a jury awarded Halstead and Restivo $18 million each for their time spent wrongfully incarcerated. One million dollars per year of wrongful incarceration. Kogut was not part of that lawsuit.

However Kogut was awarded $1.5 million by the New York Court of Claims. Meanwhile Restivo and Halstead each received $2.2 million from the Court of Claims. 

In 2016, Restivo and Halstead filed another federal lawsuit claiming that Nassau County refused to pay the award. The lawsuit sought treble damages based on the $36 million total judgment – that would be $36,000,000.00 million times three which equals $108,000,000.00 – plus another seven million in attorneys' fees, costs, interest and other expenses.

Nassau County appealed the jury verdict and lost. In January 2018, the United States Supreme Court – a fiscally minded conservative court – declined to accept a further appeal and the money was ordered disbursed within 30 days. 

Poor Theresa’s mother is enraged that these accused killers of her daughter are not only free but rich after 18 years in prison. But Ms. Fusco they didn’t do it. You should not have allowed Theresa to walk to and from work after Kelly went missing. For God’s sake it was just a part time teenager job at a roller rink. 

Nassau County citizens took it on the chin and maybe up the ass because of the Confession Takers (Nassau County). And the killer(s) never saw justice. The killer(s) are still out there today.

How many more innocent girls died we will never know – will we. 

Because they will deem it an active criminal case I will never get a single document via a FOIL request. Too old and cold to start from scratch.