Investigators on Long Island have finally determined who killed a grandmother and raped another elderly woman at a state psychiatric hospital in the mid-1990s.
Authorities announced this week that Steven Briecke, a career criminal and convicted child sex offender, was responsible for murdering 69-year-old Ann Lustig in February 1997 and raping another 82-year-old woman from the Kings Park State Psychiatric Hospital.
‘[Briecke] committed two horrific crimes targeting the most vulnerable,’ Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said at a news conference on Monday, according to Newsday.
He was finally identified nearly 30 years after the brutal homicide thanks to advances in DNA technology.
A simple smudge found on Lustig’s sweatshirt proved to be the key, as it was used to build a complete DNA profile of her killer – finally solving the cases once and for all.
Unfortunately, the break in the case came too late to bring charges. Briecke died 12 years ago at the age of 56. And the 82-year-old survivor also passed away in 2012 of natural causes.
Still, Lustig’s family expressed relief at the news.
‘You were able to give us something that generations of investigators were unable to: a name, a face,’ said her grandson, Joseph Saccone.
‘My family and I consider us fortunate,’ he continued. ‘The monster that took her last breath from her and stole her precious smile is no longer walking among us.’
Long Island investigators have determined that Steven Briecke (pictured) was responsible for murdering 69-year-old Ann Lustig in February 1997 and raping another 82-year-old woman from the Kings Park State Psychiatric Hospital
Lustig (pictured) had vanished from the Kings Park Psychiatric Hospital on February 18, 1997, and was found strangled and beaten to death in Calverton – more than 35 miles away
He noted that the family had been left with questions for years as the case remained unsolved.
‘What if? How could this happen? And of course, who took my grandmother Ann from us in the winter of 1997?’ Saccone said.
Lustig had vanished from the Kings Park Psychiatric Hospital on February 18, 1997. She was last seen at the Buckman Day Treatment Center on the hospital campus for an appointment with a therapist.
The next day, she was found strangled and beaten to death in Calverton – more than 35 miles away.
Police believed at the time the murder was connected to another incident that occurred at the psychiatric hospital just two months earlier – on December 20, 1996.
In that case, an 82-year-old psychiatric patient was approached by a man offering her a ride. When she refused, he bundled her into his car, drove her to an unknown location and raped her.
Hours later, the attacker dropped his victim back at the hospital where she reported the terrifying ordeal.
Lustig’s family expressed relief at the news and appeared at a press conference revealing the news
Joseph Saccone, Lustig’s grandson, expressed his gratitude to the investigators for solving the case
Police noted at the time that carpet fibers found in both cases were similar – and both victims were frail, older women who were driven off the hospital campus and sexually assaulted.
But officers at the time were unable to find a forensic link until the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office’s Cold Case Task Force reprocessed the evidence last year, and uploaded the genetic profile to the Combined DNA Index System – a national database managed by the FBI that allows law enforcement agencies to compare DNA profiles from crime scenes with those of known offenders.
It came back a match to Briecke, whose DNA was added to the system in 2000 – three years after the murder – in connection with his 1985 conviction for burglary and assault.
He was only months removed from his prison sentence in that case when he allegedly attacked the elderly women.
Cold case detectives then learned that a witness saw a distinct blue-and-white van near the scene where Lustig’s body was found, and were able to determine that Briecke drove a Ford can matching the description.
The vehicle had been registered to his mother, and he received a ticket in it about one month after the murder, authorities said.
After matching Briecke’s DNA to a smudge found on Lustig’s sweater, investigators learned that a witness saw a distinct blue-and-white van near the scene where Lustig’s body was found, and were able to determine that Briecke drove a Ford can matching the description
At some point, Briecke moved to Florida, where he was convicted in 2003 for sexually assaulting a child under the age of 16 – which made him a registered sex offender.
Briecke also had multiple convictions for public lewdness, authorities said.
Now, if he were still alive, District Attorney Tierney insists he would have enough evidence to indict Briecke in Lustig’s murder.
‘That’s why we do that work,’ he said of cold cases, ‘to seek justice, to find truth and to give families small measures of closure.’
