Cold case solved: Authorities identify Steven Briecke, formerly of West Islip, as the suspect in the 1997 killing of Ann Lustig of Northport and the rape of another woman in 1996

A Long Island man with a history of sexual assaults was responsible for the unsolved murder of a 69-year-old Northport woman abducted at Kings Park Psychiatric Center in February 1997 and the rape of an elderly woman at the same location two months earlier, law enforcement officials said Monday.

Steven Briecke, formerly of West Islip, was identified as the suspect in both the killing of Ann Lustig and the earlier assault through a recent investigation by the Suffolk County Cold Case Task Force, Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney said at a news conference in Hauppauge. A mixture of DNA found on Lustig’s clothing, which recent advancements in technology made it possible to identify as belonging to Briecke and Lustig, was the critical break in the case.

“[Briecke] committed two horrific crimes targeting the most vulnerable among us," Tierney said.

Briecke, who officials said had 20 arrests and was only months removed from a lengthy prison sentence for the 1984 burglary and assault of an elderly West Islip woman when Lustig was killed, died at the age of 56 in 2014. At the time of his death he was a registered sex offender in Florida, where he had assaulted a child, Tierney said.

The district attorney said there would now be enough evidence to indict Briecke in the killing if he were alive today.

"That’s why we do that work," Tierney said of cold cases. "To seek justice, to find truth and to give families small measures of closure."

Lustig had been living at the Dawn Hill Group Home in Northport when she was killed on Feb. 18, 1997, police said at the time. She was last seen at Buckman Day Treatment Center, located on Kings Park Psychiatric Center grounds, for an appointment with a therapist the afternoon she disappeared, Newsday reported at the time.

Lustig took a taxi to the appointment, which she completed, but never booked a cab home. Her body was found more than 35 miles away in Calverton the following day and police found evidence of a sexual assault.

"Thank you to the cold case team for finally giving us some answers to our questions," Lustig’s grandson, Joseph Saccone, said at Monday’s news conference. "You were able to give us ... a name, a face and the knowledge that the monster who took her last breath from her, that stole her precious smile and ended the life of our loved one, is no longer walking among us. He no longer serves as a threat."

Saccone, who attended the news conference with his mother and uncle, said he hopes other families of unsolved crime victims keep hope alive.

"Don’t ever quit in your search for justice," Saccone said.

Police said at the time they believed Lustig’s killing was connected to the rape of an 82-year-old woman leaving another building on the Kings Park campus in December 1996, which investigators have now confirmed. Both victims were frail, older women, who were driven off the campus and sexually assaulted, police said at the time. Tierney said carpet fibers found at both crime scenes also proved to be similar.

In the 1996 incident, the woman, who was not publicly identified Monday, had gone to a cafeteria for coffee and was driven by a man to a nearby house where she was raped, Newsday reported.

Cold case detectives also learned that a witness saw a blue and white van near the scene where Lustig’s body was found and police were able to determine Briecke drove a Ford van matching that description around that time. The vehicle was registered to his mother and he received a ticket in it about a month after Lustig was killed, Tierney said.

Briecke’s DNA was added to the CODIS law enforcement database in 2000, three years after the killing. The database did not exist in 1997, Tierney said.

Suffolk Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina and Suffolk County Executive Edward Romaine thanked the two original detectives in the Lustig case for properly collecting the evidence from the crime scenes so it could be used when the technology caught up.

"I can pretty much guarantee that we’re going to have a lot more success moving forward with some of these cases," Catalina said.

It’s the second Cold Case Task Force investigation officials have announced as solved since saying last year it was taking a close look at about 300 cases dating back to 1965. A Georgia man was arrested in connection with the 2003 murder of 88-year-old Edna Schubert of Bay Shore in February.

"Let justice be done," Romaine said of the work of the Task Force.