Detective who solved notorious LI crimes dies

Joseph Volpe, a Nassau homicide detective who helped solve some of the most notorious slayings in the county before retiring in 2002, has died. He was 63.

The cause of death, on Jan. 5 at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, was complications from respiratory illness, said his fiancee, Eileen O'Brien.

Among the murder cases Volpe helped close: The 1997 hit man's shooting of a Syosset fireman on his lawn, the 2001 disemboweling of a Hofstra student, and the 1988 beating and killing of a Baldwin woman who was later found floating in the Hudson River.

"It's like that old football saying: Your record is what it says it is - and he had a very solid record," said one of his former supervisors, retired Det. Sgt. William Cocks.

Volpe, who joined the homicide squad in 1984, was known for casting a wide net to recruit specialists to help in his investigations - whether a fellow detective who might be better suited to conduct an interview or a plainclothes cops in another unit - if he thought they'd bring him closer to solving a case, said retired Det. Marty Alger.

"He had great investigative instincts," Alger said.

And he was a mentor. Det. Bob Brzeski recalled how Volpe coached him through his first case. "He showed me the ins and outs of what it is like to be a homicide detective: how to manage big cases, what to look for," Brzeski said.

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"When he needed to step it up with the bad guys, he knew how to act," Brzeski said. "He was also a guy who knew how to throw on the charm when it called for it."

The dapper, mustachioed Volpe would always wear a crisp white shirt and tie, with a well-tailored suit. He would impress victims' families with his devotion to their cases, colleagues said.

Frank Guidice, one of Volpe's homicide commanders, said Volpe made himself easily accessible to the families, giving them his cell phone number, and before cell phones, his pager number.

"He was somebody who showed a lot of compassion," Guidice said.

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Fred Klein, a former Major Offense Bureau chief for the district attorney's office who prosecuted many of Volpe's cases, called him a "tenacious investigator."

"Very fair," Klein said. "He never gave up until he exhausted every possibility."

One of the cases that Klein worked on with Volpe was the 1984 rape and murder of Theresa Fusco, 16, of Lynbrook. Three men were convicted of the crime and one of them, John Kogut, gave a written and videotaped confession to Volpe.

But about three years after retiring, Volpe was called to the witness stand to testify about that statement. It was later repudiated in Kogut's retrial in 2005 after DNA excluded Kogut and the two other men. The three were released after 17 years in prison.

Joseph Peter Volpe was born in the Bronx on Feb. 17, 1947, to Angelo Volpe and the former Filomena Scauzillo. He attended Great Neck South High School and later served as a medic in the U.S. Army in Vietnam.

In October 1969, Volpe, a New Hyde Park resident, joined the Nassau police; his assignments included the Fifth Precinct and robbery squad.

In his retirement, he worked as a car salesman at Toyota in Hempstead.

His funeral was earlier this week at Notre Dame R.C. Church in New Hyde Park. Burial was at Calverton National Cemetery.

In addition to his fiancee, of Douglaston, and his mother, of New Hyde Park, survivors include a son, Joseph Brian Volpe, 16; and a sister, Carolann Hessemann of North Massapequa.