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Modern forensic technology and the work of Suffolk’s Cold Case Task Force have identified the man responsible for the 1997 killing of a grandmother in Calverton and linked him to a separate sexual assault of an elderly woman, authorities said Monday.
Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said the task force reexamined decades-old evidence using updated DNA methods to identify the killer as convicted sex offender Steven Briecke who died in 2014, bringing resolution to the decades-old case.
The victim, 69-year-old Ann Lustig of Northport, disappeared after leaving an outpatient clinic at Kings Park State Hospital and was found dead the next day in a wooded area in Calverton. Investigators determined she had been sexually assaulted and killed, Tierney noted during a press conference attended by top county law enforcement officials.
Two months earlier, an 82-year-old woman associated with the same hospital had been abducted, assaulted inside a home, and brought back to the facility. Tierney explained that both victims underwent forensic exams, but investigators in the 1990s lacked the technology to identify an assailant.
Tierney said analysts later developed a Y-STR DNA link between the two attacks and, in 2025, obtained a full male DNA profile from the older victim’s clothing. That profile produced a CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) hit identifying Briecke, the district attorney said.
A likelihood ratio analysis showed the DNA was 30 trillion times more likely to have come from Briecke than an unrelated person, Tierney said. Detectives also connected him to a blue-and-white Ford van seen near where the woman’s body was found.
Had he been still alive, Briecke would have been hit with murder and sexual assault charges, Tierney said.
“Our goal is to provide closure to as many families as possible,” the district attorney said. “If we announce a case, it is because we believe that there is probable cause to bring charges against the perpetrators of these cases, whether they be living or dead.
“And that’s why we do the work — to seek justice, to find truth and to give families those small measures of closure,” Tierney added.
A grandson of the victim said the announcement brought closure to “a near 29-year-long nightmare” and thanked investigators for delivering long-sought answers.
“The monster that 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 said.
Suffolk Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina and County Executive Edward Romaine credited the cold case team, homicide detectives, and the crime lab, noting that vital evidence collected in the 1990s ultimately enabled the case to be solved.
Court documents reviewed by Greater Long Island indicate that at the time of Lustig’s killing, Briecke was on parole for a 1984 conviction for first-degree burglary and first-degree assault, in which he broke into the home of a 75-year-old woman in West Islip, severely beat her, and attempted to rob her.
Top: YouTube video stills (Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office)
