'Life-Changing' Tips Needed In Long Island Detective Dennis Wustenhoff's Slaying

PATCHOGUE, NY — Melissa Wustenhoff-Scelsi spent Valentine's Day with her dad, Det. Dennis Wustenhoff, at the father-daughter dance at her elementary school. He had taken off from his job working undercover in narcotics for the Suffolk County Police Department just to attend the dance with the then 10-year-old.

He would be back on the schedule the next day to work on Feb. 15, 1990.

Wustenhoff was still in bed as Melissa said goodbye to him before leaving their Patchogue home for school.

"He told me, 'Learn something today' — the same as he always would," she recalled in an interview Tuesday.

It was the last time she heard her father's voice again.

"I never would have thought I would never see him again," she said.

Later that day, when Wustenhoff got into the unmarked car he used for his undercover work, a motion sensor detonated a bomb placed under his car, severely injuring the lower portion of his body.

A neighbor pulled the gravely wounded detective from the burning car before an ambulance raced him to a landing site where a helicopter was waiting to airlift him to Stony Brook University Hospital for treatment.

He had been lucid and was aware of what happened, and was able to speak in the aftermath.

By the time his family arrived at the hospital, he was no longer conscious.

Melissa learned of the bombing during school recess.

It was a rainy day, so school administrators arranged for the children to watch a movie.

When a teacher hurriedly called her outside, she believed it was because she was talking with classmates.

Instead, she was told her father was in an accident and to pack up her things quickly before she was whisked into a police car where she found her brother, Kevin, and her sister, Jennifer, waiting.

"It's police officers that come to get me, so I'm like, 'What the heck is going on?'" she said. "Like, why? Is this, you know, serious? I just knew something wasn't right."

In her 10-year-old mind, a wave of fear and sadness came over her.

There were also questions.

What happened to her father? Where was her mother? Why were the police there?

She started hysterically crying, and she can remember Jennifer saying that everything would be alright.

Melissa remembers the police car moving very fast up Nicolls Road from Blue Point to Stony Brook.

It seemed as though it took five minutes before the three siblings were escorted out of the car past a throng of media cameras into a secret area where they were hidden for safety inside a secretary's office.

Eventually, the three met up with their mom, Fran, and a doctor came out to speak with her.

"We heard her scream and she fainted," Melissa said.

The family never saw Dennis that day.

He died about three hours after the bombing.

The next time the family would see him was at his wake.

Melissa was the last of the three siblings to see her father alive, and terrifying, and confusing as that scenario was as a child, it remains even more so to process as a 43-year-old adult, as a mother with a family of her own.

Thirty-three years later, no arrests have been made in her father's slaying.

There was a person of interest but no charges have been filed, Melissa said, adding that she believes that the person is responsible for her father's death.

"I think it's important to know that this affects our lives, but there's also someone out there that murdered someone that's walking free on Long Island," she said. "That's creepy."

"That person's just been there in the stores, and they're just going on with their life," she said.

While her father's death affects the Wustenhoff family personally, it also affects "the entire community that there's a person out there that's capable of doing this and they get away with it," she said.

In the more than three decades since their patriarch's death, the Wustenhoff family has banded together with friends and supporters, as well as fraternal police organizations to raise both awareness and funds to help bring closure to the case.

The family started a Facebook group called Justice for Dennis Wustenhoff to aid in their cause also.

They share family photos, as well as inspiration for others.

This winter, the Wustenhoffs added another $35,000 to the previous $65,000 raised between Suffolk's Crime Stoppers fund and the police unions. Crime Stoppers is offering $30,000, and the remainder has been collected by the police unions.

The total reward money available is $100,000.

For Melissa, any information to that end, would be life-changing for a family "that has lived so many years without closure."

For anyone who might have information, coming forward would make a world of difference.

"Doing it would be serving justice for my dad and for the person that needs to pay the price for what they've done," she said.

She doesn't want to say that her family's lives are destroyed, but they have been to some extent.

"I didn't do anything wrong," she said. "I was 10 years old."

Now she has to explain to her four-year-old where her grandfather is.

All she can do now is pass on memories and stories.

Melissa describes her father as the funniest, happiest, and most involved person.

"That was him — anyone who ever met him," she said.

He was the greatest person, a class clown, and made everyone laugh.

No one could ever say anything bad about him.

A wonderful family man, he went to all the functions that he could despite, "cops have crazy schedules sometimes," Melissa said.

"He always made sure that he made it to a dance recital sports game," she said, adding that he would show up, "so you never felt like he was missing out."

"He worked crazy overnight hours or whatnot, but he always made sure that he was there for his for his kids and his family," she said.

His family will continue to make sure they are there for him.

Anyone with information about the bombing that killed Det. Dennis Wustenhoff can contact Suffolk's Crime Stoppers at 1-800-220-TIPS. All calls will remain anonymous.