Dear Editor:

So good to see that Durham Regional Police’s first murder victim, Beverly Smith (1974 cold case), was finally solved some 33 years later.

It does beg the question, however, why this took so long with a fingerprint at the scene, a neighbour (now accused) who apparently
slipped away from his wife and committed the act and then returned to his home.

It had to come down to DNA advancements on technology so many decades later. Instead of lauding the tenacity of justice, which had been more family-driven according to newspaper accounts, perhaps we should be lamenting the sloppiness of official police investigative work back then, as frustrating as these cases are to police officials.