Kudos and thanks from the community are owed the St. Cloud Police Department for  bringing one suspect to justice so far in a 31-year-old homicide case – a local man confessed to the crime and another former resident is considered someone of interest in the case.

A family’s persistence, new technology and the professionalism of the police department helped solve this case that involved the killing of a 28-year-old church pastor’s wife and mother of two boys.

Norma Page, the victim, had expressed to family members that St. Cloud was “the best place in the world to raise a family,” mainly because she believed it to be “so safe.” That outlook, shared by so many at the time, was shattered with the killing, the first in a reported 20 years for the town.

Much has changed since then in terms of crime fighting and community awareness. Yes, forensic science has improved dramatically, as have community-policing techniques. However, there will always be monsters living among us that sooner or later will shatter our perceptions of how safe we are — and no level of technology can prevent that.

The St. Cloud Police department reopened this case in August 2009 after family members wrote a letter urging another look at the evidence. Police also wanted to reopen the case because they figured this was the last chance to solve it, given the probable age of suspects.

Detectives saved several pieces of blood-covered clothing and materials in their evidence section at the police department, items that were found to have the suspect’s blood and DNA on them, allowing a match to the suspect, whose DNA had been entered in a statewide database 21 years earlier.

The current St. Cloud police chief said it was “rare that evidence was packaged and preserved and maintained the way it was” where an analysis could be made. Our hats go off to the detectives who collected that evidence and the staff that stored it.

The $20,000 in forfeiture funds the St. Cloud Police Department used to pay for the latest-available DNA testing was money well-spent and we urge other local authorities to use this funding source for evidence testing in their cold murder cases. It is the least we owe the victims.

Yes, it is difficult for surviving family members to have to go through this again, but we agree with Norma Page’s husband, the Rev. Jim Page, who said, “There’s a relief in knowing.”