Editorial: Closing cold cases is a show of resolve, respect
The death of Young Kamila in Des Plaines in 1999 likely did not register much in the public mind in 2020.
It probably never left the minds of her family and friends for all those 21 years.
And, fortunately, it never strayed far from the thoughts of detectives in Des Plaines and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Kamila, a 30-year-old flight attendant, was assaulted and killed Nov. 30, 1999, after she returned to her Des Plaines apartment with some groceries and a carryout dinner. Her assailant got away and escaped to Mexico.
On Thursday, Des Plaines police announced that the suspected killer had been arrested in Mexico and returned to the United States for trial.
We get these reminders of the persistence of police every now and then. There are, perhaps, too many unsolved cold cases to assure consolation for every victim's survivors, but each case that gets solved, that results in an arrest, provides comfort to an immediate circle of family and friends and hope for all those others still waiting for feelings of closure.
And, it provides a demonstration of the authorities' resourcefulness and determination, at its core an affirmation of society's respect for justice and human life.
Circumstances vary when such cases find resolution. The 1993 Palatine Brown's Chicken murders went unsolved for nearly 10 years until a witness's tip and a detective's intuition about saving a piece of half-eaten chicken led to the convictions of two men. In the case of 19-year-old Noreen Kumeta from 1973, the solution grew out of an Arlington Heights police officer's decision while investigating another cold case to have Kumeta's body exhumed and re-examined in 2013. In the case of Glen Ellyn 15-year-old Kristy Wesselman, who was murdered in 1985, the break came when a man who had never been a suspect had to give a DNA sample 30 years later in a domestic battery case in Champaign County.
No suspect had been identified in Kamila's death until 2007, when relatives of Luis Rodriguez-Mena fled Mexico and told authorities in the U.S. he had bragged about the killings. Detectives found a former girlfriend who had a child with Rodriguez-Mena and got a DNA sample linking him to the crime. Then followed more than a decade of dogged, often frustrating efforts by investigators to overcome the challenges of working with Mexican authorities and the efforts of Rodriguez-Mena's family to keep him hidden.
But persistence won out. Rodriguez-Mena was arrested in Mexico in June and returned this week to Chicago.
Police face many urgent demands and limited resources, in both time and money, to meet them. It might be understandable if they let isolated tragedies long removed from the public's attention fade from their own list of priorities. That they do not is a testament to their dedication and their resolve and a show of respect not just to the families immediately affected but also to the values that underpin our society.