Suburban cold cases

Several notorious suburban crimes languished for years before suspects were charged. Among them:

Helen Brach murder

Crime: February 1977

Arrest: 1994

The break: Federal authorities swept up the North Shore candy heiress' presumed killer while investigating a suburban scheme to kill racehorses for insurance money.

Con man Richard Bailey was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 1995 after he pleaded guilty to romancing women like Brach and then selling them worthless racehorses. A federal judge found Bailey was involved with soliciting Brach's murder, but no one has been held accountable for her death.

Stephanie Lyng murder

Crime: Oct. 25, 1977

Arrest: 1992

The break: The former girlfriend of Edward Lyng, Stephanie's husband, told police he'd confessed to her.

The Lyngs' four daughters said they lived in fear of their father after their mother disappeared without a trace from their Palatine home. Lyng eventually was sentenced to 15 to 50 years for killing his wife. He then was sentenced to another 50 years for orchestrating plots from jail to kill a man he believed was dating his ex-girlfriend and another man who was a witness in his original trial. Neither was harmed.

Darlene and Bruce Rouse murders

Crime: June 6, 1980

Arrest: 1996

The break: Son Billy Rouse confessed while in custody in Key West, Fla., on bank robbery charges.

The Rouses were killed in their bed while at home with their three children near Libertyville. Advised by lawyers hired by relatives, all three refused to take polygraph tests or appear before a grand jury. Middle daughter Robin died in a 1983 car crash. Billy Rouse, 15 at the time of the murders, was convicted in 1996 and sentenced to 80 years in prison.

Brown's murders

Crime: Jan. 8, 1993

Arrest: May 2002

The break: Anne Lockett, prompted by her high-school boyfriend's attempts to contact her, contacted police to say he could be the killer.

Seven people were massacred at Brown's Chicken & Pasta in Palatine in a crime that, despite thousands of hours of police work, went unsolved for years. Lockett's former boyfriend James Degorski and his Fremd High School friend Juan Luna, a former Brown's employee, finally were charged. Luna is serving a life sentence; Degorski's trial is set for later this year.

Stacey Frobel, Amela and Dzeneta Pasanbegovic murders

Crimes: 1995

Arrest: 2001

The break: DNA evidence from a woman and her 10-year-old daughter killed in Chicago led to serial killer Paul Runge of Carol Stream.

Runge scattered the dismembered body of Frobel, of Carol Stream, across northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Bodies of the Pasanbegovic sisters, of Hanover Park, were never found. Accused of seven murders, Runge was sentenced in 2006 to death.