Well...at least they kept working it until they solved it.

"The unsolved mystery was handed down as a cold case from one generation of retiring detectives to the next. But authorities revealed this week that they have finally cracked the case of Candy Rogers, using the modern marvels of DNA.
“We are tenacious. We will never give up,” Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl said at a news conference announcing the murder had been solved.
Even though investigators say they know who killed Candy, there was no arrest: the suspect, Army deserter John Reigh Hoff, who went on to commit a similar assault, died by suicide in 1970.
Spokane Major Crimes Detective Zac Storment described Candy’s death as the “Mount Everest” of the department’s cold cases— “the one that we could never seem to overcome. But at the same time, nobody ever forgot.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news..../crime/candy-rogers-