The Last Word:

If not for new technology, Gerald Su Go might never have been connected to a 24-year-old cold-case slaying.

But if not for the tenacity of Huntington Beach Det. Mike Reilly, the case may not have been made at all.

The one-time Costa Mesa man attacked a woman in Costa Mesa in 1986 and jumped bail and fled to Canada after his arrest then. Go got caught during a routine immigration check when he tried to check back into the country through New York in 2004, and justice was served in that case. But Elizabeth Mae Hoffschneider’s brutal killing in Huntington Beach was left unsolved.

Reilly caught the case as a rookie in 1984. He never forgot it. He never gave up on it.

“That’s the problem,” he said. “People forget victims. But they have families. They have friends. You cannot forget these people.”

Go served his time for the attempted rape and was deported back to Canada, where he became a citizen after jumping bail. But weeks later hair samples found at the crime scene were sent to the Orange County Crime Laboratory. The DNA tests connected Go to the crime scene. He was never even a suspect in the slaying. And had he served his time back in 1987 the DNA samples he had to submit in 2004 might never have been required.

But now he faces the rest of his life in a U.S. prison as he fights extradition.

We’re grateful that hard-working, determined detectives like Reilly have tools like DNA testing, but we’re even more thankful for that oldest of investigatory methods: persistence.