MAYFIELD, KY-  Last October investigators promised they were close to a break in the murder case of Delilah Blair.

Blair, 49, was found strangled October 4, 2008 inside her East South Street apartment.  Calls poured in, suspects were named, but that break never came for Mayfield Police.

It was Detective Mark Green's first homicide and he promised himself, "I will not let it become a cold case."

Each week, Green checked in with Kenneth Simmons, Blair's brother.

"The hardest thing was calling and telling him I still didn't have anything," he remembered.

Instead of the days getting easier, they got harder. Simmons drove by the scene of the crime several times a week.

"You ride through where it happened, you see people, you're not sure if he the one, they the one," he said, of being haunted by his sister's murder.

After the year anniversary passed,  Green took additional evidence to a crime lab in Frankfort.  And at long last DNA evidence, he says, solved the case, "That was the break I'd been looking for."

While investigators declined to go into detail about the evidence they will say it is enough to connect Tony Green, 45, to the crime.  Green had long been a suspect and had admitted to being at Blair's home with three others the night of her death.  Investigators called the pair 'acquaintances' but said the motive for murder is still unclear.

"He hugged my neck, it even brought a tear to my eye, it was something," Detective Green said of sharing the news with Simmons Friday evening.

"It just made me feel so good, it really did," Simmons said, his voice choked with emotion.

Now, he says, he and his family can begin the act of healing and moving forward, "She's gone but she won't ever be forgotten."

Tony Green remains in the Graves County Jail serving a five year sentence for wanton endangerment charges.  He was arrested three weeks after the murder after leading police on a chase through three counties.