The personal circumstances of Billie Stewart and Wesu Ono couldn't be more different. What they did share is that neither deserved what fate had in store for them. There isn't a detective who wouldn't want to solve either one of those investigations.

It doesn't matter if the victim is someone's grandmother, a sex-trade worker or aboriginal -- detectives want to solve them all. That's why they get up in the morning. They are not content to leave [Al Mackling] and his family suffering, never knowing. They are not comfortable knowing that even a thousand miles away Billie Stewart's mother suffers, too. They don't like knowing a murderer is at large.

A genuine effort is a good thing but doesn't Wesu Ono's family deserve the same? Why shouldn't her file get some of that special attention? Or Margaret Unger's? She was a 50-something Red Cross employee who lived on her own and was shot in the head, execution-style, while she was standing in her kitchen with a cup of coffee, one sunny Sunday morning on Manitoba Avenue. That case has remained open for 20 years.