Bonner Springs Detective Vickie Fogarty has been on the Robin Bell murder case since November 2005, chasing shadows and countless leads. Three people have now been charged in Bell's death.

Bonner Springs ? In the 22 months since Robin Bell’s badly beaten body was discovered in a Dollar General store she managed here, Vickie Fogarty had pushed hard to find Bell’s murderer.

The Bonner Springs detective who was lead investigator on the case followed countless leads and worked countless hours on the case.

Fogarty’s big break in the case, however, came as a surprise.

“It was completely out of the blue,” Fogarty said. “I was doing an interview on an unrelated case : that evolved into some other crimes.”

That was Sept. 21.

Within a few days, two men and a young woman were in custody, all charged with first-degree murder in the November 2005 killing of Bell, a Tonganoxie woman.

The three – John Backus, 20, Robert Haberlein, 19, and Amber Russell, 17 – also face aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery charges.

The three had not once been considered suspects during the 22-month investigation into a murder Fogarty describes as “horrendous.”

“They were nowhere on the radar,” Fogarty said.

Although Fogarty can’t discuss specifics of the case, she realized during that interview on Sept. 21 that the department’s long-awaited break had come. The person she was talking to mentioned a detail about the murder that investigators had held back from the public.

Before that interview, Fogarty, a detective with the department for 10 years, had begun to doubt whether the case was solvable. But she and her colleagues continued to work on it.

“I just kept reviewing the case,” Fogarty said. “I knew that if it broke, it would be a small detail – it wouldn’t be anything that would jump out at us. : I kept telling Melissa (Bell’s daughter, Melissa Mathia) that if someone is going to mess up, it’s going to be something they don’t think is important.

“I know that frustrated the family,” Fogarty said.

Mathia, a Basehor resident, said she formed a negative opinion of the department shortly after her mother’s murder. Despite the arrests in the case, that opinion hasn’t changed.

“I heard a couple times that it was a lucky break,” Mathia said of the Sept. 21 interview. “But they’re trying to act like it’s some magical police work.”

Robin Bell’s husband, Don, however, is more charitable. He now understands why police released so few details about the crime.

“I thought they weren’t trying as hard as they were,” Bell said. “My opinion changed.”

During the nearly two years that Bonner Springs police worked on the murder case – despite mounting pressure from the family and questions about the quality of police work on the case – Fogarty said she and other investigators kept their focus. She said they did that for Robin Bell’s sake.

“This is really all about Robin,” Fogarty said. “We had her picture here. I felt like I knew her. I had to do it for her and her kids and her husband.”

Wyandotte County District Attorney Jerome Gorman said it was highly unusual for crimes as old as the Bell case to be solved.

“It’s pretty rare,” Gorman said. “Once every two or three years, I’m talking countywide, I see a case two years or older get solved like that.”

Investigators’ persistence – as well as a dose of good fortune – both played a role in solving the crime, Gorman said.

“If you’re not up on all the facts, then you can’t conduct a proper interview,” he said. “So it was a little luck, and a lot of detective work and using people skills and talking.”

Fogarty, described as “tenacious” by her boss, Chief John Haley, credits detectives Ron Crouss and Pat Budy with helping solve the case, which was only Fogarty’s second murder investigation.

“The other detectives, there’s no egos back here,” Fogarty said. “We all help each other. We’re all friends. If it weren’t for that it wouldn’t have gone as smoothly as it did.”

Still, as much praise as Fogarty and others may get for their detective work on the Robin Bell case, Fogarty has yet to impress her 6-year-old granddaughter. When a television news station recently reported the break in the Bell homicide case, Fogarty’s husband pointed to the screen and said, “Your Nana solved that case.”

“Uh uh,” the child said, because the crime was committed nearly two years ago.

After being assured that it was in fact the same case, the girl asked, “What took so long?”