BY KRISTEN DELGUZZI
The Cincinnati Enquirer

For 17 years, the case has eaten away at Cincinnati Police Spc. Michael O'Brien.

Two young people, out for a walk on a warm summer night, gunned down just yards from their grandmother's Bond Hill home.

A suspect with a history of racially motivated crimes across the country.

But just not enough evidence - despite Spc. O'Brien's dogged pursuit - to charge a racist serial killer in the June 1980 deaths of cousins Dante Evans Brown and Darrell Lane.

Until Sunday.

That's when self-avowed racist Joseph Paul Franklin confessed, setting the wheels of justice in motion and finally closing the book on the long-unsolved homicide.

''Yes,'' Spc. O'Brien said he thought after hearing that Mr. Franklin had confessed. ''Success.''

Last week, Mr. Franklin invited an assistant Hamilton County prosecutor to his death row home in a Missouri prison to discuss the case. Spc. O'Brien tagged along and was among the first to hear that Mr. Franklin had confessed.

''It's a good feeling,'' the veteran officer said Tuesday, less than an hour after Mr. Franklin had been indicted on two counts of aggravated murder. ''It's the feeling that a weight has been lifted off your shoulders.''

The case has been with Spc. O'Brien, 48, much of the time he has been with the police force. He's been an officer 25 years.

When the cousins were shot by a sniper on Reading Road, police quickly formed a task force. All 14 homicide investigators were assigned, as were two officers from each of the city's five police districts. In all, nearly 30 officers worked the case over the years.

Myron J. Leistler, a former police chief who retired 12 years ago, remembers the case: He formed the task force and later hosted meetings with authorities from parts of the country where Mr. Franklin had killed before.

''We knew who it was all the time,'' he said Tuesday. ''It was very frustrating.''

Spc. O'Brien, who today is a member of the homicide unit, was one of the District 1 officers named to the task force. He has been among the few constants in the investigation.

''It's a case that has always stuck in my mind, simply because of the age of the teen-agers, the innocence,'' he said. ''And the suspect was basically thumbing his nose at society.

''These kids deserved better. They deserved somebody to stand in their corner and fight for them.''

Dana DiFilippo contributed to this story.

STORY
''REIGN OF TERROR''