SPRINGFIELD -- The arrest of a suspect this week for the murder of JonBenet Ramsey in Boulder, Colo., 10 years ago puts new focus on old unsolved cases.  A forensic expert says small details and new investigators can break big cases wide open.

  "It can be just a miniscule piece of information that gets the ball rolling," said consultant Gene Gietzen.

  Gietzen says it all goes back to the evidence.  In his office in Springfield, he looks over crime scene photos from current cases.  He's often called in on investigations to take another look at evidence already collected.

  In the Ramsey case, he thinks an investigator with a new perspective may have picked up on something no one else noticed.

  "The investigators will hand the case from investigator to investigator and very often that's a common police tactic; somebody can go in and review and look at the case from a different aspect," said Gietzen, who directed the Springfield Police Department Crime Lab until 1991, when the department closed its lab.

 Susan Sutton has been waiting for an investigator to do just that in her daughter's cold case.  Someone abducted 19-year-old Becky Sutton from her home in Hollister and killed her more than three years ago.

 "Somebody knows something out there and I'd like to know how they're sleeping," said Sutton.

  Susan and private investigator John Huey have been tireless in their efforts to keep active the investigation into Becky's death.  Like the Ramsey case, they firmly believe one piece of information could lead them to Becky's killer. 

  Gietzen tells victims’ families that they should never give up on a case.

  "There's always that hope that somebody will provide some information 5, 10, 15 years down the road to law enforcement who are capable of picking up the ball and running with it,” he said.

  Gietzen says crime scene technology continues to advance, and that may break some cases.  For example, it now takes a much smaller sample of evidence to conduct DNA testing than it did 10 years ago.