At 7.40 last night Chief Superintendent John Feeley emerged from Naas Garda Station to announce what could be the final chapter in the 20-year-long murder case of Kildare woman Phyllis Murphy.
Standing in shirtsleeves he told the assembled journalists that a man arrested early that morning was to be charged with the murder of the 22-year-old.
Just moments before, he said, the first of two men arrested yesterday had been released "and then rearrested and will be charged with the murder of Phyllis Murphy."
Declining to name the suspect, Chief Supt Feeley said the man would appear in court in Naas this morning.
Almost exactly 12 hours earlier the man, thought to be married with five children, had been arrested under Section Four of the Criminal Justice Act by gardai from Naas at his home in Kildare.
Under Section Four, gardai are entitled to hold him at the station for a maximum of 12 hours. As it transpired, they used every minute of that time to come to their decision.
Later that morning, close to 9 a.m., a second man was arrested and brought to Naas Garda Station to help gardai with their inquiries in relation to the case. He was released without charge last night.
As the hours passed yesterday, several detectives who had been working on the case since Phyllis Murphy disappeared close to Newbridge in Co Kildare in 1979 passed through the doors of the station.
Chief Supt Feeley, based at Naas, had been one of them. Sitting in his office he spoke of the "huge" investigation which had been carried out before and after Phyllis Murphy's body was found naked in Co Wicklow.
She had been raped and strangled to death.
He was asked whether there were any links between the men arrested yesterday and the other missing women whose cases are currently being investigated as part of Operation Trace.
He responded that the incident was being treated in isolation.
"We are investigating the case of Phyllis Murphy and that is all we are investigating at the moment."
He said he had always been hopeful that some day "something might break" in the case. He did not know, he said, whether that longed-for breakthrough would occur today.