It was just before 10 a.m. on a May morning, two years ago, when Springfield police drove to Armory Street and stopped near a green, two-story house with white-trimmed windows.

Inside, they took into custody a man who had managed, for 39 years, to evade detection as the assailant who kidnapped, beat and sexually assaulted a woman in Avon, Connecticut in 1984.

It took a long time, but George E. Legere, 75, is now paying for the terror he visited upon that woman, thanks to the Combined DNA Index System. Prosecutors are bringing more and more convictions in cold cases like this.

People who thought they got away with murder need to think again.

This year, authorities used DNA evidence to identify the late Patricia Ann Tucker, the woman found dead in 1978 who had long been known only as the “Granby girl.” Her adult son, Matthew Dale, provided his own DNA profile, hoping it would help identify his mother. It proved to be a breakthrough.

DNA “phenotyping,” in which genetic material is used to produce a sketch of a suspect, was employed by the Hampden District Attorney’s Office late last year in an attempt to solve a 1990 cold case in Springfield involving the death of Shana B. Price, 17. “Let me be clear to the person responsible for Shana’s death,” DA Anthony Gulluni said at the time. “(We) have your DNA. Justice is coming for you.”

In 2021, prosecutors pulled a DNA sample from deep inside the conch shell used to bludgeon Rose Marie Moniz 20 years before in New Bedford. The sample matched her half-brother. Just this year, a suspect was charged in the 2011 Hyannis murder of Todd Lampley based on DNA retrieved from a sweet potato found at the crime scene.

As ordinary people opt for genetic tests to learn about their ancestry, the pool of information available to law enforcement deepens.

In Legere’s case, his DNA was routinely entered into the national database in 2019 after he began a short prison sentence for assault. The sample linked Legere to DNA collected in the 1984 kidnapping.

When Springfield police arrived at his apartment May 20, 2021, he knew the drill, having been arrested more than 30 times. DNA evidence got Legere into the courtroom in Hartford this year. Prosecutors relied as well on the courage of the woman who survived the assault nearly four decades ago.

After a long wait for this case to be solved, the jury’s deliberation, the Hartford State’s Attorney noted, was “brief.”