A week or so before Easter — perhaps fittingly for a family who had never lost their strong faith — Detective Coughlin called the McCabes and told them there had been developments in the case.

“It was a proud moment, just to be able to say to this man who had pushed so hard for so long, ‘We finally have some answers,’ ” she said.

Now what secrets remain are likely to come out in court. Mr. Shelley and Mr. Ferreira were charged with murder, Mr. Ferreira in juvenile court because he was 16 at the time of the crime. Mr. Ferreira was also charged with perjury; he lied to a grand jury looking into the murder, the police said. Mr. Brown was charged with manslaughter. All three have pleaded not guilty. A pretrial conference is scheduled for May 26.

On April 30, Mr. Brown was arrested in Londonderry, N.H., where he lives, and was accused of threatening to shoot his wife and himself with a .38-caliber pistol, an affidavit filed in the case said. Mr. Brown’s wife, Carolyn, told the police that her husband had had violent outbursts in the past and told her his impending trial would “only end in death.”

When the McCabes heard the three men had been arrested in the murder, it was as if it was all happening again. But in recent weeks, they have felt a kind of relief. People have called and sent flowers. Friends of Johnny’s have visited, hugging the McCabes and reminiscing.

Yet when a child is murdered, there is perhaps no such thing as closure. And so Mr. McCabe keeps writing in his book, adding accounts of the visits and any new details that emerge.

“Perhaps the murderer will read this and say, ‘I thought it was just another punk kid that I strangled to death,’ ” he wrote long ago in the weeks after his son died. “It wasn’t. He was very special to us, so we have written this book about him.”