A dark secret that had been kept for more than 33 years may finally have burst into the light last week when, law enforcement officials say, a Milwaukee man told his wife, a counselor, a TV station and finally the police that he had killed a girl.

The fate of Carrie Ann Jopek, 13, gripped the city when she vanished in 1982, and again when her body was found, but then it faded into a very cold case. On Saturday, at long last, someone was charged in her death: Jose E. Ferreira Jr., a neighbor who was 16 at the time.

“I always prayed that we would find out, that we would find closure, but I had to wait,” Carrie’s mother, Carolyn Tousignant, said in a telephone interview. “It’s a relief.”

Mrs. Tousignant, who still lives in the same house, on the block where her daughter was killed, said she had known Mr. Ferreira as a teenager, and “he didn’t seem that bad,” so she always thought it unlikely that he was the killer. But one detail, she said, gave her pause.