Orlando police on Wednesday arrested Dale Smith Jr., the ex-fiancé of missing Orlando mother Michelle Parker, and charged him with second-degree murder in her 2011 disappearance.

Smith was taken into custody by OPD's Fugitive Unit and SWAT Team nearly 15 years after Parker, then 33, vanished on November 17, 2011, hours after dropping off their twin children at his home. Police named Smith their sole suspect just 12 days later, but no charge followed for over a decade.

Parker's mother, Yvonne Stewart, told reporters it was "the happiest day," saying she had feared he might never be arrested. Parker's body has still not been found.

The arrest stands out because the investigation had appeared frozen since 2011, when a judge ordered Smith's twins returned to his custody citing insufficient evidence.

Over the past year, the Orlando Police Department expanded its investigative team and reexamined witness testimony, statements by Smith, and digital evidence.

Chief Eric Smith said advances in technology allowed detectives to analyze data from phones, computers, and vehicles collected during the original investigation, uncovering location and communications data they believe definitively points to Smith as Parker's killer.

Officials said no additional details would be released while the case moves through the judicial process.

She was last seen on security footage at the east Orange apartment complex where Smith lived as she dropped off their children. Her SUV was found abandoned the next day on Orlando's west side, and she never showed up to her bartending job at The Barn in Sanford; her phone was found weeks later.

The disappearance triggered a massive search, with dive teams searching retention ponds and the family offering a reward.

The path to Wednesday's arrest was tortuous. The twins were placed in protective custody with Parker's family days after her disappearance, but an Orange County judge returned them to Smith, citing insufficient evidence, and Smith later moved with them to Tennessee.

Stewart filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Smith in 2013 in a longshot bid to extract information; it was voluntarily dismissed in 2020 after a judge warned Smith faced no criminal charges.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, the family has had no contact with the twins, now adults, but Stewart hopes that will change with the arrest.

State Attorney Monique Worrell, who appeared alongside the chief at Wednesday's press conference, did not rule out upgrading the charge to first-degree murder, which would require a grand jury.

Police said investigators will continue working to locate Parker's remains and provide answers to her family.

"Our responsibility now is to protect the integrity of this case and allow the judicial process to move forward," Chief Eric Smith said, adding, "We owe Michelle and her family to make sure justice is served in this case." Stewart said she will take it "minute by minute" as the prosecution begins.

The Parker arrest lands in a remarkable week for decades-old cases.

On Tuesday, a Las Vegas judge sentenced Duane "Keffe D" Davis to 40 years to life for orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur — the first conviction ever in that case — with Judge Carli Kierny telling him, "You don't get to take a man from his family."

As in the Tupac case, where Davis's own words in a memoir and interviews proved decisive, the Parker arrest shows how investigators revisit long-stalled files when new analytical tools or evidence reopen old questions.

For devoted true-crime readers, the message is that no cold case is ever truly closed.