"Happy birthday, sweetie."

It's a message, Kate Affholder is thankful she never deleted.

"Oh there's my phone, gotta run."

Affholder is just sentimental that way. She didn't know her mom Connie Hounsell would be murdered one month after leaving that voice mail.

"She had just a wonderful spirit and I thought just everybody loved her," says Affholder.

Hounsell was found stabbed to death in her Rockton home last Christmas time. Her killer, hasn't been captured.

"It's not like my mom was some gangster or drug dealer something like that, this was a widower 65 years old there cannot be that many people out there that want to bring her harm, so to me it shouldn't be something that takes this long to solve," says Affholder.

She's waiting for the Illinois State Crime Lab, located in the Zeke Georgi building to process evidence. The Department oversees all northern Illinois cases, hundreds of them and is currently backlogged.

"There are many steps involved and something the process to do this in itself is time consuming," says Deputy Chief Dominic Iasparro.

That aside, local authorities say they lack a starting point in investigating Hounsell's murder.

"When you have a victim found in their home with no witnesses nothing in her background to lead you to believe that there's something there, it becomes more difficult," says Iasparro.

Hounsell's relatives feel her murder was not random. Since she lived alone and in an isolated area.

"I just miss her, I miss my mom. I'm 36 years old but I still need my mom," says Hounsell.

We tried contacting the Illinois State Crime .ab to find out why they are so backlogged, but our calls were not returned. Many other families are in the same situation. To be clear, Affholder doesn't think her case should have precedence over the others, she just wants to bring to light the frustrations involved in such a tragedy.

Hounsell's family commends the Winnebago County Sheriff's Department for staying in constant communication with them. Authorities ask us to call them or Crimestoppers if we know anything about this case.