An Ohio man, Willie Eugene Sims, 69, has been charged with the murder of Jeanette Ralston, a 24-year-old woman found dead in her Volkswagen Beetle in San Jose, California, in 1977. She was discovered strangled and sexually assaulted, with her body wedged into the car’s back seat. DNA evidence found on her fingernails and the murder weapon—a shirt used to strangle her—matched Sims.
The breakthrough in the case came when a fingerprint found on a cigarette pack in Ralston’s car was linked to Sims after the FBI updated its fingerprint database algorithm. Although investigators had previously searched for a match without success, a recent re-examination led to the identification of Sims, who was living in Ashtabula County, Ohio. Sims is set to be arraigned on one count of murder in San Jose, facing a potential sentence of 25 years to life.
At the time of Ralston’s murder, Sims was a private in the Army stationed in Monterey County, California, and he has a previous conviction for assault with intent to commit murder and robbery in 1978. Ralston’s son, who was just six years old when his mother was killed, expressed gratitude for the arrest, considering it a significant development as his birthday approaches.
The investigation leveraged advanced forensic tools and techniques, including STRmix, which analyzes complex DNA mixtures that would have previously been unusable. The successful identification of Sims underscores the potential of latent print searches, a method emphasized by a former cold-case prosecutor as important in solving long-cold cases.
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