A single fingerprint on a cigarette pack has led to an arrest in the nearly 50-year-old cold case of a young woman found strangled in the backseat of her car. Willie Eugene Sims, 69, of Ohio, was taken into custody this week and charged with murder in the January 1977 slaying of 24-year-old Jeanette Ralston, Santa Clara County prosecutors announced Tuesday.
Ralston, a mother-of-one, was last seen alive leaving the Lion's Den bar in San Jose, California, just before midnight on January 31, 1977. She was found dead in the back seat of her Volkswagen Beetle the next day, with a medical examiner concluding she was strangled with a long sleeve shirt that was tied around her neck. An autopsy also showed evidence of sexual assault, and police said at the time it appeared the killer tried to light her car on fire - but it failed to burn.
For nearly five decades, authorities were left stumped. However, a breakthrough finally came last August when officials decided to retest the fingerprints found on a pack of cigarettes that were left in the vehicle. "Just about a year ago, I was like 'Hey, let's run those prints again to see if we get lucky,'" Santa Clara Deputy District Attorney Rob Baker told KGO.
Luckily, they were able to get a match - Sims, of Ashtabula County, Ohio, who had been serving in the US Army and was stationed at nearby Fort Ord at the time of Ralston's death. Investigators with the Santa Clara District Attorney's Office then traveled to Ohio to collect Sims' DNA. They found it was consistent with the DNA found under Ralston's fingernails and on the shirt that was used to strangle her.
Additionally, Baker noted, "All of the key witnesses in this case are still alive." District Attorney Jeff Rosen remarked, "Every day, forensic science grows better and every day criminals are closer to being caught. Cases may grow old and be forgotten by the public. We don't forget and we don't give up."
Following Sims' arrest, Baker said he called Ralston's son, Allen Ralston, who was just six years old when his mother was killed. "We can't bring her back, but hopefully we can answer a lot of questions that the family may have had and try to get them some closure and hopefully justice in that way," the deputy DA said.
Allen, now an adult, expressed his gratitude for the officers' dedication to his mother's case. "Without the Santa Clara detectives, the whole team that's worked on this for 49 years - how do you thank somebody like that and not feel guilty you didn't thank them enough?" he pondered to WOIO. The son tried to share his gratitude with a social media post thanking the detectives for their persistence. "You have undoubtedly made a six-year-old kid happy after all these years," he wrote. "Thank you from the bottom of my heart on a job well done."
Sims has now been arraigned on the murder charge and is due to be extradited to California, facing 25 years to life behind bars.
In another cold case, a grisly discovery has been made involving a teacher who disappeared in 1987. On August 3, 1987, a man from Trinity County named Nikolas Medin came home from work to find that his wife, 48-year-old Kay Adams, was missing. Her purse, glasses, and car were still at the residence, but she was nowhere to be found, according to SFGATE.
When investigators spoke to Adams' boss, they said she was in good spirits and good health when they had last spoken. Adams' disappearance resulted in a massive volunteer effort to locate her in the difficult terrain near the couple's home in the Trinity Mountains, but no trace of her was found.
In November of the same year, someone sent the sheriff's department in neighboring Humboldt County a disturbing package. It contained an anonymous letter and some of Adams' skeletal remains. The letter told investigators where they could find more of Adams' remains, which investigators used to locate them near a road approximately 45 miles from her home. The remains were positively identified as Adams' through dental records, but no cause of death could be determined, and the discovery led to no arrests.
In February 1993, a skull was found approximately 100 miles away from where Adams' remains were found. A man walking his dog stumbled onto the skull on a beach at Trinidad Head. Police at the time took a DNA profile but could not match it to anyone in the Combined DNA Index System. That skull, thanks to advances in DNA technology and the work of Othram DNA analysts, has now been identified as Adams'. Othram used a DNA sample from Adams' daughter to confirm the match, according to the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office.
“It is unclear how the majority of her remains were found 45 miles from her home or how her skull was found almost 100 miles away,” the DNA analysis group said in a statement. Adams' husband, Medin, died in 2018 and police do not consider him a suspect in her death. Despite the discovery, police are still no closer to an arrest. They have asked that anyone with information regarding Adams' disappearance and death to call the Humboldt County investigator Mike Fridley at 707-441-3024.
