logo
Cigarette packet may finally solve 50-year mystery after woman's brutal murder

Cigarette packet may finally solve 50-year mystery after woman's brutal murder

Daily Mirror17-05-2025
The police couldn't solve the tragic murder for decades but an incredible DNA technology breakthrough has finally given them more answers
Nearly 50 years ago, a 24-year-old woman was found strangled to death in her Volkswagen Beetle, leaving everyone in the city of San Jose reeling. The tragedy went unsolved for decades, but investigators finally have a breakthrough.
Evidence gathered on Jeanette Ralston 's death sat in case files gathering dust for years. At the time of the murder, technology just wasn't where it is today. But everything changed in 2018 when the city's police upgraded its fingerprint search algorithm, allowing for more accurate and wide-reaching matches.

With the new technology in place, officers decided to try their luck again - to see if an old piece of evidence from the 1977 crime would give them answers. And it did. Willie Eugene Sims, now 69, has been charged with Jeanette's murder, thanks to the fingerprint match from the cigarette pack.

"Last year, we threw a Hail Mary by running all of the prints from the crime scene through the FBI database one last time," said Rob Baker, Deputy District Attorney. "The big break happened last summer when the San Jose Police fingerprint examiners told us we had a match that led our investigators to a small town in Ohio six months later," he added.
According to court records, Jeanette was last seen on 31 January 1977, just before midnight after leaving a bar in San Jose. Witnesses saw her with an unidentified man. The next morning, she was found in her vehicle parked near a construction site.
She had been brutally attacked, with a long-sleeve dress shirt knotted around her neck. The scene suggested the killer had tried to cover his tracks, the car smelled of gasoline, and there were signs that someone had attempted to light it on fire.
An autopsy revealed she'd been strangled and sexually assaulted. There was also evidence of an attempted arson, likely to destroy the crime scene and any lingering clues.

At the time, Sims was stationed at Fort Ord as an army private. Despite a thorough investigation, he was never linked to the murder - until now. In 1978, Sims was convicted of assault with intent to commit murder in Monterey County. But he only served two and a half months behind bars before moving out of California - avoiding the DNA collection that would eventually become standard.
The fingerprint was the break they needed, but it wasn't the only one. Investigators travelled to Ohio earlier this year to collect a DNA sample from Sims. It matched material found under Jeanette's fingernails and on the shirt used to strangle her.
This case shows just how powerful forensic science has become. 'Every day, forensic science grows better, and every day criminals are closer to being caught,' said District Attorney Jeff Rosen. 'We don't forget and we don't give up.'
Sims was extradited to San Jose and is currently being held without bail. His next court date is set for August 12. If convicted, he faces 25 years to life in prison.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Paedo kidnapped me & kept me prisoner for months – I was tied to a bed, beaten & raped until tip-off saved me
Paedo kidnapped me & kept me prisoner for months – I was tied to a bed, beaten & raped until tip-off saved me

The Sun

time3 hours ago

  • The Sun

Paedo kidnapped me & kept me prisoner for months – I was tied to a bed, beaten & raped until tip-off saved me

AGED 13, Jessyca Mullenberg was abducted by a man who had been secretly abusing her for years. Now, 30 years after a TV show led to her rescue from his evil clutches, Jessyca, 43, reveals what happened during her months in captivity – and the lasting impact of her ordeal. 6 6 6 Waking up, 13-year-old Jessyca Mullenberg looked down and was gripped with fear. 'I realised I was tied to the front seat of the car by brown rope,' she remembers. 'I was terrified.' She'd been abducted by Steven Oliver, a 39-year-old paedophile obsessed with Jessyca and who had been abusing her for years before kidnapping her. Over the next 105 days, Jessyca would be subjected to multiple rapes, beatings and brainwashing. The nightmare would only come to an end when the FBI discovered her whereabouts after a tip-off. Today, 30 years on from finding herself at the centre of a kidnapping story that rocked America, Jessyca is a mum-of-two and a sexual abuse awareness advocate. She has dedicated herself to stopping any child going through what she did. Jessyca was eight years old when unmarried Oliver, then 34, came into her life. He was a neighbour in the small town of Altoona, Wisconsin, where she lived with her mother Monica and stepfather Jake. Oliver worked as a teaching assistant at her school and was the father of one of her classmates, Ryan. 'Oliver would invite me, my brothers and all the neighbourhood kids to his house to play football,' she says. 'Almost immediately, he started grooming me, first by making me sit on his lap.' He would make up a reason why Jessyca was in trouble and would tell her to go and stand in his kitchen, while everyone was still outside. 'In the kitchen, he'd touch my breasts and bottom, and get me to touch him. If I did it wrong, he'd punch me,' she says. Over the coming months, the abuse in the kitchen escalated to forced oral sex and rape. 'I was eight, so I had no idea what he was doing to me,' explains Jessyca. 'He said if I told anyone, he'd kill my brothers and the rest of my family. I was so young that I totally believed him.' In the summer of 1993, after two years of abuse, Jessyca's family moved 100 miles across state because her stepfather had a new job. 'I was so relieved, because I thought the abuse would stop,' she says. But Oliver was determined not to lose his grip on his young victim, so he began renting a trailer with Ryan close to her father's home – her parents had split when she was four and her father lived around 100 miles from Jessyca's new home. 'I stayed with my dad every weekend, and couldn't believe it the first time I visited and saw Oliver. His trailer was right across the road. I felt sick knowing he was so determined not to let me go.' Oliver, still working as a teacher's aide, found a new way to be alone with Jessyca, in order to continue abusing her. 'He told all the parents in my dad's neighbourhood he'd been selected by a publishing company to start a weekly writing workshop for kids. We'd all submit poems and short stories, we even did a play,' recalls Jessyca. 'He'd single us out for one-to-one tuition, and mine was always longer, so the abuse just continued without anyone knowing. I was so scared of him.' In September 1995, when Jessyca was 13 and she'd been going to the 'workshop' for a few months, Oliver told her that one of her short stories had been chosen for publication, and they needed to travel 200 miles for a meeting at the publishing company's office. She says her father agreed to the trip, unaware he was handing his daughter over to her abuser. 'Even with everything that had been going on, I still believed the trip was real. Why would I not? Oliver had even fooled the adults,' she says. They left early in the morning, and Jessyca fell asleep, but when she woke up and discovered she was restrained, she realised there was no meeting – she'd been kidnapped. Oliver used the journey to ensure she memorised their cover story. 'He told me he was my father 'Dave Johnson', and I was his daughter 'Cindy', and we were moving to start over our lives after my brother and mother had died in a car accident.' Oliver repeatedly told her what he'd do to her and her family if she tried to alert anyone to the kidnapping. 'We stopped on a bridge to take a break,' remembers Jessyca. 'He threw a rock over the bridge and told me that what happened to the rock would happen to my lifeless body if I said anything to anyone or tried to get away from him.' After a nine-hour drive, they arrived at Kansas City airport in Missouri, where Oliver forced Jessyca on to a plane to Houston at knifepoint. 'He held a pocket knife to my back and told me that if I screamed or shouted, he would kill me and then kill my family,' says Jessyca. 'He wouldn't have been able to do this today with all the security checks, but back then you could get a ticket under any name and didn't need proof of identity.' Once they landed, Oliver found them a cheap hotel to stay in, and he went about changing Jessyca's appearance so she wouldn't be recognised. 6 6 'He cut my hair short and dyed it from blonde to brunette,' she remembers. 'He also went clothes shopping and came back with lots of baggy clothes, which made me look like a boy.' After two days, they moved to another hotel near Houston airport, and as they checked in, Oliver wasted no time telling staff his cover story about the fatal car accident and that they were a father and daughter down on their luck. The hotel staff took pity and asked if he'd be interested in a vacant position as a painter and decorator for the hotel. Agents kept asking me if I was Jessyca Mullenberg, but by then, that name didn't mean anything to me. Jessyca after being freed Oliver jumped at the opportunity, particularly because the position included free accommodation in a block of old, abandoned rooms that were separate from the rest of the hotel. Jessyca's heart sank as Oliver marched her towards one of the small, windowless rooms. 'I was locked inside day and night, there was no way to escape. We were in a part of the hotel where no one else was staying, so no one would hear me banging on the door or shouting,' she remembers. When Oliver got back at night, he'd rape her, as well as hit her and tie her to the bed. In the first week of her captivity, Jessyca tried to call her home using the phone in the room while Oliver was working, but the calls never connected. 'It was an old rotary phone, and he'd switched all the numbers around, so I just kept dialling wrong numbers. 'I started to believe that my old life was slipping away, and I couldn't even remember my home number,' she says. Oliver tormented Jessyca psychologically, too, repeatedly telling her that her parents had given up searching for her. But in fact, her desperate family had never stopped looking, and when they were told by the FBI that Oliver might have taken her out of the state, they printed thousands of missing person posters that were then attached to trucks travelling nationwide, in the hope someone might recognise her. In the end, it was an episode of prime-time TV show America's Most Wanted that would save Jessyca from Oliver's abuse. The show had featured her abduction earlier that year, but a repeat episode aired on the evening of December 28, 1995. One of the hotel staff was watching at home and recognised Oliver as the maintenance man staying in the hotel with the young girl he claimed was his daughter. The next morning, FBI stormed the hotel room, arrested Oliver and took Jessyca to safety. By that point, Oliver had completely brainwashed her. 'Agents kept asking me if I was Jessyca Mullenberg, but by then, that name didn't mean anything to me.' Dr Darrel Turner is a forensic psychologist who specialises in predatory behaviour and has consulted for the FBI. He says: 'The more an offender can diminish the child's frame of reference of what's normal and what's not, the more impact they will have on the victim and their ability to appreciate what's happening to them.' Darrel adds: 'It's similar to the abductions of Jaycee Dugard and Elizabeth Smart, who were also just children when they were removed from their family homes and isolated so that the perpetrators could exploit the power differential that exists and exert their terrible influence. "This and the trauma Jessyca had experienced explains her lack of memory.' After hours of talking and them showing photos of my family, I finally remembered what my real name was. Jessyca after being freed 'After hours of talking and them showing photos of my family, I finally remembered what my real name was,' recalls Jessyca. By the time her mother's plane had touched down in Houston the following afternoon, she was beginning to comprehend just what had happened to her during those 105 days in Oliver's clutches. 'It's pure ecstasy,' said her mother Monica when the pair were reunited at the airport. 'We waited so long for the nightmare to be done. We've waited for the miracle to happen.' Bravely, Jessyca agreed to testify at Oliver's trial in 1996, and gave a graphic account of what had happened to her in the time she'd been kept captive. Oliver was sentenced to 40 years in prison for kidnapping and interstate transportation of a minor for illegal sexual purposes. He's still in jail to this day, aged 68. Unfortunately, Jessyca's trauma didn't end with Oliver's imprisonment, and as well as the mental scars he'd inflicted, there were physical ones. 'In my early 20s, I needed jaw surgery, because he had hit me so hard in the face, so many times, that my bones began to deteriorate, making it very hard to talk or eat, and I was suffering from non-stop headaches every day,' she says. Jessyca also suffers from severe PTSD and experiences flashbacks of her ordeal. 'I have a fear of flying after being forced to board the plane in Kansas City,' she says. 'I also can't stand the smell of cigarettes or coffee, because he constantly smelled of those things.' However, Jessyca's determination not to let Oliver hold any further power over her has been a constant in her life since. She went on to study at college and graduated with a degree in psychology, criminal justice and law enforcement. And then, in 2018, she was given the prestigious Hope Award by the National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children. Jessyca is now married to tech manager Curt, 48, and despite fears she may not be able to conceive due to the unrelenting sexual assaults she suffered at the hands of Oliver, she defied the odds and has two children of her own. However, as she explains, being a mum can also bring its own terrors. 'When they were growing up, I was waiting for my five-year-old daughter at the school bus stop, but she never got off and the bus driver didn't see her get on. "I called my husband, panicking, and rushed to the school in tears. "Thankfully, she was at a school event and there had been a misunderstanding about what time she'd be home, but it was a harrowing experience for me.' But Jessyca is determined that Oliver won't take any more from her life than he has already and is passionate about continuing her advocacy work. 'I speak about what I went through to educate people about the signs of abuse, so it can be stopped early and perpetrators can be caught. "I simply won't let Oliver win. I want to devote my life to preventing another little boy or girl from going through the hell that I did.' 6

Millions of Americans' personal data stolen in data heist
Millions of Americans' personal data stolen in data heist

Daily Mail​

time5 hours ago

  • Daily Mail​

Millions of Americans' personal data stolen in data heist

Hackers have gained access to hundreds of thousands of people's personal data after Allianz Life Insurance Company was breached. Minneapolis-based Allianz Life, a subsidiary of Munich, Germany-based Allianz SE, said the data breach affected the majority of its 1.4 million customers. The data heist occurred on July 16 when a 'malicious threat actor' gained access to a third-party, cloud-based system. It was discovered the following day. 'The threat actor was able to obtain personally identifiable data related to the majority of Allianz Life's customers, financial professionals, and select Allianz Life employees, using a social engineering technique,' Allianz Life said in a statement. 'We took immediate action to contain and mitigate the issue and notified the FBI.' The insurance giant said it notified the FBI and, based on its ongoing investigation, that there is no evidence the Allianz Life network or other company systems were accessed, including their policy administration system — just the third-party platform. The insurance giant's filing with Maine's attorney general did not indicate the number of customers affected. In the case of data breaches, a 'social engineering technique' usually involves using trickery to gain access.

Man spent 13 years on the run after stabbing his new wife while she still wore wedding dress
Man spent 13 years on the run after stabbing his new wife while she still wore wedding dress

Daily Mirror

time12 hours ago

  • Daily Mirror

Man spent 13 years on the run after stabbing his new wife while she still wore wedding dress

Arnoldo Jimenez, 43, spent over a decade on the run, and became one of the FBI's 'Most Wanted Fugitives' after stabbing his bride Estrella Carrera on their wedding day - while she was still wearing her bridal gown Many women believe that their wedding day will be one of the happiest of their lives - but for 26-year-old Estrella Carrera, it was the day hers was brutally cut short. ‌ She was discovered two days later in her dry bathtub, still wearing the silver, sequinned cocktail dress she had worn for her wedding ceremony, having been stabbed to death. ‌ Something was off even before Estrella Carrera and her on-and-off-again boyfriend, Arnoldo Jimenez, then 30, decided on the spur of the moment to tie the knot. ‌ Tragic final hours of influencer left trapped in volcano for days as she screamed for help 'Evil monster' killed disabled Eastenders star and two sons with axe in 'barbaric' way Estrella told only her father the day before she was due to get married, but no other family members knew that she was about to make such a major life decision until the day itself, when they were invited to a party to celebrate the couple's marriage. Her cousins told the Chicago Tribune at the time: "This just happened out of nowhere. It was so fast I couldn't even make to the celebration." ‌ Another cousin added that Estrella "didn't want to tell me she had gotten married. She didn't tell anybody besides her father the day before". Arnoldo and Estrella shared one child, a little boy who was two when they tied the knot in 2012, and she had a daughter from a previous relationship as well, who was nine years old at the time. He was alleged by Estrella's family to be "very possessive" and to become easily jealous, and her sister Jazmine claimed he had previously been violent with Estrella - leading them to disapprove of the romance. ‌ Their turbulent relationship had lasted about three years when they decided, seemingly at the last moment, to get married. After the ceremony on 11 May at Chicago City Hall, the couple invited their family and pals to join them for a celebratory dinner, before splurging on a limousine to travel to a nightclub in the North Side. The couple left at about 4am to go home - and Estrella was never seen alive again. ‌ Driving in Arnoldo's black 2006 Maserati, the couple is thought to have got into a serious argument. Arnoldo is alleged to have stabbed Estrella multiple times before dragging her inside her apartment and dumping her body in the bath. Eventually, Estrella's family became worried, with the new bride failing to come to collect her two young children, who had been staying with them. Initially, they are said to have gone to straight to Estrella's home, but had no answer. They then called the authorities and asked police to conduct a wellness check, which saw Estrella's body finally discovered in her home at 3.30pm on 13 May - which had no sign of forced entry. ‌ Arnoldo is reported to have called his sister crying the night that he killed Estrella, saying that he - who stands at 6 feet tall and weighed 220lbs - had left his new wife bleeding, after a "bad fight". Arnoldo's brother, Humberto Jimenez, was under investigation for drug dealing at the time of Estrella's murder, so federal agents had been listening in on his phone calls. Humberto was heard, the day that his new sister-in-law's body was found, telling someone "there's been an emergency" and referring to a "huge problem" - per the Chicago Tribune. ‌ Not only that, but during a search of his home related to drug dealing, Arnoldo's luxury car was found partially hidden - though it showed signs someone had attempted to clean it and cover up evidence, there was still a "plethora" of material for the investigators to use in their case against Arnoldo. Despite discovering the car, Arnoldo himself was nowhere to be found. With his parents living in Mexico, it was long suspected that he had fled Illinois and gone there to hide from the consequences of his actions. However, it would be nearly 13 years before he was ever captured. Arnoldo spent over a decade on the run before being arrested in Monterrey, Mexico on January 30 2025. He has been charged with first-degree murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, and he has been held in custody in Mexico until he is extradited back to the US. Arnoldo made the 'Most Wanted' list in 2019, and there was a £250,000 award on his head

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store