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