SAN JOSE — Cold-case investigators used a fingerprint from a 1977 pack of cigarettes and a DNA match to implicate an Ohio man in the strangling of a Peninsula woman near a San Jose bar nearly five decades ago, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.
Willie Eugene Sims, 69, is expected to be extradited from Ashtabula County — located about 60 miles east of Cleveland — to the Bay Area to face charges in the killing of 24-year-old San Mateo resident Jeanette Ralston. He was scheduled for arraignment in Ohio on Tuesday, the same day the DA’s office announced Sims’ arrest.
Ralston was last seen alive just before midnight on Jan. 31, 1977, leaving with an unidentified man from the Lion’s Den Bar on Almaden Road. The next day, her body was found wedged in in the back seat of her Volkswagen Beetle, which was in a carport in an apartment complex near the bar, authorities said.
Left, 1977 booking photo of William Sims. Right, SJPD sketch of the suspect in the Ralston murder. (Courtesy of the Santa Clara County DA’s office)
An autopsy determined that Ralston had been strangled with a long-sleeved dress shirt, and that there were signs that she had been sexually assaulted. The crime scene also revealed evidence that someone had unsuccessfully tried to set fire to her car.
The killing became a cold case until the DA’s Cold Case Unit and San Jose homicide detectives revisited the investigation, authorities said. Last August, they examined a fingerprint taken from a pack of Ralston’s cigarettes and matched it to Sims.
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Sims moved out of California decades ago after he was convicted in 1978 of assault to commit murder in Monterey County, where he been stationed at Ford Ord as an Army private. His DNA was not submitted into a state database before he left the state.
Following the reported fingerprint match, DA and SJPD investigators went to Ohio where, while working with law enforcement in Ashtabula County, they obtained a DNA sample from Sims. Earlier this year, an analysis matched Sims to DNA recovered from Ralston’s fingernails and the shirt used to strangle her, authorities said.
“Every day, forensic science grows better, and every day criminals are closer to being caught,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. “Cases may grow old and be forgotten by the public. We don’t forget and we don’t give up.”
If convicted of the murder charge he faces in Santa Clara County, Sims faces up to 25 years to life in prison.
Anyone with information about the cold case can contact the DA’s office at at 408-792-2466 or by email at [email protected].