Using DNA and fingerprints on a pack of Eve cigarettes, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office has charged a 69-year-old Ohio man with the murder of a woman he met in a San Jose bar nearly a half-century ago.
Willie Eugene Sims is accused of strangling Jeanette Ralston to death with a long-sleeve shirt on Feb. 1, 1977.
The defendant was scheduled to be arraigned Monday at noon in Jefferson, Ohio, where he is awaiting extradition to California. If convicted, Sims faces 25-years-to-life in prison.
Prosecutors said in a statement that friends of Ralston said they last saw her alive when she left the Lion’s Den Bar at 1500 Almaden Road in San Jose with an unknown man just before midnight on Jan. 31, 1977.
“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.”
He said the case was solved because of collaboration between the San Jose Police Homicide Unit and the DA’s Cold Case Unit. The Cold Case Unit was established in 2011. Since then, the DA’s Office has solved over 30 cold case murders from as early as 1969.
On Feb. 1, 1977, prosecutor said Ralston, then 24-years-old and living in San Mateo, was found dead, wedged tightly in the back seat of her Volkswagen Beetle in the carport area of an apartment complex near the bar. The medical examiner concluded the cause of death was strangulation from a long-sleeve dress shirt tied around her neck. The autopsy also showed evidence of sexual assault. The killer tried to light her car on fire, but it failed to burn.
No suspects were identified at the time, and the case went cold until a fingerprint found on one of Ralston’s cigarette packs was found to match Sims in August 2024. Sims – an army private assigned to Fort Ord at the time – was convicted in 1978 for an assault to commit murder in Monterey County. Sims moved out of state before his DNA could be entered into CODIS, the state’s DNA database. Earlier this year, DA’s Bureau of Investigation and San Jose Police Department investigators traveled to Ohio to collect a DNA sample from Sims with the assistance of Ashtabula County authorities. Weeks ago, the DA’s Crime Lab found DNA consistent with Sims on Ralston’s fingernails and the shirt used to strangle her.
