An Ohio man has been charged in the decades-old murder of a California woman after authorities linked him to fingerprints found on a cigarette pack in the victim’s Volkswagen Beetle, officials said.
The prints belonged to Willie Eugene Sims, 69, and it was discovered in the car of Jeanette Ralston, 24, in 1977.
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Ralston appeared to have been strangled and sexually assaulted when her body was found wedged into the VW’s back seat on Feb. 1, 1977, near a bar in San Jose, Baker said.
DNA found on Ralston’s fingernails and on the alleged murder weapon — a shirt used to strangle her — was later found to match Sims, Baker said.
Baker said investigators had previously sought to identify the prints through an FBI database. But those efforts had proved futile, he said.
Then, last year, Baker said his office “threw a Hail Mary” and ran the prints again after the FBI updated the search algorithm in the fingerprint database. The effort was successful, he said, and produced a “hit” for Sims, who was living in Ashtabula County, northeast of Cleveland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sx8nokHIIA
I agree with this guy.. You ask why myself and my team work so hard on Zodiac Case.. Listen to this man on this History Channel Special.. He sums it up perfectly..
What he started we finished!
Ben