A single fingerprint on a cigarette pack has led to an arrest in the nearly 50-year-old cold case of a young woman found strangled in the backseat of her car.
Willie Eugene Sims, 69, of Ohio, was taken into custody this week and charged with murder in the January 1977 slaying of 24-year-old Jeanette Ralston, Santa Clara county prosecutors announced Tuesday.
Ralston, a mother-of-one, was last seen alive leaving the Lion’s Den bar in San Jose, California with a previously unidentified man just before midnight on January 31, 1977.