BEAUTIFUL Jeanette Ralston, 24, was letting her hair down with pals at a local bar while her six-year-old son, Allen, was safely tucked up in bed.
But tragically, the mum-of-one never made it home to her baby. She was found strangled, sexually assaulted and wedged into the back seat of her own car.
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Jeanette was last seen alive leaving the Lion’s Den bar in San Jose, California with an unidentified man just before midnight on January 31 1977.
She told pals that she’d be back in 10 minutes.
The following day, her body was discovered dead in the back of her Volkswagen Beetle in a carport near the bar.
A medical examiner determined that she had been strangled with the long-sleeve shirt that was found wound around her neck.
The cold-blooded killer then tried to set Jeanette’s car on fire, but it failed to burn.
He got away with the slaying for nearly five decades.
Willie Eugene Sims, 69, was arrested two weeks ago and charged with the brutal murder of Jeanette in January 1977, according to Santa Clara County prosecutors.
The Ohio man was finally linked to the crime through a cigarette pack in Jeanette’s VW Beetle.
The breakthrough came last August when police made the decision to retest fingerprints on the cigarette packet, despite testing from years prior not linking anyone to the cold case.
But Santa Clara Deputy District Attorney Rob Baker said that his office decided to “throw a Hail Mary” after the FBI updated its fingerprint database’s search algorithm.
“Just about a year ago, I was like, ‘hey, let’s run those prints again to see if we get lucky’,” he told KGO.
To Baker’s astonishment, the fresh search revealed a match for Sims.
Further analysis found Sims’ DNA under Jeanette’s fingernails and on the shirt used to strangle her, according to cops.
Jeanette’s son Allen, who was just six-years-old when his mother was violently taken from him, has expressed gratitude for Sims’ arrest.
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“His birthday is coming up – he said this was such a great birthday present,” Baker said.
“We can’t bring her back, but at least now we can answer some of the questions that have haunted the family and offer them the closure they’ve waited almost 50 years for.”
Allen shared his heartfelt thanks in a social media post, acknowledging the detectives’ tireless work.
He wrote: “You have undoubtedly made a six-year-old kid happy after all these years. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for a job well done.”
Sims has now been arraigned on the murder charge and is due to be extradited to California, where he could face a sentence of 25 years to life behind bars.
