May 13, 2025 • 46 mins
Just before midnight on January 31, 1977, Jeanette Ralston leaves the Lion's Den bar in San Jose, California. She never arrives home and the next morning her body is found wedged in the back seat of her VW Beetle in a carport of an apartment complex not far from the bar. She had been strangled and possibly sexually assaulted. Investigators found evidence and a sketch of a possible suspect was done, but the case went unsolved and ran cold. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the murder of this single mom and how investigators eventually located a possible suspect in 2024 using a thumbprint found on a carton of cigarettes at the scene of the crime in 1977.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quty dollars, but Joseph's gotten more. I'm sure that everyone
has heard the term the new car smell. You know
what I'm talking about. It doesn't just apply to cars,
but it applies to homes, newly built homes where you
(00:21):
can still smell that lumber that you've paidands and thousands
of dollars to, are the fixtures that are in the house.
Or if you've ever been in a new camper, for instance,
it's out on a lot and you walk through it,
it has a particular smell. It hasn't been lived in yet.
But cars in particular carry an odor. I guess odor
(00:44):
implies something bad. It's not necessarily bad, other than you think.
It's emblematic of the fact that it's going to depreciate
when you drive it off a lot and you've dumped
thousands of dollars into it. But there's one car in
particular that for me per I can't speak for anybody else.
There's one car in particular that I've had contact with
(01:05):
throughout my life, ever since I was a weed little
guy up until this point, that always had a very
distinctive smell to it. It's a particular brand, it was
designed and manufactured originally in Germany, and it has I
don't know it has connections to the Nazi Party. What
(01:28):
I'm talking about is the Volkswagen Beetle. The Beetle has
a particular smell to it when you get into it.
I don't know what it is, I really don't, but
there's just something about it, and it's an interesting little car.
I was always fascinated by it because Kimmy, my wife,
she'd always wanted a convertible super Beetle, and she says
(01:50):
that she always wanted one because she thought they were cute,
and she said they drive like go karts, and they
kind of do. And she only wants annual transmission in
this thing. Right. I've been in them and throughout my life,
and they always have that interesting smell. And for a
long time they were probably the most affordable vehicle that
(02:12):
many people could go out and purchase. Maybe a single mom,
a mom that maybe didn't have two Nichols to rub together,
a single mom that had a six year old son
that was I guess probably born when she was nineteen
(02:32):
years old. A single mom who would on a cold
February morning back in nineteen seventy seven be found dead
stuffed into the floorboard of the back seat of her
VW Beetle. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body backs.
(03:00):
They you've either got you've got to confirm to me
or just dismissed me one way or another. First off,
had you ever been in a VW Beetle?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Funny you should ask that, Joe. I don't know if
it's generational for our age group or whatever, but yeah,
I had a vo Okay, it was a sixty nine
and I love that car. I found a later on
when I bought a Bradley GT Kickart to put on it.
But yeah, I know my way around to a VW Beetle.
And in today's case, we're talking about a cold case
(03:30):
dating back in nineteen seventy seven. It's the cold case
murder of Janette Ralston, twenty five year old single mom.
Her son was six years old at the time of
her death. She was found after being strangled and possibly
sexually assaulted. Her body was wedged in the back seat
of that VW Beetle, and you know, the back seat
comes loose because that's where the battery is. And I'm
(03:52):
wondering if that had something to do with how she
was wedged in there. But it's a sad story that
actually opens up an incredible story of investigators Joe and
how they go about collecting evidence and how long it
took for this particular case to actually get solved and
(04:13):
it came down to a thumbprint. It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Before we get into the specifics of this case, let's
go back in time a bit and kind of look
at where we were in nineteen seventy seven. Listen, the
seventy seven was not the dark ages of forensics. Okay,
people look at us now with all of the whiz
(04:38):
bangs as I like to say that we have, and
the new technology and all these sorts of things, and
I think many people, particularly those that are not in
the field teaching in the field, those people might turn
up their noses almost look like, you know, look at
those individuals back then that were almost like in terms
of well, there were cave men, you know, unsophisticated. They
(05:01):
really weren't. They had an appreciation. They did have an
appreciation for things like trace evidence. Okay, they had an
appreciation for fingerprints, okay, because that was kind of your
life's blood, no pun intended. We didn't have DNA, it's
before those days. But what we did have was zerology,
(05:24):
and zerology is a division within a forensic lab that
still exists, but it is the wellspring from which DNA springs. Okay,
so if you think about zerology, let me kind of
break it down for you what a erology section would
do in a forensic lab. They're going to look at
various bodily fluids. Okay, some of these are kind of disgusting,
(05:46):
but we'll run through them real quick. Number one at
the top of the heap is blood. And back then
we couldn't do DNA. It had no forensic application back
in seventy seven. But what they would do is they
would do blood typing, okay, and try to determine what
your specific blood type was, and if you were lucky,
(06:09):
you might find somebody that had a specific trait within
their blood. I think probably the biggest category for that
kind of trait that you might want to look for
is like sickle cell, for instance, And there are other
things you know that you can look for when you're
examining blood that's left behind. So we've got blood, I
(06:34):
think next we've got semen. And I don't mean sailors.
We've got semen, which plays into two of these flew as.
I'm going to mention where a certain percentage of the
population are secrets and what secrets. What that means is
that if you have a jaculate that you can collect
(06:56):
with a rape kit, that portion of the population that
are secrets and that ejaculate that you can get per
rape kit might actually have RBC's in red blood cells
and same thing with saliva as well, and so if
(07:17):
you can find the saliva, if you can find ejaculate,
then there's a changing type of blood with that as well.
And it's also a specific identifier because if you look
at the secretor population, you couple that with a specific
blood type, then you've already narrowed down your field. But
that is about as far as we could go. Now,
(07:39):
the other things that specifically you can I guess you know,
they'll probably do a little bit with urine. But you know,
one of the one of the more discussing things they
deal with as feces. And one of the things about
feces is that first off, when feces passes through the body,
(08:00):
and this is one of the things that you test
for now relative to DNA, the epithelial cells from the
interior of the bowel, you know, from the walls bowel
or actually ripped away, you know, with every bowel movement.
Now they replicate, but it rips away, and you'll find
evidence of that within the feces. Okay. And you know
(08:22):
with feces also you're looking for food stuffs that might
be identified. Those sorts of things a really disgusting job.
It's not something that hey, what did you do today
at work? Dad, Well, I looked at stool samples all
day long or whatever the case might be. Unidentified stool samples.
Wouldn't that be wouldn't that be lovely? So that tip
of the cap to the people in soroology. But you
know that's really a crappy job. Yeah, exactly, put ump on,
(08:45):
you'll be here all week. Try the veal uh and
uh you have that. And then the technology coupled with
fingerprints as well. Now, fingerprints are a bit more specific,
aren't they, because you know they say, you know, everybody
has unique fingerprints. By the way, I know I've mentioned
(09:06):
this before, there's never been a true quantitative worldwide study
to verify that. Okay, And you can go back and
check check some of the studies that were done during
the Obama administration relative to the excellence in I can't
remember the name of the act, but it was one
of the things that went forward that kind of diminished
(09:28):
bite mark evidence and those sorts of things. And they
were they were examining fingerprints and the science of fingerprints.
How do we come to this conclusion that everybody accepts
as common scientific knowledge that no two sets of prints
are identical unless you're identical twins. Okay, so it is
a unique identifier, you can say that, but it's not
(09:51):
as unique as a genetic profile. But hey, look it's
the best they had, you know, to deal with. Let
me add one.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Thing, Joe, because you and I have both are children
of TV, and when we were growing up on television,
the detective shows, you know, putting the case together, following
the evidence, there was always somebody that was on the
cutting edge of the latest technology. So whether it was
nineteen fifty seven, sixty seven, seventy seven, or eighty seven
(10:19):
when we finally got to have DNA in a case,
they were using cutting edge material to find the latest
purp and it. Because we don't know what's next right now,
we think we're the end all be all with this
particular we're not what next next. It could be that
we find out that the ear hair, you know, or
that an eyebrow hair or something actually identifies everything. I mean,
(10:42):
we don't know what's next. But back then you mentioned
it wasn't the dark ages. We had detectives who knew
how to keep a crime scene clean. Because in this
particular case, Joe, they had to get this evidence and
they had to store it properly, and without a knowledge
of what was going to come. They had to do
(11:03):
some things back then that allowed somebody that wasn't even
born at the time.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Boy, Yeah, you're absolutely right. The people in the case
that we're going to talk about today that examined the
evidence in this case were not even probably a thought
in their parents' minds at that point in time. And
that goes to the police agency, and it goes to
every police agency that can hold onto a case and
(11:34):
that can preserve preserve very fragile biological evidence. And included
in that group is not just say, for instance, a
rape kit. We're talking about fragile fingerprints, which are you know,
it's kind of amazing, you know, one of the most
(11:56):
fascinating things I've seen. I've seen a couple of images
of this. If you've seen the images of the monks,
they would they're not modern day monks. These are monks
that you know from a thousand years ago that were
in some monastery and they were actually translating the Bible,
and they would they have that image where they're sitting
(12:16):
at the desk, there's a single candle burning, and they're
like sitting there and doing that beautiful script and translating
the Bible. And you know they've taken a substance called
ninhydrant and have applied it to pages of these texts,
and Dave, they've raised fingerprints. They're over a thousand years old.
(12:39):
One of the coolest images I ever saw was actually
on the on the relative to monks, and I might
be wrong about that. I think I'm right. A cat
had stepped in an inkwell like nine hundred years ago
and had walked across the pages, and you could still
see the cat, Paul Prince on the page. So many things,
(13:05):
many things that we come in contact with, always leave
a trace, just like the Sage of Sages said many
decades ago ed Mond Lcarte. Every contact does in fact
leave a trace, and in this case, those traces aid
(13:28):
in the capture of a murderer. I like to use
that adage many times that people that destroy lives or
(13:49):
akin to somebody that takes a brick and throws it
through a beautiful, ancient stained glass window, I've never understood it.
I never have. I think that everyone has value. And
with that said, there are many people out there that
have this ability. I think within them. It's not a disability.
(14:14):
It's an ability to completely and totally devalue a human
being and use them for their own sadistic pleasure, and
regardless of the consequences, destroy that individual and throw that
life away, and they start a ripple effect that touches
(14:36):
every single life that that victim's life had touched. And Dave,
I think this case is a shining example of that.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, it's shocking to start off with a twenty four
year old woman with a six year old son and
she just goes out for a night havings and fun
and leaves the place that the Lion's den. You know,
we're talking looking about San Jose, California, the northern part
of the state. You know, do you know the way
to San Jose, although I mean it's an area that
(15:09):
people are familiar with, for ord a military base not
far from where we're talking about today. And you've just
got a young woman in the prime of life. I'm thinking,
you know, what are you doing that stage of life?
You're just out, you know, and you never make it home.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
You mentioned how some people just don't see they look
so differently than the rest of us. I think about
that six year old boy, you know, whose mother didn't
come home, who had to tell him what happened. And then,
by the way, kid, we don't know who did it.
We just know that somebody did it, but we don't
know who. And this case went cold pretty quick. Joe,
they had witnesses and they had you told me by
(15:47):
the drawing. You got to break this down because his friends.
When I was telling Joe, hey man, I've got this,
there's a picture. You know, they actually did have witnesses.
Here's the guy that we saw leave with her at
the same time. And it didn't look like the guy,
but there were similarities to this picture that was drawn
from eyewitness accounts. But they still couldn't locate him. And
you're not talking about Los Angeles or San Francisco. We're
(16:11):
not talking about a population density where you know, you've
got ten people to look like everyone, you know, that
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, yeah, you're talking about San Jose. I mean back
then in particular, I can't speak to San Jose. Now,
I've always envisioned the area's probably populated with really wealthy people.
All of that area is so expensive to live in now.
But back then it wasn't right off posts from ford Word,
which by the way, is shut down I think in
like ninety one or ninety two. But ford Word was
(16:42):
a was a post that had significant people that passed
through there. You know. Colinicswood was actually stationed there during
the Korean War. He taught He was a swimming instructor
in the army and it survived a plane crash actually,
and him and another guy swam ashore and the rest
of the people on the plane were killed. And he
(17:03):
was stationed at ford Ward. I think I might be
mistaken about that. And of course he winds up, you know,
buying a home you know, down the down the coast,
you know, because he was so enamored with with that
area of the country. But Ford Order was eventually closed.
But interestingly enough, it turns out that the suspect that
(17:26):
was involved in this case may have had a connection
to Ford Ord. And I find that quite fascinating, you
know that that this individual because I remember what it
was like to be a young soldier. When you're a
young soldier and you have the ability to go off post.
(17:47):
First off, the n c os are all terrified that
sheugar can get thrown in jail for something. You know,
the idea of what's the old saying, uh uh, don't
add to the population, don't just don't subtract from the population.
Don't get thrown in jail, you know, And that's kind
of the instruction that they give you before you leave.
But it's you know, for those that haven't been in
the military and you get a pass when you can
(18:08):
leave post, it's and you're a young man, it's exciting. Okay,
So you're you're going to go up the road and
literally San Jose is up the road from Fort Ord.
But you know, you never know who's going to be
in the mix in that population down at Fort Ord.
There were interesting people that had been in the army
(18:33):
during the same time period. A little bit before this
but Berkowitz had been in the army, you know, at
the same time that this was going on in seventy seven,
I believe Dahmer was still in the army. So and
you know, did not have a stellar career, as you
can imagine. So yeah, the military produced some interesting characters,
(18:53):
you know, back during that time. And so with that said,
you've got this young mama who is eventually found not
in the parking lot of the lines Den, but it's
a couple of miles away in her vehicle. And I thought,
you know who saw this individual that left right behind her?
(19:15):
And when you look at the sketch, Dave, as you
stated and rightly stated, the sketch doesn't actually look exactly
like the person. But I want everybody to hear me, right,
when it comes to any kind of forensic artistry, you're
not looking to get a spot on match. And when
(19:39):
I say forensic artistry, I'm talking about whether it's hand
drawings or even clay renderings, because I've seen some clay
renderings that were so far off the mark. Do you
remember they used to use them on America's Most Wanted
and they would put that clay rendering up there, and
I remember people saying it doesn't looking thing like him.
(20:02):
But the purpose of this is to try if you're
going to be talking to witnesses and you get information
from them, it might be a specific feature that they
can indicate on this rendering that might spur memories with
other people. You're not doing this to hang it in
(20:24):
a gallery somewhere or say, you know some It's not
like going to an amusement park where they draw the
big heads of you, you know, and they're you know,
the funny the funny characters, yeah, and all that stuff.
It's not like that. That's not the purpose of it.
But they did have a rendering of this individual back then.
They knew that he was an African American. But he
(20:44):
just kind of vanishes into the night. Uh, And they're
left with nothing but this young woman who's found dead
in the back of this VW beetle and she's stuffed
down the floor. But I can tell you this, when
when the police began to work this this case, when
(21:07):
they opened the door of that car and peered in,
what they saw was horrific because you can imagine, I mean,
you've owned a beetle. It takes some effort. First off,
to get your legs behind the seat. Can you imagine
how much more effort it takes to stuff a body
(21:27):
down in this, you know, down in here, even if
you were going to place a child's body, it's a
grown woman. And when they began to examine her, Dave,
she actually had a red dress with sleeves tied around
her neck. And we don't know the specifics relative to
the sexual assault. You know, one of the things you
(21:49):
look for in sexual assault first off, and I know
this is her other obvious, but it's it's the disruption
of like the undergarments, you know, because let's just say
she had on a skirt. If the panties are misaligned anyway,
if they're torn, if they're twisted. That's why you have
to be very careful before you move the body, because
(22:09):
you don't want to disrupt the pristine condition of the body.
Because if he has pulled the panties off of her
and raped her, which is kind of being implied, I
don't know if they found the underwear they or not,
but when this occurs, you have to observe the body
in its pristine condition or you're going to lose everything completely.
(22:31):
You're going to lose context is what's going to occur.
The thought is is for me, at least if she
was in fact assaulted, it would have had as difficult
as it would have been. She would have had to
have been assaulted I think, probably in the backseat of
that car, if it did take place in the car,
if not, maybe adjacent to the car itself on the outside,
(22:54):
because remember, her car was not in the parking lot
of the place that they saw her leave. It was
in another location. Had this perpetrator identified a spot that
they thought was kind of sequestered away from prying eyes.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
In this one, it was in a carport area of
an apartment complex, Joe in it covered carport area. So yeah,
there would be at night and you're talking about after
midnight in the early morning hours, okay, because they left
right before midnight and she's founded early the next day.
So yeah, and that would be and it would be
a place where you could go without being seen apartment And.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
What else does that tell us about the perpetrator? Well,
I don't know for me. If you have that kind
of specificity about the location of a body that lends
itself to as an investigator to you again to think
that this individual had familiarity with the area. I often wonder,
(23:55):
I truly do these cases that I've worked over the
years involving sexuals salt. Obviously, not all sexual assault victims die,
Okay in my world they do, because I'm in medical
legal death investigation. I'm not a rape a rape cop, Okay.
So how many other people had this subject, perhaps it
(24:21):
had sexual contact with violent sexual contact with that that
were so afraid they never came forward, They were so
drunk or inebriated they never came forward. Because I think
that this individual would probably be a predator. And if
you're if you're the wolf circling, circling the flock, we're
(24:43):
you going to look Are you going to look out
in the bright sunshine? No, You're going to go to
a place where people have imbibed a bit in alcohol.
Some in this location may have imbibed in drugs. But
their guard is going to be down, and you wait,
You sit outside the herd, and you wait until one
(25:04):
decides to leave. Somebody you've identified, maybe you've seen that
individual take a couple of drinks, maybe their guard is down,
maybe you made eye contact with them, but you know
your moment is at hand as they begin to walk
out the door, and you follow them and then you
rape and murder them. Dave, I know that you have
(25:43):
mentioned that our victim here is twenty four and she's single,
mom's got a six year old son. Can you tell
us anything else about her at all?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Her name is Janette Ralston and her you know, we
mentioned twenty four years old. You mentioned that, you you know,
eighteen nineteen when she had her son, young woman, and
we know there were witnesses that saw the man leave
either with or behind her. Generally speaking, they were at
the same time. We don't know enough information to say
(26:15):
that they connected there and left together. We don't know that.
We just know that she was known to people in
that establishment, they didn't know him. And we know that
her car was found a couple of miles away from
the lions Den Bar in an apartment complex parking area.
(26:36):
Carport is what it was described as, and her body
was wedged in the back seat, which, again going back
to the Volkswagen Beatle Joe, if you're wedged in that
back seat, people can't see you. If you're trying to
hide a body, that's where you hide it because you
can barely see into them on a good day. Now
you're talking about stuffing a very small body in there
(26:57):
after you have taken the life out of it.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
And ye.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Then this individual, Joe, the suspect, tried to light the
car on fire. That also tells me that he had
an area, he had enough time, because that's not something
you can do if you're worried about somebody walking up,
you can't sit there and try to light something on fire.
You know, there were enough attempts at setting this vehicle
(27:21):
on fire that he left the remainders behind, but it
never took fire. It didn't catch on.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
The cars aren't exactly good fuel. A lot of people
watch movies and things and they think that cars blow up,
and they do. I've actually seen it happen on the
highway and it's terrifying. You know, when you see a
car that's on fire, you've ever seen one on the
side of the road, it's like fully engulfed. I was
out on a scene one night and there was a
(27:47):
multi car accident and one of the cars that had
been involved. There was not a fatality. The person who
had been evacuated and injured. That car actually sparked up
while I was standing there and exploded, and it was
a terrifying moment, you know, And I'm like kneeling over
a dead body in the middle of like I think
I was like I two eighty five going around Atlanta,
(28:09):
which is a slaughterhouse anyway, particularly at night because people
drop so fast. But yeah, cars do not burn very well,
contrary to what you see in movies. You have to
help this thing along. So it's not going to be
something that's just going to be like kindling that's going
to go up. And I could see how somebody could
get frustrated.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I was shot fairy where he was trying to light
it on fire. I mean, yeah, air cooled engine, you know,
so it's in the back. Yeah, the gas tank is
in the front passenger side. Yeah, that's where you had
the nozzle for it. Anyway, at least my beetle was.
I had sixty nine beetle as her mine was. And
the first day I had it, I broke the latch.
I didn't know there was an interior latch to let
it out. You know, you had the release latch on
(28:49):
the inside.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, yeah, this car, it was used and it had
a fresh paint job. It looked awesome. Okay, a sixty
nine beetle. It looked awesome. Joe and I couldn't get
the gas thing to open. It wouldn't open. It had
the latch, but nobody told me there was a latch,
so I had to get a screwdraar. I thought they
painted this thing shut, hopped it with the screw doer.
The first day I had it and broke.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
It, and you snapped it, yep, And think about it.
Those latches are very fragile. But in this case, you know,
you're talking about the interior of the car. I'm actually
looking at crum scene image right now, when when they
were at the scene they had snapped they had snapped
an image of Jeanette's car. And one of the things
that really struck me about this, particularly with this image,
(29:30):
you can see her personal belongings, and I'm talking about
like her purse, a carton of cigarettes, some other items.
It looks like there's some red cloth there. All of
that stuff. Dave has been jammed forward of the driver's seat.
And what the significance of this is is that these
(29:53):
items were probably in the back seat and the perpetrator
had to make room for it. So these are all
jammed onto the floorboard forward of the two seats in
the front to make room for whatever activity was being
engaged in the back. I think that we can conclude
that it was sexual assault and subsequent strangulation, or it
(30:18):
could have been sexual assault while strangulation was going on.
The police are saying she was actually choked to death
or strangled with a ligature that was created out of
a piece of clothing, which is kind of interesting. That
gives us another indicator about the perpetrator that he did
(30:38):
not show up prepared. The sum of these perpetrators like
to use their bare hands because there's a tactile thing
to it where they can actually touch the skin of
the other person. This individual chose not to do that,
but chose to use a ligature made out of a
piece of cloth or clothing and do this. But I
(30:58):
want to jump back to something real quick. The generation
that exists now doesn't know much about marketing of cigarettes.
Do you remember when we were kids and you see
the Marlboro Men on television? Tom Selik was actually a
Marlboro Man. I think Sam Elliott was a Marlboro Man. No,
he was in the movie as a Marlborough Man. Thank
(31:19):
You for Thank You for Smoking, I think is the name.
Great movie, by the way, But they marketed cigarettes to
specific groups in this case. In this case, Jeanette had
a carton of cigarettes in her car that were called
Eve Eve. Now this is specific marketing. These and Virginia Slims.
(31:47):
Virginia Slims and eve Eve's. I think they still make
I don't know if they still make Eves or not.
I have to look the next time I go to
the convenience store. But with Virginia Slim those cigarettes are
actually marketed to women, and that winds up being crucial
in this case, Dave, because on the surface of one
(32:11):
of these packs of cigarettes, and if anyone out there
has never smoked before, if you look at a pack
of cigarettes, they used to come wrapped in cell a phane,
and so you would have either the soft pack or
the box box pack inside of the carton. Most of
the time it'd be a soft pack, and those would
(32:32):
actually be wrapped in sulfane. Well, what a cell phane
cellfhane is It creates a smooth, non poor surface. So
if you touch that with your finger, all right, maybe
you're you're moving it because when you see I can
actually see the carton of Eves cigarettes on the floorboard.
(32:52):
If he grabbed that carton and happened to stick his
finger or his thumb inside of the pack, he could
touch one of the packets of cigarettes in there. Well,
what happens you leave behind an unseen print otherwise known
as a latent print. And Dave the San jose A
Police Department actually preserved that fingerprint. We always talked about
(33:16):
how fragile DNA is. How could they fingerprints are equally fragile?
Speaker 2 (33:20):
How I before we began this, I told you I
made a note because I was shocked that we're talking
fifty years here, Joe, we're talking. This is Inuary, January
thirty first, nineteen seventy seven. I mean we're talking. You
make me feel like dancing by Leo Sayer and Rose Royce,
(33:41):
you know, car wash or the top of two songs.
And that's when this thumb print was left on the
thumbpress cigarettes, right, And yet they have the ability to
save it so that all these years later, a six
year old boy who's now a grown man, well actually
(34:01):
know on this Mother's Day who was responsible for taking
his mother from him. The foresight that just and then
whatever they got from under her fingernails. Joe, you have
to explain to me what they had to do that
it could be used all these years later.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah, and it would appear that San Jose Police Department,
relative to Jeanette's case, really paid attention here. They were
able to retain this fingerprint and there's an interesting story
that goes along with this, by the way, and preserve
it to the point where it was still readable or
(34:42):
they had dusted it initially and still had that laytent
on file, but they didn't get a hit on it.
Then at autopsy, when they were examining Jeanette's body, they
did fingernail scrapings and clippings on her, which is something
that that we have done for years and years and years,
(35:04):
knowing that if you can't get a specific identity, you
can at least be able to say, well, she had
physical contact with the perpetrator and actually probably scratched him
or dug her fingernails into his face or his neck,
either way, when she scratched this individual and came away
(35:29):
with probably skin maybe blood underneath her fingernails. When they
trim those and clip them, they put them into they
put them into a piece of paper. And for folks
that have never seen this, and you can look these
up online and you can actually see what it looks
like they would have clipped the nails. Nowadays, nail clipping
(35:55):
kits come with a brand new pair of clippers, nail
clippers with every that okay, they're stainless. Still looks like
the ones you go to you know, CBS or Walgreens
and by but you don't use them over again. You
dispose of them. But you clip the nails with these.
But before you do that, there's a little stick that
(36:16):
you scrape under the nails with. So you scrape and
then you clip, You scrape, you clip, you scrape, your clip,
and each one of these, like if it's your left
pinky finger, you would do each one of these little
pieces of paper I'm talking about. It looks like a
if you've ever taken a powdered powdered headache medication like
(36:37):
BC or Goodies or anything these things, and they use
a drugist fold for those. That's what the paper looks like.
And so you trim that nail on the ento the
surface of that little packet, you fold it up, you
secure it, and you label it say, if it's the
left hand, you go left small finger okay, so to
be L s F okay. And then so you go
(37:01):
down the line, you collect each digit, I mean each
finger itself individually, and you keep them all in their
priscine condition, and so you've got so it's really kind
of cool because if you come away with a left hand,
you don't have anything. Okay, you come away with the
right hand, you can deduce that she was only contacting
(37:23):
him with the right hand. You don't want to get
them combined. That's why it's really important that you keep
them separate. And that's actually what they did all of
these years later. I mean we're literally one year removed
from the Nation's Boss Centennial where everybody's walking around wearing red,
white and blue or remember that, and that's how long
ago this was. But yet they collected all of that
(37:46):
and it turned out to be really you know, a
eureka moment, you know, for this case that you mentioned
went cold really quickly, even though they had a latent
print on what they thought might be the perpetrator. Do
it fills in a little bit on who the suspect is.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Dave, Well, you know you mentioned they get the thing.
They get the thumb print early on. They know they
have it, they have a suspect. They don't know that
it's a killer. They found it on a carton of
cigarettes for crying out loud and telling whose dumb it?
You know, it could have been the person who's sold it.
They don't know that it's just again, it's just possibilities.
But they try matching it up with what they have
(38:28):
at the time, and nothing comes back. So the case
does go cold quickly, sadly, and it's kind of strange
the way this worked out. In August of last year,
they decide they being these detectives are still running this case.
It is cold, but they're still running it now. In
twenty eleven, the homicide unit in San Jose set up
(38:50):
a cold case unit. Yeah, they have spent the last
fourteen to fifteen years breaking cold cases back to nineteen
sixty nine, so they know the drill. So they ran
it again. We got a thumbprint, let's run it. Let's
see if we can get a hit. Didn't get a
hit back then maybe now. Come to find out, they
(39:10):
do get a hit. The guy that actually matched the
thumb print had well. We mentioned fort orbe earlier a
military base. The suspect thumb the thumb print that came
back to nothing in nineteen seventy seven. Oddly enough, they
ran it again and it didn't come up. They've run
it a couple of different times. The suspect here, They
(39:33):
got up with him in twenty twenty four when they
got a hit. He's in Ohio now, he's sixty nine
years old. Eugene Simms, a sixty nine year old African
American man in Ohio. His thumbprint matches, and so again
it's just a suspect Joe. He didn't come up at
the time, don't know. But then they run Eugene Sims
(39:56):
and find out, hey, wait a minute, this thumb match
and this guy, well, he was at Fort or back
in nineteen seventy seven. He was a private in the
military and lo and behold. A year after this assault
sex well, sexual assault murder, he was actually arrested, charged
(40:20):
and sent to prison for an assault and attempted murder.
Now he left the state of California. He was imprisoned
in California. He left the state before they actually took
DNA samplying. I don't know what year had started there,
but he left before then.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
It was many years after. But I think that it's
tell me again, how far how seventy four miles seven
from the distance from where Jeanette was killed and this
other assault took place? Correct, Yeah, less than an hour
and a half seventy five mins. Less than one hundred miles,
Joe boy, I tell you, yeah, I'll tell you what.
(40:56):
It really makes my because you know, you know who
was active during the time. You know who I thought
about when you mentioned this with San Jose and starting
the cold case thing. This is just south and for
some reason, I have a memory of San Jose being
involved in this. This is just south of where the
Golden State Killer was working. Yeah, and you know, and
(41:18):
I'm I'm thinking, you know, I'm thinking to my friend
Paul Hols that works with AUTHORM. Now I was thinking, Hm,
you begin to think about was this guy also active
out there? Because I'd like to look at his at
his military jacket to see, first off, when did he
(41:39):
show up at ford Ord, how long had he been there,
what was his job at ford Ord? And what kind
of trouble had he gotten into, if any? If any
he may not have while he was on active duty,
and the fact that he was in the lock up
for this other which is an equally horrible crime, absent
at the murder, and he leaves man and apparently he
(42:02):
just stays off of the radar.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Well, you mentioned you said this before we started. You
said it to me, he said, Dave, can you imagine
what it was like. The guy's in jail up there,
He's in prison for four years. He's waiting every day,
he's waiting for them to come and say you're not
getting out, you know, but they didn't. He's in the system,
he's in jail, and yet he's allowed to leave. I'm
(42:25):
not blaming anybody for this. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
We can we know, and let me just that's like,
let me give you an image of what I'm thinking about.
And it's selling.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
It's like he's you know, he's not telling anybody, he's
not I'm shut.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
I have visions of him with a brown paper back
with all of his earthly belongings wrapped in it. They
take him to the main gate. He throws this under
his arm and he starts to quickly walk away. When
he is finally let go from the prison, and you know,
thinking looking over his shoulder because that that's a key time, right,
(43:01):
because they might not tell you they're coming after you.
There's literally somebody. Can you imagine, They let him do
us four years, right, they let him do his four years.
And there's a car. They've worked a lead on this thing,
and they think that it's him. There's a car that
begins to slowly kind of track him while he's walking
down the sidewalk to go get on a bus or
whatever the hell they did with these people, and all
(43:23):
of a sudden they pull up and they say, come here.
They badge him. We want to talk to you about
this case, this case out of San Jose. And it
didn't happen. This guy, unlike Jeanette, got to go on
living his life, Dave. He lived a full life in
(43:44):
the whole grand scheme of things a lot longer than
this young woman did. Now what happened, because the reason
we're covering this is that they've recently, i mean like
really recently hooked him up, haven't they?
Speaker 2 (43:55):
In this week? Well it's going on right now. Actually
they know, as you mentioned last August, they ran the
thumb print and it came back to this guy and
not this guy Eugene Simms, sixty nine years old in Ohio.
They then sent a team out there to get DNA,
got a sample, and it came back to what they
found under her fingernails. And that's why I was That's
(44:16):
why I was so caught up in how they were
able to keep this evidence viable, because what the thumb
print is not enough A thumb print, he you know
what I mean, that's it puts you around it, But
that's not enough. That's just enough to move somewhere around
the cart and the cigarettes.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Well, yeah, you can ask him questions all you want.
And this guy's this guy's an ex con, right, the
thing's retaining that knowledge for being an x con. He'll
keep his mouth shut and you won't. You won't get
peep out of him after that. But the tie back
to the DNA is the is the key here. There
was one thought that that had crossed my mind about
(44:55):
this case, interestingly enough, and that the authorities have talked
about this. In twenty eighteen, the FBI that actually manages
the National Fingerprint Database, which is as you can imagine, vast,
(45:15):
they upgraded the algorithm on this thing. And so it
was after twenty eighteen they decided to plug this thumbprint
in and all those years before, and now keep in mind,
he had been in the system, Dave, He's been in
the state pen in California. He's in the system. They
never got a hit, but yet they adjusted the algorithm
(45:37):
on their system to read prints and they get a
hit on this guy. And so that's again, I love
to use the image of the proverbial thread on the
sweater that's pulled. They pulled it with that, and when
they pulled it, the whole charade, everything that lie that
this monster had been living all these years with a
(46:02):
ghost in the memory of a beautiful young mother dead
long long ago, that he never thought he would be
held responsible for. Now he's on a journey. He's on
a journey that soon will start where he will be
extradited from Ohio and he's going to stand tall, not
(46:22):
in a military uniform, but he's going to be standing
tall before judge and they're going to formally charge him
and they are going to try him and maybe, just maybe, Jeannette,
we'll finally get some justice. I'm Josep Scott Morgan and
this is Bodybacks
Quty dollars, but Joseph's gotten more. I'm sure that everyone
has heard the term the new car smell. You know
what I'm talking about. It doesn't just apply to cars,
but it applies to homes, newly built homes where you
(00:21):
can still smell that lumber that you've paidands and thousands
of dollars to, are the fixtures that are in the house.
Or if you've ever been in a new camper, for instance,
it's out on a lot and you walk through it,
it has a particular smell. It hasn't been lived in yet.
But cars in particular carry an odor. I guess odor
(00:44):
implies something bad. It's not necessarily bad, other than you think.
It's emblematic of the fact that it's going to depreciate
when you drive it off a lot and you've dumped
thousands of dollars into it. But there's one car in
particular that for me per I can't speak for anybody else.
There's one car in particular that I've had contact with
(01:05):
throughout my life, ever since I was a weed little
guy up until this point, that always had a very
distinctive smell to it. It's a particular brand, it was
designed and manufactured originally in Germany, and it has I
don't know it has connections to the Nazi Party. What
(01:28):
I'm talking about is the Volkswagen Beetle. The Beetle has
a particular smell to it when you get into it.
I don't know what it is, I really don't, but
there's just something about it, and it's an interesting little car.
I was always fascinated by it because Kimmy, my wife,
she'd always wanted a convertible super Beetle, and she says
(01:50):
that she always wanted one because she thought they were cute,
and she said they drive like go karts, and they
kind of do. And she only wants annual transmission in
this thing. Right. I've been in them and throughout my life,
and they always have that interesting smell. And for a
long time they were probably the most affordable vehicle that
(02:12):
many people could go out and purchase. Maybe a single mom,
a mom that maybe didn't have two Nichols to rub together,
a single mom that had a six year old son
that was I guess probably born when she was nineteen
(02:32):
years old. A single mom who would on a cold
February morning back in nineteen seventy seven be found dead
stuffed into the floorboard of the back seat of her
VW Beetle. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body backs.
(03:00):
They you've either got you've got to confirm to me
or just dismissed me one way or another. First off,
had you ever been in a VW Beetle?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Funny you should ask that, Joe. I don't know if
it's generational for our age group or whatever, but yeah,
I had a vo Okay, it was a sixty nine
and I love that car. I found a later on
when I bought a Bradley GT Kickart to put on it.
But yeah, I know my way around to a VW Beetle.
And in today's case, we're talking about a cold case
(03:30):
dating back in nineteen seventy seven. It's the cold case
murder of Janette Ralston, twenty five year old single mom.
Her son was six years old at the time of
her death. She was found after being strangled and possibly
sexually assaulted. Her body was wedged in the back seat
of that VW Beetle, and you know, the back seat
comes loose because that's where the battery is. And I'm
(03:52):
wondering if that had something to do with how she
was wedged in there. But it's a sad story that
actually opens up an incredible story of investigators Joe and
how they go about collecting evidence and how long it
took for this particular case to actually get solved and
(04:13):
it came down to a thumbprint. It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Before we get into the specifics of this case, let's
go back in time a bit and kind of look
at where we were in nineteen seventy seven. Listen, the
seventy seven was not the dark ages of forensics. Okay,
people look at us now with all of the whiz
(04:38):
bangs as I like to say that we have, and
the new technology and all these sorts of things, and
I think many people, particularly those that are not in
the field teaching in the field, those people might turn
up their noses almost look like, you know, look at
those individuals back then that were almost like in terms
of well, there were cave men, you know, unsophisticated. They
(05:01):
really weren't. They had an appreciation. They did have an
appreciation for things like trace evidence. Okay, they had an
appreciation for fingerprints, okay, because that was kind of your
life's blood, no pun intended. We didn't have DNA, it's
before those days. But what we did have was zerology,
(05:24):
and zerology is a division within a forensic lab that
still exists, but it is the wellspring from which DNA springs. Okay,
so if you think about zerology, let me kind of
break it down for you what a erology section would
do in a forensic lab. They're going to look at
various bodily fluids. Okay, some of these are kind of disgusting,
(05:46):
but we'll run through them real quick. Number one at
the top of the heap is blood. And back then
we couldn't do DNA. It had no forensic application back
in seventy seven. But what they would do is they
would do blood typing, okay, and try to determine what
your specific blood type was, and if you were lucky,
(06:09):
you might find somebody that had a specific trait within
their blood. I think probably the biggest category for that
kind of trait that you might want to look for
is like sickle cell, for instance, And there are other
things you know that you can look for when you're
examining blood that's left behind. So we've got blood, I
(06:34):
think next we've got semen. And I don't mean sailors.
We've got semen, which plays into two of these flew as.
I'm going to mention where a certain percentage of the
population are secrets and what secrets. What that means is
that if you have a jaculate that you can collect
(06:56):
with a rape kit, that portion of the population that
are secrets and that ejaculate that you can get per
rape kit might actually have RBC's in red blood cells
and same thing with saliva as well, and so if
(07:17):
you can find the saliva, if you can find ejaculate,
then there's a changing type of blood with that as well.
And it's also a specific identifier because if you look
at the secretor population, you couple that with a specific
blood type, then you've already narrowed down your field. But
that is about as far as we could go. Now,
(07:39):
the other things that specifically you can I guess you know,
they'll probably do a little bit with urine. But you know,
one of the one of the more discussing things they
deal with as feces. And one of the things about
feces is that first off, when feces passes through the body,
(08:00):
and this is one of the things that you test
for now relative to DNA, the epithelial cells from the
interior of the bowel, you know, from the walls bowel
or actually ripped away, you know, with every bowel movement.
Now they replicate, but it rips away, and you'll find
evidence of that within the feces. Okay. And you know
(08:22):
with feces also you're looking for food stuffs that might
be identified. Those sorts of things a really disgusting job.
It's not something that hey, what did you do today
at work? Dad, Well, I looked at stool samples all
day long or whatever the case might be. Unidentified stool samples.
Wouldn't that be wouldn't that be lovely? So that tip
of the cap to the people in soroology. But you
know that's really a crappy job. Yeah, exactly, put ump on,
(08:45):
you'll be here all week. Try the veal uh and
uh you have that. And then the technology coupled with
fingerprints as well. Now, fingerprints are a bit more specific,
aren't they, because you know they say, you know, everybody
has unique fingerprints. By the way, I know I've mentioned
(09:06):
this before, there's never been a true quantitative worldwide study
to verify that. Okay, And you can go back and
check check some of the studies that were done during
the Obama administration relative to the excellence in I can't
remember the name of the act, but it was one
of the things that went forward that kind of diminished
(09:28):
bite mark evidence and those sorts of things. And they
were they were examining fingerprints and the science of fingerprints.
How do we come to this conclusion that everybody accepts
as common scientific knowledge that no two sets of prints
are identical unless you're identical twins. Okay, so it is
a unique identifier, you can say that, but it's not
(09:51):
as unique as a genetic profile. But hey, look it's
the best they had, you know, to deal with. Let
me add one.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Thing, Joe, because you and I have both are children
of TV, and when we were growing up on television,
the detective shows, you know, putting the case together, following
the evidence, there was always somebody that was on the
cutting edge of the latest technology. So whether it was
nineteen fifty seven, sixty seven, seventy seven, or eighty seven
(10:19):
when we finally got to have DNA in a case,
they were using cutting edge material to find the latest
purp and it. Because we don't know what's next right now,
we think we're the end all be all with this
particular we're not what next next. It could be that
we find out that the ear hair, you know, or
that an eyebrow hair or something actually identifies everything. I mean,
(10:42):
we don't know what's next. But back then you mentioned
it wasn't the dark ages. We had detectives who knew
how to keep a crime scene clean. Because in this
particular case, Joe, they had to get this evidence and
they had to store it properly, and without a knowledge
of what was going to come. They had to do
(11:03):
some things back then that allowed somebody that wasn't even
born at the time.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Boy, Yeah, you're absolutely right. The people in the case
that we're going to talk about today that examined the
evidence in this case were not even probably a thought
in their parents' minds at that point in time. And
that goes to the police agency, and it goes to
every police agency that can hold onto a case and
(11:34):
that can preserve preserve very fragile biological evidence. And included
in that group is not just say, for instance, a
rape kit. We're talking about fragile fingerprints, which are you know,
it's kind of amazing, you know, one of the most
(11:56):
fascinating things I've seen. I've seen a couple of images
of this. If you've seen the images of the monks,
they would they're not modern day monks. These are monks
that you know from a thousand years ago that were
in some monastery and they were actually translating the Bible,
and they would they have that image where they're sitting
(12:16):
at the desk, there's a single candle burning, and they're
like sitting there and doing that beautiful script and translating
the Bible. And you know they've taken a substance called
ninhydrant and have applied it to pages of these texts,
and Dave, they've raised fingerprints. They're over a thousand years old.
(12:39):
One of the coolest images I ever saw was actually
on the on the relative to monks, and I might
be wrong about that. I think I'm right. A cat
had stepped in an inkwell like nine hundred years ago
and had walked across the pages, and you could still
see the cat, Paul Prince on the page. So many things,
(13:05):
many things that we come in contact with, always leave
a trace, just like the Sage of Sages said many
decades ago ed Mond Lcarte. Every contact does in fact
leave a trace, and in this case, those traces aid
(13:28):
in the capture of a murderer. I like to use
that adage many times that people that destroy lives or
(13:49):
akin to somebody that takes a brick and throws it
through a beautiful, ancient stained glass window, I've never understood it.
I never have. I think that everyone has value. And
with that said, there are many people out there that
have this ability. I think within them. It's not a disability.
(14:14):
It's an ability to completely and totally devalue a human
being and use them for their own sadistic pleasure, and
regardless of the consequences, destroy that individual and throw that
life away, and they start a ripple effect that touches
(14:36):
every single life that that victim's life had touched. And Dave,
I think this case is a shining example of that.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, it's shocking to start off with a twenty four
year old woman with a six year old son and
she just goes out for a night havings and fun
and leaves the place that the Lion's den. You know,
we're talking looking about San Jose, California, the northern part
of the state. You know, do you know the way
to San Jose, although I mean it's an area that
(15:09):
people are familiar with, for ord a military base not
far from where we're talking about today. And you've just
got a young woman in the prime of life. I'm thinking,
you know, what are you doing that stage of life?
You're just out, you know, and you never make it home.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
You mentioned how some people just don't see they look
so differently than the rest of us. I think about
that six year old boy, you know, whose mother didn't
come home, who had to tell him what happened. And then,
by the way, kid, we don't know who did it.
We just know that somebody did it, but we don't
know who. And this case went cold pretty quick. Joe,
they had witnesses and they had you told me by
(15:47):
the drawing. You got to break this down because his friends.
When I was telling Joe, hey man, I've got this,
there's a picture. You know, they actually did have witnesses.
Here's the guy that we saw leave with her at
the same time. And it didn't look like the guy,
but there were similarities to this picture that was drawn
from eyewitness accounts. But they still couldn't locate him. And
you're not talking about Los Angeles or San Francisco. We're
(16:11):
not talking about a population density where you know, you've
got ten people to look like everyone, you know, that
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, yeah, you're talking about San Jose. I mean back
then in particular, I can't speak to San Jose. Now,
I've always envisioned the area's probably populated with really wealthy people.
All of that area is so expensive to live in now.
But back then it wasn't right off posts from ford Word,
which by the way, is shut down I think in
like ninety one or ninety two. But ford Word was
(16:42):
a was a post that had significant people that passed
through there. You know. Colinicswood was actually stationed there during
the Korean War. He taught He was a swimming instructor
in the army and it survived a plane crash actually,
and him and another guy swam ashore and the rest
of the people on the plane were killed. And he
(17:03):
was stationed at ford Ward. I think I might be
mistaken about that. And of course he winds up, you know,
buying a home you know, down the down the coast,
you know, because he was so enamored with with that
area of the country. But Ford Order was eventually closed.
But interestingly enough, it turns out that the suspect that
(17:26):
was involved in this case may have had a connection
to Ford Ord. And I find that quite fascinating, you
know that that this individual because I remember what it
was like to be a young soldier. When you're a
young soldier and you have the ability to go off post.
(17:47):
First off, the n c os are all terrified that
sheugar can get thrown in jail for something. You know,
the idea of what's the old saying, uh uh, don't
add to the population, don't just don't subtract from the population.
Don't get thrown in jail, you know, And that's kind
of the instruction that they give you before you leave.
But it's you know, for those that haven't been in
the military and you get a pass when you can
(18:08):
leave post, it's and you're a young man, it's exciting. Okay,
So you're you're going to go up the road and
literally San Jose is up the road from Fort Ord.
But you know, you never know who's going to be
in the mix in that population down at Fort Ord.
There were interesting people that had been in the army
(18:33):
during the same time period. A little bit before this
but Berkowitz had been in the army, you know, at
the same time that this was going on in seventy seven,
I believe Dahmer was still in the army. So and
you know, did not have a stellar career, as you
can imagine. So yeah, the military produced some interesting characters,
(18:53):
you know, back during that time. And so with that said,
you've got this young mama who is eventually found not
in the parking lot of the lines Den, but it's
a couple of miles away in her vehicle. And I thought,
you know who saw this individual that left right behind her?
(19:15):
And when you look at the sketch, Dave, as you
stated and rightly stated, the sketch doesn't actually look exactly
like the person. But I want everybody to hear me, right,
when it comes to any kind of forensic artistry, you're
not looking to get a spot on match. And when
(19:39):
I say forensic artistry, I'm talking about whether it's hand
drawings or even clay renderings, because I've seen some clay
renderings that were so far off the mark. Do you
remember they used to use them on America's Most Wanted
and they would put that clay rendering up there, and
I remember people saying it doesn't looking thing like him.
(20:02):
But the purpose of this is to try if you're
going to be talking to witnesses and you get information
from them, it might be a specific feature that they
can indicate on this rendering that might spur memories with
other people. You're not doing this to hang it in
(20:24):
a gallery somewhere or say, you know some It's not
like going to an amusement park where they draw the
big heads of you, you know, and they're you know,
the funny the funny characters, yeah, and all that stuff.
It's not like that. That's not the purpose of it.
But they did have a rendering of this individual back then.
They knew that he was an African American. But he
(20:44):
just kind of vanishes into the night. Uh, And they're
left with nothing but this young woman who's found dead
in the back of this VW beetle and she's stuffed
down the floor. But I can tell you this, when
when the police began to work this this case, when
(21:07):
they opened the door of that car and peered in,
what they saw was horrific because you can imagine, I mean,
you've owned a beetle. It takes some effort. First off,
to get your legs behind the seat. Can you imagine
how much more effort it takes to stuff a body
(21:27):
down in this, you know, down in here, even if
you were going to place a child's body, it's a
grown woman. And when they began to examine her, Dave,
she actually had a red dress with sleeves tied around
her neck. And we don't know the specifics relative to
the sexual assault. You know, one of the things you
(21:49):
look for in sexual assault first off, and I know
this is her other obvious, but it's it's the disruption
of like the undergarments, you know, because let's just say
she had on a skirt. If the panties are misaligned anyway,
if they're torn, if they're twisted. That's why you have
to be very careful before you move the body, because
(22:09):
you don't want to disrupt the pristine condition of the body.
Because if he has pulled the panties off of her
and raped her, which is kind of being implied, I
don't know if they found the underwear they or not,
but when this occurs, you have to observe the body
in its pristine condition or you're going to lose everything completely.
(22:31):
You're going to lose context is what's going to occur.
The thought is is for me, at least if she
was in fact assaulted, it would have had as difficult
as it would have been. She would have had to
have been assaulted I think, probably in the backseat of
that car, if it did take place in the car,
if not, maybe adjacent to the car itself on the outside,
(22:54):
because remember, her car was not in the parking lot
of the place that they saw her leave. It was
in another location. Had this perpetrator identified a spot that
they thought was kind of sequestered away from prying eyes.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
In this one, it was in a carport area of
an apartment complex, Joe in it covered carport area. So yeah,
there would be at night and you're talking about after
midnight in the early morning hours, okay, because they left
right before midnight and she's founded early the next day.
So yeah, and that would be and it would be
a place where you could go without being seen apartment And.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
What else does that tell us about the perpetrator? Well,
I don't know for me. If you have that kind
of specificity about the location of a body that lends
itself to as an investigator to you again to think
that this individual had familiarity with the area. I often wonder,
(23:55):
I truly do these cases that I've worked over the
years involving sexuals salt. Obviously, not all sexual assault victims die,
Okay in my world they do, because I'm in medical
legal death investigation. I'm not a rape a rape cop, Okay.
So how many other people had this subject, perhaps it
(24:21):
had sexual contact with violent sexual contact with that that
were so afraid they never came forward, They were so
drunk or inebriated they never came forward. Because I think
that this individual would probably be a predator. And if
you're if you're the wolf circling, circling the flock, we're
(24:43):
you going to look Are you going to look out
in the bright sunshine? No, You're going to go to
a place where people have imbibed a bit in alcohol.
Some in this location may have imbibed in drugs. But
their guard is going to be down, and you wait,
You sit outside the herd, and you wait until one
(25:04):
decides to leave. Somebody you've identified, maybe you've seen that
individual take a couple of drinks, maybe their guard is down,
maybe you made eye contact with them, but you know
your moment is at hand as they begin to walk
out the door, and you follow them and then you
rape and murder them. Dave, I know that you have
(25:43):
mentioned that our victim here is twenty four and she's single,
mom's got a six year old son. Can you tell
us anything else about her at all?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Her name is Janette Ralston and her you know, we
mentioned twenty four years old. You mentioned that, you you know,
eighteen nineteen when she had her son, young woman, and
we know there were witnesses that saw the man leave
either with or behind her. Generally speaking, they were at
the same time. We don't know enough information to say
(26:15):
that they connected there and left together. We don't know that.
We just know that she was known to people in
that establishment, they didn't know him. And we know that
her car was found a couple of miles away from
the lions Den Bar in an apartment complex parking area.
(26:36):
Carport is what it was described as, and her body
was wedged in the back seat, which, again going back
to the Volkswagen Beatle Joe, if you're wedged in that
back seat, people can't see you. If you're trying to
hide a body, that's where you hide it because you
can barely see into them on a good day. Now
you're talking about stuffing a very small body in there
(26:57):
after you have taken the life out of it.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
And ye.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Then this individual, Joe, the suspect, tried to light the
car on fire. That also tells me that he had
an area, he had enough time, because that's not something
you can do if you're worried about somebody walking up,
you can't sit there and try to light something on fire.
You know, there were enough attempts at setting this vehicle
(27:21):
on fire that he left the remainders behind, but it
never took fire. It didn't catch on.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
The cars aren't exactly good fuel. A lot of people
watch movies and things and they think that cars blow up,
and they do. I've actually seen it happen on the
highway and it's terrifying. You know, when you see a
car that's on fire, you've ever seen one on the
side of the road, it's like fully engulfed. I was
out on a scene one night and there was a
(27:47):
multi car accident and one of the cars that had
been involved. There was not a fatality. The person who
had been evacuated and injured. That car actually sparked up
while I was standing there and exploded, and it was
a terrifying moment, you know, And I'm like kneeling over
a dead body in the middle of like I think
I was like I two eighty five going around Atlanta,
(28:09):
which is a slaughterhouse anyway, particularly at night because people
drop so fast. But yeah, cars do not burn very well,
contrary to what you see in movies. You have to
help this thing along. So it's not going to be
something that's just going to be like kindling that's going
to go up. And I could see how somebody could
get frustrated.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I was shot fairy where he was trying to light
it on fire. I mean, yeah, air cooled engine, you know,
so it's in the back. Yeah, the gas tank is
in the front passenger side. Yeah, that's where you had
the nozzle for it. Anyway, at least my beetle was.
I had sixty nine beetle as her mine was. And
the first day I had it, I broke the latch.
I didn't know there was an interior latch to let
it out. You know, you had the release latch on
(28:49):
the inside.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, yeah, this car, it was used and it had
a fresh paint job. It looked awesome. Okay, a sixty
nine beetle. It looked awesome. Joe and I couldn't get
the gas thing to open. It wouldn't open. It had
the latch, but nobody told me there was a latch,
so I had to get a screwdraar. I thought they
painted this thing shut, hopped it with the screw doer.
The first day I had it and broke.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
It, and you snapped it, yep, And think about it.
Those latches are very fragile. But in this case, you know,
you're talking about the interior of the car. I'm actually
looking at crum scene image right now, when when they
were at the scene they had snapped they had snapped
an image of Jeanette's car. And one of the things
that really struck me about this, particularly with this image,
(29:30):
you can see her personal belongings, and I'm talking about
like her purse, a carton of cigarettes, some other items.
It looks like there's some red cloth there. All of
that stuff. Dave has been jammed forward of the driver's seat.
And what the significance of this is is that these
(29:53):
items were probably in the back seat and the perpetrator
had to make room for it. So these are all
jammed onto the floorboard forward of the two seats in
the front to make room for whatever activity was being
engaged in the back. I think that we can conclude
that it was sexual assault and subsequent strangulation, or it
(30:18):
could have been sexual assault while strangulation was going on.
The police are saying she was actually choked to death
or strangled with a ligature that was created out of
a piece of clothing, which is kind of interesting. That
gives us another indicator about the perpetrator that he did
(30:38):
not show up prepared. The sum of these perpetrators like
to use their bare hands because there's a tactile thing
to it where they can actually touch the skin of
the other person. This individual chose not to do that,
but chose to use a ligature made out of a
piece of cloth or clothing and do this. But I
(30:58):
want to jump back to something real quick. The generation
that exists now doesn't know much about marketing of cigarettes.
Do you remember when we were kids and you see
the Marlboro Men on television? Tom Selik was actually a
Marlboro Man. I think Sam Elliott was a Marlboro Man. No,
he was in the movie as a Marlborough Man. Thank
(31:19):
You for Thank You for Smoking, I think is the name.
Great movie, by the way, But they marketed cigarettes to
specific groups in this case. In this case, Jeanette had
a carton of cigarettes in her car that were called
Eve Eve. Now this is specific marketing. These and Virginia Slims.
(31:47):
Virginia Slims and eve Eve's. I think they still make
I don't know if they still make Eves or not.
I have to look the next time I go to
the convenience store. But with Virginia Slim those cigarettes are
actually marketed to women, and that winds up being crucial
in this case, Dave, because on the surface of one
(32:11):
of these packs of cigarettes, and if anyone out there
has never smoked before, if you look at a pack
of cigarettes, they used to come wrapped in cell a phane,
and so you would have either the soft pack or
the box box pack inside of the carton. Most of
the time it'd be a soft pack, and those would
(32:32):
actually be wrapped in sulfane. Well, what a cell phane
cellfhane is It creates a smooth, non poor surface. So
if you touch that with your finger, all right, maybe
you're you're moving it because when you see I can
actually see the carton of Eves cigarettes on the floorboard.
(32:52):
If he grabbed that carton and happened to stick his
finger or his thumb inside of the pack, he could
touch one of the packets of cigarettes in there. Well,
what happens you leave behind an unseen print otherwise known
as a latent print. And Dave the San jose A
Police Department actually preserved that fingerprint. We always talked about
(33:16):
how fragile DNA is. How could they fingerprints are equally fragile?
Speaker 2 (33:20):
How I before we began this, I told you I
made a note because I was shocked that we're talking
fifty years here, Joe, we're talking. This is Inuary, January
thirty first, nineteen seventy seven. I mean we're talking. You
make me feel like dancing by Leo Sayer and Rose Royce,
(33:41):
you know, car wash or the top of two songs.
And that's when this thumb print was left on the
thumbpress cigarettes, right, And yet they have the ability to
save it so that all these years later, a six
year old boy who's now a grown man, well actually
(34:01):
know on this Mother's Day who was responsible for taking
his mother from him. The foresight that just and then
whatever they got from under her fingernails. Joe, you have
to explain to me what they had to do that
it could be used all these years later.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah, and it would appear that San Jose Police Department,
relative to Jeanette's case, really paid attention here. They were
able to retain this fingerprint and there's an interesting story
that goes along with this, by the way, and preserve
it to the point where it was still readable or
(34:42):
they had dusted it initially and still had that laytent
on file, but they didn't get a hit on it.
Then at autopsy, when they were examining Jeanette's body, they
did fingernail scrapings and clippings on her, which is something
that that we have done for years and years and years,
(35:04):
knowing that if you can't get a specific identity, you
can at least be able to say, well, she had
physical contact with the perpetrator and actually probably scratched him
or dug her fingernails into his face or his neck,
either way, when she scratched this individual and came away
(35:29):
with probably skin maybe blood underneath her fingernails. When they
trim those and clip them, they put them into they
put them into a piece of paper. And for folks
that have never seen this, and you can look these
up online and you can actually see what it looks
like they would have clipped the nails. Nowadays, nail clipping
(35:55):
kits come with a brand new pair of clippers, nail
clippers with every that okay, they're stainless. Still looks like
the ones you go to you know, CBS or Walgreens
and by but you don't use them over again. You
dispose of them. But you clip the nails with these.
But before you do that, there's a little stick that
(36:16):
you scrape under the nails with. So you scrape and
then you clip, You scrape, you clip, you scrape, your clip,
and each one of these, like if it's your left
pinky finger, you would do each one of these little
pieces of paper I'm talking about. It looks like a
if you've ever taken a powdered powdered headache medication like
(36:37):
BC or Goodies or anything these things, and they use
a drugist fold for those. That's what the paper looks like.
And so you trim that nail on the ento the
surface of that little packet, you fold it up, you
secure it, and you label it say, if it's the
left hand, you go left small finger okay, so to
be L s F okay. And then so you go
(37:01):
down the line, you collect each digit, I mean each
finger itself individually, and you keep them all in their
priscine condition, and so you've got so it's really kind
of cool because if you come away with a left hand,
you don't have anything. Okay, you come away with the
right hand, you can deduce that she was only contacting
(37:23):
him with the right hand. You don't want to get
them combined. That's why it's really important that you keep
them separate. And that's actually what they did all of
these years later. I mean we're literally one year removed
from the Nation's Boss Centennial where everybody's walking around wearing red,
white and blue or remember that, and that's how long
ago this was. But yet they collected all of that
(37:46):
and it turned out to be really you know, a
eureka moment, you know, for this case that you mentioned
went cold really quickly, even though they had a latent
print on what they thought might be the perpetrator. Do
it fills in a little bit on who the suspect is.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Dave, Well, you know you mentioned they get the thing.
They get the thumb print early on. They know they
have it, they have a suspect. They don't know that
it's a killer. They found it on a carton of
cigarettes for crying out loud and telling whose dumb it?
You know, it could have been the person who's sold it.
They don't know that it's just again, it's just possibilities.
But they try matching it up with what they have
(38:28):
at the time, and nothing comes back. So the case
does go cold quickly, sadly, and it's kind of strange
the way this worked out. In August of last year,
they decide they being these detectives are still running this case.
It is cold, but they're still running it now. In
twenty eleven, the homicide unit in San Jose set up
(38:50):
a cold case unit. Yeah, they have spent the last
fourteen to fifteen years breaking cold cases back to nineteen
sixty nine, so they know the drill. So they ran
it again. We got a thumbprint, let's run it. Let's
see if we can get a hit. Didn't get a
hit back then maybe now. Come to find out, they
(39:10):
do get a hit. The guy that actually matched the
thumb print had well. We mentioned fort orbe earlier a
military base. The suspect thumb the thumb print that came
back to nothing in nineteen seventy seven. Oddly enough, they
ran it again and it didn't come up. They've run
it a couple of different times. The suspect here, They
(39:33):
got up with him in twenty twenty four when they
got a hit. He's in Ohio now, he's sixty nine
years old. Eugene Simms, a sixty nine year old African
American man in Ohio. His thumbprint matches, and so again
it's just a suspect Joe. He didn't come up at
the time, don't know. But then they run Eugene Sims
(39:56):
and find out, hey, wait a minute, this thumb match
and this guy, well, he was at Fort or back
in nineteen seventy seven. He was a private in the
military and lo and behold. A year after this assault
sex well, sexual assault murder, he was actually arrested, charged
(40:20):
and sent to prison for an assault and attempted murder.
Now he left the state of California. He was imprisoned
in California. He left the state before they actually took
DNA samplying. I don't know what year had started there,
but he left before then.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
It was many years after. But I think that it's
tell me again, how far how seventy four miles seven
from the distance from where Jeanette was killed and this
other assault took place? Correct, Yeah, less than an hour
and a half seventy five mins. Less than one hundred miles,
Joe boy, I tell you, yeah, I'll tell you what.
(40:56):
It really makes my because you know, you know who
was active during the time. You know who I thought
about when you mentioned this with San Jose and starting
the cold case thing. This is just south and for
some reason, I have a memory of San Jose being
involved in this. This is just south of where the
Golden State Killer was working. Yeah, and you know, and
(41:18):
I'm I'm thinking, you know, I'm thinking to my friend
Paul Hols that works with AUTHORM. Now I was thinking, Hm,
you begin to think about was this guy also active
out there? Because I'd like to look at his at
his military jacket to see, first off, when did he
(41:39):
show up at ford Ord, how long had he been there,
what was his job at ford Ord? And what kind
of trouble had he gotten into, if any? If any
he may not have while he was on active duty,
and the fact that he was in the lock up
for this other which is an equally horrible crime, absent
at the murder, and he leaves man and apparently he
(42:02):
just stays off of the radar.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Well, you mentioned you said this before we started. You
said it to me, he said, Dave, can you imagine
what it was like. The guy's in jail up there,
He's in prison for four years. He's waiting every day,
he's waiting for them to come and say you're not
getting out, you know, but they didn't. He's in the system,
he's in jail, and yet he's allowed to leave. I'm
(42:25):
not blaming anybody for this. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
We can we know, and let me just that's like,
let me give you an image of what I'm thinking about.
And it's selling.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
It's like he's you know, he's not telling anybody, he's
not I'm shut.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
I have visions of him with a brown paper back
with all of his earthly belongings wrapped in it. They
take him to the main gate. He throws this under
his arm and he starts to quickly walk away. When
he is finally let go from the prison, and you know,
thinking looking over his shoulder because that that's a key time, right,
(43:01):
because they might not tell you they're coming after you.
There's literally somebody. Can you imagine, They let him do
us four years, right, they let him do his four years.
And there's a car. They've worked a lead on this thing,
and they think that it's him. There's a car that
begins to slowly kind of track him while he's walking
down the sidewalk to go get on a bus or
whatever the hell they did with these people, and all
(43:23):
of a sudden they pull up and they say, come here.
They badge him. We want to talk to you about
this case, this case out of San Jose. And it
didn't happen. This guy, unlike Jeanette, got to go on
living his life, Dave. He lived a full life in
(43:44):
the whole grand scheme of things a lot longer than
this young woman did. Now what happened, because the reason
we're covering this is that they've recently, i mean like
really recently hooked him up, haven't they?
Speaker 2 (43:55):
In this week? Well it's going on right now. Actually
they know, as you mentioned last August, they ran the
thumb print and it came back to this guy and
not this guy Eugene Simms, sixty nine years old in Ohio.
They then sent a team out there to get DNA,
got a sample, and it came back to what they
found under her fingernails. And that's why I was That's
(44:16):
why I was so caught up in how they were
able to keep this evidence viable, because what the thumb
print is not enough A thumb print, he you know
what I mean, that's it puts you around it, But
that's not enough. That's just enough to move somewhere around
the cart and the cigarettes.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Well, yeah, you can ask him questions all you want.
And this guy's this guy's an ex con, right, the
thing's retaining that knowledge for being an x con. He'll
keep his mouth shut and you won't. You won't get
peep out of him after that. But the tie back
to the DNA is the is the key here. There
was one thought that that had crossed my mind about
(44:55):
this case, interestingly enough, and that the authorities have talked
about this. In twenty eighteen, the FBI that actually manages
the National Fingerprint Database, which is as you can imagine, vast,
(45:15):
they upgraded the algorithm on this thing. And so it
was after twenty eighteen they decided to plug this thumbprint
in and all those years before, and now keep in mind,
he had been in the system, Dave, He's been in
the state pen in California. He's in the system. They
never got a hit, but yet they adjusted the algorithm
(45:37):
on their system to read prints and they get a
hit on this guy. And so that's again, I love
to use the image of the proverbial thread on the
sweater that's pulled. They pulled it with that, and when
they pulled it, the whole charade, everything that lie that
this monster had been living all these years with a
(46:02):
ghost in the memory of a beautiful young mother dead
long long ago, that he never thought he would be
held responsible for. Now he's on a journey. He's on
a journey that soon will start where he will be
extradited from Ohio and he's going to stand tall, not
(46:22):
in a military uniform, but he's going to be standing
tall before judge and they're going to formally charge him
and they are going to try him and maybe, just maybe, Jeannette,
we'll finally get some justice. I'm Josep Scott Morgan and
this is Bodybacks
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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