July 24, 2025 • 32 mins
Right now in true crime: BK sentencing and victim impact statements, Erik Menendez update.
1977 in San Jose, California 24-year-old Jeanette Ralston lost her life in a horrific way, and while her case remained cold for many years,
We now have resolution. In recent months, law-enforcement decided to dig back into evidence in her case. It has finally been solved and an arrest has been made. Let’s discuss how we got here and where everything stands today.
Sources for episode:
https://youtu.be/NYLEyczYEE0?si=p75BhDYCy8-cGg4k (Alieva's impact statement)
https://www.wlbt.com/2025/05/07/son-woman-found-strangled-death-1977-reacts-suspects-arrest/?outputType=amp
https://people.com/cops-think-theyve-cracked-womans-slaying-inside-volkswagen-beetle-11733074
https://www.kbtx.com/2025/05/07/son-woman-found-strangled-death-1977-reacts-suspects-arrest/?outputType=amp
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/us/jeanette-ralston-cold-case-murder-suspect.html
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/05/14/us/san-jose-cold-case-arrest-jeanette-ralston-death
https://da.santaclaracounty.gov/da-cold-case-unit-charges-ohio-man-1977-murder
https://www.kgns.tv/2025/05/07/69-year-old-man-identified-suspect-1977-cold-case-involving-woman-found-strangled/?outputType=amp
https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/tenth-court-of-appeals/2001/4113.html
1977 in San Jose, California 24-year-old Jeanette Ralston lost her life in a horrific way, and while her case remained cold for many years,
We now have resolution. In recent months, law-enforcement decided to dig back into evidence in her case. It has finally been solved and an arrest has been made. Let’s discuss how we got here and where everything stands today.
Sources for episode:
https://youtu.be/NYLEyczYEE0?si=p75BhDYCy8-cGg4k (Alieva's impact statement)
https://www.wlbt.com/2025/05/07/son-woman-found-strangled-death-1977-reacts-suspects-arrest/?outputType=amp
https://people.com/cops-think-theyve-cracked-womans-slaying-inside-volkswagen-beetle-11733074
https://www.kbtx.com/2025/05/07/son-woman-found-strangled-death-1977-reacts-suspects-arrest/?outputType=amp
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/us/jeanette-ralston-cold-case-murder-suspect.html
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/05/14/us/san-jose-cold-case-arrest-jeanette-ralston-death
https://da.santaclaracounty.gov/da-cold-case-unit-charges-ohio-man-1977-murder
https://www.kgns.tv/2025/05/07/69-year-old-man-identified-suspect-1977-cold-case-involving-woman-found-strangled/?outputType=amp
https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/tenth-court-of-appeals/2001/4113.html
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
This episode contains graphic crime scene detail as well as
talk of sexual assault. Please listen with discretion. All witnesses, suspects,
and persons of interest are considered innocent until proven guilty
in a court of law.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Let's talk right now on true crime, and then together
we are going to work on warming up some cold cases.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Poppy killed Mommy was the first thing my little sister
said to me after her father murdered our mother. My
mom had gotten off the phone at nine to fifty
three pm on July eighth, nineteen ninety three, after making
plans to leave him by one forty am. A nine
to one to one call was placed asking for help.
Three hours and forty seven minutes. That's how fast a
woman can go from planning her escape to being gone.
(00:46):
Her death was ruled a homicide. The man who killed
her admitted that he might have shot her. My sister,
just three years old, told police more than a dozen
times Poppy killed Mommy, But the Yavapai County Attorney said
there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute. Seventy five percent of
women murdered by an intimate partner are killed while they're
trying to leave. My mom became part of that statistic.
(01:09):
This is the story they buried. Listen to Poppy killed
Mommy and hear what they refuse to see.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of Primetime Crime.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
It's Kylie.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We are going to get into right now in true crime,
which honestly, I really want to spend a little bit
of time talking about the BK sentencing that happened on Wednesday.
He was sentenced to four life terms running consecutively, no
possibility of parole. But what I really want to talk
(01:41):
about is the victim impact statements. There were many that
were given, but Kaylee's sister Olivia, gave probably the most
powerful victim impact statement that I have ever heard, and
I want to play it right now on this intro.
I've listened to a heck of a lot of victim
(02:02):
impact statements in my day, and I feel like this
is one of the most powerful ones, and I think
it really tells the story. If you have followed this
case at all, you know that BK was a predator
and a creep, and he thought he was smarter than everybody.
He put out a questionnaire on Reddit many many years
(02:24):
ago because he was a criminology student and he wanted
to have all these questions answered about people that had
committed crimes. And Olivia turned that and put it right
back in his face. And I am going to play
her victim impact statement right now. It is about ten
minutes long. It is powerful as hell, and I applaud
(02:46):
her for getting up and she didn't stumble over a
single word.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
She was passionate.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
She looked him in the eye and it was impactful,
and we're going to play it now.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
I'd like to start by thanking the court for allowing
me the time and opportunity to speak today. My name
is Olivia and I'm the big sister of Kailey Gonzalvez,
and I was blessed to love Madison Mogan as a
sister too. I'm not here today to speak in grief.
I'm here to speak in truth because the truth is
my sister, Kayley and her best friend Mattie were not
(03:18):
yours to take. They were not yours to study, to
stalk or to silence. They were two pieces of a whole,
the perfect yin and yang. They are everything that you
could never be loved accepted, vibrant, accomplished.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Brave and powerful.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Because the truth about Kayley and Maddie, they would have
been kind to you if you would approach them in
their everyday lives. They would have given you directions, thanked
you for the compliment, or awkwardly giggled to make your
own words less uncomfortable for you in a world that
rejected you. They would have shown mercy. Because the truth is,
(04:05):
I'm angry. Every day I'm angry. I'm left shouting at
the inside of my own head everything I wish I
could say to you. The truth about me is when
I heard the news, I didn't cry. I listened for them.
I promised them I would that I would fight for them,
(04:28):
that I would show up no matter what it cost me.
I swore I'd never let them feel alone, because you see,
I've always been their heavyweight. I've always been the one
to fight the battles. They didn't feel ready to fight themselves.
All it ever took was a call, and they knew
I would handle it for them, no matter the time,
(04:49):
no matter the cost. They could wave their white flag
because they knew I would never back down, not for them,
and not even death could change to that. Somewhere along
the line, I started to think about what I would
say to them if I was given just one last chance,
(05:09):
if I could gather enough heartbreak or love or sacrifice
or whatever it took to get just one message across,
what would I say.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Throughout this entire.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Process, I've written my feelings down at every moment, my wishes,
my love, my denial, my anger, and as one final
act of love, I planned to read these thoughts, even
jarring and discombobulating and not even making sense, because for
me that was true love, as bare and as naked
(05:42):
as it could be, not laced in pretty words or
dressed for the occasion, but written through bleary eyes at
two am, with clenched fists, angry at this reality. My
true final act of love was to continue on without
them for them that dream to read love, to read
(06:04):
aloud my love to them, to bring meaning through pain
was the latest blow in realizing you don't deserve it,
and Kayleie and Maddy don't need it. Kayleie and Matty
have always known my love, and they would never ask
me to prove it by further victimizing myself to a
(06:26):
defendant who has shown no guilt, no remorse, no apprehension.
They would say to me, why would you give the
satisfaction of showing vulnerability? Now you promised you would never
back down, And for that clarity, I'm thankful. I won't
stand here and give you what you want. I won't
(06:48):
offer you tears, I won't offer you trembling disappointments like
you thrive on pain, on.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Fear, and on the illusion of.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
Power, And I won't feed your beast. Instead, I will
call you what you are, sociopath, psychopath, murderer. I will
ask the questions that reverberate violently in my own head,
so loudly that I can't think straight most any day.
(07:20):
Some of these might be familiar, So set up straight
when I talk to you. How is your life right
before you murdered my sisters? Did you prepare for the
crime before leaving your apartment? Please detail what you were
thinking and feeling at this time.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Why did you.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Choose my sisters before making your move? Did you approach
my sisters? Detail what you were thinking and feeling before
leaving their home? Is there anything else you did? How
does it feel to know the only thing you failed
more miserably at than being a murderer is trying to
(08:01):
be a rapper. Did you recently start shaving or manually
pulling out your eyebrows?
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Why?
Speaker 4 (08:10):
November thirteenth, did you truly think your Amazon purchase was
untraceable because you used a gift card? How do you
find it enjoyable to stargaze with such a severe case
of visual snow? Where is the murder weapon? The clothes
you wore that night? What did you bring into the
(08:33):
house with you? What was the second weapon you used
on Cayley? What were Kaylee's last words? Please describe in
detail the level of anxiety you must have felt when
you heard the bear cat pull up to your family
home on December thirtieth, twenty twenty two. Which do you
(08:56):
regret more returning to the crime scene five hours later
or never ever going back to Moscow, not even once
after stalking them there for months. If you were really smart,
do you think you'd be here right now? What's it
(09:17):
like needing this much attention just to feel real? You're
terrified of being ordinary, aren't you? Do you feel anything
at all? Or you exactly what you always feared?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Nothing?
Speaker 4 (09:36):
If you're so powerful, then why are you still hiding defendant.
You see, I'm here today as me.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
But who are you?
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Let's try to take off your mask and see you
didn't create devastation.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
You revealed it.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
In it, in yourself, and that darkness you carry, that emptiness,
You'll sit with it long after this is over. That
is your sentence, and it was written on the wall
long before you ever pled guilty. You didn't win, You
just exposed.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yourself as the coward you are.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
You're a delusional, pathetic, hypochondriac loser who thought you were
so much smarter than everybody else, constantly scolding, turning your
nose up to grammar mistakes, nitpicking and criticizing others. You
wanted so badly to be different, to be special, to
(10:35):
be better, to be deep, to be mysterious. You found
yourself thinking you were better than everyone else, and you
thought you could figure out the human psyche and see
through it all while tweaked.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Out on heroin.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Lurking in the shadows made you feel powerful because no
one ever paid you any attention. In the light, you
thought you were exceptional, all because of a grade on
a paper. You thought you were a lee because your
online IQ test from twenty ten told you so all
of that effort just to see them important. It's desperate.
(11:09):
There is a name for your condition. Though you're inflated.
Ego just didn't allow you to see it.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Want to be.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
You act like no one could ever understand your mind.
But the truth is you're basic, your textbook pace of
insecurity disguised as control. Your patterns are predictable, your motives
are shallow. You are not profound. You're pathetic. You aren't
special or deep, not mysterious or exceptional. Don't ever get
(11:41):
it twisted again. No one is scared of you today.
No one is intimidated by you, no one is impressed
by you. No one thinks that you are important. You
orchestrated this like you thought you were God. Now look
at you begging a courtroom for scraps. You spent months preparing,
(12:02):
and still all it took was my sister, and as
she you work so hard to seem dangerous, but real
control doesn't have to prove itself. The truth is the
scariest part about you. It's how painfully average you turned
out to be. The truth is as dumb as they come, stupid, clumsy, slow, sloppy, weak, dirty.
(12:32):
Let me be very clear, don't ever try to convince
yourself you mattered just because someone finally said your name
out loud. I see through you. You want the truth.
Here's the one you'll hate the most. If you hadn't
attacked them in their sleep in the middle of the
night like a pedophile, Kaylee would have kicked your fucking ass.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
I literally have listened to that so many times already,
and it's only Wednesday night, and I just think that
she really chose her words carefully. She degraded him, She
read him like a book, and I was so impressed
with her statement. All of the victim impact statements were really,
(13:28):
really good, and I highly suggest you go listen to
all of them. Bethany wrote a victim impact statement and
had someone read it for her.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
She's one of the surviving roommates.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And then Dylan got up and read her victim impact statement,
and it absolutely completely breaks your heart when you really
put into perspective what these poor girls have gone through.
Not only did they lose four of their best friends,
but they were targets of people accusing them of murder
(14:01):
and threats and the worst of the worst. While they
are in the midst of their grief. Dylan said, she
was only nineteen years old when this happened, and when
you really put that into perspective, she was a baby,
so young, so innocent, obviously never thinking that the worst
(14:22):
of the worst was going to happen right under her
own roof, because she had lived a very normal life
where you don't think that the worst of the worst
is going to happen to you, and then all of
a sudden you're thrust into this insanity of what happened
to your friends, and you are a survivor of that,
(14:42):
and it's just I can't even put into words. Her
victim impact statement really really drove it home that yes,
they are two living victims that survived this, but they
are going to live the rest of their life trying
to maneuver through the grief of what has happened to them.
(15:03):
And the other victim impact statements, like I said, are
all really really good. So I do suggest you guys
go and give it a listen, give them all a listen.
They're all on Court TV, and they all are really good.
Steve Kaylee's dad actually moved to the podium so he
was eye to eye, face to face with BK and
(15:24):
he had no emotion during the whole everyone going no
emotion at all. Everyone that spoke, he had zero emotion.
I don't know how you can sit through something like
that and not even like WinCE once, and he didn't.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
He was terrible.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Everybody did a really great job giving their victim impact statements,
and I think.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
It was a very powerful day.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
I personally wish nothing but the worst of the worst
for BK in prison.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I hope he has a.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Terrible time, and I hope I never have to hear
from him ever ever again in life. They are starting
to release some of the documents and everything. I am
not at the I don't have the mental capacity in
bandwidth to go through all that right now, but I
probably will in the coming days. Last thing I want
(16:13):
to talk about real quickly is Eric Menandez, of the
Menanda's brothers.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Is not doing well medically.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
They said he had a kidney stone and that he
was hospitalized, but now it seems like it's progressed to
something a little bit more serious, and they're basically calling
that he is let out so that way he can
get the proper medical care. I don't know what's going
to come of it. But that's kind of what's going
on right now. With all of that, they do have
a hearing coming up in August about their paroles, so
(16:44):
it's going to be interesting to see what ends up happening.
But I'll be sure to keep you updated. And I'm
going to have a more in depth right now in
True Crime next week because this week I really wanted
to focus on Olivia's statement the BK sentencing, and we'll
get into more next week because I swear when it
rains abhors in the true crime world unfortunately, So we
(17:07):
are going to go ahead now and get into today's episode.
It is a little bit of a shorter episode, but
still a really important story to tell. Alrighty guys, Today
we are diving into a case that is a recently
solved case of a twenty four year old woman named
Jeannette Ralston. She lost her life in nineteen seventy seven
after leaving a bar in San Jose, California, and although
(17:31):
her case was cold for many years, it is now
finally solved due to the San Jose Police Department not
giving up and re examining evidence and taking a fresh
look at what they had available and doing so with
Fresh twenty twenty five eyes. We are going to talk
about Jeanette the case, why it was dormant for so long,
and what's come out since law enforcement has finally announced
(17:54):
that they made an arrest. Also, there was a composite
sketch in this case, and it's really why to see
the comparison of that sketch to the actual suspect now
that we know who he is and his identity. So
often I feel like those sketches really do a great
job at identifying the suspect, and in this case, they
super nailed it.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
It is wild.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Jeanette Diana Collins or Elston was born on April twenty
fifth of nineteen fifty two in Germany. I wasn't able
to find much about her childhood or her upbringing, but
at some point she moved to California and had lived
in Benetia and San Mateo prior to her death. I'm
not fully sure on the timeframe, but I do know
(18:36):
that she was married, and she was a mom and
had a son named Alan, who was only six at
the time of his mother's murder. So Jeanette's story all
starts on January thirty first of nineteen seventy seven, when
she went out to spend some time with some friends
at the lions Den Bar in San Jose, California. It
was located at fifteen hundred Almaden Road, and it was
(18:58):
just after midnight when she had told her friends that
she would be back in about ten minutes. As she
walked out of sight from her friend's field of vision,
they noticed that she was with the man that they
did not recognize. Jeannette never returned to the bar that night,
and it wouldn't be until the next morning when her
fate would be found out. The next morning, on February
(19:18):
first of nineteen seventy seven, Jeannette was found in her
Volkswagen Beetle. She was wedged tightly in the backseat of
her car. Her car was parked in the carport area
of an apartment complex not far from the bar where
she was last seen. She had been strangled with a
long sleeve dress shirt and had been sexually assaulted. It
also appeared that the perpetrator had unsuccessfully attempted to set
(19:41):
the car on a fire, which was an obvious attempt
to cover his tracks and cover his crime. Despite the
fact that the last people with Jeanette were able to
come up with a composite sketch of the individual.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
She was last seen with.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Law enforcement had no viable suspects, and the case went
cold until twenty twenty four. That is, the San Jose
Police Departments Homicide Unit, along with the cold case unit
that was established in twenty eleven, decided that they were
going to dig back into Janette's case. The Deputy District Attorney,
Rob Baker decided in twenty twenty four to rerun and
(20:19):
retest all of the evidence. Things that they had collected
in nineteen seventy seven that yielded no results could yield
results now in present day. So that's exactly what they did.
They said that they threw basically a hail Mary and
tried to see if they could solve this case. They
retested fingerprints that were found on a pack of Eve
cigarettes that were found in Jeanette's car, and boom, the
(20:41):
breakthrough came. The prince came back as matching a man
named Willie Eugene Simms, who was sixty nine years old
and living in Ohio. Early in twenty twenty five, investigators
traveled to Ohio to collect Willy's DNA and it came
back as a match and consistent with the DNA that
was found under Jutt's fingernails, as well as the DNA
(21:02):
that was on the blouse that was used to strangle her.
A true smoking gun. So who is Willy Eugene Simms.
At the time of Jeanet's murder? Willie was an Army
private who was stationed at Fort Ord. In nineteen seventy eight,
a year after Jeanette's murder, he was convicted of assault
with the intent to commit murder in Monterey County.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
He was sentenced to.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Two and a half months, which is pure insanity considering
the charges. He then moved out of California before the
time when DNA was routinely collected and placed into databases,
hence why he was able to remain free for so
many years. So of course I had to research him
a little bit more and try to find out a
(21:46):
little bit more about his history, and I found another
case of his I believe from nineteen ninety eight that
took place in Texas where he is accused and found
guilty of a robbery where he entered a home and
stole property from a house along with an accomplice. He
was basically found hiding in this person's closet with some
(22:07):
of their belongings. I am going to read through that
case file now. On December second, nineteen ninety eight, at
approximately nine am, Dorothy saw two young black males running
from her neighbor's house. She watched as the boys ran
to a nearby house. She testified that the boy in
front was wearing a baise jacket with a light collar,
and the other was wearing a striped blue jacket. She
(22:29):
physically described the boy in front as tall and slim
and the boy and back as short and husky. Further,
she said the boy and back was carrying a bulky object.
After her husband went to the neighbor's house and saw
the black window had been broken out, they called police.
While they waited for police to arrive, Dorothy watched the
house nearby to see if the boys had left the house.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
They did not.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
When the police arrived, Dorothy pointed out the nearby house
that the boys had entered. The police officers knocked on
the door and missed Kennedy. The owner of the home
answered the officer. Dixplained what had happened and obtained her
permission to search. The house officer Mark Barrington went to
the back bedroom, where he found Sims standing in a
bedroom closet. Sims was ordered out of the closet and
(23:13):
the officers confirmed from the owner that Sims did not
have permission to be in her house. As Barrington began
searching the bedroom closet, Sims said, there's nothing in the closet.
Barrington continued searching the closet and found three rings lying
on a pile of clothes. He looked underneath the pile
of clothes and found a VCR. Additionally, in the closet
(23:33):
where they found Sims, they found a jacket matching the
eyewitnesses description of a bays jacket. The officer also found
two bags of coins in the closet. In the bedroom,
Barrington found a brooch on the floor and bags of jewelry.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
On the bed.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Barrington also found the other suspect, Jermaine Kennedy, squatted down
in the bottom of a hallway linen closet.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
On the shelf.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
In the linen closet, Barrington found some rings and watches.
All the described items, other than the Bayse jack it
were later identified and has been stolen from the victim's house.
A search of the victim's house revealed that a window
near the back door had been broken out, but the
burglars had not been able to gain entry through the door.
The officers found that another window had been broken through
(24:15):
which the burglars entered the house through. The house had
been ransacked. Sims was arrested and indicted for the offense
of burglary of a habitation. In his sole issue on appeal,
Sim asserts the evidence is insufficient to support his conviction
because there's no evidence to show he entered the habitation.
The state argues the evidence is sufficient to convict Sims,
(24:36):
either under the law or parties, or as a primary actor.
We agree with the state and affirm the conviction. Sims
asserts there is no evidence indicating that he entered the
victim's house, and therefore the evidence is legally insufficient to
find that he committed the offense of burglary, despite evidence
that the defendant actually entered the home to commit the
theft is unnecessary if the record discloses a burglary occurred,
(25:00):
that the defendant possessed some or all of the stolen property,
and that the defendant failed to proffer a reason for
having it. Sims matched the description of the taller male
who had been wearing a base jacket with a light collar.
In the closet where Sims was found, there was a
bays jacket matching the eyewitness's description. The jacket had a
roll of dimes in one of the pockets. The officers
(25:20):
also found a gun in one of the pockets of
the base jacket. The victim testified that her home had
been broken into and ransacked, and the property recovered by
the police from Sims and Kennedy belonged to her. Furthermore,
sims accomplice testified that he and Sims had a prior agreement.
Even after eliminating all accomplice evidence from the record, we
(25:40):
conclude the other evidence, although circumstantial, tends to support a
finding that Sims entered the victim's house. Considering the eyewindest
testimony and the fact that the base jacket and stolen
goods were found in and around the closet where Sims
was found, we believe that there was sufficient circumstantial evidence
to support the juries fighting that Sims entered the victim's
(26:01):
home and committed burglary of a habitation. So I'm pretty
sure that this is the same individual, and he obviously
doesn't want to take any accountability for his actions, even
though he was literally caught red handed in a closet
with all of the stolen merchandise, and he thinks that
it's just circumstantial and they really can't even prove that
(26:21):
he was ever in the house, and he basically just
tried to blame it on his accomplice. But no dice
for you, Willy Eugene Simms. So not only do we
have that occurrence, we also have the assault in nineteen
seventy eight and then the murder and assault of Jeanette.
What else is this guy responsible for? I say it
all the time. Someone this violent doesn't just offend once.
(26:43):
They offend again and again until they are caught. And
luckily for us, time is up for Willie. Jeanette's son,
who was only six years old at the time of
her murder, expressed immense gratitude for the police department not
giving up on his mom's case, and is quoted as
saying in a WLB three interview, without the Santa Clara Detectives,
(27:03):
the whole team that's worked on this for forty nine
years how do you think somebody like that and not
feel guilty that you didn't thank them enough?
Speaker 1 (27:11):
End quote. He then goes on to.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Say that he holds the memory of his mother close
to his heart and says, she raised me to be
a happy kid, so I just hold on to that.
I've always tried to do good in my life and
try to respect her in any way I.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Could end quote.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
This case was cold for so many years, and I'm
just glad that there is finally some resolution. It's all
kind of happening in real time. They just officially announced
this in May, right around Mother's Day, which Alan said
was a really good Mother's Day present for him because
he's lived so many of his years without knowing what
(27:46):
happened to his mom or who was responsible.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
This story also.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Reminds me a little bit of Megan Beth John's, who
I just covered again. It's another case that was recently solved,
and it's just the track record of the suspect that
really gets to me, because so often these people have
a trail of violent offenses that they entertained.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
It just doesn't start one day.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Usually they start very very young, and then it just
gets worse and with some of them.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
They aren't locked.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Away and put away, so they can not do this
to somebody else, and they just keep reoffending until eventually,
years down the line, they get caught. And that's exactly
what happened in this case of Willie Eugene Simms, because
it seems like he was a violent person. He was
just basically it seems like a career criminal. What other
(28:44):
things could he be responsible for that he hasn't been
caught for yet. He served two months in jail after
an attempted murder and then was able to leave the
state of California, never giving his prints, never giving his DNA,
and was able to get away with stuff for such
a long time. And I guess it's with his nineteen
(29:06):
ninety eight arrests for the burglary that they ended up
getting his prints and everything else.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
He eventually moved.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
To Ohio, and god knows what he was up to there.
He's almost seventy years old now. But I think for
a lot of these people that have eluded authorities for
so long and have gotten away with these cases for
so long, their time truly is running out because DNA
technology is catching up and police departments are going back
through some of these decades long cold cases, and they're
(29:36):
rerunning all of the evidence and things are popping up
left and right. That is why I feel like there's
so many of these now solved cases. This one was
almost fifty years old, and it was almost cold for
fifty whole years, but now it's not anymore. And although
we don't know at the moment the reason why Willie
(29:56):
Eugene Simms decided to take Jeannette's life, I do know
that he will never do it to anybody else because
he is behind bars in California and there is going
to be a hearing that's coming up in August, and
if convicted, he is facing from twenty five years to life,
and I hope it's more on the life side, because
(30:17):
this individual never needs to see the light of day
again in my opinion. Of course, they have enough evidence
to bring charges against him, but he has not been
found guilty yet in a court of law, so I
do want to make that very very clear. But I
do think that the San Jose Police Department did a
wonderful job with this case. They did a great job
(30:37):
preserving the evidence and taking the evidence way back in
nineteen seventy seven, when I don't even think that they
knew that one day that evidence was going to come
back around and help them solve this case in twenty
twenty five. It's really crazy to think about how much
time passed in between the testing of the evidence and
the preservation of the evidence. How good they must have
(31:00):
preserve that evidence underneath her fingernails, on the shirt that
was used to strangle her, and on the Eves cigarette
carton of all things. This is why I cover these
cases so we can have way more resolution like this one.
So although the story is a little bit shorter than
my typical episodes, I did want to cover it because
(31:20):
Jeanette's story matters, and I'm so glad that we are
one step closer to getting justice for her. And like
I said, I'm going to be sharing the composite sketch
of the suspect, a booking photo current of Willy E
Jean Sims, and a former booking photo of Willy Eujeene Sims,
because it is definitely crazy to see the comparison and
(31:42):
how accurate this initial description of this man was. They
just never had this guy on their radar. He probably
wasn't somebody that was known to Jeanette, and maybe that
night he was able to gain her trust and they
ended up leaving together for one reason or another, and
then he attacked her, assaulted her, and murdered her, and
(32:04):
then tried to cover his tracks by burning the car,
but failed miserably because he sucks allegedly in my opinion,
So thank god for that, because if that had happened,
if he had successfully lit the car on fire, a
lot of this evidence that was so well preserved probably wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Even be in existence. So thankfully.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Criminals are dumb and a lot of the times they
mess up and things don't go as planned. So that
is Jeanette's story. Thank you guys so much for listening.
I will see you next week for a brand new
unsolved case. I hope you have a great weekend and
I will see you then.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Bye.
Warning.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
This episode contains graphic crime scene detail as well as
talk of sexual assault. Please listen with discretion. All witnesses, suspects,
and persons of interest are considered innocent until proven guilty
in a court of law.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Let's talk right now on true crime, and then together
we are going to work on warming up some cold cases.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Poppy killed Mommy was the first thing my little sister
said to me after her father murdered our mother. My
mom had gotten off the phone at nine to fifty
three pm on July eighth, nineteen ninety three, after making
plans to leave him by one forty am. A nine
to one to one call was placed asking for help.
Three hours and forty seven minutes. That's how fast a
woman can go from planning her escape to being gone.
(00:46):
Her death was ruled a homicide. The man who killed
her admitted that he might have shot her. My sister,
just three years old, told police more than a dozen
times Poppy killed Mommy, But the Yavapai County Attorney said
there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute. Seventy five percent of
women murdered by an intimate partner are killed while they're
trying to leave. My mom became part of that statistic.
(01:09):
This is the story they buried. Listen to Poppy killed
Mommy and hear what they refuse to see.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of Primetime Crime.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
It's Kylie.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We are going to get into right now in true crime,
which honestly, I really want to spend a little bit
of time talking about the BK sentencing that happened on Wednesday.
He was sentenced to four life terms running consecutively, no
possibility of parole. But what I really want to talk
(01:41):
about is the victim impact statements. There were many that
were given, but Kaylee's sister Olivia, gave probably the most
powerful victim impact statement that I have ever heard, and
I want to play it right now on this intro.
I've listened to a heck of a lot of victim
(02:02):
impact statements in my day, and I feel like this
is one of the most powerful ones, and I think
it really tells the story. If you have followed this
case at all, you know that BK was a predator
and a creep, and he thought he was smarter than everybody.
He put out a questionnaire on Reddit many many years
(02:24):
ago because he was a criminology student and he wanted
to have all these questions answered about people that had
committed crimes. And Olivia turned that and put it right
back in his face. And I am going to play
her victim impact statement right now. It is about ten
minutes long. It is powerful as hell, and I applaud
(02:46):
her for getting up and she didn't stumble over a
single word.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
She was passionate.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
She looked him in the eye and it was impactful,
and we're going to play it now.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
I'd like to start by thanking the court for allowing
me the time and opportunity to speak today. My name
is Olivia and I'm the big sister of Kailey Gonzalvez,
and I was blessed to love Madison Mogan as a
sister too. I'm not here today to speak in grief.
I'm here to speak in truth because the truth is
my sister, Kayley and her best friend Mattie were not
(03:18):
yours to take. They were not yours to study, to
stalk or to silence. They were two pieces of a whole,
the perfect yin and yang. They are everything that you
could never be loved accepted, vibrant, accomplished.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Brave and powerful.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Because the truth about Kayley and Maddie, they would have
been kind to you if you would approach them in
their everyday lives. They would have given you directions, thanked
you for the compliment, or awkwardly giggled to make your
own words less uncomfortable for you in a world that
rejected you. They would have shown mercy. Because the truth is,
(04:05):
I'm angry. Every day I'm angry. I'm left shouting at
the inside of my own head everything I wish I
could say to you. The truth about me is when
I heard the news, I didn't cry. I listened for them.
I promised them I would that I would fight for them,
(04:28):
that I would show up no matter what it cost me.
I swore I'd never let them feel alone, because you see,
I've always been their heavyweight. I've always been the one
to fight the battles. They didn't feel ready to fight themselves.
All it ever took was a call, and they knew
I would handle it for them, no matter the time,
(04:49):
no matter the cost. They could wave their white flag
because they knew I would never back down, not for them,
and not even death could change to that. Somewhere along
the line, I started to think about what I would
say to them if I was given just one last chance,
(05:09):
if I could gather enough heartbreak or love or sacrifice
or whatever it took to get just one message across,
what would I say.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Throughout this entire.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Process, I've written my feelings down at every moment, my wishes,
my love, my denial, my anger, and as one final
act of love, I planned to read these thoughts, even
jarring and discombobulating and not even making sense, because for
me that was true love, as bare and as naked
(05:42):
as it could be, not laced in pretty words or
dressed for the occasion, but written through bleary eyes at
two am, with clenched fists, angry at this reality. My
true final act of love was to continue on without
them for them that dream to read love, to read
(06:04):
aloud my love to them, to bring meaning through pain
was the latest blow in realizing you don't deserve it,
and Kayleie and Maddy don't need it. Kayleie and Matty
have always known my love, and they would never ask
me to prove it by further victimizing myself to a
(06:26):
defendant who has shown no guilt, no remorse, no apprehension.
They would say to me, why would you give the
satisfaction of showing vulnerability? Now you promised you would never
back down, And for that clarity, I'm thankful. I won't
stand here and give you what you want. I won't
(06:48):
offer you tears, I won't offer you trembling disappointments like
you thrive on pain, on.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Fear, and on the illusion of.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
Power, And I won't feed your beast. Instead, I will
call you what you are, sociopath, psychopath, murderer. I will
ask the questions that reverberate violently in my own head,
so loudly that I can't think straight most any day.
(07:20):
Some of these might be familiar, So set up straight
when I talk to you. How is your life right
before you murdered my sisters? Did you prepare for the
crime before leaving your apartment? Please detail what you were
thinking and feeling at this time.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Why did you.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Choose my sisters before making your move? Did you approach
my sisters? Detail what you were thinking and feeling before
leaving their home? Is there anything else you did? How
does it feel to know the only thing you failed
more miserably at than being a murderer is trying to
(08:01):
be a rapper. Did you recently start shaving or manually
pulling out your eyebrows?
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Why?
Speaker 4 (08:10):
November thirteenth, did you truly think your Amazon purchase was
untraceable because you used a gift card? How do you
find it enjoyable to stargaze with such a severe case
of visual snow? Where is the murder weapon? The clothes
you wore that night? What did you bring into the
(08:33):
house with you? What was the second weapon you used
on Cayley? What were Kaylee's last words? Please describe in
detail the level of anxiety you must have felt when
you heard the bear cat pull up to your family
home on December thirtieth, twenty twenty two. Which do you
(08:56):
regret more returning to the crime scene five hours later
or never ever going back to Moscow, not even once
after stalking them there for months. If you were really smart,
do you think you'd be here right now? What's it
(09:17):
like needing this much attention just to feel real? You're
terrified of being ordinary, aren't you? Do you feel anything
at all? Or you exactly what you always feared?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Nothing?
Speaker 4 (09:36):
If you're so powerful, then why are you still hiding defendant.
You see, I'm here today as me.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
But who are you?
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Let's try to take off your mask and see you
didn't create devastation.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
You revealed it.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
In it, in yourself, and that darkness you carry, that emptiness,
You'll sit with it long after this is over. That
is your sentence, and it was written on the wall
long before you ever pled guilty. You didn't win, You
just exposed.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yourself as the coward you are.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
You're a delusional, pathetic, hypochondriac loser who thought you were
so much smarter than everybody else, constantly scolding, turning your
nose up to grammar mistakes, nitpicking and criticizing others. You
wanted so badly to be different, to be special, to
(10:35):
be better, to be deep, to be mysterious. You found
yourself thinking you were better than everyone else, and you
thought you could figure out the human psyche and see
through it all while tweaked.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Out on heroin.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Lurking in the shadows made you feel powerful because no
one ever paid you any attention. In the light, you
thought you were exceptional, all because of a grade on
a paper. You thought you were a lee because your
online IQ test from twenty ten told you so all
of that effort just to see them important. It's desperate.
(11:09):
There is a name for your condition. Though you're inflated.
Ego just didn't allow you to see it.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Want to be.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
You act like no one could ever understand your mind.
But the truth is you're basic, your textbook pace of
insecurity disguised as control. Your patterns are predictable, your motives
are shallow. You are not profound. You're pathetic. You aren't
special or deep, not mysterious or exceptional. Don't ever get
(11:41):
it twisted again. No one is scared of you today.
No one is intimidated by you, no one is impressed
by you. No one thinks that you are important. You
orchestrated this like you thought you were God. Now look
at you begging a courtroom for scraps. You spent months preparing,
(12:02):
and still all it took was my sister, and as
she you work so hard to seem dangerous, but real
control doesn't have to prove itself. The truth is the
scariest part about you. It's how painfully average you turned
out to be. The truth is as dumb as they come, stupid, clumsy, slow, sloppy, weak, dirty.
(12:32):
Let me be very clear, don't ever try to convince
yourself you mattered just because someone finally said your name
out loud. I see through you. You want the truth.
Here's the one you'll hate the most. If you hadn't
attacked them in their sleep in the middle of the
night like a pedophile, Kaylee would have kicked your fucking ass.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
I literally have listened to that so many times already,
and it's only Wednesday night, and I just think that
she really chose her words carefully. She degraded him, She
read him like a book, and I was so impressed
with her statement. All of the victim impact statements were really,
(13:28):
really good, and I highly suggest you go listen to
all of them. Bethany wrote a victim impact statement and
had someone read it for her.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
She's one of the surviving roommates.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And then Dylan got up and read her victim impact statement,
and it absolutely completely breaks your heart when you really
put into perspective what these poor girls have gone through.
Not only did they lose four of their best friends,
but they were targets of people accusing them of murder
(14:01):
and threats and the worst of the worst. While they
are in the midst of their grief. Dylan said, she
was only nineteen years old when this happened, and when
you really put that into perspective, she was a baby,
so young, so innocent, obviously never thinking that the worst
(14:22):
of the worst was going to happen right under her
own roof, because she had lived a very normal life
where you don't think that the worst of the worst
is going to happen to you, and then all of
a sudden you're thrust into this insanity of what happened
to your friends, and you are a survivor of that,
(14:42):
and it's just I can't even put into words. Her
victim impact statement really really drove it home that yes,
they are two living victims that survived this, but they
are going to live the rest of their life trying
to maneuver through the grief of what has happened to them.
(15:03):
And the other victim impact statements, like I said, are
all really really good. So I do suggest you guys
go and give it a listen, give them all a listen.
They're all on Court TV, and they all are really good.
Steve Kaylee's dad actually moved to the podium so he
was eye to eye, face to face with BK and
(15:24):
he had no emotion during the whole everyone going no
emotion at all. Everyone that spoke, he had zero emotion.
I don't know how you can sit through something like
that and not even like WinCE once, and he didn't.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
He was terrible.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Everybody did a really great job giving their victim impact statements,
and I think.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
It was a very powerful day.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
I personally wish nothing but the worst of the worst
for BK in prison.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I hope he has a.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Terrible time, and I hope I never have to hear
from him ever ever again in life. They are starting
to release some of the documents and everything. I am
not at the I don't have the mental capacity in
bandwidth to go through all that right now, but I
probably will in the coming days. Last thing I want
(16:13):
to talk about real quickly is Eric Menandez, of the
Menanda's brothers.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Is not doing well medically.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
They said he had a kidney stone and that he
was hospitalized, but now it seems like it's progressed to
something a little bit more serious, and they're basically calling
that he is let out so that way he can
get the proper medical care. I don't know what's going
to come of it. But that's kind of what's going
on right now. With all of that, they do have
a hearing coming up in August about their paroles, so
(16:44):
it's going to be interesting to see what ends up happening.
But I'll be sure to keep you updated. And I'm
going to have a more in depth right now in
True Crime next week because this week I really wanted
to focus on Olivia's statement the BK sentencing, and we'll
get into more next week because I swear when it
rains abhors in the true crime world unfortunately, So we
(17:07):
are going to go ahead now and get into today's episode.
It is a little bit of a shorter episode, but
still a really important story to tell. Alrighty guys, Today
we are diving into a case that is a recently
solved case of a twenty four year old woman named
Jeannette Ralston. She lost her life in nineteen seventy seven
after leaving a bar in San Jose, California, and although
(17:31):
her case was cold for many years, it is now
finally solved due to the San Jose Police Department not
giving up and re examining evidence and taking a fresh
look at what they had available and doing so with
Fresh twenty twenty five eyes. We are going to talk
about Jeanette the case, why it was dormant for so long,
and what's come out since law enforcement has finally announced
(17:54):
that they made an arrest. Also, there was a composite
sketch in this case, and it's really why to see
the comparison of that sketch to the actual suspect now
that we know who he is and his identity. So
often I feel like those sketches really do a great
job at identifying the suspect, and in this case, they
super nailed it.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
It is wild.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Jeanette Diana Collins or Elston was born on April twenty
fifth of nineteen fifty two in Germany. I wasn't able
to find much about her childhood or her upbringing, but
at some point she moved to California and had lived
in Benetia and San Mateo prior to her death. I'm
not fully sure on the timeframe, but I do know
(18:36):
that she was married, and she was a mom and
had a son named Alan, who was only six at
the time of his mother's murder. So Jeanette's story all
starts on January thirty first of nineteen seventy seven, when
she went out to spend some time with some friends
at the lions Den Bar in San Jose, California. It
was located at fifteen hundred Almaden Road, and it was
(18:58):
just after midnight when she had told her friends that
she would be back in about ten minutes. As she
walked out of sight from her friend's field of vision,
they noticed that she was with the man that they
did not recognize. Jeannette never returned to the bar that night,
and it wouldn't be until the next morning when her
fate would be found out. The next morning, on February
(19:18):
first of nineteen seventy seven, Jeannette was found in her
Volkswagen Beetle. She was wedged tightly in the backseat of
her car. Her car was parked in the carport area
of an apartment complex not far from the bar where
she was last seen. She had been strangled with a
long sleeve dress shirt and had been sexually assaulted. It
also appeared that the perpetrator had unsuccessfully attempted to set
(19:41):
the car on a fire, which was an obvious attempt
to cover his tracks and cover his crime. Despite the
fact that the last people with Jeanette were able to
come up with a composite sketch of the individual.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
She was last seen with.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Law enforcement had no viable suspects, and the case went
cold until twenty twenty four. That is, the San Jose
Police Departments Homicide Unit, along with the cold case unit
that was established in twenty eleven, decided that they were
going to dig back into Janette's case. The Deputy District Attorney,
Rob Baker decided in twenty twenty four to rerun and
(20:19):
retest all of the evidence. Things that they had collected
in nineteen seventy seven that yielded no results could yield
results now in present day. So that's exactly what they did.
They said that they threw basically a hail Mary and
tried to see if they could solve this case. They
retested fingerprints that were found on a pack of Eve
cigarettes that were found in Jeanette's car, and boom, the
(20:41):
breakthrough came. The prince came back as matching a man
named Willie Eugene Simms, who was sixty nine years old
and living in Ohio. Early in twenty twenty five, investigators
traveled to Ohio to collect Willy's DNA and it came
back as a match and consistent with the DNA that
was found under Jutt's fingernails, as well as the DNA
(21:02):
that was on the blouse that was used to strangle her.
A true smoking gun. So who is Willy Eugene Simms.
At the time of Jeanet's murder? Willie was an Army
private who was stationed at Fort Ord. In nineteen seventy eight,
a year after Jeanette's murder, he was convicted of assault
with the intent to commit murder in Monterey County.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
He was sentenced to.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Two and a half months, which is pure insanity considering
the charges. He then moved out of California before the
time when DNA was routinely collected and placed into databases,
hence why he was able to remain free for so
many years. So of course I had to research him
a little bit more and try to find out a
(21:46):
little bit more about his history, and I found another
case of his I believe from nineteen ninety eight that
took place in Texas where he is accused and found
guilty of a robbery where he entered a home and
stole property from a house along with an accomplice. He
was basically found hiding in this person's closet with some
(22:07):
of their belongings. I am going to read through that
case file now. On December second, nineteen ninety eight, at
approximately nine am, Dorothy saw two young black males running
from her neighbor's house. She watched as the boys ran
to a nearby house. She testified that the boy in
front was wearing a baise jacket with a light collar,
and the other was wearing a striped blue jacket. She
(22:29):
physically described the boy in front as tall and slim
and the boy and back as short and husky. Further,
she said the boy and back was carrying a bulky object.
After her husband went to the neighbor's house and saw
the black window had been broken out, they called police.
While they waited for police to arrive, Dorothy watched the
house nearby to see if the boys had left the house.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
They did not.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
When the police arrived, Dorothy pointed out the nearby house
that the boys had entered. The police officers knocked on
the door and missed Kennedy. The owner of the home
answered the officer. Dixplained what had happened and obtained her
permission to search. The house officer Mark Barrington went to
the back bedroom, where he found Sims standing in a
bedroom closet. Sims was ordered out of the closet and
(23:13):
the officers confirmed from the owner that Sims did not
have permission to be in her house. As Barrington began
searching the bedroom closet, Sims said, there's nothing in the closet.
Barrington continued searching the closet and found three rings lying
on a pile of clothes. He looked underneath the pile
of clothes and found a VCR. Additionally, in the closet
(23:33):
where they found Sims, they found a jacket matching the
eyewitnesses description of a bays jacket. The officer also found
two bags of coins in the closet. In the bedroom,
Barrington found a brooch on the floor and bags of jewelry.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
On the bed.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Barrington also found the other suspect, Jermaine Kennedy, squatted down
in the bottom of a hallway linen closet.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
On the shelf.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
In the linen closet, Barrington found some rings and watches.
All the described items, other than the Bayse jack it
were later identified and has been stolen from the victim's house.
A search of the victim's house revealed that a window
near the back door had been broken out, but the
burglars had not been able to gain entry through the door.
The officers found that another window had been broken through
(24:15):
which the burglars entered the house through. The house had
been ransacked. Sims was arrested and indicted for the offense
of burglary of a habitation. In his sole issue on appeal,
Sim asserts the evidence is insufficient to support his conviction
because there's no evidence to show he entered the habitation.
The state argues the evidence is sufficient to convict Sims,
(24:36):
either under the law or parties, or as a primary actor.
We agree with the state and affirm the conviction. Sims
asserts there is no evidence indicating that he entered the
victim's house, and therefore the evidence is legally insufficient to
find that he committed the offense of burglary, despite evidence
that the defendant actually entered the home to commit the
theft is unnecessary if the record discloses a burglary occurred,
(25:00):
that the defendant possessed some or all of the stolen property,
and that the defendant failed to proffer a reason for
having it. Sims matched the description of the taller male
who had been wearing a base jacket with a light collar.
In the closet where Sims was found, there was a
bays jacket matching the eyewitness's description. The jacket had a
roll of dimes in one of the pockets. The officers
(25:20):
also found a gun in one of the pockets of
the base jacket. The victim testified that her home had
been broken into and ransacked, and the property recovered by
the police from Sims and Kennedy belonged to her. Furthermore,
sims accomplice testified that he and Sims had a prior agreement.
Even after eliminating all accomplice evidence from the record, we
(25:40):
conclude the other evidence, although circumstantial, tends to support a
finding that Sims entered the victim's house. Considering the eyewindest
testimony and the fact that the base jacket and stolen
goods were found in and around the closet where Sims
was found, we believe that there was sufficient circumstantial evidence
to support the juries fighting that Sims entered the victim's
(26:01):
home and committed burglary of a habitation. So I'm pretty
sure that this is the same individual, and he obviously
doesn't want to take any accountability for his actions, even
though he was literally caught red handed in a closet
with all of the stolen merchandise, and he thinks that
it's just circumstantial and they really can't even prove that
(26:21):
he was ever in the house, and he basically just
tried to blame it on his accomplice. But no dice
for you, Willy Eugene Simms. So not only do we
have that occurrence, we also have the assault in nineteen
seventy eight and then the murder and assault of Jeanette.
What else is this guy responsible for? I say it
all the time. Someone this violent doesn't just offend once.
(26:43):
They offend again and again until they are caught. And
luckily for us, time is up for Willie. Jeanette's son,
who was only six years old at the time of
her murder, expressed immense gratitude for the police department not
giving up on his mom's case, and is quoted as
saying in a WLB three interview, without the Santa Clara Detectives,
(27:03):
the whole team that's worked on this for forty nine
years how do you think somebody like that and not
feel guilty that you didn't thank them enough?
Speaker 1 (27:11):
End quote. He then goes on to.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Say that he holds the memory of his mother close
to his heart and says, she raised me to be
a happy kid, so I just hold on to that.
I've always tried to do good in my life and
try to respect her in any way I.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Could end quote.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
This case was cold for so many years, and I'm
just glad that there is finally some resolution. It's all
kind of happening in real time. They just officially announced
this in May, right around Mother's Day, which Alan said
was a really good Mother's Day present for him because
he's lived so many of his years without knowing what
(27:46):
happened to his mom or who was responsible.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
This story also.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Reminds me a little bit of Megan Beth John's, who
I just covered again. It's another case that was recently solved,
and it's just the track record of the suspect that
really gets to me, because so often these people have
a trail of violent offenses that they entertained.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
It just doesn't start one day.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Usually they start very very young, and then it just
gets worse and with some of them.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
They aren't locked.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Away and put away, so they can not do this
to somebody else, and they just keep reoffending until eventually,
years down the line, they get caught. And that's exactly
what happened in this case of Willie Eugene Simms, because
it seems like he was a violent person. He was
just basically it seems like a career criminal. What other
(28:44):
things could he be responsible for that he hasn't been
caught for yet. He served two months in jail after
an attempted murder and then was able to leave the
state of California, never giving his prints, never giving his DNA,
and was able to get away with stuff for such
a long time. And I guess it's with his nineteen
(29:06):
ninety eight arrests for the burglary that they ended up
getting his prints and everything else.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
He eventually moved.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
To Ohio, and god knows what he was up to there.
He's almost seventy years old now. But I think for
a lot of these people that have eluded authorities for
so long and have gotten away with these cases for
so long, their time truly is running out because DNA
technology is catching up and police departments are going back
through some of these decades long cold cases, and they're
(29:36):
rerunning all of the evidence and things are popping up
left and right. That is why I feel like there's
so many of these now solved cases. This one was
almost fifty years old, and it was almost cold for
fifty whole years, but now it's not anymore. And although
we don't know at the moment the reason why Willie
(29:56):
Eugene Simms decided to take Jeannette's life, I do know
that he will never do it to anybody else because
he is behind bars in California and there is going
to be a hearing that's coming up in August, and
if convicted, he is facing from twenty five years to life,
and I hope it's more on the life side, because
(30:17):
this individual never needs to see the light of day
again in my opinion. Of course, they have enough evidence
to bring charges against him, but he has not been
found guilty yet in a court of law, so I
do want to make that very very clear. But I
do think that the San Jose Police Department did a
wonderful job with this case. They did a great job
(30:37):
preserving the evidence and taking the evidence way back in
nineteen seventy seven, when I don't even think that they
knew that one day that evidence was going to come
back around and help them solve this case in twenty
twenty five. It's really crazy to think about how much
time passed in between the testing of the evidence and
the preservation of the evidence. How good they must have
(31:00):
preserve that evidence underneath her fingernails, on the shirt that
was used to strangle her, and on the Eves cigarette
carton of all things. This is why I cover these
cases so we can have way more resolution like this one.
So although the story is a little bit shorter than
my typical episodes, I did want to cover it because
(31:20):
Jeanette's story matters, and I'm so glad that we are
one step closer to getting justice for her. And like
I said, I'm going to be sharing the composite sketch
of the suspect, a booking photo current of Willy E
Jean Sims, and a former booking photo of Willy Eujeene Sims,
because it is definitely crazy to see the comparison and
(31:42):
how accurate this initial description of this man was. They
just never had this guy on their radar. He probably
wasn't somebody that was known to Jeanette, and maybe that
night he was able to gain her trust and they
ended up leaving together for one reason or another, and
then he attacked her, assaulted her, and murdered her, and
(32:04):
then tried to cover his tracks by burning the car,
but failed miserably because he sucks allegedly in my opinion,
So thank god for that, because if that had happened,
if he had successfully lit the car on fire, a
lot of this evidence that was so well preserved probably wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Even be in existence. So thankfully.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Criminals are dumb and a lot of the times they
mess up and things don't go as planned. So that
is Jeanette's story. Thank you guys so much for listening.
I will see you next week for a brand new
unsolved case. I hope you have a great weekend and
I will see you then.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Bye.
Popular Podcasts
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!