Killer undone by decades-old threads — glove, towel and shirt stitch together cold case justice

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2026 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG. Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on FoxNews.com. A man who got away with rape and murder for nearly four decades will now spend the rest of his life behind bars after investigators used a covert DNA sample, collected with help from the FBI, to finally identify him. A Santa Barbara County judge sentenced Aloysius Winthrop James, 59, to life without the possibility of parole, the maximum sentence allowed by law. A jury had already convicted him in February of first-degree murder in the killing of 30-year-old Ofelia Sandoval, with the special circumstance that the murder was committed during a rape. Sandoval was killed on Sept. 18, 1988, in Santa Maria. She was found strangled to death, and despite what authorities described as an extensive investigation at the time, the case went cold the following year. REALTOR'S COLD C