A Gainesville man, arrested here two years ago, has been convicted of a California murder that occurred 38 years ago.
Santa Barbara County District Attorney John T. Savrnoch announced Friday Aloysius James had been convicted of first-degree murder with the special circumstance of murder in the commission of the rape of 30-year-old Ofelia Sandoval, who was killed on September 18, 1988, in Santa Maria.
Jones was arrested in Gainesville nearly two years ago. He was a resident of Santa Maria at the time of the murder.
SANTA MARIA COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY NEWS RELEASE:
Sentencing is set for April 14th in Department 6 of the Santa Maria division of the Santa Barbara
Superior Court. The defendant is facing a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Ofelia Sandoval was discovered strangled to death, on the floor of her home on the evening of
September 18, 1988. Santa Maria Police (SMPD) Officers vigorously investigated her death in 1988 and
collected countless pieces of evidence. Her death was ruled a homicide. Despite a valiant effort to
solve her murder, the case went cold in 1989.
Over the years many different SMPD detectives worked on the murder of Ofelia. In the early
2000s the Department of Justice used technology to develop a DNA profile of an unknown male
on items found in Ofelia’s room. The male DNA profile did not match to any known DNA profiles
and did not match to any profiles in the national database. However, the Santa Maria Police
Department never gave up on solving Ofelia’s murder.
In 2018, the FBI partnered with SMPD to obtain a covert DNA profile from Aloysius James. Then
in 2023, the Department of Justice developed the same male suspect DNA profile from samples
taken at Ofelia Sandoval’s autopsy in 1988. SMPD detectives obtained a warrant for the arrest of
Aloysius James and they booked him into custody in (Gainesville) Georgia on April 16, 2024. (EARLIER STORY. POSTED APRIL 20, 2024: Calif. murder suspect arrested in Gville)
Today marks the culmination of almost 38 years of work on the murder of Ofelia Sandoval.”
The Hall County SWAT Team and Gainesville Police were among the agencies and individuals Savrnoch thanked in helping close the case.
Sentencing is set for April 14. Jones faces a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.