Santa Barbara County District Attorney John T. Savrnoch announced today a jury returned a verdict of guilty against defendant Aloysius James of first-degree murder with the special circumstance of murder in the commission of the rape of thirty-year-old Ofelia Sandoval, who was killed on September 18, 1988, in Santa Maria, California.
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 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 2000’s 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…