Prosecutors said new DNA work helped link a former boyfriend of the victim’s sister to the crime.
FONTANA, Calif. — More than four decades after 18-year-old Michelle “Missy” Jones was found dead in a field in Fontana, a jury has convicted a man prosecutors say sexually assaulted and killed her, closing what authorities described as the oldest cold case successfully prosecuted in San Bernardino County.
The case, long stalled by limited leads and aging evidence, moved forward after investigators reexamined forensic material with newer DNA methods and compared it to a sample collected from the suspect years later. The conviction brought renewed attention to how cold-case units test old evidence, and to the families who wait through decades of court delays and unanswered questions.
Jones was found July 5, 1980, in an area near Live Oak Avenue and Santa Ana Avenue, police and prosecutors said. Early reports described her body as discovered in a grove or dirt field, and investigators said she had been sexually assaulted. The case went cold after detectives developed no strong suspect and no clear path to prove who attacked her, even as her family and officers kept the file active through periodic reviews.
In 2020, a Fontana Police Department detective assigned to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s cold-case team reopened the investigation and pushed for new testing, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office said in a case filing. Investigators said they were able to connect DNA collected during Jones’ autopsy to Leonard Nash, a Las Vegas-area resident. Detectives said they obtained Nash’s DNA from items he had discarded, then confirmed it matched the biological evidence preserved from the 1980 investigation.
The identification also tied back to the victim’s life in 1980. Detectives said interviews with family members helped establish that Nash had been dating Jones’ sister around the time Jones was killed, placing him in the family’s orbit and giving investigators a link that had not been fully developed in the original inquiry. Fontana police Detective Katie Clark, speaking during the 2020 announcement of the arrest, emphasized that investigators did not view the case as forgotten even after decades. “I want to make it very clear to the family that she was never a piece of trash to us and she was never forgotten,” Clark said.
Nash was arrested in September 2020 after prosecutors filed a murder case against him under California Penal Code Section 187, the district attorney’s office said. Court records listed the case under a San Bernardino County Superior Court file number, and prosecutors framed the filing as the result of renewed cold-case work and improved forensic tools. The arrest marked a major turn for a case that had lingered since the early years of modern DNA analysis, when many departments were still building evidence-storage practices and statewide systems for comparing genetic profiles.
Even with the arrest, the case required years to reach a verdict. Prosecutors still had to present a crime from 1980 to modern jurors, explain how evidence was preserved, and account for the loss of time: faded memories, unavailable witnesses, and the limits of records created long before today’s digital systems. Defense attorneys in old cases often challenge whether evidence could have been contaminated, whether it was stored correctly, and whether investigators can reliably reconstruct events decades later.
A jury convicted Nash of second-degree murder on Nov. 13, 2025, according to a report carried by Patch that cited the Press-Enterprise. Nash, described as 71 at the time of the verdict, faced a sentence of 15 years to life in state prison. Authorities did not publicly outline every detail of how prosecutors argued the killing occurred, and investigators have not said whether they believe anyone else was involved. They also have not released a detailed public timeline of Jones’ final hours, beyond where her body was discovered.
Family members who spoke when Nash was first taken into custody said the arrest brought a kind of closure, though it came too late for some relatives who died before seeing the case revived. During the 2020 news conference, Jones’ sister said she wished their parents were alive to hear the update, then added she was relieved a suspect had been caught. The comments reflected a common strain in cold cases: the long wait can outlast the people most connected to the victim, leaving later generations to carry the questions into court.
Authorities have highlighted the case as a milestone for San Bernardino County because of its age and because it led to a successful prosecution. Cold-case teams in Southern California have increasingly leaned on DNA advances to reopen murders from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Those investigations can be expensive and slow, requiring lab work, careful chain-of-custody review, and new interviews to confirm what earlier detectives documented. When a DNA match does emerge, prosecutors still must show jurors that the science and record-keeping are reliable enough to support a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.
The district attorney’s office has not released a full trial transcript in its public summary, and many specifics remain unclear, including what investigators believe the motive was and where the attack started. Police have also not said whether any additional forensic evidence, such as fingerprints or fibers, supported the DNA match. What is clear is that the case’s turning point came from linking preserved biological evidence to a suspect’s DNA profile and then building the surrounding context through interviews with family members and historical records.
With the verdict in place, the next steps center on sentencing and prison processing, along with any possible post-conviction motions or appeals. In California, a second-degree murder conviction typically brings a lengthy prison term, and a 15-years-to-life sentence means the defendant may later seek parole but does not guarantee release. The timing of any parole review depends on state rules and on credits and hearings that follow after sentencing.
For Fontana investigators, the case stands as a reminder of both persistence and limits. Jones’ killing remained unsolved through changes in leadership, technology, and staffing, and the evidence waited decades for a method that could connect it to a named suspect. The case also underscores how solving a cold case is not the same as answering every question. Even after conviction, families often still lack a full account of what happened, why it happened, and what a victim experienced in the final moments.
Authorities say the conviction closes a chapter that began on a summer day in 1980, when officers responded to a young woman found dead near a roadway and fields in Fontana. The milestone, they said, is measured not only in years but in the persistence of evidence, paperwork, and the people who refused to let a teenager’s death become only a file number.
Author note: Last updated February 13, 2026.