She was murdered 40 years ago. Her killer was found using a Wingstop cup

A California man who police say murdered his girlfriend’s 18-year-old sister was captured 40 years later, and detectives used a Wingstop cup to do it.

The man, Leonard Nash, was charged in September 2020 with felony murder in the killing of Michelle “Missy” Jones. Jones was found dead on July 5, 1980, in a grapefruit grove in Fontana, CA, the Fontana Police Department and the San Bernardino County district attorney said in press releases.

Cpl. Kathryn Clark, who was working on cold cases in June 2020, followed up on an unreported lead from 1980. Clark and her partners were able to interview Nash, who left DNA on a Wingstop cup, as first reported by the San Bernardino Sun. 

After DNA testing, investigators arrested Nash, who was in his mid-20s when the murder happened. His arrest came when he was in his 60s.

Nash, now 72, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced in January 2026 to 15 years to ​life in prison. He is serving his sentence at the California Institution for Men in Chino, CA, according to court records obtained by USA TODAY.

Here’s what we know about Michelle Jones and the evidence that allowed police and prosecutors to charge her killer in the 40-year-old murder case.

An unreported tip, lunch and a Wingstop cup lead to arrest

Clark, the investigator who helped collect Jones’s DNA and solve the case, said the renewed investigation dates to 2020, 40 years after Jones was killed. Clark works for the Fontana Police Department and was assigned in spring 2020 to work on cold cases ⁠with two detectives at the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

One of those cases was Jones’s. Clark learned Jones has an older sister, Phyllis, who was dating Nash in 1980. The family had a Fourth of July party in 1980 in Rancho Cucamonga, at the home Phyllis and Nash shared, Clark told USA TODAY on Wednesday, June 3.

The next day, around 4:40 p.m. on July 5, 1980, Jones’s body was ‌found in a field about 11 miles east of where the family’s party was held. Investigators swabbed the victim’s genitals and made a slide using the DNA, but ​technology hadn’t advanced enough to process it.

Decades after Jones’s killing, investigators sent the evidence to a laboratory for processing and established a DNA profile of the killer. The profile was entered into the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ DNA database, but no matches were found. 

Clark looked up the men Jones had been associated with and, one by one, ruled them out. One man had been arrested in 1980 but released. The man said he picked Jones up after the family’s barbecue, the pair had sex and he dropped her off at around 4:30 a.m. on July 5 at her home in Pomona.

When he realized her family suspected him of killing her, he provided a statement to police and passed multiple polygraph tests. Investigators also corroborated his statements, Clark told USA TODAY on Wednesday, June 3. 

Sister makes suspicious discovery implicating boyfriend in Jones’s death

When Clark picked up ⁠Jones’s case, she received secondhand information that led her to speak to Jones’s sister. In June 2020, Clark traveled to Arizona to interview her about it.

Phyllis told Clark that on July 4 that year, Nash ‌left after the barbecue ended. Phyllis told Clark she was supposed to go to another event with Jones ‌and Nash, but she was too tired. Although Nash had left for the night, she wasn’t 100% certain where he’d gone. 

The next day, on July 5, 1980, Phyllis made an odd discovery in the home she shared with Nash.

“She pulled back the shower curtain of the upstairs bathroom and she saw his suit coat hanging in the shower,” Clark said. “On his suit coat was a foxtail. It startled her because she didn’t know why his suit coat was hanging in ⁠the shower. That was odd.”

She also saw mud or dirt on his shoes in the closet, said Clark, who added that this was information investigators didn’t have back in 1980, and that no one had spoken to him back then. 

Clark said when she asked why Phyllis didn’t report the coat, foxtail or dirty shoes to police, she replied: “I was 19 years old. I told my stepdad and I figured he told the police.”

Victim told loved ones suspect ‘won’t leave me alone’

Clark learned during her investigation that Jones did not like Nash, who had come on ‌to her multiple times. At one point, Jones lived with her sister and Nash.

Clark said: “She was only there with ‌them for a couple weeks when she told her mom: ‘He makes me feel uncomfortable. He keeps trying to come on to me. I don’t want nothing to do with him. He won’t leave me alone.’ ”

Jones’s best friend also recalled the 18-year-old being afraid of Nash.

“She recalls sitting down with Missy at a park, and Missy actually looked afraid of Leonard,” Clark told USA TODAY. 

How did investigators collect the suspect’s DNA?

When Clark learned about Nash’s alleged interest in Jones, the dirty shoes in the closet and Nash’s coat hanging in the shower, she knew she needed to get her hands on his ⁠DNA. 

Investigators first made contact with him on the phone and asked whether he remembered Jones, Clark said. He said he knew her but he needed to call them back. When he called back, the investigators had just settled down to ​grab a bite to eat at a Thai restaurant. They invited Nash, who needed a ride, Clark ⁠said.

The plan was to ​pick up Nash, bring him to the restaurant and, once the interview was over, collect his napkins, plate, straw and other items for DNA testing. In case that didn’t work, the investigators bought a bottle of water and placed it in the center console of the car, hoping he’d drink from it.

“We drove to a gas station where he asked us to pick him up,” she recalled. “He walked out with a styrofoam cup in his hand, a Wingstop styrofoam cup.”

As he sat in the front seat, he took the bottle of water and poured it into the Wingstop cup, Clark said. Once they got back to the restaurant, Nash threw the Wingstop cup in the trash. Clark then locked eyes with her partner, she said. Clark got Nash to sit down inside ⁠the Thai restaurant while her partner went to collect the cup and put it in his vehicle.

When investigators pressed Nash for information about Jones, he said he’d danced with Jones but never had sex with her, Clark recalled.

Arrest comes 40 years later

Once they were done eating and interviewing Nash, the team asked him to go outside and look at some photos. As he left, an investigator collected his fork, his napkin and his straw. The team was then able to get the items from the restaurant, as well as the Wingstop cup, to a lab in California.

Analysts had to compare the DNA from the Wingstop cup, the fork and the ⁠straw to each other in order to confirm the profiles all belonged to the same person – Nash. They then compared the DNA from the Wingstop cup to the slide from 1980. They got a match, Clark said.

The DNA was collected in June 2020, the lab work was done by August and in September, Clark had what she needed to get an arrest warrant for Nash, she told USA TODAY.

Police in Las Vegas arranged for him to be arrested and then extradited to California, Clark said.

Victim’s siblings talk about impact of finding answers

This past April, six years after Nash’s DNA matched the crime scene evidence, the San Bernardino County district attorney hosted an event for National Crime Victims Rights Week where Jones’s younger sister, Kymberly Jones, spoke.

She said Jones had her own style, was feisty, protective ⁠of her family, was classy and always had a smile on her face. The sisters come from a large ‌family of eight siblings, but July 4, 1980, changed that, she said. 

She said that day, her sister left the house saying she’d be right back.

“I watched her walk out of that door in her ​blue skirt and her blue top, and she never ‌came home,” her sister said on April 20 at the Sunrise Church Rialto Campus. “Missy was gone.”

Kymberly, who was 11 years old when her big sister was killed, said it was traumatizing.

“I thought she had gone undercover and she was still out there somewhere,” she said. “That’s what ​trauma does. It protects you from the truth until you are ready to understand.”

She said her family has lived with anger, unanswered questions and grief for more than 45 years. Her family also moved around a lot after Jones’s death, she recalled. She said a breakthrough came in 2019 when DNA technology allowed investigators to look into her sister’s case. She also thanked the advocates and investigators who made this possible.

“To every family that’s still waiting, I won’t tell you that this was easy,” Jones’s little sister said on April 20. “But I will tell you this: Don’t stop.”