Elaina Marie Bear was 15 and from Northside, Ohio. She was last seen on January 15, 1977, after spending the evening with a friend, Debbie Whitt, smoking marijuana and eating chili dogs in the Clifton area of Cincinnati. That night they hitchhiked with a stranger; the stranger dropped Elaina off at her sister’s home in nearby Winton Place while Whitt was taken home.

On February 28, 1977, Elaina’s nude body was found in a creek bed along a rural road about 50 miles away in Clinton County, Ohio. An autopsy determined she died the morning of January 16, 1977, by strangulation; stomach contents helped establish the approximate time of death.

Authorities later arrested 28-year-old Larry Ralston, who had worked at the Hamilton County morgue and a state mental hospital and was already in custody on multiple rape and kidnapping charges. Ralston was indicted November 29, 1977, for Elaina’s aggravated murder, convicted by a Clermont County jury, and initially sentenced to death; that sentence was later converted to life imprisonment after the Ohio death penalty was ruled unconstitutional. His convictions in other aggravated-murder trials involved several young women; one conviction was later overturned on procedural grounds regarding a confession.

Does anyone have further details about Elaina’s last evening or the ride she and Debbie Whitt accepted?