Almost one year after the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office arrested the man they believe shot and killed Joseph Rocha at his business on Highway 120 between Manteca and Escalon, the case has now been closed.

Emilio Baraza Valdez, who was 75 at the time he was arrested in January of last year, died last month while awaiting trial on charges of murder stemming from the 1979 shooting of the owner of Rocha’s 120 Bar – which was located several miles outside of Manteca’s city limits.

According to authorities, an argument ensued after Rocha kicked Baraza and another man out of the bar, and then refused to sell them a 6-pack of beer for the road – ending in gunfire that ultimately claimed the life of the bar’s owner.

Valdez’s accomplice – who was then 26-year-old Joe Perez of Riverbank – was arrested and charged with the crime while the man authorities claim pulled the trigger fled the country and then changed his name. He was discovered living in Southern California last year by the then newly formed Cold Case Unit and was taken into custody for the murder.

The unit fulfilled a campaign promise made by Sheriff Pat Withrow to do something about solving the more than 200 homicides that were stacked up on the agency’s books – assigning Detective Sergeant Linda Jimenez and Detective Irene Shelvay to the unit and pulling in additional resources as necessary to investigate and build cases with state-of-the-art technologies that were not available at the time that the cases were new.

According to a release published almost two years ago, the unit has been focusing on unsolved homicides, missing persons cases, and sexual assault cases that initially went unsolved.

Because of the massive amount of work involved in finding leads in the old cases, it has taken some time for the unit to start making headway on the backlog.

Baraza was initially being held on $3 million bail on charges of felony murder.

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.