A California teen was raped and stabbed 59 times. 40 years later, the verdict was announced
The man responsible for the long-term murder was sentenced to life imprisonment after the naked body of a 15-year-old Palo Alto girl was tied and covered in blood near a bus stop for more than 40 years.
Gary Ramirez, 78, of Hawaii, was sentenced Monday to a 1982 brutal rape and murder of Karen Stitt, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office announced. After 25 years, he is eligible for parole.
According to a report by a medical examiner, the victim was sexually assaulted on the neck, chest, abdomen and back and stabbed 59 times. The killer placed his blood and semen on her body, but investigators were unable to identify the suspect at the time.
The case has been silenced for decades until new DNA technology and community tips led investigators to arrest Ramirez in 2022 at his Maui residence.
“Karen Stitt was killed 40 years ago, but she was not forgotten,” the Santa Clara County district. Atti. Jeff Rosen said in a statement Monday. “Today, thanks to a dedicated detective, a lasting prosecutor and our crime lab, the people in charge are in prison.”
Prosecutors said Karen walked around Sunnyvale on the last night of her life with her 17-year-old boyfriend, who left her at the bus stop around midnight so she could return to Palo Alto.
The boyfriend “later told police that he felt sorry for leaving her alone, but he didn’t want to get into trouble because his parents were late.” Matthew Hutchison arrested Ramirez in the documents.
A truck driver found her body around 10:45 am the next morning in the bush under the coal mine wall near the bus stop. Hutchison wrote that the dirt and leaves around her were disturbed, indicating that she continued to struggle after being left there.
By 2000, detectives were able to use new DNA testing techniques to build profiles of suspects based on blood spots found on the wall and fluids in the girl’s body.
The profile does not match her boyfriend and he is excluded from the suspect. Unfortunately, it also doesn’t match anyone in the national DNA crime database, and the case is cold again.
Prosecutors said that until 2019, until 2019, Sunnyville police used tips to determine that four of the Fresno brothers may have committed the crime and began a genealogy hunt that matched the crime scene DNA with their families.
DNA samples obtained from Ramirez’s daughter provide a breakthrough and Ramirez was established as the main suspect in April 2022.
He was arrested in August 2022 at his home in Makava, Maui and extradited to Santa Clara County, where he was charged with murder, rape, kidnapping and armed with deadly weapons during felony crimes. He did not defend in February.
Prosecutors said several of Karen’s friends and family attended Monday’s sentencing hearing, sharing their ongoing grief over the killings and showing she was not forgotten.
“Justice is a tough thing,” the girl’s aunt, Robin Morris, told the district attorney’s office in a telephone interview in February. “He has lived his whole life and my niece has not received that privilege.”
