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In 1982, 15-year-old Karen Stitt’s naked body was abandoned near a bus stop in Sunnyvale after she was brutally raped and stabbed, and finally, more than 40 years later, her murder was sentenced to prison.
The Palo Alto teen spent the night with her 17-year-old boyfriend. He was able to leave her at the bus stop around midnight, the night he walked around and headed home, and he never missed the curfew.
The truck driver found his bloody, tied up body in a bush near the wall of a bloody cinder block just before 11am the next day, Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office official said in a news release.
She was sexually assaulted and stabbed her in the neck, stomach, chest and back more than 50 times. The incident got colder, as the murderer left both his blood and semen in his teenage body, police were unable to involve the horrifying murderer.
Over the next few years, investigators used DNA technology to create profiles from Stitt’s body fluids that exonerated blood sugar found on the wall and Stitt’s fluids that were not in line with others in the National DNA Crime Database.
Karen Stitt, 15, a Palo Alto resident seen in this undated photo. (Santa Clara County DA office) Karen Stitt, 15, a Palo Alto resident seen in this undated photograph. (Santa Clara County DA office)
In 2019, detective Matt Hutchinson with the Sunnyvale Public Safety Agency used hints that the teenage murderer was one of Fresno’s four brothers and launched a genealogy investigation to find a family that matches the DNA at the crime scene.
About three years later, in April 2022, 78-year-old Maui resident Gary Ramirez was identified as a suspect after her daughter provided DNA samples to investigators.
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Four months later, he was arrested at his Maui home and handed over to Santa Clara County, where he was charged with murder, rape, trickery and armed with deadly weapons by the Felony Commission.
In February, the 78-year-old did not contest the 1982 murder and was sentenced to life in prison on May 12 for 25 years on the possibility of parole.
“More than 40 years ago, Karen Stitt lost her life, but she couldn’t be forgotten,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said. “Today, thanks to our dedicated detectives, enduring prosecutors and our crime lab, the person in charge is behind the bar.”
Several of Karen Stitt’s friends and family reportedly attended Monday’s sentence. There, we were able to share the pain that long-term cases continue to cause.
“Justice is hard,” Stitt’s aunt, Robin Morris, said in an interview, according to the Times. “He lived his whole life, but my nie didn’t get that privilege.”
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