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More than 40 years after the naked body of a 15-year-old Palo Alto girl was found tied up and covered in blood near a bus stop, the longtime murderer was sentenced to life in prison.
Hawaii’s Gary Ramirez, 78, was sentenced Monday after admitting not to contest the brutal rape in 1982 and the murder of Karen Stitt, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office announced. He will be eligible for parole after 25 years.
The victim was sexually assaulted and stabbed her in the neck, chest, abdomen and back 59 times. The murderer left his blood and semen in her body, but investigators were unable to identify the suspect at the time.
The case was cold for decades before new DNA technology and community chips began arresting Ramirez at his Maui residence in 2022.
“More than 40 years ago, Karen Stitt lost his life, but he couldn’t forget it,” Atty. Jeff Rosen said in a statement Monday. “Today, thanks to our dedicated detectives, enduring prosecutors and our crime lab, the person in charge is behind the bar.”
Karen spent the last night of her life walking around Sunnyvale with her 17-year-old boyfriend.
“Later he said he would feel bad if he left her alone, but he shouldn’t have been bothered with his parents to get home late,” according to a statement submitted by Sunnyvale Police Ditt. Matthew Hutchison in the document to arrest Ramirez.
The truck driver spotted his body around 10:45 the next morning in a bush beneath the wall of a cinder block near the bus stop. The dirt and leaves around her were disturbed, indicating that she continued to struggle after she remained there, Hutchison wrote.
By 2000, detectives were able to use new DNA testing techniques to build profiles of suspects based on blood stays found on the wall and liquids found on the girl’s body.
His profile did not match her boyfriend and he was ruled out as a suspect. Unfortunately, it also didn’t match anyone in the National DNA Crime Database and the case was cold again.
It used hints until Sunnyvale police determined that one of the four Fresno brothers committed a crime and began a genealogy hunt to match crime scene DNA with family members, prosecutors said.
The DNA samples obtained from Ramirez’s daughter provided a breakthrough in April 2022, establishing Ramirez as the main suspect.
He was arrested in August 2022 at his home in Makawao, Maui, and handed over to Santa Clara County, where he was charged during a felony commission with murder, rape, tricking him and arming him with deadly weapons. He did not suing the contest in February.
Several of Karen’s friends and family attended the Monday sentencing hearing, sharing their continued grief over the horrifying murder and showing that she has not been forgotten, prosecutors said.
“Justice is hard,” the girl’s aunt, Robin Morris, told the District Attorney’s Office in a phone interview in February. “He lived his whole life, but my nie didn’t get that privilege.”
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