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 man responsible for the long-unsolved slaying was sentenced to life in prison.
Gary Ramirez, 78, of Hawaii was sentenced Monday after pleading no contest to the brutal 1982 rape and murder of Karen Stitt, the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office announced. He is eligible for parole after 25 years.
The victim was sexually assaulted and stabbed 59 times in her neck, chest, abdomen and back, according to a medical examiner’s report. The killer left his blood and semen on her body, but investigators were unable to identify a suspect at the time.
The case went cold for decades until new DNA technology and a community tip led investigators to arrest Ramirez at his Maui residence in 2022.
“Over 40 years ago, Karen Stitt lost her life, but she was not forgotten,” Santa Clara County Dist. Atty. Jeff Rosen said in a statement Monday. “Today, thanks to a dedicated detective, a persistent prosecutor, and our crime lab, the person responsible is behind bars.”
Karen spent the last evening of her life walking around Sunnyvale with her 17-year-old boyfriend, who left her at a bus stop around midnight so she could travel back to Palo Alto, prosecutors said.
The boyfriend “later told police that he felt bad about leaving her alone, but he did not want to get in trouble with his parents for being home late,” according to a statement filed by Sunnyvale Police Det. Matthew Hutchison in the documents to arrest Ramirez.
A truck driver found her body in the bushes below a cinder-block wall near the bus stop around 10:45 the following morning. The dirt and leaves around her were disturbed, indicating that she continued to struggle after being left there, Hutchison wrote.
By 2000, detectives were able to use new DNA testing technology to build a profile of the suspect based on a bloodstain found on the wall and the fluids found on the girl’s body.
The profile did not match her boyfriend, and he was ruled out as a suspect. Unfortunately, it also did not match anyone in a national DNA crime database, and the case went cold once again.
That was, until 2019 when Sunnyvale police used a tip to determine that one of four Fresno brothers might have committed the crime and began a genealogical hunt to match the crime scene DNA to a family member, prosecutors said.
A DNA sample obtained from Ramirez’s daughter provided a breakthrough and established Ramirez as the prime suspect in April 2022.
He was arrested at his home in Makawao, Maui, in August 2022 and extradited to Santa Clara County, where he was charged with murder, rape, kidnapping and being armed with a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony. He pleaded no contest in February.
Several of Karen’s friends and family members attended Monday’s sentencing hearing to share their continued grief about the gruesome killing and show that she has not been forgotten, prosecutors said.
“Justice is a difficult thing,” Robin Morris, the girl’s aunt, told the district attorney’s office in a February phone interview. “He’s lived his entire life, and my niece didn’t get that privilege.”
