Officials have revealed that a man from Hawaii was arrested for sexually assaulting, abducting, and repeatedly stabbing a girl aged 15 as she was traveling to California. This happened nearly 40 years ago.
Officials announced Tuesday that Gary Ramirez (75), was taken into custody at Makawao on Maui for the brutal Sept. 2, 1982 killing of Karen Stitt, 15, on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he is expected to appear in Hawaii court for an additional edition hearing.
Stitt was from Palo Alto and had taken a bus to Sunnyvale to visit her boyfriend on Sept. 2, 1982. He walked Stitt back to the bus stop at about midnight. However, out of fear that his parents might punish him for going past the curfew, Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office stated.
Stitt was last seen alive by her boyfriend in the El Camino Read/Wolfe Road area. She was walking toward the bus stop to catch her return trip to Palo Alto.
The truck driver found Stitt’s naked body in the morning. He was severely injured and had hidden it behind a “cinderblock wall” approximately 100 yards away from the bus stop. Officials and court records indicate that the truck driver discovered Stitt’s naked body.
District Attorney Jeff Rosen stated in a prepared statement that “behind every murder file in any major police department there is a person and heartbreak and a mystery.” “The mystery surrounding Karen Stitt’s murder has been solved by advances in forensic science, and a detective who would never, ever give up.”
Investigators found that Stitt had been sexually assaulted, and she was stabbed 59 more times. She died of “stab wounds to her neck and chest,” according to an autopsy. The killer, however, was apparently a lazy man and left his bodily fluids and blood on the scene.
The case was closed.
Court records show that “a review of the crime scene photographs and videos showed that leaves, dirt and other debris around her feet had been disturbed, and kicked. This suggests that she was still breathing when her body was removed.” “It appears that her murder occurred while the perpetrator was involved in the kidnapping.
Initial suspicions of her boyfriend were made by police, but the DNA evidence proved that he was innocent.
Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety Department. Matt Hutchinson was tipped by a Fresno-based brother to be the killer. Officials said that Hutchinson identified Gary Ramirez as the “probable source of blood or bodily fluid” at the scene and was able to pinpoint him by April 2022.
Last week, the office of the district attorney confirmed his suspicions.
Ramirez was born in Fresno, served in the U.S. Air Force, and then moved to various places in the country before landing in Hawaii.
He is facing murder, kidnapping, and rape charges. According to a spokesperson from the Santa Clara County District attorney’s office, Ramirez has not yet been assigned an attorney for California.
