Breakthrough in 1982 California cold case leads to arrest of Fresno native in Hawaii
Police in the Bay Area believe they finally know who raped and killed a 15-year-old girl whose naked body was found behind a blood-stained wall near a bus stop in 1982 in Sunnyvale.
The suspect in the killing of Karen Stitt grew up in Fresno, where he attended high school in the late 1960s. Gary Ramirez was arrested Aug 2. in Makawao on the Hawaiian island of Maui.
He was to be in court Wednesday for an extradition hearing, according to an update on the homicide case from the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office.
Once extradited, the 75-year-old Ramirez will be arraigned on murder, kidnapping and rape charges and “faces life in prison without the possibility of parole,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said.
“Behind every old murder file in every major police department, there is a person, heartbreak and a mystery. The mystery of Karen Stitt’s death has been solved thanks to advances in forensic science and a detective that would never, ever give up,” Rosen said.
The night Karen Stitt was killed in Sunnyvale
Stitt, who was from Palo Alto, had taken the bus to visit her boyfriend in Sunnyvale on Sept. 2, 1982. The couple spent the evening playing video games and mini-golf, and she returned to the bus stop around midnight.
Stitt’s boyfriend left her walking toward the bus stop as he ran home. He later told police that he felt bad about leaving her alone, but he didn’t want to get in trouble for being out after curfew.
Stitt’s body was found by a delivery man the following morning. She had been raped and stabbed 59 times.
The killer left both his blood and bodily fluid at the scene.
DNA connects Fresno native to crime, DA says
That DNA evidence cleared Stitt’s boyfriend, who had long been considered a suspect in her murder.
It also connected Ramirez to the crime.
According to the DA’s office, a detective with Sunnyvale’s Department of Public Safety received a tip in 2019 that Stitt’s killer was likely one of four brothers from Fresno. The brothers were all still alive, but did not have DNA profiles in the FBI’s CODIS database.
Ramirez was identified as the suspect after a DNA sample was collected from one of his children and compared to samples from the crime scene, according to court records. The Santa Clara County DA’s Crime Lab confirmed that identification last week.
According to the DA’s office, Ramiez served in the U.S. Air Force in the early 1970s and lived in or visited the Bay Area, San Francisco, San Diego, Colorado and Hawaii. Anyone with information on Ramirez is being asked to contact the DA’s Office Cold Case Prosecutor Rob Baker at rbaker@dao.sccgov.org.
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