A Hawaiian man has been sentenced to more than 40 years of jail for a teenage girl cruelly murdered.
Gary Ramirez, 78, was eligible for parole after no competition in the murder of 15-year-old Karen Stitt in 1982.
The Palo Alto teenager was sexually assaulted and stabbed 59 times, and her cruel body was abandoned behind the town’s cinder wall.
Stitt’s boyfriend last saw her head at midnight on September 2, heading towards the bus stop in Sunnyvale, planning to return to Palo Alto.
He ran home after watching her approaching the bus stop as he went out after the curfew and worried that his parents would be in trouble because they were late to return home.
The next morning, her body was found 100 yards from the bus stop.
Karen Stitt, 15, visited her boyfriend when she was brutally murdered late at night at a California bus stop
Gary Gene Ramirez (recently left, 40-year-old right) has been sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, kidnapping and rape
Their bodies found the killer’s blood and body fluids in her body.
Between Stitt’s death in 1982 and the identification of Ramirez as her possible killer, many detectives relentlessly attempted to investigate the tragic crime.
In 2019, Sunnyville detective Matt Hutchison received a tip that traced her killer back to the family of four brothers in Fresno.
By April 2022, Ramirez was identified as a possible killer and his DNA was traced to the one left behind in the crime scene.
The 78-year-old Hawaiian man lives in Maui and was arrested at his home and charged with murder, kidnapping and rape.
Palo Alto’s teenager was sexually assaulted and stabbed 59 times, her cruel body dumped behind a cinder wall in town
Ramirez
Jihesen said that when he arrested Ramirez, the man was so shocked that he not only said “Oh, my god.”
Ramirez grew up in Fresno and often visits or lives in different parts of the West Coast, including the Bay Area, San Diego, Colorado and Hawaii.
Ramirez was a bed bug extermination and had no previous criminal record, according to police.
“Karen Stitt was killed 40 years ago, but she was not forgotten,” said District Attorney Jeff Rosen.
“Today, the person in charge is in prison thanks to a dedicated detective, a lasting prosecutor and our crime lab.”
