Ramirez’s plea brings to an end one of the most frustrating cold cases that had crossed the desk of nearly every Sunnyvale police detective since that Sept. 3, 1982 night.
For four decades, the man who stabbed 15-year-old Karen Stitt 59 times and left her for dead behind a cinderblock wall near the old Woolworth’s in Sunnyvale got away with murder.
On Monday morning, after years of working odd jobs including as a bug exterminator and settling into a guest house on the island of Maui, Gary Gene Ramirez, age 77, slouched in a San Jose courtroom, his grey hair pulled into a ponytail, and in a barely audible voice pleaded no contest to first degree murder. It is treated as a guilty plea in criminal court, but it means he’s not admitting guilt, which didn’t sit well with relatives and friends who came to see that justice is finally done.
“Mr. Ramirez needs to admit the truth to us and to himself,” said Karen’s aunt, Robin Stitt Morris from Florida, who couldn’t attend Monday’s hearing. “I wish he would speak to me personally and explain.”
Ramirez’s sentencing is scheduled for 9 a.m. May 12 when he faces 25 years to life in prison. With certain credits, he could be eligible for parole in his mid-90s.
“Justice is a difficult thing,” Morris said in a phone interview Monday. “He’s lived his entire life, and my niece didn’t get that privilege.”
The cold case had been solved two years ago through DNA evidence left on Karen’s clothes and the dogged work of Sunnyvale Police Det. Matthew Hutchison, who knew of the case growing up in Sunnyvale as the stepson of a Sunnyvale officer who often talked about the case. Hutchison kept a photo of the blond-haired Stitt sitting on the beach tacked up in his cubicle “so anytime my phone rang, or anytime I looked at my computer screen and kind of lost focus, I would see her picture, and it would be a reminder that she’s still waiting. Her family’s still waiting. What are you doing at work today if you’re not trying to solve it?”
In August 2022, Hutchison flew to Hawaii to handcuff the shocked Ramirez himself. So many years had passed that Karen’s father and older sister never lived to see the arrest or conviction of her killer. But in the courtroom Monday were her former boyfriend who had been out with her earlier that night and has lived with trauma ever since, her sister’s ex-husband and his wife, and her best friend from Palo Alto High School, Tracy Lancaster, who is 57 years old.
“We were kids,” Lancaster said. “Nobody deserves anything like this and that’s why we’re here.”
The murder couldn’t have been solved without DNA evidence that didn’t come into wide use or factor into Karen’s case until 2000 — 18 years after her death. It’s the same kind of police work that solved the case of the Golden State Killer in 2018 that used family tree genealogy and tested DNA of relatives to zero in on Ramirez.
Ramirez’s plea brings to an end one of the most frustrating cold cases that had crossed the desk of nearly every Sunnyvale police detective since that Sept. 3, 1982 night. The case was the first to be featured on the county website in 2014 when District Attorney Jeff Rosen resurrected the cold case unit.
In all his years, Ramirez had no other criminal record — so running the DNA from the blood found on Karen’s leather jacket never produced a match through law enforcement databases.
But it did exonerate her boyfriend, David Woods, who had taken her on a date to nearby Golfland that night. Worried he’d get in trouble for busting curfew, he left her as she walked towards the bus stop at El Camino Real near Wolfe Road close to 12:30 a.m., police say.
Woods and his wife haven’t missed a hearing since Ramirez’s arrest two years ago — nearly a dozen — driving down to San Jose from El Dorado County more than three hours away each time.
“I’ve been to every hearing just to represent her, to let her know she’s got people here still thinking about her, still hurting from what he did,” Woods said.
The morning after Karen was killed, a delivery truck driver discovered her body 100 yards away from the bus stop. She had been dumped at the base of the wall, police say, naked in the bushes. Her wrists were bound with her own striped shirt. Her jacket was tied around her left ankle.
For Det. Hutchison, the case has taken a toll. He drives past the murder scene every day on the way to work.
“I stop at the stop light, and I look over in the direction of where she was found, and it’s hard not to get sucked in all the sadness and the suffering that she must have gone through,” he said. “But knowing now today that somebody is going to be held responsible, it’s a big moment.”
Hutchison pursued a multi-state hunt for Stitt’s killer until he came face-to-face with Ramirez, then a 75-year-old man with a bad hip who appeared so shocked he could say little more than, “Oh my gosh.”
Ramirez grew up in Fresno, one of four brothers, in a “dysfunctional” middle class family, one of his brothers told the Bay Area News Group in 2022. Ramirez joined the Air Force and at some point in the 1980s, when Karen was killed, he lived briefly in the Bay Area. He moved back with his mother in Fresno before his brother encouraged him to join him in Maui. He married twice and had two daughters.
Deputy District Attorney Barbara Cathcart came to the plea deal with Ramirez and his lawyers. In exchange for his no contest plea, Ramirez will be eligible for parole, but Cathcart said she believes he will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Since his arrest, Hutchison said he has contacted law enforcement agencies all over California and Hawaii and everywhere Ramirez has lived, in case Ramirez might be responsible for other unsolved cold cases. But despite such a ghastly crime by a man with no other criminal record, there have been no other matches so far, he said.
For four decades, the man who stabbed 15-year-old Karen Stitt 59 times and left her for dead behind a cinderblock wall near the old Woolworth’s in Sunnyvale got away with murder.
On Monday morning, after years of working odd jobs including as a bug exterminator and settling into a guest house on the island of Maui, Gary Gene Ramirez, age 77, slouched in a San Jose courtroom, his grey hair pulled into a ponytail, and in a barely audible voice pleaded no contest to first degree murder. It is treated as a guilty plea in criminal court, but it means he’s not admitting guilt, which didn’t sit well with relatives and friends who came to see that justice is finally done.
“Mr. Ramirez needs to admit the truth to us and to himself,” said Karen’s aunt, Robin Stitt Morris from Florida, who couldn’t attend Monday’s hearing. “I wish he would speak to me personally and explain.”
Ramirez’s sentencing is scheduled for 9 a.m. May 12 when he faces 25 years to life in prison. With certain credits, he could be eligible for parole in his mid-90s.
“Justice is a difficult thing,” Morris said in a phone interview Monday. “He’s lived his entire life, and my niece didn’t get that privilege.”
The cold case had been solved two years ago through DNA evidence left on Karen’s clothes and the dogged work of Sunnyvale Police Det. Matthew Hutchison, who knew of the case growing up in Sunnyvale as the stepson of a Sunnyvale officer who often talked about the case. Hutchison kept a photo of the blond-haired Stitt sitting on the beach tacked up in his cubicle “so anytime my phone rang, or anytime I looked at my computer screen and kind of lost focus, I would see her picture, and it would be a reminder that she’s still waiting. Her family’s still waiting. What are you doing at work today if you’re not trying to solve it?”
In August 2022, Hutchison flew to Hawaii to handcuff the shocked Ramirez himself. So many years had passed that Karen’s father and older sister never lived to see the arrest or conviction of her killer. But in the courtroom Monday were her former boyfriend who had been out with her earlier that night and has lived with trauma ever since, her sister’s ex-husband and his wife, and her best friend from Palo Alto High School, Tracy Lancaster, who is 57 years old.
“We were kids,” Lancaster said. “Nobody deserves anything like this and that’s why we’re here.”
The murder couldn’t have been solved without DNA evidence that didn’t come into wide use or factor into Karen’s case until 2000 — 18 years after her death. It’s the same kind of police work that solved the case of the Golden State Killer in 2018 that used family tree genealogy and tested DNA of relatives to zero in on Ramirez.
Ramirez’s plea brings to an end one of the most frustrating cold cases that had crossed the desk of nearly every Sunnyvale police detective since that Sept. 3, 1982 night. The case was the first to be featured on the county website in 2014 when District Attorney Jeff Rosen resurrected the cold case unit.
In all his years, Ramirez had no other criminal record — so running the DNA from the blood found on Karen’s leather jacket never produced a match through law enforcement databases.
But it did exonerate her boyfriend, David Woods, who had taken her on a date to nearby Golfland that night. Worried he’d get in trouble for busting curfew, he left her as she walked towards the bus stop at El Camino Real near Wolfe Road close to 12:30 a.m., police say.
Woods and his wife haven’t missed a hearing since Ramirez’s arrest two years ago — nearly a dozen — driving down to San Jose from El Dorado County more than three hours away each time.
“I’ve been to every hearing just to represent her, to let her know she’s got people here still thinking about her, still hurting from what he did,” Woods said.
The morning after Karen was killed, a delivery truck driver discovered her body 100 yards away from the bus stop. She had been dumped at the base of the wall, police say, naked in the bushes. Her wrists were bound with her own striped shirt. Her jacket was tied around her left ankle.
For Det. Hutchison, the case has taken a toll. He drives past the murder scene every day on the way to work.
“I stop at the stop light, and I look over in the direction of where she was found, and it’s hard not to get sucked in all the sadness and the suffering that she must have gone through,” he said. “But knowing now today that somebody is going to be held responsible, it’s a big moment.”
Hutchison pursued a multi-state hunt for Stitt’s killer until he came face-to-face with Ramirez, then a 75-year-old man with a bad hip who appeared so shocked he could say little more than, “Oh my gosh.”
Ramirez grew up in Fresno, one of four brothers, in a “dysfunctional” middle class family, one of his brothers told the Bay Area News Group in 2022. Ramirez joined the Air Force and at some point in the 1980s, when Karen was killed, he lived briefly in the Bay Area. He moved back with his mother in Fresno before his brother encouraged him to join him in Maui. He married twice and had two daughters.
Deputy District Attorney Barbara Cathcart came to the plea deal with Ramirez and his lawyers. In exchange for his no contest plea, Ramirez will be eligible for parole, but Cathcart said she believes he will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Since his arrest, Hutchison said he has contacted law enforcement agencies all over California and Hawaii and everywhere Ramirez has lived, in case Ramirez might be responsible for other unsolved cold cases. But despite such a ghastly crime by a man with no other criminal record, there have been no other matches so far, he said.
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