A Hawaii man has been arrested for a 1982 slaying of an adolescent kidnapped from a bus cease in California, authorities introduced Tuesday.
Police in Sunnyvale nabbed 75-year-old Gary Ramirez in Maui after they concluded his DNA matched the blood from the scene of 15-year-old Karen Stitt’s homicide, in accordance with Santa Clara County District Lawyer’s Workplace.
Stitt was ready for a bus in Sunnyvale when she disappeared within the early morning hours of Sept. 3, 1982. A supply truck driver discovered her unclothed lifeless physique in bushes a soccer discipline away from the station, in accordance with a Mercury Information story revealed Tuesday.
Police mentioned DNA expertise was used to hyperlink Ramirez to the blood from Karen’s leather-based jacket and the 4-foot cinder block wall the place the killer left her after stabbing her 59 occasions.
Sunnyvale police Detective Matt Hutchison revealed that whereas he arrested Ramirez — a retired bug exterminator and Air Pressure veteran with an injured hip — appeared so shocked he may solely utter, “Oh my gosh.”
Ramirez, a Fresno native, had no prison file, police mentioned. His older brother, Rudy Ramirez, who additionally lives in Maui, mentioned it was arduous to conceive that his youthful brother would perform a grisly homicide.
“I’ve by no means seen him violent or get offended ever,” Rudy Ramirez instructed the newspaper. “He wouldn’t damage a fly.”
In 2019, Hutchison partnered with a genealogist, who narrowed the DNA right down to 4 brothers.
Hutchison then looked for certainly one of Gary Ramirez’s youngsters, and picked up a DNA pattern, which revealed there was a excessive chance that the suspect was their father, he mentioned. Authorities then employed a search warrant to swab Gary Ramirez’s mouth for a DNA pattern, which against the law lab confirmed matched the DNA discovered on the decades-old crime scene.
When he opened the e-mail with the DNA match, “I wished to scream, however I can’t as a result of I didn’t wish to get up the resort,” Hutchison mentioned. “So I simply took a second to mirror.”
He opened up his laptop computer and clicked on the photograph of Karen.
“I took a fast look at her photograph,” he mentioned, “and I simply instructed her, ‘We did it.’”
Ramirez is locked up in a Maui jail whereas ready for a Wednesday extradition listening to to be able to transport him to California.
With Publish wires
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