Karen Stitt was raped and stabbed 59 times, but her killer slipped away unnoticed for decades until in 2019, the police received a tip-off that changed everything
Teenager Karen Stitt had only been in Palo Alto, California, a few months, but she’d already settled into a new school and had made lots of friends. The 15-year-old was friendly and upbeat, with a big smile and an outgoing personality, so it wasn’t hard for people to like her.
Karen had moved thousands of miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to the West Coast with her older sister and brother and her father, after her mother’s death. She was a student at the Palo Alto High School, where she’d built a social circle and had a boyfriend, David Woods. He lived 10 miles away in Sunnyvale, but Karen had already confidently worked out the bus route.
On the evening of Thursday 2 September 1982, Karen took the bus to see David. They played some video games at a 7-Eleventhen went on to a mini-golf course.
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Last seen alive
Just after midnight, Karen’s boyfriend dropped her off at the bus stop where she was planning to get the route 22 back home. He was worried about getting into trouble with his parents for being late back, so he ran home and left Karen waiting.
It was a busy road with restaurants and bars. Karen was dressed in a leather jacket, striped shirt, trousers and her boyfriend’s baseball hat, which had a Rush rock band logo on. She was never seen alive again.
In the early hours, a delivery driver found Karen’s naked body 100 yards from the bus stop behind a blood-stained, four-foot high cinder block wall near a restaurant. Her wrists had been tied with her shirt and her jacket was tied around her left ankle. The hat lay nearby.
She had been raped and stabbed 59 times in the chest, abdomen and neck. Investigators noticed that the leaves and dirt around her feet were disturbed as if she’d kicked out – suggesting she was still alive when her body was moved there.
Karen’s murder was a huge shock to the community. The pictures of her that were released by the police would become recognisable to so many across the US. The beautiful, shaggy-haired blonde teenager was dressed in red, smiling happily on a beach. She was a young woman full of life, frozen in time. It was unthinkable to imagine her final terrifying moments.
A late-night worker saw an old-fashioned truck parked near where Karen’s body was found, and DNA was also at the scene. There was blood on Karen’s jacket and bodily fluids found during the autopsy, but there were no matches on any of the national crime DNA databases.
Karen’s boyfriend David Woods was initially considered a suspect, but was eventually cleared by forensic analysis, and the case ran cold.
Over the years, the case was passed down through detectives. There was a determination to solve the mystery of the teenager who was killed, and keeping her story in the public eye eventually paid off.
In 2019, police received a tip-off that Karen’s killer was one of four brothers from Fresno, California, about 160miles from Sunnyvale. A new investigation began, supported by a Department of Justice grant to help with cold cases.
Detectives started working with an expert in genetic genealogy to try to identify Karen’s killer. By comparing a DNA sample from one of the brothers’ children to the DNA found at the crime scene, they found their killer: Gary Gene Ramirez.
Killer finally caught
On 2 August 2022, Ramirez, 75, was arrested at his home on the island of Maui, Hawaii. He simply uttered, “Oh, my gosh.”
Ramirez had grown up in Fresno and attended high school there. He served in the US Air Force in the early 1970s and, after leaving, he moved around California – including the Bay Area Peninsula where Karen had lived. Eventually he settled in Hawaii where he did several odd jobs, including working as an exterminator.
No one suspected that the quiet man could be a killer. He had no criminal record, had been married twice and had two children, and yet he was responsible for one of the most infamous crimes on the West Coast. Ramirez was brought to Santa Clara County to face trial for murder, rape and kidnapping.
For Karen’s family, there was relief at finally getting some answers, but it also opened old wounds. It had been such a painful chapter in their lives. Sadly, Karen’s father and sister died before getting justice.
In May this year, Ramirez pleaded no contest to the murder. At the sentencing, he appeared with a walking stick and long, grey hair. He was an elderly man but there was no escaping the savage way he’d attacked Karen – raping and stabbing her repeatedly.
In court, Ramirez, now 78, sat motionless and listened to impact statements.
“Since Karen was brutally taken from us, there have been many unanswered questions – ‘why’ being the biggest,” said Karen’s best friend Tracy Lancaster, who was at school with her. She added that they were both just kids at the time and no one deserved what happened that night.
Another friend, Michael Calhoun, said, “Just because you’ve been caught, finally, and you will start serving your sentence – your punishment for your brutally gruesome crime – there will still never be closure. Karen is gone. We will never get her back.”
David Woods, who had gone on that last date with Karen, was there with his wife, and told the court, “His heinous crime, that ended her life in such a horrific way, has caused deep heartache and continued suffering for the many that loved Karen Stitt.”
Ramirez was sentenced to life in prison, only eligible for parole after 25 years. Finally, the killer was behind bars. Karen would be 58 years old today. Her tragic death was over 40 years ago but she has never been forgotten. While it was frustrating for Karen’s loved ones to know that Ramirez had been able to live his life for so long as a free man, they have comfort knowing he will never be able to hurt anyone else again.