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More than four decades after the brutal murder of Karen Stitt, a 15-year-old Palo Alto girl, a Santa Clara County judge on Monday sentenced the convicted killer and rapist Gary Ramirez to life in prison.
Ramirez, who is from Hawaii, pleaded no contest to his rape and murder charges and will serve his time in a California state prison, although it is unclear exactly where yet, said Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Barbara Cathcart in an interview with this publication. Ramirez, 78, will be eligible for parole in 25 years.
Various of Stitt’s family members and friends attended the sentencing in front of Judge Hanley Chew on Monday, according to Cathcart, with many making statements about the Palo Alto High School student, who would have been in her 50’s today.
“It was clear that there is still a great amount of grief about this terrible crime that occurred and you can tell that so many people still love and remember her,” Cathcart said.
After visiting her boyfriend in Sunnyvale on Sept. 2, 1982, Stitt walked toward a bus stop near El Camino Real and Wolfe Road to head back home to Palo Alto, where she had only recently moved to from Pennsylvania.
The next morning, a restaurant delivery man found her body about 100 yards away from the stop behind a cinderblock wall, with Ramirez’s blood and bodily fluids on her body. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed 59 times, according to a county press release.
Disturbed leaves and dirt beside her body indicated that she was still alive after her brutal attack, according to previous reporting by this publication.
Stitt’s boyfriend was considered a suspect until decades later, when new DNA technology reopened the case and cleared his name.
In 2019, Sunnyvale Police Department Detective Matt Hutchison followed up on a tip that pointed to four brothers in Fresno – one of whom was Ramirez. The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Crime Lab confirmed him as the source of blood and fluid left at the scene of the crime, according to the county statement.
“Today’s outcome was the result of a continuous line of detectives at Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety putting their hearts and souls into investigating this infamous crime,” Cathcart wrote.
Stitt, who had many friends and seemed to fit in quickly despite her move from the East Coast, was described as a special person and a “vibrant soul” by her former boyfriend Michael Calhoun, who went on to join law enforcement because of her murder.
“I will continue to carry Karen in my heart and soul until my last breath on this earth. I’m just glad we can now breathe a sigh of relief that her killer has been named and caught,” he said after Ramirez was arrested. “I hope Karen is resting in peace now.”
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