Gary Gene Ramírez is arrested for raping and killing a girl in 1982 (PHOTOS)

• Gary Gene Ramírez, 75, was arrested for a 40 year old rape and murder.
• Karen Ann Stitt, 15, was found naked, raped and stabbed to death.
• Ramírez lived peacefully in Hawaii after leaving California following the brutal crime.

Gary Gene Ramírez was arrested for the murder and rape of the young Karen Ann Stitt in a crime that occurred forty years ago. The Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety (SDPS), in California, announced the arrest of the elderly man for the brutal crime.

Gary Gene Ramirez was taken into custody by SDPS Homicide Division detectives in the remote town of Makawao on Hawaii’s Maui Island. Ramírez’s arrest for the rape and stabbing murder of the girl was achieved thanks to DNA testing.

Gary Gene Ramírez managed to evade justice for 40 years

Karen Ann Stitt, 15, was last seen on the morning of September 3, 1982, when her boyfriend dropped her off at a bus stop at the intersection of El Camino Real and Wolfe Road. Stitt was going to take the bus back to her house in Palo Alto, California.

Several hours later, a delivery man passing through the area spotted a naked body in the bushes from his cab. The trucker stopped and called the police from the first public phone he found. Several SDPS patrols responded to the scene.

Karen Ann Stitt was raped and stabbed to death

SDPS troopers who arrived at the scene stated in their report that the body of Karen Ann Stitt was lying in the bushes, next to a concrete block wall about a hundred yards from the bus stop. The girl had been savagely raped and then stabbed 59 times.

The body of Karen Ann Stitt had blood stains that were not hers and thanks to that the officers knew that the girl had fought for her life. Samples of the attacker’s sperm also remained on various parts of the girl’s body. For decades, no one suspected Gary Gene Ramírez.

In 2019, the clue that led to the murderer emerged

From the day of the crime, detectives from the Homicide Division of the SDPS followed various lines of investigation. The main clue was DNA samples from the blood and sperm that had been found on the naked corpse of Karen Ann Stitt.

Sunnyvale is a city in Northern California and many Hispanic families live there. An informant spoke to SDPS Detective Matt Hutchison in 2019, revealing that one of four Fresno brothers was obsessed with the girl. That man was Gary Gene Ramíez.

The police investigated Gary Gene Ramírez

When investigating Gary Gene Ramírez, SDPDS agents discovered that he had served in the armed forces in the United States Air Force. After discharge from the military he had lived in the states of California, Colorado and Hawaii.

In 1982 when Karen Ann Stitt was brutally murdered and raped, the man lived in San Francisco and other cities in the area. Thanks to his history in the armed forces, homicide detectives were able to obtain samples of his DNA.

“A policeman who never, never gave up”

Based on the DNA and other investigations that placed him in the area in 1982, the detectives traveled to Makawao in Hawaii on August 2, 2022 to arrest Gary Gene Ramírez. He had lived peacefully on the island for years.

Jeff Rosen, District Attorney in Santa Clara County, said in a statement that “behind every old homicide… there are people heartbroken by the mystery. The mystery in Karen Ann Stitt’s death was solved thanks to advances in forensic science and a police officer who never, ever gave up.»