DNA leads to arrest 40 years after girl kidnapped from bus stop was murdered

In the 1992 murder of a 15-year-old girl who was kidnapped from a bus stop in Northern California, raped and murdered, investigators used DNA technology to identify her. A Hawaiian man was arrested after identifyingthe authorities said.

Karen Stitt disappeared in the early hours of September 3, 1982 while waiting for a bus in Sunnyvale. Her delivery truck driver found her naked body in the bush 100 yards from the bus. Stop, Mercury News reported on Tuesday.

Last week,Sunnyvale Police arrested Gary Ramirez on Maui.75-year-old arrested. They said his DNA matched the blood from Karen's leather jacket and the four-foot cinder-block wall the killer left behind after stabbing her 59 times.

Ramirez remains incarcerated in a Maui jail awaiting an extradition hearing Wednesday to bring him to California. It was not immediately clear whether he had hired a lawyer who could speak on his behalf. 116} He will be charged with murder, kidnapping and rape. If convicted, he faces life in prison with no possibility of parole. There is a mystery,'' said Santa Clara County DA Jeff Rosen,. }

Santa Clara County cold case investigators say they used DNA technology linked to genealogy. This is the same investigative process that led to the arrest and conviction.

Sunnyvale Police Detective Matt Hutchison said he arrested Ramirez, who had a bad back. Ramirez was so shocked that all he could say was, "Oh my God."

Ramirez, a retired exterminator, had no criminal record, police say. His older brother, Rudy Ramirez, who also lives on Maui, said he could not imagine his younger brother capable of committing such a horrific crime. I've never seen him do that," Ramirez's brother told the newspaper. "He didn't hurt a fly."

Three years ago, Hutchison worked with a genealogist to narrow his DNA down to his four siblings. Hutchison then sought out one of Gary Ramirez's children and collected a DNA sample, he said, which indicated the suspect was likely the father. Authorities then used a search warrant to take a DNA sample from Gary Ramirez's mouth. Crime labs have confirmed a match to the DNA found at the crime scene.

When he opened his DNA match email, "I wanted to scream, but I couldn't because I didn't want to wake up the hotel," he said, Hutchinson. "So I just thought about it."

He opened his laptop and clicked on Karen's picture.

"I glanced at her picture," he said. 154} Undated Photo of Gary Ramirez Santa Clara District Attorney

Medium:
• Unsolved Case
• DNA
• California
• Murder
• Hawaii