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Arrest in case of girl killed 40 years ago

A 75-year-old military veteran in Hawaii has been charged with the rape and murder of a teenager in California 40 years ago after detectives used advances in DNA technology to link him to the crime.

Gary Ramirez was arrested at his home on the island of Maui on suspicion of killing Karen Stitt in 1982. The 15-year-old was last seen alive at a bus stop in Sunnyvale, near San Francisco, after spending the evening with her 17-year-old boyfriend. Stitt’s body was found 100 metres from the bus stop the next morning. She had been stabbed 59 times in her neck, chest, abdomen and back. The case had gone cold until last year, when a detective teamed up with a genetic genealogist who worked out that the killer was possibly the son of Rose Aguilera Ramirez, who lived in Fresno, about 260km from Sunnyvale. Police traced one of Gary Ramirez’s children and obtained a DNA sample from them. Investigators found ‘‘very strong statistical support’’ linking DNA from Ramirez’s child to DNA from the crime scene.

World

en-nz

2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281981791367813

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