- 2 days ago
20/20 - Season 49 - Episode 02: Badass Detective
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00:00:28Transcribed by ESO, translated by —
00:00:31It's a decades-old mystery.
00:00:33This is a view from the south side of the crime scene.
00:00:37Where Officer Group I is now is the placement location of the body.
00:00:47All leads had been exhausted.
00:00:49Why can't I solve this case? Why can't I find out who killed this 15-year-old girl?
00:00:55How could the killer just do this and disappear?
00:00:57Karen Stitt was just 15 when she was brutally murdered on her way to a bus stop in Sunnyvale, California,
00:01:05in Silicon Valley.
00:01:07Dumped at the base of a cinder block wall behind some bushes.
00:01:10Her hands and her legs bound with her own clothes.
00:01:15Raped, stabbed over 50 times, and left to bleed to death by a monster.
00:01:20To cross paths with an evil predator on such a short window of time is like a lightning strike.
00:01:26When someone is murdered, it's like a whole world has been destroyed.
00:01:30It changed all of our lives forever.
00:01:37For every family member and friend who never got answers, there are investigators still haunted by the case they never
00:01:45closed.
00:01:46It was a case that hung over their heads for decades.
00:01:49It was in their neighborhood. It happened on their watch. They wanted it solved.
00:01:53Decades after Karen Stitt's murder, one determined cop, Detective Matt Hutchison, takes her case on.
00:02:01I was reading a newspaper one day and I saw this article about this Sunnyvale cop who had posed as
00:02:08a busboy to gather DNA evidence to solve a cold case.
00:02:12And I thought, this is kind of cool. Sounds like a TV show or something.
00:02:17Matt never gives up. And he will use every avenue available to him to solve the crime.
00:02:25He's willing to kind of get down in the muck and to do whatever it takes to find these people.
00:02:30He will bust tables and he will collect trash and he will get his fortune told.
00:02:35Matt will do anything to identify these killers.
00:02:43Matt Hutchison, who goes by Hutch, has made arrests in no less than seven cold cases, leading some to use
00:03:03a different nickname for him, Badass Detective.
00:03:11I was born and raised in the city of Sunnyvale.
00:03:15Grew up like any other kid, playing Little League and all the sports that I could.
00:03:19I asked Matt what he was like as a kid. And he says, I guess you could say I was
00:03:23willful. I was a willful kid.
00:03:26I'm the youngest of three boys. So I had to keep up. I had to get a quick wit to
00:03:31defend myself quite a bit.
00:03:33He went to high school probably five miles from where he does his police work.
00:03:36Then he went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which is a few hours down the road.
00:03:40So he's very much a local guy.
00:03:43You didn't start off wanting to be a comp. What was your original plan?
00:03:47I majored in history and I thought that I was going to be a high school history teacher, maybe coach
00:03:51golf or football.
00:03:52And while I was in college, I realized I probably don't have the patience to be teaching high school kids.
00:03:58My stepfather worked for the city of Sunnyvale as a police officer for 30 plus years.
00:04:03Oh, wow.
00:04:03And he kind of guided me down that path and said, you need to consider public safety and I think
00:04:07it'd be a fit for you.
00:04:08And it was.
00:04:13It's a unique program in all of the United States. Every officer there is a fully trained police officer, EMT,
00:04:20and firefighter.
00:04:29Basically what that means is that everybody who signs up to be a cop also signs up to be a
00:04:35firefighter and an EMT.
00:04:36A lot of people want to either be cops or firefighters.
00:04:40It definitely takes a special person that wants to do both sides of the house.
00:04:44Which one do you like best? What's the difference?
00:04:47I would say that when you're a firefighter, they wave to you with all five fingers instead of just their
00:04:52favorite middle one when you're on patrol.
00:04:57We worked on graveyard patrol together 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. So true nighttime hours.
00:05:05Corrine is a lot like me. We're like-minded. We're one and two trying to push each other.
00:05:09If she made an arrest, I needed to go out and make two and vice versa.
00:05:14My goal on graveyard was to be as active as I possibly could.
00:05:17I wanted to get as much experience as quickly as I could because I knew that I wanted to get
00:05:21into investigations.
00:05:23I applied three times before I was selected.
00:05:26Once he finally makes it to investigations, Hutch, now Detective Hutch, finally finds his calling with a little inspiration from
00:05:35an unexpected source.
00:05:37I was looking around for something to keep me busy and keep my mind engaged.
00:05:42And one of my husband's friends was a captain at DPS, the Department of Public Safety.
00:05:47They put her on a filing duty.
00:05:50And after a certain amount of time, maybe a few months, she went to one of the sergeants and said,
00:05:55basically, this is really boring.
00:05:57Can you give me something a little more interesting to do?
00:05:59He said, yeah, I got something that might interest you.
00:06:05The detective that took me to the cold case room, he asked me to come back to the bureau to
00:06:10organize the closet and the files.
00:06:13Your original goal was to make it all more streamlined and organized, more manageable.
00:06:19Yes.
00:06:20Initially, I was putting them together for the investigator, but I got so drawn in.
00:06:25Were you prepared to see the violent nature in these files?
00:06:29No, not at all.
00:06:31Carol told me that she was just horrified.
00:06:33She told herself, these people can't get away with this, whoever did this.
00:06:37I'm not going to solve it, and I know that, but I'm hoping that I can put the data together
00:06:40to give to a detective that can solve it,
00:06:43or at least make more headway or eliminate more people.
00:06:47For the most part, they were not getting worked.
00:06:49And all of a sudden, here comes Matt.
00:06:52It's like he hadn't found his true mission, and then all of a sudden, he found it.
00:06:58Cold cases are cold for a reason.
00:07:01What made you think that you could solve those?
00:07:04They get under your skin.
00:07:06They bury into your heart, and you want to solve them so badly that you can't just put them down.
00:07:13The very first day that I opened the cold case closet door, there were boxes stacked six feet high, filing
00:07:21cabinets with loose papers and things all over them.
00:07:25It's such a dramatic scene.
00:07:29It was like the attic that you've not gone up into for 30 years.
00:07:35It was one folding chair, so he sat on a little folding chair with the files, and he would have
00:07:39a legal pad on one knee, and he'd be taking notes.
00:07:42So many of these boxes representing lives lost.
00:07:47It was just him, total silence back there with the files, back there with the ghosts.
00:07:55When I became a detective, and I told my stepfather I was interested in the cold cases, he said, you
00:08:01have to work Karen Stitt.
00:08:03She's a 15-year-old girl who was abducted, stripped nude, bound, and sexually assaulted, and left in an alleyway.
00:08:11Let's danger here, and on the other side of the wall.
00:08:17Every detective over the years, when they look at that case, that's the case you want to solve.
00:08:21If you're going to work any of them, you want to solve that one.
00:08:27Little does he know, it'll take him another five years, and traveling 2,500 miles,
00:08:34teaming up with library ladies, and a mom on a laptop,
00:08:39going undercover to visit a psychic, to close in on the killer of Karen Stitt.
00:09:00It's a sunny September morning, and a truck driver is making a delivery to a local garden center.
00:09:06He sees something in the bushes.
00:09:09What did he discover?
00:09:11Initially, he thought he was seeing a mannequin, and didn't think twice about it.
00:09:16It wasn't a mannequin.
00:09:17No, it was a young girl.
00:09:22What we're approaching right now is the wall where she's eventually found.
00:09:25All this was completely different in 1982, so this is a driveway that goes down an alley,
00:09:31and this wall extends about 20 to 30 feet down this alley.
00:09:34Her body was found right behind this wall?
00:09:37Yeah, there used to be a large hedge and a bunch of bushes that lined the wall,
00:09:41and she was concealed between the bushes and the wall itself, laying on her side, looking out.
00:09:47You used this alleyway when you were a kid?
00:09:49Yeah, so I would get stuck at this red light here,
00:09:52and I would cut through the alley and find my way back out onto El Camino.
00:09:56I wasn't one for patience and waiting at red lights, so I found a way around.
00:10:00My thoughts at this alley changed dramatically when I realized what happened here.
00:10:05You have to work?
00:10:06Yeah, finally.
00:10:08In this case, they did a scene walk-through where they actually videotaped it.
00:10:12About how far is this west of the body, Jim?
00:10:16About 40 feet.
00:10:19So I can see exactly what they saw.
00:10:22Blue jeans, belt, more cosmetics, lipstick.
00:10:27There was blood on the wall behind her body, and then up above her,
00:10:30there was more blood on top of the wall.
00:10:32Blood stains are here, and on the other side of the wall.
00:10:40The brutality of this crime was over the top.
00:10:43She stabbed over 50 times in the chest and sexually assaulted.
00:10:48She was nude.
00:10:49She had her hands and her legs bound with her own clothes.
00:10:55The leaves near the victim's feet were disturbed, which suggested she had been thrown there.
00:11:02Still alive.
00:11:03It's certainly the most graphic and violent scene that I've seen in my career.
00:11:08The voice that we hear narrating the crime scene video, who is that?
00:11:12That's Bruce Dudley.
00:11:13As the lead crime scene investigator, he was the one directing all the evidence items that were collected.
00:11:19He managed that entire crime scene.
00:11:21He actually told me that this case has given him nightmares for years,
00:11:24because he wanted the case solved so badly.
00:11:27Object here appears to be a makeup pencil, eyeliner.
00:11:30Personal items of hers were strewn about where she was found.
00:11:34A brown colored compact.
00:11:37They went through the crime scene and took painstaking care to preserve everything they thought might be usable someday down
00:11:46the road.
00:11:46And that will be branch five.
00:11:48They were collecting branches from the bushes that she had been brushed up against.
00:11:53They were taking blood samples, soil samples.
00:11:56They collected every one of her personal items that they could find on scene.
00:11:59There was a wallet that was kind of underneath her body.
00:12:02Inside the wallet was her social security card that listed her name, Karen Stitt.
00:12:07Karen Stitt was a high school girl that lived in Palo Alto, about 20 minutes north of Sunnyvale.
00:12:14As investigators focus on the crime scene in the alleyway,
00:12:18their fellow officers monitor the perimeter to keep the public out.
00:12:22One of those officers on the perimeter got approached by a young man asking questions about,
00:12:26hey, what's going on?
00:12:27What's with all the police activity?
00:12:29The officer eventually asked, well, who are you?
00:12:32What are you doing here?
00:12:33And he said, I'm David Woods, and I was here last night.
00:12:36I was dropping off my girlfriend in this area.
00:12:38Her name's Karen Stitt.
00:12:39We had just moved out there this summer.
00:12:42It was a pretty amazing place to land at.
00:12:45Shortly after is when I met Karen.
00:12:47I was 16 and Karen was 15.
00:12:50I was with Karen when she met David.
00:12:54We were at the mall.
00:12:56And I vaguely remember her meeting a boy with a baseball cap on.
00:13:01And from there, she continued seeing him.
00:13:04I think I could call to love at first sight.
00:13:06She just really swept me off my feet, and we were just instantly a couple at that point.
00:13:12It was just pure bliss, really.
00:13:15We'd go out wandering around.
00:13:17One place I remember, it was a Tower of Records.
00:13:20You're flipping through records and albums.
00:13:22We're both into rock music.
00:13:24I had definitely a wide variety of tastes.
00:13:26I know she liked a lot of what I did, too.
00:13:29On the last night of her life, Karen takes the number 22 bus from Palo Alto to Sunnyvale for a
00:13:36date with David.
00:13:38David met her at the bus stop.
00:13:40He played video games at a 7-Eleven.
00:13:42I got really good at this one called Defender.
00:13:46He went to a miniature golf course.
00:13:49Then we walked over to our new house and met with my parents and sister briefly.
00:13:56We went up to my room, and I played some guitar for her.
00:14:00I was big into guitar then.
00:14:02And after a while, we went back out and just hung out at this little elementary school that was close
00:14:08to the house.
00:14:08We lost track of time a little bit and hustled off toward the bus stop.
00:14:14He was worried that he was going to bust curfew.
00:14:17I was kind of on thin ice about that with my parents, always coming in a little late.
00:14:22He's got to get her back to the bus stop because he's got to get back home.
00:14:26We got close enough to see the corner where the bus stop was at Wolf and El Camino.
00:14:32And we kissed goodnight, and she grabbed my ball cap, which was a prize to her.
00:14:38She knew that that was kind of a part of me, as I'd always have it.
00:14:43And I was like, okay, I'll get it back from you tomorrow.
00:14:52The first sign that something is wrong comes when David gets an early morning call.
00:14:57Family and friends are looking for Karen.
00:15:00She never came home.
00:15:02I got a call for wondering if Karen was still at my place, that she didn't come back last night.
00:15:07And, you know, I got dressed and went down, picked up the bus at the same spot.
00:15:14David heads to Palo Alto to retrace her steps, but there's no sign of Karen.
00:15:21His worry growing, he makes the return trip home.
00:15:25When I got off the bus, I started walking down the road, and I see the crime scene taped off.
00:15:31Then I'm a little more concerned, so I approached one of the uniformed officers that was there asking what's going
00:15:38on.
00:15:38And at that point, they pretty much whisked me away.
00:15:43He was the last person to see her alive.
00:15:44And when cops search David at the police station, they find something that only heightens their suspicions.
00:15:53When you're six hours into a homicide investigation, you have to follow that lead.
00:15:57Then they discover that he lied to his mom on the morning after Karen's murder.
00:16:03They're looking at him saying, well, he's not exactly credible.
00:16:18It was right around this area that Karen Stitt, just 15 years old, says goodnight to her boyfriend.
00:16:24He turns and runs in that direction to make curfew.
00:16:27She heads in the opposite direction, around the corner, to catch her bus.
00:16:32But the bus comes and goes, and Karen never gets on.
00:16:44Karen was bright and kind and beautiful.
00:16:50My brother was her father.
00:16:52Karen was the third child.
00:16:54She was the baby of the family.
00:16:55She was.
00:16:56She was born prematurely.
00:16:58She weighed less than six pounds and really wasn't expected to live.
00:17:03But she was strong, and she grew into a thriving baby and a happy child.
00:17:10So from the very beginning, she was a fighter.
00:17:15This one's dated 1972, and she's in her brownie outfit.
00:17:20So she would have been five there.
00:17:22And here, I remember, this is their house in Pittsburgh, where she was raised, sitting on the couch in their
00:17:27living room.
00:17:31And then this final picture is her with her sister.
00:17:35This is Suzanne in the front, Karen in the middle, and a family friend, Susan.
00:17:43Her mother and father divorced?
00:17:45Yes.
00:17:46They divorced, and my brother first moved to Georgia, and then took a job in California, living in Palo Alto.
00:17:54And then, at 14 years old, Karen's life is hit with tragedy, when her mother, Kathy, takes her own life.
00:18:02What impact did that have on Karen?
00:18:04I can only imagine what it's like to lose a parent in any circumstance at such a young age.
00:18:12But she was lucky she had the support of her family, and particularly her older sister, Suzanne, who just adored
00:18:19her.
00:18:24After her mother's death, Karen moves to California to live with her father full-time.
00:18:30She went out there and was immediately enrolled in school and seemed to be doing great.
00:18:37She went to Palo Alto Senior High School, or Pali.
00:18:40She came in halfway through what would have been her freshman year.
00:18:45We just clicked, started hanging out, you know, swapped numbers, and just became really tight friends.
00:18:52Karen was definitely a person that, once you met her, she was just like no other girl that I had
00:18:58ever met before.
00:18:59We were either always on the phone or together, out doing what 15-year-olds do, hanging at the mall,
00:19:05being girls.
00:19:06You know, we weren't afraid to take walks to the store, ride the buses by ourselves.
00:19:12It was just easy living at that time.
00:19:17As the summer ended, she was in love.
00:19:19She was about to start a new school year.
00:19:22Was this a new life for her?
00:19:24I think it was.
00:19:25She was excited about the future and about the possibilities.
00:19:33But Karen's sudden murder stuns her friends and family.
00:19:38One of her shoes is up to the right, underneath the limb there.
00:19:42It was just unthinkable that something like that could happen.
00:19:47The leaves appear to be pushed back during the struggle.
00:19:50She didn't want to believe it, you know, like it couldn't be true.
00:19:54Where the other two subjects were standing is about where the body was located.
00:20:00And you see that there are monsters out there.
00:20:02It changed all of our lives forever.
00:20:08As they search to identify the monster who killed Karen, police are locked in on the one person
00:20:14they know she was with the night before, David Woods.
00:20:21And at that point, they pretty much whisked me away, took me down to their station for questioning.
00:20:28What did officers find in his pocket?
00:20:31When he came in for questioning, it's common to just do a cursory search of him to make sure
00:20:36he doesn't have any weapons.
00:20:37And when they did that, they found that he was in possession of a pocket knife.
00:20:40Could be the murder weapon.
00:20:42He was the last person with her.
00:20:43And now he's got a weapon on his person.
00:20:46They're certainly concerned that that could be the murder weapon.
00:21:05The detectives are probing him for information as if he's a suspect.
00:21:09I don't know that he necessarily recognized that he was a suspect in that moment.
00:21:13It still was not occurring to me that something that's horrific could have happened.
00:21:43Detectives are pressing David for details about his hat.
00:21:47Because that morning, they found it next to Karen's body.
00:21:51Can you describe your hat?
00:21:53It's a blue hat with a patch on the front and a set of brush.
00:21:58It's got two buttons of Rolling Stones, a bottom of a juice crease, but something happened to her.
00:22:03I don't know what we're trying to find out.
00:22:05You walked her up to the bus stop and then left her there?
00:22:09Did you wait for the bus with her?
00:22:11No, I had to go home.
00:22:14I didn't like doing it.
00:22:16The detectives pushed him quite a bit on why would you leave her out by herself.
00:22:21Was she yet physically at the bus stop sitting on the bench when you left?
00:22:26She was walking toward her from the restaurant.
00:22:29How come you didn't stay with her?
00:22:31I had to be home.
00:22:32Do you have any objection?
00:22:33David touched looking in your room at home and looking at the boat.
00:22:37Say you were right.
00:22:40If you need this help, support.
00:22:43It's important for us to know because the parents didn't be murdered by the way.
00:22:50She was murdered by the way.
00:22:51Yes.
00:22:55I found out that she had been killed at that point and it just still seemed unreal to me.
00:23:00My world got swept out from under my feet and then I, you know, I had that horrible regret of
00:23:06not being there to protect her.
00:23:09And, you know, just thinking about what she must have had to endure, you know, it was just so painful.
00:23:21David may be reeling from the shock of Karen's loss, but he and his parents take investigators back to his
00:23:27house and they give them his clothes from the night before.
00:23:31None of his clothes had any biological evidence, no blood, the knife was clean.
00:23:38But what's missing from the crime scene quickly takes investigators in a different direction.
00:23:44There's not enough blood on the ground, on the wall, for that to be where she was stabbed.
00:23:50Could Karen have been attacked and killed somewhere else and then left back to get that alley?
00:23:57There was a witness that came forward and described a very distinct vehicle.
00:24:01They described the coloring and described a sticker.
00:24:03Detectives told officers to be out in the neighborhood day and night trying to find this car.
00:24:08They're casting a very wide net because we just really don't have any idea who did this.
00:24:25Every time I look at the crime scene photos, as traumatic as they are, I want to study them and
00:24:32know them like the back of my own hand.
00:24:35Because I want to be able to explain every single item, the what, the how, the where, the when, the
00:24:41why.
00:24:41I want to know every answer I can.
00:24:46In 1982, investigators are also studying the crime scene closely and have zeroed in on Karen's boyfriend.
00:24:55I don't recall them having any suspicions other than possibly David because he was the last one with her.
00:25:05And that's not all.
00:25:06They discover he had not told everyone the same story about the morning after Karen's murder.
00:25:13Did you receive a phone call this morning?
00:25:15Yeah.
00:25:16What time?
00:25:17Who was it?
00:25:18It was, oh, first of all, first of all.
00:25:23Did she say why she was the victim of Karen?
00:25:26She said his mom didn't think I was.
00:25:29But when he hung up the phone that morning, he had told his mom something different.
00:25:34When David finishes that conversation, Mom asks him who was that, and he tells his mom it was Karen.
00:25:40Even though he explains he was just trying to avoid worrying her, it feeds their suspicions.
00:25:47When the police are talking to all these different people and getting four different versions of the events,
00:25:51they're looking at him saying, well, he's not exactly credible.
00:25:54Why would he lie to his mom about who he just talked to?
00:25:57Even as they're taking a hard look at David, cops are also re-examining the crime scene
00:26:02and details that seem to be pointing in an entirely different direction.
00:26:09Where Karen was found, there's not enough blood on the ground, on the wall, for that to be where she
00:26:15was stabbed.
00:26:16There's just no way.
00:26:18I've always believed that whoever abducted her put her into some sort of a vehicle that was big enough
00:26:23that the crime was committed inside the vehicle.
00:26:25The investigators keyed in on that as well.
00:26:28At one point, there was a witness that came forward and described a very distinct vehicle.
00:26:33It was either a truck with a shell over it or a panel van type of vehicle.
00:26:38Detectives told officers, I need you to be out in the neighborhood day and night trying to find this specifically
00:26:44described car.
00:26:45And they actually found a vehicle that matched generally the description and found that guy and interviewed him as well.
00:26:52But this tip goes nowhere, as does every other potential lead they chase.
00:26:58From a reportedly violent military veteran seen in the area that night, to a clerk at the 7-Eleven, where
00:27:05David Wood said he was playing an arcade game.
00:27:08They just had blood on the wall, a boyfriend who made some statements that were inconsistent, and there's really nothing
00:27:14else to work.
00:27:15Did the family suspect anyone?
00:27:17I don't think there was anyone that the family truly suspected.
00:27:22They kept saying, you know, it's only one phone call away.
00:27:25Whoever knows anything at all, just make the call.
00:27:28The longer it went, I knew the harder it was going to be to find somebody.
00:27:36We didn't hear anything for quite a long time, like five years or something.
00:27:40And then somebody would reach out.
00:27:43And then you wouldn't hear anything again for a long time.
00:27:47So I thought it was just like a repeating cycle of,
00:27:51they don't have anything, but they're just asking more questions.
00:27:54But whenever a detective does reopen Karen's file, and many do, one name usually rises to the top.
00:28:03Really, it's not the boyfriend? Are we sure it's not the boyfriend?
00:28:06They felt like they knew what happened, and they had a hard time going beyond just looking at the boyfriend.
00:28:13He was the main suspect initially, and he remained a suspect for years.
00:28:19I'm sure they, whatever list of potential suspects was there, I was probably always on there.
00:28:26But, you know, I also knew that, you know, there's no evidence that I would have been able to do
00:28:34something so horrific.
00:28:39In 2000, a new detective is looking at this case and realizes we can use DNA technology on the blood
00:28:45from our crime scene.
00:28:46Where are we here?
00:28:47We are at the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office Crime Laboratory, where we do DNA analysis.
00:28:57In Karen Stitt's case, you processed some evidence in the year 2000.
00:29:03Why do it now?
00:29:04The crime laboratory went online with the more modern, newer DNA typing.
00:29:09A 15-year-old girl was murdered in 1982.
00:29:13The victim had been tied up with her own jacket, and this jacket had blood smears and stains all over
00:29:21it.
00:29:21If you're stabbing someone, the odds are that the blood is going to lubricate your hand, and it's going to
00:29:26slip, and you're going to cut your own hand on that knife plate.
00:29:29So, I was looking for something that stood out.
00:29:33This is my note page from the case.
00:29:36I noted that the stains were all soaked or smeared.
00:29:39One little red dot was thick, shiny, and perfectly round as if someone just dropped it, and it dried.
00:29:47Because it stood out, I sampled it for DNA analysis, and it was an unknown male DNA profile.
00:29:55That same profile matched the blood seen on the wall above her.
00:29:58That was the point we thought, this is our killer.
00:30:02That's the person that did this.
00:30:03The first thing we did with that was to compare it to her boyfriend.
00:30:08We do a one-to-one comparison between David Woods and the blood at the scene, and David Woods is
00:30:14eliminated as the source of that blood.
00:30:16After nearly 20 years, with a cloud of suspicion hanging over him, David Woods is finally ruled out as Karen
00:30:25Stitz's killer.
00:30:27It's the DNA that allowed us to rule him out as a suspect.
00:30:31How does this unknown DNA profile change the investigation?
00:30:36Now that's the person that you need to focus on, figure out who that blood belongs to.
00:30:42We didn't know who it was. It was a profile that was eligible to be uploaded into CODIS, the national
00:30:48database, and we did upload it, but there was no hit.
00:30:53I got to a point where I felt like this probably will never get solved.
00:30:59It almost became a subject that we didn't talk about in the family.
00:31:03But 35 years after Karen's death, Hutch takes this case on with a new determination to solve it.
00:31:11When I first started working it, there had been an article in a local newspaper where her father was quoted,
00:31:16and the sentiment was,
00:31:18I haven't heard from Sunnyvale in quite some time. I don't think they'll ever solve my daughter's case.
00:31:23I called him right away, and I said, Mr. Stitt, I'm taking the case now. I will work it.
00:31:29And that conversation was short, and he basically told me, don't call me back until you do.
00:31:36And as Hutch digs into the case, another unsolved murder in the same town just a few years earlier catches
00:31:43his attention.
00:31:45A young security guard, 18 years old, stabbed to death inside an office building.
00:31:50She was a young girl still in high school.
00:31:52There's parallels in these cases because they're both stabbed, and it's a complete, what we call a whodunit.
00:31:58So what connection could there be between these two cases?
00:32:13I learned fly fish, and it became a godsend to me.
00:32:19Watching my fly go down the river and setting the hook is the only place where I can completely check
00:32:24out from the rest of the world.
00:32:27It recharges my batteries, in a sense, and gives me the ability to keep going.
00:32:32I wish that we were just catching fish and there wasn't a need to catch people, but this is my
00:32:38job.
00:32:42Matt was always working on more than one case at a time.
00:32:45Because he would hit a dead end, and he would just start working on another one.
00:32:50Matt Hutchison is moving full speed ahead, trying to solve the Karen Stitt case.
00:32:56But he's also competing with a backlog of current cases the department is trying to close.
00:33:03Sometimes all Hutch can do is wait and begin investigating other cold cases.
00:33:11And then there's the murder of Estella Mena.
00:33:14It was a mystery.
00:33:16Absolute mystery.
00:33:19Estella came from a strong family.
00:33:21She didn't go out and socialize a lot.
00:33:23She did some martial arts, went to school, and worked.
00:33:31Long before big tech became a big thing here in Silicon Valley,
00:33:37Western Electric was a leader in the communication business in Sunnyvale.
00:33:43Back in 1979, Estella Mena was a security guard working part-time there while still in high school.
00:33:51She's 18 years old, and she's still in school, but she's taking on such a serious job.
00:33:56I always just looked at it as a sign of her ambition and where she wanted to go in life.
00:34:02On a Saturday afternoon in October, Estella was planning to attend a martial arts competition after work.
00:34:09She never made it.
00:34:14It was a weekend where Western Electric didn't have all their employees going in and out of the business.
00:34:19There was less staff on scene.
00:34:21And one of the engineers who had been working upstairs, he's going to leave the business,
00:34:27and he hears Estella in the corner struggling to live.
00:34:33He finds her on the ground stabbed multiple times.
00:34:37She's not communicating with him about who stabbed her.
00:34:40She never attacked where she worked and murdered and tossed behind a vending machine.
00:34:50The murder is in 1979.
00:34:53Hodge is on the case in 2018.
00:34:59All right, what do we have here?
00:35:02This is the overhead scene diagram from 1979 for the murder of Estella Mena.
00:35:07A common thing that crime scene investigators will do is an overhead view of the scene where a crime happened.
00:35:13They'll draw the vending machines, her desk in place, doors, certain things that don't move.
00:35:20The other category Hodge focuses on are things that do move, items that seem out of place.
00:35:28I look at things like the screwdriver in the middle of the room.
00:35:32How does that get there?
00:35:33Why is that there?
00:35:34Does it make any sense?
00:35:36Same with the comb.
00:35:38Same with the shoe.
00:35:40The photo of Estella's shoe also catches the eye of Carol Smith, that volunteer who's been helping out in the
00:35:49cold case unit.
00:35:51The other detectives that I had worked with suggest that it was probably above her head because the first responders
00:35:58to get to her, they'd thrown it back over her head.
00:36:02Carol, you said looking at the scene, it was your impression that the victim was a fighter.
00:36:08Why did you say that?
00:36:09Because it starts this way and goes all the way to the other side of the lobby.
00:36:14And you can see there's buttons and combs and everything that trail that way.
00:36:18There's blood that trails throughout the lobby.
00:36:20So, yeah, she fought the whole way.
00:36:22But the young martial arts student is no match for a killer with a knife.
00:36:28She didn't have no kind of weapon on her.
00:36:31She didn't have nothing.
00:36:32And she was a security guard, and most security guards do.
00:36:34They have either maize to spray in their eyes or some kind of, if not a gun, I mean, a
00:36:41stick or, you know, something for her to protect herself with.
00:36:45And she didn't have nothing like that.
00:36:48Decades later, the family receives an unexpected phone call from Detective Hutch.
00:36:56I did reach out early on, and I said, I'm working this case.
00:36:59I know that there's a family on the other end of that case that's still waiting, and that's painful for
00:37:05them.
00:37:06And if it's painful for them, it's something that I want to try and do everything I can to fix.
00:37:10By the time Hutch comes on board, Western Electric has ceased operations.
00:37:15The original investigators have long since retired, and the killer has a 39-year head start.
00:37:26I've always picked up a cold case knowing that it is my goal to solve it, but that might be
00:37:32difficult and I may not succeed.
00:37:33But I can leave it better than I found it.
00:37:36In the early stages of the investigation, the biggest lead was the smallest piece of evidence, a speck of blood.
00:37:45When the crime scene was processed, the Sunnyvale detectives found a drop of blood on the doorframe, the same door
00:37:55that the killer would have gone through.
00:37:58I knew if we're ever going to solve it, we need to be able to answer who's the source of
00:38:03that blood.
00:38:04But you can't prosecute that case unless you know who the blood on the doorframe is.
00:38:09On the day of the crime, Western Electric was in the process of moving to another facility.
00:38:15So the building itself had a lot of people that were in and out of there that weren't necessarily associated
00:38:20to the business.
00:38:21Over time, investigators interview them all.
00:38:25The end result?
00:38:27Nobody knew anything.
00:38:29Nobody saw anything.
00:38:36Much like Karen's case, Estella's case gets under your skin and it sticks with you and they won't let you
00:38:43give up.
00:38:46Matt Hutchison is about to get some assistance from a very unlikely source.
00:38:52I explained to them who my victim is and what the case is and they are on board.
00:38:58How can we help you?
00:38:59What do you need from us to help solve this murder of this young girl?
00:39:02I said, I need a trash truck.
00:39:04One of the best ways to find a killer is to get a sample of their DNA.
00:39:09And the best way to do that is to grab their trash.
00:39:12This is your guy.
00:39:13Matt Hutchison.
00:39:14I didn't do anything wrong.
00:39:16In my line of work, it's very common for people to lie to us.
00:39:19I want to see if I can rattle his cage a little bit.
00:39:21Any reason for your blood to be found inside that lobby?
00:39:31Nobody should have to see the things that were done to those two girls.
00:39:37But I'm fine with it being me if it means I can solve them.
00:39:40And solve them by any means necessary.
00:39:44Because if he sees you out the window, your cover is blown.
00:39:47I rode the truck as if I was just any other employee.
00:39:49Any reason for your blood to be found inside that lobby where this happened?
00:39:54Juggling two cold cases.
00:39:56But is it the same killer?
00:39:58We just needed to find a name to match that DNA.
00:40:01That's what we look for.
00:40:02You have someone who was killed or stabbed or shot.
00:40:05And that person, they're bloody all over.
00:40:08So we just took our pool of suspects from millions to there's three men in the world that it could
00:40:14be.
00:40:15Crucial work.
00:40:16A very crucial work.
00:40:17And is one of them connected to this psychic?
00:40:21You're not going to need me cry, right?
00:40:22If you don't cry, it'll feel like a different job.
00:40:24This is the one chance we're going to get at it and we can't screw it up.
00:40:28Bingo.
00:40:28We're going now.
00:40:30Because I have to go take care of Karen.
00:40:32I have to go take care of Estella.
00:40:36Oh, man.
00:40:46Detective Matt Hutchison is stuck in the past by choice.
00:40:51I'm fortunate to work cold cases in Sunnyvale.
00:40:54Working case files pulled from a closet few others dare to enter.
00:41:01I went in there.
00:41:03I almost turned around and went out and said, I give up.
00:41:06Instead, he starts working multiple cases at the same time, including two eerily similar stabbings.
00:41:15Karen Stitt, a 15-year-old, stabbed multiple times while on her way to the bus.
00:41:20Estella Mena, an 18-year-old security guard, attacked on the job at Western Electric.
00:41:27Both murdered, but by whom?
00:41:30There's constant disappointment.
00:41:32Can the man they call Hutch break the cases before the cases break him?
00:41:39Oh, man.
00:41:45In the Estella Mena case, there was an entry-exit door to that lobby that had a small smear of
00:41:51blood on it.
00:41:52They had found one drop of blood, obviously not the victim's blood.
00:41:55It was somebody else's blood that was found a few feet away.
00:41:57They decided this must be the person.
00:42:00We put it through CODIS, got no matches.
00:42:02CODIS is a database that contains DNA profiles of convicted felons and people arrested for felonies.
00:42:10In certain states.
00:42:11If you didn't get a match, if you didn't get a hit, basically the approach for law enforcement is,
00:42:16well, there's nothing else we can do.
00:42:19But the game changes with the arrival of forensic genetic genealogy.
00:42:24Now that same genetic profile found on the doorframe can be compared not to criminal databases,
00:42:31but to millions of profiles submitted to public genealogy websites.
00:42:38We got back some genetic matches that were close relatives that quickly kind of identified one gentleman
00:42:45who lived in Southern California who could be the source.
00:42:47It's the best lead investigators have had since 1979, a subject with a connection to Western Electric.
00:42:57I went into the case file with the name of the subject that lived in Southern California,
00:43:01and he jumps off the page.
00:43:03He was an employee at Western Electric.
00:43:05He did a brief interview in 1979, a couple days after the homicide.
00:43:10He essentially said, hey, I'm an employee of the mailroom.
00:43:13I don't know anything about the homicide.
00:43:15So we devised a plan to try to collect his trash that he's left out at the curb.
00:43:19A partner and I fly down to Southern California where he lives.
00:43:24But the execution of that plan is more complicated.
00:43:28Police surveillance reveals the subject puts out his trash just moments before the garbage
00:43:33truck comes down the street.
00:43:35So taking it in the middle of the night is not an option.
00:43:42You want the element of surprise because if he sees you out the window, right, your cover is blowing.
00:43:48Our cover is blown.
00:43:49Evidence could be gone.
00:43:51He could be prepared for the interview and come up with a story that I can't refute.
00:43:55When I get face to face with him, I want it to be the first time he knows we're investigating
00:43:59him.
00:44:00So you've got to be able to surprise him.
00:44:02Have to.
00:44:02You've got to get creative.
00:44:04I do.
00:44:04We actually contacted the trash company in this case and got them to give us a truck
00:44:09so that we could drive on the truck and collect an entire can.
00:44:12You asked the trash company for a truck.
00:44:15Their reaction?
00:44:17You know, at first they were like, this is not the type of thing that we do.
00:44:20And then I introduce them to my victim and I tell them the story.
00:44:23I tell them who she is and why this is important, why this is the only way.
00:44:26And then they're 100% on board.
00:44:29It has to be realistic, right?
00:44:31It has to look like every other trash day that he's ever had.
00:44:35It was important that I look exactly like another trash employee.
00:44:38So I had the vest on, I rode the truck as if I was just any other employee because we
00:44:42didn't want to give the impression anything was changed.
00:44:46They roll out the old beast that's been on the line for probably 15 years and it's got
00:44:51three inches of just sludge.
00:44:53Sludge.
00:44:54Just disgusting.
00:44:55And I tell them, guys, we're going to put samples of DNA into this thing.
00:44:59It has to be pristine.
00:45:00We have to have a way to preserve this evidence.
00:45:03These trucks are designed so that when a can goes in, it smashes all the trash to make
00:45:08room for the next can.
00:45:09We disabled the compactor arm and then we drove to a local hardware store and bought a
00:45:14big tarp and crawled up in there and rigged it up inside the truck so that when the can
00:45:19dumped in, we would catch just our trash and it wouldn't touch anything else and we'd be able
00:45:23to drive away with it.
00:45:24So then you hit the streets.
00:45:26You head to this guy's house and what happens there?
00:45:30The first thing I see is another one of these trucks half a block ahead of us and I'm in
00:45:35full panic thinking this guy's going to take our can.
00:45:38We got on the horn with him and said, you need to just blow by the address.
00:45:41He listened, thankfully, and when he goes by, we pull up and we make a left into this gentleman's
00:45:47court and I see his can and I know the game's on.
00:45:55The trash is successfully deposited into the truck.
00:46:00Hutch is booked on the next flight to get back to Sunnyvale, but he can't let the evidence
00:46:06out of his sight.
00:46:08We've got a lot of cigarette butts, bottles, cans.
00:46:11Anything that somebody puts in their mouth can be a source of DNA.
00:46:14And then I try to get through TSA with a suitcase full of trash thinking that they're going to
00:46:18put me on some sort of watch list or something.
00:46:21We are able to get on the plane, fly it back, and then my task is immediately take it to
00:46:25the crime lab because we want it tested right now.
00:46:27Match or no match?
00:46:29It's a match.
00:46:30We know who the source of the blood is inside our crime scene now.
00:46:35The work is on now.
00:46:36We have to prove that he's the one that did it.
00:46:39Hutch returns to Southern California, and this time it's to come face-to-face with his
00:46:44prime suspect.
00:46:46This is your guy.
00:46:47Matt Hutchison, I'm really sorry to ruin your day.
00:46:50That's the copy of the search warrant.
00:46:52Oh, Jesus.
00:46:53When did we have to have a search warrant?
00:46:55I didn't do anything wrong.
00:47:05When I come back to Southern California, where the employee of Western Electric lives, I think
00:47:12everyone assumed quite reasonably that the blood on the doorframe that the killer went through
00:47:18has to be our killer.
00:47:24When we arrived at his house, we had the local police department with us.
00:47:29We'll do this wherever you're comfortable.
00:47:30We need...
00:47:31Okay.
00:47:31I appreciate it.
00:47:33You want a cup of coffee?
00:47:35I'm okay.
00:47:37I want to see if I can rattle his cage a little bit, make him uncomfortable, and maybe he'll slip
00:47:42up.
00:47:42In my line of work, it's very common for people to lie to you.
00:47:45Did you ever suffer any kind of injuries or have any accidents when you worked at Western Electric?
00:47:48Not that I remember.
00:47:50Maybe he'll say something, or maybe he'll give me some indication that he actually is the perpetrator in this case.
00:47:56This is one of the doors leaving the business.
00:47:59There's a blood smear.
00:48:00I see it right there.
00:48:02Any reason for your blood to be found inside that lobby where this happened?
00:48:07I don't think so.
00:48:10Why would you kill the security guard?
00:48:12There was no money there.
00:48:15He couldn't have been calmer or more cooperative.
00:48:18Have a safe trip back.
00:48:19Appreciate it.
00:48:21I wish I could be more help, but I...
00:48:23When I look at that, I believe that he's credible, but he might just be a good actor.
00:48:28He might be just saying all the right things.
00:48:30I know I need more evidence than just the blood on the door.
00:48:34Can I put him somewhere closer to the victim, maybe on the victim's body, on her clothing, on some item
00:48:40that I know she touched and interacted with?
00:48:45We need to look at all of the evidence all over again.
00:48:49And as soon as I knew we were going to test other items, I came back to Carol's voice in
00:48:53my head saying,
00:48:54Matt, you have to test a shoe.
00:48:55You have to test a shoe.
00:49:00The two of you talked about that shoe.
00:49:03Yes.
00:49:05Incessantly, apparently.
00:49:07You can ask Matt, but yeah, I bugged him.
00:49:09She made it very clear to me that she wouldn't speak to me again if we didn't test that shoe.
00:49:13The bottom line is that shoe should have been on her foot, and it's not anymore.
00:49:18And that only happens because it falls off during the fight.
00:49:23Although they've seen the crime scene photos numerous times, neither Hutch nor Carol have seen the actual evidence until now.
00:49:35This really humanizes it.
00:49:37You see a height and a weight on a piece of paper, just somebody's statistics, and that resonates in your
00:49:44brain.
00:49:44You see that, and then you hold something that belonged to them, and you see just how tiny she was.
00:49:50Yeah.
00:49:52You can see the different areas that they sampled here, where you see a circle with pen.
00:49:57You can see a slight, faint stain in there.
00:50:00Blood doesn't always come up like a bright red stain that's going to jump off the page at you.
00:50:05From that tiny wedge shoe comes the answer Hutch has been looking for.
00:50:11The blood on that shoe is not just Estella's.
00:50:15There's also someone else's blood that doesn't match that former employee they've been pursuing.
00:50:21So whose blood is it?
00:50:24It's not the same guy that's on the doorframe, which now throws a wrench into my case.
00:50:30The unknown DNA is entered into CODIS, and this time, a hit.
00:50:36There's a gentleman named Samuel Silva, who lived in the state of Colorado, who was identified as the source of
00:50:43the blood that was on Estella's shoe and the DNA on her pants.
00:50:49Sam Silva's killed before.
00:50:50He was a violent felon.
00:50:52He was arrested for rape.
00:50:55He was arrested for attempted murder.
00:50:57All of this in Colorado.
00:51:00The main question now for the detective, was Samuel Silva ever in California?
00:51:07Hutch gets the answers by digging up Colorado probation reports, where officers once asked Silva if he ever lived outside
00:51:16of that state.
00:51:17And when the probation officer asked him, well, where were you and what were you doing?
00:51:22He said, I was living in Sunnyvale, California, with my two brothers in 1978, which would have put him in
00:51:29my city and possibly crossing paths with my victim.
00:51:33Estella Mena was killed in 1979.
00:51:38The street in Sunnyvale where Silva lived was less than two miles from Western Electric.
00:51:45Matt Hutchison keeps digging.
00:51:48He finds a copy of a resume that belonged to Estella Mena.
00:51:52It turns out that before she worked at Western Electric, she worked here at Great America Amusement Park.
00:51:59And guess who else worked here?
00:52:03Sam Silva also previously worked at Great America.
00:52:08We don't know if they knew each other for sure, but maybe that's where he got to know her.
00:52:16And eventually, Carol, you hear the news that there's been a break in a case.
00:52:20Matt called me immediately when he got the news.
00:52:22So this part always makes me teary because that was such a...
00:52:29I mean, that just gets to your heart.
00:52:33And all these years, yeah, to finally hear that we had gotten this one done, that was like, that was
00:52:40a big day.
00:52:42But no matter how hard the detective keeps working the case, there'll be no arrest, no conviction.
00:52:50Samuel Silva had died years earlier.
00:52:57I know I can never put handcuffs on him.
00:52:59I can never tell the family that we got him.
00:53:02You still have a job to do.
00:53:05When I go to the family and I say, Samuel Silva is the person that did it, that's not all
00:53:11I'm going to tell them.
00:53:12I'm going to tell them why I believe that.
00:53:16It is my belief that she was the intended target of him coming to that business and that she either
00:53:22said no to him, I'm not interested, or whatever it was that initiated an assault from him, and she fought
00:53:29for her life.
00:53:31It was Estella's sister, Marta, seen here in a news report from our station KGO in San Francisco, who would
00:53:39grow up and coin a phrase that would one day make headlines.
00:53:45Marta, apparently a fairly religious person, told me that Matt had flew up and met with her, and she said
00:53:52that when he left, she turned her husband and said, that's one badass detective.
00:53:57There can be no better moment for me as an investigator than to tell them, it's done.
00:54:03We know who he is.
00:54:04He didn't get away with this.
00:54:09Touch is not done.
00:54:11Karen Stitt's killer is still very much alive.
00:54:15And the detective is closing in.
00:54:18I'm going to put handcuffs on the person that murdered Karen Stitt.
00:54:33In the decades-long mystery of who killed 15-year-old Karen Stitt, Sunnyvale has an answer of sorts.
00:54:42We knew who the killer was, except for his name.
00:54:47We had his DNA profile.
00:54:48We just needed to find a name to match that DNA.
00:54:52So they decide to enlist a lab on the East Coast that specializes in forensic genetic genealogy to try to
00:55:00figure out who their suspect is.
00:55:03When we send the DNA off for genealogy, we're taking that blood that we know belongs to a male, converting
00:55:08it to a genealogical sample to see if we can match to any of his relatives.
00:55:12We can then try to work backwards and figure out who he is.
00:55:17Hutch has a lot of hope, but it's immediately crushed.
00:55:21We get back three very distant relatives, all third cousins.
00:55:26The advice from the lab was, move on to a different case.
00:55:29You're not going to solve this one.
00:55:31We're talking about people that are so remote, there's basically no chance that we're going to be able to build
00:55:38a family tree to narrow it down to this particular perpetrator.
00:55:42They said, Matt, do you know your third cousins?
00:55:46And I don't know any of them, so it made sense to me that this is going to be an
00:55:49uphill battle.
00:55:51He was a little bummed, but I know Matt, and I've known Matt for a long time, that that wasn't
00:55:57going to keep him down for too long.
00:56:00It's easy to feel sorry for yourself as a cold case investigator and say, well, you know, these cases are
00:56:06so dang hard.
00:56:07If I don't solve it, nobody's going to get mad at me.
00:56:09I'm just going to put it away.
00:56:10I quickly learned that I couldn't have that kind of attitude with Karen.
00:56:14I took her picture and I put it up on my desk right behind my phone.
00:56:19She's staring at me, telling me, don't give up on my case.
00:56:22You can solve it.
00:56:23If three third cousins are as close as he can get, Hutch decides to start there.
00:56:29So I went about the task of, let me build this tree as big as I possibly can get it.
00:56:35From what he can see online, one of those third cousins has already built out an extensive family tree, potentially
00:56:43crucial investigative leads.
00:56:45But first, Hutch has to convince that cousin to help him.
00:56:51He left me a message.
00:56:52And I remember laughing, and I told my husband, wow, pranking and, you know, identity theft has reached a new
00:56:59level.
00:57:01A couple days later, I received a text message.
00:57:04He sent me a picture of his business card and his officer badge on a table.
00:57:09He offers to fly to Texas and meet her in person.
00:57:12And still skeptical, she insists that their first contact has to be in a safe place.
00:57:20We met at the small police department where she lived and then told her who Karen was, told her why
00:57:24we needed her help.
00:57:25And she said, that's enough for me.
00:57:28Come back to my house and I'll give you everything I've got.
00:57:31It really struck me.
00:57:32He cared about Karen.
00:57:33He cared about her family.
00:57:35He cared about what happened to her.
00:57:37And so we rolled the family trees out on her kitchen table.
00:57:41All of the profiles of people who were living were basically blacked out.
00:57:45And he asked me if I would be willing to fill in all the blank spots.
00:57:50How many names did you wind up writing down for him?
00:57:54I want to say it was at least 100.
00:58:02Once I knew the specifics of the case, I went back into my family tree and started looking for people
00:58:07that I thought could potentially be a suspect.
00:58:11We're building the data, but we have no idea where to go with it at that point.
00:58:15I'm just waiting for something or someone to come along and help me.
00:58:19And that's exactly what happens one day after Hutch gives a talk on cold cases at the Sunnyvale Library.
00:58:29I get approached by three women afterwards and they say, well, we're daughters of the American Revolution.
00:58:34So that sounds really neat.
00:58:36What the heck does that mean?
00:58:37And they said, well, we've chased our DNA all the way back to the American Revolution.
00:58:42So, wow, you guys seem like you're the experts.
00:58:46Have you ever thought about working for a police department?
00:58:48They keep their day jobs, but agree to volunteer on Karen's case, working with Hutch to fill in the blanks
00:58:56across the suspect's family tree.
00:58:59One day, his phone rings.
00:59:02There was one genealogist that kind of took the lead amongst the rest of them.
00:59:06And she called me and said, we have something.
00:59:10And she didn't talk like that in any of the other times I'd ever talked to her.
00:59:14So I start getting excited.
00:59:15I'm like, we have the guy?
00:59:17She goes, no, we don't have the guy.
00:59:19But there's this person.
00:59:20If you go out and you get their DNA, we'll know if we need to go after that person's cousins
00:59:26or if we need to go after that person's uncles.
00:59:30He's local.
00:59:31He's in San Jose, which is 10 minutes down the road.
00:59:34After a simple local trash grab one night, the results confirm Karen Stitt's killer is one of this man's three
00:59:44uncles.
00:59:45So we just took our pool of suspects from millions, and you're never going to solve it, according to the
00:59:52genealogy lab, to there's three men in the world that it could be.
00:59:57And I'm bouncing off the walls at this point.
01:00:01My partner, Karen, and I figure out that one of the uncles is living in North Las Vegas, and we
01:00:07know his trash day.
01:00:08We're going to collect his trash early in the morning and drive it all the way back the very next
01:00:12day.
01:00:18I was pretty excited, a little nervous.
01:00:23I remember it being very, very quiet.
01:00:28And it sounded like the loudest thing, just trying to pull the garbage bag out of the trash can.
01:00:36Nobody came out, but it felt like, you know, this is the loudest thing going on in the block.
01:00:42So we grabbed the trash, and we immediately take off.
01:00:46We drove straight through the night back up to Santa Clara County.
01:00:50And then our crime lab comes back and says, oh, yeah, this guy, no, he's not the killer.
01:00:54But you know what? One of his brothers is the killer.
01:00:56We've now shrunk the pool of suspects down to two.
01:00:59Determining which of the two brothers murdered Karen Stitt will require Matt and Corinne to go undercover
01:01:09and visit a psychic.
01:01:12She got a fake wedding ring, and I wore my real one, of course, and we got our palms red.
01:01:17But we can't give her too much where it looks like we're cops.
01:01:20You've got to be careful.
01:01:21For all I know, she's going to catch me.
01:01:31Investigators Matt Hutchison and Corinne Abernathy are steadily narrowing down their suspects
01:01:36in the 40-year-old murder of Karen Stitt.
01:01:41Through just working the leads and not giving up and building these family trees out,
01:01:46we narrowed it down to a group of four brothers.
01:01:48There was a lot of case discussion on which route we would take.
01:01:52And then it becomes a process of elimination.
01:01:54One by one, you've got to go out and get their DNA.
01:01:56And that leaves us with two brothers, basically on opposite ends of the country.
01:02:00One was in Maine, and one was on the island of Maui in Hawaii.
01:02:04It came down to Gary Ramirez and another brother.
01:02:08Gary lived in Maui.
01:02:10We ultimately ended up in Hawaii.
01:02:16We didn't know too much about the individual in Hawaii.
01:02:19We knew that he lived in Maui, but we didn't know precisely where.
01:02:23We had a good idea, but there was no way to verify if he was actually living in that particular
01:02:29house.
01:02:30Some of the last records on file of where he may possibly reside was this residence.
01:02:37So we had to get a little bit creative and see if there was a way that we could confirm
01:02:41that he was even living there.
01:02:42I did just an open source search on Google of the address, and there's a pin on the address that
01:02:48says that there's a local psychic.
01:02:51A psychic.
01:02:51She's the landlord of the house, and she does palm readings out of the residence itself.
01:02:56Hey, yo.
01:03:00Hey, yo.
01:03:02It's not every day that while you're investigating somebody, you have a ticket into their life and a way to
01:03:08get into their life without them knowing that you're there.
01:03:11And so we went as a married couple, and my partner got a fake wedding ring, and I wore my
01:03:16real one, of course.
01:03:17And we sat on her lanai and got our palms red.
01:03:22How about your name again?
01:03:23Corinne.
01:03:24Corinne.
01:03:24Corinne, can you name it?
01:03:25Matt.
01:03:25Matt.
01:03:27Okay.
01:03:29So he's more sensitive.
01:03:32That sounds all right.
01:03:35He is a very caring, compassionate man.
01:03:38Yeah.
01:03:38Yeah, absolutely.
01:03:40And he likes the truth.
01:03:42I won't cry.
01:03:43Oh, no.
01:03:44You're not going to make me cry, are you?
01:03:46I try to make people cry.
01:03:48Oh.
01:03:49If you don't cry, I don't feel like I've said my job.
01:03:51Oh, no.
01:03:53In the time that I've worked with him, we know each other very well, so it was very easy to
01:03:58play off him and vice versa.
01:03:59He'd play off of me.
01:04:01But Matt would definitely try to get a little bit of, you know, information from her.
01:04:08We created a backstory that we met at Fresno State.
01:04:11It's because our suspect, who was living with her, grew up in Fresno.
01:04:16We wanted to see if we drop a nugget, if she'll pick it up.
01:04:19That's really smart.
01:04:20I said I had a brother named Gary to try to see if she would take the bait.
01:04:23I've got two brothers, two older brothers, Gary and Jeff.
01:04:28They drive me crazy.
01:04:29You've got to be careful not to say too much and become too obvious.
01:04:32It's a balancing act.
01:04:33And she might be a psychic.
01:04:35For all I know, she's going to catch me.
01:04:37It was a great opportunity for you.
01:04:38If nothing else, we got a look at the layout of the residence so that when we go and eventually
01:04:45make contact there, we're not going in blind.
01:04:48I could hear rustling from a garage that sounded like there was people probably living in there, like it was
01:04:53a converted dwelling.
01:04:54He was kind of lying low or just really under the radar, so that may have just been his normal
01:05:01pattern of life.
01:05:02She never took any of the bait.
01:05:04She just took our money.
01:05:05Forbidden by local laws from making a trash grab in Maui without a search warrant, Hutch and Corinne return to
01:05:14Sunnyvale, and they devise a new plan.
01:05:17If they can test the DNA of the brother's biological child, that could tell them if they found Karen's killer.
01:05:27The gentleman who lived in Maui had a daughter that lived in California.
01:05:30We had another mission to go down to San Diego.
01:05:35So same as Vegas, we devised a plan.
01:05:37We're going to drive all the way down to Southern California, collect the trash, and drive it all the way
01:05:41back.
01:05:44I remember walking down the street with a garbage bag and safety lights come on, just porch lights, and I
01:05:51felt like stadium lighting as I'm walking down the street with a trash bag.
01:05:55All I remember is I just, I need to get back to the car, and now we got to go.
01:05:59And we were able to go out and get a sample of her DNA as a means of testing against
01:06:04the sample of blood at the crime scene and essentially doing a paternity test.
01:06:08And we brought them back up here for testing.
01:06:10The crime lab report said, this is the daughter of the killer.
01:06:16And that's when we knew.
01:06:18It was Gary Ramirez.
01:06:21Bingo.
01:06:22The next step was to hook him up in Maui.
01:06:24We're going now.
01:06:26We have him now.
01:06:27We're going now.
01:06:27I'll let you hold on to that.
01:06:28The paperwork we have to notify you of here is a warrant for your arrest.
01:06:41Once we knew that Gary was our guy, we filed a complaint charging him with murder.
01:06:45We're going to go and make an arrest in Hawaii.
01:06:50Did you know he was going to be there?
01:06:52We had a Maui detective call Gary and say, you might be the victim of identity theft.
01:06:57Can you call us back?
01:06:58And when we landed and tried to do a briefing with the local authorities, he called and said, I want
01:07:04to meet with you guys right now.
01:07:06Bingo.
01:07:06Everybody sitting around that briefing table looked at each other and said, we're going now.
01:07:14As we pulled up, I saw Gary Ramirez.
01:07:19Yeah, how you doing, sir?
01:07:21I recognized him from his photos.
01:07:22Yeah, we just have to verify who we're talking to so we can make sure we have the right investigation
01:07:26going.
01:07:26Do you have your ID?
01:07:27Do you have an ID?
01:07:28No, I have a military ID.
01:07:29Okay.
01:07:30Is that something that we can see?
01:07:32The paperwork we have been noticed by you up here, this is a warrant for your arrest.
01:07:36So I'm going to have, I'm going to hold on to this.
01:07:38We're going to, we're going to do this right away right off the bat for you.
01:07:41I'm not going to let you fall down or anything like that.
01:07:43Go ahead and turn that way and just keep your hands on your back for you.
01:07:48I knew 10 seconds from now, I'm going to put handcuffs on the person that murdered Karen Stitt.
01:07:55And they're not just any handcuffs.
01:07:57I took my stepdad's handcuffs from when he was an officer in the city of Sunnyvale.
01:08:02Because I wanted some representative of Karen from 1982 to be part of that arrest.
01:08:08It meant that much to you?
01:08:10It meant that much to me, but I knew it meant that much to his generation of cops.
01:08:14Oh no, what happened?
01:08:15What did I do?
01:08:16It's something that's really old that we would be happy to talk to you about and share more information.
01:08:20Oh no, what did I do?
01:08:22So I'm going to walk with you so we're not standing right by the house.
01:08:25Can you walk forward for me?
01:08:26His reaction?
01:08:27He tried to express surprise, but it didn't come off genuine to me at all.
01:08:32We'll get him to the car and then we'll explain it.
01:08:33We have a warrant for his arrest.
01:08:35I don't know what they did.
01:08:37For somebody to be accused of something so heinous, if they know they didn't do it,
01:08:42I would have expected much stronger denials.
01:08:45You have the wrong person.
01:08:46This is wrong.
01:08:48This is the penal person murder.
01:08:51What did I do?
01:08:52What's wrong?
01:08:55Something's wrong.
01:08:56Hutch and Corinne drive Gary Ramirez to Maui's police department to be processed and questioned.
01:09:03This is kind of the moment, especially for Matt, where you ultimately want to try to get as
01:09:08much information as you can and just get the truth.
01:09:13Come in, Gary.
01:09:15Hi, Gary.
01:09:16You said you didn't bring a talk.
01:09:18What's up?
01:09:19The way he conducts those interviews, he's so good at getting people to be comfortable
01:09:25to work of art.
01:09:27You're saying it's not you.
01:09:30I want as much explanation for how it's not you as possible so I can go find the guy that
01:09:34it is then.
01:09:35My goal in this is not to put the wrong guy in custody.
01:09:41I was careful not to tell him Karen's name, not to tell him the city of Sunnyvale.
01:09:46I wanted him on the defense.
01:09:48I wanted him to not know what I knew.
01:09:50And you said you used to work in sales, right?
01:09:52Yes.
01:09:53And you said car sales while you were in college?
01:09:56Yeah, I was in college, yeah.
01:09:58The violent nature of Karen's murder led me to believe that he could be responsible for
01:10:03other murders.
01:10:04I want to learn as much as I can about him.
01:10:06So Denver, Colorado, Libya, where'd you do your basic training?
01:10:12Blackburn?
01:10:13Where's Blackburn?
01:10:13Texas?
01:10:14Texas.
01:10:15Do you even get to get stationed anywhere in California close to home or anything?
01:10:20No.
01:10:21It's all right.
01:10:22I had fun.
01:10:23We talked to him about the places he had lived, jobs that he had.
01:10:27Jones Cleaners.
01:10:28I worked for them.
01:10:29And Jones Cleaners was out of Fresno?
01:10:31Yeah.
01:10:32Vehicles that he drove.
01:10:33I think I sold the Mustang and then I got the van.
01:10:38I always wanted to van.
01:10:39I wanted to fix it up, you know.
01:10:41But I just never got around to it.
01:10:43I mean, you wouldn't want to van when you were young and you'd say, go, let's go hang
01:10:46on, party, stuff inside.
01:10:49Yeah?
01:10:50Did you ever have parties inside?
01:10:53Like, I know people would put, like, black light in there.
01:10:55I never had a girl in there.
01:10:57But remember, Hutch always believed it was possible Karen had been murdered in a vehicle
01:11:03and then left in that alley.
01:11:06We spent probably more than two hours with Gary before we ever talked about this case
01:11:12at all.
01:11:12That's strange, right?
01:11:13Very strange to me.
01:11:15And I actually confronted him about that.
01:11:17It's curious to me that you're under arrest for murder and you don't have any questions
01:11:19about that.
01:11:21I don't know.
01:11:22I mean, I don't know.
01:11:23You know what murder is, though, right?
01:11:25Yeah.
01:11:26Killing a person?
01:11:27Yeah.
01:11:28Have you ever killed a person, Gary?
01:11:29No.
01:11:30When I told him, you're not even asking me what agency I work for, his response was,
01:11:35I know what agency you're from.
01:11:36You already told me.
01:11:37San Francisco.
01:11:39I didn't tell you that.
01:11:40I don't work in the city of San Francisco.
01:11:43Immediately, it's like a light bulb in my head thinking, what did you do in San Francisco
01:11:48that's causing you to believe that San Francisco police has shown up on your doorstep?
01:11:51Where do you work?
01:11:52I work in the city of San Diego, Gary.
01:11:54Where?
01:11:55Sunnyville.
01:11:56Okay.
01:11:59I don't know who that is.
01:12:01That's a 15-year-old girl, Gary.
01:12:04That's all?
01:12:06Is there any reason you can think of that I would have blood evidence that that blood belongs
01:12:16to you?
01:12:18I don't know how that would happen.
01:12:20I don't know how that would happen.
01:12:22Are you curious how she was killed?
01:12:23That's horrible.
01:12:24How was she killed?
01:12:26You stabbed her 60 times, Gary.
01:12:28Oh, my God.
01:12:29No.
01:12:29I didn't do anything like that.
01:12:32This is awful, you guys.
01:12:34He invokes his right to an attorney.
01:12:35If you guys are accusing something I didn't do, I'd like to have a lawyer if it's okay with
01:12:39you guys.
01:12:40And that means I'm done.
01:12:41I can't talk to him anymore.
01:12:43I've got to shut it down and walk out of the room.
01:12:44Yeah, Gary.
01:12:46Even without a confession, Hutch is sure he has Karen's killer in custody, but he's waiting
01:12:53for one final confirmation.
01:12:56The DNA all says he did it, but the ultimate answer for prosecution and for me as a detective
01:13:02is when we put that swab inside of his cheek and have that tested directly against the blood.
01:13:09Now we're going one-to-one.
01:13:11Is this the same person?
01:13:16A Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety detective flew it back, brought the sample to the lab.
01:13:26They worked this case 24 hours until they got the result.
01:13:30By about 3 a.m. I had the DNA results.
01:13:34I compared it to the evidence from the bloodstain from the jacket, and it was an exact match.
01:13:44I remember being in bed, but something told me, wake up and look at your computer.
01:13:50And I had an email from the crime lab, and it said Gary Ramirez is the person that killed Karen
01:13:54Stitt.
01:14:00Just like I had her picture at my desk all these years, I had her picture on my computer, and
01:14:08I pulled it up, and I said,
01:14:10Karen, we did it.
01:14:23I was just overwashed with emotion.
01:14:27I'm amazed and grateful that this day had finally came.
01:14:31oh my god 40 years later you had never heard of this man prior to this no no not at
01:14:37all it was
01:14:38shocking to me when he told me how old he was i was bitter to be perfectly honest with you
01:14:44that
01:14:44this man got to live a full life and in return we lost karen when it's time to go to
01:14:55court the man
01:14:56who loved karen will finally face the man who killed her i wanted to be there whenever he was
01:15:03present i wanted to make eye contact with straight-faced eye contact but i want him to say
01:15:08i'm guilty and i want him to explain what he did the case against gary ramirez never went to trial
01:15:23instead the elderly ramirez pleaded no contest for the murder of karen stitt a maximum sentence for
01:15:3178 year old gary ramirez for first degree murder he was never separately charged for karen's sexual
01:15:38assault he entered court with a cane long gray hair and glasses and sat silently looking forward or down
01:15:45as victims read their statements just everything came back about what he did to her and how
01:15:53brutal he was to her and how he threw her away like trash but i was able to get through
01:16:00it told
01:16:02him what i thought about him and i hope he heard every word that she was stabbed nearly 60 times
01:16:07he
01:16:07was just looking straight ahead so there was no eye contact or no reaction from him when any of us
01:16:14spoke
01:16:15i would love to talk to gary ramirez tell me what happened that night why he chose karen where he
01:16:23chose karen just to be honest and tell the truth instead of you know copping out and and pleading no
01:16:29contest 40 years of freedom lived through the prime of his life probably acting like
01:16:36he had nothing happened you know he may even still try to deny it in his own head
01:16:47there's a cost to solving cold cases a psychological one they're gonna haunt me too there's just no way
01:16:55around that it they they get into your soul and these cases will affect me for the rest of my
01:17:00life
01:17:03there's also an emotional toll paid for matt hutcheson providing closure for other families
01:17:09sometimes comes at the expense of his own there's times i have to give my little boys a hug and
01:17:16a kiss
01:17:16goodbye and say i'm going to be gone for three or four days and you're not going to understand why
01:17:21but what i always try to do is i would tell my sons i need you to work the case
01:17:25with me and they'd say
01:17:27well what does that mean dad and it says you i'd say you take care of mom because i have
01:17:31to go take
01:17:32care of karen i have to go take care of estella cute hutch gets to know each of the families
01:17:44and the
01:17:45mena family has treated him with open arms they're almost like extended family now her they call me
01:17:53sobrino which is which is really cool um sobrino means nephew after her case was solved they held
01:18:00the memorial mass for her and they invited me to be a part of it and then afterwards they had
01:18:06a
01:18:06reception and i got to just sit with her family and hear stories stories that don't make it into a
01:18:10police report matt hutcheson will be the first to say he didn't solve these cases alone it was all of
01:18:20us
01:18:20it's not just me i was able to still test blood and clothing and different things and get dna on
01:18:26them 40 plus years after the crime because the investigators collected them they had no idea
01:18:32about dna technology then but the evidence they collected is what ultimately led to both of these
01:18:39cases being solved i think it's really significant and impactful that both in the karen stitt case
01:18:48and in the estella mana case key players and key personnel were volunteers you ever allow yourself to
01:18:57acknowledge that you were so much more than just a volunteer file clerk that's what i did though some
01:19:05people would call you a hero um no no i was organizing files helping matt and you do it all
01:19:17over again
01:19:19absolutely i'll do whatever i can to get more of these cases worked if more of them get worked more
01:19:25of
01:19:26them get solved and i hope all the gary ramirez's of the world and the samuel silva's of the world
01:19:33are living in fear for the knock on the door that's coming
01:19:39a promise and a warning backed up by the numbers detective hutch tells us that he's very close to
01:19:44making an arrest on an eighth cold case now of course we'll stay on that absolutely we will and while
01:19:49he
01:19:49continues to investigate hutch has not connected gary ramirez to any additional crimes in california
01:19:55we reached out to ramirez for comment david but we did not hear back that's our program
01:20:00for tonight thanks so much for watching i'm deborah roberts and i'm david muir from all of us here at
01:20:05abc news in 2020 good night
01:20:35abc news in in
01:20:36You
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