Badass Detective

Summary

20/20: "Badass Detective"

Podcast by ABC News
Date: January 10, 2026

Episode Overview

This riveting episode of 20/20, titled "Badass Detective," dives deep into the long-unsolved 1982 murder of 15-year-old Karen Stitt in Sunnyvale, California, and the parallel case of Estella Mena's 1979 murder. It profiles the relentless work of Detective Matt Hutchison (“Hutch”), who—decades after the crimes occurred—solves these cold cases using a creative, all-encompassing approach and technological innovations like forensic genealogy. The episode not only unveils the twists and turns of the investigations but also celebrates the determination and human cost required to seek justice, painting a vivid portrait of both the victims' families and the relentless detective at the center of the storm.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Brutal Murder of Karen Stitt

• Karen Stitt was 15, found murdered in 1982 near a bus stop in Sunnyvale. She was raped, bound with her own clothes, and stabbed over 50 times.
• The crime scene: Karen's body was dumped behind a cinderblock wall, with blood smears and her personal items scattered around. (01:07–11:03)

“Raped, stabbed over 50 times and left to bleed to death by a monster.”
— Karen Stitt’s Family Member (01:15)

• The first suspect is her boyfriend, David Woods, who’d seen her last the night she was killed. Detectives seize upon inconsistencies in his alibi and a pocket knife found in his possession. However, after extensive questioning and investigation, no evidence links him definitively to the crime. (15:02–16:03, 22:02–28:50)

2. Cold Case Challenges and Detective Hutchison's Arrival

• For decades, the case goes cold. Files and evidence grow dusty and disorganized.

• Enter Matt Hutchison, a Sunnyvale native turned detective, known for his relentless drive and willingness to push boundaries.

• Hutchison takes on cold cases out of a deep sense of mission and with encouragement from his stepfather, a retired officer. He describes his determination:

  “You’re gonna work these cases until they’re solved or it’s gonna break you.”
  — Detective Matt Hutchison (02:51)

• Hutch partners with volunteer Carol Smith and a diverse team, including forensic scientists and later genealogists, to reopen and organize the cold cases. (05:37–07:43)

3. DNA and Forensic Genealogy Breakthroughs

• In 2000, a pivotal DNA analysis excludes David Woods as the killer and reveals an unknown male suspect. But CODIS brings no match. (31:02–32:18)

“David Woods is eliminated as the source of that blood.”
— Detective Matt Hutchison (31:50)

• 35+ years later, Hutch revisits the case with forensic genealogy, building out family trees from distant DNA relatives found in online databases. Despite initially being told to “move on to a different case,” Hutch persists, recruiting genealogy experts and volunteers. (57:00–59:05)

• The investigation narrows to three, then two brothers, with creative undercover work, trash collection for DNA, and even a visit to a Maui psychic leading them to the prime suspect: Gary Ramirez. (62:17–65:32)

“We just took our pool of suspects from millions […] to […] three men in the world that it could be.”
— Detective Matt Hutchison (62:27)

4. Parallel Case: The Murder of Estella Mena (1979)

• Hutch also investigates the murder of 18-year-old Estella Mena, a security guard stabbed at work. Like Karen’s case, DNA found at the scene becomes crucial years later.
• An initial suspect is ruled out when DNA from a shoe matches a violent felon in Colorado, Samuel Silva, showing the value—and limits—of forensic evidence. Unfortunately, Silva had died years before. (53:06–55:24)

5. Creative Detective Work and Emotional Toll

• Hutch’s resourcefulness is on full display: from riding on garbage trucks to collect DNA evidence to covert visits as a “married couple” at a suspect’s psychic landlord’s house in Maui. (47:10–65:32)

• The psychological cost and dedication necessary to solve such cases are clear:

  “They get into your soul. And these cases will affect me for the rest of my life.”
  — Detective Matt Hutchison (80:05)

• Supporting families and collaborating with volunteers and scientists, Hutch becomes "almost like extended family" to the victims’ loved ones. (81:01)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On relentless pursuit:

  “He’s willing to kind of get down in the muck to do whatever it takes.”
  — Gary (02:25)

• On the cold case files:

  “Boxes stacked 6 feet high, filing cabinets with loose papers... total silence. Back there were the ghosts.”
  — Gary (07:25)

• Turning point with DNA testing:

  “We have the guy?... No, but there’s this person. If you go out and you get their DNA, we’ll know...”
  — Genealogist via Detective Matt Hutchison (61:44)

• Moment of closure:

  “I pulled [Karen’s picture] up and I said, Karen, we did it.”
  — Detective Matt Hutchison (76:07)

• On solving cold cases:

  “I’ll do whatever I can to get more of these cases worked… And I hope all the Gary Ramirez’s of the world and the Samuel Silvas of the world are living in fear for the knock on the door that’s coming.”
  — Detective Matt Hutchison (82:32)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:33–11:03: Karen Stitt’s murder and initial investigation
• 22:02–32:18: Suspicion shifts, boyfriend cleared by DNA
• 34:56–41:10: Introduction to parallel case of Estella Mena
• 47:10–51:26: Creative, hands-on detective work and pivotal evidence collection (trash truck operation)
• 52:05–55:24: The crucial DNA match for Estella Mena's case, discovering Silva
• 57:00–69:02: Genealogy, narrowing suspects, finally identifying and arresting Gary Ramirez
• 76:07–77:26: DNA match confirmed, Karen’s family informed
• 78:05–82:07: Court outcome, emotional aftermath, and legacy of persistence

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Conclusion: Legacy of Relentless Investigation

The episode powerfully illustrates how “badass” detective work operates today: not just through dogged police persistence, but also teamwork, community support, the embrace of new science, and empathy for victims’ families. Matt Hutchison’s journey is one of innovation, humility, and heart—and a reminder that justice can arrive decades late, but never too late.

“It was all of us. It’s not just me... The evidence they collected is what ultimately led to both of these cases being solved.”
— Detective Matt Hutchison (81:31)

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For Listeners: Why It Matters

This story showcases the evolving world of cold case investigation, the impact of modern forensics, and the importance of not giving up—even when the trail grows cold. The legacy of Karen Stitt, Estella Mena, and the determination of Detective Matt “Hutch” Hutchison exemplifies real-life heroism, with new hope delivered to families long haunted by unanswered questions.

Transcript

[Jim]

Sam.

[David Muir]

Decades old mystery.

[Jim]

This is a view from the south side of the crime scene. Where Officer Grubaugh is now is the location of the body.

[Corinne Abernathy]

All leads had been exhausted. Why can't I solve this case? Why can't I find out who killed this 15 year old girl?

[David Woods]

How could the killer just do this and disappear?

[David Muir]

Karen stitt was just 15 when she was brutally murdered on her way to a bus stop in Sunnyvale, California, in Silicon Valley.

[Narrator]

Dumped at the base of a cinder block wall behind some bushes. Her hands and her legs bound with her own clothes.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

Raped, stabbed over 50 times and left to bleed to death by a monster.

[David Woods]

To cross paths with an evil predator on such a short window of time is. Is like a lightning strike when someone is murdered.

[David Muir]

It's like a whole world has been destroyed.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

It changed all of our lives forever.

[David Muir]

For every family member and friend who never got answers, there are investigators still haunted by the case they never closed.

[Gary]

It was a case that hung over their heads for decades.

[Carol Smith]

It was in their neighborhood, happened on their watch. They wanted it solved.

[David Muir]

Decades after Karen Stitt's murder, one determined cop, Detective Matt Hutchison, takes her case on.

[Gary]

I was reading a newspaper one day and I saw this article about the Sunnyvale cop who had posed as a busboy to gather DNA evidence to solve a cold case. And I thought, this is, this is kind of cool. Sounds like a TV show or something.

[Narrator]

Matt never gives up, and he will use every avenue available to him to solve the crime.

[Gary]

He's willing to kind of get down in the muck to do whatever it takes to find these people.

[Narrator]

He will bust tables and he will collect trash and he will get his fortune told. Matt will do anything to identify these killers.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

For every story, there's a villain and a hero, and I think Matt is the hero in this story.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

You're gonna work these cases until they're solved or it's gonna break you.

[David Muir]

Matt Hutchison, who goes by Hutch, has made arrests in no less than seven cold cases, leading some, to use a different nickname for him, badass detective.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I was born and raised in the city of Sunnyvale. Grew up like any other kid, playing Little League and all the sports that I could.

[Gary]

I asked Matt what he was like as a kid and he says, I guess you'd say I was willful. I was a willful kid.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I'm the youngest of three boys, so I had to keep up. I had to get a quick wit to defend myself quite a bit.

[Gary]

He went to high school probably five miles from where he does his Police work. Then he went to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, which is a few hours down the road. So he's very much a local guy.

[David Muir]

You didn't start off wanting to be a cop. What was your original plan?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I majored in history and I thought that I was going to be a high school history teacher, maybe coach golf or football. And while I was in college, I realized I probably don't have the patience to be teaching high school kids. My stepfather worked for the city of Sunnyvale as a police officer for 30 plus years. Oh, wow. And he kind of guided me down that path and said, you need to consider public safety and I think it'd be a fit for you. And it was.

[Gary]

It's a unique program in all the United States. Every officer there is a fully trained police officer, EMT and firefighter.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Basically what that means is that everybody who signs up to be a cop also signs up to be a firefighter and an emt.

[Corinne Abernathy]

A lot of people want to either be cops or firefighters. It definitely takes a special person that wants to do both sides of the house.

[David Muir]

Which one do you like best? What's the difference?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I would say that when you're a firefighter, they wave to you with all five fingers instead of just their favorite middle one when you're on patrol.

[Corinne Abernathy]

We worked on graveyard Patrol together, 8pm to 7am so true. Nighttime hours.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Corrine is a lot like me. We're like minded. We're 1 and 2 trying to push each other. She made an arrest. I need to go out and make two and vice versa. My goal on graveyard was to be as active as I possibly could. I wanted to get as much experience as quickly as I could because I knew that I wanted to get into investigations. I applied three times before I was selected.

[David Muir]

Once he finally makes it to investigations, Hutch, now Detective Hutch finally finds his calling with a little inspiration from an unexpected source.

[Carol Smith]

I was looking around for something to keep me busy and keep my mind engaged. And one of my husband's friends was a captain at dps, the Department of Public Safety.

[Gary]

They put her on a filing duty, and after a certain amount of time and maybe a few months, she went to one of the sergeants and said, basically, this is really boring. Can you give me something a little more interesting to do? He said, yeah, I guess something might interest you.

[Carol Smith]

The detective that took me to the cold case room, he asked me to come back to the bureau to organize the closet and the files.

[David Muir]

Your original goal was to make it all more streamlined, organized, more Manageable, Yes.

[Carol Smith]

Initially, I was putting them together for the investigator, but I got so drawn in.

[David Muir]

Were you prepared to see the. The violent nature in these files?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

No, not at all.

[Gary]

Carol told me that she was just horrified. She told herself, these people can't get away with this. Whoever did this, I'm not going to.

[Carol Smith]

Solve it, and I know that. But I'm hoping that I can put the data together to give to a detective that can solve it or at least make more headway or eliminate more people.

[Gary]

For the most part, they were not getting worked. And all of a sudden, here comes Matt. It's like he hadn't found his true mission. And then all of a sudden, he found it.

[David Muir]

Cold cases are cold for a reason. What made you think that you could solve those?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

They get under your skin, they bury into your heart, and you want to solve them so badly that you can't just put them down. The very first day that I opened the cold case closet door, it there were boxes stacked 6ft high, filing cabinets with loose papers and things all over them.

[Gary]

It's such a dramatic scene. It was like the attic that you've not gone up into for 30 years. There was one folding chair. So he sat on a little folding chair with the files and he would have a legal pad on one knee and he'd be taking notes.

[David Muir]

So many of these boxes representing lives.

[Gary]

Lost, it was just him, total silence. Back there with the files. Back there were the ghosts.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

When I became a detective and I told my stepfather I was interested in the cold cases, he said, you have to work. Karen stitt, she's a 15 year old girl who was abducted, stripped nude, bound and sexually assaulted and left in a Hollywood.

[Jim]

The bloodstreams are here and on the other side of the wall.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Every detective over the years, when they look at that case, that's the case you want to solve. If you're gonna work any of them, you want to solve that one.

[David Muir]

Little does he know it'll take him another five years. And traveling 2,500 miles, teaming up with library ladies and a mom on a laptop and going undercover to visit a psychic to close in on the killer of Karen Stitt. It's a sunny September morning and a truck driver is making a delivery to a local garden center. He sees something in the bushes. What did he discover?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Initially, he thought he was seeing a mannequin and didn't think twice about it.

[David Muir]

It wasn't a mannequin.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

No, it was a young girl. What we're approaching right now is the wall where she's eventually found. All this was completely different in 1982. So this is a driveway that goes down an alley. And this wall extends about 20 to 30ft down this alley.

[David Muir]

Her body was found right behind this wall.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Yeah, there used to be a large hedge and a bunch of bushes that lined the wall. And she was concealed between the bushes and the wall itself, laying on her side looking out.

[David Muir]

You used this alleyway when you were a kid?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Yeah, So I would get stuck at this red light here. I would cut through the alley and find my way back out onto El Camino. I wasn't one for patience and waiting that red light, so I found a way around. My thoughts of this alley changed dramatically when I realized what happened here. Yeah, finally, in this case, they did a scene walkthrough where they actually videotaped it.

[Jim]

About how far is this west of the body, Jim? About 40ft.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

So I can see exactly what they saw.

[Jim]

Blue jeans, belts, more cosmetics, lipstick.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

There was blood on the wall behind her body. And then up above her, there was more blood on top of the wall.

[Jim]

The blood stains are here and on the other side of the wall.

[Narrator]

The brutality of this crime was over the top. She was stabbed over 50 times in the chest and sexually assaulted. She was nude. She had her hands and her legs bound with her own clothes.

[Gary]

Leaves near the victim's feet were disturbed, which suggested she had been thrown there, still alive.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

It's certainly the most graphic and violent scene that I've seen in my career.

[David Muir]

The voice that we hear narrating the crime scene video, who is that?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

That's Bruce Dudley. As the lead crime scene investigator. He was the one directing all the evidence, items that were collected. He managed that entire crime scene. He actually told me that this case has given him nightmares for years because he wanted the case solved so badly.

[Jim]

Object here appears to be a makeup, pencil, eyeliner.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Personal items of hers were strewn about where she was found.

[Jim]

A brown colored compact.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

They went through the crime scene and took painstaking care to preserve everything they thought might be usable someday down the road.

[Jim]

And that will be Branch 5.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

They were collecting branches from the bushes that she had been brushed up against. They were taking blood samples, soil samples. They collected every one of her personal items that they could find on scene. There was a wallet that was kind of underneath her body. Inside the wallet was her Social Security card that listed her name. Karen Stitt.

[Narrator]

Karen Stitt was a high school girl that lived in Palo Alto, about 20 minutes north of Sunnyvale.

[David Muir]

As investigators focus on the crime scene in the alleyway, their fellow officers monitor the perimeter to keep the public out.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

One of those officers on the perimeter got approached by a young man asking questions about, hey, what's going on? What's with all the police activity? The officer eventually asked, well, who are you? What are you doing here? And he said, I'm David woods, and I was here last night. I was dropping off my girlfriend in this area. Her name's Karen Stitt.

[David Woods]

We had just moved out there that summer. It was pretty amazing place to land at. Shortly after is when I met Karen. I was 16 and Karen was 15.

[Corinne Abernathy]

I was with Karen when she met David.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We were at the mall, and I.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Vaguely remember her meeting a boy with a baseball cap on.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

And from there she continued seeing him.

[David Woods]

I think I could call to love at first sight. She just really swept me off my feet. And we were just instantly a couple. And at that point, it was just pure bliss, really. We'd go out wandering around one place. I remember it was a tower of records. You're flipping through records and albums. We're both into rock music. I had definitely a wide variety of tastes. I know she liked a lot of what I did too.

[David Muir]

On the last night of her life, Karen takes the number 22 bus from Palo Alto to Sunnyvale for a date with David.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

David met her at the bus stop.

[Narrator]

He played video Games at a 7 11.

[David Woods]

I got really good at this one called Defender.

[Gary]

He went to a miniature golf course.

[David Woods]

Then we walked over to our new house and met with my parents and sister briefly. We went up to my room and I played some guitar for her. I was big into guitar then, and after a while we went back out and just hung out at this little elementary school that was close to the house. We lost track of time a little bit and hustled off toward the bus stop.

[Gary]

Steve was worried that he was gonna bus curfew.

[David Woods]

I was kind of on thin ice about that with my parents always coming in a little late.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

He's gotta get her back to the bus stop because he's gotta get back home.

[David Woods]

We got close enough to see the corner where the bus stop was at Wolf El Camino. And we kissed good night. And she grabbed my ball cap, which was a prize to her. She knew that that was kind of a part of me. I'd always have it. And it's like, okay, I'll get it back from you tomorrow.

[David Muir]

The first sign that something is wrong comes when David gets an early morning call. Family and friends are looking for Karen. She never came home.

[David Woods]

I got a call wondering if Karen was still at my place, that she didn't come back last night. And, you know, I got dressed and went down, picked up the bus at the same spot.

[David Muir]

David heads to Palo Alto to retrace her steps, but there's no sign of Karen. His worry growing, he makes the return trip home.

[David Woods]

When I got off the bus and I started walking down the road and I see the crime scene taped off, then I'm a little more concerned. So I, I approached one of the uniform officers that was there asking what's going on. And at that point they pretty much whisked me away.

[Narrator]

He was the last person to see her alive.

[David Muir]

And when cops search David at the police station, they find something that only haydn their suspicions.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

When you're six hours into a homicide investigation, you have to follow that lead.

[David Muir]

Then they discover that he lied to his mom. On the morning after Karen's murder, they're.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Looking at him saying, well, he's not exactly credible.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

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[David Muir]

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[David Muir]

It was right around this area that Karen Stitt, just 15 years old, says good night to her boyfriend. He turns and runs in that direction to make curfew. She heads in the opposite direction, around the corner to catch her bus. But the bus comes and goes and Karen never gets on.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

Karen was bright and kind and beautiful. My brother was her father. Karen was the third child.

[David Muir]

She was the baby of the family.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

She was. She was born prematurely. She weighed less than six pounds and really wasn't expected to live. But she was strong and she grew into a thriving baby and a happy child. So from the very beginning she was a fighter. This one's dated 1972 and she's in her brownie outfit, so she would have been five there. And here I remember this is their house in Pittsburgh where she was raised, sitting on the couch in their living room. And then this final picture is her with her sister. This is Suzanne in the front, Karen in the middle and a family friend, Susan.

[David Muir]

Her mother and father divorced.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

Yes, they divorced. And my brother first moved to Georgia and then took a job in California, living in Palo Alto.

[David Muir]

And then at 14 years old, Karen's life is hit with tragedy when her mother, Kathy, takes her own life. What impact did that have on Karen?

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

I can only imagine what it's like to lose a parent in any circumstance at such a young age. But she was lucky. She had the support of her family and particularly her older sister Suzanne, who just adored her.

[David Muir]

After her mother's death, Karen moves to California to live with her father full time.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

She went out there and was immediately enrolled in school and seemed to be doing great.

[David Muir]

She went to Palo Alto Senior High School or Pali. She came in halfway through what would.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Have been her freshman year.

[Corinne Abernathy]

We just clicked, started hanging out, you know, swapped numbers and just became really tight friends.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Karen was definitely a person that once you met her, she was just like.

[David Muir]

No other girl that I had ever met before.

[Corinne Abernathy]

We were either always on the phone or together out doing what 15 year.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Olds do, hanging at the mall, being.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Girls, you know, we weren't afraid to.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Take walks to the store, ride the buses by ourselves.

[Corinne Abernathy]

It was just easy living at that time.

[David Muir]

As the summer ended, she was in love. She was about to start a new school year. Was this a new life for her?

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

I think it was. She was excited about the future and about the possibilities.

[David Muir]

But Karen's sudden murder stuns her friends and family.

[Jim]

One of her shoes is up to the right, underneath the limb there.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

It was just unthinkable that something like that could happen.

[Jim]

The leaves appear to be pushed back during the struggle.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

He didn't want to believe it, you know, like it couldn't. It couldn't be true. Where the other two subjects are standing.

[Jim]

Is about where her body was located.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

You see that? There are monsters out there. It changed all of our lives forever.

[David Muir]

As they search to identify the monster who killed Karen, police are locked in on the one person they know she was with the night before. David Woods.

[David Woods]

And at that point, they pretty much whisked me away, took me down to their station for questioning.

[David Muir]

What did officers find in his pocket.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

When he came in for questioning? It's common to just do a cursory search of him to make sure he doesn't have any weapons. And when they did that, they found that he was in possession of a pocket knife.

[David Muir]

Could be the murder weapon.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

He was the last person with her, and now he's got a weapon on his person. They're certainly concerned that that could be the murder weapon.

[Jim]

David, what we need to know from you is the last time you saw Karen, where you were. She came over to visit me last night. About what time she came over about between eight and nine.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

The detectives are probing him for information as if he's a suspect. I don't know that he necessarily recognized that he was a suspect in that moment.

[David Woods]

It still was not occurring to me that something this horrific could have happened.

[Jim]

She wearing. She was wearing her blue jeans, white striped shirt, black satin jacket. She had it on at the time. Or did you give it to her when you met her? I gave it to her. But you gave it to her when you left where? Okay, I walked her up to the bus stop.

[David Muir]

Detectives are pressing David for details about his hat because that morning they found it next to Karen's body.

[Jim]

Can you describe your hat? It's a blue hat with a patch on the front that says brush. It's got two buttons of Rolling Stones, bottom of Judas Creek's butt. Something happened to him? That's what we're trying to find out. You walked her up to the bus stop and then left her there? Did you wait for the bus with her? No, I had to go home. I didn't like doing that.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

The detectives pushed him quite a bit on. Why would you leave her out by herself?

[Jim]

Was she getting physically at the bus stop, sitting on the bench when he left? No way. She was walking toward him from the restaurant. How come he didn't stay with her? So I had to be honest. Do you have any objections? Gave it to us. Looking in your room at home and looking at the clothes that you were wearing last night, you need to know support. It's important for us to know this. Karen's kid was murdered last night. She was murdered last night? Yes.

[David Woods]

I found out that she'd been killed. That prison, it just still seemed unreal to me. My world got swept out from under my feet. And then I, you know, I had that horrible regret of not being there to protect her. And, you know, just thinking about what she must have had to endure, you, know, it was just so painful.

[David Muir]

David may be reeling from the shock of Karen's loss, But he and his parents take investigators back to his house, and they give them his clothes from the night before.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

None of his clothes had any biological evidence. No blood. The knife was clean.

[David Muir]

But what's missing from the crime scene Quickly takes investigators in a different direction.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

There's not enough blood on the ground, on the wall for that to be where she was stabbed.

[David Muir]

Could karen have been attacked and killed somewhere else and then left to back at that alley?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

There was a witness that came forward and described a very distinct vehicle. They described the coloring and described a sticker. Detectives told officers, be out in the neighborhood day and night Trying to find this car. They're casting a very wide net because we just really don't have any idea who did this. Every time I look at the crime scene photos, as traumatic as they are, I want to study them and know them like the back of my own hand Because I want to be able to explain every single item. The what, the how, the where, the when, the why. I want to know every answer I can.

[David Muir]

In 1982. Investigators are also studying the crime scene closely and have zeroed in on Karen's boyfriend.

[Corinne Abernathy]

I don't recall them having any suspicions Other than possibly David, because he was the last one with her.

[David Muir]

And that's not all they discover he had not told everyone the same story about the morning after Karen's murder.

[Jim]

Did you receive a phone call this morning? Yeah. What time? It was? Oh, her. She's referring. She said why she was looking for.

[David Muir]

But when he hung up the phone, that morning, he had told his mom something different.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

When David finishes that conversation, mom asks him, who was that? And he tells his mom it was Karen.

[David Muir]

Even though he explains he was just trying to avoid worrying her. It feeds their suspicions.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

When the police are talking to all these different people and getting four different versions of the events, they're looking at him saying, well, he's not exactly credible. Why would he lie to his mom about who he just talked to?

[David Muir]

Even as they're taking a hard look at David, cops are also reexamining the crime scene and details that seem to be pointing in an entirely different direction.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Where Karen was found. There's not enough blood on the ground, on the wall for that to be where she was stabbed. There's just no way. I've always believed that whoever abducted her put her into some sort of vehicle that was big enough that the crime was committed inside the vehicle. The investigators keyed in on that as well. At one point, there was a witness that came forward and described a very distinct vehicle. It was either a truck with a shell over it or a panel van type of vehicle vehicle. Detectives told officers, I need you to be out in the neighborhood day and night trying to find this specifically described car. And they actually found a vehicle that. That matched generally the description and found that guy and interviewed him as well.

[David Muir]

But this tip goes nowhere, as does every other potential lead they chase, from a reportedly violent military veteran seen in the area that night to a clerk at the 711 where David Wood said he was playing an arcade game.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

They just had blood on the wall. A boyfriend who made some statements that were inconsistent, and there's really nothing else to work.

[David Muir]

Did the family suspect anyone?

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

I don't think there was anyone that the family truly suspected.

[David Muir]

They kept saying, you know, it's only.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

One phone call away.

[Gary]

Whoever knows anything at all, just make the call. The longer it went, I knew the.

[David Muir]

Harder it was going.

[Gary]

Going to be to find somebody.

[Corinne Abernathy]

We didn't hear anything for quite a long time, like five years or something.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

And then somebody would reach out, and then you wouldn't hear anything again for a long time.

[Corinne Abernathy]

So I thought it was just like a repeating cycle of they don't have anything, but they're just asking more questions.

[David Muir]

But whenever a detective does reopen Karen's file, and many do, one name usually rises to the top. Really. It's not the boyfriend.

[Gary]

Are we sure it's not the boyfriend?

[Carol Smith]

They felt like they knew what happened, and they had a hard time going beyond just looking at the boyfriend.

[Narrator]

He was the main suspect initially and he remained a suspect for years.

[David Woods]

I'm sure they whatever list of potential suspects was there, I was probably always on there. But you know, I also knew that, you know, there's no evidence that I would have been able to do something so horrific.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

In 2000. A new detective is looking at this case and realizes we can use DNA technology on the blood from our crime scene.

[David Muir]

Where are we here?

[Corinne Abernathy]

We are at the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office crime laboratory where we.

[David Muir]

Do DNA analysis in Karen Stitt's case. You processed some evidence in the year 2000, why do it now?

[Corinne Abernathy]

The crime laboratory went online with the more modern, newer DNA typing. A 15 year old girl was murdered in 1982. The victim had been tied up with her own jacket. And this was jacket had blood smears and stains all over it.

[Narrator]

If you're stabbing someone, the odds are that the blood is going to lubricate your hand and it's going to slip and you're going to cut your own hand on that knife blade.

[Corinne Abernathy]

So I was looking for something that stood out. This is my note page from the case. I noted that the stains were all soaked or smeared. One little red dot was thick, shiny and perfectly as if someone just dropped it and it dried because it stood out. I sampled it for DNA analysis and it was an unknown male DNA profile.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

That same profile matched the blood stain on the wall above her.

[Narrator]

That was the point. We thought, this is our killer. That's the person that did this. The first thing we did with that was to compare it to her boyfriend.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We do a one to one comparison between David woods and the blood at the scene, and David woods is eliminated as the source of that blood.

[David Muir]

After nearly 20 years with a cloud of suspicion hanging over him, David woods is finally ruled out as Karen Stitt's killer. It's the DNA that allowed us to rule him out as a suspect. How does this unknown DNA profile change the investigation?

[Jim]

Now?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

That's the person that you need to focus on. Figure out who that blood belongs to.

[Narrator]

We didn't know who it was. It was a profile that was eligible to be uploaded into codis, the national database. And we did upload it, but there was no hit.

[David Woods]

I got to a point where I felt like this probably will never get solved.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

It almost became a subject that we didn't talk about in the family.

[David Muir]

But 35 years after Karen's death, Hutch takes this case on with a new determination to solve it.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

When I first started working it, there had been an article in a local newspaper where her father was quoted, and the sentiment was, I haven't heard from Sunnyvale in quite some time. I don't think they'll ever solve my daughter's case. I called him right away And I said, Mr. Stitt, I'm taking the case now. I will work it. And that conversation was short. And he basically told me, don't call me back until you do.

[David Muir]

And as Hutch digs into the case, another unsolved murder in the same town just a few years earlier catches his attention.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

A young security guard, 18 years old, stabbed to death inside of an office building.

[Carol Smith]

She was a young girl still in high school.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

There's parallels in these cases because they're both stabbed, and it's a complete. What we call a whodunit.

[David Muir]

So what connection could there be between these two cases?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I learned fly fish, and it became a godsend to me, watching my fly go down the river and. And setting the hook is the only place where I can completely check out from the rest of the world. It recharges my batteries, in a sense, and gives me the ability to keep going. I wish that we were just catching fish and there wasn't a need to catch people, but this is my job.

[Gary]

Matt was always working on more than one case at a time, because you would hit a dead end and he would just start working on another one.

[David Muir]

Matt Hutchison is moving full speed ahead, trying to solve the Karen Stitt case, but he's also competing with a backlog of current cases the department is trying to close. Sometimes all Hutch can do is wait and begin investigating other cold cases. And then there's the murder of Estella Mena.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

It was a mystery, absolute mystery. Estella came from a strong family. She didn't go out and socialize a lot. She did some martial arts, went to school, and worked.

[David Muir]

Long before big tech became a big thing here in Silicon Valley. Western Electric was a leader in the communication business in Sunnyvale. Back in 1979. Estella Mena was a security guard, working part time there while still in high school.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

She's 18 years old and she's still in school, but she's taking on such a serious job. I always just looked at it as a sign of her ambition and where she wanted to go in life.

[David Muir]

On a Saturday afternoon in October, Estella was planning to attend a martial arts competition. After work. She never made.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Was a weekend where Western Electric didn't have all their employees going in and out of the business. There was less staff on scene, and one of the engineers who had been working upstairs. He's going to leave the business. And he hears Estella in the corner, struggling to live. He finds her on the ground, stabbed multiple times. She's not communicating with him about who.

[Gary]

Stabbed her, attacked where she worked, and murdered and tossed behind a vending machine.

[David Muir]

The murder is in 1979. Hutch is on the case in 2018. All right, what do we have here?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

This is the overhead scene diagram from 1979 for the murder of Estella Mena. A common thing that crime scene investigators will do is an overhead view of the scene where a crime happened. They'll draw the vending machines, her desk in place, doors, certain things that don't move.

[David Muir]

The other category Hutch focuses on are things that do move, Items that seem out of place.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I look at things like the screwdriver in the middle of the room. How does that get there? Why is that there? Does it make any sense? Same with the comb. Same with the shoe.

[David Muir]

The photo of Estella's shoe also catches the eye of Carol Smith, that volunteer who's been helping out in the cold case unit.

[Carol Smith]

The other detectives that I had worked with suggested that it was probably above her head because the first responders to get to her, they'd thrown it back over her head.

[David Muir]

Carol, you said looking at the scene, it was your impression that the victim was a fighter. Why did you say that?

[Carol Smith]

Because it starts to swing, goes all the way to the other side of the lobby, and you can see there's buttons and combs and everything that trail that way. There's blood that trails throughout the lobby. So, yeah, she fought the whole way.

[David Muir]

But the young martial arts student is no match for a killer with a knife.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

She didn't have no kind of weapon on her.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

She didn't have nothing.

[Carol Smith]

And she was a security guard. And most security guards do, they have.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Either maze to spray in their eyes.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Or some kind of. If not a gun, I mean, a stick or, you know, something for her to protect herself with. And she didn't have nothing like that.

[David Muir]

Decades later, the family receives an unexpected phone call from Detective Hutch.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I did reach out early on, and I said, I'm working this case. I know that there's a family on the other end of that case that's still waiting, and that's painful for them. And if it's painful for them, it's something that I want to try and do everything I can to fix.

[David Muir]

By the time Hutch comes on board, Western Electric has ceased operations. The original investigators have long since retired, and the killer has a 39 year head start.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I've always picked up a cold case knowing that it is my goal to solve it. But that might be difficult and I may not succeed, But I can leave it better than I found it.

[David Muir]

In the early stages of the investigation, the biggest lead was the smallest piece of evidence. A speck of blood.

[Narrator]

When the crime scene was processed, the Sunnyvale detectives found a drop of blood.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

On the door frame.

[Narrator]

The same door that the killer would have gone through.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I knew if we're ever going to solve it, we need to be able to answer who's the source of that blood?

[Narrator]

You can't prosecute that case unless you know who the blood on the door frame is.

[David Muir]

On the day of the crime, Western Electric was in the process of moving to another facility.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

So the building itself had a lot of people that were in and out of there that weren't necessarily associated to the business.

[David Muir]

Over time, investigators interview them all. The end result, nobody knew anything. Nobody saw anything.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Thank you. Much like Karen's case, Estella's case gets under your skin and it sticks with you. And they won't let you give up.

[David Muir]

Matt Hutchison is about to get some assistance from a very unlikely source.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I explained to them who my victim is and what the case is, and they are on board. How can we help you? What do you need from us to help solve this murder of this young girl? I said I need a trash truck.

[David Muir]

One of the best ways to find a killer is to get a sample of their DNA. And the best way to do that is to grab their trash.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

This is your guy, Matt Hutchton.

[David Muir]

I didn't do anything wrong.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

In my line of work, it's very common for people to lie to you. I want to see if I can rattle his cage a little bit. Any reason for your blood to be found inside that lobby.

[David Muir]

For 100 days? I'm going to cross the seven continents because the answers to everything important are out there at the edges of our world. I'm stepping into the unknown. Where are we going to see our planet? This is amazing as it's never been seen before. From Pole to Pole Pole to Pole with Will Smith series premiere Tuesday, January 13 at 9 on National Geographic stream on Disney and Hulu.

[Gary]

Show me the way FX is the beauty.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Imagine the hottest new superdrug that makes you effortlessly beautiful.

[Gary]

From executive producer Ryan Murphy.

[David Woods]

This is the closest to the fountain.

[David Muir]

Of youth anyone's ever gonna get.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Are there side effects?

[David Muir]

I just went in, woke up and.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

It looked like this. I would like the first Pope FX is the beauty.

[Gary]

Premieres January 21st on FX, Hulu and.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers. Nobody should have to see the things that were done to those two girls. But I'm fine with it being me if it means I can solve them.

[David Muir]

And solve them by any means necessary. Because if he sees you out the window, your cover is blowing.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

And I rode the truck in the as if I was just any other employee. Any reason for your blood to be found inside that lobby where this happened?

[David Muir]

Juggling two cold cases. But is it the same killer?

[Narrator]

We just needed to find a name to match that DNA.

[Corinne Abernathy]

That's what we look for. You have someone who was killed or stabbed or shot.

[Jim]

You gotta look at everything.

[Corinne Abernathy]

And that person. They're bloody all over.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

So we just took our pool of suspects from millions to. There's three men in the world that they could beat.

[David Muir]

Crucial work, Gary.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Very crucial work.

[David Muir]

And is one of them connected to this psychic?

[Jim]

You're not gonna let me Clyde, are you?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

If you don't clyde until I got my job, this is the one chance we're gonna get at it. And we can't screw it up.

[David Muir]

Bingo.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We're going now because I have to go take care of Karen. I have to go take care of Estella.

[Jim]

Oh, man.

[David Muir]

Detective Matt Hutchison is stuck in the past by choice.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I'm fortunate to work cold cases in Sunnyville.

[David Muir]

Working case files pulled from a closet few others dare to enter.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I went in there, I almost turned around and went out and said, I give up.

[David Muir]

Instead, he starts working multiple cases at the same time time, including two eerily similar stabbings. Karen Stitt, a 15 year old, stabbed multiple times while on her way to the bus. Estella Mena, an 18 year old security guard, attacked on the job at Western Electric. Both murdered. But by whom?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

There's constant disappointment.

[David Muir]

Can the man they call Hutch break the cases before the cases break him?

[Jim]

Oh, man.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

In the Estella Mana case, there was an entry, exit door to that lobby that had a small smear of blood on it.

[Gary]

They had found one drop of blood. Obviously not the victim's blood. It was somebody else's blood. It was found a few feet away. They decided this must be the person.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We put it through. Codis. Got no matches.

[David Muir]

CODIS is a database that contains DNA profiles of convicted felons and people arrested for felonies in certain states.

[Narrator]

If you didn't get a match, if you didn't get a hit, basically the approach for law enforcement is, well, there's nothing Else we can do.

[David Muir]

But the game changes with the arrival of forensic genetic genealogy. Now, that same genetic profile found on the door frame can be compared not to criminal databases, but to millions of profiles submitted to public genealogy websites.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We got back some genetic matches that were close relatives that quickly kind of identified one gentleman who lived in southern California who could be the source.

[David Muir]

It's the best lead investigators have had since 1979. A subject with a connection to western Electric.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I went into the case file with the name of the subject that lived in southern California, and he jumps off the page. He was an employee at western Electric. He did a brief interview in 1979, a couple days after the homicide. He essentially said, hey, I'm an employee of the mailroom. I don't know anything about the homicide. So we devised a plan to try to collect his trash that he's left out at the curb. A partner and I fly down to southern California where he lives.

[David Muir]

But the execution of that plan is more complicated. Police surveillance reveals the subject puts out his trash just moments before the garbage truck comes down the street. So taking it in the middle of the night is not an option. You want the element of surprise, because if he sees you out the window. Right. Your cover is blown.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Our cover's blown. Evidence could be gone. He could be prepared for the interview and come up with a story that I can't refute. When I get face to face with him, I want it to be the first time he knows we're investigating him.

[David Muir]

So you gotta be able to surprise him.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Have to.

[David Muir]

You gotta get creative.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I do. We actually contacted the trash company in this case and got them to give us a truck so that we could drive on the truck and collect an entire can.

[David Muir]

You asked the trash company for a truck? Their reaction?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

You know, at first they were like, this is not the type of thing that we do. And then I introduce them to my victim and I tell them the story. I tell them who she is and why this is important, why this is the only way. And then they're 100% on board.

[David Muir]

It has to be realistic.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Right?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

It has to look like every other trash day that he's ever had. It was important that I look exactly like another trash employee. So I had the vest on. I rode the truck as if I was just any other employee, because we didn't want to give the impression anything was changed. They roll out the old beast that's been on the line for probably 15 years. And it's got three inches of just sludge.

[David Muir]

Sludge.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Just disgusting. And I tell them, guys, we're going to put samples of DNA into this thing. It has to be pristine. We have to have a way to preserve this evidence. These trucks are designed so that when a can goes in, it smashes all the trash to make room for the next can. We disabled the compactor arm, and then we drove to a local hardware store and bought a big tarp and crawled up in there and rigged it up inside the truck so that when the can dumped in, we would catch just our trash and it wouldn't touch anything else, and we'd be able to drive away with it.

[David Muir]

So then you hit the streets, you head to this guy's house, and what happens there?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

The first thing I see is another one of these trucks half a block ahead of us. And I'm in full panic thinking, this guy's gonna take our can. We got on the horn with him and said, you need to just blow by these drivers. He listened, thankfully. And when he goes by, we pull up and we make a left into this. This gentleman's court. And I see his cannon. I know the game's on.

[David Muir]

The trash is successfully deposited into the truck. Hutch is booked on the next flight to get back to Sunnyvale, but he can't let the evidence out of his sight.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We found a lot of cigarette butts, bottles, cans. Anything that somebody puts in their mouth can be a source of DNA. And then I try to get through TSA with a suitcase full of trash, thinking that they're gonna put me on some sort of watch list or something. We are able to get on the plane, fly it back, and then my task is immediately take it to the crime lab because we want it tested right now.

[David Muir]

Match or no match, It's a match.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We know who the source of the blood is inside our crime scene. The work is on. Now we have to prove that he's the one that did it.

[David Muir]

Hutch returns to Southern California, and this time, it's to come face to face with his prime suspect.

[Jim]

This is your guy, Matt Hutch, and.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I'm really sorry to ruin your day. And that's the copy of the search warrant.

[Jim]

Oh, Jesus. Why do we have to have a search warrant?

[David Muir]

I didn't do anything wrong.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I come back to Southern California, where the employee of Western Electric lives.

[Narrator]

I think everyone assumed, quite reasonably that.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

The blood on the door frame that.

[Narrator]

The killer went through has to be our killer.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

When we arrived at his house, we had the local police department with us. We'll do this wherever you're comfortable. We need Okay.

[Jim]

I appreciate it.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

You want a cup of coffee? I don't care.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Thank you.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I want to see if I can rattle his cage a little bit, make him uncomfortable, and maybe he'll slip up. In my line of work, it's very common for people to lie to you. Did you ever suffer any kind of injuries or have any accidents when you worked at Western Electricity? Not that I remember. Maybe he'll say something or maybe he'll give me some indication that he actually is the perpetrator in this case, this. One of the doors leaving the business. There's a blood smear.

[Gary]

I see it right there.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Any reason for your blood to be found inside that lobby where this happened?

[Jim]

I don't think so. Why would you kill the security guard?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

There was no money there. He couldn't have been calmer or more cooperative.

[Jim]

Have a safe trip back.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Appreciate it.

[Jim]

Thank you. I wish that could be more help.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

When I look at that, I believe that he's credible, but he might just be a good actor. He might be just saying all the right things. I know I need more evidence than just the blood on the door. Can I put him somewhere closer to the victim? Maybe on the victim's body, on her clothing, on some item that I know she. She touched and interacted with?

[Narrator]

We need to look at all of the evidence all over again.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

And as soon as I knew we were going to test other items, I came back to Carol's voice in my head saying, matt, you have to test the shoe. You have to test the shoe.

[David Muir]

The two of you talked about that shoe?

[Carol Smith]

Yes.

[David Muir]

Incessantly, apparently.

[Carol Smith]

You can ask Matt, but, yeah, I bugged him.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

She made it very clear to me that she wouldn't speak to me again if we didn't test that shoe. The bottom line is that shoe should have been on her foot, and it's not anymore. And that only happens because it falls off during the fight.

[David Muir]

Although they've seen the crime scene photos numerous times, neither Hutch nor Carol have seen the actual evidence until now. This really humanizes it.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

You see a height and a weight on a piece of paper, just somebody's statistics. And that resonates in your brain. And you see that, and then you hold something that belonged to them, and you see just how tiny she was. You can see the different areas that they sampled. Here, where you see a circle with pen, you can see a slight, faint stain in there. Blood doesn't always come up like a bright red stain that's going to jump off the page at you from that.

[David Muir]

Tiny wedge Shoe comes the answer Hutch has been looking for. The blood on that shoe is not just Estella's. There's also someone else's blood that doesn't match that former employee they've been pursuing. So whose blood is it?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

It's not the same guy that's on the door frame. Which now throws a wrench into my case.

[David Muir]

The unknown DNA is entered into codis, and this time, a hit.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

There's a gentleman named Samuel Silva who lived in the state of Colorado, who was identified as the source of the blood that was on Estella's shoe and the DNA on her pants.

[Narrator]

Sam Silva's killed before. He was a violent felon. He was arrested for rape. He was arrested for attempted murder. All of this in Colorado.

[David Muir]

The main question now for the detective, was Samuel Silva ever in California? Hutch gets the answers by digging up Colorado probation reports where officers once asked Silva if he ever lived outside of that state.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

And when the probation officer asked him, well, where were you and what were you doing? He said, I was living in Sunnyvale, California, with my two brothers in 1978, which would have put him in my city and possibly crossing paths with my victim.

[David Muir]

Estella Manna was killed in 1979. The street in Sunnyvale where Silva lived is. Was less than 2 miles from Western Electric. Matt Hutchison keeps digging. He finds a copy of a resume that belonged to Estella Mena. It turns out that before she worked at Western Electric, she worked here at Great America Amusement Park. And guess who else worked here.

[Narrator]

Sam Silva also previously worked at Great America. We don't know if they knew each other for sure, but maybe that's where he got to know her.

[David Muir]

And eventually, Carol, you hear the news that there's been a break in the case.

[Carol Smith]

Matt called me immediately when he got the news. So this part always makes me teary because that was such a.

[Jim]

I mean, that.

[Carol Smith]

That just gets to your heart. And all these years.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Carol Smith]

To finally hear that we had gotten this one done, that was like. That was a big day.

[David Muir]

But no matter how hard the detective keeps working the case, there'll be no arrest, no conviction. Samuel Silva had died years earlier.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I know. I can never put handcuffs on him. I can never tell the family that we got him. You still have a job to do. When I go to the family and I say Samuel Sovola is the person that did it, that's not all I'm going to tell them. I'm going to tell them why I believe that. It is my belief that she was the intended Target of him coming to that business and that she either said no to him, I'm not interested, or whatever it was that initiated an assault from him and she fought for her life.

[David Muir]

It was Estella's sister Marta, seen here in a news report from our station KGO in San Francisco, who would grow up and coin a phrase that would one day make headlines.

[Gary]

Marta, who apparently is a fairly religious person, told me that Matt had flew up and met with her. And she said that when he left, she turned her husband and said, that's one badass detective.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

There can be no better moment for me as an investigator than to tell them, it's done. We know who he is. He didn't get away with this.

[David Muir]

Touch is not done. Karen Stitt's killer is still very much alive. And the detective is closing in.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I'm gonna put handcuffs on the person that murdered Karen Stead.

[David Muir]

In the decades long mystery of who killed 15 year old Karen Stitt, Sunnyvale has an answer of sorts.

[Narrator]

We knew who the killer was, except for his name. We had his DNA profile. We just needed to find a name to match that DNA.

[David Muir]

So they decide to enlist a lab on the east coast that specializes in forensic genetic genealogy to try to figure out who their suspect is.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

When we send the DNA off for genealogy, we're taking that blood that we know belongs to a male, converting it to a genealogical sample and to see if we can match to any of his relatives. We can then try to work backwards and figure out who he is.

[David Muir]

Hutch has a lot of hope, but it's immediately crushed.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We get back three very distant relatives, all third cousins. The advice from the lab was move on to a different case. You're not going to solve this one.

[Narrator]

We're talking about people that are so remote, there's basically no chance that, that we're going to be able to build a family tree to narrow it down to this particular perpetrator.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

They said, matt, do you know your third cousins? And I don't know any of them. So it made sense to me that this is going to be an uphill battle.

[Corinne Abernathy]

He was a little bummed, but I know Matt and I've known Matt for a long time that that wasn't going to keep him down for too long.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

It's easy to feel sorry for yourself as a cold case investigator and say, well, you know, these cases are so dang hard, if I don't solve it, nobody's gonna get mad at me. I'm just gonna put it away. I quickly learned that I couldn't have that kind of attitude with Karen. I took her picture, and I put it up on my desk right behind my phone. She's staring at me, telling me, don't give up on my case. You can solve it.

[David Muir]

If three third cousins are as close as he can get, Hutch decides to start there.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

So I went about the task of, let me build this tree as big as I possibly can get it.

[David Muir]

From what he can see online, one of those third cousins has already built out an extensive family tree, potentially crucial investigative leads. But first, Hutch has to convince that cousin to help him.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

He left me a message, and I.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Remember laughing, and I told my husband.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

Wow, pranking and, you know, identity theft.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Has reached a new level.

[Carol Smith]

A couple days later, I received a text message.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

He sent me a picture of his.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

Business card and his officer badge on a table.

[David Muir]

He offers to fly to Texas and meet her in person. Still skeptical, she insists that their first contact has to be in a safe place.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We met at the small police department where she lived and then told her who Karen was, told her why we needed her help, and she said, that's enough for me. Come back to my house, and I'll give you everything I've got.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

It really struck me he cared about Karen. He cared about her family and cared about what happened to her.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

And so we rolled the family trees out on her kitchen table.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

All of the profiles of people who were living were basically blacked out. And he asked me if I would be willing to fill in all the blank spots.

[David Muir]

How many names did you wind up writing down for him?

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

I want to say it was at least 100.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Once I knew the specifics of the.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

Case, I went back into my family tree and started looking for people that I thought could potentially be a suspect.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We're building the data, but we have no idea where to go with it. At that point, I'm just waiting for something or someone to come along and.

[David Muir]

Help me, and that's exactly what happens. One day, after Hutch gives a talk on cold cases at the Sunnyvale Library.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I get approached by three women afterwards, and they say, well, we're Daughters of the American Revolution. So that sounds really neat. What the heck does that mean? And they say, well, we've chased our DNA all the way back to the American Revolution. I said, wow. Wow, you guys seem like you're the experts. Have you ever thought about working for a police department?

[David Muir]

They keep their day jobs, but agree to volunteer on Karen's case, working with Hutch to fill in the blanks across the suspect's. Family tree. One day, his phone rings.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

There was one genealogist that kind of took the lead amongst the rest of them. And she called me and said, we have something. And she didn't talk like that in any of the other times I'd ever talked to her. So I start getting excited. I'm like, we have the guy? She goes, no, we don't have the guy. But there's this person. If you go out and you get their DNA, we'll know if we need to go after that person's cousins or if we need to go after that person's uncles. He's local. He's in San Jose, which is 10 minutes down the road after a simple.

[David Muir]

Local trash grab one night. The results confirm Karen Stitt's killer is one of this man's three uncles.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

So we just took our pool of suspects from millions and you're never gonna solve it. According to the genealogy lab to there's three men in the world that it could be. And I'm bouncing off the walls at this point. My partner Corinne and I figure out that one of the uncles is living in North Las Vegas. And we know his trash day. We're going to collect his trash early in the morning and drive it all the way back the very next day.

[Corinne Abernathy]

I was pretty excited, a little nervous. I remember it being very, very quiet and it sounded like the loudest thing. Just trying to pull the garbage bag out of the trash can. Nobody came out, but it felt like, you know, this is the loudest thing going on in the block. So we grab the trash and we immediately take off. We drove straight through the night back up to Santa Clara county.

[Narrator]

And then our crime lab comes back and says, oh, yeah, this guy, no, he's not the killer. But you know what? One of his brothers is the killer.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We've not shrunk to pull the suspects down to two.

[David Muir]

Determining which of the two brothers murdered Karen Stitt will require Matt and Corinne to go undercover and visit a psychic.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

She got a fake wedding ring and I wore my, my real one, of course, and we got our palms red. But we can't give her too much where it looks like we're cops.

[David Muir]

You got to be careful.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

For all I know, she's gonna catch up.

[David Muir]

Investigators Matt Hutchison and Corinne Abernathy are steadily narrowing down their suspects in the 40 year old murder of Karen Stitt.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Through just working the leads and not giving up and building these family trees out, we narrowed it down to a group of four brothers.

[Corinne Abernathy]

There was a lot of case Discussion on which route we would take, and.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Then it becomes a process of elimination one by one. You gotta go out and get their DNA. And that leaves us with two brothers basically on opposite ends of the country. One was in Maine, and one was on the island of Maui in Hawaii.

[Narrator]

It came down to Gary Ramirez and another brother. Gary lived in Maui.

[Corinne Abernathy]

We ultimately ended up in Hawaii. We didn't know too much about the individual in Hawaii.

[Narrator]

We knew that he lived in Maui, but we didn't know precisely where. We had a good idea, but there was no way to verify if he was actually living in that particular house.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Some of the last records on file of where he may possibly reside was this residence.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

So we had to get a little bit creative and see if there was a way that we could confirm that he was even living there. I did just an open source search on Google of the address, and there's a pin on the address that says that there's a local psychic.

[David Muir]

A psychic.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

She's the landlord of the house, and she does palm readings out of the residence itself. It's not every day that while you're investigating somebody, you have a ticket into their life and. And a way to get into their life without them knowing that you're there. And so we went as a married couple, and my partner got a fake wedding ring, and I wore my real one, of course. And we sat on her lanai and got our palms red.

[Jim]

Tell me your name again.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Corinne.

[Jim]

Corinne, your name is? Matt.

[David Muir]

Matt.

[Carol Smith]

Okay.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

So he's more sensitive.

[Corinne Abernathy]

That sounds about right. He is a very caring, compassionate man. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

And he likes the truth.

[Jim]

I don't want to cry.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Oh, no, you're not gonna make me cry, are you?

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

I try to make people cry.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

If you don't cry, I don't feel like I've done my job.

[Corinne Abernathy]

In the time that I've worked with him, we know each other very well, so it was very easy to play off him, and vice versa. He play off. But Matt would definitely try to get a little bit of, you know, information from her.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We created a backstory that we met at Fresno State because our suspect, who was living with her grew up in Fresno. We wanted to see if we drop a nugget, if she'll pick it up.

[David Muir]

That's really smart.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I said I had a brother named Gary to try to see if she would take the bait. I've got two brothers, two older brothers, Gary and Jeff. They drive me crazy.

[David Muir]

You gotta be careful not to say too much and become too obvious.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

It's A balancing act. And she might be a psychic for all I know. She's gonna catch me.

[David Muir]

And it was a great opportunity for.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

You, if nothing else. We got a look at the layout of the residents so that when we go and eventually make contact there, we're not going in blind. I could hear rustling from a garage that sounded like there was people. Probably like it was a converted dwelling.

[Corinne Abernathy]

He was kind of lying low or just really under the radar. So that may have just been his normal pattern of life.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

She never took any of the bait. She just took our money.

[David Muir]

Forbidden by local laws from making a trash grab in Maui without a search warrant, Hutch and Corrine return to Sunnyvale and they devise a new plan. If they can test the DNA of the brothers and biological child, that could tell them if they found Karen's killer.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

The gentleman who lived in Maui had a daughter that lived in California.

[Corinne Abernathy]

We had another mission to go down to San Diego.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

So same as Vegas, we devised a plan. We're going to drive all the way down Southern California, collect the trash, and drive it all the way back.

[Corinne Abernathy]

I remember walking down the street with a garbage bag and safety lights come on, just porch lights. And I felt like stadium lighting. As I'm walking down the street with a trash bag, all I remember is I just. I need to get back to the car and we gotta go.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We were able to go out and get a sample of her DNA as a means of testing against the sample of blood at the crime scene and essentially doing a paternity test. And we brought them back up here.

[Narrator]

For testing the crime lab reports said this is the daughter of the killer. And that's when we knew it was Gary Ramirez.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Bingo.

[Narrator]

The next step was to hook him up in Maui.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We're going now. We have him now.

[David Muir]

We're going now.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

The paperwork we have to notify you of. Here is a warrant for your arrest.

[David Muir]

Tell me Lies returns with an all new season.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I'm willing to forgive you.

[David Muir]

After everything you've done.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Everything I've done? What about everything you've done on January 13th?

[Corinne Abernathy]

Every single time you try to make.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

Something better, you end up making it so much worse.

[David Muir]

Every betrayal.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Why are you doing this?

[David Muir]

Has consequences.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Because I want to hurt you. And I don't know how else to do it.

[David Muir]

Tell me lies new season January 13th. Streaming on Hulu and for bundle subscribers on Disney terms apply.

[Narrator]

Once we knew that Gary was our guy, we filed a complaint charging him with murder.

[Corinne Abernathy]

We're gonna go and make an arrest in Hawaii.

[David Muir]

Did you Know he was going to be there.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We had a Maui detective call Gary and say you might be the victim of identity theft. Can you call us back? And when we landed and tried to do a briefing with the local. Local authorities, he called and said, I want to meet with you guys right now.

[David Muir]

Bingo.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Everybody sitting around that briefing table looked at each other and said, we're going now. As we pulled up, I saw Gary Ramirez.

[Jim]

Yeah.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

How you doing, sir? I recognized him from his photos. Yeah. We just have to verify who we're talking to so we make sure we have the right investigation going. Do you have your id? Do you have an id?

[Jim]

I have a military id.

[Narrator]

Okay.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Is that something that we can see the paperwork we have to notify you of here is a warrant for your arrest. So I'm gonna have. I'm gonna hold on to this.

[Narrator]

We're gonna.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We're gonna do this right away, right off the bat for you. I'm not gonna let you fall down or anything like that. Go ahead and turn that way and just keep your hands behind you back for you. I knew 10 seconds from now, I'm gonna put handcuffs on the person that murdered Karen Stitt. And they're not just any handcuffs. I took my stepdad's handcuffs from when he was an officer in the city of Sunnyville because I wanted some representative of Karen from 1982 to be part of that arrest.

[David Muir]

It meant that much to you?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

It meant that much to me, but I knew it meant that much to his generation of cops.

[Jim]

Oh, no.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

What happened when I do, it's something that's really old that we would be happy to talk to you about and share more information.

[Jim]

No. What did I do?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

So I'm gonna walk with you. So we're not standing right by the house.

[Carol Smith]

Can you walk forward for me?

[David Muir]

His reaction.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

He tried to express surprise, but it didn't come off genuine to me at all. We'll get him to the car, and then we'll explain it. We have a warrant for his arrest.

[Jim]

I don't know what I did.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

For somebody to be accused of something so heinous if they know they didn't do it. I would have expected much stronger denials. You have the wrong person. This is wrong.

[Jim]

This is the penal coaster murder in California.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

What are they doing?

[Jim]

What's.

[Gary]

What?

[Carol Smith]

What?

[David Muir]

No, something's wrong. Hutch and Corrine drive Gary Ramirez to Maui's police department to be processed and questioned.

[Corinne Abernathy]

This is kind of the moment, especially for Matt, where you ultimately want to try to get as much Information as you can and just get the truth.

[Jim]

Hi.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Come in, Gary.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Hi, Gary.

[Jim]

What's that?

[David Muir]

Thank you.

[Corinne Abernathy]

The way he conducts those interviews, he's so good at getting people to be comfortable. It's a work of art.

[Jim]

You're saying it's not you?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I want as much explanation for how.

[Jim]

It'S not you as possible so I can go find the guy that it is then.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

My goal in this is not to.

[Jim]

Put the wrong guy in custody.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I was careful not to tell him Karen's name, not to tell him the city of Sunnyvale. I wanted him on the defense. I wanted him to not know what I knew.

[Jim]

And you said you used to work in sales, right? Yes. And you said car sales while you were in college? Yeah, when I was in college, yeah.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

The violent nature of Karen's murder led me to believe that he could be responsible for other murders. I want to learn as much as I can about him. So, Denver, Colorado, Libya.

[Jim]

Where'd you do your basic training? Where's Laughlin? Texas. Texas. You didn't even get to get stationed.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Anywhere in California close to home or anything?

[Jim]

No. It's all right. I had fun.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We talked to him about the places he had lived, jobs that he had.

[Jim]

Jones cleaners. I work for them.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

And Jones cleaners was out of Fresno?

[Jim]

Yeah.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Vehicles that he drove.

[Jim]

I think I sold Mustang. And then I got the van. I always wanted the van. I wanted to fix it up, you know, But I just never got around to it. I mean, who wouldn't want a van when you're young and you say, go hang out, party stuff inside. Yeah. Did you ever have parties inside? Like, I know people would put, like, black light in there.

[David Muir]

But remember, Hutch always believed it was possible Karen had been murdered in a vehicle and then left in that alley.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

We spent probably more than two hours with Gary before we ever talked about this case at all.

[David Muir]

That's strange, right?

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Very strange to me. And I actually confronted him about that.

[Jim]

It's curious to me that you're under arrest for murder and you don't have any questions about that. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. You know what murder is, though, right? Yeah. Killing a person. Yeah. Have you ever killed a person, Gary? No.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

When I told him, you're not even asking me what agency I work for, his response was, I know what agency you're from.

[Jim]

You already told me. San Francisco. I didn't tighten. I don't work in the city of San Francisco.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Immediately. It's like a light bulb in my head. Thinking. What did you do in San Francisco that's causing you to believe that San Francisco police has shown up on your doorstep?

[David Muir]

Where do you work?

[Jim]

I work in the city of Sunnyville, Gary. Where? Sunnyville. Okay? I don't know who that is. That's a 15 year old girl, Gary. That's all. Doesn't ring a bell that you worry, okay? Is there any reason you can think.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Of that I would have blood evidence.

[Jim]

And that blood belongs to you? I. I don't know how that happened. I don't know how that would happen. Are you curious how she was killed? That's horrible. How was she killed? You stabbed her 60 times, Gary. Oh, my God. No, I didn't do anything like that. This is awful, you guys.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

He invokes his right to an attorney.

[Jim]

You guys are accusing something I didn't do. I'd like to have a lawyer if it's okay with you guys.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

And that means I'm done. I can't talk to him anymore. I've got to shut it down and walk out of the room.

[David Muir]

Even without a confession, Hutch is sure he has Karen's killer in custody. But he's waiting for one final confirmation.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

The DNA all says he did it. But the ultimate answer for prosecution and for me as a detective.

[Jim]

Open your mouth.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

And we're gonna swab one on each side for is when we put that swab inside of his cheek and have that tested directly against the blood. Now we're going one to one. Is this the same person?

[Corinne Abernathy]

A Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety detective flew it back, brought the sample to the lab.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

They worked this case 24 hours until they got the result.

[Corinne Abernathy]

By about. About 3am I had the DNA results. I compared it to the evidence from the blood stain from the jacket, and it was an exact match.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I remember being in bed, but something told me, wake up and look at your computer. And I had an email from the crime lab and it said, gary Ramirez is the person that killed Karen Stitt. Just like I had her picture at my desk. All these years, I had her picture on my computer. And I. I pulled it up and I said, karen, we did it.

[David Muir]

Hutch then calls Karen's loved ones, who have waited 40 years for the news he's finally able to. To deliver.

[David Woods]

I was just overwashed with emotion. I'm amazed and grateful that this day, it finally came.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Oh, my God.

[Corinne Abernathy]

40 years later.

[David Muir]

You had never heard of this man prior to this?

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

No, no, not at all. It was shocking to me when he told me how old he was. I was bitter, to be perfectly honest with you, that this man got to live a full life. And in return, we lost Karen.

[David Muir]

When it's time to go to court, the man who loved Karen will finally face the man who killed her.

[David Woods]

I wanted to be there whenever he was present. I wanted to make eye contact with him, straight faced eye contact.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

But I want him to say I'm guilty and I want him to explain what he did.

[David Muir]

The case against Gary Ramirez never went to trial. Instead, the elderly Ramirez pleaded no contest for the murder of Karen Stitt, a.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Maximum sentence for 78 year old Gary.

[David Muir]

Ramirez for first degree murder. He was never separately charged for Karen's sexual assault. He entered court with a cane, long.

[Gary]

Gray hair and glasses, and sat silently.

[David Muir]

Looking forward or down as victims read their statements.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Just everything came back about what he.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Did to her and how brutal he.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Was to her and how he threw her away like trash.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

But I was able to get through it, told him what I thought about.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Him and I hope he heard every.

[David Muir]

Word, that she was stabbed nearly 60 times.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

He was just looking straight ahead.

[David Muir]

So there was no eye contact or no reaction from him when any of us spoke.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

I would love to talk to Gary Ramirez, tell me what happened that night, why he chose Karen, where he chose Karen just to be honest and tell the truth instead of, you know, copping out and pleading no contest.

[David Woods]

40 years of freedom, lived through the prime of his life, probably acting like nothing happened. You know, he may even still try to deny it in his own head.

[David Muir]

There's a cost to solving cold cases, a psychological one.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

They're gonna haunt me too. There's just no way around that. They. They get into your soul. And these cases will affect me for the rest of my life.

[David Muir]

There's also an emotional toll paid for Matt Hutchison. Providing closure for other families sometimes comes at the expense of his own.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

There's times I have to give my little boys a hug and a kiss goodbye and say, I'm going to be gone for three or four days and you're not going to understand why. But what I always try to do is I would tell my sons, I need you to work the case with me. And they'd say, well, what does that mean, dad? And it says you. I'd say, you take care of mom because I have to go take care of Karen. I have to go take care of Estella.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Cute.

[David Muir]

Hutch gets to know each of the families, and the Menna family has treated him with open arms.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

They're almost like extended family. Now her, they call Me Sobrino, which is really cool.

[David Muir]

Sobrino means nephew.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

After her case was solved, they held a memorial mass for her, and they invited me to be a part of it. And then afterwards they had a reception, and I got to just sit with her family and hear stories. Stories that don't make it into a police report.

[David Muir]

Matt Hutchison will be the first to say he didn't solve these cases alone.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

It was all of us. It's not just me. I was able to still test blood and clothing and different things and get DNA on them 40 plus years after the crime because the investigators collected them.

[David Muir]

They had no idea about DNA technology then.

[Gary]

But the evidence they collected is what.

[David Muir]

Ultimately led to both of these cases being solved.

[Narrator]

I think it's really significant and impactful that both in the Karen Stitt case and in the Estella Mena case, key players and key personnel were volunteers.

[David Muir]

You ever allow yourself to acknowledge that you are so much more than just a volunteer file clerk?

[Carol Smith]

That's what I did.

[David Muir]

Though some people would call you a hero.

[Carol Smith]

Um, no, I was organizing files, helping Matt.

[David Muir]

And you do it all over again?

[Carol Smith]

Absolutely.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

I'll do whatever I can to get more of these cases worked. If more of them get worked, more of them get solved. And I hope all the Gary Ramirez's of the world and the Samuel Silvas of the world are living in fear for the knock on the door that's coming.

[David Muir]

A promise and a warning backed up by the numbers.

[Narrator]

Detective Hutch tells us that he's very.

[David Muir]

Close to making an arrest on an eighth cold case.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Now, of course, we'll stay on that.

[David Muir]

Absolutely we will.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

And while he continues to investigate, Hutch.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

Has not connected Gary Ramirez to any.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

Additional crimes in California.

[Karen Stitt's Family Member]

We reached out to Ramirez for comment, David, but we did not hear back. That's our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Deborah.

[Corinne Abernathy]

Deborah Roberts.

[David Muir]

And I'm David Muir.

[Detective Matt Hutchison]

From all of us here at ABC.

[David Muir]

News in 2020, good.