Transcript of Badass Detective

It's a decades-old mystery.

This is a view from the south side of the crime scene. Where officer Gruba is now is the location of the body. 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? How could the killer just do this and disappear?

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

Dumped at the base of a cinderblock wall behind some bushes, her hands and her legs bound with her own clothes. Raped, stabbed over 50 times, and left to bleed to death by a monster.

To cross paths with an evil predator on such a short window of time is like a lightning strike. When someone is murdered, it's like a whole world has been destroyed.

It changed all of our lives forever.

For every family member and friend who never got answers, there are investigators still haunted by the case they never closed. It was a case that hung over their heads for decades.

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

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

I was reading a newspaper one day, and I saw this article about this Sunnyvale cop who had posed as a bus boy to gather DNA evidence to solve a cold case.

And I thought, this is cool. Sounds like a TV show or something.

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

He's willing to get down in the muck to do whatever it takes to find these He will bust tables, and he will collect trash, and he will get his fortune told.

Matt will do anything to identify these killers. For every story, there's a villain and a hero, and I think Matt is the hero in this story. You're going to work these cases until they're solved or it's going to break you.

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.

I was born and raised in the city of Sunnyville. I grew up like any other kid playing Little League and all the sports that I could. 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. I'm the youngest of three boys, so I had to keep up. I had to I had a quick wit to defend myself quite a bit. He went to high school probably five miles from where he does his police work. Then he went to Cal Poly San Luis, Abispo, which is a few hours down the road.

So he's very much a local guy. You didn't start off wanting to be a comp. What was your original plan?

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 Sunnyville as a police officer for 30 plus years. Oh, wow. He 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. It's a unique program in all the United States, every officer there is a fully trained police officer, EMT, and firefighter. Basically, what that means is that everybody who signs up to be a cop also signs up to be a firefighter and an EMT. 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.

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

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. We worked on Graveyard, Patrol together, 8: 00 PM to 07: 00 AM, so true nighttime hours. Corinne is a lot like me. We're like minded. We're one and two trying to push each other. If 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.

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

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. They put her on a filing duty.

After a certain amount of time, 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.

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.

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

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

Were you prepared to see the violent nature in these files? No, not at all.

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 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.

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

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, there were boxes stacked 6 feet high, filing cabinets with loose papers and things all over them.

It's such a dramatic scene.

It was like the attic that you've not gone up into for 30 years.

It was one folding chair, so he sat on the little folding chair with the files, and he would have a legal pad on one knee, and he'd be taking notes. So many of these boxes representing lives lost.

It was just him, total silence, back there with the files, back there with the ghosts. 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 an alleyway.

Let's danger here and on the other side of the wall.

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

Little does he know it'll take him a another five years and traveling 2,500 miles, teaming up with library ladies and a mom on a laptop, 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?

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

It wasn't a mannequin?

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 Alley that goes down an alley, and this wall extends about 20 to 30 feet down this alley as well.

Her body was found right behind this wall?

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.

You used this alleyway when you were a kid?

Yeah, so I would get stuck at this red light here, and I would cut through the alley and find my way back out on 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. You have to work? Yeah, finally. In this case, they did a scene walkthrough where they actually videotaped it. How far is this west of the body, Jim? About 40 feet. So I can see exactly what they saw. Blue jeans, belt, more cosmetics, lipstick. There was blood on the wall behind her body, and then up above her. There was more blood on top of the wall. Blood stains are here and on the other side of the wall. 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. Leaves near the victim's feet were disturbed, which suggested She had been thrown there, still alive. It's certainly the most graphic and violent scene that I've seen in my career.

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

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. Object here appears to be a makeup pencil, eyeliner. Personal items of hers were strewn about where she was found. A brown-colored compact. They went through the crime scene and took painstaking care to preserve everything they thought might be usable someday down the road. That will be Branch 5. 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 underneath her body. Inside The Wallet was her Social Security card that listed her name, Karen Stitt. Karen Stitt was a high school girl that lived in Palo Alto, about 20 minutes north of Sunnyvale.

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

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 He actually asked, Well, who are you? What are you doing here? 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. We had just moved out there this summer. It was a pretty amazing place to land at. Shortly after is when I met Karen. I was 16, and Karen was 15. I was with Karen when she met David. We were at the mall, and I vaguely remember her meeting a boy with a a baseball cap on. And from there, she continued seeing him. 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 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.

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

David met her at the bus stop. We played video games at a 7-Eleven. I got really good at this one called Defender.

They went to a miniature golf course.

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 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. He was worried that he was going to bus curfew. I was on thin ice about that with my parents always coming in a little late. He's got to get her back to the bus stop because he's got to get back home. We got close enough to see the corner where the bus was at Wolf and El Camino. We kiss good night, and she grabbed my ball cap, which was a prize to her. She knew that that was a part of me, as I'd always have it. I was like, Okay, I'll get it back for me tomorrow.

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.

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

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.

When I got off the bus, I started walking down the road and I see the crime scene your dog. Then I'm a little more concerned. So 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. He was the last person to see her alive.

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

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

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

They're looking at him saying, Well, he's not exactly credible. The college football playoff isn't over. Not yet.

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

She was the baby of the family. She was.

She was born prematurely. She weighed less than 6 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. 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.

Her mother and father divorced?

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

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?

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, Susanne, who just adored her.

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

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

She went to Palo Alto Senior High School or Pally. She came in halfway through what would have been her freshman year.

We just clicked, started hanging out, and swap numbers, and just became really tight friends.

Karen was definitely a person that once you met her, she was just like the other girl that I had ever met before.

We were either always on the phone or together, out doing what 15-year-olds do, hanging at the mall, being girls. We weren't afraid to take walks to the store, ride the busses by ourselves. It was just easy living at that time.

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

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

But Karen's sudden murder stuns her friends and family. One of her shoes is up to the right underneath the limb there.

It was just unthinkable that something like that could happen.

The leaves appear to be pushed back during the struggle.

She didn't want to believe it. It couldn't be true. Where the other two subjects are standing is about where the body was located. You see that there are monsters out there.

It changed all of our lives, forever. 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.

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

What did officers find in his pocket?

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. When they did that, they found that he was in possession of a pocket knife.

It could be the murder weapon.

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. 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 8: 00 and 9: 00.

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. It still was not occurring to me that something that's her if it could have happened. She was wearing...

She was wearing her blue jeans, blue and white striped shirt, black satin jacket on the head.

She had it on at the time or she could give it to her when you met her.

I gave it to her.

You gave it to her when you left where? All right, okay.

I walked her up to the bus stop. Not a long time. Detectives are pressing David for details about his hat because that morning, they found it next to Karen's body. Can you describe your hat, Eric?

It's a blue hat with a patch on the front of a set of rush.

It's got two buttons of rolling stones, bottom of a june's cruise, but something happened to it. I don't know what we're trying to find out. You walked her up to the bus stop and then left her there?

Mm-hmm. Did you wait for the bus with her? No, I had to go home. I didn't like doing it. The detectives pushed him quite a on why would you leave her out by herself.

Was she yet physically at the bus stop sitting on the bench when you left?

No. She was walking toward her from the restaurant. How come you didn't stay with her? Because I had to be out. Do you have any objection? I gave a touch looking at your home and looking at the photo that you were wearing that light. If you need this help, it's important. It's important for us to know because Karen still was murdered. She was murdered last night? Yes. I found out that she had been killed at that point. It just still seemed unreal to me. My world got swept out from under my feet, and Then I had that horrible regret of not being there to protect her.

Just thinking about what she must have had to endure. It was just so painful. 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.

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

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

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

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

There was a witness that came forward and described a very distinct vehicle. They described the coloring and described the sticker. Detectives told officers to 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.

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

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

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

Did you receive a phone call this morning? Yeah. What time? It wasn't.

It was her sister's mom. Did she say why she was looking for Karen?

So his mom didn't know.

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

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

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

When the police are talking to all 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?

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.

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 a 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. 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 matched the description and found that guy and interviewed him as well.

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.

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

Did the family suspect anyone?

I don't think there was anyone that the family truly suspected. They kept saying, It's only one phone call away.

Whoever knows anything at all, just make the call. The longer it went, I knew the harder it was going to be to find somebody.

We didn't hear anything for quite a long time, five years or something. And then somebody would reach out, and then you wouldn't hear anything again for a long time. I thought it was It's like a repeating cycle of... They don't have anything, but they're just asking more questions.

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? Are we sure it's not the boyfriend?

They felt like they knew what happened, and they had a hard time going beyond just looking at the boyfriend. He was the main suspect initially, and he remained a suspect for years. I'm sure whatever list of potential suspects was there, I was probably always on there. But I also knew that there's no evidence that I would have I didn't be able to do something so horrific. In 2000, a new detective is looking at this case and realizes we can use DNA technology on the blood from our crime scene.

Where are we here? We are at Santa Clara County district Attorney's Office, Crime Laboratory, where we do a DNA analysis. In Karen Stitt's case, you processed some evidence in the year 2000. Why do it now?

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 jacket had blood smears and stains all over it. 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 plate. 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 round 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. That same profile matched the blood scene on the wall above her. 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. 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.

After nearly 20 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 changed the investigation.

Now that's the person that you need to focus on, figure out who that blood belongs to. 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. I got to a point where I felt like this probably will never get solved. It almost became a subject that we didn't talk about in the family.

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

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 Sunnyville 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.

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

A young security guard, 18 years old, stabbed a death inside an office building. She was a young girl still in high school. There's parallels in these cases because they're both stabbed, and it's a complete what we call a whodunit.

So what connection could there be between these two cases?

I learned flyfish, and it became a godsend to me. Watching my fly go down the river 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.

Matt was always working on more than one case at a time because he would hit a dead end and he would just I'm going to start working on another one. 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. 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.

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 time there while still in high school.

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.

On a Saturday afternoon, noon in October, Stella was planning to attend a martial arts competition after work. She never made it.

It 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 the Stella in the corner struggling to live. He finds her on the ground, stabbed multiple times. She's not communicating with him about who stabbed her. Attacked where she worked and murdered and tossed behind a vending machine.

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

This is the overhead scene diagram from 1979 for the murder of Estela Mina. 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Because it starts this way and goes all the way to the other side of the lobby. 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.

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

She didn't have no weapon on her. She didn't have nothing.

And she was a security guard, and most security lards do.

They have either a maze to spray in their eyes or some, if not a gun, I mean, a stick or something for her to protect herself with. And she didn't have nothing like that.

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

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.

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

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. Lead, but I can leave it better than I found it.

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

When the crime scene was processed, the Sunnyvale detectives found a drop of blood on the door frame, the same door that the killer would have gone through. I knew if we're ever going to solve it, we need to be able to answer who's the source of that blood. You can't prosecute that case unless you know who the blood on the door frame is.

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

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

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

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

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

I explain 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.

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. This is your guy.

Matt Hutchinson. I didn't do anything wrong. In my line of work, it's very common for people to lie to us. I want to see if I can rattle his cage a little bit. Any reason for your blood to be found inside that lobby?

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 13th at 9: 00 on National Geographic. Stream on Disney Plus and Hulu.

Show me the way.

Tell Me Lies returns with an all-new season. I'm willing to forgive you after everything you've done.

Everything I've done?

What about everything you've done? On January 13th.

Every single time you try to make something better, you end up making it so much worse.

Every betrayal.

Why are you doing this?

Has consequences. Because I want to hurt you, and I I don't know how else to do it. Tell me lies. You see this on January 13th. Streaming on Hulu and for bundled subscribers on Disney Plus. Terms apply.

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.

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

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

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

We just needed to find a name to match that DNA. That's what we look for. Do you have someone who was killed or stabbed or shot? You got to look at everything. That person, they're bloody all over. We just took our pool of suspects from millions to there's three men in the world that they could be.

Crucial work, Karen. A very crucial work. And is of them connected to this psychic.

You're not going to make me cry, right? If you don't cry, I'll show I got so much stuff. This is the one chance we're going to get at it, and we can't screw it up. Bingo. We're going now because I have to go take care of Karen. I have to go take care of Stella. Oh, man. Detective Matt Hutchison is stuck in the past by Joyce. I'm fortunate to work cold cases in Sunnyville.

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

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

Instead, he starts working multiple cases at the same 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?

There's constant disappointment.

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

Oh, man. In the Estella Mena case, there was an entry/exit to that lobby that had a small smear of blood on it.

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. We put it through CODIS, got no matches.

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

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.

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 files submitted to public genealogy websites.

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

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

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 of days after the homicide. He essentially said, I'm an employee of the mail room. 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.

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, your cover is blown.

Our cover is 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.

So you got to be able to surprise him. Have to. You got to get creative.

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 the entire can.

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

At first, they were 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.

It has to be realistic, right?

It has to look like every other trash day that he's ever had. It was important that I looked 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 beast that's been on the line for probably 15 years, and it's got three inches of just sludge. Sludge. Just disgusting. 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.

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

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 is going to take our can. We got on the horn with him and said, You need to just blow by the address. He listened, thankfully, and when he goes by, we pull up and we make a left into this gentleman's court, and I see his can. I know the game's on.

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

We've got 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 going to put me on some watchlist or something. We were 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.

Match or no match?

It's a match. 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.

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

This is your guy. Matt Hutch said, I'm really sorry to ruin your day. That's the copy of the search warrant. Jesus. When we have to have a search warrant? Why are you doing it wrong. I come back to Southern California, where the employee of Western Electric lives. I think everyone assumed quite reasonably that the blood on the door frame that the killer went through has to be our killer. 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. I appreciate. Do you want a cup of coffee? I'm okay. Thank you. 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 injuries or have any accidents when you Western Electric? 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 is one of the doors leaving the business. There's a blood smear.

I can see it right there.

Any reason for your blood to be found inside that lobby where this happened? I don't think so. Why would you kill the security guard? There's no money there. He couldn't have been calmer or more cooperative. Have a safe trip back. Appreciate it. Thank you. I wish that could be more help. When I look at that, I believe that he's credible. But he might just be a good actor, and 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 touched and interacted with? We need to look at all of the evidence all over again. 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 a shoe. You have to test a shoe.

The two of you talked about that shoe. Yes. Incessantly, apparently.

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

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

You see a height and a weight on a piece of paper, just somebody's statistics, and that resonates in your brain. You see that, and then you hold something that belonged 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 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 that's here.

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

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

The unknown DNA is entered into Coda's and this time, a hit.

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 Stella's shoe and the DNA on her pants. Sam Silva was killed before. He was a violent felon. He was arrested for rape. He was arrested for attempted murder. All of this in Colorado.

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.

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

Estella Mena was killed in 1979. The street in Sunnyvale, where Silva lived, was less than two 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?

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.

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

Matt called me immediately when he got the news. So this part always makes me teary because that was such a... I mean, that just gets to your heart. In all these ears. Yeah, to finally hear that we had gotten this one done. That was a big day.

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

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 Silva 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.

It was Stella's sister Martha, 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. Martha, who apparently is a fairly religious person, told me 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.

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.

Butch is not done. Karen Stead's killer is still very much alive, and the detective is closing in.

I'm going to put handcuffs on the person that murdered Karen Stitt. In the decades-long mystery of who killed 15-year-old Karen Stitt, Sunnyvale has an answer of sorts. We knew who the killer was except for his name. We had his DNA profile. Trial. We just needed to find a name to match that DNA.

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.

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 to see if we can match to any of his relatives. We can then try to work backwards and figure out who he is.

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

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. We're talking about people that are so remote, there's basically no chance that we're going to be able to build a family tree to narrow it down to this particular perpetrator. They said, Matt, do you know your third cousins? I don't know any of them. So it It made sense to me that this is going to be an uphill battle. 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. It's easy to feel sorry for yourself as a cold case investigator and say, Well, these cases are so damn hard. If I don't solve it, nobody's going to get mad at me. I'm just going to put it away. I quickly learned that I couldn't have that 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.

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

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

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.

He left me a message, and I remember laughing, and I told my husband, Wow, pranking and identity theft has reached a new level. A couple of days later, I received a text message. He sent me a picture of his business card and his officer badge on a table.

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.

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. It really struck me if he cared about Karen. He cared about her family. He cared about what happened to her. And so we rolled the family trees out on her kitchen table. 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.

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

I want to say it was at least 100.

Once I knew the specifics of the case, I went back into my family tree and started looking for people that I thought could potentially be a suspect.

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 help me.

And that's exactly what happens one day after Hutch gives a talk on cold cases at the Sunnyvale Library.

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

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.

There was one genealogist that took the lead amongst the rest of them, and she called me and said, We have something. She didn't talk like that in any of the other times I'd ever talked to her. So I started getting excited. I'm like, We have the guy? She goes, No, we don't have the guy. 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 local trash grab one night, the results confirm Karen Stitt's killer is one of this man's three uncles.

So we just took our pool of suspects from from millions, and you're never going to solve it, according to the genealogy lab, to there's three men in the world that it could be. 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. 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 this is the loudest thing going on in the block. So we grabbed the trash and we immediately take off. We drove straight through the night right back up to Santa Clara County. 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. We've now shrunk the pool of suspects down to two.

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

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

You got to be careful.

For all I know, she's going to catch me.

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

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. There was a lot of case discussion on which route we would take. And then it becomes a process of elimination. One by one, you got to 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. It came down to Gary Ramirez and another brother. Gary lived in Maui. We ultimately ended up in Hawaii. We didn't know too much about the individual in Hawaii. 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. Some of the last records on file of where he may possibly reside was this residence. 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.

A psychic. 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 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 We sat on her Lanai and got our palms read. Tell me your name again. Corrine. Corrine, can you name it? Matt.

Matt. Okay. So he's more sensitive.

That sounds all right. He's a very caring, compassionate man. Yeah, absolutely.

And he likes the truth.

I want fun. Oh, no. You're not going to make me cry, right?

I try to make people cry.

If you don't cry, I feel like I'm doing my job. 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'd play off me. But Matt would definitely try to get a little bit of information from her. We created a backstory that we met at Fresno State. It's 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. That's really smart. I said I had a brother named Gary. Just trying to see if she would take the bait. I've got two brothers, two older brothers, Gary and Jeff. They drive me crazy.

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

It's a balancing act. She might be a psychic. For all I know, she's going to catch me.

It was a great opportunity for you.

If nothing else, we got a look at the layout of the residence so that when we go and eventually make contact there, we're not going in blind. My I could hear rustling from a garage that sounded like there was people probably living in there, like it was a converted dwelling. He was lying low or just really under the radar, so that may have just been his normal pattern of life. She never took any of the bait. She just took our money.

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

The gentleman who lived in Maui had a daughter that lived in California. We had another mission to go down to San Diego. 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. 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 need to get back to the car, and we got to go. 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. We brought them back up here for testing. The crime lab report said, This is the daughter of the killer. And that's when we knew. It was Gary Ramirez.

Bingo.

The next step was to hook him up in Maui. We're going now. We have him now. We're going now. We have you. Hold on to that. The paperwork we have to notify you up here is a warrant for your arrest. Fx is the beauty. Imagine the hottest new super drug that makes you effortlessly beautiful. From executive producer, Ryan Murphy.

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Are there side effects? I just went in, woke up, and it looked like this. I would like the first poke? Fx is the Beauty. Premieres January 21st on FX, Hulu, and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Once we knew that Gary was our guy, we filed a complaint charging him with murder. We're going to go and make an arrest in Did you know he was going to be there? 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 authorities, he called and said, I want to meet with you guys right now. Bingo. Everybody sitting around that briefing table looked at each other and said, We're going now. As we pulled up, I saw Gary Ramirez. How are you doing, sir? I recognized him from his photos. Yeah, we just have to verify who we're talking to. We make sure we have the right investigation going. Do you have your ID? Do you have an ID? No, I have a military ID. Okay. Is that something that we can see?

The paperwork we have to notify you up here. This is a warrant for your arrest. I'm going to hold on to this. We're going to do this right away, right off of that for you. I'm not going to let you fall down or anything like that. Go ahead and turn that way and just keep your hands behind your back for I knew 10 seconds from now, I'm going to 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 in the city of Sunnyville because I wanted some representative of Karen from 1982 to be part of that arrest.

It meant that much to you.

It meant that much to me, but I knew it meant that much to his generation of cops. Oh, no. What do I do? It's something that's really old that we We would be happy to talk to you about and share more information. Oh, no. What have I do? I'm going to walk with you so we're not standing right by the house. Can you walk forward for me?

His reaction?

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. We have a warrant for his arrest. I don't know what I did. 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. What do you see? This is the Penal Court murder. What the hell? What do I do?

What? No, something wrong. Hutch and Corinne drive Gary Ramirez to Maui's Police Department to be processed and questioned.

This is the moment, especially for Matt, where you ultimately want to try to get as much information as you can and just get the truth. Can I come in, Gary? Hi, Gary. I'm going to bring a call. What time? Thank you. The way he conducts those interviews, he's so good at getting people to be comfortable to work of art. You're saying it's not you? I want as much explanation for how it's not you as possible so I can go find the guy that it is then. My goal in this is not to put the wrong guy in custody. I was careful not to tell him Karen's name, not to tell him the city of Sunnyville. I wanted him on the defense. I wanted him to not know what I knew. You said you used to work in sales, right? Yes. You said car sales while you're in college? Yeah, I was in college. 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. Denver, Colorado, Olivia, where did you do your basic training? Lackland. Where's Lackland?

Texas? Texas. Did you even get to get stationed anywhere in California You're not close to home or anything? No. No? It's all right. I had fun. We talked to him about the places he had lived, jobs that he had. Jones Cleaners. I worked for them. Jones Cleaners was out of Fresno? Yeah. Vehicles that he drove. I think I sold my thing, and then I got the van. I always wanted the van. I wanted to fix it up, but I just never got around to it.

I mean, you wouldn't want a van. You're young, and you think, Oh, hang on.

It's a party. That's inside. Did you ever have parties inside? I know people would put like, black light in there. I never had a girl in there.

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

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

That's strange, right?

Very strange to me. And I actually confronted him about that. 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. 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. You already told me San Francisco. I didn't tell him. I don't work in the city of San Francisco. 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? Where do you work? 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. Is there anything about all?

Is everything a bell? Is that the right word?

Okay.

Is there any reason you can think of that I would have blood evidence that that blood belongs to you?

I don't know how that would happen.

I don't know how that would happen. Are you curious how she was killed? That's horrible. How was she killed? You staffed her 60 times, Gary. Oh, my God, no, I didn't do anything like that. This is I'm here to help for you guys. He invokes his right to an attorney.

You guys are accusing me of something I didn't do.

I'd like to have a lawyer if it's okay with you guys. 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. You're good, Eric.

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

The DNA all says he did it. But the ultimate answer for prosecution and for me as a detective-Open your mouth. I'm going to swab one on each side. 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? A Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety Detective flew it back, brought the sample to the lab. They worked this case 24 hours until they got the result. By about 3: 00 AM, I had the DNA result. I compared it to the evidence from the blood stain from the jacket, and it was an exact match. 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 pulled it up and I said, Karen, we did it.

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

I was just overwashed with emotion. I'm amazed and grateful that this day it finally came. Oh, my God. 40 years later.

You had never heard of this man prior to this?

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.

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

I wanted to be there whenever he was present. I wanted to make eye contact with a straight-face eye contact. But I want him to say I'm guilty, and I want him to explain what he did.

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

A maximum sentence for 78-year-old Gary Ramirez for first-degree murder.

He was never separately charged for Karen's sexual assault. He entered court with a cane, long, gray hair and glasses, and sat silently looking forward or down as victims read their statements.

Just everything came back about what he did to her and how brutal he was to her and how he threw her away like trash. But I was able to get through it. Tell them what I thought about him, and I hope he heard every word.

She was stabbed nearly 60 times. He was just looking straight ahead, so there was no eye contact or no reaction from him when any of us spoke.

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 copping out and pleading no contest. Forty years of freedom lived through the prime of his life, probably acting like he had nothing happened. He may even still try to deny it in his own head.

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

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

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

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 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 I'd say, You take care of mom because I have to go take care of Karen. I have to go take care of Stella.

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

They're almost like extended family now. They call me Sobrino, which is really cool.

Sobrino means nephew.

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 their family and hear stories, stories that don't make it into a police report.

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

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. They had no idea about DNA technology then, but the evidence they collected is what ultimately led to both of these cases being solved. 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.

You ever allow yourself to acknowledge that you were so much more than just a volunteer file clerk? That's what I did, though. Some people would call you a hero.

No. No.

I was organizing files, helping Matt. And you do it all over again?

I'm Absolutely. 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 Silva's of the world are living in fear for the knock on the door that's coming. A promise and a warning backed up by the numbers. Detective Hutch tells us that he's very close to making an arrest on an eighth cold case. Now, of course, we'll stay on that. Absolutely.

Absolutely, we will. And while he continues to investigate, Hutch has not connected Gary Ramirez to any additional crimes in California. 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 Roberts. And I'm David Muir from all of us here at ABC News in 2020. Good night. Good night.