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Hawaii Man Arrested For Brutal 1982 Murder of Karen Stitt
After decades of waiting, the teenager’s family will finally get the answers they have longed for.
Authorities in California have announced they have made an arrest in a decades-old cold homicide case that had perplexed investigators since the early 1980s.
Karen Stitt was just 15 when she was violently attacked and murdered, but the perpetrator calmly left the scene of the crime and got away with what he had done. Now, though, he will face justice after the forensic evidence he left behind caught up with him at last.
Karen’s murder
Karen Stitt hadn’t been living in California long in the late summer of 1982. She had moved to the Bay Area from Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania just a few months before. However, where others might have struggled to adjust and make new friends, the teenager described as “spunky” by the County of Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office had no such trouble. In fact, she slotted into her new life at Palo Alto High “like a native”.
On Thursday 2nd September 1982, Karen had taken a bus from Palo Alto to Sunnyvale to visit her relatively new boyfriend, and they spent the evening together playing video games at a 7-Eleven.