Detective Hutchison has done everything from pose as a trash collector to fly to Hawaii to collect DNA evidence to make his bust.
What do you do in your free time away from the day-to-day demands of work? Some hit the beach, others spend time with family, catch up on reading, take a hike or just relax.
Det. Matt Hutchison, 39, solves his police department’s cold cases.
Hutchison is a detective with Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety in Santa Clara, California. He has cracked eight of his department’s cold cases and plans on solving the remaining five they have.
Hutchison has spent 16 years on the Public Safety force. He is trained as a police officer, EMT and fire personnel, and when an opening on the detective squad opened a decade ago, Hutchison jumped at the chance to further build up his resume. And as a detective, Hutchison works a docket of active cases during the day and chips away at cold cases in his spare time.
“The big thing is to show that you've done everything else that you possibly can and that this is your best bet of being successful in the ultimate goal of solving the case," he tells Inside Edition Digital. "I can tell you that now being on the seventh or eighth or whatever number it is, it's easier to convince (Hutchison's bosses) now than maybe it was on the first one because there's a track record there. But really, I enjoy a lot of support from the district attorney's office in Santa Clara County and also from my department."
Among the eight cases he's so far solved or identified suspects in is the 1969 murder of high school student Susan DeLeon, who was strangled to death. At the time of DeLeon's killing, Charles Maine Jr. was considered a suspect but was cleared. In 2018, Hutchison unearthed evidence that prosecutors later said would have been enough to convict Maine had he lived long enough to bring the charges against him. (Maine died in a hospital in 2019).
Hutchison also worked hard to solve the 1979 murder of 18-year-old Elena Mena.
Mena was working as a security guard at a Sunnyvale office building when she was stabbed to death during an attempted sexual assault. Hutchison found new DNA evidence linking the crime to Samuel Silva, a man with a long history of violent crime. Silva died in 2008 and was never convicted in Mena’s murder but the case is considered solved. Still, it's a “case sticks (that) with me very much,” Hutchison says.
Solving the murder of 15-year-old Karen Stitt also “stands out to me,” Hutchison says.
A bus driver found Stitt’s body in 1982. The teen had been sexually assaulted and stabbed nearly 60 times.
“I spent so many years working that case and the level of violence that she endured and the amount of years her family waited for answers is just heartbreaking to me,” he says.
Stitt’s case took Hutchison, along with 14 other officers, to Hawaii in August 2022 to get a DNA sample of Gary Ramirez. Ramirez’s DNA matched that found at the crime scene and the then-75-year-old was extradited from Hawaii. He is now awaiting a preliminary hearing in his trial which is slated for next month. If convicted of Sitt's killing, he faces life in prison.
Ramirez has not yet entered a plea, Santa Clara County Superior Court tells Inside Edition Digital.
“It shouldn't sit right with anybody when somebody loses their life to violence, and that there's all the pain and everything that's left behind, the void, the empty chair at the table on Christmas dinner, I think about those things,” he says on what motivates him to do what he does. “I don't think about the amount of work that it's going to take or, 'well, it's already been cold for 40 years, so it must be really hard to solve. I might as well not try.' There's still a family that wants to know, and I would be the exact same way. If it was somebody that I cared about, I would want the detective to do everything they possibly could.”
Hutchison's work has recently made headlines and some have dubbed him "America’s Best Detective."
“I don't feel like I'm worthy of that" title, Hutchison says. "I never set out to be called 'America's Best Detective.' It is certainly very flattering and I appreciate it, but the goal has always been to use any talents that I might have or any resources that are available to me, to spend every minute in the assignment doing everything I can to clear these cold cases,” he tells Inside Edition Digital. “These victims have waited too long, and if people are giving me those accolades and saying those flattering things, it means I'm one step closer to meeting my goal, which is to do everything I can for these victims.”
When picking up a case, Hutchison intentionally ignores the previous work done to try to solve it.
“One of the big things that I do is I try to block out the previous investigation. We have a lot of detectives that have promoted or they're still with the department in another function, and when you pick up a case for the first time and word gets out that you're looking at such and such case, there's a lot of people that are willing to come to you and say, ‘Hey, I looked at that in the past and let me tell you who did it.’ And if I'm going to go down that same exact road that everybody else went down for the last 30 or 40 years on a case, I'm probably going to end up at the same result," he says. "So when I take a case on, I try to make the first impression I have of that case my own. I don't want somebody else to influence how I'm seeing it, how I'm reviewing the evidence or what I'm seeing as needs or holes in the case that need to be filled."
Hutchison is actively working on two of Sunnyvale's five remaining cold cases. "Once I get through those two, there's not a celebration period where I feel good about myself. It's, immediately open up the next one," he says.
Lest anyone think Hutchison spends all of his waking time on work, the married father of two says readers can rest assured he has established strong boundaries and is intentional about taking time away from the cases that drive him. To recharge, he fly fishes and spends time with family.
"In my free time, I try to get as far away from the realm of murder and violence as I possibly can," he says. "I do have time for my kids and my wife. When I come home and I'm in husband and dad mode, I'm trying to put these cases away."
But sometimes, duty still calls.
"There's times that I just can't do it and I'm getting calls and I'm having to do things after hours because I'm dealing with people in different time zones and whatever it is," he says. "I'm so fortunate that my wife is the greatest partner in the world."
It's with her that he works to make sure their children understand the principles he says drives him: “Tell the truth, protect the weak, make a difference.”
