Westlake grads from 1972 learn classmate Karen Ramsey was homicide victim
Every high school has them. The graduates who move on fully, keeping their teenage school years in the rearview mirror.
The members of the Westlake High School Class of 1972, though, were stunned to learn this month why they never heard from one classmate, why she couldn't join them at reunions.
Karen Ramsey’s remains were discovered buried in Patterson in April during excavation on a new home. Once they were identified as hers, state police said she disappeared in May 1980, at the age of 25, although no missing person report has surfaced. And last week they confirmed what classmates who first learned of the discovery had feared: Karen was the victim of a homicide.
"I heard and basically spent the next 24 hours crying," Marie Nankervis said in a phone interview from her home in Las Vegas. "My heart is breaking because this shouldn't have happened to her. She was too good a person."
Karen Angelillo grew up in Thornwood
Karen Angelillo and Marie Lupinski grew up in Thornwood and became friends in grade school at Holy Rosary, the school at the Hawthorne church where the families were parishioners and their mothers friends. Karen’s parents switched her at one point to public school and the two girls reconnected when they started 9th grade at Westlake in September 1968.
Both girls were in the Theater Club, which took students to New York City to see Broadway shows. Karen signed Marie's yearbook in their junior year, writing next to the Theater Club picture that the following year she would list all the things they did together since Holy Rosary.
"Stay Sweet," she wrote in signing off. Marie checked her senior yearbook this week but found Karen hadn't gotten a chance to sign it.
Karen was active in the French Club starting in her freshman year. She was one of just a few sophomores in the spring of 1970 to join upperclassmen on a 17-day trip to France where she skied for the first time, according to an article in The Patent Trader when they returned.
Westlake classmates remember what Karen was like
Jim Hauser, a class member who helped organize the 50th reunion two years ago, wasn’t a close friend but remembered Karen fondly.
“She was sweet, polite, well-mannered, just a nice girl,” he said. “For that to happen to someone like that makes you sick.”
Marie didn't know much about Karen's life, only that she was several years younger than her two older sisters. She and Karen would speak often, do regular teenage things and also had after-school jobs together at Shopwell in the Rose Hill Shopping Center.
But she didn't remember any substantive conversations. She recalls wondering whether something was amiss at home as Karen never spoke of her family.
"Karen was just different," Marie said. "She was sweet. She was lovable. But she never opened up about things."
She said she stayed in touch with Karen off and on for about a year after high school. She learned a few years later that Karen had gotten married but never knew anything about her husband or that she had become a mother.
What we know about Karen Ramsey after Westlake
Karen married John Ramsey, a Vietnam War vet from Maryland a few years after high school. They lived in a rented Peekskill apartment before buying a condo off Route 22 in Southeast in 1977, a month before their daughter Jennifer was born.
The condo was sold in September 1981. Mysteriously, despite the last known sighting of her more than a year earlier, a signature purporting to be Karen's was on the deed of sale. It was notarized in August 1981.
State police have said little about what they have gleaned in their two-month investigation so far. They have not said what they were told specifically about who saw Karen in May 1980 and the circumstances of that.
It was around that time that John Ramsey began divorce proceedings, citing spousal abandonment and seeking custody of their daughter in legal notices required when a spouse cannot be located.
Three weeks after the condo sale, John Ramsey married Elaine Calvano, who herself had gone through divorce proceedings the previous year.
John and Elaine Ramsey lived in East Fishkill for years. He died in 2022.
Elaine and Jennifer have not responded to phone messages. Neither have Karen's oldest sister and that woman's daughter. Karen's other sister died in 2016.
'Nobody deserves to die like that'
When she saw the picture of Karen that state police released this month Marie was struck by the scarf she wore, an accessory Karen never bothered with when they knew each other. But it wasn't a stranger she was looking at, Marie said.
"It was just like her, never a huge smile, never super happy, like she was doing what she had to to get through the day."
She wonders how nobody seems to have ever reported Karen missing. And was outraged to learn John Ramsey claimed Karen abandoned him and his daughter when he filed for divorce.
"Karen would never have abandoned a child," Marie said. "That was not in her heart at all."
She said she has found herself praying, even asking Karen for some hints from her life that may help solve the mystery of her death.
“Nobody deserves to die like that,” she said. “They need to figure out who did this to her. I want to know that she can rest in peace.”
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Karen Angelillo Ramsey, homicide victim, remembered by classmates
