The Dateline episode “The Alibi” investigates the murder of Pfc. Karlyn Ramirez, a 24-year-old IT specialist in the U.S. Army. In August 2015, Ramirez was found fatally shot in her Severn, Maryland townhouse with her 4-month-old daughter near her dead body, unharmed. Her estranged husband, Sergeant Maliek Kearney, the father of Karlyn’s child, was found guilty of his wife’s murder. His mistress, Dolores Delgado, confessed to giving Kearney the gun and letting him drive her car from South Carolina to Maryland. It was a seven-hour drive. After shooting Ramirez three times at close range, and making it look like a sexual assault (he pulled her underwear down to her ankles), he drove back to South Carolina.
According to prosecutors, when Ramirez told Kearney she wanted a divorce, Kearney became enraged and texted her more than 900 times over two days. One of the texts he sent read: “I am just getting hulk mad.” Ramirez blocked his phone number and sought a protective order from the Army.
At his sentencing, Ramirez’s mother told the judge that when Kearney attended her daughter’s funeral, he stared at the coffin and told her, “For all we know, the killer is among us,” which made the grieving mother “shudder.” In the courtroom, Kearney delivered a message to his five children: “Daddy loves you. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to be there for the past two years because of these proceedings.”
In December 2018, Kearney and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He is also ordered to pay $490,000 in restitution to Ramirez’s family. Delgado was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Dateline airs Fridays at 10 pm on NBC.
