Murder in Pleasanton: Tina Faelz and the Search for Justice

Murder in Pleasanton: Tina Faelz and the Search for Justice

by Joshua Suchon
Murder in Pleasanton: Tina Faelz and the Search for Justice

Murder in Pleasanton: Tina Faelz and the Search for Justice

by Joshua Suchon

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Overview


In April 1984, Foothill High freshman Tina Faelz took a shortcut on her walk home. About an hour later, she was found in a ditch, brutally stabbed to death. The murder shook the quiet East Bay suburb of Pleasanton and left investigators baffled. With no witnesses or leads, the case went cold and remained so for nearly thirty years. In 2011, the investigation finally got a break. Improved forensics recovered DNA from a drop of blood found at the scene matching Tina's classmate, Steven Carlson. Through dusty police files, personal interviews, letters and firsthand accounts, journalist Joshua Suchon revisits his childhood home to uncover the story of a disturbing crime and the controversial sentencing that brought long-awaited answers to a city tormented by questions.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781540202154
Publisher: History Press Library Editions
Publication date: 09/21/2015
Pages: 194
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author


Pleasanton native Joshua Suchon was a reporter at the Oakland Tribune for ten years before switching careers to pursue a lifelong dream to become a baseball play-by-play announcer. He's now the radio announcer for the Albuquerque Isotopes, the triple-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies. This is his third book and first true crime publication. He can be reached at www.joshuasuchon.com.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

APRIL 5, 1984

It was the coldest crime scene I've ever seen.

— Bill Eastman

It was Tina Faelz's turn to sit in the front seat of the car on the way to school. Tina was the elder child, a fourteen-year-old freshman at Foothill High. Her younger brother, Drew, an eight-year-old in the fifth grade at Donlon Elementary, was in a bratty mood. Drew wanted to sit in the front seat and jumped in the car first. Upset, Tina fired a few choice words at her younger brother.

"That," Drew said, "was the last conversation I ever had with my sister."

Where to sit in the car was the least of Tina's concerns. Her mother, Shirley, was driving her to school because she had stopped riding the bus. Tina was trying to avoid the neighborhood girls who threatened her, taunted her and made her life miserable at the bus stop, on the bus and on campus.

As they approached the high school, Shirley asked her daughter, "Do you want to change schools?" Tina shook her head. "Not now. I'll wait until the end of this year, then transfer."

Before leaving for school that day, freshman Julie Asplin told her mother that she was staying after school to make up a typing exam. As a result, she'd miss the bus and walk home with her friend Tina Faelz.

"My mom insisted that I didn't stay after school that day," Asplin said. "She had this horrible feeling that something bad was going to happen. She said when I grew up and have my own family, I would understand that feeling."

It was a busy time on campus. Seven more school days remained until spring break. The senior ball was a few weeks after that. Graduation was roughly two months away.

The day was filled with tension on campus. Around 10:00 a.m., wood shop teacher Gary Hicklin heard a loud commotion outside his classroom. Hicklin was told a student was locked in a trash dumpster. Hicklin went outside, unlocked the dumpster and was startled to see a freshman named Steve Carlson inside. Hicklin immediately smelled alcohol on the student's body.

Hicklin observed that Carlson was intoxicated and belligerent. It was an odd interaction; it didn't last long. Hicklin told Carlson to go to the office. Carlson did not. He went in the opposite direction, away from where the classrooms were located on campus, toward the football field and in the direction of where he lived. Hicklin lost sight of Carlson and went back inside his classroom.

"I brought alcohol to school that day, and everybody got drunk, including Steve," sophomore Rob Tremblay said. "He was being stupid to all the girls. All the guys in auto shop, we locked him in there. He was all dirty with food all over him, screaming and yelling …They dropped pot in there or something. We were all silly drunk, and it was easy to coax him into it. Everybody was walking by, kicking it; it echoes in there."

Soon thereafter, freshman Andrew Hartlett said he left campus, along with Todd Smith and Alan "Buck" Rodgers, to check on Carlson. They walked off campus to Carlson's nearby house, knowing his parents were out of town.

"He was drinking vodka," Hartlett said. "I saw him drinking straight from the bottle."

Carlson had the keys to his mother's car. Hartlett said he and Rodgers watched while Smith got in the car. Carlson was sixteen but didn't have a license yet. Carlson went for a brief joyride around the block. Hartlett said he returned to campus with Rodgers and didn't know when Smith came back to school.

Additional tension took place during lunch. A group of three to five girls who had issues with Faelz in the past threw rocks at her. They called her "Tina the Tuna." When school got out, the girls warned Faelz, they were going to kick her ass.

The end of lunch meant the start of fifth period. Two classes remained before school ended. Becky Tantillo was startled to see her friend Faelz enter her classroom because she wasn't in that class.

"Tina was never late for class," said Tantillo, unaware that rocks had been thrown at Faelz minutes prior. "But that day, she made it a point to pay me back the money I loaned her so she could eat, and she was late for her class. That wasn't like her. I asked if she was OK, and she said, 'I'm fine.' But she was being weird that day. I don't know why. She was acting strange. It wasn't like her."

Around 12:30 p.m., assistant principal Jack Keegan had finished eating lunch with other administrators and made his rounds on campus. He was in the northeast corner of the school, near the farm area, when he spotted Carlson. Keegan didn't have any contact with Carlson, other than seeing him walking away from campus, east toward the freeway and where Carlson lived.

Tina Faelz's final class was geography, taught by Barbara Follenfant. Class ended at 2:20 p.m. Before Follenfant went to the girls' locker room to prepare for the softball team's practice, she talked with Faelz for five to ten minutes. The subject wasn't memorable. Follenfant didn't recall that Faelz was upset or scared.

Faelz was supposed to attend detention, which started at 2:30 p.m. and was scheduled to end at 3:15 p.m. Keegan presided over detention and noted that Faelz never showed up. Faelz knew some of the girls who had threatened her earlier in the day were also scheduled for detention. That's possibly why she skipped detention but not definitely why.

What did Faelz do next? She didn't take the bus. She didn't immediately walk home. She wasn't expecting her mother to pick her up. She waited on campus. And waited. She waited at least twenty minutes, perhaps as long as thirty minutes, before she started walking home.

Maybe she was waiting to see if Sirianni and Scarlett had gone to detention and if the coast was clear to walk home without incident. Maybe she was avoiding other girls who bullied her as well. Maybe she was hoping to see the two girls, face her enemies, utilize her recent foray into karate classes and have at them. Maybe she did homework or read a book. Or maybe she was just a lost soul, wandering aimlessly around campus, sitting and reflecting in a quiet place, alone with her thoughts.

Once she finally started walking home, freshman Dean Studemaker was about ten to fifteen feet behind her. They were both walking east, past the baseball field and away from campus. They didn't interact other than Studemaker casually saying, "Bye, Tina," as he turned left and walked north to his house.

Faelz walked by the baseball fields and through the empty football field, ducked through a cutout in the fence that emptied onto Aster Court and turned right onto Muirwood Drive. One street later, she turned left on Lemonwood Way and headed toward the drainage ditch that led to a shortcut that went under Interstate 680 to her neighborhood.

Freshman Sean West was walking home in the same direction. West was no more than five minutes behind Faelz, perhaps two minutes. He knew it was Faelz and where she was going. Their houses were so close, West could see into the backyard of the Faelz house from his bedroom window. Lives were changed by what happened next.

"Tina had just made the turn and gone down [Lemonwood Way]," West said. "My friend Marty drove by and said, 'You want a ride?' I said heck yeah. So I jumped in his Camaro and I took off."

It was about 2:50 p.m., perhaps 2:55 p.m.

Freshmen Weldon Mann and Todd Smith were the next two people to see Faelz alive. Mann knew Faelz well. They both lived on Virgin Islands Court. Mann was a frequent target of little pranks by Faelz and her friend Katie Kelly. They targeted Mann because they both had a crush on him. They would doorbell ditch his house or make a prank phone call. It wasn't malicious. It was two teenage girls trying to get any attention from the popular, cute boy who lived on their street.

"If I remember correctly, we were riding Todd's moped, but I'm not totally sure," Mann said. "We were down there riding around and screwing around. We saw Tina. She was walking toward the culvert. I don't know if somebody was yelling at her or what. I remember spotting her and thinking it was odd. It was a little after school, but not real late. We saw Steve Carlson in his front yard about the same time."

Mann knew Carlson well. They worked together at a restaurant named Augustus washing dishes in the back. One night, they got into a fistfight out by the dumpsters.

"[Carlson] was on his front yard," Mann said. "His parents were out of town. He'd been having during-the-day parties, if I remember right. We spotted him and saw Tina. I looked down at my watch and realized that I was going to be late because my mom was going to pick me up at the top of the school. I was at the bottom of the school. I high-tailed it up to the top of the school. I jumped in the car. I looked at the clock. I was on time. My mom said good job."

It was 3:00 p.m.

Larry Lovall was a truck driver who spent thirty years driving big rigs up and down the state of California. He'd made stops earlier that day and was now heading south on Interstate 680 to his company's headquarters in San Jose.

Sometime between 3:05 p.m. and 3:15 p.m., Lovall happened to look to his right and noticed something unusual. It looked like a person had fallen in a gully just off the freeway. Nobody else was around the body. Lovall wasn't sure what he saw. It was just a quick glance.

Lovall didn't want to brush it off. He decided to go back for another look. This required him to continue driving south on Interstate 680 to the next exit at Bernal Avenue, make a left at the stop sign where the off-ramp ends and another left to get back onto the freeway heading north for a little over four miles to the 580-680 interchange, circle back around and continue south again.

In Lovall's second trip, he slowed his truck as he approached the location and parked the big rig to the side of what was then a four-lane highway. Lovall got out of the truck, started walking down the steep embankment of the culvert and noticed the body was covered in blood. Lovall didn't go all the way to the body. He saw enough to know she needed immediate help.

Lovall returned to his truck. He drove south on Interstate 680 again, exited at Bernal Avenue, turned left and, this time, drove to the Pleasanton Fairgrounds to find a pay phone.

Curt Stoner was the first student to see the body. Stoner was in the detention period that Faelz skipped. Stoner was ahead of the other students on his way home. When Stoner saw the body, he didn't stick around or look for the closest house to call 911. Instead, he sprinted home as fast as possible. Stoner was so disturbed by what he saw, his older brother called 911 for him.

Sophomores Eric Voellm and Jay Dallimore were the next to see the dead body. The good friends were also walking home after detention. As they approached the entrance to the culvert, they saw a motionless body. They saw papers and books scattered everywhere. And they saw blood — lots and lots of blood. They slowly walked closer to the body, not knowing who it was, their hearts racing with fear and uncertainty. Voellm felt for a pulse. The body was still warm, but he knew the girl was dead.

The boys raced out of the drainage ditch, up the dirt path, across the street and knocked on the front door of 7308 Lemonwood Drive. It was the Carlson house. Nobody answered. The boys then spotted an adult at the house they'd just run past.

It was Michael Toovey, who worked the graveyard shift for the City of San Leandro Public Works and was doing yard work in front of his house. Toovey owned the last house on Ashwood Drive, before it turned into Lemonwood Way. Large trees were along the right side of his house, covering the view of the drainage ditch.

Toovey saw the boys run past his house and across the street. Now, he saw the boys running frantically toward him. They had frightened looks on their faces. They described a girl covered in blood. Toovey asked if she was alive or moving. The boys said no. Toovey called 911 and reported what the boys had told him.

The phone calls by Stoner's older brother and Toovey arrived within seconds of each other at 3:27 p.m., just as the truck driver Lovall was flagging down a uniformed officer at the fairgrounds.

Senior Tony Fisher was in the garage with his friends, a couple blocks down the street on nearby Ashwood Court.

"Some kid I didn't know on a bike was riding down the street, saw us and said, 'Hey you see the dead girl?'" Fisher said. "We thought he was lying. So he took us over. I don't remember if we rode our bikes or walked. We went down there. I walked up toward the body."

It was Fisher, Todd Oelson and Todd Smith who saw the body. Fisher estimated he got about fifteen feet away. "I just remember seeing all her books and papers spread, and just seeing the body laying there. Right when I saw that, that was enough for me …I didn't really want to see the body anymore or get any closer."

Smith did get closer because he didn't think it was a real body. He and his brothers used to cover a go-kart in a way to make it look like a dummy.

"That's what I thought this was," Smith recalled. "All these holes in this sweatshirt cannot be real. No fucking way. That's fake. We started walking away. Somebody said push on the head. That's fake. In that area, there were these sandbags that were dry. They were the shape of concrete bags. They were stacked up the embankment. It felt like I was pushing a concrete bag. I pushed one more time. That's when I threw up in my own mouth. That has never left my mind. I cannot erase that picture, as much as I've tried."

Back at the fairgrounds, Lovall spotted somebody in a police uniform and waved his arms to get their attention. It was Grace Darrell Dickinson, known as G.D. or Gracie Dickinson. It was her fourth year working for the Pleasanton Police Department as a parking control officer, better known as a meter maid.

A bit frantic, Lovall told Dickinson that he had seen a dead body just off the freeway. Dickinson immediately got on the radio and called the dispatcher.

Detective Craig Veteran heard the call from Dickinson on the radio. He was on Division Street, just a few blocks from their location at the fairgrounds. Veteran sped his unmarked car to the fairgrounds and arrived in less than a minute. Lovall explained what he had seen again, this time to Veteran.

Lovall climbed into Veteran's car and described the area accurately. It was easy for Veteran to figure out where to drive. Dickinson drove her marked vehicle behind Veteran's. They didn't take the freeway. They sped west on Bernal Avenue, made a right on Foothill Road and traveled north and then right on Muirwood Drive. The cars turned right on Lemonwood Way and parked at the end of the street.

Veteran was the first officer to arrive at the scene. Neighbor Toovey was still in his front yard. He pointed in the direction of the drainage ditch. Lovall remained in Veteran's car. Veteran and Dickinson searched for the body. At first, they couldn't find it. They didn't know the terrain and paths like the kids did. Veteran went to the freeway to look back, trying to get the same view as the truck driver.

Dickinson could tell from Veteran's body language exactly when he spotted the body. Veteran isn't graceful for his size but was able to climb down the steep embankment to the body. Nobody else was there. Veteran felt for a pulse. It was too late. The girl was dead. Veteran instructed Dickinson to secure the dirt path, making sure no other civilians entered the crime scene.

Gary Tollefson was the working lead detective on crimes against persons when he heard the call over the radio. He was at police headquarters. It was his birthday. He was getting ready to go home a little early. His birthday plans ended immediately. Tollefson arrived at the crime scene at 3:40 p.m., about thirteen minutes after the near-simultaneous 911 calls.

"She was laying there, all cut up," Tollefson said. "Nobody around. She was pretty cut up, but she was pretty pristine. You could tell the kids were traveling through there a lot. Nothing unusual, other than the body ... A lot of the cuts were superficial. They weren't real deep."

Faelz was wearing a black sweater with a purple stripe underneath a purple hoodie and lavender pants. Most of the blood was soaked into her clothes and didn't spill out. Very little blood splattered onto the ground.

Tollefson's initial thought for the murder weapon: "My guess is what we called the folding buck-knife: probably a 4-inch by 3/4-inch blade. It looked like it was pretty sharp."

Police Chief Bill Eastman was in a meeting when the 911 calls were made. He arrived a few minutes after Tollefson. One everlasting image remains of what he saw. "It was the coldest crime scene that I've ever seen," Eastman said. "I've seen dozens of homicides. There was nothing there."

Nothing meant no clues.

Sergeant Michael Stewart brought a camera kit to the crime scene for Tollefson. As lead detective, Tollefson was in charge of gathering evidence and taking pictures. Tollefson took pictures of the crime scene with his thirty-five-milimeter Canon. He used two rolls of film, for a total of forty-eight pictures.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "Murder in Pleasanton"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Joshua Suchon.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Preface,
1. April 5, 1984,
2. Who Was Tina Faelz?,
3. A Kid with Bad ADHD,
4. The Investigation Begins,
5. A Community Mourns,
6. Creepy Gets Creepier,
7. An Unusual Task Force,
8. From Pleasanton to Davis,
9. The DNA Talks,
10. The Arrest,
11. The Curious Case of Todd Smith,
12. Motive?,
13. The Trial,
14. Sentencing,
Bibliography,
About the Author,

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