" I had a dream.
It was a beautiful dream.
It was a fantasy come true.
Tina came home.
We were all home again.
They laughed and cried,
and soon the teasing I missed began,
but soon Tina had to leave.
Some day we'll all be together again.
I miss the family I had,
and I wish at that time I knew how lucky I was,
but the dream ended long ago,
and her last words were,
'Bye, mom."
By Shirley Ann Griffiths Orosco
Tina Marie Faelz was born on April 27th, 1969 in Washington to Shirley Ann Griffiths Orosco. She had a younger brother named Drew. The family lived in the Valley Trails neighborhood in Pleasanton, California.
Tina was described as a kind, freckled face, smiling, tomboy who was shy until you got to know her. She loved soccer and sleepovers. Sometimes she would pretend to take pictures with a filmless camera.
On April 4th, 1984, Tina attended Wells Junior High in Dublin, California with her best friend named Katie. Unfortunately, Tina was bullied mercilessly at school by a pack of mean girls. Because of the torment that she would endure daily, a then 14 year old Tina decided not to take the school bus that day and instead took a short cut home through a culvert. A short cut that would turn into a deadly mistake.
If you were to scream for help, no one would hear you. The culvert was like a swamp. The pipe was dark and with the roar of the trucks overhead on the four lane highway, it was isolating. This was a shortcut that only the brave kids would take. With the torture that Tina went through on a daily basis, she had no choice to be brave.
A truck driver driving on the highway, above the culvert, looked over to his right and saw something he thought suspicious. It seemed to be maybe someone that had been harmed. He pulled over and started walking down the culvert. He then noticed a large amount of blood and discovered a dead body down in the creek. The truck driver, horrified, quickly left to find a payphone. While the truck driver was phoning in his gruesome discovery, two kids stumbled across Tina's body.
Police Chief Bill Eastman was the man that responded to the scene that day. This was the first time in his career he had seen something so tragic happen to such a young individual. Tina's body was still warm, which let police to believe that this terrible crime had happened only a short time ago. Tina had been stabbed 44 times. Later, the coroner would determine that for the first 38 times she had still been alive. Some of the stab wounds were up to 5 inches deep. It was surmised that there was no slip guard on the knife due to the lack of marks or indentations. And so detectives concluded that there was a good chance that the killer had cut himself in the process of killing Tina.
A grid search was set up at the scene, but there were no fingerprints, footprints and no murder weapon found. Officers did find something up in a tree, dangling above Tina's dead body, it was what turned out to be Tina's purse with her report card in it.
The next day the family was interviewed. Tina's mother's boyfriend, Keith Fitzwater, had recently moved out. He had been creating some family tension in the home. He had a bad temper, had been violent towards Tina's mother and was a heavy drinker. According to Tina's brother, Drew, a few days before Tina's murder, Tina had yelled at Keith to leave their mom alone.
Allegedly the only day that Keith had been nice was on the night of Tina's murder. He had asked his boss to give him a ride to console Tina's mom. Detectives interviewed Keith. He claimed that he had been at work at the time of Tina's murder. Detectives then talked with Keith's boss who claimed that Keith had been wearing a belt with a knife on the day of the murder. The boss also said that when he gave Keith a ride to Tina's house that Keith asked him to hold onto the knife. The knife was sent to the lab and it came out clean.
Officers also went to Tina's school to interview students and staff to help find answers. They found out that the previous morning, the girls that were mean to Tina had thrown rocks at her. They also had allegedly stated "Let's tie Tina to a tree and stab her." On further investigation, it was found out that the girls had been in detention when Tina was murdered, so they had an alibi.
A fellow student of Tina's came forward. Steve Carlson claimed that he and another classmate, Todd Smith, had been riding around after school and had seen Tina heading to the culvert. Steve also said that he saw another student, Jeff Michaelson, following Tina.
Jeff Michaelson was known to carry a hunting knife, grab and grope girls and was also a bully that would pick on smaller kids. One of those kids was Steve Carlson. On the day of Tina's murder, Jeff was seen tossing Steve in a dumpster and locking him in. Steve spend around ten minutes in the dumpster until a teacher came along and let him out.
Officers went to question Jeff and notice he had a cut on his finger. He gave two different versions to police of how he acquired the cut. On was that he slipped at work while carrying a pan and cut himself. Later, he said that he got cut when cleaning a vent hood. He also never reported the cut to his boss. A search warrant for Jeff's house was then obtained. Two hunting knives were found and sent to the lab for analysis. There was no traces of blood or anything found on the knives, they came out clean.
April 26th, 21 days after Tina's murder and the day before her birthday, Walter Nyman, was on a bridge and sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl walking home from school. The girl got away and Walter was arrested.
Investigators found out that at the time of Tina's murder Walter lived in her town. Investigators talked with Walter's grandmother, who also lived in Tina's town. The grandmother claimed that Walter came knocking on her door on the day of Tina's murder looking all flustered and out of sorts. He told her that he wanted to get out of town.
Police searched Walter's home and found two bloody knives and bloody clothes. When the they were tested, the blood on the knives and well as the blood on the clothes came back as positive for animal blood.
Three potential suspects and none of them found with any concrete evidence tying them to the crime.
After Tina's murder, her brother, Drew, didn't feel safe. Every time he heard a noise it freaked him out and he'd call police. He even had kids joking with him that they were the ones that killed his sister.
There was no on to fill the void that Tina had left in her brother and mother's lives. Tina's mother slowly fell into a deep despair and battled with her sanity.
Michael Ihde use to live in Tina's town. Three years after Tina's murder, Tina's mom came across an article about Michael, who was serving a prison sentence at a Washington State prison. In the article, Michael had been accused of killing a young girl around the same time of Tina's murder. Tina's mom thought the looked familiar, so she went through some of her photos. She found of photo of herself and who she thought was Michael at a barbeque.
Detectives traveled up to Washington State to interview the people that had introduced Tina's mom to Michael at that barbeque. They said that that was not Michael.
Tina's case grew cold and her mother spend much time in and out of mental hospitals.
February, 2008, a new pair of eyes peered into Tina's case. Dana Savage went over the 20,000 pages of statements and notes. She went through all the horrific crime scene photos.
Dana had the idea of looking into the three different serial killers that were active in the area.
December, 1983, 14-year-old Kellie Jean Poppleton was found murdered with Robert Rhoades being the killer.
In November of 1984, 18 year old, high school student, Lisa Monzo was found murdered and Michael Idhe was found responsible.
In 1989, James Daveggio and his girlfriend, Michelle Michaud, kidnapped Vanessa Lei Sampson and sexually assaulted and tortured her in their van rigged with hooks before strangling her and dumping her body in a snowbank.
Vanessa wasn't James and Michelle's only victim and Tina fit the profile of most of their victims. James had also attended Tina's school many years earlier. Around the time of Tina's murder, James around disappear for days on end and he knew about the shortcut that Tina had taken through the culvert.
James, who was spending life behind bars, was interviewed. He denied having any involvement in Tina's murder and instead pointed the finger at his friend, Walter Nyman.
With no concrete evidence of who ended Tina's life in such a horrible fashion, Dana look through the crime scene photos again in attempts to see if she had missed anything. That is when she got the idea to have Tina's purse tested. Tina's clothes had been tested quite a few times over the years for everything you can imagine, but her purse only had been tested once, and that was for fingerprints only.
Tina's purse was tested for DNA and on March 14h, 2011, Tina's killer was identified from drops of blood found on her purse. Steve Carlson had killed Tina.
Investigators began piecing what happened on the day.
On the day of Tina's murder, Steve's parents had left him alone at their house. Steve had called in sick to school that day. Later that day, he went to school to invite other students to his house to party, but no one seemed interested. Shortly after noon, Jeff Michaelson and some other kids locked Steve in the dumpster. After the teacher discovered Steve and let him out of the dumpster, Steve seemed intoxicated and belligerent. The teacher advised Steve to go to the office, but he walked away from the campus in the direction of the culvert.
Steve allegedly then went home and took his mom's car for a ride around the neighborhood. Steve didn't have his friend, Todd Smith, in the car like he claimed. And Todd later had told investigators that he never said he had been in the car with him. However, Steve did see Tina heading to the culvert and claimed that she gave him a dirty look. He got upset and followed her down to the culvert and killed her.
Steve, who was just released from jail for drug charges and had been previously incarcerated for sexually assaulting a young girl, was arrested for Tina's murder.
In 2014, just before Steve's trial began, at only 66 years old, Tina's mother died of a massive heart attack. When Steve's trial came to a close, he was convicted of 1st degree murder, but then the sentence was reduced to 2nd degree. He was sentenced 15 years to life.
At first, Steve proclaimed his innocence, but 6 years after his conviction he confessed to murdering Tina. He said he was in a drunken rage filled stupor and didn't remember stabbing her. He just remembered standing over her body with the bloody knife in hand.
Steve's next parole hearing will be in 2023. Do you think he should be set free? Do you think that he was being truthful when he said he couldn't remember stabbing Tina 44 times?
