Cold Case Files - She Never Came Home

Episode Date: June 6, 2017

A fourteen-year-old girl walks home from school to avoid bullies on the bus. On the way through "The Culvert," she's murdered, and the police are left with nothing but questions. What happened that led her to take that shortcut? What's the deal with the purse in the tree? Why does everyone in town seem to have a bloody knife? And most importantly, who killed Tina Faelz?

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production. Available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. The best in paranormal talk radio is here on Podcast One as part of the Jericho Network. Beyond the Darkness examines all aspects of the supernatural every day, Monday through Friday. And now, the same team behind Beyond the Darkness bring you the most frighteningly real-life dramas on True Crime Tuesday. Subscribe now by visiting darknessradio.com, then click the True Crime Tuesday banner. Again, that's True Crime Tuesday. Visit darknessradio.com and click the True Crime Tuesday banner. Subscribe now. The viciousness of her death, it's just so heinous.

You don't want to believe it. Who in the hell killed a little girl? There are 120,000 unsolved murder cases in America, and each one is called a cold case. Only 1% of cold cases are ever solved. This is one of those stories. This is Cold Case Files, the podcast from A&E. I am Brooke, and let me clarify now. I am not an investigator. I'm not an attorney. I'm not a journalist. I don't have any radio training, and up until last year, I wasn't even a podcaster.

I'm a social worker. Social work is about figuring out what triggers certain behaviors, what in a person's life has led them to make certain choices, and how do those choices affect others. I'm fascinated by these stories. I love telling them, especially when the stories have an ending. This podcast isn't about unsolved mysteries. This podcast is about rare cases that go cold and against all odds are solved. At the end of this episode, I promise you'll know who killed Tina Fales. Pleasanton, California. A place that looks exactly how it sounds.

A quaint, quiet community. A place where neighbors exactly how it sounds. A quaint, quiet community. A place where neighbors rarely lock their doors. Certainly not a town that would play host to a brutal murder. In fact, in 1984, only five murders had been committed in Pleasanton since World War II. In short, no one saw this coming. I remember every bit of that day like it was yesterday. I came home from school and my sister wasn't there. On a typical day, she would get home before me, watch over me, and she'd help me with my homework.

There'd be times where my mom would go out at night and my sister would put me to bed. She protected me. She looked out for me all the time. Another hour passed by and she still hadn't come home. On April 5th, 1984, 14-year-old Tina Fales was murdered on her walk home from school. The killing was brutal. She was stabbed 44 times and left by the side of the road for dead. Who would kill a teenage girl? What kind of monster would stab a 14-year-old 44 times? It turns out, potentially a lot of people would commit this atrocity. This is not one of those cases that went cold due to lack of suspects.

There were probably too many suspects. This case is a rollercoaster of sinister characters, bizarre theories, bloody knives, and dead ends. The last day of Tina's life started out like any other. Unfortunately, that meant being bullied. Tina wasn't popular. She was often targeted by a pack of mean girls. Here's Katie, Tina's best friend from school. One of them had said,

hey, let's tie Tina to a tree and stab her. It was petrifying. The bus ride home had become such hell for Tina that on this particular day, she opted to walk, taking a shortcut through the culvert. What is a culvert, you ask? I didn't know either. Turns out a culvert is one of those long, man-sized pipes

that runs under the roadways and is usually filled with sludge and rats. It was like a swamp. It felt spooky. The tunnel itself seemed like crossing into another dimension. It was dark. Once you got halfway, you couldn't see anything. It was pitch black. You could hear the cars and the trucks on the freeway roaring go all the way through. Katie herself said she could never do it.

We all know what it feels like to be bullied. I was bullied. I was the fat kid my entire life. Unless you somehow manage to skip ages 12 through 16, you can probably relate. Kids are mean. Imagine how bad the bus ride must have been for Tina to choose a long walk in the pitch black under a four-lane highway in a pipe. Tina never made it out of that pipe. Tina's body was discovered by a passing truck driver who noticed something suspicious in the grass by the highway.

What he found was horrifying. He left to find a payphone, and in the time that he was gone, two more witnesses came upon the body. So many people found the body so quickly. It's almost unbelievable that nobody came across the murder while it was happening. When the police arrived, they conclude that the murder must have literally just happened in broad daylight. The body was still warm. Everything else, however, was cold.

Here's Bill Eastman, the police chief at the time, and the lead investigator on the case. There's no weapon. There's no weapon. There's no fingerprints. There's no footprints. The crime scene is a low-lying patch of dirt and grass, barely more than a ditch. A few trees dot the area. Officers noticed something suspicious about one of the trees. A purse was hanging from the upper branches, far from the body. Inside the purse was a report card with Tina's name on it. So they had the name of the victim, but no suspects and no murder weapon. Enter Officer Jim Knox. At the time of the murder, I'm 20 years old. I'm a member of the Pleasanton Police Department Explorer Post. I am asked to set up a grid search looking for the murder weapon.

Here I'm walking through a field and I'm thinking about a girl just a few years younger than me that was stabbed to death. This is Pleasanton, where it's safe to leave your doors unlocked. It's safe to leave your windows open. And suddenly the innocence is kind of taken from the community. We weren't able to find the murder weapon. And suddenly the innocence is kind of taken from the community. We weren't able to find the murder weapon. With so little to go on, investigators start talking to any and everyone who might have a lead. In such a close-knit community, someone must have seen something. First stop, Foothill High School. Katie Kelly was Tina's best friend at school. We heard from her earlier when she described how scary the shortcut through the culvert was. She was the one who told the police about Tina being the victim

of some pretty intense bullying, which had been going on since junior high. Tina was a practical joker. She liked to pull little pranks like ding-dong-jitching, you know, where you ring someone's doorbell and then run away. Her jokes rubbed some people the wrong way. The mean girls who tormented Tina had made a habit of insulting her, calling her names, throwing rocks at her. They even threatened once to tie her to a tree and stab her. All this was enough to cause Tina to stop taking the bus just to avoid them. It was also enough to make the mean girls suspects.

The mean girls, though, had an alibi. That afternoon, they were in detention. They couldn't have killed Tina. They wouldn't have even been on the bus. There's a terrible, tragic irony that Tina didn't need to take a shortcut through the culvert that day in order to avoid her bullies. The next students police questioned were upperclassmen Todd Smith and Steve Carlson. Todd and Steve both saw Tina crawl through the hole in the chain link fence that led down to the shortcut under the highway. Steve also pointed police towards another student, Jeff Michelson. Jeff was easy to identify because of his distinctive blue backpack.

Steve sees a male student named Jeff Michelson running through the drainage culvert that goes under I-680 right around 3 o'clock or 3.05, the time of the murder. Jeff Michelson becomes one of the first big suspects in the case. Placing Jeff at the crime scene near the time of the murder made him a suspect. But Police Chief Eastman had his doubts about a crime this brutal being committed by a kid. The theory in these early stages is that the killer is most likely someone close to Tina, an adult who knows her and her family. According to Tina's aunt, Karen Reif, things had gotten a bit messy at home for the Fales family. Tina's

parents had recently gone through a rough divorce, and her mom, Shirley, had found comfort in her new boyfriend, Keith Fitzwater. At first, Keith and Tina got along great. He seemed cool. He was young, only eight years older than Tina. But after Keith moved into the house in May of 83, his temper started flaring more and more. I didn't care for Keith much at all. He was 15 years younger than my mom. He was in his early 20s at the time. He had a pretty bad temper. He'd get angry with Shirley and loud, like scary loud, and Tina decided he wasn't good enough for her mother. Shirley kicked him out after just a few months. This is Tina's aunt, Karen Reif. I don't know if Shirley ever thought Keith killed Tina, but I know that I did and other family members did. Keith was at

work at a factory in town when he heard about Tina's murder. He asked his boss for a ride to Shirley's house to go be with the family. But before he left, he handed his boss the knife from his belt to hold on to. The police tested it for traces of blood, but the knife came back clean. Keith also came up with an alibi at work, which seemed to chuck out. So suspect number one was a dead end. Meanwhile, Jeff Michelson,

the kid with the blue backpack who was spotted running through the drainage culvert, was interviewed by police. And despite Bill Eastman's initial reservations, suspicion around Michelson quickly started to rise. Here's Jim Knox again, one of the officers involved in the investigation at the time. When detectives look into Jeff Michelson, they find out that he was known as the bully that picked on other smaller kids. According to eyewitnesses, on the day of

Tina's murder, a kid named Steve Carlson was taken by Jeff and thrown into a dumpster. And they locked him in there for about 10 minutes before a teacher came and let him out. And then later, Steve Carlson sees Jeff in the general vicinity of the crime scene at the time of Tina's murder. One of the other things that detectives found is Jeff had several instances where he had approached girls and grabbed them or groped them. But the most interesting piece was Jeff carried a hunting style knife in a sheath that he wore sometimes on his belt. Investigators went to interview him and they noticed that he had a cut on his index finger. A bully, a groper, a knife on his belt, and a cut on his hand. Suddenly, Jeff Michelson seemed like a heck of a lot more than just a blue backpack.

That cut fit another theory the police had about Tina's killer. According to the coroner's report, there was a high probability the killer cut himself as well. And how did Jeff Michelson explain the cut on his finger? Well, he didn't exactly do himself any favors. He said he was at work and he was walking with a pan and he slipped. And when he dropped the pan, he cut himself. When they asked him about it again later, he said that he was replacing a vent hood. When they asked him if he had advised his boss that he'd cut himself, he said, no, I didn't think it was a big

deal, so I didn't tell him about it. Well, it was a big deal to police. Here's Bill Eastman again. Because of the conflicting statements that Jeff made, officers got a search warrant and went to his house. They found two hunting knives. The hunting knives were sent to the crime lab. They were examined for traces of blood, and they were found to be clean. Why he told the two stories, we don't know. I was telling myself there was so much there, but there was not enough to file a case on. Another suspect. Another knife or two.

Another dead end. Pleasanton police are at a standstill. They're churning through suspects at an alarming rate, but every time they come up empty. And yet, a disturbing pattern is starting to emerge, if not one that is particularly helpful in solving a murder. Tina Fales faced bullies at school, like the Mean Girls and Jeff Michelson. She faced a bully at home in Keith Fitzwater. How did one teenage girl find herself surrounded by so much hate and hostility?

Was she that unlucky, or is that normal and we just don't notice it in the absence of tragedy? I'm not sure if I believe in an outlook on humanity that's quite that grim. But at the same time, it's hard to imagine what that experience might do to a person. Three weeks later, Bill Eastman and his department finally get a fresh lead. A man by the name of Walter Nyman sexually assaulted a young woman in Felton, California. Nyman was on a bridge when he crossed paths with a 17-year-old girl walking home from school. He accosted her. Things got physical. The girl was able to flee and get away.

But what if she hadn't? Would she have been another Tina Fales? The fact that it was a young girl that he accosted, that it was near water, it was like a duplicate of the crime. What made this even more tantalizing to us was the fact that at the time of Tina's murder, Nyman lived in Pleasanton. Nyman's grandmother was contacted as she was somewhat close to him. When questioned about Tina's murder, she said, Oh yes, April 5th. I remember the date very specifically,

because that was the day that Walter showed up at my house. Nyman had been living with his parents in Pleasanton and was deeply unhappy there. On April 5th, he ran away, knocked on his grandmother's door, and asked if he could live with her. When detectives searched his grandmother's home, they found a bag filled with blood-soaked clothing and two bloody knives. Was this finally it? Were these the knives that might actually connect one of the many suspects to Tina Fale's murder? Of course not. The knives were tested, and the blood wasn't Tina's. It wasn't even human. It was animal blood.

Walter Nyman had used his hunting knives for hunting. Walter Nyman is cleared, for now, but he remains a suspect, just not one that the police can arrest. Did I get your hopes up? Sorry. I did promise that this case gets resolved. And it does. But not before going cold. Ice cold. For another 24 years. Tina's murder hangs over the family, tormenting them. Frayed by decades of searching with no closure, Tina's family begins to unravel. Here's what Tina's brother, Drew, remembers about that time. It's hard for him to forget. I didn't know why it happened to my sister.

I was afraid of being killed next. I had a kid joke with me at one point saying he's one that killed my sister with a machete. I was just in shock. If I would hear things in my backyard, I would call the police. I didn't really have anyone to fill the void after my sister passed. My mom did what she could, but she started breaking down mentally. So the killer didn't just take Tina. They were slowly strangling the entire Fales family.

And it's not just the family that's still haunted by Tina's killer. I retired from the police force in January of 2000. That's Bill Eastman. When you've worked on something as long and as hard as the department did on that case, it is disappointing. Justice is supposed to prevail. The good guys win. The bad guys are supposed to lose.

For decades, there isn't a blip. No new evidence. No promising suspects. Then, in 2008, 24 years after Tina's death, the case is reopened. Remember Jim Knox? Two decades ago, he helped investigators search for the murder weapon that never turned up. He's now Sergeant Knox, head of the police department's criminal division. Around this time, Detective Dana Savage, one of the few members of the police force who did not grow up in town, is placed on desk duty.

She's pregnant with her second child and effectively benched from all police activity. Suddenly, the Pleasanton PD had someone with fresh eyes and time to kill. As a pregnant police detective, you just have more time on your hands. So I wanted to look into the unsolved murders, and that's when I picked up Tina Fell's murder case. It was overwhelming, to say the least. 20,000 pages worth of statements and notes. One of the first things that I did was I viewed the crime scene photos. This scene was just horrific. What she went through, the last

moments of her life, it's unacceptable to me. In working with cold cases, the victims are never forgotten. I've worked my whole life to prepare myself for a case such as this. I want to provide closure to Tina and to her family. I just knew that I had to find who had done this. Detective Savage leaves no stone unturned. She sets up a tip line where people can call in leads. She combs through the case files, reading every interview, looking at every piece of evidence, considering every possible theory.

She takes a closer look at anyone close to Tina. Her classmates, her family, Shirley's sketchy boyfriend, even Shirley. After analyzing every possible suspect, she's forced to conclude that the killer must have been someone Tina didn't know, or barely knew. She's looking for a serial killer, someone capable of committing a random act of extreme violence, a monster. In searching for a serial killer, Detective Savage comes across James DeVeggio. He's a convicted killer, who went to Foothill High School at the same time as Tina. He knew the school. He knew

the culvert. He may have known Tina. I couldn't have that suspect contact due to the fact I was pregnant, so I had to hand some things off to other detectives. Lieutenant Davis interviews James DeVeggio. DeVeggio levels and says, look, I'm in prison for the rest of my life. I've got nothing to lose. If I was involved in Tina's murder, I would tell you I'm not involved. He actually points the finger at Walter Nyman. Quick reminder, Walter Nyman was the creepy guy who assaulted the girl on the bridge. Investigators had been down the Walter Nyman path before and came up empty-handed. What Detective Savage needed was evidence.

She revisits the crime scene photos, looking for any piece of evidence that was missed the first time around. She notices something the previous detectives working the case had not. It's very possible that he cut himself leaving some kind of evidence somewhere, and I have to figure out, okay, what would he have touched? When I'm looking at the evidence photos, there is a purse hanging from the branches of a tree. Seeing the purse up in the tree just didn't make sense to me at all. I think Tina would try and hold onto her purse and possibly try and fight back with it using it as a weapon. This was kind of an aha moment for me.

It just really clicked that probably the last person to touch this purse was the suspect. She can't be the first person to have looked at the purse, right? I mean, they had to have tested it. It turns out the purse had gone relatively untouched since it was discovered. It was checked for fingerprints, but never for DNA. The sweatshirt had been tested and retested for DNA over the years, but they had never tested the purse. Acting on a hunch, Detective Savage submits the purse to the FBI for DNA testing. Now all that's left to do is wait. For three years, there's nothing. Then the phone rings. One day, I get a work call, and it's the FBI. The FBI agent says

to me, do you want to know who killed Tina Fales? I can't believe I'm getting this call, finally. Obviously, they have a hit. The FBI found four drops of the suspect's blood on the purse. This solidified the theory that had gone back for decades that the murderer's hand had slid down on the knife, possibly cutting himself. At this point, I felt as confident as I could that the killer was James DeVeggio or Walter Nyman. I say, yeah, I want to know who. Me, too. After the break. After almost 30 years, Detective Savage is about to find out who killed Tina Fales. I'm mostly expecting the FBI to say James DeVeggio or Walter Nyman. The FBI agent says it's Steve Carlson. Wait, Steve Carlson?

The same Steve Carlson who was the first witness officers interviewed back in 1984? The same Steve Carlson who pointed the finger at Jeff Michelson? The same Steve Carlson that got the finger at Jeff Michelson, the same Steve Carlson that got locked in a dumpster the day Tina was killed. Remember this? According to eyewitnesses, on the day of Tina's murder, a kid named Steve Carlson was taken by Jeff and thrown into a dumpster. And they locked him in there for about 10 minutes before a teacher came and let him out.

Yeah, that Steve Carlson. Now investigators had a suspect, but no clear motive. What could make a 16-year-old Steve Carlson brutally murder a girl he barely knew? After going back and interviewing some of the other witnesses regarding what they remembered about that day, we know that Steve's parents left him alone in the house. Steve went to the school and invited other students to come over to his house and drink and use drugs. Nobody wanted to go. And then later, some kids lock him in the dumpster. And when Steve gets out, he is covered in garbage and food, and he is pissed off. Steve is emotional. No, he's furious.

During the initial investigation, he told police he was driving around the neighborhood with Todd Smith, but Todd later says that he was never with Steve that day. He also told detectives he saw Tina near the culvert, and she gave him a dirty look. So Steve was enraged, speeding through the neighborhood, and that pushed him over the edge.

Steve followed her down into the drainage ditch and stabbed her over and over and over. Then he went home, which wasn't far. He lived two houses down from where he killed Tina. He could see the crime scene from his roof. He sat on the roof and watched police discover Tina's body. He watched them comb the crime scene for weeks. He pointed them towards Jeff. He was right there. In 2014, Steve Carlson is brought to trial for the murder of Tina Fales. Her family gathers at the courthouse to see Tina's case finally come to a close.

Well, most of her family. In a tragic turn, Tina's mother, Shirley, has a massive heart attack and dies the day before trial. She never saw Steve get convicted. She never got closure on her daughter's death. I promised you a resolution, but I never promised justice. Let's go back to April 5th, 1984. Imagine for a second an alternative version of that day, a day when two children, both the victims of bullying, crossed paths. Instead of having a violent encounter that ultimately led to a murder, they found a way to connect and share in this common experience. I generally don't subscribe to a grim outlook on humanity.

People can be seen as good. They can also be seen as bad. It's all a matter of choices. And I'd like to imagine a world where these two kids could have found comfort in one another. But sadly, that's not what happened. And imagining what if is all the Fales family has left. If you'd like to see more about the case of Tina Fales, check out Cold Case Files at aetv.com. There's also a link in the show notes.

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