I’m forever grateful to Janet, all her daughter’s friends in Davis and to Sarah Whitmire, whose tumultuous relationship with Carlson is heartbreaking. She proved to be warm and incredibly helpful, and ultimately, she believed stories like these need to be told. How do you explain to a total stranger that you’re writing a book about a murder from 1984, and the defendant used to be married to her deceased daughter? That’s what it was like introducing myself to Janet Hamilton. However, without their input, this book either doesn’t happen or isn’t very compelling.Īpproaching people was not easy.
Tina faelz cold case files full#
The final book probably doesn’t do justice to the full impact Tina’s death had on her family and her closest friends. The family shared candid, painful and embarrassing stories. Over the next four years, I talked to Tina’s brother, Drew her biological father, Ron Penix stepfather, Steve Faelz and many other family members. I also met Katie Kelly, Tina’s best friend, and started to understand the layers of this tragic story and why it impacted her so much. She gave her blessing, supported the project and provided valuable contact information, and we talked occasionally over the next few years. I met Tina’s mother, Shirley Orosco, at her home in Pleasanton. The reporting on this book started in September 2011, when I was in San Francisco doing pre-and postgame work for the Los Angeles Dodgers Radio Network. My older sister and some of her childhood friends knew Carlson better than most. I went to the same three schools as Tina. I was in the fifth grade and a newspaper delivery boy when the murder happened. I grew up in Pleasanton and lived six blocks down the street from Tina. When Steve Carlson was arrested in August 2011 for the murder of Tina Faelz, I thought this was the non-sports assignment I’d been seeking, and I was the ideal to person to tell the story. That part makes me feel better to get confirmation, but it doesn’t resolve anything.I always wanted to complete a journalism project that did not involve baseball, mostly as proof to myself that I could do journalism that did not involve home runs and strikeouts. “I just remember standing over her bloody body holding a bloody knife.”įaelz’s brother Drew told the Chronicle that “it is nice knowing that he’s admitting it, it’s 100%. “I don’t remember the stabbing motions,” Carlson wrote in one letter. I walked across the street into the field at the ‘gully’ that’s where at the time was Tina Faelz.” I remember going to kitchen and grabed (sic) a butcher knife.
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“I remember being full of rage at the way all my classmates were laughin (sic) at me, and the damage my parents room was in and how my dad was going to whip up on me after they found out about the party I threw,” he wrote. Article contentĪccording to the Chronicle, Carlson killed Faelz while in a drunken rage after he had been bullied at school earlier in the day after attempting to throw a party at his house while his parents were out of town.Ĭarlson said he hadn’t planned to commit murder that day, but was overcome when he saw Faelz walking home from school in the field across the street from his house. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.