She Never Came Home

Summary

Cold Case Files: "She Never Came Home" – Detailed Summary

Hosted by Paula Barros, "She Never Came Home" delves into the harrowing 1984 murder of 14-year-old Tina Fales in Pleasanton, California. This episode meticulously traces the investigation’s evolution over three decades, highlighting the relentless pursuit of justice by law enforcement and the enduring pain endured by Tina’s family.

---

1. The Tragic Beginning

April 4, 1984, marks the day when Tina Fales’ life was brutally cut short. Seeking to avoid bullies, Tina opts for her usual shortcut home via a drainage culvert. However, this time, she never returns.

• Drew Fales (Tina's Brother) shares his poignant memories:

  "I remember every bit of that day like it was yesterday... She protected me. She looked out for me all the time."
  (00:32)

• Jim Knox (Pleasanton Police Officer) recounts the discovery:

  "A truck driver... saw what he felt was a person in distress... He saw blood and realized there’s a dead body down in the creek."
  (02:21)

• Bill Eastman (Former Police Chief) describes the crime scene’s grim nature:

  "She was stabbed 44 times... There’s no weapon. There are no fingerprints. There are no footprints."
  (03:26)

---

2. Initial Investigation and Suspects

The immediate aftermath saw investigators grappling with limited evidence. The absence of a weapon and identifiable traces made the case particularly challenging.

• Detective Dana Savage emphasizes the brutality:

  "The coroner determined the first 38 times she was stabbed, she was still alive... Some wounds were up to 5 inches deep."
  (03:29)

• Jim Knox speculates on the killer’s weapon:

  "There was probably no hilt or guard on the knife... the suspect’s hand would slide off, possibly cutting themselves."
  (03:38)

Primary Suspects:

1. Jeff Michelson

   • Described as a school bully with a history of aggressive behavior.
   • Jim Knox notes:

     "Jeff had a hunting style knife... he had a cut on his index finger."
     (09:37)

   • Despite arresting him, forensic tests found no blood traces linking him to the murder.

2. Keith Fitzwater

   • Tina’s mother's boyfriend, noted for his volatile temper and recent departure from the Fales household.
   • Karen Reiff (Tina's Aunt) states:

     "He was physically, verbally abusive... the only time he was ever nice was the night when Tina died."
     (10:55)

   • Evidence was inconclusive, leading investigators to keep him as a suspect without sufficient grounds for charges.

3. Walter Nyman and James D'Veggio

   • Both had histories of sexual offenses and were part of Pleasanton’s serial killer investigations.
   • Detective Dana Savage later connects them to ongoing patterns of violence against young girls in the area.

---

3. The Fales Family’s Ordeal

Tina’s disappearance profoundly affected her family, particularly her mother, Shirley Fales.

• Drew Fales describes the emotional toll:

  "I was afraid of being killed next. I had a mental block... I was in shock."
  (17:44)

• Karen Reiff highlights Shirley’s deteriorating mental state:

  "She just couldn’t function anymore... She started eliminating friend after friend."
  (20:01)

---

4. The Case Goes Cold

Despite multiple leads and suspect interrogations, the absence of concrete evidence led to the investigation stalling. The family remained in limbo, hoping for answers that seemed elusive.

• Bill Eastman expresses the frustration:

  "With the information we had, we couldn't charge Fitzwater... justice is supposed to prevail."
  (15:26)

• Narrator summarizes:

  "Leads run out, and the investigation goes cold. Life for the Fales family stands still."
  (19:54)

---

5. Reopening the Investigation

February 2008, Detective Dana Savage decides to revisit Tina’s case while on limited duty during her pregnancy.

• Detective Dana Savage shares her motivation:

  "People who get into law enforcement don't do it for the money. We do it to help people. I want to provide closure to Tina and to her family."
  (20:51)

She identifies patterns linking Tina’s murder to other serial killings in Pleasanton during the 1980s, particularly focusing on James D'Veggio, a known serial killer who attended Foothill High School during Tina’s murder.

---

6. Breakthrough and Evidence Collection

Using advanced DNA technology, Detective Savage revisits older evidence, particularly Tina’s purse, suspected to hold crucial forensic clues.

• Detective Dana Savage explains her strategy:

  "I think the last person to touch this purse was the suspect... I handed it over to the FBI in Quantico."
  (24:26)

March 14, 2011, the FBI identifies four drops of the suspect’s blood on the purse, narrowing down the suspects to Walter Nyman and James D'Veggio.

However, when questioned:

• James D'Veggio deflects blame onto Walter Nyman, suggesting:

  "If I was involved in Tina's murder, I would tell you I'm not involved."
  (24:26)

---

7. The Arrest of Steve Carlson

Contrary to initial suspicions, it emerges that Steve Carlson, a student who had been previously incarcerated for unrelated charges, was the actual perpetrator.

• Jim Knox narrates the arrest:

  "Steve became violently ill... we met with deputies and placed Steve under arrest for murder."
  (34:06)

Steve’s transformation from a bullied student to a hardened criminal added complexity to the case.

• Bill Eastman reflects:

  "Somebody that killed a little girl is still at large, but we have a potential suspect, Keith Fitzwater... eventually, it was Steve Carlson."
  (10:45)

2014, Steve Carlson is convicted and sentenced to 15 years to life for the second-degree murder of Tina Fales, finally bringing closure to the long-unsolved case.

---

8. Aftermath and Legacy

The resolution of Tina’s case, albeit delayed, had profound effects on her family and the community.

• Drew Fales shares the lingering grief:

  "A year after my sister's murder, my mom wrote a poem... 'Someday we'll all be together again.'"
  (35:32)

• Karen Reiff laments the toll:

  "She just couldn’t function anymore... he took Shirley because she had no life after that."
  (35:37)

Although justice was served, the emotional scars endured by Tina's family remained deep and unhealed.

---

Notable Quotes

• Drew Fales on the loss:

  "She protected me. She looked out for me all the time."
  (00:32)

• Bill Eastman on investigative challenges:

  "Who in the hell killed a little girl alone in front of a culvert?"
  (04:49)

• Detective Dana Savage on her commitment:

  "I want to provide closure to Tina and to her family."
  (20:51)

• Jim Knox on the final arrest:

  "Once we booked Stephen at Santa Rita Jail, I went over to Shirley Fale's residence. It was like she knew."
  (34:11)

---

Conclusion

"She Never Came Home" serves as a testament to the enduring pursuit of justice in the face of overwhelming odds. Through meticulous investigation and breakthroughs in forensic technology, the Pleasanton community witnessed the closure of a heart-wrenching cold case. However, the episode also underscores the profound and lasting impact such tragedies have on the victims' families and the community at large.

Transcript

[Marissa Pinson]

Hi, cold case listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson, and if you're enjoying.

[Narrator]

This show, I just want to remind you that episodes of Cold Case Files.

[Marissa Pinson]

As well as the AE Classic podcasts, I Survived American justice, and City Confidential, are all available ad free on the new A and E crime and investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple plus for just 4.99amonth or $39.99 a year.

[Narrator]

And now onto the show. This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.

[Drew Fales]

I saw her as a big sister and someone that protected me.

[Jim Knox]

This was a girl just a few years younger than me. Suddenly the innocence is taken from the community.

[Detective Dana Savage]

The viciousness of her death, it's just so heinous, you don't want to believe it.

[Bill Eastman]

Who in the hell killed a little girl?

[Detective Dana Savage]

There were so many suspects.

[Narrator]

There are 120,000 unsolved murder cases in America. Each one is called a cold case, and only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare cases. On April 4, 1984, in Pleasanton, California, summer break is just a few weeks away. To avoid bullies, 14 year old Tina Fales skips the school bus. She takes her usual neighborhood shortcut home. But this time she never makes it. Drew Fales is Tina's brother.

[Drew Fales]

I remember every bit of that day like it was yesterday. I came home from school and my sister wasn't there. On 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. I remember riding my bike out in the court. I remember an undercover police car that came down the street. Right away. I knew something was up. I just felt like it was gonna stop at our house. I was scared. I didn't know what was going on. It was the next day that I found out from my parents what had happened, that my sister was killed.

[Narrator]

Jim Knox, an officer with the Pleasanton Police Department, describes the events of that day.

[Jim Knox]

A truck driver driving through Pleasanton on the freeway looked over to his right and saw what he felt was a person in distress or possibly harmed. He starts walking down the drainage culvert. He sees blood and realizes there's a dead body down in the creek.

[Narrator]

Bill Eastman is the former Pleasanton police chief.

[Bill Eastman]

I was in my office when I learned of the homicide. I always dreaded getting a notification call like that. Somebody killed a little girl. Nothing like that ever happened to such a young person in Pleasanton's history. It was a very cold crime scene. There's no weapon. There's no fingerprints. There's no footprints. Officers noticed a purse suspended in a tree above the body. They found a report card that had the name Tina Fales on it. Freshman at Foothill High School, Tina had a lot of trauma done to her body. In the attack, she was stabbed 44 times.

[Narrator]

Detective Dana Savage investigated the murder.

[Detective Dana Savage]

The coroner determined the first 38 times she stabbed. She's still alive. Some of her wounds were up to 5 inches deep.

[Jim Knox]

Another thing that was noted by the coroner was that there was probably no hilt or guard on the knife because there was no marks or indentations on the body. At some point, we felt that in the course of stabbing Tina, the suspect's hand would slide off of the handle because there's no protective guard onto the blade and actually cut themselves.

[Detective Dana Savage]

It would make sense in my mind that someone of a psychopathic nature would be responsible for her death. It was just so vicious and so.

[Jim Knox]

Rageful 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.

[Bill Eastman]

There was very little to go on, so we had to rely on talking to people. Who in the hell killed a little girl alone in front of a culvert?

[Jim Knox]

Detectives go up to Foothill High School, and they start interviewing students, looking for leads to follow up on witnesses that may have seen Tina that day. Witnesses that may have information on the killer's motive for killing her. They find out that Tina was being bullied at school. She used to ride the bus home. But several girls on the bus were picking on her. They were threatening to beat her up.

[Narrator]

Katy Kelly was one of Tina's friends.

[Katy Kelly]

Tina could no longer ride the bus. She had to go through the culvert. This culvert was, in essence, a shortcut between Foothill High School and home. 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 overhead. You're isolated, you're all alone. If you were to scream for help, no one would be able to hear you.

[Bill Eastman]

The day Tina was murdered, the girls that taunted Tina had thrown rocks at her.

[Katy Kelly]

I think that day one of them had said, hey, let's tie Tina to a tree and stab her. It was petrifying.

[Jim Knox]

These girls were questioned. They did share that they didn't like her for whatever reason. But that particular day, the girls were actually in detention, so it wasn't possible for them to have been involved in killing Tina. We're trying to identify witnesses that may.

[Bill Eastman]

Lead us to shortly before 3pm Two students were riding in a car. Steve Carlson and Todd Smith. Carlson remarked, look, there's Tina Fales. As she was headed toward the culvert.

[Jim Knox]

Steve sees a male student named Jeff Michelson running through the drainage culvert that goes under I680, right around 3:00 or 3:05, the time of the murder. Jeff Michelson becomes one of the first big suspects in the case. At the same time, while investigators at the school are speaking to students, there's another group of detectives that are at Tina's house speaking with her family.

[Bill Eastman]

Detectives turn to the family and family friends because they're the closest people to the victim and usually somebody close has committed the crime.

[Jim Knox]

Investigators find out that Tina's mom, Shirley, has a boyfriend who has recently moved out. His name is Keith Fitzwater. Keith moved out of the Fales residence because he was creating some family tension in the house.

[Drew Fales]

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 temperature.

[Bill Eastman]

He started drinking heavily. He had been violent towards Shirley.

[Drew Fales]

A few days prior to my sister being murdered, my sister started yelling at him to leave my mom alone. It made me feel like it could be Keith.

[Bill Eastman]

Keith Fitzwater. The person close to the victim, Jeff Michaelson, a young man that had been seen in close proximity to the crime scene at the time of the homicide. We have two possible suspects in Tina's murder.

[Jim Knox]

Which one of these guys is responsible for this killing? 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.

[Bill Eastman]

The reason the cut was significant was the possibility that the killer cut himself. When questioned as to how he got the cut, Jeff gave two different versions of the story.

[Jim Knox]

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.

[Bill Eastman]

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. We had to move on because he wasn't the only suspect in our case.

[Jim Knox]

Investigators continue to look at Keith Fitzwater, Tina's mom's boyfriend. He had a violent temper.

[Narrator]

Karen Reiff is Tina's aunt.

[Karen Reiff]

He was physically, verbally abusive. The only time he was ever nice was the night when Tina died. You know, it was unbelievably nice that it almost seemed suspicious.

[Jim Knox]

Detectives meet with Keith Fitzwater, and they ask him where he was the day of the murder. He tells them that he had been at work.

[Bill Eastman]

Keith asked his boss if he could get a ride from him to Shirley's house because Tina had been stabbed to death.

[Jim Knox]

Detectives spoke with his boss. The one thing that they find out is that Keith had a knife on his belt at the time, which he removed and asked his boss to hold on to it.

[Bill Eastman]

He says, why do you want me to keep it? And Keith said, I don't want to go in the house with a knife. This certainly was suspicious behavior. You had to think something was going on.

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[Bill Eastman]

Somebody that killed a little girl is still at large, but we have a potential suspect, Keith Fitzwater. Hearing that Keith asked his boss to keep his knife piqued our interest. We retrieved the knife and sent it for analysis. It came back with no trace of blood.

[Karen Reiff]

I don't know if Shirley ever thought Keith killed Tina, but I know that I did and other family members did.

[Drew Fales]

I always had that feeling. Even many years later. I always felt like it could be Keith.

[Bill Eastman]

With the information we had, we couldn't charge Fitzwater with Tina's murder. At least not at that time. Three weeks after Tina's murder, investigators got what looked like a very good break in the case. A man by the name of Walter Nyman sexually assaulted a young woman in Felton, California.

[Jim Knox]

Walter was on a bridge and a 17 year old girl was walking home from school.

[Bill Eastman]

The fact that it was a young girl that he accosted, that it was near water as it was like a duplicate of the crime, she was able.

[Jim Knox]

To flee and get away.

[Bill Eastman]

Walter Nyman was arrested in Felton for attempted rape and assault. 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.

[Jim Knox]

When he showed up at his grandmother's house, he seemed to be flustered and really kind of out of sort.

[Bill Eastman]

On the day of Tina's murder, he told his grandmother that he wanted to get out of Pleasanton. It made him a very likely suspect in our case. Police served a search warrant at his home. They were astounded at what they found. Two bloody knives and bloody clothing.

[Jim Knox]

Those items were tested for Tina's blood.

[Bill Eastman]

It Was an adrenaline pumping moment to believe that we had succeeded in finding Tina's killer.

[Jim Knox]

It was determined that the blood on the knives as well as the clothing Was actually animal blood. Another disappointing outcome. He still could be the killer, but there wasn't enough to proceed on the investigation. It's very, very saddening and frustrating for an investigator. We had several suspects, but there was no evidence that would prove who was responsible for killing tina.

[Drew Fales]

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 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. She was in constant dismay, Just wanting to know what happened.

[Bill Eastman]

My estimation, she was struggling for her sanity over the loss of her daughter. If she had what she thought was new information or something that needed to be looked into, she would tell us.

[Jim Knox]

Shirley was reading a newspaper article. She saw a picture of michael ide.

[Bill Eastman]

This guy in prison up in washington state. Used to live in pleasanton. He had been identified as having killed a young lady around the time of Tina's murder.

[Jim Knox]

Shirley looked at the photo in the newspaper and went, oh, my gosh, this guy looks really familiar. She believed that she had a photograph of herself and michael ide from an occasion where they had met at a barbecue.

[Bill Eastman]

And she looks at it and says, my gosh. Dead ringer.

[Narrator]

It's Now May of 1987, three years after Tina's murder.

[Drew Fales]

My mom said there could be some closure coming. I thought we found the killer, this thing would finally be solved.

[Bill Eastman]

The lead investigator sent detectives up to washington to interview the people that had introduced shirley to the man she had a picture taken with. They said, that's not michael. I more disappointment stacked on top of disappointment. We had to move on again. I retired from the police force in January of 22,000. 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.

[Narrator]

Leads run out, and the investigation goes cold. Life for the fales family stands still.

[Karen Reiff]

I just felt so sorry for shirley after that. She just couldn't function anymore.

[Drew Fales]

As the case gets older and older, she slowly started deteriorating Just mentally.

[Karen Reiff]

She started just eliminating friend after friend.

[Drew Fales]

She would always have her House spotless. And whenever she'd have these breakdowns, she wouldn't clean the dishes for months. I'm seeing her deteriorate, just go crazy right in front of me. I'd have to call the crisis unit around. At the time, I was about 18 years old in order to get her put into mental hospitals.

[Karen Reiff]

I would be so mad when I would think of whoever killed Tina. They didn't just take Tina from us. He took Shirley because she had no life after that.

[Narrator]

It's now February 2008, 24 years after Tina's murder.

[Detective Dana Savage]

When I was pregnant with my second child, Zachary, I was on limited duty. I have no suspect contact. 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. People who get into law enforcement don't do it for the money. We do it to help people. I want to provide closure to Tina and to her family. I just knew that I had to find who had done this. Once I'm reading through the investigation, what really stood out to me was there were so many suspects that were close to Tina. However, what really stood out to me were the serial killings that were happening in the area at the time. In the 80s, there were three serial killers identified as murdering young girls in the Pleasanton area. One of them has to be the person responsible for Tina's death. In November of 1984, Lisa Monzo is found murdered. And it's determined that Michael Ide was responsible for her killing. In December of 1983, Kelly Poppleton was found murdered. It's eventually found that Robert Rhodes is the killer. In 1989, James DiVeggio and his girlfriend Michelle Michaud kidnapped Vanessa Sampson off the street in Pleasanton. They had fashioned a sexual torture chamber in the back of his van and they had Vanessa tied up. They sexually assaulted her several times before driving her to the area of Tahoe, where they eventually strangled her and left her in a snowbank. Tina fit their profile. Young Caucasian girls in the same area. What really surprised me was that James Diveggio went to Foothill High school at the time of Tina's murder. James would disappear for days on end with no explanation of where he had been. He knew that same shortcut through the culvert. This puts James in the area at the time of Tina's murder. I wanted to go interview James D'Veggio in prison, but I just 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 D'Veggio Diveo 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. Walter Nyman was on the suspect list days after Tina's murder because of kidnapping and sexual assault. But they couldn't confirm or deny that he was ever involved. James D'Veggio and Walter Nyman are friends.

[Bill Eastman]

They used to drink together at the Pastime Bar. You couldn't walk into the place without smelling urine. It was that bad. To have two people of that ilk together in one place, you have to wonder what they might have done together.

[Detective Dana Savage]

One of them has to be the person responsible for Tina's death. What I really needed was evidence. Where do we have the best chance of finding something that maybe was overlooked before? All you have to go on are these crime scene photographs, and that's how you recreate the scene in your mind. From the coroner's report, I know there's no guard on the killer's knife, so the murderer's hand might have slipped down. 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. Over the years, as DNA technology had advanced, Tina's sweatshirt had been submitted many times, but her purse had only been looked at for fingerprints. When I saw the purse wrapped in the evidence bag, I see the purses textured. The purses material just wasn't conducive for fingerprinting. Even though I couldn't see anything on the purse. I still felt that it was the best evidence that we had. I handed it over through the chain of evidence to the FBI in Quantico, Virginia. At this point in investigation, I had interviewed as many people as I could. And in regards to the serial killers, I had researched them and looked into them as much as I possibly could. We had narrowed down the suspects to either Walter nyman or James D'Aeveggio. What I really needed was that evidence to come back, and I was hoping for a DNA match putting either one of them at the scene.

[Narrator]

It's now March 14, 2011, 27 years after Tina's murder.

[Detective Dana Savage]

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 Divegio or Walter Nyman. I say, yeah, I want to know who. I wasn't ready for what I discovered.

[Marissa Pinson]

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[Detective Dana Savage]

In my mind, I'm mostly expecting the FBI to say James Divegio or Walter Nyman. The FBI agent says it's Steve Carlson, the student who was locked in the dumpster. Later, after Tina's body was found, Steve was the first witness officers spoke with.

[Jim Knox]

He told them that he saw a male student named Jeff Michaelson in the general vicinity of the crime scene on that particular day.

[Bill Eastman]

He was trying to push investigators toward another suspect.

[Detective Dana Savage]

Steve was 16, Tina was 14. I just couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that a kid could kill a kid. It's just so heinous you don't want to believe it.

[Jim Knox]

Okay, now we have the suspect. Let's go back, take a look at the evidence and try to piece things together. 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.

[Detective Dana Savage]

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.

[Jim Knox]

So at that point, Steve returned home to his house and got into his mom's car and started driving around the neighborhood. When investigators spoke to Steve, he said that he was with Todd Smith. But Todd later says, I never said that I was with him. Steve also told detectives he had seen Tina walking to the culvert.

[Detective Dana Savage]

Steve tells them that Tina gives him a dirty look, like, why are you speeding through the neighborhood?

[Jim Knox]

We believe that Steve got upset and at that point decided to follow Tina down into that creek.

[Detective Dana Savage]

My gut was telling me that putting that purse into the tree was a deliberate act. He was marking the scene so he could either go back later or watch police.

[Jim Knox]

As they worked, Steve's residents had a clear view of the culvert where Tina was killed. According to eyewitnesses, after the body is discovered, Steve Carlson is seen on the roof of his home watching as police begin their investigation. In 2011, Steve Carlson was actually incarcerated on an unrelated drug charge. He had been arrested over the years for numerous drug violations. He had been arrested up in the Sacramento area for a sexual assault on a young girl up there. Steve was Nothing like the 16 year old boy that had attended Foothill High School. Early photos showed him with blonde hair, kind of a good looking kid. Now he was covered with tattoos. Just a very hard individual. We're looking into a homicide that occurred in Pleasanton in 1984 in high school.

[Bill Eastman]

Do you remember that?

[Detective Dana Savage]

You were in high school.

[Jim Knox]

Tina Fales got killed.

[Drew Fales]

Do you remember that?

[Jim Knox]

Yeah, we're recontacting old from that case and we.

[Bill Eastman]

Oh, yeah, here we go.

[Narrator]

Just a few moments into the interview, Steve begins to vomit into a nearby trash can.

[Jim Knox]

Steve became violently ill. About two weeks after we interviewed him, Steve was due to be released on his unrelated drug offense. Detective Batt and I went down. We met with deputies ahead of time and told them that we were going to place Steve under arrest for murder. Steve, you're under arrest for the murder.

[Detective Dana Savage]

Of bales.

[Jim Knox]

In 1984. I was there looking for the murder weapon and I got to put the handcuffs on him. That was such a special feeling. Once we booked Stephen at Santa Rita Jail, I went over to Shirley Fale's residence. She asked, did you find him. It was like she knew. She agonized over Tina's death for 27 years. It affected her health. It affected her mental well being. Certainly took a big portion of her life from, from her.

[Narrator]

In 2014, Steve Carlson was found guilty. He is currently serving 15 years to life for the second degree murder of Tina Fales. The Pleasanton police can finally put the 30 year case to rest, hopefully giving the Fales family a chance to move on. But for Tina's mother, justice didn't come soon enough.

[Drew Fales]

On the day prior to the trial, my mom had a massive heart attack.

[Karen Reiff]

I think she just couldn't go through the trial and died of a broken heart.

[Drew Fales]

A year after my sister's murder, my mom wrote a poem and she wrote the poem to my sister and it's called I had a dream. I had a dream.

[Karen Reiff]

I had a dream. It was a beautiful dream.

[Drew Fales]

It was a fantasy come true. Tina came home. We were all home again.

[Karen Reiff]

They laughed and cried and soon the teasing I missed because began. But soon Tina had to leave.

[Drew Fales]

Someday 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.

[Jim Knox]

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