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
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 going to stop at
our house
there was the next day that i found out
from my parents when it happened
that my sister was killed
a truck driver's driving through
pleasanton on the freeway
looked over to his right
and saw what he felt was a person in
distress or possibly harm
he starts walking down the drainage
culvert he sees blood
and realizes there's a dead body down in
the creek
i always dreaded getting a notification
call like that
somebody killed a little girl
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 fails on it
freshman at foothill high school she was
stabbed 44 times another thing that was
noted by the corner 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
there was very little to go on so we had
to rely on talking to people detectives
go up to foothill high school and they
start interviewing students looking for
leads to follow up on 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
tina could no longer ride the bus
she had to go through the culvert
it was like a swamp
it felt spooky
the tunnel itself
seemed like crossing into another
dimension
once you got halfway you couldn't see
anything it was pitch black
the day tina was murdered
the girls that taunted tina had thrown
rocks at her
i think that day one of them had said
hey let's
tie tina to a tree and stab her
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
shortly before 3 p.m
two students were riding in a car
steve carlson and todd smith
carlson remarked look there's tina fails
as she was headed toward the culvert
steve sees a male student named jeff
michelson
running through the drainage culvert
that goes under i-680 right around three
o'clock or 305 at the time of the murder
jeff michelson
becomes one of the first big suspects in
the case
investigators find out that tina's mom
surely has a boyfriend who has recently
moved out
his name is keith fitzwater
keith moved out of the fails residence
because he was creating some family
tension in the house
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 started drinking heavily
he had been violent towards shirley
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
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 a 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
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
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
investigators continue to look at keith
fitzwater
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
keith asked his boss if he could get a
ride from him to shirley's house because
tina had been stabbed to death
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
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
we retrieved the knife and sent it for
analysis
it came back with no trace of blood
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
as the case gets older and older
she slowly started deteriorating just
mentally
she would always have her house spotless
then 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
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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
where do we have the best chance of
finding something that maybe was
overlooked before
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 on to
her purse and and possibly trying to
fight back with it using it as a weapon
it just really clicked that probably the
last person to touch this purse
was the suspect i handed it over through
the chain of evidence to the fbi in
quantico virginia 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
fails 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
i wasn't ready for
what i discovered
the fbi agent says
it's steve carlson
the student who is locked in the
dumpster
later after tina's body was found
steve was the first witness officers
spoke with
he told them that he saw a male student
named jeff michelson
in the general vicinity of the crime
scene on that particular day
he was trying to push investigators
toward another suspect
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 it's you don't want
to believe it
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
so at that point steve returned home to
his house
and got into
his mom's car
and started driving around the
neighborhood steve tells them that tina
gives him
a dirty look like why are you speeding
through the neighborhood
we believe that steve got upset
and at that point decided to follow tina
down into that creek
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
we're looking in
to a homicide that occurred in
pleasanton in 1984 in high school do you
remember that you were in high school
tina fales got killed do you remember
that
yeah
we're recontacting old
steve became violently ill you're under
arrest for the murderous senator
but for tina's mom
justice didn't come soon enough
on the day prior to the trial
my mom had a massive heart attack
i think she just couldn't go through the
trial
and
died of a broken heart
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