IAPE Evidence Blog

10WALB, walb.com
BYLINE: Jade Bulecza, jade.bulecza@walb.com
Link to Article

Lown­des County, GA

Val­dosta, Georgia -

Lown­des County deputies had to scram­ble to pro­tect drugs and other evi­dence that’s nor­mally safely locked away in an evi­dence room.

That’s because a man acci­den­tally crashed his truck into the room.

That dri­ver, Ivey Star­ling, is still in the hospital.

This truck rammed into the wall at the sheriff’s office around noon.

72 year old Ivey Star­ling took his son Ivey Star­ling Jr. to the sheriff’s office to get his truck that was stolen over the week­end. Inves­ti­ga­tors say it shook the building.

“I was in my office talk­ing to some­one and all the sud­den a big boom and our alarm went off and I ran out and the truck was in the build­ing,” said Capt. Wanda Edwards.

“For unknown rea­sons he hit the accel­er­a­tor and come the con­crete curb­ing here and struck the wall,” said Trooper Jeremy Kinsey.

As you can see there’s dam­age here on the out­side and inside the walls have shifted and even the air con­di­tion­ing unit that cools Sher­iff Prine’s office has also been damaged.

Joseph Gif­ford is accused of steal­ing Ivey Star­ling Junior’s truck around mid­night from his home. Gif­ford was arrested on Williams School Road Mon­day morning.

County offi­cials were work­ing on a short term solu­tion to secure the area as they assess the damage.

“It’s actu­ally our evi­dence room where we keep our evi­dence store drugs and drug para­pher­na­lia such as that,” said Sher­iff Chris Prine.

“We’re going to come up with some kind of block­ing to cover the hole up,” said Chad McLeod, the Lown­des County project manager.

Troop­ers are still inves­ti­gat­ing what caused Star­ling to crash. 

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

San Fran­cisoc Chron­i­cal, S F Gate, sfgate.com

BYLINE: Henry K. Lee, Matthai Kuruvila,Demian Bulwa, Chron­i­cle Staff Writ­ers
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Pleasan­ton, CA

Law enforce­ment per­son­nel stand behind a photo of Tina Faelz, who was 14 years old when mur­dered, dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Pleasan­ton Police Depart­ment on Mon­day, Aug. 8, 2011, in Pleasan­ton, Calif. Police announced Mon­day they have arrested a sus­pect in the 1984 stab­bing case using DNA evi­dence. Photo: Noah Berger / Spe­cial to The Chronicle

PLEASANTON — Tina Faelz was 14 when she was stabbed numer­ous times and left to die in a drainage cul­vert that she and other kids used to cross under the free­way while walk­ing home from their Pleasan­ton high school. The 1984 crime shocked the quiet bed­room com­mu­nity and frus­trated the police who couldn’t solve it.

As the years passed, mem­o­ries faded, but tech­nol­ogy improved. And on Mon­day, author­i­ties said a DNA match had pin­pointed a sus­pect who had long been on inves­ti­ga­tors’ radar — a 43-year-old parolee who at the time of the slay­ing was a trou­bled 16-year-old stu­dent at Foothill High School.

In announc­ing the arrest, Pleasan­ton Police Chief David Spiller declined to name the sus­pect because he was a minor in 1984. But Alameda County jail records show he is Steven John Carl­son, who knew Faelz, lived near the short­cut under Inter­state 680, and went on to become a reg­is­tered sex offender.

Inves­ti­ga­tors do not believe Carl­son sex­u­ally assaulted Faelz, but Spiller declined to dis­cuss pos­si­ble motives in the case. He said the killing “notably changed Pleasan­ton and rocked this com­mu­nity. The best way to dis­cuss reac­tion to this mur­der was purely shock. The bru­tal mur­der of this 14-year-old fresh­man made the peo­ple of Pleasan­ton look at the world entirely dif­fer­ent that day.”

Carlson’s arrest leaves author­i­ties in the unusual posi­tion of march­ing a heav­ily tat­tooed man in his 40s into juve­nile court. He is sched­uled to be arraigned Wednes­day at the Alameda County Juve­nile Jus­tice Cen­ter in San Lean­dro, though pros­e­cu­tors said they would ask a judge to move him to adult court under laws in place in 1984.

Sus­pect not surprised

Spiller said Carl­son didn’t seem sur­prised when he was arrested at 8:15 a.m. Sun­day upon his release from Santa Cruz County Jail, where he had been held on unre­lated drug charges and a pro­ba­tion vio­la­tion since Decem­ber. Listed as a tran­sient, he was pre­vi­ously arrested at least half a dozen times last year in that county for non­vi­o­lent offenses.

He is now being held with­out bail at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. Records show he has been in and out of jails and pris­ons since the late 1980s, soon after his days at Foothill High.

In Yolo County, Carl­son was con­victed for com­mit­ting lewd acts with a child under 14, a 1989 offense that earned him the sex offender des­ig­na­tion and three years in prison. In Sacra­mento County, he was con­victed of assault with a deadly weapon in 2008 and sen­tenced to 120 days.

Pleasan­ton police said he was among the peo­ple that detec­tives inter­viewed shortly after Tina was found on April 5, 1984, in a drainage area off Lemon­wood Way. She had lived on the east side of the free­way, while Carl­son had lived on Lemon­wood on the west side near the high school. The short­cut is now inaccessible.

In 1984, though, the tech­nol­ogy for mak­ing DNA matches was vir­tu­ally nonex­is­tent. The break in the case came after 2007, when police sub­mit­ted bio­log­i­cal evi­dence to the FBI crime lab for re-examination.

Last year, author­i­ties said, the lab matched the evi­dence to Carl­son, prompt­ing them to rebuild their entire case — a process that cul­mi­nated Sun­day morning.

Mother ‘waited a long time’

Tina’s mother, Shirley Orosco, 63, was noti­fied of the arrest by the lead inves­ti­ga­tor, Detec­tive Keith Batt, on Sun­day. She declined to com­ment Mon­day, but her hus­band, Ron Orosco, told reporters that his wife “lost a child — that’s forever.”

He said, though, that the arrest had brought a mea­sure of relief. “She has to know before she dies, or I die, who was respon­si­ble,” he said.

Batt said, “I was really happy to get to meet with her yes­ter­day, finally, and let her know that we made an arrest. I’m hum­bled to be able to do that. She deserves it. She waited a long time.”

For­mer class­mates of the vic­tim and sus­pect — who both entered Foothill High in the fall of 1983 despite their age dif­fer­ence — said Mon­day that Carl­son had been known as “Creepy Carl­son” at school because of his demeanor and his thin, drawn appear­ance, which had changed rad­i­cally from junior high school.

They recalled hear­ing imme­di­ate rumors around cam­pus — which now has a plaque bear­ing Tina’s name, and a tree planted in her honor — that Carl­son had been involved in Faelz’s stabbing.

“It’s been on everybody’s mind for a very long time, and we’ve always won­dered what hap­pened,” said Michele Timm, who now lives in east­ern Con­tra Costa County. “It was some­thing that as a class we always talked about. And Steve’s name was always in our minds. We always thought he was the one who did it.”

She added, “27 years later, I don’t remem­ber any par­tic­u­lar rea­son why.”

Another class­mate, who asked that his name be with­held, said, “Every­one pretty much thought he did it — it was just one of those things. I remem­ber hear­ing kids say, ‘You did it, Steve, you did it, Steve,’ and he would laugh.”

Leslie Davis­son, 43, who used to cut through the same cul­vert, said the killing “rocked our teenage worlds. Here we were in this sub­ur­ban bub­ble. My par­ents moved there because it was a nice, safe place to raise kids.”

All day Mon­day, Davis­son said, friends dis­cussed the killing on Facebook.

“The fact that it was one of our class­mates,” she said, “who went to school and came back the next day as if noth­ing went down, sent shiv­ers down my spine.”

E-mail the writ­ers at hlee@sfchronicle.com, mkuruvila@sfchronicle.com and dbulwa@sfchronicle.com.

Foothill High’s cam­pus has a tree and marker in remem­brance of Tina Faelz, who died at age 14. Photo: Noah Berger / Spe­cial to The Chron­i­cle
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Pleasan­ton Police Chief David Spiller, right, and Annie Saadi, Alameda County deputy dis­trict attor­ney, lis­ten dur­ing a press con­fer­ence about the 1984 of 14-year-old Tina Faelz on Mon­day, Aug. 8, 2011, in Pleasan­ton, Calif. Speak­ing is lead inves­ti­ga­tor Lt. Jim Knox. Photo: Noah Berger / Spe­cial to The Chronicle

The home of Tina Faelz’s fam­ily is pic­tured on Mon­day, Aug. 8, 2011, in Pleasan­ton, Calif. Police announced Mon­day they have arrested a for­mer class­mate sus­pected of killing the 14-year-old stu­dent in 1984. Photo: Noah Berger / Spe­cial to The Chronicle

Law enforce­ment per­son­nel stand behind a photo of Tina Faelz as Pleasan­ton Police Chief David Spiller (right) announces an arrest in her stab­bing death. Photo: Noah Berger / Spe­cial to The Chronicle

Steven John Carl­son, who was 16 when his class­mate was killed, lived near the scene of the slay­ing. Class­mates said they had always sus­pected he was involved. Photo: Cal­i­for­nia Megan’s Law Web­site
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Moun­tain Xpress (Asheville, North Carolina)

Bun­combe County, NC

Feb­ru­ary 24, 2010 — March 2, 2010

After con­firm­ing that the 48 bags con­tained pot, the 42 bags were split evenly, 17 bags each, between the two offi­cers’ trunks for safe keep­ing. There, it remained undis­turbed until the next ear­li­est and con­ve­nient time that the stash could be handed over to the evidence-room offi­cer — some­time later in the week.

Few peo­ple grasp the full impor­tance of the chain of evi­dence and how vital it is to the oper­a­tion of our jus­tice sys­tem. Here in Bun­combe County, a for­merly anti­quated and sloppy evidence-handling pro­ce­dure has been replaced by a state-of-the-art sys­tem with numer­ous fail-safes. Take a look at how the chain of evi­dence was main­tained in a recent mar­i­juana arrest:

After pulling a vehi­cle to the side of the road for a mov­ing vio­la­tion, the arrest­ing offi­cer noticed the strong odor of mar­i­juana. Once backup arrived, the two offi­cers searched the vehi­cle and, sure enough, found 50 pounds of mar­i­juana con­tained in 50 one-pound bags.

After con­firm­ing that the 48 bags con­tained pot, the 42 bags were split evenly, 17 bags each, between the two offi­cers’ trunks for safe keep­ing. There, it remained undis­turbed until the next ear­li­est and con­ve­nient time that the stash could be handed over to the evidence-room offi­cer — some­time later in the week.

At that time, the 30 pounds of mar­i­juana, con­tained in 25 or so tightly-sealed evi­dence bags, was ver­i­fied and checked into the mar­i­juana safe area of the evi­dence room, to be thor­oughly tested. Legally speak­ing, that par­tic­u­larly evi­dence was some good stuff, man.

Despite a tiny frac­tion being lost to the test­ing process, the 17 pounds of con­tra­band were con­firmed and re-entered into the locked evi­dence room, where they remained 100-percent safe from being used and/or sold by enter­pris­ing law-enforcement offi­cials, then replaced with a mix­ture of grass clip­pings and oregano before trial.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org