Joshua Suchon, former Bay Area sports writer who just released the book "Murder in Pleasanton: Tina Falez and The Search for Justice."
Joshua Suchon, former Bay Area sports writer who just released the book "Murder in Pleasanton: Tina Falez and The Search for Justice." (Photo courtesy of Joshua Suchon)

PLEASANTON -- Sports journalist Joshua Suchon was a 10-year-old paperboy for the Tri-Valley Herald in 1984 when he delivered the news that Tina Faelz, a 14-year-old girl from his Pleasanton neighborhood, had been brutally murdered while walking home from Foothill High School.
Suchon and other Pleasantonians who grew up in the shadow of the long unsolved murder waited 30 years before Tina's former schoolmate Steven Carlson was convicted based on DNA evidence at a trial where no motive was presented. 
The convicting jury heard there had been little contact between the teens before Tina was found stabbed and slashed 44 times at the foot of a culvert near the Carlson family home.
The jury never heard what Suchon learned in his reporting for his newly released book, "Murder in Pleasanton: Tina Faelz and the Search for Justice."
"Murder in Pleasanton" reveals a shocking and little-known connection between Tina and Carlson that provides for a possible motive to the killing for which Carlson still claimed innocence when he was sentenced in January to 26 years to life in prison.