Investigators Seek Leads In Teen's Grisly Unsolved Murder

ALAMEDA COUNTY, CA — It has been 34 years since Kellie Jean Poppleton, 14, was found dead along Kilkare Road in Sunol. More than three decades later, on the anniversary of her death, investigators with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office are revisiting the cold case seeking leads in the teenager’s grisly death.

Poppleton attended Conrad Noll School in Fremont and was last seen alive in the area of Darwin Drive and Fremont Boulevard. On Dec. 2, 1983, Poppleton's body was found badly beaten, strangled and sexually assaulted along the remote road in Alameda County, according to media reports. Investigators at the time suspected Poppleton’s death was possibly related to a school drug ring. The sheriff’s office said witnesses reported a black Pontiac Trans Am in the area where her body was found.

The murder of Tina Faelz was of the most infamous cold cases ever solved in Alameda County. Unsolved until 2011, interest still lingers around the tragic 1984 murder that took the teen's life and eventually put Steven Carlson behind bars. Carlson, a former Pleasanton resident, was convicted of first-degree murder in 2014 in the brutal stabbing death. However, in January 2017, a three-judge Court of Appeal panel said the conviction must be reduced to second-degree murder because prosecutors hadn't proved the element of premeditation and deliberate intent needed for a first-degree murder conviction.

Faelz, a freshman at Foothill High School, died after suffering 44 stab wounds when she was on her way home from school on the afternoon of April 5, 1984. Her body was found in a drainage ditch adjacent to Interstate Highway 680, east of the high school. Carlson lived nearby on Lemonwood Way.

The case was cold for more than two decades, but in 2011, authorities announced that DNA investigations begun in 2007 linked a spot of blood found on Faelz's purse, which was found hanging from a tree at the homicide scene, to Carlson. Carlson, who then had a criminal record that included convictions for drug crimes and a lewd act on a 13-year-old girl, was arrested and charged with the murder. He was tried as an adult and convicted.

Read More:

• Steven Carlson Convicted of First-Degree Murder of Tina Faelz
• Steven Carlson Gets 26 Years to Life in Prison

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