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Looking over statistics of our most-popular stories for a given week or month is always fascinating, as I strive to gauge what our readers crave.
Usually those articles are among our freshest, like a public safety emergency or big council decision that just happened, or an exclusive feature or investigative story, or a recent topic making the rounds on social media.
So consider me stunned when a story from nearly two years ago popped up at least a half-dozen times on our weekly recap lists this spring and summer.
I even asked our IT director if the data was correct – the numbers aren’t lying, he told me (I’m paraphrasing).
Sure enough, what might end up as our top-read story of 2022 was actually published on Oct. 23, 2020: “36 years later: Former classmate confesses to murder of Pleasanton’s Tina Faelz.”
Reporting the then-latest update in one of the Tri-Valley’s most infamous crimes, the article by our publisher Gina Channell Wilcox centered on convicted killer Steven Carlson’s admission in letters to the parole board and the Faelz family that he stabbed his 14-year-old Foothill High School classmate to death in 1984. He had maintained his innocence to that point.
As many with long ties to Pleasanton remember, the gruesome murder went unsolved for decades until DNA investigations into a blood spot found on Faelz’s purse connected Carlson to the crime in 2011.
Carlson, who was 16 at the time of the killing, was subsequently charged as an adult and convicted by a jury of first-degree murder in 2014 as a 46-year-old. (The state Court of Appeal later reduced the conviction to second-degree murder, reasoning that prosecutors hadn’t proven premeditation and deliberate intent at trial.)
Thus the confession letters upon parole eligibility in 2020, for which he was ultimately denied. But that doesn’t really explain why our past Faelz coverage received renewed readership this year.
The answer lies, in part, in the true crime docu-series “A Time to Kill” on Apple TV. The premiere episode of Season 5, released in January, centered on the Faelz case. Our in-house data shows a spike that month in eyes on our confession story almost comparable to the initial peak upon publication in October 2020.
Interestingly, after the viewership dipped back down to mostly double digits per day, the Faelz story ticked back up and has maintained a moderate plateau of daily action since June 20. And that’s not just quick clicks; the story has appeared on our “most time spent on page” list too.
I’ve been hard-pressed to pinpoint the cause, but we did hear that one of the other past documentaries on the murder rebroadcast on TV in parts of the country around that date.
Whatever readers’ recent motivations, it is now among our top-performing articles of all time.
Carlson is next eligible for parole next year, and you can bet we’ll be watching – just like we’ve been following the case since our inception in 2000, including our “Who killed Tina Faelz?” cover story when it was still cold in 2008 to Carlson’s arrest, conviction, sentencing and partial victory on appeal.
Speaking of parole, another Tri-Valley crime that made national headlines decades ago was back in the news last week as the state parole board granted release to Frederick Woods, the final convict still imprisoned for the 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping for ransom.
Woods and brothers Richard and James Schoenfeld seized control of a bus with schoolchildren in the town near Fresno, ditched the bus and drove the 26 kids and the bus driver up to a quarry in Livermore – where they buried the victims in a large van while demanding a $5 million ransom.
The victims managed to escape, and the trio were ultimately arrested and convicted of 27 counts of kidnapping for ransom.
The Schoenfelds were paroled in 2012 and 2015, respectively, but Woods remained behind bars in part with a history of infractions while in prison.
But the 18th time was the charm for now-70-year-old Woods, as the parole board affirmed his release following a hearing Aug. 16 after Gov. Gavin Newsom asked the board to reconsider parole for Woods. The governor could not block parole outright because it was not a murder case, according to the Associated Press.
Parole is a complex call, often cast in competing priorities – things like inmate remorse, admission and personal evolution, the feelings of victims and/or their families, public safety, community interest, criminal justice precedent and prison facilities, just to name a few. Not a duty I envy.
That said, let’s hope the governor is keeping a close eye out the next time Carlson comes up for parole. Only 12 years incarcerated for Faelz’s murder? I’m not sure that would be just.
Editor’s note: Jeremy Walsh has been the editor of the Embarcadero Media East Bay Division since February 2017. His “What a Week” column publishes on the second and fourth Fridays of the month.
