FRANCES MARIE WAITES KILLER GUILTY, 27 YEARS ON

SOLVED

CAUGHT

THE trail of blood told it's own horrifying story.
Frances Marie Waites had been stabbed in her bedroom, before running through the kitchen to lock herself in a back room.
But her killer had followed, smashing his way through  to reach her,
By the time her friend arrived at her Portland, OR home to pick her up for work the next morning, she'd been sexually assaulted and stabbed numerous times.
Her arms and hands had been cut in what police call defensive wounds — signs that she'd fought for her life — and her throat had been slit almost to the bone.
 It was a vicious killing and detectives hit the case hard her killer managed to evade justice for 27-years, until this week when Frederick Alvin Richey agreed to plead for the murder.
At the time they'd gathered evidence, hair found on her body and bodily fluid samples.
They even interviewed Richey after Waites' friend reported seeing a man he didn't know near the house the morning she died and picked him out of a series of mugshots, but he denied ever knowing her. 
Eight months later, he was convicted of manslaughter in connection with the strangulation of a woman in her Northeast Portland home.
A man later told detectives that he'd met Richey in jail and he'd confessed to murdering her in anger after she reneged on a cocaine deal.
Even then, the case languished and was forgotten.
Then in 2008, a retired Portland detective working with the Cold Case Unit started looking into the matter.
By then, advances had been made in DNA technology and he learned that evidence from the Waites case had been properly preserved.
In September 2009, the Oregon State Police crime lab ran DNA from the bodily fluids in the case through a database and Richey was a match.
He was arrested in July 2010.
Wednesday afternoon, the district attorney told the judge that the DNA match was one in a billion. Richey was their man.
Faced with the overwhelming evidence and the possibility of 20-years in jail if he went to trial or plead no contest to murder and hope for less time when he is sentenced in October.
He took the deal.

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SCHOOLGIRL TINA FAELZ 1984 SLAY SOLVED: COPS

THE BRUTAL 1984 slaying of schoolgirl Tina Faelz has finally been solved after 27 years, cops say.
More than a quarter-of-a-century ago the 14-year-old's body was found viciously stabbed over 15 times near a dark culvert, which she had used as a shortcut home from school in Santa Cruz, CA. Yet despite huge community outcry and massive investigation by police, no one was ever charged with her murder. But now police believe that thanks to new DNA technology they have caught their killer - a fellow pupil at the time, Steven John Carlson, now 43. Carlson, who would have been 16 at the time of the murder, was
a schoolmate of Faelz at  Foothill High School and he was questioned at the time but later released.
Now living as a transient, with no fixed address, his DNA was in the system after a series of minor crimes, which matches that found at the scene of the crime.     
Pleasanton police Capt. Craig Eicher was a senior at Foothill High when Tina Faelz's body was found told the Mercury News that there was a lot of fear in the community at the time.
He said: "I think there are a lot of folks who will have a big sigh of relief now that this suspect will be brought to justice."
Tina's mother, Shirley Orosco, who still lives in Pleasanton, declined to comment Monday, but in a 2005 interview with the paper she revealed that about a month before her death, Tina was having problems with some kids at school and had stopped riding the bus home. 
She said: "I would like to see whoever did this pay for it. I lost a daughter."
It appears she will get her wish. 

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