Lil’ Miss Murder

Lisa Marie Kimmell (18) was on a road trip from Colorado to Montana to visit her boyfriend and parents. She left on March 25, 1988, but never made it to her destiny. The last confirmed sighting of her was at 9:08 pm of the same day she left, when a state tropper issued her a ticket for speeding in Wyoming.

On April 2, a fisherman found Lisa’s body in a river. She’d been raped, stabbed multiple times and had been dealt a fatal blow on the head. At the time, police said that there was something distinctive about the stab wounds that led them to believe Lisa had been tortured; it was later revealed that they formed a circle around her chest.

Because the body had been in cold water, it was hard to determine how long she’d been dead. Police thought she had been killed shortly after going missing. Later they would learn they had been wrong about that.

Lisa drove a Honda with the very distinctive plate LIL MISS, and that’s why her case eventually got named Lil’ Miss Murder. Several witness claimed to have seen that car driving around after Lisa went missing, but authorities could never corroborate the sightings.

The case went unsolved for over a decade, until in 2002 the DNA that had been collected at the crime scene produced a match. The suspect was Dale Wayne Eaton, who at the time was in prison for kidnapping and possession of a gun. Police found Lisa’s car buried in Eaton’s property, and with such clear evidence he was charged for her rape, kidnapping and murder.

Eaton ended up admitting to the murder and revealed he had kept Lisa alive for six days before killing her. During his trial, a handwriting expert testified that a note that had been left at Lisa’s grave six months after her death was written by Eaton. The note read: Lisa –There are'nt (sic) words to say how much you’re missed the pain never leaves it’s so hard without you you’ll always be alive in me. Your death is my painful loss but Heaven’s sweet gain. Love always, Stringfellow Hawke. Eaton denied writing it.

He was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was the only man in death row in Wyoming, but in 2014 it was overturned because a judge considered that his defenders hadn’t done an adequate job during his sentencing phase. Prosecution could still file to have the death penalty reinstated, but with pending claims in court it doesn’t seem like they will, and Eaton might just stay with life without parole.

On April 5, 1984, Tina Faelz (14) decided not to take the school bus home to avoid some girls who were bullying her. Instead, she took a shortcut home through a drainage culvert close to the freeway. It was a somewhat creepy looking path, but this was Pleasanton, California. In the last 40 years, there had only been 5 murders.

Sadly, Tina came to be one more. Her body was found in that culvert around 3:25 pm by some kids. She’d been stabbed 44 times and there was no sign of sexual assault. Police believed she’d been dead for at most 15 minutes when she was found, and the shape of the wounds suggested the killer’s hand had slipped to the blade more than once during the stabbing. They also discovered Tina’s purse hanging from a tree, and they theorized it had been left there by the murderer as a marker so they could later come back and get rid of the body.

Many suspects came up during the investigation. One of them was Steve Carlson, who was 16 at the time. Steve didn’t have much interaction with Tina that anyone knew of, but he’d been overheard by some people claiming responsibility for her murder, although after he always said he was joking. He also had severe problems with alcohol and drugs, which only increased after Tina’s murder, especially since he dropped out from high school.

One of Steve’s friends, who was used by him as an alibi for the time of the murder, said he’d found odd that when Tina’s body was discovered, Steve had refused to go see her. It was uncharacteristic of a boy attracted to morbid things who’d more than once tortured animals, according to this same witness who later denied he’d been with Steve when Tina was killed.

The evidence against him was circumstantial, so Steve wasn’t arrested. He went on to live a life of crime that included sexual offences. But in 2011, police retested Tina’s purse and matched the bloodstains left there to Steve’s DNA. He was arrested, tried and convicted of first degree murder, which meant he’d spend at least 26 years behind bars. However, in January 2017, the Court of Appeals changed his conviction to second degree murder, which reduced his sentence in 10 years.