DNA Cracks Infamous Cold Case Murders: Belmont Man ID'd In Case

Police have identified a suspect who they believe brutally killed Thomas and Alice Green in their East Bay home almost 40 years ago.

March 12, 2019

LIVERMORE, CA — Investigators in Livermore are crediting DNA technology and old-fashioned police work with solving a 1981 double homicide. Thomas and Alice Green were found dead in a bedroom of their Livermore home on June 3, 1981. She suffered multiple stab wounds and blunt force trauma. He had been bound and shot once. For years the case was cold.

"In 2002, LPD evidence technicians were able to retrieve DNA samples from evidence collected during the initial investigation into these murders," police said. "Based on where the collected DNA was located, detectives were confident that the person whose DNA was collected was the person responsible for the murders."

Despite the DNA discovery, a match was never made. Almost 40 years later, using new DNA technology, tenacious investigators identified a relative of the suspect.

"Using autosomal DNA testing, it was determined that Gregory Michael Peyton was the suspect in this case," police said. "LPD detectives immediately began reviewing Peyton's relationship to the victims. Peyton was the brother of Thomas and Alice Green's daughter's husband.

About three years after the Greens were killed, Peyton, a Belmont resident, killed his wife and took his own life in Oklahoma in October 1984, according to police.

Police said there are four unsolved Livermore homicides that are continually being investigated.

The murder of Tina Faelz in Pleasanton was one 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 while she was on her way home from school 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 — 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.