A man convicted of killing his 14-year-old Pleasanton classmate wrote a confession letter to the girls’ family— 36 years after her death.

Steve Carlson was convicted in 2014 of killing Foothill High School freshman Tina Faelz as she walked home from school in April 1984. Carlson, 52, was supposed to have a parole hearing two weeks ago but asked that it be canceled, according to Alameda County District Attorney prosecutor Jill Klinge. His next hearing won’t be for another three years.

Klinge asked that Carlson’s confession letters be released to her, to give to the family. Called “remorse letters” the family wanted a sense of closure, as he’s never admitted to the killing. In the handwritten letters, made available to the San Francisco Chronicle, Carlson confesses to the killing. He was 16 at the time of the killing, and was tried as an adult in the case.

“I was living in denial for many years; not being able to believe or take responsibility for brutily(sic) murdering you on that day of April 5, 1984,” he wrote.

“I want you and your family to know you did absolutely nothing to deserve what I did to you. That’s what makes this murder so callous and horrific.”

The parole hearing would have been Carlson’s first since being re-sentenced to 16 years to life in prison in 2017. When convicted in 2014 of first-degree murder, he was sentenced to 26 years to life in prison. But in 2017, a state appellate court reduced his conviction to second-degree murder, saying there was not enough evidence of premeditation and deliberation.

Tina was walking home from from Foothill High School and taking a shortcut on April 5, 1984, when she was stabbed 44 times. The homicide case went cold until 2011, when DNA found on her purse linked the killing to Carlson.

Carlson was a drug addict in Tina’s freshman class but had little interaction with her, according to evidence from the trial. He lived next to the murder scene at the time.

On the day of the murder, an intoxicated Carlson left school early after being bullied by fellow classmates, who had put him inside a Dumpster.

He was questioned as a person of interest after Tina’s death, and again in 1986 when he told people at a party that he killed Tina, but later claimed it was a joke.

In a 2011 interview with this news organization from jail, Carlson denied he killed her, stating at the time that police were blaming him to close the case.

Carlson remains in prison at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi.