Unsolved Slaying of Boy Leaves Neighborhood Unnerved

A “sold” sign now sits on the well-kept lawn of the home where 12-year-old Greg Anderson was found stabbed to death on the kitchen floor June 2.

Investigators have interviewed more than 1,000 people, searching for clues that may lead them to the killer who took the life of a boy described as studious and well liked, and who changed this quiet, affluent neighborhood in East Tustin.

“Our investigators are still sifting through the information,” said Lt. Richard Olson, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department. “We have nothing of a concrete nature at all. I wish we did have something.”

Neighbors in the 18000 block of Bikini Place fear the killer who is still at large and don’t want to give their names.

One resident said the neighborhood is “pretty much all back to normal” and that most people would rather forget about the killing and continue with their lives.

But Greg’s death still casts its shadow along the quiet streets, where residents now look suspiciously at strangers and don’t hesitate to call police.

“We thought we were in the inner sanctum and immune to it here,” one neighbor said. Now he answers his door with a loaded gun.

The Andersons now live somewhere else in the county, the neighbor said.

“They were moving back in one day but came back before dark and said they couldn’t move back in the house,” the neighbor said.

Horror came to the neighborhood on a sunny Thursday afternoon, soon after Greg returned home from school.

Shortly after 3 p.m., his 15-year-old sister arrived home and found his body on the kitchen floor. She ran to a neighbor, who went to the house and found Greg lying face down in a pool of blood. A knife was near the body.

Greg routinely came home from nearby Hewes Middle School about 2:30 p.m., usually riding his motocross bike, his stepmother told police.

On that day, she had left the house at 2:10 p.m. She returned home to find sheriff’s investigators cordoning off the crime scene.

Investigators spent more than a week in the neighborhood gathering evidence and interviewing anyone who may have seen anything.

To protect their investigation, authorities will not say whether they found fingerprints or where the knife came from.

The slaying especially shocked Greg’s schoolmates, many of whom learned of Greg’s death the next day when Principal Julie Hume addressed the 750 students at Hewes Middle School.

Nearly 400 classmates and friends attended memorial services for Greg, where he was eulogized as a shy but friendly boy who was very studious and enjoyed baseball.

Before school closed for summer, school officials, teachers and psychologists encouraged students to use a “buddy system” walking to and from school and asked parents to check on other children whose parents get home from work in the evening.

Sheriff’s investigators continue to work full time on the case.

“It’s been very difficult” for the family, Olson said. “They’ve been through an ordeal.”