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-Police release name of friend who had disclosed details of the woman’s killing. By STEVE E. SWENSON Californian staff writer e-mail sswenson @ bakersfield.com on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Tina Blunt’s abduction and suffocation death, Bakersfield police disclosed the name of a man they say knew informa tion known “only by the killer or some one the killer told.” Sgt. Mike Cantrell and detective Dennis McBride said the man who had the information is Jeremy William Fender, 30, a lifelong family friend of Blunt. Fender's grandparents lived near the Connie Street home of Blunt, who was abducted March 31 sometime after 3:30 a.m., when she left for her ticket agent job at Meadows Field, McBride said. Her body was found April 14 in a sunken field of grass and trees off Bear Mountain Boulevard, a half-mile west of Highway 99. The abduction of the friendly, outgoing mother of two touched the heart of Kern County, which reacted with public expressions of sorrow, appeals for help and campaigns to help find her body and her killer. A Eureka-based foundation, estab lished after the disappearance in Yosemite of a mother, her teenage daughter and a friend of the daughter, contributed $30,000 in a reward fund to the Tina Blunt case. While McBride declined to say whether Fender is a suspect, he said Fender is “a focus of the investigation.” McBride and Cantrell said they are releasing Fender's name now in hopes it will lead to further information that might end what McBride describes as “a solvable case.” Fender could not be reached for com ment, but his mother, Glenda Alright, who lives in the same Oildale apartment complex as her son, said Wednesday evening her son does not want to talk to anybody about it. She said he is innocent and she denied that he had any killer-generated informa tion on the case. McBride, however, said Fender admit ted to him that he had information at least 12 days before Blunt’s body was found about the type of area in which the body was located. That information — that the body would be found near a truck stop, a body of water and toward the Grapevine— was first reported to police two days after Blunt disappeared, McBride said. The information was relayed in a call from one of Fender’s relatives, he said. It was one of scores of telephone calls police received in the highly publicized case. Ultimately, rewards of up to $40,000 were offered for information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of the killer. McBride said the information became “very, very significant” when Blunt's body was found near truck scales and a small lake relatively close to the Grapevine. The informant’s reports never men tioned a street name, McBride said. But Please run to BLUNT / A16 Tina Blunt CASEY CHRISTIE /THE CALIFORNIAN Across was erected in a field off Bear Mountain Boulevard, where Tina Blunt’s body was found.
Newspaper Details
Bakersfield Californian
Bakersfield, California, US
Sat, Mar 25, 2000
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 30 Apr 2026
Other Publications Near Bakersfield, California
The Berkshire County Eagle
Southern Californian and Kern Weekly Courier
The Weekly Californian
Kern County Californian
Daily Californian
