January 23, 2025 • 52 mins
This week, we go back to the 70's for another infamous crime: The Barbecue Murders! This is a classic tale of parricide, but the details muddy the waters a bit when thinking about who is really at fault, and who is really a victim. Sixteen year old Marlene Olive, adopted at birth and never allowed to forget it, doesn't know love, only control. Her boyfriend, Chuck, doesn't think he's deserving of love and does whatever he can to continually earn Marlene's affection, including plotting to kill her parents, Jim and Naomi Olive. But Chuck isn't the only one Marlene draws into her web, and Jim and Naomi may not be the innocent victims you'd expect. Tune in now for a wild tale of family drama that ends in a horrific double murder.
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Sources:
https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C5198791
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue_murders
https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/07/21/infamous-marin-killer-will-have-court-ordered-parole-hearing-in-september/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/70213152/
Join us on instagram: True Crime California
Send us an email with case suggestions, or just say hi! truecrimecaliforniapod@gmail.com
A proud member of the Darkcast Network
Sources:
https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C5198791
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue_murders
https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/07/21/infamous-marin-killer-will-have-court-ordered-parole-hearing-in-september/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/70213152/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Dark Cast Network. Out of the shadows come the best
indie podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
and I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Heay, guys, welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
This is another episode of True Crime California and we
got another California murder for you guys today. Before I
get into that, I just want to say that this week, Socks,
my city is on fire. I live in Los Angeles
and I know a lot of people who have lost
their homes. A ton of people are now out of work.
(00:54):
Shit sucks right now. It's really really rough. You know,
where I am, the air quality is okay, but a
lot of people I know that's not the case. We're able.
I'm in the valley, I'm in Burbank. So when the
fires were just starting, we were literally like in the
middle of the triangle of like crazy fires and they
were able to put one out pretty quickly. And then
(01:14):
now it's just these two, the Palisades Fire and the
Eaten Fire have just literally decimated the areas and we
still don't have even fifty percent containment on either fire.
It's just it's been a rough week. So tomorrow will
be one week from the day that the fires broke out.
(01:37):
I was actually on the beach in Santa Monica. I
mentioned this in the last podcast. I was on the
beach when we saw the fire kind of taking off
in the Palisades, and we saw you know, police and
fire racing towards the location. And obviously it didn't really
they didn't get there in time or they weren't able
to stop it. Because we're at like almost twenty four
(01:57):
thousand acres in the powers, thousands of structures just completely gone,
historical structures.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
It's it's really awful.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
And in Altadina, which is like largely a black populated
area and an area populated with artists and people who
don't have a lot of money, there's over seven thousand
structures gone. Something like eleven people died. I mean it's
I think they're up to sixteen now.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I heard.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
It's absolutely awful. So I just wanted to know what's
going on. I went and volunteered last weekend. I donated
some stuff. I'm going to keep trying to volunteer. It's
really just like clearing brush, clearing debris, helping rebuild and
hopefully staving off these evil developers that want to buy
up the land, just like they did in Hawaii. I mean,
it's not an accident that they just in Los Angeles
(02:46):
announced they want to build a smart city, and now
we have two areas that are completely leveled. I know
that's like bordering on conspiracy theory, but at this point,
like I don't think the rich are above anything. So anyway,
it's been.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
A rough week.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
But let's lick our wounds and make ourselves feel better
with a little true crime, shall we. This week, I'm
going to cover a pretty well known case. This case
is known as the Barbecue murders, and we're going back
to the seventies for this case. As a pretty gnarly story.
It takes place not just in California, but the murder
(03:22):
is in California, so it counts this. Actually the murder
takes place in Tara Linda, which is back in the
Bay Area near San Francisco, but a little bit more northern.
It's actually a district in the city of San Rafel,
which is in Marin County. And yes, that is how
you say it. It's spelled San Raphael, but it said
it's pronounced San Rafel. I had a friend who worked
(03:45):
for the mayor there, so I happen to know. It's
a pretty cool spy. It's close to the ocean on
both sides. It's not I don't know if you'd called
a peninsula. I don't know what we call it, but
it's really nice. It's surrounded by water, you know, especially
recently with gentriv and everything, it's really become like a
very beautiful area with a lot of rich homes. And
(04:05):
as a note, it's about twenty miles from Petaluma, which
is where Polyclass lived at the time of her abduction.
She was two episodes ago, so if you want to
hear about her from my perspective, feel free.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
To tune into that one.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
This case is interesting because it doesn't necessarily begin in Ecuador,
but it takes place in part in Ecuador. And I'm
going to start this case by talking about the victims first.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
So we have.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
James Jim Olive, who was an army recruit when he
met and married Naomi Wagner in nineteen forty four. Now, Naomi,
I believe, was only about nineteen at the time and
Jim was twenty eight. Naomi had grown up in a
pretty unstable household with her mother being sent to mental
hospitals starting when Naomi was about two years old and
(04:52):
having suffered from what today I believe would be called schizophrenia.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
They may have changed that again, but they were.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Calling it like schizoid personality disorder or something back then,
or maybe that's what they call it now. I have
difficulty My mom suffers from it, but I have a
difficult time keeping up with the names. So this obviously
deeply affected Naomi, as we'll see, and you can imagine
how difficult this was for her, considering it was sort
of like her way of life, like she grew up
(05:19):
from the age of two seeing her mother in and
out of these hospitals. And this continued until Naomi was
eleven years old, which is when her mother died.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
And I'm sure that's very traumatic.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
And I do not have details on how her mother died,
but I cannot imagine that it was of natural causes.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
She was only in her thirties.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I don't have Naomi's exact date of birth, but she
was born sometime in nineteen twenty five, so again, in
nineteen forty four, she's around nineteen years old. Jim is
twenty eight, and they get married From there, they moved
around a bit, mostly because of Jim's work in both
real estate and oil. Jim came from a wealthy family
and his father was a bit older when he was born,
(06:02):
so by the time Jim Naomi got married, his father
was already in his seventies, and in fact, he died
the same year that these two got married, and Jim's
mother died only five years later. Now she wasn't quite
as old, but she was in her sixties, so I
believe that in both instances it was natural causes. Now,
(06:23):
because the family was rich and because both of his
parents died, this meant that before thirty years old, Jim
had a pretty sizable inheritance which he used to attempt.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
To strike it rich in real estate.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Now unfortunately, this didn't pan out, and he ended up
working in oil and moved to both Panama and Ecuador.
And I believe that he had spent some time in
those areas when he was younger, as he was fluent
in Spanish. So Jim really enjoyed this time abroad, whereas
Naomi was.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Not so happy there.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
She refused to learn the language. She didn't so she
didn't speak Spanish and she thought that the women in
the market and on the street were making fun of her,
which to me sounds like the beginnings of some paranoia issues.
Naomi became increasingly unhappy even as the couple moved back
to the United States and decided the way to fix
this was to have a baby. Unfortunately, try as they might,
(07:17):
the couple was unable to conceive. Fortunately, rich people also
have good connections, and Jim had connections to wealthy and
powerful families, including one in Virginia, where the couple was living.
When the teenage daughter of one of these local wealthy
families became pregnant, of course, the family did not want
(07:39):
people to find out about the pregnancy because it would
bring shame to them, so they allowed Jim and Naomi
to adopt the baby girl, who they named Marlene, the
day after she was born on January sixteenth, nineteen fifty nine.
That's the adoption day. She was born on the fifteenth.
Naomi unfortunately did not find peace or happiness with baby Marlene,
(08:00):
and in fact, Marlene's presence seemed to bring out some
underlying issues within Naomi, dealing with mental health. Mostly for
the first six months of Marlene's life, nobody was allowed
to be near her without wearing a gauze mask over
their face, and this included both Naomi and Jim.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Now, obviously this.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Is very weird, but it's also super detrimental to babies
to not be able to see the faces of the
adults that they're interacting with, because babies use facial expressions
and facial recognition to bond with people. The importance of
this cannot be overstated, and not having this probably really
stunted Marlene's emotional growth right off the bat. So she's
(08:40):
already being traumatized and borderline abused. And obviously this isn't
intended as abuse at this point, but it ends up
kind of being that. Naomi was also a super clean freak,
obsessively wiping down the house not just daily, but like hourly.
She was a stay at home mom, so had all
the time in the world to obsess over cleanliness, and
(09:02):
Jim worked long hours in the oil industry, so she
had nobody to help her or sort of keep her
grounded or really even notice what was going.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
On with her.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
When Marlene was very young, as I mentioned previously, the
family moved to Ecuador. They lived there for the first
ten years of Marlene's life, so pretty much right after
she was born, they moved and so Marlene was raised bilingual.
Now again, Naomi had refused to learn Spanish, and so
she wasn't able to communicate with Marlene this way, which
(09:34):
put up a barrier between them. So it's kind of
like another barrier already, and in fact, as Marlene got older,
whenever she was angry with her mother, which we'll see
was often, she would talk to her father about it
in Spanish, so that Naomi couldn't understand her, which obviously,
you know that's not gonna fly. That's going to be
a big, a big fucking problem beyond the language barrier,
(09:57):
which I mean, you know, they could communicate in English,
but I feel like the barrier is a great example
of their relationship in general. Naomi's overbearing, obsessive behavior didn't
really stop as Marlene grew up, and it definitely put
a strain on their relationship. Marlene was wilful even at
a young age, and Naomi generally unhappy with her life
and the living situation and likely battling fairly severe mental illness.
(10:21):
Took too heavy drinking to manage her stress. Naomi refused
to go to the doctor for her mental health because
she was so traumatized by her mother's experience and so
terrified of ending up like her, which I mean, it
kind of sounds like she's headed that way, but I
guess her answer was to just ignore it and drink heavily,
(10:43):
which she did daily from about the time Marlene was
ten years old. So we just have trauma on trauma
on trauma, like generational trauma. Marlene kind of doesn't stand
a chance. I mean, basically from the day she's born,
she's dealing with this. And speaking of Marlene at age ten,
this was the age at which she found her adoption paperwork,
(11:03):
which was in her father's office. One day while she
was playing, she was like going through stuff and she
just finds this paperwork. When she asked Jim what it meant,
he did his best to explain, but Marlene was crushed.
She felt, you know that her not getting along with
Naomi was because Naomi didn't love her, and how could
(11:24):
she when she wasn't even her own blood. Now, Jim
tried to say, you know, we do love you, we
chose you. It's a sign of how much we love you,
but it just it didn't really work, and I have
to say, maybe that would have made sense to her
if the situation wasn't sort of the way that it was,
where it was already very contentious, and just at age ten,
she's already not getting along with her mom on a
(11:47):
regular basis.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Jim and Marlene always.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Got along really well, so you know, this was a
big blow to Marlene. Obviously it affected her deeply, but
their relationship mostly remained intact, at least at that time.
The family moved back to America briefly, then back to
Ecuador as Jim kept getting fired from his marketing jobs,
but also like brokering high dollar deals between the companies.
(12:10):
So I don't know if that's like shady.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
I don't really know.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
There's not a ton of information about Jim specifically, but
I don't get a good vibe from him. I feel
like he's not like a great dude. So I don't know.
But the family had to move a lot as a
result of whatever the hell's going on, and this includes
their last move to Tara Linda in San Rafel, California. Now,
as mentioned, this is in the Bay Area, and the
(12:34):
family ended up at three P fifty three Hibiscus Way,
which is a very cute street name, and if anybody
wants to look it up, that's where they were. Naomi
was elated to be back in the States, but Marlene,
who was fourteen when they moved, definitely was not because
it for her, it wasn't really being back in the States.
It was being fourteen years old and being shoved into
(12:55):
a whole new culture against your will, and the only
people that you have to talk to are your adoptive parents,
one of whom you really don't get along with. She
also wasn't used to speaking English. She had different ideas
about what was cool, what was in fashion, how to
conduct herself. It was basically just like a horrible case
of culture shock for her, and at such a vulnerable
(13:15):
time in her life anyway, because the teen years are tough,
like no matter what, if you come from a good
family and you never move homes in your life, being
a teenager sucks. So for her it's just like trauma
on trauma on trauma. It's pretty innarly. Part of me
thinks that this would have happened anyway, But I think
also as a result of the move, Naomi and Marlene
(13:37):
start getting into worse fights louder, fights way more, you know, yelling,
borderline getting violent. Marlene wasn't shy about her disdain for Naomi,
even telling her sixth grade teacher, which was before they moved,
that she hated her mom, like straight up told her teacher,
I hate my mom now. Pretty shortly after they arrived
(13:58):
in Tara Linda, Marlene's started high school. She was definitely
an outsider, and if I had to describe her using
terms for the people that I grew up with, I
would say that she was like a goth, like before
goths really existed. She would walk around telling people she
was a witch and made up really fantastical stories about
her life before coming to Terre Linda, including saying she
(14:19):
was once engaged to someone far older than herself. But
you know, she was really focused on being a witch
and this was really her thing. She told people she
had magic, she could cast spells, so a very kind
of like weird, immature way of sort of presenting herself.
It feels like she's a little lost, doesn't really know
how to behave. And I'm not saying that people aren't
(14:40):
really witches. I'm not saying that, Like, please don't be
offended by that. I'm just saying that, like for her,
this seemed to be sort of a coping mechanism, something
where she was just making things up about herself because
she didn't know how to fit in. So there are
two separate things. I just want to clear that up.
Her other thing beyond claiming she was a witch, was
pop pills, which she had been a given prescribed by
(15:03):
a doctor. I forget exactly what it was for she
either have like stomach pain or there's something else going on,
but they were essentially like narcotics, and this started a
long love affair with pills for her. She sort of
started to fall in with the druggy crowd at school,
kids who would hang out but weren't really her friends.
You know, she did have a few friends, but it
(15:23):
was really more just about like getting high together. Marlene
of course went from pills to weed, which is a
lateral or backwards move, but you know, she went from
prescribed drugs to illegal drugs, and then from there she
started taking LSD and in fact, the first time she
ever took acid, which was at school. Of course, this
(15:44):
changed the course of her life forever. This is because
on this day she met a young man four years
older than she was named Chuck Riley. Marlene was fifteen
at the time and nineteen year old Chuck was a
local drug dealer, but not really a bad guy by
(16:04):
any means. And I know that sounds weird, but it's
like selling weed is definitely not like you're a bad person,
you know, like people that age, especially back then, everybody
was doing shit like that.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
You could be a.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Bad person, but you could also be a totally normal,
nice person. So I just want to call that out.
They met when Chuck found Marlene being made fun of
by some of the boys she was quote unquote friends
with who were fucking with her and giving her a
bad acid trip for her very first time, which is
super fucked up.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
You shouldn't do that.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
My friend Lisa kind of fucked with me the first
time I ever took acid. She told me about it
before I took it, and she's like, I won't do
that to you, and then she did. It was so mean,
but we're still friends and it's fine. She then took
care of me and she knew when to stop. Anyway,
these kids were not being nice and it was a problem,
so Chuck came up and he protected her from them,
and from that moment on he was head over heels
(16:55):
in love with her. A few days after this interaction,
he brought her some weed to school, then asked her
to the movies. Marlene went, but made it a double
date and went home with her friend after because she
really wasn't into Chuck, but everybody likes free weed, so
she was down to at least hang out. Now, let's
(17:15):
talk about Charles Chuck Riley a little bit. Like I said,
he was four years older than Marlene, born in nineteen
fifty five in Marin County, which is where this takes place,
and had a really rather normal childhood. His parents never divorced,
They never hit him, they never really did anything to him.
That being said, Chuck wasn't without his issues, including a
(17:36):
pretty severe weight issue that he had starting at age five. Now,
by the time he was in high school, he was
over three hundred pounds. In addition to this this sounds
really mean, but he wasn't very smart. He wasn't like
naturally gifted in school, He wasn't a good athlete, and
he was very shy and sort of a scared type
of person, like definitely a follower. When he was pretty young.
(17:59):
Because of his weight, a doctor prescribed him dexa dream
and he started using it as speed. He then got
into weed and other drugs and started selling them as well.
As I have noted, he dropped out of the high
school where he met Marlene, but clearly still came around
to see his.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Friends and saw them drugs.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And I'm sure, like, again, the way I'm describing him
makes him sound like a shitty dude, but I really
think he was just sort of lost, didn't have any
real ambition, and his weight and the insecurity he felt
surrounding that really affected him and his ability to thrive
as a person. His father was also pretty hard on him,
not like mean, but always worried he'd end up in
(18:36):
prison because he was so aimless. And it's interesting that
that was his fear. And obviously we'll get there, but
I'm not talking about Chuck for no reason. After dropping
out of high school, Chuck worked a bunch of part
time jobs, mostly delivering pizza or papers. He also worked
as a bartender for a while and in a factory,
but always was dealing drugs on the side. He's met
(19:00):
Marlene and the two of them hang out a lot,
because again, he's not working full time, he's just kind
of spending his time doing whatever, and she's not into
him as a boyfriend at all. Chuck knows this, and
in fact, the first night they went to the movies,
she threw herself at his friend, and his friend told him,
but he was not discouraged from pursuing her. He was like,
it's fine, I can wait her out whatever. It also
(19:24):
like sort of seemed like the meaner she was, the
more he liked her, and the more he wanted her,
which is very telling, very sad, and a lignes really
well with who she is and who he is and
kind of where the story goes. He began to believe
her stories, which she was in fact a witch, that
she had cast a spell on him, because he was like,
why am I so in love with her? You know,
(19:45):
like he couldn't understand what it was about her, so
he assumed she had cast a spell. He was like
a lost puppy, just following her around, doing whatever she
wanted him to do. Meanwhile, things at home from Marlene
were getting worse and worse. Naomi took to mocking Marlene's
birth mother, calling her a whore, and during one drunken night,
(20:06):
Naomi even paraded around naked in front of Marlene, saying,
this is what your birth mother looks like, which I
want to call out as being super ironic as Naomi
is the drunk, naked, abusive person here. But I'm sure
this is very upsetting to Marlene. She's a child. This
is supposed to be her mother, even though as somebody
(20:27):
looking in from the outside can be like this woman's insane,
She's ridiculous for Marlene, I'm sure it was extremely hurtful
that being said, Marlene gave as good as she got
and could definitely dish out.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Some abusive language. Now. At first, Jim was Switzerland. He
wouldn't get.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Involved, and he sometimes would even take Marlene's side. After
a while, though, he started to shun Marlene in an
attempt to keep Naomi happy, as her mental health was
deteriorating rapidly by this point. This was obviously super harmful
for Marlene, as Jim was sort of participating in like
an emotional incest with Marlene, treating her almost like the
(21:08):
other woman, like he had to choose Naomi over her,
which is super abusive in its own way, so much
more damage being done to Marlene, who's already very lost,
very angry, needs connection, needs love, needs a parent, and
just does not have one now. Because of the lack
of love at home, the lack of direction, the lack
(21:30):
of parental oversight, Marlene started acting out by sleeping with boys,
lots of them, but never Chuck. Naomi found out about
this and started calling her a street walker, accuser of
being easy, being a whore, and Naomi wasn't quiet about this,
with her drunken antics being known around town to the
(21:52):
point where Marlene's friends weren't even allowed at her house anymore,
which only further alienated Marlene. So she's really just she's
got nobody. Marlene would start self harming during their fights,
which were happening daily at this point. She would like
bite herself, she would hit herself, and it was just
really really bad at home, and she and Chuck were
(22:15):
getting closer and closer, and he was doing more and
more of her bidding. Now. Around this time, Marlene started
openly telling her friends that she wanted to kill her mother,
and also decided, for whatever reason, to finally give Chuck
a shot at being her boyfriend. One night, they were
driving around after doing drugs and hanging out, and she
(22:35):
started fondling Chuck while he was driving his car. The
next night they had sex for the first time, and
after that it was kind of on. They were together constantly.
They were having sex at least once a day, usually more,
and their sex was super sadistic, with Marlene making Chuck
live out really messed up fantasies. I'm not going to
get into them, but they were not good. She would
(22:56):
have him tie her up and hurt her, and she
was really into it. So she's really kind of letting
out all of her frustration and her sadness, and she's
using Chuck to do that. Chuck was a virgin when
they met, so he did whatever she told him to do.
And that's not to say that he couldn't have said no.
I'm just saying that the dynamic of their relationship considering that,
(23:17):
it's not surprising at all that this is what's going on.
Marlene used the control that she had over Chuck not
only in the bedroom but also in their everyday lives.
She would threaten to break up with Chuck almost daily
anytime he didn't do something she wanted him to do.
She was very controlling, very emotional, very angry. At one point,
(23:38):
she got Chuck a bracelet and said she had bewitched
it so anytime she wanted him he would feel it
tingling on his wrist. Now Chuck bought into this entirely,
and he said he could feel it tingling on his
wrist all the time, which worked out because she always
wanted him around to boss him around and make him.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Do her bidding.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
So, just to sort of recap, we have this really
horrible home life for Marlene, a mentally ill, alcoholic adoptive mother,
this sort of emotional incest situation with her adoptive father,
and then we have this really one sided, controlling relationship
with this older boy who is absolutely obsessed with her.
(24:19):
This is just a recipe for disaster, and things, of
course get worse and worse. Beyond their weird sex life,
these two got really into stealing. In one month, in fact,
they stole upwards of six thousand dollars, and that's in
nineteen seventy five money, and the way they did it
was super indicative of the power dynamics of their relationship
(24:41):
as well. Marlene would go into a store, pick out
the stuff she wanted and then send Chuck in to
go steal it for her. Now, Marlene would steal some
stuff too, but she basically made Chuck do the majority
of it, and it was sort of a way for
him to prove his love for her and also obviously
to keep him under control, which is really what it was.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
This went on for months and months, the two of
them having this crazy sex life. Every single day. They're
together all hours of the day and night. They're only
a part when Chuck has to work or Marlene's in school,
and they go on these crazy, you know, stealing spreees.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
It's just nuts.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Finally, one day they got caught stealing after going back
to the same store twice in one day, which is
super stupid, but of course they did that because they're
kids and they're stupid. They were both arrested, with Chuck
going to real jail because he was like nineteen or
twenty at that point, while sixteen year old Marlene only
went to juvie until her parents could pick her up.
(25:40):
She did have to go to court for this, and
when she went to court, she had what seemed like
a change of heart. She was weeping in the courtroom,
apologizing to Naomi, saying that she wanted to have a
good relationship with her and for them to have a
normal family. Naomi took this opportunity to be as big
of an asshole as she ever had been, saying she
was ashamed of Marlene and couldn't trust her now. The
(26:01):
police officer who had actually arrested Marlene had suggested that
she stay in Juvie until her court date. After meeting
Naomi and realizing how fucked up Marlene's home life was,
she actually thought she'd have been better off staying in Juvie,
and Jim was like, sure, you can stay there. But
then Marlene called and was like, I want to come home,
(26:22):
and he picked her up because he was an enabler
above all else. So you know, at this point, Jim
is just fed up with Marlene, and while he had
originally really liked Chuck and thought that Chuck was a
good influence, this situation completely destroyed that facade, and he
forbade Marlene from seeing Chuck ever again. Chuck was of
course extremely distraught over this and came to the house
(26:45):
to try to talk to Jim, and Jim told him
if he ever came back to the house he would
kill him, which is so stupid to me, Like these
people are all so out of control, Like these are
two adults, and this is the way that they're It's
insane to me. And of course, Marlene and Chuck found
ways to talk, as all teens forbidden from seeing each
(27:06):
other will do, and they stayed together, and they spent
pretty much time as much time together as they ever had,
because of course they did. It didn't really help that
Jim and Naomi pretty much ignored Marlene unless they were
like screaming at her. They didn't really pay any attention
to her, so she could just do whatever the fuck
she wanted. And also I think that they felt like
she was out of control, so they just threw their
(27:27):
hands up in the air and were.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Like, we don't know what to do. They're just like
victims right now.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Finally sick of everything and not being able to control Marlene.
Near the summer of nineteen seventy five, they informed her
that the following year they would be sending her to
boarding school, which is like, why why tell her that,
like that is a threat to be cruel, to cause problems,
Like most parents I know who do this kind of thing,
and I knew a lot of kids that were subjected
(27:52):
to this at a younger age would sort of spring
it on the kids because otherwise it just creates more problems.
Why are you going to tell your kid who is
completely out of control, who hates you, three months ahead
of time, that you're sending them away, Like all that's
going to do is give them the opportunity to run.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Away to cause more problems.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
But like they seem to like having problems this family
like pretty clearly like these people did not know how
to behave now. Of course, Marlene was extremely upset about
this and continued to tell anybody who would listen that
she wanted to kill her parents, or sometimes she would
just say she wanted to kill her mother or Naomi.
She obviously said this to Chuck all the time, but
(28:30):
it wasn't until he realized that Marlene was going to
be sent away to boarding school and therefore removed from
his life that he really started to sort of take
her seriously and even consider being a part of the
murder of her mother or parents. So Marlene and her
mother had yet another fight, this time on June twenty first,
(28:51):
nineteen seventy five, and it was a really really bad fight.
Naomi came downstairs already wasted at like you know, ten
in the morning or something, and they got in a
huge fight that lasted hours. And after this, Marlene called
Chuck at his friend's house where he was staying and
said to him, quote, we have to kill the bitch today. Chuck,
(29:15):
not expecting this call exactly, had just taken acid, which
is so fucking insane that that is a part of
this story that is like agreed upon by everyone.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
He was on acid when this took place.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Now, Chuck owned a twenty two caliber pistol, and Marlene
told him to bring it to her house or she
would never speak to him again. Now, again, Chuck knew
Marlene was gonna be sent away either way, so if
he didn't do what she wanted, he was going to
lose her.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Even if she was.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Bluffing about never talking to him again, because obviously she
always said to him, do what I want, or I'm
breaking up with you. Do what I want, or I'll
never talk to you again. But the added threat of
her parents actually sending her somewhere made him really think,
I've got to act now. His friends, who overheard the
phone call conversation he had said that he seemed really
uncomfortable but also upset, and they heard him say, you
(30:06):
just have to hit her as hard as you can,
harder than you've ever hit anybody before. Now, apparently, he
and Marlene were discussing the various ways to kill Naomi
while on the phone, including poisoning her or bludgeoning her
with a hammer. Finally, it was decided that Chuck would
come over and wait in the bushes while Marlene got
Jim out of the house somehow. Once they were gone,
(30:27):
Chuck would go in and kill Naomi with said hammer,
but he would also bring his gun just in case. Chuck,
high on drugs and deeply in love, agreed and left
his friend's house around one thirty PM and arrived to
Marlene's not long after. Naomi had gone to take a
nap after the fight, likely because you know, she was
(30:49):
wasted and needed to sleep it off. I mean, she
definitely was wasted, so the nap was probably to sleep
it off. So when Chuck finally entered the home, which
took him a very long time for obviouslys I mean
beyond just being afraid.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
You know, he's on drugs, it's gonna be difficult.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
But when he did enter the home, she was sound
asleep in bed. He hesitated outside, like I said, but
when he went in and found her, he basically was like,
there she is. Took a hammer and hit her on
the head with it just above her left eye. This
created a huge hole right above her browbone, and this
(31:26):
also woke Naomi up. Now maybe not ever really fully,
because Chuck said that she basically just started gasping for
air and flailing around. He then hit her again, this
time with the sharp side of the hammer, which got
stuck in her head. When Chuck talked about this later,
he admitted that he had trouble pulling it out, and
(31:47):
that during this time, his gun slipped out of his pants,
hit the floor, and went off, almost shooting him in
the foot. Naomi was now laid out in bed, gurgling,
but still live. Chuck said he then tried to smother
Naomi to put her out of her misery, but while
he was doing this, Jim and Marlene arrived back home
(32:10):
because he took way too much time to go kill Naomi.
Had he gone in right after they left, he would
have been long gone before they came home. But obviously
he's terrified and again on drugs. So this took a
really long time. While outside, and just before going in
the house, Marlene stopped Jim in some moment of you know,
(32:31):
clarity or remorse and said, quote, if you go inside,
you'll die. Jim apparently laughed at this, which is super
fucking weird, especially given the situation. I mean, you've got
this angry daughter who you told you're sending away, who's
not allowed to see her boyfriend who does drugs, and
I mean, it's just like, why would you laugh at that?
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Fucking weird?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
He then went right inside as if she hadn't said
anything to him, and of course when he did, he
found both Naiomi, moments from death in bed and Chuck
standing over her with a hammer and a pillow. Jim, furious,
grabbed a kitchen knife and advanced towards Chuck, who, in
what he later called self defense, pulled out his gun
(33:17):
and shot Jim in the chest four times. Jim fell
to the ground dead. Now get this, Marlene and Chuck
then had sex in the fucking house. And I can't
even tell you how often this happens when teens kill.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Their parents, like it's such a thing.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
They kill their parents with their boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever,
and then they stay in the house and like have sex.
It's so it's so crazy to me that this is
a thing. Anyway, So after this fucked up scene, they
left the house. They went to Marlene's friend's house, where
Marlene was notably affectionate with Chuck, which wasn't really normal
for her, Like normally she wasn't into like PDAs, but
she was super affectionate that day, I guess because she
(34:01):
was rewarding him for doing her bidding, which is pretty
fucking twisted. Now, when they got back to the house,
which they went home later, and they realized, you know,
we have to figure out what to do with these bodies,
if for no other reason than they were starting to smell,
they decided to take them to a nearby campground called
China Camp.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Now, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Who knows this, but San Francisco and that area was
during like the building of the railroads and kind of
the Gold Rush. It was an area where a lot
of Chinese immigrants lived and worked. And in fact, Chinese
immigrants built our railroads, not always by choice, in fact,
not often by choice. And that's yet another smudge on
(34:41):
the history of California and the United States. But in
any case, so the Chinese lived in this area and
one of the ways that they would sustain themselves and
feed their families was to go fishing. And one of
the areas they did where they went fishing was this
now campground that they called China camp.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Now.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
By the time Marlene and Chuck came to know the area,
it was a lover's lane for horny teenagers, so well
known by a lot of the people of their age
and their type. Definitely not like a family like you
know grounds anymore, but somewhere that they could go and
pretty easily hide a body. So they take the bodies
there and they throw them in a barbecue pit.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
That's at the campground. They then light them on fire.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
They pour gasoline and put a bunch of you know,
leaves and shit in there, and before the fire goes out,
they leave. So they don't even know if the bodies
are fully burned or what, but they're like, fuck it,
let's get out of here. They then go to a
friend's house and as teens always do, tell the friends,
they told them what they did, like it's so stupid.
It's so interesting to me that like they're doing something
(35:48):
so life altering and permanently fucking crazy as murdering two people.
But then they're like, I don't feel like waiting to
like burn the bodies. Let's go hang out with our
friends and let's go tell them what we did. It's like,
it's this weird level of like supreme immaturity. And this
is another thing that you see in these cases where
teenagers kill people. They always tell on themselves, like one
(36:11):
hundred percent of the time. It's such a weird phenomenon,
but it helps them get caught, I guess, so whatever.
So the friend that Naomi told, like the very first friend,
she actually asked if they could provide an alibi for
her should the cops ever come knocking, and this friend agreed.
Chuck also told friends, saying they quote had to do
(36:33):
it because otherwise they wouldn't be able to see each other,
so this obviously wasn't going to stay a secret. After
telling everybody they ever met, essentially, they ended up going
back to the camp to further burn the bodies. They
brought more gasoline, more wood, and they found that her
parents' heads hadn't fully burned, so they had to finish
the job now, between the time they left and the
(36:55):
time they came back, a fireman actually found the burning
bodies but thought that they were a deer carcass and
so left them. So this information only really came to
light after the fact. Had this never been discovered, he
probably would have gone on with his life, but the
fact that obviously the two of them get caught. He
then was brought to testify and talk about what he saw.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Beyond that.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Beyond the firefighter and all of the secrets being told,
there were other challenges to staying under the radar, including
Jim's boss or I think business partner, calling to check
up on him after he didn't show up to work.
They were supposed to move offices, so it was pretty
much immediately noticed when Jim didn't show up to do this,
and after not hearing from Jim for about a week,
(37:40):
his partner called the cops, who went to the house
to do a welfare check. When they arrived, Marlene was
there alone and answered the door. I think Chuck was
probably at work or something, and she let the cops
come inside and they saw that her house.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Was an insane mess.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
The police asked her, you know, where are your parents
and she said, Oh, they gone, They're gone out of town.
I'm not sure when they're coming back. I'm expecting them
any day now. And the cops were like, that is
a load of horseshit because.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
They've been gone a week. You don't know where they are.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
You're not worried about them, you haven't called. And they're like, also, like,
there's no way that the house would look like this
if you thought your parents were coming home. You would
not let your parents see the house like this. Like,
no adult is gonna come into this house and not
freak the fuck out. So the cops were basically like,
this is bullshit. And because of Jim's partner calling, cops
(38:31):
had a pretty good idea of when Jim and potentially
also Naomi disappeared, so they asked her, you know where
were you on this day? And Marlene gladly gave them
her friend's information for that alibi she'd asked for. Police
kept pushing Marlene, who kept changing her story just a
little bit and like just enough for them to know
they were on the right track. And meanwhile, they also
(38:52):
went and talked to her friend, who at first covered
for her and apparently had also helped clean up the
murder scene in the house, but pretty quickly realized this
was not going to be worth the trouble and spilled
the beans. Cops then went and picked up Marlene and
took her to the station, where she first told them, oh,
my parents were killed by Hell's angels and then said, oh, well,
(39:13):
one of them killed the.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Other one and then disappeared.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Now it's unclear if they finally got Marlene to crack
or if they used the friend's confession, but either way,
they went to the barbecue pit and found the bodies
or you know, the charred, fragmented remains of the bodies,
because at this point there were only bone chips left
of Jim and Naomi, which is horrifying. However, they were
able to use this to arrest both Marlene and Chuck.
(39:40):
They also found multiple letters in Marlene's room talking about
killing her parents, and these letters were addressed to both
Chuck and a previous boyfriend, which lent credence to the
theory that she had been planning this for a very
long time. One of the letters seemed to have been
written after the murder and expressed her complete lack of
remor over the killings, which is just lovely and also
(40:03):
again totally something a teenager is gonna do. They're gonna
fucking chronicle this shit in writing for the police to
just like stumble upon and open and shutcase, which is fine,
because she's awful now. Pretty much immediately after his arrest,
Chuck made a full confession, taking all of the blame
for the murders and of course saying he didn't remember
it all that well, which is a classic murderer move.
(40:26):
But also in this instance, he was on acid, so
I feel like this was a little bit more earnest
than other confessions of a similar type. Anyway, both were charged,
and before the trial started, they of course broke up. Marlene,
I think, was upset with Chuck for killing her dad,
even though she had walked Jim into his own death.
(40:47):
I really think that she had been torn about it,
which is why she took him out of the house
and ultimately did not want him to die. But I
think she felt that there was nothing she could do
in that moment because she knew he was gonna walk
into the house and she only cared about getting away
from her parents. And the other thing was she and
Chuck had been spending all of her parents' money since
they died and were expecting to somehow get away with
(41:11):
her parents disappearing and having her inherit their insurance money, and.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Then they were going to move to Ecuador. So I
don't think that.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
I mean, I think she told Chuck that she wanted
her dad to die, but I really think that she
was like not, actually, she didn't really mean it, like
she wanted Naomi to die. She did not want Jim
to die, but she was so angry, and I feel
like she didn't feel like she could be honest about it,
you know, so instead she tells Chuck one thing, lets
(41:40):
it go down the way it did, and then blames
him for that. So, in any case, after a short while,
Marlene stopped writing Chuck back.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
She no longer wrote him letters.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
The two of them writing constantly after their arrests, but
her letters started getting shorter and shorter, and then they
just stopped coming. At first, Chuck was super distraught, but
I think as he's or sort of started to get
out from under her spell quote unquote, he started to
realize what was really going on, and he actually became
really happy that he was no longer with Marlene, and
(42:12):
in fact, this is so weird. At one point, he
asked a guard to please let him wear the bracelet
she gave him to see if he could still feel.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
His arm tingling.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
He said when he put it on, he didn't feel anything,
so he knew that her spell was broken.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
These people are insane.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
From here, his confession changed. He said that he in
fact had come to the house but had found Marlene
had already mortally wounded Naomi using the hammer, and he
simply attempted to smother her to help end her misery.
He said Jim came in and found the two of
them in the room, and he shot Jim in self
defense once Jim caught him in the act, and that
(42:50):
Marlene was in fact the real aggressor in all of this.
So he said, you know, I didn't actually kill Naomi.
Marlene did. I was there, but she had already done it,
and then I had to shoot Jim because he was
coming out with me with a knife. And I don't
necessarily think that's true, but it.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Also could be true.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
I mean, she was on the phone with him asking
about killing her mother and then told him to come over.
It's very possible that she got impatient and attacked Naomi,
you know, before Chuck ever got there, so I don't know.
He supposedly made this confession while under hypnosis, but a
judge later ruled that he was faking it. And the
way the judge said he knew he was faking it
(43:30):
was that Chuck was speaking in the past tense, and
apparently when you're under hypnosis you speak in the present
tense only, which is a wild detail to know, Like,
I didn't know that. So if somebody is being hypnotized
and they aren't using present tents, you know that they're
full of shit. So keep that in your back pocket, guys. Anyway,
(43:50):
like I said, the judge did not buy it, and
Chuck was found guilty of both murders, so two counts
of murder in the first degree and it only twenty
years old. He was given the death penalty, which is
pretty fucking steep. The only other thing he had on
his record was that theft that theft charge that he
(44:11):
got from Marlene or with Marlene, like six months earlier,
So that's pretty pretty gnarly. I mean, the murders were crazy,
but all things considered, it feels pretty harsh. Marlene being
only sixteen years old was given five years, as according
to state law at the time, she could only be
held until her twenty first birthday. Despite everyone agreeing she
(44:35):
was absolutely the mastermind behind the murders, I have to
say I do agree with not locking up children for
the rest of their lives. I think that like our
sort of like prison to slavery pipeline in America and
especially California, is pretty fucking disgusting. So while I understand
that like Marlene was awful, when I look back at
(44:57):
her life to that point and I think about the
fact that she was only sixteen years old, do.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
I think she should be locked away forever? Absolutely not.
And if you think that, I think you should really do.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Some soul searching, because children are children for a reason. Biologically,
your brain doesn't even stop developing until you're into your twenties,
So somebody who does something like this at this age
can absolutely become a different person as they get older.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
But we'll get there.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
This is not the case to sort of prove that point. Unfortunately,
now for Chuck, they actually rolled back the death penalty
for him. There was some sort of change in the
law that basically was like, hey, that's way too fucking
harsh for a twenty year old, and I agree with
that as well. And instead they gave him two life
sentences with the possibility for parole after I believe only
(45:44):
seven years. Not being said, even though he started applying
for parole, like as soon as he was able, he
was denied all the way up until twenty fifteen when
he was finally released. Now the parole board had actually
granted him parole in twenty eleven, and bitch asked Governor
Jerry fucking Brown overruled it because he was like, the
(46:09):
crime was so brutal. And then the Supreme Court or
whoever decides, overruled Jerry Brown, and they were like, you
have no right to do what you're doing. This guy
has been rehabilitated. He's not a threat. He hasn't been
a threat for years. The only infractions he has in
prison are super minor, Like, just the guy deserves to
be let out. He's paid his time, he's done his time,
(46:29):
he's paid his dues. He's not a threat. They basically said, like,
he's a weak minded little bitch who's learned his lesson.
He's gone to college while in prison. He's been pretty
much an exemplary prisoner, it's time to let him out.
And so in twenty fifteen he was released and has
just sort of disappeared. He has not caused any other problems.
He's just living his life. Marlene all live. On the
(46:51):
other hand, not so much so. Marlene gets you know well.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
First of all, before she.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Was released in this first in juvie, she escaped and
she waited until like two months before she was going
to be released anyway, and chose to escape because she
just cannot make good decisions. She disappeared into I Forget
where she went like north, and she became a sex.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Worker to support herself.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
After a few months, she was caught and sent back
to prison, where she was made to finish out her sentence.
But again they didn't add any time. They just let
her go. Now since then, she has changed her name
multiple times, and she has been arrested for insane shit
like check forgery. Like there's an article about her in
the La Times like fifteen years after her initial arrest.
(47:40):
So she's like in her thirties and they said that
she had the most sophisticated forgery operation that the police
had ever seen. She had also changed her name a
bunch of times she engaged in sex work, theft, robbery, Like,
she's just led a really horrible life of crime. Now
at this point, she's in her mid to late sixties
(48:04):
and nobody really knows where she is. But every single
point at which her location has been found or she's
been reported on, it's been because she's getting arrested. It's
been because she's doing something illegal. So her life definitely
did not turn out in a good way whatsoever. I
do hope though, that Chuck. I mean, I know what
(48:27):
he did was absolutely horrifying, and I don't feel like,
you know, he's a good guy here, But I do
feel like the courts or the parole board got it
right when they basically said he was a follower. He
was totally wrapped up in this person, and he's not
a threat, and he deserves another chance. Forty years in
(48:48):
prison is a very long time, and I feel like,
I'm just hopeful that he is able to get a
shit together and live the rest of his days in
a positive way. And I think it's a good thing
that he was let out. And I think honestly that
these you know, jail times could have been reversed, and
(49:08):
it would have been a little more effective. But again,
Marlene was a child. Unfortunately, she ended up going down
the route that I think everybody kind of expected she would,
and Charles, you know, kind of went the way people
expected he would. And I feel it was really unfortunate
that he did so much time when he clearly learned
from his mistakes and was no longer a threat. So
(49:31):
I know everybody has different feelings about prison, but I
borderline believe we should abolish it. I feel that there's rehabilitation,
there's other options. So for something like this, forty years
is a very, very long time.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
But he's out now.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
I hope he's doing well. And uh yeah, that's that's
the story. This is a fucking crazy one. Always love
a good story of a teenager killing her parents. I mean,
we'll never run out of those. I'll probably do quite
a few more in cal There's probably quite a few,
so before my time on this podcast is done, we'll
have more and we can compare notes between them. But anyway,
(50:07):
this is a really sad story. I feel from Arlene
as well. I don't feel like she ever stood a chance.
Like literally from the day after she was born, she
was being abused and traumatized, and she didn't do anything
to deserve that. She just was a victim of circumstance.
And it's understandable in a way, not killing your parents,
but being this angry. And I really do feel for
(50:29):
the child, you know, for her as a child, her
as an adult. She sounds wild. My expectation is she's
an Ecuador at this point, probably gonna die there. I
think she was much happier there, but it's interesting to
think about. So if you guys want to look her up,
there's definitely some more stories out there about some of
the crazy shit she got into after getting out of
prison or getting out of juvie whatever.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Anyway, thanks so much you guys for listening.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
I'll be back again next week with a little bit more,
some more crazy, fun terrible stories. Who knows, things are
a little wild right now with the fires and people
being displaced and work being crazy. So you know, going
to keep doing this to keep myself distracted, keep myself
on track. If you guys have the ability to donate
(51:13):
to people who have lost their homes, please consider doing so.
I'll see about if I can post some links on
my Instagram where people can donate and how they can help.
Direct donations are going to be the way to go.
Finding people's go fundme is verifying that they're you know, real,
and donating there I think at this point is going
to be what helps the most. So I'll try to
find some links at least to the people that I know,
(51:34):
which there are quite a few, very unfortunately. So thanks
everybody for listening. Please like Raake review, share with your
friends and family, and come back next week for another
Crazy Tale. Until then, stay safe.
Dark Cast Network. Out of the shadows come the best
indie podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
and I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Heay, guys, welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
This is another episode of True Crime California and we
got another California murder for you guys today. Before I
get into that, I just want to say that this week, Socks,
my city is on fire. I live in Los Angeles
and I know a lot of people who have lost
their homes. A ton of people are now out of work.
(00:54):
Shit sucks right now. It's really really rough. You know,
where I am, the air quality is okay, but a
lot of people I know that's not the case. We're able.
I'm in the valley, I'm in Burbank. So when the
fires were just starting, we were literally like in the
middle of the triangle of like crazy fires and they
were able to put one out pretty quickly. And then
(01:14):
now it's just these two, the Palisades Fire and the
Eaten Fire have just literally decimated the areas and we
still don't have even fifty percent containment on either fire.
It's just it's been a rough week. So tomorrow will
be one week from the day that the fires broke out.
(01:37):
I was actually on the beach in Santa Monica. I
mentioned this in the last podcast. I was on the
beach when we saw the fire kind of taking off
in the Palisades, and we saw you know, police and
fire racing towards the location. And obviously it didn't really
they didn't get there in time or they weren't able
to stop it. Because we're at like almost twenty four
(01:57):
thousand acres in the powers, thousands of structures just completely gone,
historical structures.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
It's it's really awful.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
And in Altadina, which is like largely a black populated
area and an area populated with artists and people who
don't have a lot of money, there's over seven thousand
structures gone. Something like eleven people died. I mean it's
I think they're up to sixteen now.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I heard.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
It's absolutely awful. So I just wanted to know what's
going on. I went and volunteered last weekend. I donated
some stuff. I'm going to keep trying to volunteer. It's
really just like clearing brush, clearing debris, helping rebuild and
hopefully staving off these evil developers that want to buy
up the land, just like they did in Hawaii. I mean,
it's not an accident that they just in Los Angeles
(02:46):
announced they want to build a smart city, and now
we have two areas that are completely leveled. I know
that's like bordering on conspiracy theory, but at this point,
like I don't think the rich are above anything. So anyway,
it's been.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
A rough week.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
But let's lick our wounds and make ourselves feel better
with a little true crime, shall we. This week, I'm
going to cover a pretty well known case. This case
is known as the Barbecue murders, and we're going back
to the seventies for this case. As a pretty gnarly story.
It takes place not just in California, but the murder
(03:22):
is in California, so it counts this. Actually the murder
takes place in Tara Linda, which is back in the
Bay Area near San Francisco, but a little bit more northern.
It's actually a district in the city of San Rafel,
which is in Marin County. And yes, that is how
you say it. It's spelled San Raphael, but it said
it's pronounced San Rafel. I had a friend who worked
(03:45):
for the mayor there, so I happen to know. It's
a pretty cool spy. It's close to the ocean on
both sides. It's not I don't know if you'd called
a peninsula. I don't know what we call it, but
it's really nice. It's surrounded by water, you know, especially
recently with gentriv and everything, it's really become like a
very beautiful area with a lot of rich homes. And
(04:05):
as a note, it's about twenty miles from Petaluma, which
is where Polyclass lived at the time of her abduction.
She was two episodes ago, so if you want to
hear about her from my perspective, feel free.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
To tune into that one.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
This case is interesting because it doesn't necessarily begin in Ecuador,
but it takes place in part in Ecuador. And I'm
going to start this case by talking about the victims first.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
So we have.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
James Jim Olive, who was an army recruit when he
met and married Naomi Wagner in nineteen forty four. Now, Naomi,
I believe, was only about nineteen at the time and
Jim was twenty eight. Naomi had grown up in a
pretty unstable household with her mother being sent to mental
hospitals starting when Naomi was about two years old and
(04:52):
having suffered from what today I believe would be called schizophrenia.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
They may have changed that again, but they were.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Calling it like schizoid personality disorder or something back then,
or maybe that's what they call it now. I have
difficulty My mom suffers from it, but I have a
difficult time keeping up with the names. So this obviously
deeply affected Naomi, as we'll see, and you can imagine
how difficult this was for her, considering it was sort
of like her way of life, like she grew up
(05:19):
from the age of two seeing her mother in and
out of these hospitals. And this continued until Naomi was
eleven years old, which is when her mother died.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
And I'm sure that's very traumatic.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
And I do not have details on how her mother died,
but I cannot imagine that it was of natural causes.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
She was only in her thirties.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I don't have Naomi's exact date of birth, but she
was born sometime in nineteen twenty five, so again, in
nineteen forty four, she's around nineteen years old. Jim is
twenty eight, and they get married From there, they moved
around a bit, mostly because of Jim's work in both
real estate and oil. Jim came from a wealthy family
and his father was a bit older when he was born,
(06:02):
so by the time Jim Naomi got married, his father
was already in his seventies, and in fact, he died
the same year that these two got married, and Jim's
mother died only five years later. Now she wasn't quite
as old, but she was in her sixties, so I
believe that in both instances it was natural causes. Now,
(06:23):
because the family was rich and because both of his
parents died, this meant that before thirty years old, Jim
had a pretty sizable inheritance which he used to attempt.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
To strike it rich in real estate.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Now unfortunately, this didn't pan out, and he ended up
working in oil and moved to both Panama and Ecuador.
And I believe that he had spent some time in
those areas when he was younger, as he was fluent
in Spanish. So Jim really enjoyed this time abroad, whereas
Naomi was.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Not so happy there.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
She refused to learn the language. She didn't so she
didn't speak Spanish and she thought that the women in
the market and on the street were making fun of her,
which to me sounds like the beginnings of some paranoia issues.
Naomi became increasingly unhappy even as the couple moved back
to the United States and decided the way to fix
this was to have a baby. Unfortunately, try as they might,
(07:17):
the couple was unable to conceive. Fortunately, rich people also
have good connections, and Jim had connections to wealthy and
powerful families, including one in Virginia, where the couple was living.
When the teenage daughter of one of these local wealthy
families became pregnant, of course, the family did not want
(07:39):
people to find out about the pregnancy because it would
bring shame to them, so they allowed Jim and Naomi
to adopt the baby girl, who they named Marlene, the
day after she was born on January sixteenth, nineteen fifty nine.
That's the adoption day. She was born on the fifteenth.
Naomi unfortunately did not find peace or happiness with baby Marlene,
(08:00):
and in fact, Marlene's presence seemed to bring out some
underlying issues within Naomi, dealing with mental health. Mostly for
the first six months of Marlene's life, nobody was allowed
to be near her without wearing a gauze mask over
their face, and this included both Naomi and Jim.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Now, obviously this.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Is very weird, but it's also super detrimental to babies
to not be able to see the faces of the
adults that they're interacting with, because babies use facial expressions
and facial recognition to bond with people. The importance of
this cannot be overstated, and not having this probably really
stunted Marlene's emotional growth right off the bat. So she's
(08:40):
already being traumatized and borderline abused. And obviously this isn't
intended as abuse at this point, but it ends up
kind of being that. Naomi was also a super clean freak,
obsessively wiping down the house not just daily, but like hourly.
She was a stay at home mom, so had all
the time in the world to obsess over cleanliness, and
(09:02):
Jim worked long hours in the oil industry, so she
had nobody to help her or sort of keep her
grounded or really even notice what was going.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
On with her.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
When Marlene was very young, as I mentioned previously, the
family moved to Ecuador. They lived there for the first
ten years of Marlene's life, so pretty much right after
she was born, they moved and so Marlene was raised bilingual.
Now again, Naomi had refused to learn Spanish, and so
she wasn't able to communicate with Marlene this way, which
(09:34):
put up a barrier between them. So it's kind of
like another barrier already, and in fact, as Marlene got older,
whenever she was angry with her mother, which we'll see
was often, she would talk to her father about it
in Spanish, so that Naomi couldn't understand her, which obviously,
you know that's not gonna fly. That's going to be
a big, a big fucking problem beyond the language barrier,
(09:57):
which I mean, you know, they could communicate in English,
but I feel like the barrier is a great example
of their relationship in general. Naomi's overbearing, obsessive behavior didn't
really stop as Marlene grew up, and it definitely put
a strain on their relationship. Marlene was wilful even at
a young age, and Naomi generally unhappy with her life
and the living situation and likely battling fairly severe mental illness.
(10:21):
Took too heavy drinking to manage her stress. Naomi refused
to go to the doctor for her mental health because
she was so traumatized by her mother's experience and so
terrified of ending up like her, which I mean, it
kind of sounds like she's headed that way, but I
guess her answer was to just ignore it and drink heavily,
(10:43):
which she did daily from about the time Marlene was
ten years old. So we just have trauma on trauma
on trauma, like generational trauma. Marlene kind of doesn't stand
a chance. I mean, basically from the day she's born,
she's dealing with this. And speaking of Marlene at age ten,
this was the age at which she found her adoption paperwork,
(11:03):
which was in her father's office. One day while she
was playing, she was like going through stuff and she
just finds this paperwork. When she asked Jim what it meant,
he did his best to explain, but Marlene was crushed.
She felt, you know that her not getting along with
Naomi was because Naomi didn't love her, and how could
(11:24):
she when she wasn't even her own blood. Now, Jim
tried to say, you know, we do love you, we
chose you. It's a sign of how much we love you,
but it just it didn't really work, and I have
to say, maybe that would have made sense to her
if the situation wasn't sort of the way that it was,
where it was already very contentious, and just at age ten,
she's already not getting along with her mom on a
(11:47):
regular basis.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Jim and Marlene always.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Got along really well, so you know, this was a
big blow to Marlene. Obviously it affected her deeply, but
their relationship mostly remained intact, at least at that time.
The family moved back to America briefly, then back to
Ecuador as Jim kept getting fired from his marketing jobs,
but also like brokering high dollar deals between the companies.
(12:10):
So I don't know if that's like shady.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
I don't really know.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
There's not a ton of information about Jim specifically, but
I don't get a good vibe from him. I feel
like he's not like a great dude. So I don't know.
But the family had to move a lot as a
result of whatever the hell's going on, and this includes
their last move to Tara Linda in San Rafel, California. Now,
as mentioned, this is in the Bay Area, and the
(12:34):
family ended up at three P fifty three Hibiscus Way,
which is a very cute street name, and if anybody
wants to look it up, that's where they were. Naomi
was elated to be back in the States, but Marlene,
who was fourteen when they moved, definitely was not because
it for her, it wasn't really being back in the States.
It was being fourteen years old and being shoved into
(12:55):
a whole new culture against your will, and the only
people that you have to talk to are your adoptive parents,
one of whom you really don't get along with. She
also wasn't used to speaking English. She had different ideas
about what was cool, what was in fashion, how to
conduct herself. It was basically just like a horrible case
of culture shock for her, and at such a vulnerable
(13:15):
time in her life anyway, because the teen years are tough,
like no matter what, if you come from a good
family and you never move homes in your life, being
a teenager sucks. So for her it's just like trauma
on trauma on trauma. It's pretty innarly. Part of me
thinks that this would have happened anyway, But I think
also as a result of the move, Naomi and Marlene
(13:37):
start getting into worse fights louder, fights way more, you know, yelling,
borderline getting violent. Marlene wasn't shy about her disdain for Naomi,
even telling her sixth grade teacher, which was before they moved,
that she hated her mom, like straight up told her teacher,
I hate my mom now. Pretty shortly after they arrived
(13:58):
in Tara Linda, Marlene's started high school. She was definitely
an outsider, and if I had to describe her using
terms for the people that I grew up with, I
would say that she was like a goth, like before
goths really existed. She would walk around telling people she
was a witch and made up really fantastical stories about
her life before coming to Terre Linda, including saying she
(14:19):
was once engaged to someone far older than herself. But
you know, she was really focused on being a witch
and this was really her thing. She told people she
had magic, she could cast spells, so a very kind
of like weird, immature way of sort of presenting herself.
It feels like she's a little lost, doesn't really know
how to behave. And I'm not saying that people aren't
(14:40):
really witches. I'm not saying that, Like, please don't be
offended by that. I'm just saying that, like for her,
this seemed to be sort of a coping mechanism, something
where she was just making things up about herself because
she didn't know how to fit in. So there are
two separate things. I just want to clear that up.
Her other thing beyond claiming she was a witch, was
pop pills, which she had been a given prescribed by
(15:03):
a doctor. I forget exactly what it was for she
either have like stomach pain or there's something else going on,
but they were essentially like narcotics, and this started a
long love affair with pills for her. She sort of
started to fall in with the druggy crowd at school,
kids who would hang out but weren't really her friends.
You know, she did have a few friends, but it
(15:23):
was really more just about like getting high together. Marlene
of course went from pills to weed, which is a
lateral or backwards move, but you know, she went from
prescribed drugs to illegal drugs, and then from there she
started taking LSD and in fact, the first time she
ever took acid, which was at school. Of course, this
(15:44):
changed the course of her life forever. This is because
on this day she met a young man four years
older than she was named Chuck Riley. Marlene was fifteen
at the time and nineteen year old Chuck was a
local drug dealer, but not really a bad guy by
(16:04):
any means. And I know that sounds weird, but it's
like selling weed is definitely not like you're a bad person,
you know, like people that age, especially back then, everybody
was doing shit like that.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
You could be a.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Bad person, but you could also be a totally normal,
nice person. So I just want to call that out.
They met when Chuck found Marlene being made fun of
by some of the boys she was quote unquote friends
with who were fucking with her and giving her a
bad acid trip for her very first time, which is
super fucked up.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
You shouldn't do that.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
My friend Lisa kind of fucked with me the first
time I ever took acid. She told me about it
before I took it, and she's like, I won't do
that to you, and then she did. It was so mean,
but we're still friends and it's fine. She then took
care of me and she knew when to stop. Anyway,
these kids were not being nice and it was a problem,
so Chuck came up and he protected her from them,
and from that moment on he was head over heels
(16:55):
in love with her. A few days after this interaction,
he brought her some weed to school, then asked her
to the movies. Marlene went, but made it a double
date and went home with her friend after because she
really wasn't into Chuck, but everybody likes free weed, so
she was down to at least hang out. Now, let's
(17:15):
talk about Charles Chuck Riley a little bit. Like I said,
he was four years older than Marlene, born in nineteen
fifty five in Marin County, which is where this takes place,
and had a really rather normal childhood. His parents never divorced,
They never hit him, they never really did anything to him.
That being said, Chuck wasn't without his issues, including a
(17:36):
pretty severe weight issue that he had starting at age five. Now,
by the time he was in high school, he was
over three hundred pounds. In addition to this this sounds
really mean, but he wasn't very smart. He wasn't like
naturally gifted in school, He wasn't a good athlete, and
he was very shy and sort of a scared type
of person, like definitely a follower. When he was pretty young.
(17:59):
Because of his weight, a doctor prescribed him dexa dream
and he started using it as speed. He then got
into weed and other drugs and started selling them as well.
As I have noted, he dropped out of the high
school where he met Marlene, but clearly still came around
to see his.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Friends and saw them drugs.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And I'm sure, like, again, the way I'm describing him
makes him sound like a shitty dude, but I really
think he was just sort of lost, didn't have any
real ambition, and his weight and the insecurity he felt
surrounding that really affected him and his ability to thrive
as a person. His father was also pretty hard on him,
not like mean, but always worried he'd end up in
(18:36):
prison because he was so aimless. And it's interesting that
that was his fear. And obviously we'll get there, but
I'm not talking about Chuck for no reason. After dropping
out of high school, Chuck worked a bunch of part
time jobs, mostly delivering pizza or papers. He also worked
as a bartender for a while and in a factory,
but always was dealing drugs on the side. He's met
(19:00):
Marlene and the two of them hang out a lot,
because again, he's not working full time, he's just kind
of spending his time doing whatever, and she's not into
him as a boyfriend at all. Chuck knows this, and
in fact, the first night they went to the movies,
she threw herself at his friend, and his friend told him,
but he was not discouraged from pursuing her. He was like,
it's fine, I can wait her out whatever. It also
(19:24):
like sort of seemed like the meaner she was, the
more he liked her, and the more he wanted her,
which is very telling, very sad, and a lignes really
well with who she is and who he is and
kind of where the story goes. He began to believe
her stories, which she was in fact a witch, that
she had cast a spell on him, because he was like,
why am I so in love with her? You know,
(19:45):
like he couldn't understand what it was about her, so
he assumed she had cast a spell. He was like
a lost puppy, just following her around, doing whatever she
wanted him to do. Meanwhile, things at home from Marlene
were getting worse and worse. Naomi took to mocking Marlene's
birth mother, calling her a whore, and during one drunken night,
(20:06):
Naomi even paraded around naked in front of Marlene, saying,
this is what your birth mother looks like, which I
want to call out as being super ironic as Naomi
is the drunk, naked, abusive person here. But I'm sure
this is very upsetting to Marlene. She's a child. This
is supposed to be her mother, even though as somebody
(20:27):
looking in from the outside can be like this woman's insane,
She's ridiculous for Marlene, I'm sure it was extremely hurtful
that being said, Marlene gave as good as she got
and could definitely dish out.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Some abusive language. Now. At first, Jim was Switzerland. He
wouldn't get.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Involved, and he sometimes would even take Marlene's side. After
a while, though, he started to shun Marlene in an
attempt to keep Naomi happy, as her mental health was
deteriorating rapidly by this point. This was obviously super harmful
for Marlene, as Jim was sort of participating in like
an emotional incest with Marlene, treating her almost like the
(21:08):
other woman, like he had to choose Naomi over her,
which is super abusive in its own way, so much
more damage being done to Marlene, who's already very lost,
very angry, needs connection, needs love, needs a parent, and
just does not have one now. Because of the lack
of love at home, the lack of direction, the lack
(21:30):
of parental oversight, Marlene started acting out by sleeping with boys,
lots of them, but never Chuck. Naomi found out about
this and started calling her a street walker, accuser of
being easy, being a whore, and Naomi wasn't quiet about this,
with her drunken antics being known around town to the
(21:52):
point where Marlene's friends weren't even allowed at her house anymore,
which only further alienated Marlene. So she's really just she's
got nobody. Marlene would start self harming during their fights,
which were happening daily at this point. She would like
bite herself, she would hit herself, and it was just
really really bad at home, and she and Chuck were
(22:15):
getting closer and closer, and he was doing more and
more of her bidding. Now. Around this time, Marlene started
openly telling her friends that she wanted to kill her mother,
and also decided, for whatever reason, to finally give Chuck
a shot at being her boyfriend. One night, they were
driving around after doing drugs and hanging out, and she
(22:35):
started fondling Chuck while he was driving his car. The
next night they had sex for the first time, and
after that it was kind of on. They were together constantly.
They were having sex at least once a day, usually more,
and their sex was super sadistic, with Marlene making Chuck
live out really messed up fantasies. I'm not going to
get into them, but they were not good. She would
(22:56):
have him tie her up and hurt her, and she
was really into it. So she's really kind of letting
out all of her frustration and her sadness, and she's
using Chuck to do that. Chuck was a virgin when
they met, so he did whatever she told him to do.
And that's not to say that he couldn't have said no.
I'm just saying that the dynamic of their relationship considering that,
(23:17):
it's not surprising at all that this is what's going on.
Marlene used the control that she had over Chuck not
only in the bedroom but also in their everyday lives.
She would threaten to break up with Chuck almost daily
anytime he didn't do something she wanted him to do.
She was very controlling, very emotional, very angry. At one point,
(23:38):
she got Chuck a bracelet and said she had bewitched
it so anytime she wanted him he would feel it
tingling on his wrist. Now Chuck bought into this entirely,
and he said he could feel it tingling on his
wrist all the time, which worked out because she always
wanted him around to boss him around and make him.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Do her bidding.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
So, just to sort of recap, we have this really
horrible home life for Marlene, a mentally ill, alcoholic adoptive mother,
this sort of emotional incest situation with her adoptive father,
and then we have this really one sided, controlling relationship
with this older boy who is absolutely obsessed with her.
(24:19):
This is just a recipe for disaster, and things, of
course get worse and worse. Beyond their weird sex life,
these two got really into stealing. In one month, in fact,
they stole upwards of six thousand dollars, and that's in
nineteen seventy five money, and the way they did it
was super indicative of the power dynamics of their relationship
(24:41):
as well. Marlene would go into a store, pick out
the stuff she wanted and then send Chuck in to
go steal it for her. Now, Marlene would steal some
stuff too, but she basically made Chuck do the majority
of it, and it was sort of a way for
him to prove his love for her and also obviously
to keep him under control, which is really what it was.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
This went on for months and months, the two of
them having this crazy sex life. Every single day. They're
together all hours of the day and night. They're only
a part when Chuck has to work or Marlene's in school,
and they go on these crazy, you know, stealing spreees.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
It's just nuts.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Finally, one day they got caught stealing after going back
to the same store twice in one day, which is
super stupid, but of course they did that because they're
kids and they're stupid. They were both arrested, with Chuck
going to real jail because he was like nineteen or
twenty at that point, while sixteen year old Marlene only
went to juvie until her parents could pick her up.
(25:40):
She did have to go to court for this, and
when she went to court, she had what seemed like
a change of heart. She was weeping in the courtroom,
apologizing to Naomi, saying that she wanted to have a
good relationship with her and for them to have a
normal family. Naomi took this opportunity to be as big
of an asshole as she ever had been, saying she
was ashamed of Marlene and couldn't trust her now. The
(26:01):
police officer who had actually arrested Marlene had suggested that
she stay in Juvie until her court date. After meeting
Naomi and realizing how fucked up Marlene's home life was,
she actually thought she'd have been better off staying in Juvie,
and Jim was like, sure, you can stay there. But
then Marlene called and was like, I want to come home,
(26:22):
and he picked her up because he was an enabler
above all else. So you know, at this point, Jim
is just fed up with Marlene, and while he had
originally really liked Chuck and thought that Chuck was a
good influence, this situation completely destroyed that facade, and he
forbade Marlene from seeing Chuck ever again. Chuck was of
course extremely distraught over this and came to the house
(26:45):
to try to talk to Jim, and Jim told him
if he ever came back to the house he would
kill him, which is so stupid to me, Like these
people are all so out of control, Like these are
two adults, and this is the way that they're It's
insane to me. And of course, Marlene and Chuck found
ways to talk, as all teens forbidden from seeing each
(27:06):
other will do, and they stayed together, and they spent
pretty much time as much time together as they ever had,
because of course they did. It didn't really help that
Jim and Naomi pretty much ignored Marlene unless they were
like screaming at her. They didn't really pay any attention
to her, so she could just do whatever the fuck
she wanted. And also I think that they felt like
she was out of control, so they just threw their
(27:27):
hands up in the air and were.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Like, we don't know what to do. They're just like
victims right now.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Finally sick of everything and not being able to control Marlene.
Near the summer of nineteen seventy five, they informed her
that the following year they would be sending her to
boarding school, which is like, why why tell her that,
like that is a threat to be cruel, to cause problems,
Like most parents I know who do this kind of thing,
and I knew a lot of kids that were subjected
(27:52):
to this at a younger age would sort of spring
it on the kids because otherwise it just creates more problems.
Why are you going to tell your kid who is
completely out of control, who hates you, three months ahead
of time, that you're sending them away, Like all that's
going to do is give them the opportunity to run.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Away to cause more problems.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
But like they seem to like having problems this family
like pretty clearly like these people did not know how
to behave now. Of course, Marlene was extremely upset about
this and continued to tell anybody who would listen that
she wanted to kill her parents, or sometimes she would
just say she wanted to kill her mother or Naomi.
She obviously said this to Chuck all the time, but
(28:30):
it wasn't until he realized that Marlene was going to
be sent away to boarding school and therefore removed from
his life that he really started to sort of take
her seriously and even consider being a part of the
murder of her mother or parents. So Marlene and her
mother had yet another fight, this time on June twenty first,
(28:51):
nineteen seventy five, and it was a really really bad fight.
Naomi came downstairs already wasted at like you know, ten
in the morning or something, and they got in a
huge fight that lasted hours. And after this, Marlene called
Chuck at his friend's house where he was staying and
said to him, quote, we have to kill the bitch today. Chuck,
(29:15):
not expecting this call exactly, had just taken acid, which
is so fucking insane that that is a part of
this story that is like agreed upon by everyone.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
He was on acid when this took place.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Now, Chuck owned a twenty two caliber pistol, and Marlene
told him to bring it to her house or she
would never speak to him again. Now, again, Chuck knew
Marlene was gonna be sent away either way, so if
he didn't do what she wanted, he was going to
lose her.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Even if she was.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Bluffing about never talking to him again, because obviously she
always said to him, do what I want, or I'm
breaking up with you. Do what I want, or I'll
never talk to you again. But the added threat of
her parents actually sending her somewhere made him really think,
I've got to act now. His friends, who overheard the
phone call conversation he had said that he seemed really
uncomfortable but also upset, and they heard him say, you
(30:06):
just have to hit her as hard as you can,
harder than you've ever hit anybody before. Now, apparently, he
and Marlene were discussing the various ways to kill Naomi
while on the phone, including poisoning her or bludgeoning her
with a hammer. Finally, it was decided that Chuck would
come over and wait in the bushes while Marlene got
Jim out of the house somehow. Once they were gone,
(30:27):
Chuck would go in and kill Naomi with said hammer,
but he would also bring his gun just in case. Chuck,
high on drugs and deeply in love, agreed and left
his friend's house around one thirty PM and arrived to
Marlene's not long after. Naomi had gone to take a
nap after the fight, likely because you know, she was
(30:49):
wasted and needed to sleep it off. I mean, she
definitely was wasted, so the nap was probably to sleep
it off. So when Chuck finally entered the home, which
took him a very long time for obviouslys I mean
beyond just being afraid.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
You know, he's on drugs, it's gonna be difficult.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
But when he did enter the home, she was sound
asleep in bed. He hesitated outside, like I said, but
when he went in and found her, he basically was like,
there she is. Took a hammer and hit her on
the head with it just above her left eye. This
created a huge hole right above her browbone, and this
(31:26):
also woke Naomi up. Now maybe not ever really fully,
because Chuck said that she basically just started gasping for
air and flailing around. He then hit her again, this
time with the sharp side of the hammer, which got
stuck in her head. When Chuck talked about this later,
he admitted that he had trouble pulling it out, and
(31:47):
that during this time, his gun slipped out of his pants,
hit the floor, and went off, almost shooting him in
the foot. Naomi was now laid out in bed, gurgling,
but still live. Chuck said he then tried to smother
Naomi to put her out of her misery, but while
he was doing this, Jim and Marlene arrived back home
(32:10):
because he took way too much time to go kill Naomi.
Had he gone in right after they left, he would
have been long gone before they came home. But obviously
he's terrified and again on drugs. So this took a
really long time. While outside, and just before going in
the house, Marlene stopped Jim in some moment of you know,
(32:31):
clarity or remorse and said, quote, if you go inside,
you'll die. Jim apparently laughed at this, which is super
fucking weird, especially given the situation. I mean, you've got
this angry daughter who you told you're sending away, who's
not allowed to see her boyfriend who does drugs, and
I mean, it's just like, why would you laugh at that?
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Fucking weird?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
He then went right inside as if she hadn't said
anything to him, and of course when he did, he
found both Naiomi, moments from death in bed and Chuck
standing over her with a hammer and a pillow. Jim, furious,
grabbed a kitchen knife and advanced towards Chuck, who, in
what he later called self defense, pulled out his gun
(33:17):
and shot Jim in the chest four times. Jim fell
to the ground dead. Now get this, Marlene and Chuck
then had sex in the fucking house. And I can't
even tell you how often this happens when teens kill.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Their parents, like it's such a thing.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
They kill their parents with their boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever,
and then they stay in the house and like have sex.
It's so it's so crazy to me that this is
a thing. Anyway, So after this fucked up scene, they
left the house. They went to Marlene's friend's house, where
Marlene was notably affectionate with Chuck, which wasn't really normal
for her, Like normally she wasn't into like PDAs, but
she was super affectionate that day, I guess because she
(34:01):
was rewarding him for doing her bidding, which is pretty
fucking twisted. Now, when they got back to the house,
which they went home later, and they realized, you know,
we have to figure out what to do with these bodies,
if for no other reason than they were starting to smell,
they decided to take them to a nearby campground called
China Camp.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Now, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Who knows this, but San Francisco and that area was
during like the building of the railroads and kind of
the Gold Rush. It was an area where a lot
of Chinese immigrants lived and worked. And in fact, Chinese
immigrants built our railroads, not always by choice, in fact,
not often by choice. And that's yet another smudge on
(34:41):
the history of California and the United States. But in
any case, so the Chinese lived in this area and
one of the ways that they would sustain themselves and
feed their families was to go fishing. And one of
the areas they did where they went fishing was this
now campground that they called China camp.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Now.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
By the time Marlene and Chuck came to know the area,
it was a lover's lane for horny teenagers, so well
known by a lot of the people of their age
and their type. Definitely not like a family like you
know grounds anymore, but somewhere that they could go and
pretty easily hide a body. So they take the bodies
there and they throw them in a barbecue pit.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
That's at the campground. They then light them on fire.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
They pour gasoline and put a bunch of you know,
leaves and shit in there, and before the fire goes out,
they leave. So they don't even know if the bodies
are fully burned or what, but they're like, fuck it,
let's get out of here. They then go to a
friend's house and as teens always do, tell the friends,
they told them what they did, like it's so stupid.
It's so interesting to me that like they're doing something
(35:48):
so life altering and permanently fucking crazy as murdering two people.
But then they're like, I don't feel like waiting to
like burn the bodies. Let's go hang out with our
friends and let's go tell them what we did. It's like,
it's this weird level of like supreme immaturity. And this
is another thing that you see in these cases where
teenagers kill people. They always tell on themselves, like one
(36:11):
hundred percent of the time. It's such a weird phenomenon,
but it helps them get caught, I guess, so whatever.
So the friend that Naomi told, like the very first friend,
she actually asked if they could provide an alibi for
her should the cops ever come knocking, and this friend agreed.
Chuck also told friends, saying they quote had to do
(36:33):
it because otherwise they wouldn't be able to see each other,
so this obviously wasn't going to stay a secret. After
telling everybody they ever met, essentially, they ended up going
back to the camp to further burn the bodies. They
brought more gasoline, more wood, and they found that her
parents' heads hadn't fully burned, so they had to finish
the job now, between the time they left and the
(36:55):
time they came back, a fireman actually found the burning
bodies but thought that they were a deer carcass and
so left them. So this information only really came to
light after the fact. Had this never been discovered, he
probably would have gone on with his life, but the
fact that obviously the two of them get caught. He
then was brought to testify and talk about what he saw.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Beyond that.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Beyond the firefighter and all of the secrets being told,
there were other challenges to staying under the radar, including
Jim's boss or I think business partner, calling to check
up on him after he didn't show up to work.
They were supposed to move offices, so it was pretty
much immediately noticed when Jim didn't show up to do this,
and after not hearing from Jim for about a week,
(37:40):
his partner called the cops, who went to the house
to do a welfare check. When they arrived, Marlene was
there alone and answered the door. I think Chuck was
probably at work or something, and she let the cops
come inside and they saw that her house.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Was an insane mess.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
The police asked her, you know, where are your parents
and she said, Oh, they gone, They're gone out of town.
I'm not sure when they're coming back. I'm expecting them
any day now. And the cops were like, that is
a load of horseshit because.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
They've been gone a week. You don't know where they are.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
You're not worried about them, you haven't called. And they're like, also, like,
there's no way that the house would look like this
if you thought your parents were coming home. You would
not let your parents see the house like this. Like,
no adult is gonna come into this house and not
freak the fuck out. So the cops were basically like,
this is bullshit. And because of Jim's partner calling, cops
(38:31):
had a pretty good idea of when Jim and potentially
also Naomi disappeared, so they asked her, you know where
were you on this day? And Marlene gladly gave them
her friend's information for that alibi she'd asked for. Police
kept pushing Marlene, who kept changing her story just a
little bit and like just enough for them to know
they were on the right track. And meanwhile, they also
(38:52):
went and talked to her friend, who at first covered
for her and apparently had also helped clean up the
murder scene in the house, but pretty quickly realized this
was not going to be worth the trouble and spilled
the beans. Cops then went and picked up Marlene and
took her to the station, where she first told them, oh,
my parents were killed by Hell's angels and then said, oh, well,
(39:13):
one of them killed the.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Other one and then disappeared.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Now it's unclear if they finally got Marlene to crack
or if they used the friend's confession, but either way,
they went to the barbecue pit and found the bodies
or you know, the charred, fragmented remains of the bodies,
because at this point there were only bone chips left
of Jim and Naomi, which is horrifying. However, they were
able to use this to arrest both Marlene and Chuck.
(39:40):
They also found multiple letters in Marlene's room talking about
killing her parents, and these letters were addressed to both
Chuck and a previous boyfriend, which lent credence to the
theory that she had been planning this for a very
long time. One of the letters seemed to have been
written after the murder and expressed her complete lack of
remor over the killings, which is just lovely and also
(40:03):
again totally something a teenager is gonna do. They're gonna
fucking chronicle this shit in writing for the police to
just like stumble upon and open and shutcase, which is fine,
because she's awful now. Pretty much immediately after his arrest,
Chuck made a full confession, taking all of the blame
for the murders and of course saying he didn't remember
it all that well, which is a classic murderer move.
(40:26):
But also in this instance, he was on acid, so
I feel like this was a little bit more earnest
than other confessions of a similar type. Anyway, both were charged,
and before the trial started, they of course broke up. Marlene,
I think, was upset with Chuck for killing her dad,
even though she had walked Jim into his own death.
(40:47):
I really think that she had been torn about it,
which is why she took him out of the house
and ultimately did not want him to die. But I
think she felt that there was nothing she could do
in that moment because she knew he was gonna walk
into the house and she only cared about getting away
from her parents. And the other thing was she and
Chuck had been spending all of her parents' money since
they died and were expecting to somehow get away with
(41:11):
her parents disappearing and having her inherit their insurance money, and.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Then they were going to move to Ecuador. So I
don't think that.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
I mean, I think she told Chuck that she wanted
her dad to die, but I really think that she
was like not, actually, she didn't really mean it, like
she wanted Naomi to die. She did not want Jim
to die, but she was so angry, and I feel
like she didn't feel like she could be honest about it,
you know, so instead she tells Chuck one thing, lets
(41:40):
it go down the way it did, and then blames
him for that. So, in any case, after a short while,
Marlene stopped writing Chuck back.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
She no longer wrote him letters.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
The two of them writing constantly after their arrests, but
her letters started getting shorter and shorter, and then they
just stopped coming. At first, Chuck was super distraught, but
I think as he's or sort of started to get
out from under her spell quote unquote, he started to
realize what was really going on, and he actually became
really happy that he was no longer with Marlene, and
(42:12):
in fact, this is so weird. At one point, he
asked a guard to please let him wear the bracelet
she gave him to see if he could still feel.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
His arm tingling.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
He said when he put it on, he didn't feel anything,
so he knew that her spell was broken.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
These people are insane.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
From here, his confession changed. He said that he in
fact had come to the house but had found Marlene
had already mortally wounded Naomi using the hammer, and he
simply attempted to smother her to help end her misery.
He said Jim came in and found the two of
them in the room, and he shot Jim in self
defense once Jim caught him in the act, and that
(42:50):
Marlene was in fact the real aggressor in all of this.
So he said, you know, I didn't actually kill Naomi.
Marlene did. I was there, but she had already done it,
and then I had to shoot Jim because he was
coming out with me with a knife. And I don't
necessarily think that's true, but it.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Also could be true.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
I mean, she was on the phone with him asking
about killing her mother and then told him to come over.
It's very possible that she got impatient and attacked Naomi,
you know, before Chuck ever got there, so I don't know.
He supposedly made this confession while under hypnosis, but a
judge later ruled that he was faking it. And the
way the judge said he knew he was faking it
(43:30):
was that Chuck was speaking in the past tense, and
apparently when you're under hypnosis you speak in the present
tense only, which is a wild detail to know, Like,
I didn't know that. So if somebody is being hypnotized
and they aren't using present tents, you know that they're
full of shit. So keep that in your back pocket, guys. Anyway,
(43:50):
like I said, the judge did not buy it, and
Chuck was found guilty of both murders, so two counts
of murder in the first degree and it only twenty
years old. He was given the death penalty, which is
pretty fucking steep. The only other thing he had on
his record was that theft that theft charge that he
(44:11):
got from Marlene or with Marlene, like six months earlier,
So that's pretty pretty gnarly. I mean, the murders were crazy,
but all things considered, it feels pretty harsh. Marlene being
only sixteen years old was given five years, as according
to state law at the time, she could only be
held until her twenty first birthday. Despite everyone agreeing she
(44:35):
was absolutely the mastermind behind the murders, I have to
say I do agree with not locking up children for
the rest of their lives. I think that like our
sort of like prison to slavery pipeline in America and
especially California, is pretty fucking disgusting. So while I understand
that like Marlene was awful, when I look back at
(44:57):
her life to that point and I think about the
fact that she was only sixteen years old, do.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
I think she should be locked away forever? Absolutely not.
And if you think that, I think you should really do.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Some soul searching, because children are children for a reason. Biologically,
your brain doesn't even stop developing until you're into your twenties,
So somebody who does something like this at this age
can absolutely become a different person as they get older.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
But we'll get there.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
This is not the case to sort of prove that point. Unfortunately,
now for Chuck, they actually rolled back the death penalty
for him. There was some sort of change in the
law that basically was like, hey, that's way too fucking
harsh for a twenty year old, and I agree with
that as well. And instead they gave him two life
sentences with the possibility for parole after I believe only
(45:44):
seven years. Not being said, even though he started applying
for parole, like as soon as he was able, he
was denied all the way up until twenty fifteen when
he was finally released. Now the parole board had actually
granted him parole in twenty eleven, and bitch asked Governor
Jerry fucking Brown overruled it because he was like, the
(46:09):
crime was so brutal. And then the Supreme Court or
whoever decides, overruled Jerry Brown, and they were like, you
have no right to do what you're doing. This guy
has been rehabilitated. He's not a threat. He hasn't been
a threat for years. The only infractions he has in
prison are super minor, Like, just the guy deserves to
be let out. He's paid his time, he's done his time,
(46:29):
he's paid his dues. He's not a threat. They basically said, like,
he's a weak minded little bitch who's learned his lesson.
He's gone to college while in prison. He's been pretty
much an exemplary prisoner, it's time to let him out.
And so in twenty fifteen he was released and has
just sort of disappeared. He has not caused any other problems.
He's just living his life. Marlene all live. On the
(46:51):
other hand, not so much so. Marlene gets you know well.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
First of all, before she.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Was released in this first in juvie, she escaped and
she waited until like two months before she was going
to be released anyway, and chose to escape because she
just cannot make good decisions. She disappeared into I Forget
where she went like north, and she became a sex.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Worker to support herself.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
After a few months, she was caught and sent back
to prison, where she was made to finish out her sentence.
But again they didn't add any time. They just let
her go. Now since then, she has changed her name
multiple times, and she has been arrested for insane shit
like check forgery. Like there's an article about her in
the La Times like fifteen years after her initial arrest.
(47:40):
So she's like in her thirties and they said that
she had the most sophisticated forgery operation that the police
had ever seen. She had also changed her name a
bunch of times she engaged in sex work, theft, robbery, Like,
she's just led a really horrible life of crime. Now
at this point, she's in her mid to late sixties
(48:04):
and nobody really knows where she is. But every single
point at which her location has been found or she's
been reported on, it's been because she's getting arrested. It's
been because she's doing something illegal. So her life definitely
did not turn out in a good way whatsoever. I
do hope though, that Chuck. I mean, I know what
(48:27):
he did was absolutely horrifying, and I don't feel like,
you know, he's a good guy here, But I do
feel like the courts or the parole board got it
right when they basically said he was a follower. He
was totally wrapped up in this person, and he's not
a threat, and he deserves another chance. Forty years in
(48:48):
prison is a very long time, and I feel like,
I'm just hopeful that he is able to get a
shit together and live the rest of his days in
a positive way. And I think it's a good thing
that he was let out. And I think honestly that
these you know, jail times could have been reversed, and
(49:08):
it would have been a little more effective. But again,
Marlene was a child. Unfortunately, she ended up going down
the route that I think everybody kind of expected she would,
and Charles, you know, kind of went the way people
expected he would. And I feel it was really unfortunate
that he did so much time when he clearly learned
from his mistakes and was no longer a threat. So
(49:31):
I know everybody has different feelings about prison, but I
borderline believe we should abolish it. I feel that there's rehabilitation,
there's other options. So for something like this, forty years
is a very, very long time.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
But he's out now.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
I hope he's doing well. And uh yeah, that's that's
the story. This is a fucking crazy one. Always love
a good story of a teenager killing her parents. I mean,
we'll never run out of those. I'll probably do quite
a few more in cal There's probably quite a few,
so before my time on this podcast is done, we'll
have more and we can compare notes between them. But anyway,
(50:07):
this is a really sad story. I feel from Arlene
as well. I don't feel like she ever stood a chance.
Like literally from the day after she was born, she
was being abused and traumatized, and she didn't do anything
to deserve that. She just was a victim of circumstance.
And it's understandable in a way, not killing your parents,
but being this angry. And I really do feel for
(50:29):
the child, you know, for her as a child, her
as an adult. She sounds wild. My expectation is she's
an Ecuador at this point, probably gonna die there. I
think she was much happier there, but it's interesting to
think about. So if you guys want to look her up,
there's definitely some more stories out there about some of
the crazy shit she got into after getting out of
prison or getting out of juvie whatever.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Anyway, thanks so much you guys for listening.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
I'll be back again next week with a little bit more,
some more crazy, fun terrible stories. Who knows, things are
a little wild right now with the fires and people
being displaced and work being crazy. So you know, going
to keep doing this to keep myself distracted, keep myself
on track. If you guys have the ability to donate
(51:13):
to people who have lost their homes, please consider doing so.
I'll see about if I can post some links on
my Instagram where people can donate and how they can help.
Direct donations are going to be the way to go.
Finding people's go fundme is verifying that they're you know, real,
and donating there I think at this point is going
to be what helps the most. So I'll try to
find some links at least to the people that I know,
(51:34):
which there are quite a few, very unfortunately. So thanks
everybody for listening. Please like Raake review, share with your
friends and family, and come back next week for another
Crazy Tale. Until then, stay safe.
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