by John Bateson
James Olive grabbed a knife that was on a nightstand by the bed and came toward Riley, who fired four shots through the paper bag. The bullets exploded in James Olive’s body and he went down in a heap, mortally wounded.
In the moment, both teens were numb to what had just happened. In his testimony, Riley said that afterward he walked into the living room and stared at the fireplace for a long time. Then Marlene brought him a beer, and shortly thereafter she began undressing him and they had sex. After that they went out to dinner with several friends, following it with a drive-in movie by themselves. During the movie they talked about burning the bodies and decided that the large concrete cistern at China Camp, which served as a fire pit, was the best place to do it.
China Camp State Park is a historic site on the shore of San Pablo Bay in San Rafael. A onetime Chinese-American shrimp-fishing village, it was a popular hangout for teens, and Marlene and Riley had been there on occasion, getting drunk and doing drugs with friends. They struggled to put the bodies of Marlene’s parents into plastic garbage bags and load them in the family’s station wagon. To get rid of some of the evidence and also cover the bodies in case anyone happened to look in, they threw the mattress from Naomi Olive’s bed over the remains of her and her husband.
When they arrived at China Camp, it was dark and deserted. They dumped the bodies of James Olive, fifty-nine, and Naomi Olive, fifty-two, out of the bags and into the cistern after discarding the mattress in the surrounding woods. At one time the cistern had stored rainwater for a now abandoned dairy farm. Since then it had been filled with crushed rock except for the top two feet. After they splashed kerosene on the Olives, they set them on fire. Too scared to stay and watch for fear of being caught, they raced out of the park and returned to the Olives’ house. Early the next morning, Marlene made Riley drive back alone to the cistern to see whether both bodies had burned completely. A portion of James Olive’s body hadn’t, and Riley doused it with more kerosene and lit it again.
The following week, Marlene and Riley acted as if nothing had happened. They continued to live in the Olives’ house and socialize with friends, one of whom came to the house and helped Marlene clean up the mess. To anyone who called and asked to speak with Mr. or Mrs. Olive, Marlene made up stories about her parents being away and not knowing when they would return. As far as she was concerned, the worst was over. Her parents were now just bones and ashes, and she and Riley were free. It wouldn’t be long, she thought, before she received her inheritance.
A GOLD CROWN
Shortly after Riley had burned the final remains of James Olive, a San Rafael firefighter who was in the area noticed a plume of smoke coming from China Camp. When he went to investigate, he saw charred bones in the cistern and assumed that local hunters had been roasting a deer in the pit. Upon closer examination, though, he saw a piece of jawbone with a tooth that had a gold crown. That’s when the coroner’s office entered the picture.
Keith Craig responded, along with Rodger Heglar, a physical anthropologist who was on contract with the coroner’s office. They began sifting through the cistern, finding more human bones and pieces of burned clothing and charred flesh. Every item that was recovered was taken back to the office to be studied in order to learn who had died.
The following day, Dr. Heglar examined the bones and fragments. There were portions of the cranial vault and face, vertebrae, ribs, scapula (shoulder bone), ulna (elbow bone), talus (ankle bone), and assorted long bones (that is, bones such as the femur and tibia—the thigh bone and shinbone—that are longer than they are wide). Heglar determined that the fragments of cranial and long bones differed somewhat in size, suggesting that the bones were from two people, with one person being larger than the other. He noted that there weren’t parallel examples of the same bone to prove that the remains comprised two people, but it seemed likely. Moreover, the size of the bones from the lower jaw and shoulder were consistent with those of a female age forty-five to fifty-five, he said.
Meanwhile, James Olive’s business partner, a man named Phillip Royce, became increasingly concerned when Olive didn’t show up for work or call. Royce phoned the Olive residence multiple times, always talking to Marlene. She gave him cryptic answers regarding the whereabouts of her father, and after a week Royce contacted the police.
The first officer who went to the house questioned Marlene at length. Even though she provided rambling and contradictory stories about her parents, as well as a fabricated tale about visiting a friend in the Lake Tahoe area and coming home to find her parents gone with no note or explanation, the officer accepted what she told him. Her ability to tell detailed lies with seeming innocence and absolute conviction was persuasive.
Then Bart Stinson, a forty-nine-year-old police investigator, took charge of the case. Holmes worked with him numerous times over the next decade, before Stinson retired, and was in awe.
“Bart was the best interrogator I ever saw,” Holmes says, “mainly because he never seemed to interrogate anyone.”
Soft around the middle, balding on top, with oversized glasses, Stinson cut a fatherly figure. He would sit down next to someone as if he had all the time in the world and just have a conversation. By the end of it, though, the person had revealed far more than he or she ever intended.
Marlene told Stinson different stories of where she’d been and how long she’d been gone. Each story seemed plausible until Stinson asked a telltale question that caused it to fall apart. That produced a new story, which caused Stinson to press harder. She was good at invention, but he wasn’t deceived.
Eventually she told him the truth—or something close to it. She said that Chuck Riley killed her parents and the two of them burned the bodies in the cistern at China Camp.
Police arrested Riley at the water bed company where he worked and read him his rights. Bart Stinson knew from experience that people who are guilty usually waive their right to remain silent because they are eager to learn how much the police already know. Riley was no exception. Without the benefit of legal counsel, he answered Stinson’s questions until he had backed himself into a corner.
“I did it! I did it!” he said finally, burying his face in his hands. “I didn’t want to do it. Marlene made me do it. She kept asking me and asking me, begging me and begging me for months. Telling me to do it or she wouldn’t love me anymore.”
Now that the coroner’s office had a good idea whom the charred remains in the cistern at China Camp belonged to, the three investigators—Bill Thomas, Don Cornish, and Holmes—began tracking down dental records and X-rays for James and Naomi Olive. They found a dentist in San Rafael who was able to provide records and X-rays for Mr. Olive, and a dentist in Coral Gables, Florida, who provided records and X-rays for Mrs. Olive. This information was given to a dentist in Mill Valley, who compared it with the gold crowns and fragments of jawbones found at the site. He concluded that there was “incontrovertible” proof that the remains were those of Naomi Olive. The crowns and bone fragments matched her dental structure exactly. Fewer remains were found of James Olive, none of which provided certain identification, although “the similarities were reasonably conclusive,” the dentist said.
RILEY’S TRIAL
Because she was a minor, Marlene Olive was tried as a juvenile for her role in the murders. After she was convicted, she was sentenced to the California Youth Authority, where she could be released anytime that officials there felt she was rehabilitated. Release was automatic on her twenty-first birthday unless she was considered unreformed, in which case she could be held to age twenty-three. As a juvenile, she wasn’t convicted of aiding and abetting in two homicides because California’s Welfare and Institutions Code stipulated that the crimes of incarcerated minors weren’t specified. Chuck Riley’s fate was much different. His parents were able to scrape together enough money to hire William “Bill” Weissich as his defense attorney. Weissich was highly respected and had successfully argued several capital punishment cases. The ch
allenge he faced was that Riley already had confessed to both murders, which made him eligible for the death penalty if convicted. Weissich was convinced that his client wasn’t in his right mind at the time of the murders, though, that he was under Marlene’s spell. In addition, Riley said he was “spaced out” the entire day, having taken LSD before the murders and smoking marijuana, snorting cocaine, and drinking beer afterward.
To prove how easily Riley could be manipulated, Weissich hired three hypnotists. Each one put Riley under and testified that Riley was among the most hypnotizable people he had ever encountered. Under hypnosis, Riley said he didn’t kill Naomi Olive—Marlene did. Riley said that he found the hammer embedded in Mrs. Olive’s skull and was going to take it out when he was surprised by James Olive, whom he shot in self-defense.
The case went to a grand jury first to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to try Chuck Riley. In her grand jury testimony, Deanna Krieger, seventeen, the friend who helped Marlene and Riley clean up after the Olives were killed, said that Riley told her he bludgeoned Naomi and shot James, then he and Marlene cremated the bodies in the cistern at China Camp.
During the trial, however, Krieger told a different story. She said that Marlene told her she killed her mother. “She just told me that when she hit her mom over the head with a hammer,” Krieger said, “blood and stuff went all over the place.”
Krieger also testified that Marlene considered herself a “high priestess” who could command Riley to do anything she wanted. Krieger told jurors about the shoplifting episodes, about Riley supplying Marlene with cocaine and other drugs to take on dates with other men, about Marlene instructing Riley to take nude photos of her that she planned to submit to various men’s magazines, and about Marlene carrying a tarot card that she said symbolized her dominance over Riley.
Tapes of Riley’s two confessions were played for jurors, which Bill Weissich, his attorney, tried to counterbalance with testimony from Riley’s parents in which they said their son wasn’t rational after his arrest. He was sobbing heavily, apologizing and telling them, “She made me do it.”
During the trial, the Marin County Superior Court room was packed. People listened with rapt attention as scenes of debauchery, deceit, and alienation were recounted. When Riley took the stand, interest ratcheted even higher and his testimony was riveting.
“I saw Mrs. Olive with a hammer protruding from her forehead. . . . It had a paralyzing effect. I was hurt and frightened. I started to freak out . . . started to leave the house, but I couldn’t leave until I removed that hammer. . . . It took all my strength. I got blood all over my hands. The blood felt like it was burning my hands. . . . I slung it off.”
Earlier that day, Riley said, Marlene had asked him how hard you have to hit someone in order to kill the person. Afterward, he told her that he would take the blame for both murders.
Other youths testified at Riley’s trial. Two boys said that they had had sexual relations with Marlene, and she had asked each of them if he would kill her mother or find someone who would. Another teenage boy said he had talked with Marlene while both of them were in Marin Juvenile Hall, and “she said she killed her mom with some kind of mallet.”
* * *
In his closing argument, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Thomas rebutted the version of events that Riley stated initially under hypnosis and then in his courtroom testimony. Although a Stanford psychologist had testified that highly hypnotizable people are “prone to suspend their own judgments and take other people’s suggestions,” adding that “[t]his desire to please could influence a confession,” the prosecution presented its own expert witness to refute it. He said that people under hypnosis usually speak in the present tense, while Riley often spoke in the past tense. This discrepancy was evidence, the prosecution said, that Riley was lying.
As for the defense’s contention that Riley was under the influence of drugs at the time he committed murder, the prosecution’s position was that this wasn’t unusual. Riley was a heavy drug user, and his state of mind was no different on the day that the Olives were killed than on any other day. In regards to the theory put forth by the defense that Riley was bewitched by Marlene, it was “almost ridiculous,” according to the district attorney. Thomas also argued that Riley’s use of a stolen gun to kill James Olive was evidence of premeditation since stolen weapons can’t be traced.
The jury deliberated for four days and ultimately sided with the prosecution. Riley “personally committed” both first-degree murders, jurors said.
If Marlene Olive had confessed to killing her mother, her sentence wouldn’t have changed. She would have been remanded to the California Youth Authority and released within six years. Chuck Riley’s sentence would have been different, however. He would have been imprisoned fifteen years to life with the possibility of parole after seven years. Instead, because he was convicted of killing two people rather than one, he received the death penalty. When capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional in California in 1978, his sentence became life in prison without parole.
AFTERMATH
In 1978, three months before she was scheduled to be paroled, Marlene escaped from a California Youth Authority facility in Southern California. Ten months later she was picked up by police in New York City because she “looked young” and was evasive when they asked her questions. She was hooking, didn’t have proper ID, and wouldn’t tell officers her name, how old she was, or where she came from. At the police station she gave the phone number of her public guardian in Marin County. The guardian told officers that Marlene had escaped from the CYA facility in Ventura and there was a no-bail warrant out for her arrest.
Marlene was returned to California but incarcerated only briefly. Upon release, she was arrested for being part of a large forgery and counterfeiting ring in Southern California. She was convicted as an adult and sentenced to five years in prison. That was followed by other prison terms for check forgery, making false statements to authorities, and possession of drugs. Her current whereabouts are unknown.
In contrast, Chuck Riley has spent the last forty years behind bars. He has applied for parole more than a dozen times, and been denied each time.
“I can attest from firsthand experience that many death row inmates are truly evil,” Holmes says. “However, I don’t believe Chuck is one of them. He was this young, baby-faced cherub of a kid, not particularly attractive, absolutely virginal, not only physically but mentally, and she sucked him in.”
Holmes’s opinion then as well as now is that justice was poorly served. “I understand the community witch hunt,” he says, “but they let her skate and jammed this kid badly. It was so obvious. Why he’s in there for life without the possibility of parole is beyond me. He should have done seven years, then been released. Okay, he killed somebody, but he truly wasn’t in his right frame of mind.”
Many of the newspapers that reported the case referred to it as “the barbecue murders.” When Riley was first incarcerated, other inmates nicknamed him “Barbecue.” Eventually it was shortened to just “Q.” After capital punishment was abolished, he was one of the last death row inmates to be transferred from San Quentin to the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. A year later he was moved back to San Quentin, though, and he has been there ever since.
In 1981, Levine drove Marlene from Los Angeles, where she was living, to San Luis Obispo, where Riley was incarcerated. He and Marlene hadn’t seen each other in five years, and the meeting was awkward. During his time in prison, Riley had slimmed down, no longer a cherub, while Marlene’s physical appearance had deteriorated due to drug use, jail terms, and time spent on the street.
At one point Riley asked Marlene what she was thinking. Her response, according to Levine, was “I was just thinking about what had gone down. We just lost our marbles.”
It was as close as she came to expressing remorse.
Over the years, Holmes went to San Quentin Prison numerous times. Usually it
was to investigate an inmate’s death. Every once in a while he would see Riley in passing. When he did, he would stop and say, “Hey, Chuck. How are you doing?”
Riley didn’t seem to know what to say other than, “Okay.”
Only once did they have a conversation. It was no more than two minutes and consisted mainly of Holmes asking Riley how he spent his time. Riley said that he read a lot.
“Good,” Holmes said. “Reading is good.”
Reading not only gives inmates a purpose—the chance to further their limited educations—but tends to keep them out of trouble. In Riley’s instance, however, whatever he learned through books was offset by a general cluelessness that hadn’t changed much since youth.
“The last time I saw you, I was here, too,” Riley said to Holmes one time, as if he could go anywhere and it were merely coincidental that they happened to meet again at San Quentin.
Holmes could only shrug and wonder if more years in prison would make any difference. Probably not.
Things didn’t turn out well for Bill Weissich, Riley’s attorney, either. Ten years after the trial, Holmes responded to a shooting in a San Rafael law office. When he arrived, he saw Weissich sitting at his desk with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead and an empty .45-caliber casing on the floor nearby. A onetime prosecutor, Weissich had been killed by a seventy-two-year-old man named Malcolm Schlette, whom he had sent to prison for arson and attempted murder many years earlier. After he was released, Schlette sought revenge.
Weissich’s secretary was an eyewitness to the shooting, and after Schlette fled she called the police and described Schlette’s getaway vehicle, a blue van. A cop stopped it several blocks away and ordered Schlette to get out. Schlette did, but only after he swallowed cyanide. He collapsed in the street, unconscious, with foam dribbling out of his mouth.