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By any yardstick, Dr. Victor Ohta was a stunning
success.
Born in 1925, the son of a Japanese immigrant farmer
in Montana, Ohta studied medicine at Northwestern University and, in
1954, joined the Air Force, achieving the rank of major.
By 1970, he had established a booming practice in
bucolic Santa Cruz, Calif. Along with a sterling reputation as an eye
surgeon, citizen and friend, Ohta also had earned a considerable amount
of money, and he spent much of it on the trappings of wealth. He owned a
maroon Rolls-Royce, bought his wife expensive jewelry and favored
colorful silk scarves instead of ties. His children attended pricey
private schools.
Perhaps his most extravagant belonging was his home,
in the oceanfront resort area of Soquel, 5 miles south of Santa Cruz.
Perched atop a hilltop overlooking Monterey Bay, the mansion had been
designed by a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright.
On Oct. 19, 1970, it all went up in flames.
Firefighters rushed to the blaze, only to find the
two dirt roads leading to the house blocked by the doctor's Rolls and a
Lincoln Continental.
What they found when they cleared the obstacles and
reached the house was more than a fire. It was a scene of horror, a mass
murder reminiscent of the grisly Charles Manson cult slayings just 15
months earlier.
Horrific discovery
The house at first appeared to be unoccupied. Then
one of the firefighters aimed his flashlight at the lagoonlike pool and
spotted a floating corpse. Four more bodies had sunk to the bottom of
the pool. They were Dr. Ohta; his wife, Virginia, 43; their sons Derrick,
12, and Taggart, 11, and Ohta's secretary, Dorothy Cadwallader, 38, a
married mother of two little girls.
All had been bound with the doctor's bright silk
scarves, and all, along with the family cat, had been shot in the neck
with a .38.
"Like an execution," one officer observed.
A burglary seemed unlikely, because jewelry,
expensive cameras and electronics had not been touched.
But one of the family cars was missing. The green
station wagon turned up the next day, burned and abandoned in a Southern
Pacific railroad tunnel about 20 miles to the northwest.
There were no weapon, no suspects and no motive. All
detectives had was a typewritten note left on the windshield of the
Rolls. Dated "Halloween, 1970," it read: "today world war 3 will begin
as brought to you by the people of free universe. From this day forward,
anyone or company of persons who misuses the natural environment or
destroys same will suffer the penalty of death by the people of the free
universe. I and my comrades from this day forth will fight until death
or freedom against any single anyone who does not support natural life
on this planet, materialism must die or mankind will."
The note was signed by "Knight of Wands, Knight of
Cups, Night [sic] of Pentacles and Knight of Swords."
The ritualistic nature of the slayings, the cultish
tone of the note and the signature of tarot card characters sparked
terror that another Manson family was about to begin a bloody rampage.
Detectives began probing the many hippie communes
that dotted the region.
The idea that the massacre had been the work of
hippies gained momentum when one of Ohta's neighbors recalled that the
eye doctor had recently shooed a handful of them off his porch and out
of the pool in which he was later found dead.
But detectives soon learned that the hippies around
Santa Cruz were as terrified as the wealthy establishment of the phantom
killer. Some expressed true remorse over the doctor's death because Ohta
frequently extended charity to his earthy neighbors in the form of free
medical care.
His name was John Linley Frazier, 24. Born in Ohio,
Frazier had a history of petty crimes as a youngster but had calmed down
after he dropped out of high school, married and found steady work as an
auto mechanic. Then, six months before the killing, he "flipped out," no
doubt a reaction to the LSD and mescaline he was taking, a neighbor told
United Press International. Frazier left his wife, let his hair and
beard grow and became an eco-freak.
Frazier declared he had stopped driving, for example,
on orders from the Almighty.
"He said God had told him that by driving his car he
was polluting the environment and he would be killed if he drove anymore,"
said one acquaintance.
Always a bit of a loner, Frazier had gone into
seclusion in a rundown shanty near Soquel, about a half mile from the
Ohta mansion.
One of his hairy hiking companions reported that
Frazier had ranted about the doctor's materialism, saying that people
like that "should be snuffed."
Ohta's mansion was particularly irksome to the born-again
nature lover because trees had been cut to make room for it.
On the day of the murders, Frazier appeared at the
San Lorenzo home he had shared with his wife and told her he was going
to New York. He carried a loaded pistol and a backpack filled with food.
As he left, Frazier handed his estranged wife his wallet and driver's
license. "I won't be needing these anymore," he said.
Four days after the murders, police found their
suspect asleep in his shack. They also found a pair of binoculars that
had been stolen from the doctor's house some months earlier, a
wristwatch that had belonged to one of Ohta's sons and a .45-caliber
pistol. The murder weapon was never found.
Examiner.com
August 24, 2009
1970
mass murderer John Linley Frazier commits suicide in prison cell.
When I was a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News in
the early 1970s the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains were known as the murder
capital of the world.
One of the killers roaming those hills that I did
regular stories on was John Linley Frazier. In October 1970 the Soquel
area of the Santa Cruz hills, ophthalmologist Victor Ohta, his wife, two
sons and Ohta’s secretary were killed and thrown in the family swimming
pool.
A note left at the scene said the murders were
intended to start a war against materialism.
Frazier was caught, tried, found guilty and sentenced
to die. That sentence was lifted in 1974 when the United States Supreme
Court struck down California's capital punishment law.
Thirty-five years later carried out the sentence
himself.
Alone in his small cell at Mule Creek State Prison in
Ione, some 40 miles southeast of Sacramento, Frazier killed himself. A
coroner ruled death was by asphyxiation. No details were offered.
Frazier was found last Thursday but it was just announced today. He was
62.
Frazier had been transferred recently out of an
intensive mental health program into the general prison population. He
also has a physical disability, according to Jane Kahn, an attorney who
monitors inmate suicides and prevention.