Going West: True Crime - Marlene Olive // 61

Episode Date: March 12, 2020

In 1975, a teenage girl moved with her family to Northern California so her father could begin his new job. But with this move came negative change. The girls relationship with her mother only deteriorated further as she was introduced to a rough crowd of teens at school. But things would get much worse when she started dating a boy named Chuck Riley- and it would put her parents lives at danger. This is story of Marlene Olive. _____ Audible is the leading provider of audiobooks and audio entertainment so you can listen to audiobooks, memoirs, the news, podcasts, theatrical performances, and plenty of other awesome content from your smartphone or tablet. Plus, you can download your favorite reads to enjoy offline- so you can listen anywhere, anytime! If you've been putting off reading because of lack of time, here's your chance to change that. Explore the thousands of titles available on Audible today while you clean the house, cook, drive, or just while you're relaxing at home! Visit audible.com/goingwest or text goingwest to 500-500 to get your free audiobook today! Audible is the leading provider of audiobooks and audio entertainment so you can listen to audiobooks, memoirs, the news, podcasts, theatrical performances, and plenty of other awesome content from your smartphone or tablet. Plus, you can download your favorite reads to enjoy offline- so you can listen anywhere, anytime! If you've been putting off reading because of lack of time, here's your chance to change that. Explore the thousands of titles available on Audible today while you clean the house, cook, drive, or just while you're relaxing at home! Visit audible.com/goingwest or text goingwest to 500-500 to get your free audiobook today! ________ Lumi CBD Check out https://www.lumicbd.com/?oid=1&affid=3 and receive 20% off and free shipping on your order by using code "goingwest20" Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on to crime fans? I'm your host Heath, and I'm your other host Daphne, and you're listening to Going West. You know I've been referred to as the other host. Yeah, you are the other host. Oh, it's the other host. No, I was just too scared in our first episode to talk first. That's how you became the main host. Apparently I'm the main host. She does all the work though. Yeah, you're just the talent, kind of.

On the looks. The looks that no one can see. We'd like to start off our show like we start off every show by giving thanks to everybody who gave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts this past week. I almost said Apple iTunes again. Thank you so much to Jenna from Salt Lake City, Utah and Chris from Columbus, Ohio. And a big thanks to Carrie and Tucson, Arizona and Allison in Austin, Texas. I don't know if this is Jansi or Yon Sea. I'm really sorry. Jansi or Yon Sea? I'm Indianapolis, Indiana. He says it's Jansi. I don't know. I'm not sure it's it seems like Jansi but I don't know. I'm

sorry I've never seen this name before. Forgive me. And also thank you to Lindsay from Iowa. And a big thanks to Abigail and David and magma Utah and Ireland and Richland Washington Thank you so much to Caitlin from Misskeegan Michigan and Jake from Carmel, Indiana and last but not least We have Kim in Australia Linda also in Australia Pete and Brighton UK and Maria and Mexico City and if you guys want a shout out on the show, make sure you head over to Apple Podcasts. Leave us a five-star review, but make sure you leave your name and your location. Next, we have our Patreon shoutouts.

Thank you so much to everybody who became a patron this past week. For those of you who don't know, we have a thing called a Patreon.patrion.com slash Going West Podcast. It's where you can get bonus episodes and bonus content. Yeah, and right now we have 11 episodes available for you guys.

We're working on the 12th one, so that'll be out soon. So look forward to that as well. Yeah, so thank you so much to everybody who has become a patron this week. Thank you so much to Debbie, Claire, Kate, Megan, Karen, Alex, Elty, Lucy, Maryanne, and Preston. And then we have Karissa, Shondra, Mary, Christina, Jacqueline, Amy, Maria, and Tim. And then thank you so much to Kate, Olivia, Ashley, Kathleen, Nicole, Michelle, Cindy, Deborah, and Alice. You guys are awesome.

Look at all of those patrons. I don't know if it was Alice or Elise because it was spelled different, so thank you, Alice, and or Elise. Yeah, thank you guys so much. So without further ado, we're going to get into this episode today. This is episode 61 of Going West, so let's fucking get into it. In 1975, a teenage girl moved with her family to Northern California, so her father could begin his new job. But with this move came negative change. The girl's relationship with her mother only deteriorated further as she was introduced

to a rough crowd of teens at school. But things would get much worse when she started dating a boy named Chuck Riley, and this would put her parents' lives in danger. This is the story of Marlene Olive was born on January 15th, 1959 in Norfolk, Virginia. She was given up for adoption as a newborn to a middle-aged couple who couldn't have children of their own, and they were named Naomi and Jim Olive. Marlene's adoptive father Jim worked as a marketing executive for Gulf Oil and Tennico, so she spent a lot of her childhood in Ecuador, which is where the oil came from.

Marlene was always really close to her dad Jim, but she and her mother didn't get along very well at all. Naomi Olive apparently suffered from an unknown mental illness and was addicted to alcohol, and these elements were not prominent to Jim when they originally became married apparently. Just after she and Jim adopted Marlene, Naomi had become obsessive over being clean, so she was kind of a germaphob. She wouldn't allow her or Jim to go near Marlene, who was an infant, without wearing a surgical mask.

So Marlene as a baby kind of only knew her mom to be wearing a surgical mask, which is kind of interesting strange. Yeah, and especially if you're growing up like in those early years, seeing your mom wearing a surgical mask all the time around you is kind of creepy. Yeah, and I think it kind of takes away from that mother child bond. I don't know, maybe. So at age 10, Marlene discovered that she was adopted after finding the paperwork in her dad's study.

And this was really hard on her. So she grew up all the way until age 10, she had no idea that she was adopted. She thought that Jim and Naomi were her birth parents. So she started questioning why her original parents didn't want her and why she'd been calling Jim and Naomi mom and dad all these years. It just made her question everything which I'm sure most every adopted kid goes through. Yeah, I would imagine that there's a period in time where adopted children kind of question

why their parents would give them up. Honestly it seems like Jim was a very loving parent, but I think Naomi was just going through some struggles. I think she probably, it didn't seem like she cared too much that Jim wasn't her real dad, but I think even more so knowing that Naomi wasn't her real mom. Since she didn't get along with Naomi, she's like, this lady isn't even my mom and she sucks, you know? Right, and then you throw in alcohol abuse, pills, and a mental disorder, and that kind of leads to a pretty bad recipe. The olives lived a very luxurious life and Ecuador thanks to Jim's successful career.

That is, until Marlene was 13 years old and her father Jim lost his job. At that point, the olives moved back to the United States, more specifically Colorado in 1965. But Naomi's mental health seemed to only deteriorate more as time went on. She began talking to people who weren't there, and her paranoia was through the roof, and this caused a relationship with Marlene to worsen as well. When they'd get into arguments, Marlene began hurting herself, usually by biting her own arms or banging her head against the wall.

People in Marlene's life later reported that she discussed her hatred openly about her mom to classmates and middle school and even to her friends. About eight years after moving back to the United States, in March 1973, Jim was fired from his Colorado job, so he had been looking for any other job in the US. He found a position for a business management service in Marin County, California, which is just across the Golden Gate Bridge

from San Francisco, and he took it without hesitation. So again, the family would be moving, this time to a town called Tera Linda, which was in the city of San Rafael in Marin County. Marlene was having a hard time adjusting to life in the United States as it was, so moving again was tough on her. She was also stressed about her mother's paranoia and her father's inability to keep a job, so in her mid-teen years, she started to rebel. She began by stealing things and then moved on to doing drugs, mostly smoking weed or doing cocaine and LSD, and she also started drinking alcohol and hanging out with a rough crowd, mostly girls who were into doing drugs as well as skipping school and

worshipping Satan. To fit in Marlene told her new friends that she was a member of San Francisco's Church of Satan that her dad was a drug lord in Ecuador and that she was in a porn film. So this kind of shows the people she was hanging out with that would be impressed. Those false facts. Yeah, and the links that she's going to to fit in. She's like making up all these crazy with that would be impressed. Right. Those false facts. Yeah, and the lengths that she's going to to fit in, she's like making up all these crazy stories that would kind of make her seem more cool, I guess, to like the more dangerous crowd. Which a lot of new kids do, but this seems like a bit of a stretch.

Yeah, exactly. If you move to a new town, you definitely want to fit in in some way, and this is just her trying to do that. I moved like 15 times growing up, and this is just her trying to do that. I moved like 15 times growing up, and every time I moved to a new place, I was like, I'm gonna have a British accent this time. I never actually did it, but it was legitimately something

that I was thinking of doing, which is weird. What would you have done, like, once they found you out? They all would have been like, okay, well, you're fucking dumb. That's why it's a bad plan. I'm glad I never did it. That would have been so stupid. So anyway, she basically then also started dressing differently.

She wore a lot of makeup, she wore platform shoes, wore tight revealing clothes, and she would color her hair. And remember, this is also like right after like the counter-culture in the late 60s, and now like rock and roll is starting to get real big. And she's also very close to like the counterculture in the late 60s, and now like Rock and Roll is starting to get real big. And she's also very close to like the Rock and Roll scene in San Francisco, so yeah, I get it. In ninth grade, Marlene was arrested for shoplifting,

and this made Naomi really upset. They got into a huge blowout argument that led to Naomi stating that Marlene's biological mother was probably a whore, followed by Naomi stripping completely naked and making sexual movements trying to replicate her real mom's behavior, which is really fucked up. Could you imagine that's so inappropriate?

Yeah, very inappropriate, but... Their daughter's like 15 or 14 years old. I mean, that just goes to show you that she struggled a bit mentally if she was willing to kind of do that in front of her daughter. Yeah exactly. So Marlene at this point is clinging on to her dad in times like this, but he always stood up for his wife because he knew that she struggled with her disability. So this hurt him and Marlene's relationship a bit too, because they used to be really close,

but since moving to the US they became more distant. And like we said, Marlene is now rebelling, she's kind of becoming an angsty teen. Marlene used more drugs and wrote poetry to try and ease the pain of her destructive home life. And one poem she actually wrote, no one stops to step into my life. And those in it have long ago fallen asleep. I've been empty for so long. The first time that Marlene did LSD didn't go so well, and she was made fun of for it,

but there was this one guy who sold drugs to the kids at school, and he was 19-year-old Chuck Riley. He kind of stepped in and told everyone to shut up about Marlene's bad trip, and this all occurred at Marlene's high school, and she was really impressed by Chuck after he stood up for her. So I guess she was taking LSD at school and then he was there selling drugs and everyone was taunting her and he was kind of like, hey shut up. I feel like high school would be probably the last place that I would want to drop acid. I don't know what the circumstances were, I don't know if it was like after school, but I agree. Charles, known as Chuck, Riley, was born in 1955 in Marin County to Joanne, a nurse's aid, and Oscar Riley, a grocery store bakery worker. Throughout his upbringing, Chuck struggled with

his weight a lot, but he was an all-around loving and happy child. Chuck often went fishing with his dad as a little boy, along with his brother, and the area they fished at was nearby the San Quentin prison. So, whenever the boys were acting up during their fishing trips, their dad Oscar would point towards the prison and tell them that they would end up there if they didn't behave. Chuck was a victim of bullying during his school years and was often called bolder and fat man by his peers. Fat man, really? That's just a weird thing to call a teenager. Hey fat man, like what? Yeah, well different, uh, different age, I guess.

So he ended up dropping out of high school in his senior year and he began selling drugs. But he also worked as a factory worker, a newspaper boy, and a pizza delivery boy. He liked dealing drugs the best because it made him kind of popular amongst the local youth and it helped him earn a good living. With his money, he liked buying guns as he was a skilled

marksman. And I know that he wasn't making a lot of money. He was making enough money to where he could kind of support himself on that money, but he wasn't making so much money where it was like, oh, I'm this big shot drug dealer in the area. He's not ballin' out. He's basically just selling dime bags to kids at school, essentially. Yeah, exactly. So after Marlene had had this really bad LSD trip, Chuck developed a huge crush on Marlene. Again, he was 19 at the time and she was 15 years old and this was the mid-1970s, so her being underage wasn't that big of a deal.

But because Chuck's deep-rooted insecurities regarding his weights and never having a girlfriend, Marlene kind of wore the pants in the relationship. And actually I shouldn't even say kind of, she fucking did. Yeah she did. Marlene gained a lot from their relationship including gifts, drugs, and now having a real shoulder to cry on regarding her issues with her parents. But she took it all at step too far. She made him believe that she had magic powers over him and that she could control his

every move And if he didn't do what she said, there would be consequences And he fully believed all of this. She was basically his puppet master But he was also in love with her. He was completely infatuated with her So he did whatever she said. He also was hers to dominate and on one occasion She actually peed on his face in front of her friends, and often asked him to take photos of her naked. She told him that he was her slave.

And this is so messed up. Could you imagine, like, your girlfriend peeing on your face, basically marking her territory and being like, and just laughing about it? Yeah, and it doesn't even, I mean, they're so young too. I mean, it's not even really like a sexual thing, it doesn't seem like it's just kind of like, I'm an asshole.

Well, how the hell does that even happen anyways? I mean, what are they just sitting around in a circle peeing on each other? I don't know. No, just don't understand it. I don't know, and these friends really think that's cool. I mean, imagine if you're sitting there and your friend just pe peas on your other friend's

face, like, but in a serious way, you're gonna be like, that was fucking weird. Yeah, and pretty disgusting. But anyways, at one point, she actually broke up with him briefly and he attempted suicide two separate times, so you know Chuck has a kind of obsession with her. Well, if you're gonna stay with someone after they pee on your face in front of their friends and laugh at you, obviously he was really into her to not be like, I'm worth more than this, you know? Yeah, for all of you guys out there getting pee on your face, you're worth more than that.

Chuck wasn't Marlene's first boyfriend. She had dated other guys here and there, but wasn't as involved with them as she was with Chuck. And both Naomi and Jim really liked Chuck at first. They thought he was a respectful kind and seemingly responsible kid, but little did they know, Chuck and Marlene were planning something sinister against them. Marlene had brought up on more than one occasion that she wanted Chuck to help her kill her parents. It wasn't known to Chuck at the time if this was a serious request, but he knew she hated her parents,

but didn't know if she really actually wanted them dead. For the time being, it was just something she mentioned from time to time. In March 1975, so about a year or so into their relationship, when Marlene was newly 16 and Chuck was about 20, Marlene came up with the idea to carry out an extensive shoplifting scheme. So she and Chuck went to various local stores over the next few weeks and ended up stealing around $6,000 worth of clothes and accessories. But while robbing one store, they were caught and arrested for Grand Larsony. Although Chuck had been selling drugs for years, he had never actually been arrested for it, nor did he commit any other crime. So this was his first defense on his record.

But two months later, he was arrested yet again for possessing a sought-off shotgun as well as marijuana. So after the grand larceny arrest, Marlene's parents were super disappointed in her, of course. Although she had been acting up a lot since their move to California two years earlier, this was her first arrest, too. So her parents were horrified by both her actions and Chuck's actions. They didn't want her to see Chuck ever again and even threatened to send her off to boarding school or let her learn her lesson in juvenile hall. Jim told Chuck to his face that he needed to stay away from his daughter and their home or he would kill him. They were worried that Chuck was the reason that Marlene had started acting up in the first

place so they wanted to keep him away at all costs and hopes of reversing their daughter's bad behavior, which doesn't really ever work the way parents think it's going to work. Meanwhile, she was actually the one corrupting Chuck. His personality completely changed once they started dating. He turned from a generous and friendly guy to an angry rebellious type of guy probably to impress Marlene. Because of this, Chuck lost a lot of his friends. They didn't like the new Chuck. He also lost weight because of Marlene's desire for him to be slimmer and dress more hip.

Marlene continued to see Chuck in private whenever she had the chance. Two months passed and it was Saturday Saturday June 21, 1975. Marlene got in yet another horrible argument with her mom Naomi and at that point, she'd had it. Naomi's mental health continued to decline as time passed and it enraged Marlene. She called Chuck and said, get your gun. We've got to kill this bitch today. And this time, Chuck knew she meant it. He also disliked Marlene's parents because of the fact that they wanted to keep him away from Marlene.

So he was in. That day, Marlene developed a plan. She would go out with her dad for the day to ensure that he was out of the house, leaving her mom home alone, so Chuck could go in and commit the murder. Because Marlene didn't want to be the one to pull the trigger. She also left the door unlocked so Chuck could get into the house easier. Marlene didn't want Chuck to kill her father Jim

because although he usually ignored her lately, she still loved him as a dad and they got along much better than she did with her mom. On that hot summer day in 1975, Chuck headed over to the olives house on LSD, armed with a hammer and a 22 caliber pistollene to kill her adoptive mother, Naomi, before leaving to commit the crime, Chuck dropped acid. Chuck had never committed a violent crime before,

let alone a murderer, and he was doing it for Marlene. Fully believing he'd get away with it. Marlene left the house with her father Jim to head to the mall briefly and kept one of the doors of the home unlocked so that Chuck could sneak in. He did so armed with a hammer and a 22 caliber pistol. As he crept into the all of home, he eventually found Naomi

in her bed, where she spent most of her days trying to drink her troubles away. Chuck first hit Naomi repeatedly in the head with a hammer until it got stuck in her skull, but Naomi wasn't dead yet, so he ran into the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife to finish her off, since he didn't want to use the gun due to the loud noise that it would produce. He stabbed Naomi in her abdomen and chest multiple times before smothering her with a pillow. But while Chuck was still in the process of murdering Naomi, Marlene and Jim came home from their outing. She had hoped it would be completely over by the time they got home so they could just stumble upon Naomi's body while Chuck was nowhere in sight. But this plan completely backfired.

Jim saw Chuck standing over his brutally attacked wife and went to grab the knife that Chuck had set down on the nightstand. But as Jim ran towards Chuck, Chuck shot 59-year-old Jim four to six times in the chest, and Marlene watched the whole thing happen. Although Marlene didn't want Jim to die, hence her plan to make sure he was out of the house, she knew that he had to die since he'd witnessed Chuck committing Naomi's murder, so she wasn't upset about it, which says a lot. Chuck washed up and tried to get rid of any evidence that he was there after they rolled

both Naomi and Jim into rugs and moved the bodies into Chuck's car. And I just want you guys to think about this crime for one second. Naomi's sleeping, Chuck's in the house. He beats her with the hammer. She's not dead. He grabs a knife. Tries to kill her that way. She's still not dead. He grabs a knife, tries to kill her that way. She's still not dead.

Then he grabs a pillow and Suffocates her to death. I mean just think about how horrifying this whole scene is and How brutal this attack is After cleaning up they drove over to China camp, which is a rural seaside area in San Rafael This area also has a state park where families can barbecue, hike, fish is a rural seaside area in San Rafael. This area also has a state park where families can barbecue, hike, fish, and a lot more. They went to a fire pit, dumped Jim and Naomi's bodies in it, poured gasoline all over them, and set them on fire. And this is why the cases referred to as the barbecue murders since they disposed of the bodies

in a barbecue pit. After burning their remains, Marlene and Chuck left. When they got back to the house, they recruited one of their friends to help clean up the bloody mess and tell them all about what they'd done. Chuck told his friend, we had to do it. They wouldn't let me see her. Over the next few days, Chuck and Marlene lived in the all of home together where they spent Marlene's parents money to go to concerts, go shopping, and eat at nice restaurants. Their loose plan was to collect on Naomi and Jim's life insurance and move to Ecuador together.

So a short time after the murder occurred, they went to San Francisco and saw the band yes, and they just like they didn't care at all. And what I think is so weird is they were spending her parents money by using credit cards, etc. as if that was not going to be factored into the investigation. Like do you think that you can use a credit card and that they can't track it? And so whatever story that you come up with is going to be disputed because of all these things that you're using their money for, you know what I mean? Clearly, they really didn't plan out this crime. All that well.

Side note, yes, is also a really dope band. If you've ever heard the song roundabout. I'll be your roundabout. Do you know that song? Sing the rest, please. The whole song. I actually don't even know the rest of the lyrics. I do know that line, but the song is actually really good.

It's just weird though to think about this whole scenario that they're going out and just kind of like live in life after they committed this horrible crime. It just shows how immature they are and how just heartless. Yeah, and part of me thinks that maybe they thought that they were gonna get caught so they're like, ah, we'll screw it, we'll just go out and spend a bunch of money. Because at least we're gonna live it up before we get caught. Or they're just that stupid and realize that, or just didn't think that they were gonna get caught. Well, I mean, especially because Jim has a job.

Naomi didn't work, but, you know, days passed and Jim didn't show up to work. So obviously people are gonna question it, especially since Marlene didn't report her parents missing. So she and Chuck just kinda swept the whole thing under the rug and like you said, they didn't really have a plan for this thing at all. So a few days later, Jim's business partner came by the house

after not hearing from Jim, so he's like, where's Jim? And he was worried that something bad had happened, so he looked through the windows of the house after not hearing from Jim, so he's like, where's Jim? And he was worried that something bad had happened, so he looked through the windows of the house and he noticed that it was a total mess. And because of this, he felt like maybe Jim had potentially been robbed, so he went to the police. He stated that he hadn't heard from Jim or Naomi in a week, and that neither did anyone that he knew of. And it wasn't like Jim to just miss work,

so he was super worried. While Marlene was out of the house, the cops did a welfare check, and they didn't find Jim or Naomi in the house, nor any blood. So they left a note in the home for Jim and Naomi, kind of asking them to call the police when they returned home,

because they thought that maybe they just left and their house just happened to be messy. Yeah, I'm assuming that the police when they returned home. Because they thought that maybe they just left and their house just happened to be messy. Yeah, I'm assuming that the police left that note on the door, possibly, right? I actually don't know where the note was, but it likely was on the door, yeah. But I know that they checked, you know, I don't know if they went inside the house,

I would imagine that they would have needed a warrant to go inside, but they didn't notice anything. I mean, I know when they do welfare checks, obviously they have to go in the house, right? Yeah, I'm actually not real sure on welfare checks and how that actually works. Maybe one of our listeners can explain that to us. Because I would imagine a welfare child.

Why don't you? A whale fare. A whale fare. A blue whale fare check. I would imagine that a welfare check is a little bit different than needing a warrant because the person could be dead. So you may be you don't need a warrant for a welfare check.

I don't know the details. I really should look that up. I'm sorry guys. Marlene later found this note and went down to the police station herself to let them know that her parents had gone to Lake Tahoe for a little getaway but they hadn't come home yet. But police thought that her story was pretty odd, so they continued to question her. Pretty sure that they thought that this story was bullshit.

And during this interrogation, her story changed drastically. She told police that the true story was that her mom, who she emphasized had a mental illness, had killed her father and ran away. But then she later told police that it was her father who killed her mother and he ran away. But police were totally suspicious of her at this point so they continued to question her. And she confessed to what really happened.

That her parents' remains were sitting in a nearby fire pit after her boyfriend Chuck Riley had murdered them. So they immediately brought Chuck in for questioning and he too confessed to murdering the olives, but stated that Marlene had made him. Something that Marlene definitely left out of her story. I just feel like the first rule after you murder someone is to have a very clear story and not change it. I mean, you can't say that your parents went to Lake Tahoe and then suddenly say that your mom actually murdered your dad and then changed your story two more times. They eventually will get the truth out of you because they know you're lying. Because if you lie once, you know, and once you change your story, they're like, okay, obviously they're a big fat liar. And I also think it's kind of funny that she used the whole, my mom has a mental illness, so that's probably why she killed my dad,

line, I just, well, I wonder why she flipped it. Why just say, oh, my mom killed my dad, actually, my dad killed my mom. Like, why would you change that? Just stick with one of them. Like, they're pretty much the same. Yeah, if she stuck with one story,

she maybe, maybe could have convinced police for a little while until they found actual evidence, but at this point, they just know that she's a liar. But I think even from just movies that we've seen that are fake, or even documentaries, too, I can't even imagine how hard it is to sit in a room and be interrogated about something when you know that you're guilty, because they just, I feel like I would just crack immediately. Well, and let's be honest, in this day and age, and obviously this was a different time,

but in this day and age, going into an interview room and trying to lie, like, come on, they're, they're gonna find evidence, we have genealogy testing, we have all these things, so, like, pretty much, there's no point of you trying to make up a story in an interrogation room because you're probably going to get caught. Of course, and I think that everybody who is guilty or at least most people who are guilty will at least lie once. I mean, Chuck lied too. And originally, he told the whole story how he stabbed, suffocated, and beat Naomi and

told them why he shot Jim. He also told them that he did it all so that he could be with Marlene, because that was the only way that they could be together, and that it was her plan, a plan that she had been talking about for a very long time. But in Marlene's interview, she told police that Chuck had come into her house and brutally murdered her parents before holding her hostage and forcing her to do drugs. She depicted him to be a monster who acted alone with zero influence, so she's just like using this opportunity to play the victim. But later, Chuck was put under hypnosis and he stated that

when he got to the house, Naomi already had a hammer in her head and that Marlene had done that. So, he had to help her finish the job and that he killed Jim in self-defense. So, none of the murders were really his fault at all. Apparently, the reason Marlene had used a hammer is because she had been fixing her platform shoe when she and her mom had gotten into a huge blowout argument and then she used it against her mom. So this kind of makes things difficult because to believe this story you have to believe that hypnosis works which is weird because we're watching a movie on hypnosis last night. What was it called?

Sturaveco's great movie Kevin Bacon. I didn't we didn't finish off Hell sleep. But if hypnosis works, then he's likely telling the truth, because I mean that's kind of the point of hypnosis, right, that you just say things that are real. Yeah, I suppose so, yeah. So, but what doesn't make sense is if he's basically saying that he's technically innocent, then why didn't he say this in the beginning? You know, why admit fault from the get-go, if you didn't actually do it all yourself. Unless he was originally maybe trying to protect Marlene, it's also important to note that he was on acid while this crime occurred, so that definitely could have caused some confusion for him.

Yeah, maybe he was in the house and he was just tripping so hard that he didn't realize that he beat her to death with a hammer, and then was like, maybe I didn't use the hammer. I mean, I don't really know. To me, it all seems like a bunch of bullshit, and I don't believe any of it. I think that they both just can't own up to the crime that they committed. But still, a lot of questions come up here. Many have pointed out that it doesn't make much sense for Chuck to have used a hammer because he brought a gun with him for a reason. The use of the hammer insinuates rage.

It's a very brutal and personal death. So why would Chuck, who didn't even know Naomi all that well, bludgeon her with a hammer instead of just walking in and shooting her? I mean, you'd assume that that would be the quickest way. There was the mention of maybe not wanting to use the gun because of the sound, but then why would you bring it with you in the first place? Especially because he had then used it on gym. It makes much more sense for Marlene to have struck her mother in the head with the hammer because of her very clear hatred towards her mother. Because the remains had been completely burned, it was incredibly difficult to determine

the cause of death, especially in 1975. So they just chocked up Naomi's death to beating slash strangulation. On July 10, 1975, Chuck and Marlene were both formally charged with two counts each of first-degree murder. Marlene was ordered to have a psychiatric evaluation before her trial, but she was de-mentally competent to stand a psychiatric evaluation before her trial, but she was de-mentally competent to stand trial. During Trux's trial, they played his initial confession to the court where he explained that he had murdered Naomi and Jim all by himself without the help of Marlene, but that Marlene had told him to do it. But it, of course, was also

discussed that Trux stated under hypnosis that Marlene was the one who had beaten Naomi and that he was only helping her by killing Jim. But the jury didn't believe this other story. They believed his original confession, especially because a hypnosis expert had found his confession under hypnosis to not be very credible. Chuck Riley was found guilty on both counts of first-degree murder. On January 26th, 1976, at the age of 21, he was sentenced to death. During Marlene Olive's trial in Juvenile Court, she had maintained her story that Chuck had done everything on his own, and that she took no part in the crime of murdering her parents. Since she was 16 at the time of the murders, she was tried as a juvenile, so she was unable

to be tried for the death penalty, and her charges would be far less than Chuck's either way since he was an adult at the time of the murders. The court determined that Marlene had either encouraged the murders or acted as an accomplice in them, but they couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she had been the one to murder her mother. Even the judge stated, the uncontroverted evidence regarding the father is that Chuck Riley killed him, as do actually did in the mother? We'll never know.

Marlene Olive was sentenced to just four to six years at the California Youth Correctional Facility in Ventura, so at the earliest, she'd be released at the age of 21 and at the California Youth Correctional Facility in Ventura. So at the earliest, she'd be released at the age of 21 and at the latest age 23. During Marlene's sentencing, she had been allowed to serve part-time in the facility and part-time off-property with the juvenile services volunteer. She used her time inside to figure out who her biological mother was. She called the law office who had written up the adoption papers and they were able to get the information on her birth mother. The reason she had given Marlene up for adoption was because Marlene was the product of a 19-year-old woman and a sailor on leave. So the woman was unable to care for Marlene and therefore gave her

to a family who couldn't have a child of their own. But a few weeks before Marlene was to be paroled, she escaped under the care of the Juvenile Services Volunteer Off-Property and fled to New York City where she worked the streets as a sex worker. But she was caught and sent back to California to finish her sentencing. In 1980, when she was 21 years old, Marlene Olive was paroled. She moved to Los Angeles and changed her name in hopes to start a new life. But she was far from rehabilitated and ended up getting arrested countless times afterwards for drug-related crimes as well as forgery. Over the next 10 years, she spent another two years in prison on separate charges. And another charge of hers which occurred in 1986 was for forgery and a huge scheme

that she, along with 13 other people, committed. They had a forgery ring and she was thought to be the ringleader. For this, she was sentenced to five years in prison. She also committed numerous crimes in the 1990s that included forgery and continued to be imprisoned. She mostly created false identities and tried to forge checks that she found in various trash cans, and she turned out to be very good at forging these checks, and the police even were surprised that her skills. Yet she mostly got caught, so it didn't work out for her.

She visited Chuck one time and one time only in prison in 1981 after her release and Chuck didn't want anything to do with her. Since Chuck had been basically under Marlene's spell during the murders, once it was all over and he had gotten screwed over, he was just done with her. And although, I mean, he's guilty of the crimes, you know, he did kill her parents, but he was definitely manipulated by her. And now as an adult, you can only imagine how he feels about it and has felt about it over the years, no longer being under her spell and just being disappointed that his whole life was ruined because he did what she wanted. You know, just this girl he was dating when he was 20. Yeah, and that's tough because I'm sure he had a lot of like emotions going, being a

young man and this girl is kind of like manipulating him into situations and she knows she's doing it too. And I think the shitty part about this is that she gets four years in juvenile facility and this dude gets the death penalty. Right, and so many people have stated how amazing Chuck was. I was actually a lot of the research I did had comment pages, and a lot of people who knew Chuck before, oh, I went to school with him, etc. would say how nice of a guy he was and poor Chuck, poor Chuck,

fuck Marlene, things like that. He really was manipulated by this girl. And not to take anything away, so don't get this twisted listeners. We're not trying to take anything away from what Chuck did because he fucking killed people, and we know that. I mean, obviously that was his choice, and you have to do it. Sure, exactly. But there was definitely a very evil side of Marlene where she was very manipulative.

And that's an injustice that she only got four years for it. And clearly, she didn't learn shit. She continued to commit crimes. Which is awful because when I was doing this research and I learned that she got out after just four years, I'm thinking, oh, she's 21. She finally gets to start her life. Maybe she'll turn around and then it's like, prison, prison, prison, prison, prison. Like, really?

So a year after Chuck Riley was sentenced to death, the California State Supreme Court ruled that the California death penalty statue was unconstitutional. At the time of his conviction, all the murders of a certain category were basically an automatic death sentence. So the US Supreme Court recanted this law, meaning that any person sentenced to death during the time that the law was placed would not be executed. So now Chuck's death sentence was off the table, but he still had two concurrent life sentences under his belt.

Although he was also eligible for parole after just seven years of prison time, Chuck used this time in prison wisely and worked on himself. He lost weight and finally earned his high school diploma before taking college courses in prison and earning a college degree. He applied for parole time and time again, but was always denied. So he began to lose hope he would ever get out, even though he truly believed he was rehabilitated and was doing well for himself. In 2011, when Chuck was 56 years old, he began to suffer from multiple physical disabilities and appealed once again, stating that he was not a danger to society and that, considering he had spent so much time in prison already, he had done his time.

He was then offered a parole hearing and was actually found suitable for release. He was granted parole, but the governor of California at the time was not in agreement with this at all because of the fact that Chuck never really admitted guilt or took responsibility for his true role in the crimes. But because there was no real evidence that Chuck hadn't been taking responsibility for his actions, the parole board granted the parole after all. So on December 8th, 2015, Chuck Riley was released from prison at the age of 60. If he's still alive today, he's about 65 years old. Today, Marlene is 61 years old, and by all accounts, she seems to be alive and likely

living in California. The last arrest on her that we could find occurred in 2003 for once again forgery, which she apparently was potentially going to spend 9 years in prison for. Thank you everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode and next week we'll have an all new episode for you guys to check out. Our merch is back up in the store, head on over to goingwestpod.com and click the shop button, we've got T-shirts, sweatshirts, pullover, stickers, mugs, go check it out. And we're working on some

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