Dr. Ohta & the Killer Prophet

In the early evening of October 19, 1970, police and firefighters were called to the Santa Cruz County home of Dr. Victor Ohta, a well-respected ophthalmologist, for a report of a house fire. Intending to siphon water from the pool out back, firefighters ran a hose from the truck to the backyard. However, when they reached the pool, the made a horrible discovery—floating in the pool were the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Ohta, as well as their two children, and the doctor’s secretary, Dorothy Cadwallader. When they searched the scene, investigators discovered a cryptic note stuck under the windshield wiper of Victor Ohta’s car that made references to the occult and the counterculture movement. At the time of the murders, Southern California was experiencing an unprecedented wave of violent murders by multiple serial and spree killers, as well as the notorious murders committed by the Manson family. Given the content of the note and the potentially ritualistic way in which the Ohta family had been killed, investigators and residents couldn’t help but fear that they may have another murderous cult on their hands.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 02

  Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.

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• 4:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, so ding, now it starts.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  There you go. So we're gonna be talking about um the Ota family killings and a killer prophet today.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Oof.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  I feel like I don't even wanna call this man a prophet.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  He probably just called himself that.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  I don't even know if he did. I think he just got kinda like dubbed that.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Damn, that's even worse.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, this is a really awful story, and one that I actually hadn't really heard that much about before. Dave suggested it and I was reading into it and I was like, oh my god.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I know this one.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Um, I think you probably do. It was right, it was in California.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Around the seventies, like very close to the Manson family.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Like literally, this happened while the Manson family was on trial.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. So a little past eight PM on the evening of October nineteenth nineteen seventy, firefighters got an emergency call about an out of control fire at nine ninety-nine Rodeo Gold Road in SoCal, uh, California. It's a suburb of Santa Cruz County.

• 5:14Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Now, this was a multimillion dollar mansion and it was the home to forty-five year old Dr. Victor Ota, who was a very popular local ophthalmologist. He lived in that house with his wife, Virginia, as well as their two sons, twelve year old Derek and eleven year old Taggart. The couple also had two daughters, Lark and Tara, who were away at boarding school luckily when the fire began. Now, the house sat on top of a really high hill with two long driveways leading down to the main road. And when firefighters arrived to the scene, they found that the main driveway was blocked by Mr. Ota's Rolls Royce. It was parked across the driveway, like the width.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  That's not usual.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  No. Now, there was a second car, which was a large Lincoln Continental, and that was parked across the same way, the second driveway, like both.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  To literally try to keep people from getting there.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Luckily firefighters were able to push one of the cars out of the way and they managed to get the truck up to the house. But once they got there, they ran into another problem. The house was too far from any fire hydrants to connect the hose and start extinguishing.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  I feel like, is that like?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  I don't think that would be like up to code.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, that's not okay.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  No, I don't think so. I don't know.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  That is not all right at all.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Uh, it was the seventies, so I don't know if people really thought that much.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  So they were like code?

• 6:31Speaker 02

  About it. Yeah, I don't, maybe it wasn't code.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  So thinking fast, one of the firefighters suggested that they could siphon water from the swimming pool in the back of the house.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Pretty good idea.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  That is smart.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  I don't know if that would work if you had like a saltwater pool, though, I was thinking.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Cause like.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  Still might.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Still could. But also then, like, there's a lot of chemicals in pools, so it's just interesting to think about.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  But they had to do something. The fire wasn't, uh, it was serious, but it wasn't as large as they expected, so the pu- the pool would be a pretty suf- uh, sufficient source of water. So they dragged the hose to the back of the house, but when they reached the pool, they made a terrible discovery. Five bodies floating face down in the water. Fire Chief Ted Pound said, I went to the pool to see where the end of the pipe came through, and my flashlight beamed, spa- uh, my flashlight beam spotted one of the kids.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  So Chief Pound called out for one of the detectives on the scene and was met at the back of the house by Detective Terry Medina. Medina later said, the first thing that I noticed was that the bodies are tied, but not with rope. They're like silk scarves that are knotted together to tie the hands. To everybody's surprise, this simple fire had just turned into a multi-murder scene.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  Damn.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Now, they soon learned that the bodies were those of Dr. Ota, his wife, Virginia, the two youngest children, Derek and Taggart. And the fifth body was Dr. Ota's longtime secretary, thirty-eight-year-old Dorothy Ca- uh, Cadwalader. Based on the medical examiner's initial observations, it seemed like Dr. Ota had been shot once in the chest and twice in the back before he was pushed into the pool. And the other four victims had all been shot once in the back of the neck and then were pushed into the pool.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  God.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  All of the victims had their hands bound with colorful silk scarves. And Dr. Ota was known to wear those scarves instead of a, like, a regular necktie.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  Oh, God.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  So those were all of his own personal scarves.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  That's spooky.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  And all five victims were also blindfolded.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Now, as far as the forensic investigators could tell, the victims were each shot beside the pool, like I said, and then immediately pushed in. Now, to the frustration of investigators, the crime scene really didn't have that many clues as to what happened at the house that night. All five victims seemed to have been shot at close range, execution style, and the killer, or maybe multiple killers, had set several small fires throughout the house, presumably to cover up the crime. Now fortunately, the fires failed to catch or really spread as easily as they probably hoped they would, so there was minimal fire damage. But there was still not that much to be found inside. From what investigators could tell, nothing looked to be missing, so they were able to rule out robbery as a motive.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  But even more concerning was the lack of evidence of any kind of struggle.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  This is a family of five, you would expect.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  There would be some kind of struggle. It seemed very unlikely to investigators that a single intruder could overtake and completely control five people, three of which were grown adults.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  And they had to face the terrifying possibility at that point, that they were dealing with what one detective described as another Manson case.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  Ooh, cuz that had, what just happened.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Literally, like I said, the Manson family was on trial.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was probably one of the first things they thought of.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  It was. It cannot be understated how significant the fear of another Manson-style murder was at the time of these murders. It was a little more than a year earlier, when Charles Manson and his followers broke into the Hollywood home of director Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate, while Polanski was away in Europe. As we know, they killed five people staying in the house, including Sharon Tate, who was eight and a half months pregnant.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  And then the very next day, they murdered Lino and Rosemary La Bianca. Now, the murders had always been symbolic of a larger shift in fear toward uncertainty, but they were just the first of a lot of horrific acts that would go on to reshape California throughout that period. At the time, residents of the San Francisco Bay Area were being terrorized by the Zodiac Killer, like as all of this was going on. And there were a slew of other violent criminals who kept Californians in constant fear of being killed.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Like California in the seventies, it cannot be stated enough how insane it was. Cuz then just a couple of years later, you would have Ed Kemper.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  There, like, there's so many more.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, the, some of the scariest ones.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  So just one morning after the Ota murders, nineteen year old Tom DeChecco was found dead inside the gas station where he worked and his body was stuffed into an alcove just off the main garage. The station was in Saratoga, which was just thirty miles from where the Ota family lived. Like the Ota's, DeChecco had been shot in the back of the head, execution style, and his wrists were also bound, this time with electrician's tape. According to the medical examiner, his murder occurred roughly two hours after the Ota murders, and that brought to everybody's mind the murders of the Labiancas. Investigators declined to comment on whether the crimes were related, but they couldn't help think of the Manson murder spree and wonder if this was some kind of copycat crime.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I would think that.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  To murder a whole family and then a kid, you know? So the fear of a new murderous cult only grew deeper when investigators started combing over the crime scene at the Ota home, and they reached the cars at the bottom of the driveway. It was clear, obviously, like we said, that the killer rearranged the cars on purpose to prevent the firefighters from reaching the house and the police too.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  Which is so fucked up and so like, thinking, that's so premeditated.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  It is, absolutely. I'm so glad that you said that. The killer actually even went as far as to break the key of Dr. Ota's car off in the ignition.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Holy shit, so that they couldn't move it.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  That's why they couldn't move one of them. But more disturbing was the typewritten note that they found tucked under the windshield. It read, "Halloween nineteen seventy. Today, World War III will begin, as brought to you by the people of the free universe. From this day forward, anyone and/or everyone, 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 anyone who does not support natural life on this planet. Materialism must die, or mankind will stop." And then it was signed, "Knight of wands, knight of cups, knight of pentacles, knight

• 13:01Speaker 02

  of swords." All of those knights were spelled correctly, like KN, other than the pentacles. That one was spelled like nighttime.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  Like knight, okay.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Which is just weird. No, detectives saw similarities between the note and the apocalyptic ranting of From the Manson Family, like similar kind of vibes there. But the signatures at the bottom of the note were entirely new and entirely unfamiliar to investigators. They, not everybody was very familiar with Tarot back then.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  So the reference to four possibly occult sounding names only reinforced the concern that they were dealing with a new murderous cult.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  A copycat, if that. Now elsewhere in the house, more evidence suggested that the O'Toole murders were not an impulsive act. In addition to the killer or killers having taken the time to block the driveway, investigators quickly discovered that the killer had also cut the phone lines, which is the scariest thing to me.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Um, and they also discovered a box of twenty-two caliber shells, which indicated that they had the forethought to bring additional ammunition.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  Holy shit.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  But the killer had collected all the spent cartridges at the scene and left little evidence of having been there at all.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Now, when considered together, the evidence suggested that these murders were definitely planned in advance. And the presence of the note suggested that whoever was responsible seemed intent on killing again.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  So despite the presence of several high-profile cases in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the summer and the fall of nineteen seventy, violent crime was really something that didn't happen in the quiet suburban area of Santa Cruz. In fact, the O'Toole murder was the first murder in the county's history.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Damn.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Isn't that nuts?

• 14:46Speaker 03

  That was like the Martha Moxley case.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like one of the first.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  This was legit.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  The first.

• 14:51Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Under the circumstances, suspicion quickly settled on the relatively small hippie community in and around Santa Cruz, and especially, I think, because of the Mansons.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, the Mansons didn't help hippies out.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  No, they did not. One neighbor told a reporter, "It looks like another Manson thing to me." And another commented, "Looks like drugs." Which like, it doesn't really look like drugs because there was a lot of careful planning here.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, it's not chaos.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  No, not at all.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  Like, that, that is a very planned out, almost professional crime scene.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  I don't know if they said looks like drugs because of like the execution style killings.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Uh, who knows?

• 15:28Speaker 03

  Or they're just thinking of hippies, so they're like, drugs.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Exactly. Now, in reality, detectives had no idea what the motive could have been. If it had been drugs, then they reasoned that the killer would have at least taken some of the jewelry or the other valuables that were in plain sight around the house. I mean, this is a mansion, like, there's valuables everywhere.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was shocked by that.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. And if it were a Manson copycat, they expected some sign of the occult left behind. But aside from the cryptic mysterious note, there was not that much to indicate a motive. In fact, other than the note, the only thing detectives knew for sure was that the killer or killers had stolen Virginia Ota's green Oldsmobile station wagon. District Attorney Peter Chang told reporters, "This was the most tragic murder scene I've witnessed in nine years. We will need all the outside help we can get." Now, in the absence of any forensic evidence pointing to a motive or a suspect, detectives started looking into the background of the victims. Family friend Douglas Litticote said, "The life of Dr. Victor Ota reads like a classic American dream."

• 16:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  He was born in Montana to Japanese immigrant parents who worked really hard to build a life for their family, only to have everything ripped away from them when they were placed in an internment camp in 1941.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Holy shit.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Despite everything he faced, Victor was a great student. He worked all these odd jobs to support not only himself through college, but also his parents. He always sent money to his parents.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  After graduating with an undergrad degree, he enlisted in the Army in 1943 and served two years before returning home and enrolling at Northwestern University, where he studied ophthalmology. At night, he drove a cab in order to support himself and his parents.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  Damn.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Because by that point, they were too old and too weak to work anymore. After graduating in nineteen fifty, he met and married Virginia, and before long, she was pregnant with their first son. Uncertain about their financial situation, Victor decided actually to reenlist in the army. And he served several years as a flight surgeon.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  That must be wild.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Next level.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  And then eventually he returned to Northwestern to continue his studies and he was just determined to become the top specialist in his field.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  Hell, yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Which he really did become one of them. Now, it was during this time that tragedy struck and the couple lost their son Kevin to pneumonia when he was only two years old. Their daughter Lark said, their first son at two years old, like.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  Two years old.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  That's horrific. Their daughter Lark said, I know it was traumatic. It was another two years before they even considered having more children. So the emotional toll of the loss and the added expenses of a funeral pushed Victor back into the army. Where he managed to finish his studies while also making a livable wage. And that finally made it possible for them to consider having more children. Now, over the course of the next decade, Dr. Victor Ota built one of the most successful medical practices in Santa Cruz County.

• 18:24Speaker 03

  Hell, yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  And at the same time, served as a founding member on the board of the Dominican Hospital.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Like doing the damn thing.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Not long after establishing his own private practice, he hired Dorothy Codwalter as his secretary. She became an indispensable asset to the family and in no time, she really just became part of their family. She joined them for holidays, birthdays, vacations. And actually, unfortunately, they did have quite the bond because Dorothy and her husband had also lost a child at a young age. Their child was struck and killed by a mail truck.

• 18:58Speaker 03

  Holy shit.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now, as far as anybody knew, Dr. Ota and the family had no enemies to speak of, and nobody could imagine who might want them dead, like him specifically, much less his entire family.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  You also wonder with like, stories like that, you're like, why do some people

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Just have the worst luck.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  All the shit.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  It's so true.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  And a lot of times, it's like, the nicest

• 19:24Speaker 02

  People.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  Best kind of people.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  Like, that never makes sense to me.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  No, I feel like we know so many families like that.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, cuz like, her, like Dorothy and her

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Husband.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  Husband, lost a child in such a horrific way. And now he loses her this way?

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  Like, why, why do they have to deal with all that? And then the Ota's, like, it's, I just don't, whenever you hear about that, you're like, Jesus.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  And Dorothy and her husband, much like the Ota's, went on to have more children.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  So, her children and her husband lost her. It's awful.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  You just don't get it.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  I don't either. Dr. Louise Weilman, a friend, said, "Never once did I hear him speak an angry word to any, anybody. Dr. Ota was always friendly, always generous to give to charitable organizations."

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Oh, that breaks my heart.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, Lark, his daughter, echoed the sentiments of friends and neighbors and colleagues. Literally, everybody in this community loved this family. Lark said, "My dad was a magnanimous man. He was generous and outgoing and friendly. He was just a good man. He was loved in that community."

• 20:23Speaker 03

  Oh, I also love that name, Lark.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  I do too. It's such a good name.

• 20:37Speaker 00

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• 21:57Speaker 02

  Now, the same was true for the other victims. Like her husband, Virginia Ota grew up in an immigrant family, and she worked alongside her husband to make sure that their kids had opportunities that her and her husband never could have dreamed of. Lark said of her mother, "She was the strongest and most determined person that I knew, and I miss her deeply." Victor may have been the face of several charities at the hospital, but Virginia was very much working behind the scenes to ensure that everything ran smoothly. More than just a doctor's simple, stylish wife, she was an active, integral member of this community, and she was a dedicated mother. She was so committed to raising those kids, to not only have the best opportunities, but with an awareness of both sides of their heritage.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  While Dorothy Call Walliter might not have been as outgoing as Dr. Ota and Virginia, she left an impression on the lives that she touched. Her daughter Melinda said, "My mom was very elegant. She was very 60s makeup, false lashes, and hairstyles."

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Dorothy spent her entire professional life working in healthcare. And for the previous eight years, she worked in Dr. Ota's private practice. She managed nearly every aspect of that business. She always jumped in to help with the Ota children when the parents were too busy. And all the children loved and respected her.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  Like this was very much a like

• 23:16Speaker 02

  A family.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, like a blended family.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now, when Victor and Virginia had to go out of town or to a conference or a charity event, Dorothy and her husband would welcome all of the Ota kids into their home and just treated them like they were their own children.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  Damn.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Lark said Dorothy was perfect, like a 60s TV mom, except that she worked. She was beautiful inside and out. Nearly everything investigators had learned about the Ota family and about Dorothy indicated that these were all well-liked, deeply appreciated people in their community.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Just like great people.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  They were the last people anybody would expect to be the victims of violent crime. The only involvement with the law that Dr. Ota had in his past was in 1967, when a group of thieves actually broke into his office and they stole a cocaine solution that he that he used in his surgical procedures.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  Geez, so it wasn't even him?

• 24:05Speaker 02

  No. Otherwise, there appeared to be nothing in the background of any of the victims that pointed toward their killer. So in the absence of any new evidence, any new leads, anything, detectives turned their attention back to their original theory that the victims had been killed by either a cult or a Manson family copycat. Santa Cruz County and SoCal in particular had always been a quiet area. In the summer, the area was popular with tourists. They like to visit the beaches, but otherwise it was mostly populated by wealthy retirees.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  So by the mid 60s, though, the University of California opened a campus in Santa Cruz, and that brought a younger crowd to the area. And by the end of the 60s, many among that crowd embraced the hippie lifestyle. It was very much of the time, but also very much to the disappointment of locals.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm sure.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  In reality, the small but noticeable hippie community in the area, they were mostly peaceful. They actually really didn't engage with many protests.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  They're just vibing.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, like all across the country, there were like, like activism, different things like that going on. But here, these hippies just kind of hung out around this cafe and coffee shop called The Catalyst. They hosted folk music and poetry readings regularly, like just a very chill place.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  I just, that just made me think of something completely unrelated to this, but I feel like you need to know it right now.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  I do.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  I just thought of the name The Catalyst as like, I'm like, wow, what a name for a cafe. Did you know that 98 Degrees almost named themselves Spontaneous Combustion?

• 25:37Speaker 02

  I actually did, and I saw you post about that the other day.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  If you didn't see that post, I just needed everybody to know that.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  I feel like spontaneous combustion.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  It would make them a completely different band.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  Like a completely different band. And one of them also wanted to be called Inertia.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Oh, Inertia could have been cool.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  I, it's been sitting within me, so I just had to put it out there when I heard The Catalyst.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  I feel like they didn't quite know what vibe they were going for, because those are three completely different, like, genres to me.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  That's the thing. It sounds like they knew the vibe they wanted to go for. They just could not.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  But then they went.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  They went with the right name. They went with the right name for the, for the vibe. Spontaneous Combustion will live in my soul.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  I feel like The Catalyst is also a bomb name for a coffee shop.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Is a really cool name for a coffee shop. That's why it made me think of it.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Like anything.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, even a band name.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  Just a good name. Catalyst. I think The Catalyst is a band.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  Probably.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Well, here it's a coffee shop and they, you know, they had like little hippie gatherings all the time.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, hippie gatherings, you know.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  I want to go to one. Even though things were pretty chill with this group and they kept to themselves, after the Otah murders, the local police were very worried that there would be tension between the hippies and the older residents in Santa Cruz.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  You meant just tension between the hippies?

• 26:50Speaker 02

  No, never tension between the hippies. It's always outsiders.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Always.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  I'm just picturing like hippies fighting.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, just like having tension.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Weird.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Now, at the time, the contents of the note found on Dr. Otah's windshield had not yet been made public. And it was truly only because of the Manson murders that the locals even suspected somebody from the Catalyst community was responsible for the murders. Dr. Terry Medina said, "There was already fear. People were already buying guns. We didn't want retaliation against hippies or vigilantism. So we decided not to release the contents of this note," which I think was a good idea.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Probably smart.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Because unfortunately, whether they wanted it or not, retaliation was inevitable. As soon as the news about the murders made the papers, the Catalyst started getting all kinds of harassing phone calls and even a few bomb threats.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Which like, "You guys don't know anything about this murder."

• 27:42Speaker 03

  That's, it's, it's wild to know that even then, before the internet.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  People gonna people.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  People were still peopling in a way of being like, "I know the whole story."

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Yup.

• 27:52Speaker 03

  Even though I know nothing about the story.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  It was hippie.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  I, way, but way worse now, but I feel like it's, there it is.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  Cause people have always been doing that thing where they're like, "Well, I heard this much of the story."

• 28:03Speaker 02

  So let's put it on this group of people.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  So now I know the whole story and I'm gonna act based on that tiny little grain of sand that I know.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Yup.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  We all have to stop doing that.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  We do.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  Can we stop that?

• 28:14Speaker 02

  I'm down.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  Can we all agree collectively to stop doing that?

• 28:16Speaker 02

  I'm down.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  Until you know a whole story, inside and out, don't act.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  And here's the thing, when these things are initially reported on, you know nothing.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  You know.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  Nothing.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  The tip of the tip of the iceberg.

• 28:29Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, just a little boop, boop.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  They, they know what you want them, or what they want you to know.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  That's the thing.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Now, given the way that they'd been treated in the community and now facing harassment, the staff and the patrons at the Catalyst had every reason not to trust the police, trust the locals, or really talk to anybody. But when investigators canvassed the restaurant, they found a group of people who were actually very eager to help.

• 28:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  No one at the Catalyst really knew anything about the murders or the Ota family, but when detectives brought up the contents of the note to these people, they learned from one of the patrons that the four signatures at the end of the note were not signatures, they were suits from the Tarot.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Now, back at the police station, Detective Medina and the other investigators laid out the Knight of Wands, the Knight of Cups, the Knight of Pentacles, and the Knight of Swords on the desk in various configurations, hoping that the cards might tell themselves about the contents of the note or the murders. Medina said, "We really didn't come up with very much, but it was still very cultish."

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Very cultish.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  It's not cultish.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  I love, very cultish.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  It's so seventies to have that take.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  Just like, pretty cultish.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  I was like, "Do you want to bring in one of the hippies who knows tarot, who can maybe tell you something?"

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the thing. Get some experts.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Exactly. Now, on the second day of the investigation, just as they were settling into their theory of a newly formed cult, investigators got a call that would undermine that theory altogether. The call was from a gas station attendant on the outskirts of Sokol, uh, who had been working on the night of the murders. According to the caller, he'd been sitting outside the gas station when a young man in a green station wagon pulled up looking for gas. At the time, that specific station had run out of gas, so the attendant directed the driver to another station about a mile down the road. He couldn't remember the exact time, but he said it was probably a little before eight PM, which was not long after the Otas were killed.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  According to the attendant, the car matched the description of Virginia Otas Oldsmobile, and there was only one person in the car. And while the attendant never saw the man's face in the light, he did say that the driver had a fairly distinctive voice, and he was certain that he would recognize it if he heard it again.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Now, that was just the first of many calls that investigators got that day. Most reporting leads that really went nowhere. But among the dud calls, there was someone from the Southern Pacific Railroad with valuable information. The caller reported that one of their trains had collided with a green Oldsmobile wagon

• 30:54Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  in a tunnel not too far from the gas station where it had been spotted on the night of the murder.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  So sheriff's deputies rushed out to the scene, hoping that they would find the killer or the killers. But by the time they reached the train tunnel where the car was discovered, the driver was nowhere to be found.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Fortunately, neither the train nor the car suffered much damage in the collision. The only damage from the fire was to the upholstery inside the car. But any hope of finding useful evidence was quickly dashed. It had rained that morning.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  And it had transformed the area of the tunnel into like kind of a mud pit.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  God damn.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  And it washed away any physical evidence that might have been left on the exterior of the vehicle. But there were several footprints left in the mud around the car. And while it was difficult to be one hundred percent certain, it did seem that these footprints all belonged to the same person.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  So since the bodies were discovered, the police and the press had been operating on the assumption that there was more than one killer.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  But now investigators with all this new information were starting to wonder if they had it wrong. The footprints found outside the car and the statement from the gas station attendant seemed to suggest that these five murders actually could have been committed by one single killer.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  That's horrific.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  And just to think about. They have to think about how that possibly could have happened.

• 32:11Speaker 03

  Now you have to go back and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  So frustrated with the lack of evidence and leads, detectives went back to question family and friends of the Otas in order to try to establish some kind of timeline. Uh, which like would have accounted for the day of the murders.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  So they learned that on the day of the murders, Dorothy had picked up one of the boys from school and drove him home because his mom was going to be late. So stick that in your back pocket.

• 32:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, already this is adding up.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Changing the routine a little bit. Now, from the beginning of the investigation, the assumption had been that the Otah family had all been home at the same time.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  When they were attacked.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  Which would make that insane.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Right. But if Dorothy had picked up one of the children and Virginia planned to be home later, that strongly suggested that the family members could have arrived home one or two at a time. And if that was the case, an armed gunman easily could have overtaken them as they entered the house two by two. Especially if he had been lying in wait as they suspected, which is so fucking terrifying.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  Horrible.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Now, the new theory did seem to match the evidence, but it did little to point them in the direction of somebody. Out of options and running the risk of this case going cold, investigators did make the decision to release the one piece of information that they had been holding back.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  That note.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  That note on the car. They hoped that somebody might recognize the language in the note. And on the day that it was published in the paper, Roger Cron, the owner of The Catalyst,

• 33:39Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  and several others at the cafe were reading that paper and recognized the content as being very similar to the ranting of a young man who'd been coming into the cafe recently.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Isn't that interesting that it's The Catalyst people?

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. That are like, wait a second.

• 33:54Speaker 03

  Wait a minute, we can help.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  And that it's like a newcomer to The Catalyst, not like the typical crew. So Roger Cron spent a lot of the afternoon agonizing over whether he should turn in one of his own customers and his own community members to the police. But in the end, he reasoned that if it was the same man, there was a very good chance he could kill again. So in the early hours of October-

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Wait, just, just quick. He was not sure if he should-

• 34:20Speaker 02

  He was stressed out about it.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  Like this, I'm, I'm just being clear.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:25Speaker 03

  With myself.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  So there's a possibility that this person murdered an entire family, including children?

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 03

  And that was like something you were wrestling with?

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Roger, Roger was nervous to turn on his own community.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 03

  I mean-

• 34:42Speaker 02

  But he, he eventually realized he couldn't not do that.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  Cause you literally can't not do that. You can't not do that. I'm glad you realized.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  And he said, he was like, if this is the same guy he could kill again. And like,

• 34:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  I gotta tell somebody.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  And he's already murdered kids. So I think it's-

• 34:56Speaker 02

  And that goes to show you that you can, you know, you shouldn't, but you can sit there and question things for a minute and then ultimately come to the right decision.

• 35:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, there you go. You can mull things over for about a minute and a half.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  For a minute.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  And then you can move on with the right thing. I'm glad he made the right decision.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  He did.

• 35:12Speaker 03

  In the end.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  There's always that, that-

• 35:14Speaker 03

  Just had to be-

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Chance for you.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Be clear. But that was, I was like, what?

• 35:18Speaker 02

  So in the early mornings of October 22nd, he met privately at The Catalyst with District Attorney Peter Chang. And he told him the note found at the scene sounded a lot like the apocalyptic rhetoric of a man named John Lindley for- He'd been coming into the cafe in recent weeks. And according to Crone, Frazier generally seemed like he was suffering from some kind of mental illness. He came into the cafe regularly ranting about capitalism, the rich destroying the earth. And he seemed very preoccupied with World War Three.

• 35:48Speaker 03

  All of that sounds very familiar.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  All of that was in the note.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  And you know what, I can, I can at least take a step back now and say, okay, so he wasn't positive that this guy is the person? Like, he's not sitting there being like, I know he did it.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  That's the thing. He was like, I think that note sounds like him.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  Difficult to take that first step and accuse.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Cause you wanna be like, hopefully that guy coming into my bar or my cafe didn't murder a whole family.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  Annihilator, like, yeah.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  So I'll, so I'll step back and look at it from a different angle.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  So, see, you're always capable of that, too.

• 36:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I thought about it.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  So Roger provided a general description of Frazier, but he didn't really know that much about him. He didn't know where police might find him. In fact, given the increased bomb threats that the cafe had been receiving and the fear of violence that his customers were feeling, John wanted to make sure that Chang and all the other investigators understood that despite his appearance, John Frazier was not a member of the hippie community and he did not represent their values. He was like, please understand that.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  Don't conflate us.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  The DA indicated that he understood and that he would do his best to relieve the message, but first he needed to find and stop John Lindley Frazier. So who the fuck is John Lindley Frazier?

• 37:01Speaker 03

  Truly, who the fuck is he?

• 37:04Speaker 02

  This is a doozy of a background.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  Oh, boy.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  John Lindley Frazier was born January twenty sixth, nineteen forty six, in New Mexico to Pat and William Frazier. He was an Aquarius. The family was very far from wealthy, but they were well known in the area because they had a rabbit farm. And Pat, the mother, was an outspoken advocate of rabbit farming and animal welfare, both activities that she would later enlist to help with her son with. In nineteen seventy, she told a reporter, John was always kind to animals. He couldn't stand abuse of life.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  According to Pat, the first year or two of John's life were pretty ordinary. The family was generally happy. But in mid nineteen forty seven, they moved to Ohio to be closer to her husband's family. And that was when Pat started to notice that William, her husband, his personality was changing and he was just behaving in odd ways. She said he'd go out all night, forget where he lived and get involved with other women.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  It's unclear whether his behavior was the result of a mental illness or if he was just unhappy. But either way, the sudden change in his personality took obviously a serious toll on his relationship with his wife and his son. Pat tried to convince her husband that moving back to his hometown maybe was a mistake and suggested that they move and start over on their own, but he was not interested. So Pat said, I left and I thought he might come to his senses, but he didn't. So I started off on my own.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Now a single mother with no income, she moved to Hayward, California to live with her own family. And she found a job working at a local hospital. At first, the new situation was really tough for John. His mom had to rely on her family to watch him while she was working twelve hour overnight shifts. And everything was made significantly worse in the months that followed when John's health appeared to be declining.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  One night while Pat was working at the hospital, her aunt brought John in and he had a high fever and acute stomach pain. At first, the attending doctor diagnosed him with pneumonia. But the situation took a very dramatic turn just a few hours later when his appendix ruptured.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Oh shit.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. From there, things only got worse. After the surgery to remove his appendix, he was kept at the hospital a few da- for a few days. And he was inadvertently exposed to measles.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Oh my.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  So that added another two months on to his hospital stay.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  Oof.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now his measles were followed by other upper respiratory illnesses.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, measles sucks.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Upper respiratory illnesses.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's why they have vaccines for measles too.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  And that's why we are proponents of vaccine.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  Hell yeah.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Now, eventually, doctors removed his adenoids and they also removed his tonsils. And he started to improve, but then inevitably declined again when he was afflicted with just what seemed to be severe colds that went on and off for months.

• 39:50Speaker 03

  Oh, that sucks.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Now, believing that the move and the living arrangements were contributing to her son's poor health, Pat quit her job and she moved to the San Francisco area. She enrolled in dental school and found new doctors for her son. And it took some time before they were able to properly diagnose him, but eventually it was discovered that he had contracted tuberculosis.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Holy shit.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now, this was all further complicated by injuries that he sustained in an auto accident in nineteen fifty-two.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  What is going on?

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Everything. In that accident, he broke his collarbone and also got a concussion.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  What?

• 40:25Speaker 02

  He was blind for several weeks after that accident.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  This is so much trauma.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  At this kid isn't even in first grade.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  This is an incredible amount of trauma.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  This kid isn't even in first grade yet.

• 40:39Speaker 03

  That's.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  He's got a burst appendix, measles, tuberculosis, adenoids removed, tonsils removed.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Broken collarbone.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Broken collarbone.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  Went blind.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Went blind and a concussion.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  Holy shit.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now, once he had been properly diagnosed, his physical health improved dramatically, but there were several unusual behaviors that persisted regardless of the doctor's attempts to try to curb them. John frequently wet the bed and it ultimately seemed to stop when he got married.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  He was like a very long.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  Late.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, bed wetter. Um, he was also a chronic sleepwalker who struggled with other sleep disturbances for years.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Now, after he was quote unquote stabilized, Pat realized that she wasn't going to be able to go to school full-time, work at the evenings, and take care of her son. So she ended up placing him in foster care where he lived for two years. By the time that he did reach first grade, she was able to regain custody, but from that point forward, he struggled with a lot of behavioral problems.

• 41:45Speaker 03

  The amount of trauma

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  that happened to this child before first grade.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  Is unthinkable.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  It really is. It's also a wild concept to me that like you could just drop your kid off in foster care and then go get them when you were ready again.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Just be like, okay.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Ooh, nuts.

• 42:03Speaker 03

  That's a lot.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  So his first brush with the law came when he was 10 years old.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  And got caught shoplifting a penknife from a store in San Francisco. Police were called and he was given a citation and had to appear in juvenile court. Eventually, the charges were dropped, but his attitude and his behavior only continued to get worse. His eighth grade teacher said he was kind of a tough kid. His attitude was poor at times. He didn't seem like a happy kid.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  It's like, I don't know that I'd be a happy kid either. Two years later, after his mom moved to Santa Cruz, John was arrested again when he and his friends vandalized a tile factory in town. The parents of all of the boys made them clean up the factory and repair the damages. So the company agreed that they wouldn't press charges. But it didn't do much to stop his defiant behavior. By the time he reached high school, he was almost entirely uneducated and going to school. He went to a vocational school, but within a few months, he started skipping classes and soon he was just skipping school days altogether. Teachers and counselors tried to keep him engaged, but he continued to miss long stretches and eventually just dropped out entirely. Pat said that was when he started to get in trouble.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  No.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  I feel like he was in trouble from the jump, babe.

• 43:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's not it. That objectively, that's not when he started getting in trouble.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  He got arrested at 10 years old, babe.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

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• 44:43Speaker 04

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• 44:51Speaker 02

  So a series of more petty crimes led to a period of incarceration in a juvenile detention center, which was then followed by juvenile parole, which he violated almost immediately.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  Oh, man, he's just on a path, clearly.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Outside of the justice system, he also continued to demonstrate antisocial behavior. Trigger warning for animal abuse here.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  I thought he was nice to animals.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, his mom thought so too, but there was one instance where he doused a neighborhood cat in kerosene and lit it on fire.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  How do you go from being kind to animals to that?

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Head injuries.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  There were also charges for shoplifting and petty violence. In 1961, he was removed from his mother's care for a second time, this time involuntarily, and placed again in foster care. His relationship with his foster parents got off to a very bad start, and it basically stayed that way for the entire duration of the placement. In 1962, he was reported to the police by his foster parents for stealing a 22-caliber pistol, which he said he took in order to shoot animals for food.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  So that charge got him sent back to a juvenile justice center in Watsonville, where he continued to demonstrate a very defiant and antisocial behavior, particularly when it came to authority figures.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  In nineteen sixty-six, he found work in the auto parts section of Disco, which was a San Francisco department store. And it was there that he met Dolores, his soon-to-be-wife. Not to be confused with my sweet angel of a daughter.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  No.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  Now, she later said, "I started taking Johnny home because he didn't have a car. And every time I took him home, we got closer and closer." She was married at the time, but within a few months, she divorced her husband so that she could be with John Frazier.

• 46:38Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Choices. At first, the relationship was pretty good. Everything seemed normal. But then she started to notice some unusual behavior in John. She said he would get horribly sweaty and cold, and he'd yell and cry and whimper in the middle of the night.

• 46:53Speaker 03

  Oh, that's really sad.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  It is. And she said at times, he seemed so paranoid that he kept a loaded gun in the drawer of his nightstand.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  He's clearly suffering from something.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  He has mental illness a hundred percent. So, the couple got married in nineteen sixty-seven and moved to Washington, hoping to make a fresh start. But unfortunately, things did not work out there. Jobs were very hard to come by, so they struggled and they scraped together enough just to get by. But in September of that year, Dolores found out that she was pregnant with their daughter Lisa. And it became clear that they weren't going to be able to make it in Washington. So, they returned to the Santa Cruz area, where John found work at an auto shop. Like always, things would be pretty good for a while. But then, after a few months, John would find faults with his employer, with his coworkers. He'd get into arguments and he'd eventually get fired. Dolores said he always had to change jobs because there was always someone who he couldn't get along with

• 47:48Speaker 02

  or who was always picking on him.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  Oh, we all know people like that. It's never their fault.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Never their fault. Finally, in nineteen sixty-nine, he got a job with Performance West, which was a foreign car mechanic. And this was the one job that seemed to stick. The owner, Richard DePont, told a reporter, "He was the best worker I ever had."

• 48:07Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, Frazier managed to stay out of trouble until May of nineteen seventy, when he was picked up by police for harassing a local girl on the sidewalk.

• 48:16Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. According to Dolores, the young girl had been walking down the sidewalk on her way to school when she was verbally assaulted by John. He denied it was him, but she was able to identify him in a lineup. After the identification, they let him go with a warning because he only frightened her. That's it. You have to actually cause somebody

• 48:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, you gotta really hurt.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Anything to happen.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  Hurt someone.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  He didn't hit her, so.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  No, he just scared the shit out of her.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Terrified on the way to school.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  He just menaced her. That's all.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  It's fine. Men are allowed to do that.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  People are idiots.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a man's world. What are you thinking? So to investigators, he sounded like countless other petty criminals that they'd run into. Young guys with bad upbringings who were mad at the world and their parents and wanted to take it out on whoever stepped on their path. He definitely seemed like a nuisance. But to investigators, he really didn't seem like the kind of guy who could plan and execute a mass murder of a family for no obvious reason.

• 49:13Speaker 03

  Valid.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Now detectives managed to track him to Performance West, where they discovered he'd been working until a few months earlier when he quit unexpectedly. Now remember, this

• 49:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's the best worker they've ever had.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  The description of Frasier given by DuPont, that of a clean cut, married man and a great employee, seemed at odds with the man that investigators came to know through his criminal record. But as it turned out, there was an explanation for that. After DuPont gave them the address that they had on file for Frasier, detectives learned that right around the time he quit his job there, he also left his wife abruptly and moved out of the house.

• 49:49Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  According to Dolores, a few days before he was picked up for that verbal assault, he was in another car accident and hit his head when he rear ended another car.

• 49:59Speaker 03

  Oh shit.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  At the time, she said he didn't seem to be hurt in obvious way, in any obvious way, at least not physically. But she did say he had a bump on his forehead. It wasn't bleeding, just raised, but he wouldn't let me touch it at all. He wouldn't see a doctor and he wouldn't hardly let me near him.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  Oh boy.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Now in the days that followed, he continued to insist that he was fine, but he started to behave even more strangely. According to his friend David Marlowe, he started hearing voices that were warning him against catastrophe.

• 50:27Speaker 03

  This is such severe mental health issues.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Dolores said, he said he heard voices that said he should never drive again or he'd be killed. He was very different. His whole attitude was cheap and aggressive. Said, that's a read.

• 50:40Speaker 03

  That's wow. What a way to describe that.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Cheap and aggressive.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  You're acting cheap.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 50:46Speaker 03

  Holy shit.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Now, at first, Dolores was hesitant to tell the detectives where John had gone, but eventually she relented and she told them.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  Guys, we gotta stop hesitating.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  I think she was embarrassed.

• 50:55Speaker 03

  Everyone's very hesitant. Look, don't hesitate.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  Stop being hesitant. Now, after he moved out of the house, he moved into an abandoned shack in the woods, just a few miles from the O'Toole's family house.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  I hate this.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Later, after his picture was published in all the papers, neighbors of the O'Toole family told the police that they saw somebody who looked very much like Frasier, walking from the woods to a water tower near their houses, where he appeared to watch the O'Toole house with binoculars for hours on end, and then climb down from the water tower and retreat into the woods. To which I say, neighbors, if you see a strange man in the woods using binoculars to watch a family home, maybe call the police before that entire family gets murdered.

• 51:48Speaker 03

  The amount of unnecessary hesitation in this story is sending me into fucking orbit.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Especially this one. They're like, come to think of it.

• 51:58Speaker 03

  You know what?

• 51:59Speaker 02

  There was that guy in the water tower with the binoculars.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  In the woods, was watching this family for literally hours on end.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Atop the water tower.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  Atop the water tower. And it just slipped my mind. That would be something that would be top, tip top.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Also, I would hope that my neighbors would come knock on my door.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would hope.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  And say, hey, there's a man watching your home with binoculars atop the water tower.

• 52:24Speaker 03

  We should do something.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  What, do you want me to call someone?

• 52:26Speaker 03

  Do you want me to like help?

• 52:27Speaker 02

  You guys should go somewhere.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  Hello?

• 52:31Speaker 03

  I'm I'm shook by everybody in this.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  So now certain that they had the right suspect.

• 52:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  Police and sheriff's deputy has combed the woods around the Otao house for hours until they ended up finding the shack. But there was no sign of John anywhere. Convinced he would return at some point, they set up a stakeout and they watched the shack for almost an entire day. Around eight AM on the morning of October twenty third, they saw him return. Not wanting to alert him to their presence, they waited an hour or two longer before finally storming the shack. More hesitancy. But you know.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  I'm like, you, I'm like, I realize you don't want to like scare him right away, but like.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  You do like twenty, twenty five minutes.

• 53:12Speaker 03

  Like an hour or two.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Half an hour. An hour or two, feel like.

• 53:16Speaker 03

  Twenty minutes.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  Twenty minutes, max.

• 53:18Speaker 03

  Max.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  I, me thinks, like, I've never done a stakeout before.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  For twenty minutes, like he's, he's doing his thing.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:26Speaker 03

  You, you, you're free to storm the shack at that point.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  Storm it.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  Storm the fucking shack.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Please.

• 53:31Speaker 03

  Everybody hustle.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Poltrick.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  Hustle.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Poltrick.

• 53:35Speaker 03

  This is California, everybody's chiller.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  If this was the east coast, you'd never see it go down like this.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  You'd never see it be this slow and nobody can be that slow over here.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  So they like, like I said, they waited an hour or two before they stormed the shack. And that's where they caught Frazier asleep on a dirty mattress laid out on the floor.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  Holy shit.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  He was startled by the presence of police in his shack. But as soon as he understood what was happening, he looked at Terry Medina and said, why don't you give me what I deserve?

• 54:06Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Chilling.

• 54:07Speaker 03

  That's really chilling.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Now, he was taken into custody that morning. And a few hours later, he was charged with the murders of the four members of the Otao family and the murder of Dorothy Cadwallader. The arrest was a major relief to everybody in Santa Cruz County, especially when District Attorney Chang announced that they had captured the sole person responsible for the murders.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  And true to his word, Peter Chang made sure to tell reporters that they could not have apprehended John Frazier if it was not for the help of the hippie community, who were quote unquote, totally revulsed by the mass executions.

• 54:40Speaker 03

  Look at him.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  I know.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  That's nice that he kept his word.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  It is.

• 54:44Speaker 03

  Cause it's the truth.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  It is. Now, in their interviews with Frazier's family and friends, they learned that after one of the, the most recent, recent accident, John had developed a fixation with wealthy people that he believed were quote unquote, too materialistic. He said that they were harming the earth, but the one person he was the most fixated on was Victor Ota.

• 55:06Speaker 03

  Why?

• 55:06Speaker 02

  According to a former friend in the weeks leading up to the murders, John made several statements about how big things would be happening next Monday, which indicated his plan to kill the Otas. That same friend also told detectives that John confessed to him that he had broken into the Ota family home on several occasions when they weren't there. And while inside, he stole several items, including the binoculars he was using to stalk them and the twenty-two caliber pistol that they were killed with.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  Guys, you gotta say something.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Later, when Lark, their daughter, was shown the items found in Fraser's possession, she identified them all as having belonged to her father.

• 55:48Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Now, the evidence was already quite substantial by the end of the day that he was arrested, but there was still more to be learned in the days that followed. Shortly after his arrest, he was placed in a voice lineup where he was identified by the gas station attendant as the man seen driving Virginia Ota's station wagon on the night of the murders. And beyond that, there were his own statements about the murders made the day following his arrest. According to John, he said he received a message from God telling him that the Ota family needed to die because they were too rich and they were harming the earth with their reckless materialism.

• 56:25Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  Now, meanwhile, these people are like giving back to their community.

• 56:30Speaker 03

  That's the thing. It's like they're using their wealth for good.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  Now, on the day of the murders, he said he broke into the house early in the afternoon when no one was home, which is so fucking scary. That's when he found the twenty-two caliber pistol and the scarves that he, and he started planning the executions in their home.

• 56:46Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  He placed a call to Mr. Ota's office, saying that Virginia wouldn't be able to pick up the children from school because she was having car trouble, knowing that it would require them to change their plans and now that they would all be coming home at different times.

• 57:01Speaker 03

  That's too much premeditation for me. Like, he thought that through way too well.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. When Dorothy returned to the house with Derek Ota a few hours later, John ambushed them at the door and tied them up with the scarves. Mr. Ota and Taggart returned home next, and they were ambushed and tied up in the same way. And finally, Virginia came home and she too was ambushed and tied up. With the entire family bound and gathered in the living room, John ranted for some time about his beliefs about how they were harming the earth. And then he explained that he needed to destroy their home and actually even asked Victor Ota to help him do it. Victor Ota did not respond to the request, but instead he said, we'll give you whatever you want. You can have any money that you want and please just let my family live. But the mention of money and possession sent John

• 57:52Speaker 02

  over the edge and now he was enraged. He dragged Mr. Ota, Dr. Ota, out to the pool, pushed him in and then shot him three times.

• 58:03Speaker 03

  What the fuck?

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Now, once he started killing, he said he understood that there was no going back. Moments later, he brought Virginia and Dorothy out to the pool and told the blindfolded women to kneel down. After they did as he instructed, John asked Virginia whether she believed in God. And when she said that she did, he said, then you have nothing to fear and shot them both in the back of the neck and pushed their bodies into the pool.

• 58:28Speaker 03

  This is so fucked up.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  It's so dark. Now, after killing all three adults, he said he hesitated when it came to the children who were eleven and twelve. He told investigators that he kneeled down on the pavement beside the pool and begged God to give him a sign that he should spare the children. But when he didn't receive a sign, he said he had no other choice than to accept that the sins of the father had been passed on to the sons.

• 58:51Speaker 03

  Oh, fuck off.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  So he shot and killed both boys, Derek and Taggart.

• 58:55Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  Now, it was clear to detectives that he had absolutely killed the family. But the question on many people's minds, which I'm sure you can say it with me. Was he legally sane when he committed the murders? Which I'm so happy you've been pointing out the premeditation here.

• 59:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  So in the weeks after his arrest, he was placed in the custody of the county jail where he made a suicide attempt in his cell by cutting one of his wrists. Kinda. In his statement to the press, Peter Chang told reporters, he made a very superficial cut on one wrist. He is in no danger. In fact, it seemed that most of his behavior while in custody was that of somebody trying to convince people that he was mentally ill, rather than somebody who was genuinely suffering from a mental disorder. I'm not here to say that he didn't have a mental disorder, but it very much seemed like he was leaning in.

• 59:45Speaker 03

  He was trying to play it up a little more.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now, for instance, just before his interview with an evaluating psychiatrist, he shaved all the hair on one side of his head, including his eyebrows, for no apparent reason other than just to look insane.

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  I just saw that picture and it is very unsettling.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  It's really chilling. Terry Medina said in 2020, "It very quickly just became a media train wreck." From the moment he was arrested, Santa Cruz County was descended upon by journalists from not only just all over the country, but in some cases, all over the world. The case was very sensational, and being that it was 1971, the idea of a spree killer was still pretty unfamiliar to most people. So a figure like John Frazier terrified ordinary people, especially coming so close on the heels of the Manson murders. Now, as a result, the defense filed several motions that delayed the start of the trial, including a request for a gag order on everyone involved in the case and a motion to move

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  the trial out of Santa Cruz County to ensure that he would be treated fairly. A judge approved the motion for the relocation, specifically citing the local population's animosity toward the hippie community and commending Peter Chang for his attempts to minimize those negative feelings.

• 1:01:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, he did try.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  He did. Now, in late October of 1971, a year after the murders had been committed, the trial finally got started in Redwood City, which is about 50 miles from Santa Cruz. And there were countless spectators, journalists, everybody gathered inside the courtroom, and even waiting in the halls. Assistant District Attorney Chris Cottle said, "I would put him in the same camp as Manson, but unlike the Manson trial, there was no cheering section for Frazier."

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  Isn't that interesting?

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  Isn't it also insane that there was a cheering section for a group of people that murdered a woman who was eight and a half months pregnant, and all of her friends, and then a married couple? What's there to cheer for?

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  And also, how are you picking and choosing?

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  Exactly. Now, given that he had already essentially confessed to the murders, it was the job of the defense to convince the jury that he was too mentally ill to be held accountable for the crimes. And to that end, he did his best to play the part. During witness testimony for the prosecution, he stared relentlessly at the witnesses and at one point even yelled at the district attorney for getting in between him and a witness that was on the stand. But despite the antics in the courtroom, several people testified to his bizarre behavior and the frequency that he raised the subject of quote unquote, snuffing out the rich and materialistic people of the world.

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  That's the thing. He's been talking about this. It's not like this was like, oh, I snapped.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  Exactly. So the trial dragged on for over a month with even more strange outbursts from Frazier. Throughout the trial, uh, his defense attorney, James Jackson, did his best to demonstrate his client's poor mental health and the extent to which they did believe that the police violated his rights with regard to collection of physical evidence, blah, blah, blah. Despite his best efforts, though, it actually seemed like John Frazier was working against his lawyer rather than with him. Jackson recalled in 2020, Frazier didn't talk to me. He just wouldn't talk to us for a long time and he gave three different stories to a psychiatrist.

• 1:02:58Speaker 03

  Oh geez.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  Now, in addition to the obvious fact that he was mentally ill, the prosecution faced the hurdle of not having the murder weapon at the time of the trial. But what they did have was enough to place him in the house at several points, including on the night of the murder. And while it may have been obvious that he was unwell when the crimes were committed, he killed a family which included two children. So they were hoping that would override at least some of the sympathy that jurors felt, if any at all. Now, on November 26, 1971, both sides gave their closing arguments and the case was handed over to the jury. Throughout the trial, it was very hard to ignore that while he may have been performing this mental illness at various points, he was actively clearly suffering from some kind of mental illness.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  And that did strengthen the defense's case. It made it tough for the jury.

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  But being mentally ill was not in it in itself enough to prove that he was legally insane at the time of the murders.

• 1:03:55Speaker 03

  Those are two very different things.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  That's the thing that you have to remember. In fact, like you've been saying this whole time, there was considerable evidence that established he planned these murders in advance. And not only that, but he gathered what he needed in order to execute this plan. And on top of that, even after he committed the murders, this is a biggie. He set the house on fire and blocked both driveways in order to prevent help from arriving.

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's big.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Which all suggested that while, yes, maybe mentally ill, he was still sane enough to know that what he was doing was a crime.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  After three days, the jury emerged from deliberation and they found John Lindley Frazier guilty of five counts of first degree murder. The following month, the same jury found him to have been legally sane at the time of those murders.

• 1:04:41Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  And he was sentenced to death.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  When a reporter asked him how he felt about the sentence, he said, oh, I don't know what sentence. And then laughed.

• 1:04:51Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, while investigators initially did think that Tom DeChecco's murder was linked to the Ota family murders, there was never sufficient evidence and the case remains unsolved.

• 1:05:02Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  In nineteen seventy-two, just a few months after John Frazier was sentenced to death, though, the California Supreme Court overturned the death penalty on the grounds that it was a cruel and unusual punishment. So Frazier's sentence was commuted to life in prison. A few weeks later, detectives found the Ota murder weapon among his possessions.

• 1:05:21Speaker 03

  Stop.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  They just didn't initially find it.

• 1:05:24Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Now, John Lindley Frazier ultimately spent thirty-seven years at Mule Creek State Prison in Lone, California, until August thirteenth, two thousand nine, when he was found to have hanged himself in his cell at the age of sixty-three.

• 1:05:38Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  And that is the story of the Ota family murders.

• 1:05:44Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  What a chilling case.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  What a chilling case, truly.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  This man just like truly loses his grip on reality.

• 1:05:54Speaker 03

  He never had a chance from the beginning.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  He really didn't, but like moves into a shack in the woods and just singles in on this family.

• 1:06:02Speaker 03

  That's so scary.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  And like, I need to know for how long these people saw him.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  That's a thing.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  Like.

• 1:06:10Speaker 03

  Like, I'm sorry, that's making me crazy.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  No, I know.

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  Like, what?

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  And just the fact that they're like, oh, yeah, come to think of it.

• 1:06:18Speaker 03

  Like, that's why I'm so glad me and my neighbors are all up each other's asses.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah, you should be.

• 1:06:22Speaker 03

  And honestly, that's the way it should be. We're always looking out for each other.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  I hope mine are looking out for me.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  Our group chat pops off if there's something suspicious going on. We're all just out there like, what the fuck's up, Kyle?

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  What the fuck is up, Kyle?

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  Like FedEx trucks, sorry.

• 1:06:39Speaker 03

  You're getting ganged up on by my whole neighborhood. We're following you around. That's just the way it is.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Neighbors coming out their house.

• 1:06:45Speaker 03

  It's true. We're all just like staring you down as you go by.

• 1:06:50Speaker 02

  It's wild.

• 1:06:50Speaker 03

  I can't imagine my neighbors just being like, yeah, it's so weird. We saw somebody watching your house and your family with binoculars for hours on end.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  It was nuts.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  We just kind of went about our business. Like, I can't imagine that.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  And also, like, how long did it take to communicate that to the police? Because they were struggling to find a suspect for the few days.

• 1:07:10Speaker 03

  And all of a sudden, everyone's like, come to think of it.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  That guy from the water tower.

• 1:07:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, weird. That guy that was staring at you.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  I feel like people, like, really kept to themselves, like.

• 1:07:19Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I think it was a totally different, like, culture.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Speaker 03

  You know?

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  But it's like, to a, to a bad degree.

• 1:07:26Speaker 03

  Um, yeah.

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  To a detrimental degree.

• 1:07:28Speaker 03

  Exactly. Damn.

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  I think we're gonna need a fun fact read.

• 1:07:34Speaker 03

  I love this. In Switzerland, it's illegal to own just one guinea pig.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Oh, I know.

• 1:07:40Speaker 03

  Because guinea pigs are like bro-y.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  It's like cruel.

• 1:07:43Speaker 03

  They're very sociable.

• 1:07:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:45Speaker 03

  So they, literally, the Swiss government classifies owning just one single guinea pig as animal abuse.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, I love that.

• 1:07:52Speaker 03

  That's pretty badass.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  That's so funny that you said that.

• 1:07:55Speaker 03

  A plus Switzerland.

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  My angel-sweet daughter, Dolores, went to the pet store and she was like intrigued by the guinea pigs yesterday.

• 1:08:04Speaker 03

  Wow, that is weird.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  It's weird that you just brought up guinea pigs today.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  Can't have just one.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:08:09Speaker 03

  Gotta catch them all.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  I feel like you can't just have one animal at all. You have to have like a billion.

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  Unfortunately.

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  It's just the way it is.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  Oh, that's so cute. We need that.

• 1:08:16Speaker 03

  Isn't that adorable?

• 1:08:18Speaker 02

  All right. Well, thanks so much, and we hope you keep listening.

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  And we hope you keep it weird.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  But not to worry that you don't report the strange activities in the woods outside of your house and a man atop a water tower watching a family with their own binoculars.

• 1:08:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I hate that a lot. Shame. I hate it a lot.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  Their own binoculars.