page_title: Barbecue murders
section_title: Murders
hierarchical_section_title: Barbecue murders / Murders
caption_attribution_description: English: Salt marsh and oaks in China Camp State Park, as seen from Turtle Back Hill, August 2012.
context_page_description: The barbecue murders, also known as the BBQ murders, refers to a 1975 double murder in Marin County, California. Business consultant James "Jim" Olive and his wife Naomi were murdered in their home by their 16-year-old adopted daughter Marlene Olive and her 20-year-old boyfriend Charles "Chuck" Riley, who then attempted to dispose of the bodies by burning them in a barbecue pit at a nearby campground. Riley was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and received a sentence of death, which was later changed to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Marlene Olive, tried as a juvenile, received a sentence of three to six years in a California Youth Authority juvenile facility, from which she was released at age 21 having served a little over four years.
  The case gained worldwide attention due to the age of the perpetrators, the details of the crime, and the wide disparity in sentencing between the two perpetrators. Riley and Marlene Olive have also been the subjects of continuing coverage in connection with his repeated bids for parole and her subsequent convictions for numerous other crimes.
context_section_description: On Saturday, June 21, 1975, following another argument with her mother, Marlene Olive telephoned Riley and told him, "Get your gun, we've got to kill the bitch today". She arranged to go out with her father, leaving her mother home alone and leaving a door unlocked through which Riley could then enter and kill her mother. Riley, who was carrying a loaded .22 caliber revolver and later said he had taken LSD, entered the house where Naomi Olive was sleeping.
  Afterward, Riley told police that he had struck Naomi Olive "many times" with a hammer (a statement he later recanted under hypnosis) and also stabbed and suffocated her. While Riley was still in the house, Jim Olive returned, saw his wife lying in bed covered with blood, picked up a knife, and started toward Riley, exclaiming, "I'll kill you". Riley drew his gun and shot Jim Olive four times, killing him.
  Marlene Olive and Riley tried to dispose of the bodies by transporting them to a wooded area at nearby China Camp and burning them in a barbecue pit with gasoline and logs in an attempt to make them unrecognizable. The couple left while the bodies were still burning. A fireman who arrived shortly thereafter to put out the unattended fire initially mistook the partially burnt remains for a deer carcass. The couple later returned to the park and further burned the remains along with additional evidence.
  With a friend, the couple cleaned up the room where the killings had taken place, removing blood from the carpet, walls, and furniture. They confided in the friend who helped clean and in several other friends that they had killed the Olives, with Riley physically carrying out the killings. Riley told friends, "We had to do it. They wouldn't let me see her." Marlene Olive and Riley continued to live together at the Olives' house for several days, attending a Yes concert, shopping, eating at restaurants, and paying their expenses using cash, checks, and credit cards taken from her dead parents. They allegedly planned to wait for Jim and Naomi to be declared dead, collect the life insurance money, and move to Ecuador.
  After a few days, Jim Olive's business partner became concerned about his absence from work and contacted police, who visited the Olive house and spoke with Marlene Olive. She provided various alibis for herself and Riley, which the police later determined were false, and stories about her parents having either disappeared or died, claiming that one parent had killed the other and then disappeared with the body or that both parents were killed by Hells Angels. Police also noted the recently cleaned room in the otherwise disordered house. The friend who had helped clean informed the police about the blood in the room and the couple's statements about killing the Olives and burning their bodies. Acting either on information from Marlene Olive or from her friend, police searched the China Camp barbecue pit and determined that it contained fragments of burnt human remains. Marlene Olive and Riley were arrested.
  After his arrest, Riley made a detailed confession, in which he said that he and Marlene Olive had been planning to kill her parents for some time, that he had beaten, stabbed, and suffocated Naomi Olive and then shot Jim Olive, and that Marlene Olive had made him do it. However, Marlene Olive claimed that Riley had killed her parents of his own accord and that afterward, he had held her hostage and forced her to take drugs.
caption: China Camp State Park in Marin County, California, where the bodies of murder victims Jim and Naomi Olive were burned in a barbecue pit.
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