Jim and Naomi Olive's Disappearance Leads to a Gruesome Discovery

Marlene Olive, 1975 (photo source)

No one stops
to step into my life
and those in it have long ago
fallen asleep.
I have been empty for so long.

- Marlene Olive's poetry

Early on the morning of Sunday, June 22, 1975, a firefighter found a smoldering flame in a barbeque pit at China Camp State Park in Marin County, California. As it wasn't uncommon for hunters to roast deer in the pits, he thought nothing of the bone fragments in the ashes. He would have had no idea that those bones were tied to a missing San Rafael couple by the name of Jim and Naomi Olive, who lived less than ten miles to the west with their teenaged daughter, Marlene.

Marlene Olive had been born in Norfolk, Virginia in January of 1959 to an unmarried mother. When she was a day old, she was adopted by Jim and Naomi Olive. Jim and Naomi had married in 1944, when Jim was an Army recruit. Once the war ended, he wanted to get in on the housing boom and so the couple moved to Panama. They both wanted a family but as the years passed, it did not happen and so they adopted Marlene. Naomi's vigilance as a parent was excessive from the start. Worried about what the baby might be exposed to, she insisted that everyone around the baby, even herself and Jim, wear a surgical mask and repeatedly sterilized anything and everything that her daughter might come into contact with.

In the summer of 1959, Jim lost their life savings in a failed business venture and found a new position with Tenneco oil company in Ecuador. Jim loved Ecuador but Naomi hated it. She had displayed symptoms of mental illness for a number of years but the move to Ecuador, taking place not long after she became a parent, turned her into a paranoid recluse. She regularly accused Jim of a multitude of affairs and soothed herself with alcohol.

In 1965, Jim's work took his family first to Colorado and then to New Mexico. He was fired from Tenneco but found employment with the Gulf Oil Company, once again in Ecuador.

The Olives lived a privileged lifestyle in Ecuador, complete with servants. Marlene was treated like a princess by their household staff and by Jim, who adored his little girl. She and Jim bonded and became very close, helped along by Naomi's illness and lack of a caring, loving relationship with Marlene.

The little girl was ten years old when she found adoption papers in Jim's office. Despite her father's assertions that she was just as loved as if she were his own biological child, and she was more special because she was chosen, the knowledge of her adoption left Marlene confused and hurt toward her adoptive parents and wondering why her biological mother didn't want her.

When she was in the sixth grade, she announced during class one day that she hated her mother. She asked her teacher how she could find her biological mother, stating that while Jim had told her he would help her locate her mother when she was 21, she didn't want to wait.

Marlene had never been close to Naomi, even before Naomi's schizophrenia took over but as Marlene entered adolescence, the friction between the two was exacerbated. Their arguments led Marlene to bang her head against the wall and bite her own arms, leaving scars.

Jim once again lost his job in 1973, forcing the Olives to leave Ecuador for the States in March. He found employment in Marin County, California. He and Naomi chose to settle in Terra Linda, a quiet community in the city of San Rafael, 14 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. They moved to Hibiscus Way, a street of homes that were built in the 1950s.

Marlene had been terrified to leave her safe haven in Ecuador for what she believed was the drug-infested culture of California and the United States. Ironically, after starting her last term of eighth grade, she fell in with a group of kids and began emulating their behavior. She dressed in the glam rocker style, took drugs and had sex. She said she was a witch and told her classmates she was a member of the Church of Satan in San Francisco and that she had appeared in a pornographic movie while in South America. Her father, she said, was in charge of the drug trade in Ecuador.

Whether it be her daily interactions with a mentally-ill Naomi, her drug use or typical adolescent moodiness - or all three - Marlene was often sullen. At time, she would write morose, depressing poems and then write a thoughtful, loving poem about her parents.

When she was fourteen, Marlene began to shoplift and steal her parents' credit cards. Her first arrest was while she was in the ninth grade.

Predictably, Naomi disliked Marlene's friends and hated the way her daughter dressed and acted. She would often berate and verbally abuse Marlene, telling her she was going to be a whore just like her birth mother. During one episode, Naomi allegedly stripped naked and taunted Marlene, suggesting that the lewd gyrations she was making likely represented her birth mother.

Jim apparently spent more time at work than he had in Ecuador, which Marlene took personally. When he was at home, according to her, he was more interested in being the "white knight protector to Naomi."

In 1974, Marlene made a fateful and fatal acquaintance in Charles Riley. She was on her first LSD trip, sitting on the lawn of Terra Linda High School, and it was a bad one. Other students were laughing at her and it was Riley who ordered them to leave her alone.

Charles, known as Chuck, was a 19-year-old high school dropout. Since leaving school during his junior year, he had worked as a pizza deliveryman, bartender, and factory worker. A happy and affectionate child, Chuck became obese while in school, enduring names like "Boulder" and "Fat Man" from his classmates and hearing jokes on how he must have a charge account at Jack in the Box, a local fast food restaurant. By the time Chuck was 15 years old, he weighed 300 pounds. A former student at Terra Linda High School, he was at the school that day in 1974 to deal drugs. He did it not only for the money but also to help boost his popularity. He was immediately smitten and obsessed by the 15-year-old Marlene.

In an attempt to woo Marlene, who was initially put off by his size, Chuck love bombed her, gifting her with flowers, candy and affection. Although she appreciated his "white knight protector" act, especially given that she believed she had lost that from her father, it was only after Chuck agreed to provide her with drugs that Marlene agreed to have sex with him. Chuck, who had never had a girlfriend before, became utterly devoted to Marlene, who would take him into stores and point out items she wanted, which he would then steal. His association with Marlene would lead Chuck, wo had never before been in trouble with the law, to have a record.

Surprisingly, Jim and Naomi Olive liked Chuck and approved of his relationship with Marlene - at least at first. Naomi reportedly thought he was a nice young man before her daughter got to him. As 1974 turned in 1975 and life with Marlene became a constant cycle of arrests, drug use and battles, however, Jim's opinion began to change. In March of 1975, Marlene and Chuck were charged with grand larceny after they lifted $6,000 worth of women's clothing and accessories from a variety of stores in the area. Jim bailed Marlene out of jail and hired an attorney to represent her in the matter due to move forward in May but also threatened to send her to a juvenile facility. Chuck's parents, with whom he lived, bailed him out.

In the winter of 1974-1975, Marlene became obsessive with her fantasies of murdering her mother. Her friends apparently thought it was nothing more than typical teenage venting and wrote it off. However, Marlene's relationship with Naomi continued to deteriorate and she decided to take action. She crushed up prescription medication and put it into her mother's food, hoping that Naomi would ingest it and overdose. The plan failed, though, when Naomi refused to eat the food, citing it was too bitter.

By June of 1975, Jim Olive had had enough. He told Marlene he planned to ground her throughout the summer and come fall, she would be sent to a boarding school. He no longer wanted her to see Chuck Riley and Jim issued his own warning to Chuck: stay away from Marlene or I'll kill you.

On the first day of summer, Saturday, June 21, 1975, Marlene and Naomi had their last fight in which Naomi reportedly told Marlene she was going to get locked up in juvenile hall. Marlene responded by calling Chuck and telling him to get his gun because "we've got to kill the bitch today." Chuck claimed that he didn't want to kill anyone but Marlene said that if he loved her, he would do it. When that wasn't incentive enough, according to Chuck, she said if he refused, she would no longer see him.

With that in order, she arranged to go out shopping with Jim, leaving Naomi alone in the house. Marlene left the door unlocked so that Chuck could easily gain entry to the home and murder Naomi.

Chuck took some LSD before grabbing his .22 caliber revolver and a hammer and heading over the Olive residence, where Naomi was sleeping. She was struck in the head with a claw hammer until the hammer lodged in her skull. As that failed to kill her, Chuck ran to the kitchen where he obtained a steak knife that he used to stab her repeatedly in the chest. He didn't use the gun on Naomi, he later said, because he worried the noise would alert neighbors.

Although the plan allegedly had been only to kill Naomi, Marlene and Jim returned from their shopping excursion while Chuck was still in the house. Jim saw Chuck in the process of attempting to smother Naomi, grabbed the bloody steak knife from the nightstand and rushed at his daughter's boyfriend. Chuck pulled his gun out and fired it four times, striking Jim in the chest and killing him.

Even if Jim had not been part of the murder plot, Marlene apparently did not mourn him or have no remorse over his murder. She and Chuck wrapped his body and Naomi's in rugs, placed them in Chuck's car and drove to China Camp State Park. The bodies were then dumped into a barbeque pit, doused with gasoline and set on fire. The teenagers returned to Terra Linda, where they enlisted a friend for help in cleaning up the blood. For the next four days, Marlene and Chuck lived in the house on Hibiscus Way, where, using Jim and Naomi's credit cards, checkbook, and cash, they partied, ate takeout food and went to concerts. They also bragged about the murders to friends. Reportedly, the couple's plan was to wait until Jim and Naomi were declared dead, then collect the insurance money and move to Ecuador.

Jim Olive's business partner became concerned when Jim missed multiple meetings at work and dropped by the Olive residence. No one answered the door but the man noticed the overall disarray through the windows. Believing that Jim had been the victim of a burglary or home invasion, he notified police. The police also received no response to their door knocking and left a note for the home's residents to contact them as soon as they returned home. Marlene did that, showing up at the police station with a variety of conflicting stories. First, she claimed that her parents had gone to Lake Tahoe on vacation, then said that they had been kidnapped and killed by Hell's Angels. She even suggested that one of her parents had killed the other and disappeared with the body. She also provided several different alibis for herself and Chuck over the preceding days.

Police searched the messy, disorderly residence and while they found nothing of note, they did acknowledge that, unlike the rest of the house, the master bedroom was recently cleaned and spotless.

The friend who had been employed by Chuck and Marlene to help in cleaning up after the murders of Jim and Naomi went to law enforcement to make a statement not only about the blood that was present in the bedroom but about comments made by Chuck and Marlene about killing the Olives. With this information, Marlene owned up to where her parents were and led the police to the China Camp State Park and the pit where the bodies of Jim and Naomi Olive had been set alight. Human bone fragments were found in the ash.

Chuck Riley's mug shot (photo source)

On July 10, 1975, Chuck Riley and Marlene Olive were arrested and each charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Chuck immediately confessed, saying he committed the killings because Marlene told him to, although he would later recant a portion of his confession. As Marlene was a minor, a psychiatric evaluation was ordered for her. She was considered troubled but competent to stand trial.

In September, the attorney who had represented Marlene when she had been arrested for shoplifting at the local mall successfully argued on her behalf that she should be tried in juvenile court rather than as an adult in superior court. He conceded that she and Chuck were both heavily involved in drugs, sex and fantasy but it was Chuck who carried out the murders. Following a short hearing in the Marin County Juvenile Court, sixteen-year-old Marlene was ordered to spend three years at The Ventura School, the California Youth Authority's juvenile detention facility about an hour north of Los Angeles.

Chuck, as a legal adult, wasn't so lucky. His trial began on October 30, 1975. As he had confessed to both murders (although he had since claimed that he found Naomi Olive with the hammer already embedded in her head and he had stabbed her to put her out of her misery), his defense team attempted to show that a person like Chuck would be susceptible to someone like Marlene, even going so far as to kill for her. Chuck allowed himself to be hypnotized but it didn't sway the jury. Following the seven-week trial, he was found guilty of bludgeoning Naomi Olive to death and shooting Jim Olive to death at close range. He was sentenced to death and in early 1976, was sent to San Quentin State Prison to await execution.

Marin County and Terra Linda settled back in to normal life but Marlene Olive couldn't seem to stay out of trouble.

Upon arriving at The Ventura School, Marlene tracked down the attorney that handled her adoption back in 1959 and learned the name of her biological mother. Despite what Naomi had told her for years, the woman was not a prostitute impregnated by a client but a 19-year-old teenager impregnated by a sailor on leave.

In late 1978, with only weeks to go before being paroled, Marlene escaped from a holding cell in Los Angeles and headed east to New York, where she resumed her heavy drug habit and became a high-priced prostitute. She would remain free until she was picked up in July 1979 at a brothel. Returned to California to finish her sentence, she was released in 1980 when she was 21.

In 1981, accompanied by writer Richard M. Levine, who would go on to write 1982's Bad Blood: A Family Murder in Marin County, she saw Chuck for the first time in five years when she visited him in prison. He correctly observed after the visit, "I'll never see her again."

(Photo source)

Marlene went to L.A. and changed her name numerous times - possibly due to her multiple arrests (at least seven) for forgery and drug-related charges. Her arrests led to two one-year jail sentences. In 1986, she was busted, along with others, for her involvement in a large counterfeit and forgery ring for which she was suspected of being the ringleader. Sentenced to five years, she was again convicted in 1992 for for making a false financial settlement and in 1995 for possession of a forged driver's license. In between her forgeries, credit card fraud and cashing bad checks, she was admitted to UCLA through her The Ventura School community-college equivalency degree but she soon dropped out. In 2003, she was arrested in Bakersfield, California on suspicion of being under the influence of drugs, possession of stolen property, drug paraphernalia and counterfeit checks and sentenced to seven years. Authorities remarked that they had never before seen a street level forger as skilled or prolific as Marlene Olive, who could commit forgery and fraud from documents she obtained from the trash.

Marlene served her sentence at a Kern County's women prison for the Bakersfield charges and her present whereabouts are unknown.

Drawing by Marlene McCarty (photo source)

In the 1990s, artist Marlene McCarty, inspired by Levine's book, created a series of drawings on the teenaged Marlene Olive which became a series called "Murder Girls." One of those drawings is now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Chuck in 2013 (photo source)

Chuck Riley's life was spared when the death penalty was nullified in 1978 after being ruled unconstitutional; his death sentence was commuted to one of life with the possibility of parole. Transferred from San Quentin to the Men's Correctional Facility in San Luis Obispo, Chuck slimmed down to 190 pounds and earned his GED and the equivalent of a college degree. He became eligible for parole seven years into his commuted sentence; ultimately, he would be denied more than a dozen times. In 2011, following a denial, he appealed, citing that there was no evidence that he continued to be a danger to the community, that the parole board did not consider his age, and that his sentence was unconstitutionally excessive. In May of 2014, the Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed with Chuck and ordered a new parole hearing. The subsequent parole hearing found him suitable for release. On February 6, 2015, California's then-governor Jerry Brown reversed the parole board's decision. He did acknowledge that Chuck had taken positive steps in prison, such as participating in the behavioral programs and earning his associate and bachelor degrees but felt that he continued to minimize his involvement in the crime. Chuck appealed Brown's decision and on December 3, 2015, Brown's reversal was vacated and five days later, Chuck Riley was granted parole.

Chuck Riley and Marlene Olive, by all accounts, have not seen each other since 1981.