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Hello and welcome back to Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader Spencer Henry and I'm here to tell you something.

If you're new here, Cult Leader is a podcast about cults and crime and macabre history.

You can see photos from today's episode on the Cult Leader Instagram at Cult Leader Podcast.

We've had a busy few weeks, you guys. We have little leaders going again, which I'm stoked on on Fridays. We had a connection to the vampire of Sacramento, a text Watson run in and some more MLM stuff.

If you have a story you want to send in, send it on over to Spencer at Cult Leader dot com patrons. We have a new obituary going up this Thursday.

You can find that at patreon.com slash Cult Leader. And tomorrow I'm dropping an episode of another show that's on the network with me. I'm not on the episode, but just if you see it, you want to know what it is.

Check it out. Merch updates. I've been getting a lot of questions about merch lately. We are working on more merch. Patrons don't worry. You'll be able to apply your discount soon.

That's all in the process. The inner workings right now. Over the weekend though, I asked you guys about new pins and got some pretty good ideas. So I'm going to order those soon.

In the meantime, I do have some cult babe and the OG cult leader pins that I found when I was like setting up my office. So I'll put those up on the shop in the next few days before I get the new ones.

But that specific batch will only be available for the US. Don't yell at me. Don't ask questions. Alright, let's just focus on the future. Okay. I want to get right into it today. This story is wild.

I'm very surprised that I haven't heard of it because one it takes place in northern California in Bay Area and Santa Cruz. And it's a very cult leader vibes.

It was fall of 1970 in Santa Cruz, California. October 19th. Just after 8 p.m. fire fighters arrived to 999 North rodeo Gulch Road where a fire had broken out at a local residence.

This house was beautiful. Truly my dream house. A mid-century abode built in 1965 that boasted six bedrooms, three bathrooms, killer architecture, great view of the local wooded hills of Soquel, and affluent town in Santa Cruz.

The fire at the home was manageable. The flames were relatively easy to put out. Firefighters weren't too concerned, but then they ran into an issue because nobody seemed to be home and there was two cars forming a blockade at the end of the driveway. So fire fighters were unable to pull close enough to the house. They try and get closer to the house to kind of see what they can do about it.

One of them catches a glimpse of a pool in the backyard and they're like, okay let's just siphon water from the pool. They make the way to the backyard and then a grisly discovery when one of them slips on what appears to be blood. As they make the way to their pool, it's awful.

Five bodies floating. Each of them had been shot. colorful scarves tied around their wrist and heads showed that they were bound and blindfolded before being shot presumably execution style.

It seems like a very mob type killing and then before they knew it this home fire call set off a murder investigation. Who could have done this and more importantly why?

The bodies belonged to the homeowner, 45 year old Victor Oda, his wife Virginia, 43, his secretary, 38 year old Dorothy Caldwala, and the Oda's two sons, 12 year old Derek and 11 year old Taggart.

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Doug James said his men had no clues, no weapons, nothing. Upon inspection of the interior of the home which had been largely unscathed by the little fires that had been set inside, they found some interesting to say the least clues.

Purses, wallets, jewelry, all untouched. This wasn't a robbery, it wasn't a break-in and it didn't seem random. They find an empty box of 22 caliber shells. A gun is clearly missing from the home. The silk scarves that were wrapped around these now deceased family members had been taken from Victor's drawer.

Apparently he opted to wear those around his neck instead of a traditional necktie to work. He was a successful optometrist, very successful. With a good image he was involved in local charities, very philanthropic, overall just a good guy, they were a good family.

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