A Voice in the Dark: The Ohta Family Murders

True Crime Campfire

True Crime, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You’re supposed to be safe at home. Why wouldn’t you be? And that sense of comfort must be even greater if “home” is a beautiful house you built yourself, where you live happily with your family in a town where you’re successful and respected. You’d have no reason at all to think that someone was watching you with binoculars through the trees, their heart burning ever hotter with rage, ever closer to exploding with murderous fury. Join us for a story of madness and grandiose delusion, a case that rocked 1970s California almost as much as the Manson Family murders did.

Sources:
Court records: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/3d/5/287.html
New York Times archives: https://www.nytimes.com/1971/12/16/archives/killer-of-eye-doctor-and-four-on-coast-is-sentenced-to-die.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/30/archives/mechanic-on-coast-guilty-of-killing-5-in-oneman-war.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1970/10/21/archives/5-slain-on-coast-and-left-in-pool-surgeon-wife-2-children-and.html
New York Daily News: https://www.nydailynews.com/2009/03/22/crazed-hippy-killer-caused-horror-with-1970-murder-of-california-doctor/
SFGate: https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Santa-Cruz-mass-murderer-kills-self-in-prison-3221281.php
Crime Library: https://www.crimelibrary.org/notorious_murders/mass/john_frazier/index.html
Investigation Discovery's "A Crime To Remember," episode "Killer Prophet"

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire.
0:20.0	You're supposed to be safe at home. Why wouldn't you be? And that sense of comfort must be even greater if home is a beautiful house you built yourself where you live happily with your family in a town where you're successful and respected. You'd have no reason at all to think that someone was watching you with
0:38.5	binoculars through the trees, their heart burning ever hotter with rage, ever closer to
0:44.0	exploding with murderous fury. This is a voice in the dark, the Oda family murders.
1:06.3	So, campers, for this one, we're a little ways outside Santa Cruz, California, just after 8 p.m. on October 19, 1970.
1:10.0	A couple of police officers out on patrol noticed smoke billowing up
1:13.8	from the Soquil Hills in an area where some of the richest people in the county lived.
1:18.7	They called the fire department, who rushed to 99 Rodeo Gulch Road. As soon as they got there,
1:24.7	the firemen started thinking something was seriously wrong.
1:33.5	Both the front and rear driveways to the mansion were blocked by cars parked straight across them,
1:36.7	a Rolls-Royce and a Lincoln Continental, both locked.
1:42.1	It looked very much like someone had deliberately tried to prevent them from putting out the fire,
1:44.1	which they could see had reached the mansion's roof. The firemen smashed the Lincoln's window so they could release the brake and shove the car
1:49.6	out of the way, then hurried, sirens blaring, up the hill to the house and got to work. It was
1:55.7	immediately apparent that the fire had multiple different origin points, which almost always means one thing.
2:02.2	Arson.
2:03.6	The fire chief, Ted Pound, knew his business.
2:06.8	He knew that this house had had a fire hydrant installed close to the swimming pool for just this eventuality,
2:12.3	so fire crews could pump water out of the pool.
2:15.2	It was dark by now, so Ted got out his flashlight and walked around
2:18.9	the pool, trying to find the hydrant. The residents had apparently tried to disguise it with some
2:24.2	shrubbery, which is understandable on a purely aesthetic level, but not great when there's an actual
	...

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