The California Supreme Court this week has refused to review a defense petition seeking the dismissal of murder charges against a young man prosecutors say was speeding when he crashed into three parked vehicles on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu in 2023 — killing four Pepperdine University sorority sisters.
The denial Wednesday by the state’s highest court follows a Dec. 4 decision by a panel from the 2nd District Court of Appeal, which denied the petition and cited “failure to demonstrate entitlement to extraordinary relief” in Fraser Michael Bohm’s case.
Bohm — who was 22 at the time of the crash and is now 24 — is charged with four counts each of murder and vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence in the Oct. 17, 2023, nighttime crash that killed Niamh Rolston, 20; Peyton Stewart, 21; Asha Weir, 21; and Deslyn Williams, 21.
All four women were seniors at Pepperdine’s Seaver College of Liberal Arts and members of the Alpha Phi sorority. They were set to graduate with the university’s class of 2024, and subsequently received their degrees posthumously.
Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said Bohm swerved onto the north shoulder of westbound PCH and slammed into three vehicles parked alongside on the roadway. Those parked vehicles struck the four Pepperdine students, leaving them dead at the scene, according to the sheriff’s department.
At a hearing last April, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Diego Edber found sufficient evidence to allow the case against Bohm to proceed to trial.
The case was subsequently assigned to Judge Thomas Rubinson, with a new team of attorneys, including high-profile lawyer Alan Jackson, again challenging the murder charges against Bohm.
Jackson — along with fellow attorneys Kelly Quinn and Jacqueline Sparagna — wrote in one of their court filings, “… The People simply hope that this court is so blinded by the tragic nature of this accident that it forgets the People need to prove legal standards. This absence alone should be fatal to the People’s case,” the defense attorneys wrote.
Bohm’s lawyers contended that the prosecution’s argument for murder relied on the allegation that Bohm was speeding, noting that Bohm’s prior attorney had argued that the young man was being “chased in a road-rage incident” before the deadly crash and that the evidence about the rate of speed was not reliable.
Deputy District Attorney Nathan Bartos objected to the effort to dismiss the murder charges, writing in his opposition last year that “the defendant clearly drove in a reckless and dangerous manner.”
“Here, the defendant drove 59 miles per hour over the speed limit on what is essentially a residential street,” the prosecutor wrote. “There is no excuse which can justify the danger he posed at those speeds, certainly not trying to flee possible road rage, a contention for which there was no evidence, nor did the defendant ever mention it to deputies.”
During last November’s hearing, Jackson told the judge, “He didn’t know how fast he was going.”
The judge — who denied the defense’s motion to dismiss the murder charges — responded, “How could someone driving a car at 95 mph (not know they were driving at a high rate of speed)? You know you’re not driving 40. You’re driving extremely fast — you know that.”
At the hearing last April, Deputy District Attorney Nathan Bartos said that Bohm “lost control of his vehicle” as the women walked along the shoulder area after getting out of a vehicle in the 45 mph zone.
Bohm was initially arrested, then freed from jail and then re-arrested. He has been free on bail that was posted shortly after the case was filed against him eight days after the crash.
The section of PCH where the crash occurred — a short stretch between Las Flores Canyon and Carbon Canyon roads — is known as “Dead Man’s Curve” and reportedly has seen the highest number of auto accidents on the overall 21-mile coastal road.
The tragedy prompted several lawsuits, along with numerous calls to remedy the dangers and minimize speeds along that section of PCH. No safeguards were in place for pedestrians at the crash scene, even though the city has known about the dangers for decades, lawyers for the students’ parents said after the crash.
Bohm is due back in a Van Nuys courtroom for a pretrial hearing Feb. 10.