Murder Most Vile Volume 12: 18 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Murder Books)

by Robert Keller

  Chuck had to think fast and in his brain-addled condition, he decided that his best bet was to confront Jim Olive as he entered the house. He rushed downstairs and hid behind a couch, drawing his pistol as he did. But Jim spotted the bulky assassin as soon as he entered the room and demanded that he show himself. Chuck then stood up, his face and clothes spattered with blood and brain matter.

  “What have you done?” Jim demanded, then perhaps realizing the answer to his own question, “I’ll kill you!” He lunged for Chuck and Chucked raised the pistol and fired four times, killing Jim Olive on the spot.

  Chuck and Marlene spent the rest of the day cleaning up the crime scene. Then, after nightfall, they loaded the bodies into the family station wagon and drove to China Camp State Park, where they incinerated them in a barbecue pit. The following morning, someone called out the fire service and a lone fireman was dispatched to extinguish the remaining embers. The firefighter noticed bones among the ashes but took them to be from a deer.

  Over the following week, the teenaged killers lived together in the death house. They were hardly discreet about their actions, going on a spending spree with Jim Olive’s credit cards, inviting friends around to do drugs, and attending a rock concert by the band, Yes. During that concert, Marlene suddenly started chanting: “I killed my parents! I killed my parents!” over and over again, getting progressively louder and louder. But hardly anyone could hear her over the sounds of the P.A., and those who did took her admission as a joke.

  The disappearance of the Olives, however, could not remain a secret forever. After trying for several days to contact Jim, his business partner eventually reported him missing to the police. A patrol car was dispatched to make inquiries. Dissatisfied with the answers provided by Marlene, the officers asked her to accompany them to the station.

  Marlene told several different stories under interrogation. First, she said that her parents had gone to Lake Tahoe for a break. Then, she said that Jim had killed Naomi and fled. Then it was Naomi who was the killer. Finally, she admitted to the murders, implicating Chuck. He was arrested that same day and quickly cracked under interrogation, admitting to the murders but insisting that Marlene had cast a spell on him and made him do it.

  Both Chuck and Marlene were charged with the so-called “Barbecue Murders,” but as a juvenile, she was never going to do hard time. The sentence when it came was a mere two years in juvenile hall. Chuck, meanwhile, had been tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. That sentence was later commuted to life in prison. Chuck, now in his fifties, remains incarcerated to this day.

  As for Marlene, she served part of her sentence at the Ventura School before being released to live under supervised care. While on parole, she fled to New York City where she worked for a time as a prostitute before being arrested and sent back to California to finish her sentence. She was released in 1980, at the age of 21.

  Since then, she has been in and out of trouble with the law, serving several prison terms for forgery and drug-related charges. She and Chuck only saw each other once more, when she visited him in prison in 1981.

  Sins of the Father

  Marcus Wesson was the very image of a biblical prophet. A huge man, standing over six-feet-tall and weighing in at more than 400 pounds, he had a deeply lined ebony face, a flowing beard, and a mass of filthy gray dreadlocks piled on his head. And the biblical analogy did not end there. Wesson in fact, believed that he was the Messiah, and had established himself as the patriarch of a familial sect. His followers were his daughters and nieces, and the many children he’d fathered through incestuous relations with them. The world, he warned, was evil and might one day seek to separate them. If that ever happened, they should be prepared to die.

  Marcus Delon Wesson was born on August 22, 1946, and raised in Washington State. His childhood appears to have been relatively normal. His family was god-fearing and Marcus was an intelligent boy who did well in school and later served in the US Army as a medical orderly. After a tour of duty in Europe in the late 1960’s, he returned to the States. Shortly after, he set up home in San Jose, California, with a Hispanic woman named Rosemary Maytorena, who was several years his senior. By then, he’d already developed some bizarre religious ideas and a penchant for flowery language. He’d also acquired a taste for young girls. After fathering a son by Rosemary, he turned his attention to her daughter, Elizabeth, eventually marrying her in 1974. Elizabeth was just 15 years old at the time.

  Over the next 16 years, Marcus would sire ten children by Elizabeth. He was, by all accounts, a devoted father. So much so that when Elizabeth’s sister, Rosemary Solorio, had a problem with her own children, it was Marcus that she turned to. The children had suffered sexual molestation at the hands of relatives. When, in 1986, Rosemary asked the Wessons to take them in, Marcus immediately agreed. The seven Solorio siblings were added to the Wesson household. Marcus Wesson’s family now numbered twenty individuals.

  But the situation that Rosemary Solorio had delivered her children into was far from ideal. Wesson had long since decided that the life of a working stiff was not for him. He derived most of his income from welfare and, as a result, his family hovered perpetually between the poverty line and outright starvation. He could often be seen rummaging through dumpsters at fast food restaurants, scavenging half-eaten burgers and discarded fries to carry home to his family.

  Living arrangements were similarly chaotic. The family was constantly on the move, taking shelter wherever they could find it. For a time, they lived on a 26-foot boat moored in Santa Cruz harbor. It is not known how Wesson came into possession of this vessel, but it ended up getting him into trouble. He served a short jail term for benefits fraud in 1990, after failing to declare the boat as an asset on his welfare forms.

  After his release from prison, Wesson moved his clan to a remote location in the Santa Cruz mountains. There, they lived in a trailer and a large army tent, with neither electricity nor running water. After that, they took to the sea again, occupying a dilapidated tugboat off the coastline of Marin County. They also lived for a time in a broken down school bus before moving eventually to a small house in Fresno, California.

  None of the Wesson children attended school. Instead, Marcus taught them at home, following an eccentric curriculum that included his own brand of Christianity, a weird blend of Seventh Day Adventism, polygamy and vampire legend. One teaching was consistent though. According to Wesson, he was the resurrected Christ and was to be obeyed at all times. The authorities, including the police, were disciples of Satan.

  In 1993, Wesson found the perfect way to demonstrate the truth of his doctrine. During the FBI siege of the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, he and his children remained glued to their television set. “This is how the world is attacking God’s people,” he told them. “This man (David Koresh) is just like me. He is making children for the Lord. That’s what we should be doing, making children for the Lord.”

  And Wesson meant that quite literally. He had begun sexually molesting his daughters and nieces shortly after his release from prison in 1990, telling them that they were “doing the Lord’s work,” by submitting to him. Ruby Ortiz, one of the nieces sent to live with him by Rosemary Solorio, would later describe how he began having sex with her when she was only eight years old. Yet Wesson was so convincing in his warped teachings that the child willingly submitted. At the age of 13, Ruby enthusiastically agreed to “marry” Wesson, the ceremony consisting of putting their hands on the Bible and reciting marriage vows. “I loved him,” she later explained at Wesson’s trial.

  Wesson “married” three of his nieces and two of his daughters in this way and fathered children by all of them. His wife, Elizabeth, apparently had no problem with these incestuous unions. In fact, when another niece, Ruby Solorio, ran away from home, it was Elizabeth who persuaded her to return.

  In 2003, Wesson moved his family to a small residence in Roeding Park, a suburb of Fresno, California. By now, several of th
e Wesson children were old enough to work and Marcus sent them out to raise money for the family. Some took the opportunity to break free of their father’s influence. The boys were actually encouraged to do so, but Wesson was less inclined to release his hold on his harem. It was around this time that he began telling his family that the authorities might try to break them up and that they should be prepared to die rather than allow that to happen. Niece, Rosa Solorio, and daughter, Sebhrenah Wesson, were appointed as enforcers. They were told to be “strong soldiers,” who should hunt down and kill family members who betrayed Wesson.

  For now, however, Wesson still ruled his clan with an iron fist. He dictated what they could wear and who they could talk to. Transgressions were severely dealt with, often by beating with a stick or baseball bat. The family kept mainly to themselves. When they did leave their squalid home, it was always with Wesson in the lead, the women and children trailing silently in his wake, dressed in identical dark robes, their eyes downcast. “They were like zombies,” neighbors later reported, “Completely under his control.”

  But that absolute control was about to be challenged. Throughout late 2003 and the early months of 2004, Wesson had become increasingly paranoid as more and more of his followers drifted away. All of the boys had left by now and so too had most of the adult women. Only daughters Sebhrenah Wesson and Elizabeth Breani Wesson remained, along with several young children.

  On March 12, 2004, two of Wesson’s nieces, Ruby Ortiz and Sofina Solorio, showed up at the house and demanded that Wesson allow their infant daughters to leave. When Wesson refused, the women left, only to return a short while later with two police officers. The officers ordered Wesson to come outside to talk but he refused. Ruby Ortiz then encouraged them to go inside and bring him out. The policemen, however, did not have a warrant and were therefore prevented from entering the house.

  The standoff might have ended right there had Rosa Solorio not come out of the building to inform the officers that Wesson had a gun. One of the officers then called in a SWAT team.

  But the tense hostage drama that everyone was anticipating did not materialize. The SWATs had just taken up positions around the residence when the front door swung open and Wesson stepped out, his hands riding high above his head. He was wearing a white t-shirt and the police officers immediately noticed spatters of blood.

  Wesson was ordered onto his knees and then quickly cuffed and marched to a nearby police cruiser. In the meantime, a team of police officers entered the house, to a scene of utter carnage. The bodies were in a back room, stacked one on top of the other like a pile of cordwood. Two of Wesson’s daughters, Sebhrenah Wesson, 25, and Elizabeth Breani Wesson, 17, were among the dead. The other seven victims were Wesson’s incestuously fathered children, the oldest 8-year-old Ilabelle, the youngest Jeva, aged just 18 months. All of the victims had died of a single bullet wound to the head, fired into the eye socket. The policemen outside had heard not a single shot. It was the worst mass-killing in Fresno’s 130-year history.

  Marcus Delon Wesson went on trial for murder in June 2005. He pleaded not guilty, with his defense contending that his daughter, Sebhrenah, had done the shooting and had then turned the gun on herself. Since the police found no gunpowder residue on Wesson himself, it is quite possible that this version of events was true. However, it was never likely to succeed as a defense strategy. As the prosecutor was quick to point out, there was plenty of evidence that Wesson had encouraged Sebhrenah to kill rather than allow the family to be broken up. That made him culpable, whether he had pulled the trigger or not.

  Marcus Wesson was sentenced to death on June 27, 2005. He currently awaits execution.

  Carnage in Bibb County

  Captain Richard Woolfolk was a respected and well-liked man in Bibb County, Georgia. He was a hero of the Confederacy for one thing, and a man with a strong sense of civic duty. The captain operated a cotton plantation some seven miles west of Macon and to the south of the Thomaston Road. He was once widowed and now shared his home with his second wife, Mattie, and their six children. Mattie’s aunt, Tempe West, age 84, also lived at the farm. So too did Thomas Woolfolk, the captain’s 27-year-old son from his first marriage.

  Unlike his father, Tom was neither liked nor respected. As a matter of fact, those who knew him said that Tom Woolfolk was mentally disturbed, eccentric, a cranky sort of fellow. He was certainly quarrelsome and most people gave him a wide berth. He’d once been married, but his bride had deserted him after just three weeks, citing cruel mistreatment. Now Tom, having failed at running his own farm, lived under his father’s roof and maintained a tense truce with his stepmother. He didn’t like her he’d tell anyone who would listen. She and her brats were determined to cheat him out of his inheritance.

  At around two o'clock, on the morning of August 6, 1887, neighbors were awakened by the furious barking of the hounds on the Woolfolk plantation. The closest of those neighbors, a black sharecropper named Green Lockett, actually got up from his bed and went out onto his porch trying to determine the cause of the ruckus. There was a full moon out that night and he quickly made out the shape of a man sprinting down the road towards him. “Get a gun!” Tom Woolfolk shouted. “They’re killing Pa!”

  Lockett, fearful, refused to accompany Woolfolk back to the farm, but he did send his son to alert other families in the area. Soon white landowners and black sharecroppers alike were descending on the Lockett cabin. There Woolfolk related his story. Someone had entered their farmhouse during the night and murdered his entire family. He’d only escaped the killer by jumping from a first-floor window.

  A sizable band of armed men now made their way back to the Woolfolk farmhouse, Tom in the lead. But the sight of the darkened homestead, standing eerily silent in the moonlight, sapped the posse of its collective courage. Not a single man would accompany Tom inside, where for all they knew a homicidal maniac still lurked. Woolfolk, unarmed and dressed only in his Long Johns, entered the building alone. He emerged some twenty minutes later, to confirm that everyone inside was dead and that the killer appeared to have absconded.

  It was daybreak before any of the other men plucked up the courage to step inside the farmhouse. When they did, they saw that Tom had not been exaggerating. The interior of the residence had the appearance of a slaughterhouse, with blood and brain matter spattered over walls and on ceilings, pooled in congealing puddles on the floor and smeared on the linen and furnishings. The members of the Woolfolk clan had each suffered horrendous damage, caused by both the sharp and flat ends of an ax. Captain Richard F. Woolfolk, 54, his wife Mattie, 41, and their children, Richard Jr., Pearl, Annie, Rosebud, Charlie, and Matilda, aged between 20 years and 18 months, were all dead. So too was the 84-year-old Tempe West. All had died in their bedrooms, except 10-year-old Annie, who had apparently been trying to climb through a window when the killer axed her to death. Connecting each of the murder scenes was a set of bloody footprints made by stockinged feet.

  News of the tragedy spread rapidly through the community and by midmorning, hundreds of people had descended on the Woolfolk farmhouse. Tom Woolfolk, who had by now pulled on some clothes over his underwear, walked among them, repeating his story to anyone who asked and receiving messages of condolence. At times like these, old grievances were quickly forgotten. Later that afternoon, a coroner’s jury was convened, the proceeding taking place right there in the Woolfolk’s yard. It was then that the first doubts began to emerge regarding Tom Woolfolk’s story.

  First, a deputy found a bloodstained shirt balled up under Tom’s bed. Then Woolfolk was asked to hand over his Long Johns for examination. While he was removing them, the Sherriff noticed a bloody handprint on his thigh, for which Woolfolk could offer no explanation. Then there were the ubiquitous bloody footprints, which exactly matched Woolfolk’s in size.

  Its suspicions thus roused, the jury ruled that Sheriff Westcott should take Tom to Macon for further questioning. The Sherriff decided to leave immediately by a b
ack door and it was a wise move. Outside, news of the jury’s decision had begun to ripple through the crowd. Talk of a lynching quickly took hold. Upon hearing that Woolfolk had already been taken away, a group of men set off after the Sherriff’s party. Woolfolk arrived in Macon just ahead of an angry lynch mob.

  Woolfolk of course denied any involvement in the murders, but the inquisitors were struck by his apparent lack of grief (understandable perhaps, since he made no secret of his disdain for his family). Still, the evidence was considered substantial enough to charge him with the murders. No other suspect had been suggested and Captain Woolfolk had no known enemies. Robbery had been ruled out as a motive since nothing had been taken from the house. Thomas, meanwhile, had every reason to murder his family. He wanted to inherit his father’s farm and had spoken often of his belief that his stepmother and step-siblings were trying to cheat him out of his birthright.