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.Naomi now made it clear that Chuck wasn’t good enough for her daughter because his mother was a nurse’s aid and his father drove a truck.(This was ironic as the Rileys were industrious whereas Naomi had spent most of her life watching television in her bedroom.) The Olives banned the working-class youth from their home and when he tried to sneak in to spend time with Marlene, Jim Olive threatened to kill him.The teenage boy believed the threats and stayed away.Sometimes Marlene sided with her parents and finished with Chuck.On two of these occasions he tried to commit suicide by overdosing.On both occasions he slept for twenty-four hours but suffered no other harmful effects.Grounded at home, Marlene’s life became even smaller than before.Determined to have some freedom, she started playing truant from school in order to see Chuck.Often they rented a motel room and Chuck was so lovesick that he kept every motel room key as a souvenir.For the first time, sixteen-year-old Marlene had control over someone, a sense of power.She masturbated with Chuck’s hunting knife, acted out bondage and rape fantasies and even shared him sexually with another girl.Each act drove her previously-virgin boyfriend into paroxysms of desire.Chuck’s love for her intensified and he told everyone that he would do anything for Marlene.He even believed her when she said that she was a witch who had special powers.She gave him a bracelet through which she could allegedly communicate with him, and talked about casting spells.A fatal argumentBut the spells made no difference to her unendurable home life.Naomi continued to shuffle about in an alcoholic daze during the day, calling Marlene a whore whenever the teenager wore fashionable clothes.Jim’s response was still a curt ‘try harder to support your mother.’ Marlene continued to steal, was arrested again and faced spending the summer in juvenile hall.Worse, her father said he was going to send her away to boarding school and that she’d never see Chuck again.The tension escalated and her father began to shove and slap her, whilst Marlene alternately wept and shoved him back.When she became so desperate that she spoke to a counsellor, Jim Olive berated her for washing their dirty linen in public.He dressed neatly for work and went to church every Sunday, determined to give the impression of an orderly life.On the final day of Naomi Olive’s life – Saturday 21st June 1975 – she argued again with Marlene, calling her adoptive daughter a tramp and telling her that her biological mother was a slut, that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.Moments later, the familiar insults still ringing in her ears, Marlene phoned Chuck and told him that it was time to shoot Naomi dead.Chuck went off to collect his Ruger which he’d lent to a friend.Meanwhile Marlene fetched a hammer and stood over her sleeping father, but she couldn’t bring herself to kill him.Instead, she waited until he woke up then agreed to accompany him on a supermarket shopping trip.She left the door unlocked, knowing that Chuck would sneak in to kill her sleeping mother.Leastways, that’s the statement he originally gave to the police…What’s certain is that someone battered a hammer into the woman’s skull, blood spurting everywhere.The hammer cut so deeply into the bone that it was hard to get it out.Naomi was still alive so her attacker stabbed a steak knife into her chest, but the badly injured woman continued to gasp for breath so her killer picked up the pillow and began to smother her.Meanwhile Marlene’s father returned to the house and found his dead or dying wife in the bedroom and Chuck trying to hide behind the furniture.He lunged at Chuck – and Chuck raised his pistol and fired four times at the man in what he later claimed was self-defence.Chuck then apologised to Jim Olive’s corpse and attempted to shoot himself but Marlene knocked the gun from his hand.Afterwards, the nineteen-year-old was in shock – Naomi’s death rattle was still audible – but sixteen-year-old Marlene reassured him and gave him beer and Valium.They made love then took her parents’ jewellery and credit cards.Both teenagers scrubbed the blood from the walls, Chuck still feeling shaken but Marlene triumphant.For the first time in her life, she was free.The lovers went shopping, briefly visiting Chuck’s brother at the shop where he worked as an assistant.Chuck was incredibly pale and Marlene didn’t say a word.After a Chinese meal and a trip to the cinema they returned to the death house, put Naomi and Jim’s corpses in the family car and drove to the nearby China Camp State Park.The couple then set the bodies alight in a barbeque pit, returning hours later to restart the fire until there were only ashes and small pieces of leg bone remaining.Ironically, the double homicide would become known as The Barbeque Murders, reduced to a sense of place.The location would eventually be listed jokily in tourism articles, the moniker giving no clue to the murders’ desperately sad cause and effect.For the next week Marlene and Chuck led a schizophrenic life.She frequently phoned home and half-expected her father to answer.When business colleagues called for him, she dutifully wrote down their messages.But on one occasion she left the house at a run, convinced that she was in the presence of her mother’s ‘ghost’.Chuck also managed to blank out the horrors of the double murder, taking a job in a waterbed factory.His employers were incredibly impressed by his dedication which went beyond his allocated assembly-worker tasks and extended into impromptu customer sales
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