By FRED SHUSTER
A judge rejected a defense motion on Monday, Nov. 10, to dismiss murder charges against a 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.
A new team of attorneys representing Fraser Michael Bohm unsuccessfully argued to Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Thomas Rubinson that there was insufficient evidence presented to support the murder charges at a hearing in April in which another judge allowed the case to proceed to trial.
Bohm — 22 at the time of the crash and now 24 — is charged with four counts each of murder and vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence for 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.
During Monday’s hearing in a Van Nuys courtroom packed with family members of the students and the defendant, defense attorney Alan Jackson argued that the case amounted to “a tragic collision — but a collision does not equal murder.”
The murder counts should be dismissed, he argued, indicating that vehicular manslaughter charges were more appropriate in a case that involved no drugs or alcohol.
“He didn’t know how fast he was going,” Jackson said.
However, Judge Rubinson responded that he was driving a car at 95 mph: “You know you’re not driving 40. You’re driving extremely fast — you know that.”
At the hearing in April, Deputy District Attorney Nathan Bartos told Judge Diego Edber that Bohm “lost control of his vehicle” as the women walked along the shoulder after getting out of a vehicle in the 45-mph zone.
Jackson and two other lawyers wrote in a court filing seeking dismissal of the murder charges that the prosecution has “chosen to take the facts of a tragic car accident and charge them as murder.”
Bohm’s lawyers added 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 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.
Bartos countered: “The defendant clearly drove in a reckless and dangerous manner. … The defendant drove 59 miles per hour over the speed limit on what is essentially a residential street. 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.”
Bohm has been free on bail that was posted shortly after the case was filed against him eight days after the crash.
Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said Bohm swerved onto the north shoulder of westbound PCH and slammed into three parked vehicles that struck the four Pepperdine students.
That section of PCH — a short stretch between Las Flores Canyon and Carbon Canyon roads — is known as “Dead Man’s Curve.” The tragedy prompted several lawsuits, along with numerous calls to remedy the dangers and minimize speeds along that section of PCH.
The next hearing in the case was set for Jan. 14.