1970 mass murderer John Linley Frazier commits suicide in prison cell.
When I was a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News in the early 1970s the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains were known as the murder capital of the world.
One of the killers roaming those hills that I did regular stories on was John Linley Frazier. In October 1970 the Soquel area of the Santa Cruz hills, ophthalmologist Victor Ohta, his wife, two sons and Ohta’s secretary were killed and thrown in the family swimming pool.
A note left at the scene said the murders were intended to start a war against materialism.
Frazier was caught, tried, found guilty and sentenced to die. That sentence was lifted in 1974 when the United States Supreme Court struck down California's capital punishment law.
Thirty-five years later carried out the sentence himself.
Alone in his small cell at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, some 40 miles southeast of Sacramento, Frazier killed himself. A coroner ruled death was by asphyxiation. No details were offered. Frazier was found last Thursday but it was just announced today. He was 62.
Frazier had been transferred recently out of an intensive mental health program into the general prison population. He also has a physical disability, according to Jane Kahn, an attorney who monitors inmate suicides and prevention.
California authorities also announced Monday the death of Bobby August Davis, 67, who allegedly hanged himself in his cell at Kern Valley State Prison. Davis was serving four consecutive life sentences for the April 1970 murders of four California Highway Patrol officers.
Kahn said both prisoners had been receiving mental health treatment.
A federal judicial panel this month ordered California to reduce its prison population by 40,000 to improve treatment of inmates who are sick or mentally ill.
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