Barbecue murders
U.S. murders
The barbecue murders, also known as the BBQ murders, refers to a 1975 double murder in Marin County, California, United States. Business consultant James "Jim" Olive and his wife Naomi were murdered in their home by their 16-year-old adopted daughter Marlene and her 20-year-old boyfriend Charles "Chuck" Riley, who then attempted to dispose of the bodies by burning them in a barbecue pit at a nearby campground. Riley was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and received a sentence of death, which was later changed to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Marlene, tried as a juvenile, received a sentence of three to six years in a California Youth Authority juvenile facility, from which she was released at age 21 having served just over four years.
The case gained worldwide attention due to the perpetrators' ages, the details of the crime, and the wide disparity in sentencing between the two perpetrators. Riley and Olive have also been the subjects of continuing coverage in connection with his repeated bids for parole and her subsequent convictions for numerous other crimes.
Background
Olive family background
Marlene Louise Olive was born in Norfolk, Virginia on January 15, 1959 to an unwed teenager. She was adopted as a newborn by a middle-aged childless couple James "Jim" and Naomi Olive and spent her childhood up to her early teens in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where Jim Olive worked as a marketing executive for Tenneco and Gulf Oil. She was very close to her adoptive father but had a troubled relationship with her adoptive mother, who reportedly had alcoholism and a mental illness commonly thought to be schizophrenia.
When Marlene was 14, her father lost his job and moved the family back to the United States, settling in Marin County, California in the Terra Linda community of the city of San Rafael.
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