The judge presiding over accused quadruple murderer Fraser Bohm’s case vowed Thursday to throw out spectators from his courtroom after learning of ugly clashes between the families and supporters of the victims and the suspect.
‘It’s not ok to be acting in a way that belongs in a junior high school yard – I want it to stop,’ LA Superior Court Judge Thomas Rubinson said at the hearing in Van Nuys, near Los Angeles, adding that he had ‘become aware of ‘inappropriate’ clashes between the two factions, involving ‘threats, four-letter words…and intimidation.’
Judge Rubinson said the nasty exchanges had happened in court hallways, elevators, and on the way to parking garages.
Bohm, 24, is accused of killing four Pepperdine University sorority sisters when his car slammed into them on Malibu’s Pacific Coast Highway in October 2023. His supporters have consistently filled one side of the courtroom, with family and friends of the women packing the other side.
Threatening to ban troublemakers from his courtroom, Judge Rubinson added: ‘There must be a degree of decorum. If you are involved in doing this, cut it out. I’m not going to tolerate it.’
Bohm – who was 22 at the time of the accident – wore a light gray check suit, and blue shirt and tie at Thursday’s hearing.
He arrived in court with his divorced parents, father Christopher and mother Brooke, 57, who reportedly bought the BMW car involved in the crash as a present for her son’s 18th birthday.
He is pleading not guilty to four charges of second-degree murder and four of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence in the accident that killed Pepperdine students Niamh Rolston, 20, Asha Weir, 21, Peyton Stewart, 21, and Deslyn Williams, 21.
The four young women died when he lost control of the BMW and collided with stationary vehicles in the parking lane on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, next to where the girls were walking.
The speed limit there is 45mph, and prosecutors charged Bohm with quadruple murder after retrieving the ‘black box’ from his car, which showed that he accelerated from 93mph to 104mph just two and a half seconds before the crash.
At Thursday’s hearing, Judge Rubinson granted a motion from Bohm’s attorneys to ban prosecutors from using as evidence at trial three statistical studies, all of which conclude that the chances of a pedestrian surviving a 100mph collision are virtually zero.
The defense objected to the studies, calling their statistics ‘irrelevant, confusing, and too complicated ‘ to be presented to the jury at Bohm’s trial.
Judge Rubinson agreed, telling the court: ‘I’m not going to permit these statistics. There is evidence of some relevance but the risk of confusing the jury is very high.’
Last month the judge threw out Bohm’s attempt to keep the jury at his trial from hearing the suspect’s answers to police questions about how fast he was driving, whether he’d taken alcohol or drugs, or if he was texting or talking on his phone just before the deadly smashup.
Defense attorney Jacqueline Sparagna had argued that Bohm was detained for several hours at the scene, that deputies who questioned him were ‘confrontational and accusatory’ and that he was told he would be arrested if he didn’t cooperate.
Sparagna said the deputies’ questioning of Bohm, who was not read his Miranda rights till some six hours after the accident, was ‘custodial interrogation,’ that her client was treated as a ‘suspect’ and the questions he was asked were ‘intended to elicit an incriminating response.’
In denying the defense motions, Judge Rubinson referred to the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ of the horrific accident and deputies called to the scene were ‘entitled’ to ask Bohm how fast he was driving and other questions.
‘He was detained – but he was not in custody for purposes of Miranda,’ he said.
‘He was not arrested. He was never handcuffed at the scene.’
While he conceded that Bohm may have later been diagnosed as having a concussion, the judge rejected defense arguments that he was concussed when answering police questions immediately after the crash.
‘He was able to understand what was being asked,’ he said. ‘He knew where he was. He knew where he came from and where he was going.’
Bohm’s jury trial was originally scheduled to start in September.
But Judge Rubinson postponed it till December 1 after lead defense attorney, Alan Jackson, argued that he needed more time to counter prosecutors’ shocking ‘new theory’ that Bohm had a ‘giant canister of nitrous oxide’ – better known as laughing gas – in his lap just before the crash.
Jackson complained that the LA DA’s announcement ‘on the eve of trial’ that the 10-12 pound canister of laughing gas, with nozzle, found inside the BMW would be central to the prosecution’s case, ‘implied’ that Bohm was inhaling the gas at the time of the crash.
But, Deputy District Attorney Nathan Bartos assured the court that he did not intend to argue that Bohm actually inhaled the laughing gas – which can produce a short, euphoric high when inhaled – only that he ‘possessed’ the canister ‘and that possession distracted his driving.’
The grieving parents of the four victims are all pursuing wrongful death civil lawsuits against Bohm and are also suing the State of California, LA County, the City of Malibu and the California Coastal Commission, claiming dangerous road design on PCH and lack of safety standards.
All four victims had been seniors at Pepperdine’s Seaver College of Liberal Arts, where they were members of the Alpha Phi Sorority.
They were due to graduate with the class of 2024 and later were awarded their Pepperdine degrees posthumously.
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