By FRED SHUSTER
A judge declined on Monday, July 27 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.
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The case against Fraser Michael Bohm was set for trial on Sept. 8.
Attorneys for Bohm argued Monday that the implied malice murder allegations in the four murder counts are unsupported because prosecutors failed to present sufficient evidence at the preliminary hearing.
Implied malice requires proof that the defendant committed an act —in this case purportedly driving at an excessive speed — whose consequences carried a high probability of death and that the defendant knew the risk and disregarded it.
“Data shows fatal collisions are rare” over a 10-year period on PCH between Carbon Canyon and Las Flores Canyon roads, the location of the fatal crash, defense attorney Alan Jackson told the court.
At the conclusion of a nearly 90-minute hearing, Judge Thomas Rubinson denied the motion to dismiss the murder charges, after telling attorneys the first thing that had to be decided was whether data favorable to Bohm was in fact kept from the defense team prior to the preliminary hearing.
Rubinson determined that the state had provided sufficient information to enable the defense to obtain official traffic-safety, collision-history and governmental reports, and enforcement activity along PCH without having to lobby prosecutors for the data.
The District Attorney’s Office did not have a constitutional duty to disclose the information, the judge said.
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 in the Oct. 17, 2023, nighttime crash that killed Niamh Rolston, 20, Peyton Stewart, 21, Asha Weir, 21, and Deslyn Williams, 21.
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All four were seniors at Pepperdine’s Seaver College of Liberal Arts and members of the Alpha Phi sorority. They were to graduate with the university’s class of 2024, and subsequently received their degrees posthumously.
Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said Bohm swerved onto a shoulder of PCH and slammed into three vehicles parked alongside on the roadway. Those parked vehicles struck the four Pepperdine students, leaving them dead at the scene.
At the preliminary hearing in April 2025, Superior Court Judge Diego Edber found sufficient evidence to allow the case against Bohm to proceed to trial. At the time, Deputy District Attorney Nathan Bartos said 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.
Bohm has been free on bail that was posted shortly after the case was filed against him eight days after the crash.
The section of PCH where the crash occurred is known as “Dead Man’s Curve” and reportedly has seen the highest number of auto accidents on an overall 21-mile stretch of the coastal road — with no fatals aside from those in the Bohm case in the past 10 years, defense attorneys said on Monday.
The tragedy prompted several lawsuits, along with numerous calls to remedy the dangers and minimize speeds along that section of PCH.
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