Peyton Stewart (top left) via LinkedIn, Deslyn Williams (bottom left) pictured from video on her Instagram, (center) Asha Weir and Niamh Rolston pictured via Instagram/@niamhrolston, Fraser Michael Bohm (right) pitching in Perfect Game Underclass All American Games in August 2018. (YouTube/SkillShowVideos screengrab)
The defense for a 22-year-old BMW driver who allegedly sped along Pacific Coast Highway at 104 mph in a 45 mph zone before crashing along “Dead Man’s Curve” in Malibu, California, killing four Pepperdine University seniors on Oct. 17, has floated an alternate suspect in the murder case.
Fraser Michael Bohm is accused of losing control of his vehicle and hitting into parked cars on the side of Pacific Coast Highway, killing Niamh Rolston, 20, Peyton Stewart, 21, Asha Weir, 21, and Deslyn Williams, 21, each college seniors and sorority sisters studying at Pepperdine University’s Seaver College of Liberal Arts.
Bohm, once known locally as a baseball player at Oaks Christian High School, had celebrated his 22nd birthday just one day before the crash.
Investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said last week that they executed search warrants, conducted toxicology tests, and analyzed the speed Bohm was allegedly driving at prior to escalating the vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence case to a quadruple murder case.
Fraser Bohm investigated by authorities after crash (KTLA/screengrab)
At a press conference last Wednesday, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said that Bohm faces four “implied malice” murder charges and four counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence.
The victims were “minding their own business just being in the neighborhood where their school is, and they lost their lives unnecessarily” while standing on the side of the roadway, the DA said at the press conference.
“The investigation revealed that the defendant knew his actions were dangerous to human life and deliberately acted with conscious disregard for human life, committing four counts of implied malice murder in this case,” Gascón said. “I can’t say this enough. We have to realize that when we are driving a car, we have the potential of killing others.”
In a statement, the DA offered condolences to the victims’ families and their college friends “as they cope with this unimaginable pain.”
“Today we stand in deep sorrow for the loss of four innocent lives tragically taken in a senseless act,” Gascón said. “We want to assure the community that we are committed to seeking justice for those who have been taken from us too soon.”
Bohm pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on Wednesday. After his initial $8 million bail was reduced by a judge to $4 million, Bohm posted his bail and was released from custody at 8:30 p.m. last Friday, Oct. 27, from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s Lost Hills Station, jail records show.
Bohm’s lawyer Michael Kraut has already previewed the defense case by saying that a road rage incident at local bar Duke’s Malibu preceded the crash and that video footage would support the claim.
“We’ve actually been able to track down who this person is, and the person who admitted to a family member that they did drive him off the road,” Kraut said, according to local CW affiliate KTLA.
Law&Crime reached out to the lawyer for comment.
Pepperdine has said in the aftermath of the crash, which university president Jim Gash called an “unimaginable tragedy,” that Rolston, Stewart, Weir, and Williams would receive posthumous degrees in 2024, citing their “high record of achievement both socially and academically.”
The sheriff’s department has said that it is “relentlessly working to ensure we get justice for the victims’ families” and their heartbroken friends.
At a memorial service for the victims, friend Aubrey Lewis said “Peyton, Asha, Niamh and Deslyn were our best friends” and “[t]hey were everything.”
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