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VAN NUYS, LOS ANGELES () — A judge denied a motion to dismiss the murder charges against the man involved in a deadly Malibu crash that killed four Pepperdine University students.
Fraser Michael Bohm appeared in court Monday morning.
A new team of attorneys representing Bohm asked Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Thomas Rubinson to find that there was insufficient evidence presented to support the murder charges at a hearing in April in which another judge found there was enough evidence to allow the case to proceed to trial.
Bohm — who was 22 at the time of the crash and is 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.
They say he was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol when he slammed into some parked cars which crashed into the women.
Lawyers will allegedly also argue that Bohm was fleeing a road-rage driver when the fatal crash happened.
The prosecution claims Bohm was speeding and is responsible for the deaths of the students.
The judge Monday also found that defense attorneys will be allowed to extract GPS and other data from the phone of a key witness in the case. Prosecutors look to have Victor Calandra testify to Bohm’s dangerous driving, but Bohm’s attorneys say he is the aggressive driver Bohm was trying to escape from.
“This fantasy that he was chasing after the defendant… it’s ludicrous,” Calandra’s attorney Robert Helfend said outside the courtroom.
Bohm’s attorney says he will be appealing the judge’s refusal to throw out the murder charges.
The case is not slated to return to a courtroom until January. That’s when the judge hopes to set a date for the trial to begin.
All four women were seniors at Pepperdine’s Seaver College of Liberal Arts and members of the Alpha Phi sorority. They were set to graduate with Pepperdine’s class of 2024, and subsequently received their degrees posthumously.
City News Service, Inc. contributed to this report.
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