Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 58

D-2 Sunday, Oct. 28, 1990 Santa Cruz Sentinel New generations may take the old ways to task A vvpkV to me that I could do it differently until four or five years went by and a friend was doing some baking in my kitchen. "This is disgusting," she said. "I know." "Then stop doing it," she said. Once I realized I could change Our Way, I admit I went overboard.

Not only did I begin using a fresh piece of waxed paper each time I baked, I eventually went on to greasing the pan with paper towels. But it makes me nervous. It just doesn't feel right. And I'm beginning to see some signs of rebellion in my boys that worry me. Yesterday my youngest boy wanted to know why we keep our glasses upside down in the cupboard and the coffee mugs right side up.

"We're supposed to," I told him. "Why?" "Because that's Our Way." He says this is a family genetic defect. Someday, he vows, he's going to keep everything right side up in his own kitchen cupboards. 1 Maybe so. But I bet it takes him a good four or five years before he can bring himself to do it.

That's Our Way. Beth Mullally writes for the Middletown, N.Y., Times Herald-Record, an Ottaway newspaper. came up hunting and gutted a rabbit on our kitchen table and dripped some blood on Rusty the dog. I figure he grabbed the paper towel without knowing our rule about not using them, or else he panicked because it was his dog that the blood was on. We also had a genetic defect about waxed paper and Crisco shortening.

It was Our Way to use one piece of waxed paper over and over for greasing pans whenever we were baking, then we'd store it in the Crisco can until the next time we baked. We got to start with a fresh piece when a new can of Crisco was opened. This was very disgusting, but no one ever questioned it even though we lived in an otherwise sanitary home. Habits like this waxed paper thing might well have very logical origins. Probably my cave person ancestor.

Grandmother Grunt, once needed to save a last piece of waxed paper in the tiger lard can until her man could get more woolly mammoth skin, which is actually unprocessed waxed paper. Grandmother Grunt's daughters probably saw this and figured it was Our Way, and it stuck through all The Evolutionary Ages on into the Space Age and right on down to me. After I grew up and moved into a place of my own, I kept on doing the same thing with my waxed paper as Grandmother Grunt once did. It didn't even occur I'VE BEEN thinking lately about the Law of Hereditary Ways of Doing Things. That's the household law that says, "We do it this way because we do it this way.

This is Our Way." I grew up.in a house where it was Our Way to use Brillo and Comet for cleaning. Some of my closest friends lived in SOSAjax homes. That was Their Way. It didn't affect my fondness for them, but it was not Our Way. It was Our Way to clean upstairs on Thursdays and downstairs on Fridays.

It was Our Way to keep out pillows flat under the bed spread instead of rolling them in half as some families did. It was Our Way to 1 shovel first thing in the morning even if a snow storm hadn't ended yet and we'd have to do it again later. No one knows how these family habits get started, but. I think it has something to do with heredity maybe an Our Way gene that gets passed from generation to generation just like prejudices and great-Grandpa's railroad watch. The thing is, a lot of these family habits make so little sense that they're more like genetic defects.

for example, grew up in a family that has a genetic defect about paper towels. We inherited the belief that paper towels are very valuable. They should be bought and displayed, but they should never be used. Beth Mullally This is not something we discussed. It's just something we knew the same way we knew we were a Brillo family.

If I spilled something, I didn't clean it up with a nice, disposable paper towel. I cleaned it up with a disgusting, old rag that got used over and over. The only occasion I can recall that a paper towel got used was the time my great uncle from the city Homes that carry dark secrets after the murder before the suicide. "I think of them in here living with the fact of the murder I hope he was convicted." In November 1988, Bowman was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the murder of Father John. Dr.

Ohta's secretary, Dorothy Cad-wallader. The victims had been bound with brightly colored silk scarves and shot to death. John Linley Frazier was sentenced to the death penalty for the murders of the Ohta family. Two months later, the death penalty was declared unconstitutional. Frazier is now at San Quentin, said Chang.

"My gun was the murder weapon," said Santa Cruz attorney Steven Muni. Two weeks before the murder, Frazier holed up in the Muni family home 900 yards down the ridge from the Ohta's home. Muni was away at school at the time. His parents were in Los Angeles. "These were the only two big houses with swimming pools in the area," said Muni.

"He was going to kill us because we were spoilers of the environment. He ransacked the house, stole my .38, and my dad's revolver." After the murders, there was a manhunt through the Munis' land. They found Frazier living in an abandoned dairy below the house. "It was very spooky," said Muni. "My father had to testify at the trial.

Frazier later told the psychologist how he sat up there (in our home) waiting to kill us. "We sold our home shortly thereafter. We didn't feel comfortable living there anymore." The Ohtas' house remained badly burned for quite some time, said Continued from Page Dl Greek Orthodox priest, was stabbed and bludgeoned to death. His body was discovered in the hallway of the Prophet Elias Church in downtown Santa Cruz. For seven months, police searched for the murderer.

Then in December, 1985, when they went to question Edward Bowman's wife Anna, who had worked for Father John, she shot herself in the back bedroom of their home on River Street Rebecca's home. From that point on, Edward Bowman was the prime suspect. "This house scared me really bad," said Rebecca. "The first couple of nights I thought, 'I can't live Immediately I burned sage. I stayed up all night and sat around with a baseball bat.

I kept candles burning all night. Then I kind of got used to it." Two adults and two children live in the house now. The rent is $980 for the three-bedroom home which has a big yard. "Rent was, like, incredibly cheap," said Rebecca. The story of the suicide doesn't bother her roommate, she said, but it makes her imagination run wild.

In the bedroom where the suicide occurred, Rebecca points out a stain on the wall. She doesn't know what it is, but she imagines all kinds of things. "I come in this room and all I can think of is 'The In the front bedroom her bedroom she lies in bed and thinks of the Bowmans' sleeping in this room for those seven months yard," said Ethel. "She was there by herself. They raped her and had beaten her and everything else.

Then strangled her." Ethel's son-in-law discovered the victim's husband in the front yard. "He was crying 'Somebody help "There was blood still on the wall for a long time. It would bother me. I'm very sensitive about those things. It bothered me for a long time to even go in the place.

Those things have a lasting imprint." Cindy said, "She described in gory detail what my bedroom looked like. I'm not the kind of person who gets terribly spooked by things," she said. "I told some friends about it. One friend says 'How could you stand to live I love the area. I'm totally satisfied living here.

I shopped the world for a place to retire." Vincent M. Regan, who was convicted in 1975 of beating, stabbing and strangling of Coulter, was denied parole in 1984. Regan and co-defendant Orrin "Buzz" Carr were convicted of first degree murder. The two were accused of following Coulter home from a restaurant, breaking into her home and raping and killing her. They were sentenced to death, but a change in the death penalty law made the two eligible to seek parole after seven years.

The cases are automatically considered by the Board of Prison Terms each year. "I read in the paper when they were up for parole. I'm curious when they can appeal again," said Cindy. MASS MURDER FIVE DIE PETER CHANG remembers visiting the expensive hilltop mansion off Rodeo Gulch Road in the year following the execution-style murder of the Ohta family. "It still had this macabre atmosphere," said Chang, the former assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case.

"It was untouched for a whole year. It was Oct. 19, exactly a year after the murders, before the case came to trial. It was a good 18 months before it re- sold." He heard that someone finally bought it for a dime. Last week was the 20-year anniversary of the Ohta murders.

On the night of Oct. 19, 1970, firefighters responded to a fire at the Ohta family mansion. The firefighters started fighting the blaze, then went over to use the water in the pool. "They found the most gruesome scene in the world," said Chang, now in private practice as an attorney. Floating in the backyard swimming pool were the bodies of Dr.

Victor Ohta, a wealthy eye surgeon, his wife Virginia, their sons Derrick, 12, and Taggart, 11, and 1 Muni. After staying vacant for almost two years, it was eventually repaired and sold. The current owners have asked to be left alone. It was a terrible tragedy, they say, but they just want to forget it now. Chang remembers the Ohta slay-ings as part of a string of bizarre murders during the '70s that attracted nationwide attention to Santa Cruz.

"The whole thing got so weird. There were so many bodies," said Chang. "It cut down on the Boardwalk trade. People weren't sending their kids to UCSC from back east. Everybody was being murdered out here.

It was almost like a population decrease. "It's going to take a long time for Santa Cruz to forget that period. Thank God we've got a new generation of people who weren't even born then." WOMAN STRANGLED CINDY moved from Nevada to Capitola into a cozy one-bedroom apartment on 41st Avenue four years ago, after retiring as a French professor. She loved the house, the location and her neighbor although Ethel, who lives next door, was a bit strange about insisting Cindy keep her doors and windows locked. "The neighbor was very concerned about my locking doors and windows, especially the bathroom window," said Cindy.

When she finally began to get irritated, her neighbor decided it was best she tell Cindy the whole story. "I didn't want to tell her because I didn't want to frighten her," said 93-year-old Ethel who has lived next door for 36 years. "But she was a bit careless." In April 1975, the body of 27-year-old Joyce Coulter was found by her husband in their cozy one-bedroom apartment. She had been stabbed, strangled and beaten around the head. He told detectives he found her body lying in the middle of the living room floor with a strip of sheeting tied around her neck.

"The murderers went through her bathroom window took the screen off and threw it in my years. When they arrested Huffman in his car, police found $32,000 in cash and "decaying matter" which was later identified as human brain. The murder case became even more bizarre. The FBI was investigating links between Huffman and Minton with the terrorist group, the New World Liberation Front. In 1983, Huffman was convicted of second degree murder and on three drug counts.

He was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. He was also given a five-year prison term for conspiracy to bomb facilities in San Francisco. The Morgans have rented the Bonny Doon bungalow for the past seven years. They have three children. John Morgan tries to play down the history of the house.

"I like Bonny Doon. The house is a good deal." Mary Morgan, 28, added, "I was kind of skeptical about bringing kids into the house. It was really gross. We knew the people who lived next door. They found the blood trail." According to Mary, the body was discovered behind the house by an oak tree.

The Morgans decided to remove the tree. John Morgan tells the story of the former residents discovering $10,000 in decaying bills buried in the flower bed in front of the house. He also said he regularly hears the coyotes of Bonny Doon howling the same wild dogs of Bonny Doon that supposedly told Huffman to kill his girlfriend. Mary Morgan is hesitant to talk about the other stories surrounding the house. One time, after a particularly strange occurrence in the home, the Morgans had a priest come in and bless the house.

"I'm not close-minded. I do think anything is possible," said Mary Morgan. She said she does occasionally get nervous when strangers drive up the long dirt driveway to the home and sometimes she wonders why no one ever visits their home on Halloween, but she likes the house. The children are happy here. "I just want to leave well enough alone," she said.

Lies BONNY DOON AX MURDERER JOHN MORGAN grew up in Bonny Doon. He and his wife were in high school in 1979 when Ronald E. Huffman, 39, was accused of murdering his longtime girlfriend Maureen Minton, 31, with an ax blow to the back of the head. It happened behind the house where the Mintons now live. The body of the murder victim was found 15 feet behind the house where Huffman and Minton had lived together on and off for six ment Loss Prevention Services in Dallas.

"In some cultures, lying and cheating is considered normal." For most of us, though.lying exacts a physical toll, Morris said. We breathe faster, our hearts beat harder and our blood pressure goes haywire. The truth can exact a toll on the body, too, of course especially if we're admitting a lie. "Just about the most difficult thing for any human being to do is admit to someone they lied to them," Morris said. "It's very stressful.

But on the flip side, you get a ton of relief. It removes a tremendous amount of tension, especially if you've been spending your nights and days worrying about it." So it was with Patty, who had to tell other lies to cover up her initial deception with her husband. He waited until the night she returned from her business trip, then woke her from a sound sleep to confront her. Traumatic as confessing was, it was also a relief, she said. And their story has a good ending, "because we've been going to a counselor ever since, and it's helping tremendously." Continued from Page Dl each other of lying.

But each is telling their own version of the truth." Perhaps the most justifiable reason for fabrications is to spare feelings. For instance.the guests of honor at a dinner party probably wouldn't dream of telling their hosts that they didn't like the specially prepared meal even if it was terrible. Rationalization aside, lying can be stressful. If we act on false information, we can be hurt. If we lie and are discovered, it can erode the trust so vital to relationships.

Besides, lying is a strain on the brain because one lie leads to another, and we have to remember to stick to our story. To borrow a line from Algernon Sidney's "Discourses on ought to have good memories." Lying is stressful because of our societal standards, although "we can condition ourselves to where it's not so hard on us," said Joe Morris, who conducts polygraph tests and is president of Honesty Employ We provide immediate care emergency or not! BASIC MAMMOGRAPHY SCREENINGS meredent i lfSSmf I -Exam takes only Li Lrrrr 15 minutes. w4 Emergedent is the referral service that schedules quality professional care without delay. That's our specialty. naa No appointment necessary.

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