Make California Post a Preferred Source High on a secluded ridge in the affluent Soquel Hills, overlooking Monterey Bay and the rolling Santa Cruz countryside, sits one of Northern California’s purest and most intact expressions of organic mid-century-modern architecture — that also hides a brutal history.
Built in 1965, the house at 999 North Rodeo Gulch Road was designed by Aaron Green, the protégé who famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright regarded as a son.
Currently listed at $4.6 million after a recent price cut, the home is also the site of one of the most chilling mass murders in modern California lore.
Five years after the home’s completion, on the night of Oct. 19, 1970 — in an eerie echo of the Southern California Charles Manson murders the year prior — 24-year-old local John Linley Frazier entered the home of well-respected eye surgeon Dr. Victor Ohta.
A paranoid, Bible-obsessed hippie who called himself “the Killer Prophet,” Frazier believed God had chosen him to punish anyone who “misuses the natural environment.”
According to court records, Frazier used silk scarves and ties to bind Dr. Ohta, his wife Virginia Ohta, their two young sons, 12-year-old Derek and 11-year-old Taggart, and Ohta’s secretary Dorothy Cadwallader.
Frazier marched the family out to the backyard and shot them in the back and heads at the edge of or into the swimming pool, where the bodies were later discovered.
After the killings, Frazier set multiple fires in the house and left a rambling, typewritten note on the windshield of Dr. Ohta’s Rolls-Royce. According to TIME, the note declared “World War III” had begun and anyone who destroyed the natural environment would “suffer the penalty of death by the People of the Free Universe.”
Firefighters called to the blaze found the five bodies floating in the pool. The house was heavily damaged by the fires Frazier had deliberately set.
He was arrested four days later, sleeping in a shack not far from the property, and was later convicted of five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.
The house was lovingly restored in the early ’70s after the fire. To this day, the architecture and faithful craftsmanship remain extraordinary.
The indoor-outdoor flow, limestone masonry grounded into the hillside, redwood-framed walls of glass, soaring living room, polished concrete floors, five generous bedrooms and four bathrooms, custom built-ins, deep overhangs, terraces, gardens and sweeping views all survive as Wright’s disciple intended them.
Green carried the master architect’s philosophy of organic architecture into every line of this estate.
The single-level residence spans 4,166 square feet across nearly 10 private acres. Its dramatic living room rises 25 feet and is anchored by one of Santa Cruz County’s largest private residential fireplaces.
Meanwhile, an outdoor fireplace seamlessly blends the architecture into the landscape. More than 5,000 square feet of stone terrace flow around the pool house and traditional sauna.
There’s also a tennis court, Japanese garden resplendent with a koi pond and waterfall, two expansive redwood decks, bamboo walking path, bocce court and secluded hilltop great lawn.
But the lagoon-shaped swimming pool is still there.
Later, Frazier’s death sentence was commuted to life in prison. In 2009, he hung himself while in his prison cell.
Whether the next buyer can live with that history and $4.6 million price tag — or simply wants one of the finest and most architecturally significant mid-century residences left on the California market — is now a question of taste, temerity and how deep their pockets are.
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