Creatures of the Chase - Richard

Richard Chase

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Chase was promptly diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. After undergoing a battery of treatments involving psychotropic drugs, Chase was deemed no longer a danger to society; and, later in , he was released to his mother's custody. Chase's mother weaned him off his medication and got him his own apartment. He initially shared the apartment with roommates before all of them moved out, thus leaving Chase on his own. Later investigation uncovered that, in mid, Chase was stopped and arrested on a reservation in the Pyramid Lake Nevada , area. His body was smeared with blood and a bucket of blood was found in his truck.

The blood was determined to be cow's blood, and no charges were filed. On December 29, , Chase killed his first known victim in a drive-by shooting. The victim, Ambrose Griffin, was a year-old engineer and father of two. He attempted to enter the home of a woman two weeks later, but because her doors were locked, he walked away. Chase later told detectives that he took locked doors as a sign that he was not welcome, but unlocked doors were an invitation to come inside. He was once caught and chased off by a couple returning home as he pilfered their belongings; he had also urinated and defecated on their infant child's bed and clothing.

On January 23, , Chase broke into a house and shot Teresa Wallin three months pregnant at the time three times. He then had sexual intercourse with her corpse while stabbing her with a butcher knife. He then removed multiple organs, cut off one of her nipples and drank her blood. He stuffed dog feces from Wallin's yard down her throat before leaving. On January 27, Chase entered the home of year-old Evelyn Miroth.

He encountered her friend, Danny Meredith, whom he shot with his. He then fatally shot Miroth, her six-year-old son Jason, and her month-old nephew David Ferreira, before engaging in necrophilia and cannibalism with Miroth's corpse. A visitor's knock on the door startled Chase, who fled in Meredith's car, taking Ferreira's body with him.

The visitor alerted a neighbour, who called police. They discovered that Chase had left perfect handprints and shoe imprints in Miroth's blood. Chase was arrested shortly afterwards - police who searched Chase's apartment found that the walls, floor, ceiling, refrigerator, and all of Chase's eating and drinking utensils were soaked in blood. In , Chase stood trial on six counts of murder. In order to avoid the death penalty , the defense tried to have him found guilty of second degree murder , which would result in a life sentence. Their case hinged on Chase's history of mental illness and the suggestion that his crimes were not premeditated.

On May 8, the jury found Chase guilty of six counts of first degree murder and, rejecting the argument that he was not guilty by reason of insanity , sentenced him to die in the gas chamber. His fellow inmates, aware of the graphic and bizarre nature of Chase's crimes, feared him, and according to prison officials, often tried to persuade Chase to commit suicide. Chase granted a series of interviews with Robert Ressler , during which he spoke of his fears of Nazis and UFOs , claiming that although he had killed, it was not his fault; he had been forced to kill to keep himself alive, which he believed any person would do.

He asked Ressler to give him access to a radar gun , with which he could apprehend the Nazi UFOs, so that the Nazis could stand trial for the murders. He also handed Ressler a large amount of macaroni and cheese , which he had been hoarding in his pants pockets, believing that the prison officials were in league with the Nazis and attempting to kill him with poisoned food.

On December 26, , Chase was found in his cell, not breathing; an autopsy found that he committed suicide with an overdose [6] of prescribed antidepressants that he had saved over several weeks. The movie Rampage , an adaptation of the William P. Wood novel of the same name, was loosely based on Chase's crimes. Investigation Discovery's TV special Lore: Deadly Obsession was a two-hour documentary reenactment of Chase's crimes.

Chase was played by Dylan John Seaton. The criminal in that episode, Eddie Mays, was a delusional cannibalistic killer with a history of drug abuse like Chase and had a somewhat similar relationship with his mother. The deputy who checked him saw a gunshot wound on his head, and then saw blood in the bathroom, and what looked like bloody water in the tub. Then he found Evelyn lying naked on the bed in her bedroom, her legs splayed open. She had a gunshot wound to the head, and her abdomen had been cut open and her intestines pulled out.

Two carving knives, stained red, lay nearby. It appeared that she had been taking a bath when surprised by her killer, and then dragged to the bed. He sodomized her, stabbed her through the anus into her uterus at least six times, made several slices across her neck, and tried to cut out an eye. Bloody ringlets on the carpet indicated that he had once again used some kind of container to collect blood. He stabbed several internal organs as well, which the coroner later noted would facilitate getting at blood in the abdomen.

On the other side of the bed, police officers discovered the body of a boy, who turned out to be Jason. He had been shot twice in the head at close range. The intruder had left bloody footprints behind which resembled the shoe marks found at the Wallin murder scene. Then they located an eleven year-old girl in the neighborhood who described a man near the victims?

She described him in his early twenties. He fit the description of a man seen repeatedly in that area walking around asking people for magazines. Then Karen Ferreira arrived, seeking the whereabouts of her son, David, left with her sister-in-law, Evelyn, that morning. No one had seen him, but a bullet hole was discovered in the pillow that had been in a crib.

There was a lot of blood. It later turned out that Chase had drank Evelyn? A knock on the door must have interrupted him and he had fled with the body. As police looked for him, he took the baby to his home and severed the head. He removed several organs and consumed them.

It seemed to Chase that he would get away with this brutal series of murders, but he did not realize how quickly the police were closing in. Detectives apprehended him, but not without a mighty struggle on his part. They noticed he was wearing an orange parka that had dark stains on it and his shoes appeared to be covered in blood. Then they found Dan Meredith? The contents of the box he was carrying also proved interesting: They took him to the police station and tried to get him to confess.

He admitted to killing several dogs but stubbornly resisted talking about the murders. While he was in custody, detectives searched his apartment in hopes of finding a clue about the missing baby. What they found in the putrid-smelling place was disgusting. Nearly everything was bloodstained, including food and drinking glasses. In the kitchen, they found several small pieces of bone, and some dishes in the refrigerator with body parts.

One container held human brain tissue. An electric blender was badly stained and smelled of rot. There were three pet collars but no animals to be found. Photographic overlays on human organs from a science book lay on a table, along with newspapers on which ads selling dogs were circled. A calendar showed the inscription?

At one point, Chase admitted to another inmate that he had drunk the blood of his victims because he had blood poisoning. He needed blood and he had grown tired of hunting and killing animals. Finally, the baby was found. On March 24th, a church janitor came upon a box containing the remains of a male baby. He called the police. When they arrived, they recognized the clothing. It was the missing boy from the Miroth home. The baby had been decapitated and the head lay underneath the torso, which was partially mummified.

A hole in the center of the head indicated the child had been shot. There were several other stab wounds to the body and several ribs were broken. Beneath the body, too, was a ring of keys that fit Dan Meredith? The lead prosecutor for the case of California v. Richard Trenton Chase was Ronald W. He intended to seek the death penalty. The defense entered a plea of Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, but Tochterman was determined to show that he knew the difference between right and wrong and that he was not compelled to murder.

Part of his strategy included boning up on the legends of Dracula. He also read about blood-related crimes and blood rituals in various cultures, noting that some people believed that ingesting another person? He wanted to show that while this might be a belief, it was not a viable reason for murder. A change of venue was requested, given the local notoriety of the case, and the trial was moved one hundred twenty miles south to Santa Clara County.

By the time it was all over, a dozen psychiatrists had examined Chase. He admitted to one that he was disturbed about killing his victims and he was afraid they might come for him from the dead. There was no evidence in his admissions that he had ever felt compelled.

The “Vampire Of Sacramento” Was As Ghoulish As He Sounds

He simply thought the blood was therapeutic. One psychiatrist found him to be an antisocial personality, not schizophrenic. His thought processes were not disrupted, and he was aware of what he had done and that it was wrong. On January 2, , the trial began. Chase was charged with six counts of murder. The prosecutor emphasized throughout the trial that Chase had had a choice, and mentioned several times that he had brought rubber gloves with him to the victims? Altogether, there were prosecution exhibits, the strongest of which were Chase? Chase then took the stand in his own defense.

He looked awful, having dropped in weight to pounds. His eyes were sunken and lusterless. He claimed to have been semi-conscious during the Wallin murder and he described in detail the way he had been mistreated much of his life. He admitted to drinking Wallin? He did not recall much about the second series of murders, but knew that he had shot the baby in the head and decapitated it, leaving it in a bucket in the hope of getting more of its blood.

He thought the baby was something else, but did not elaborate. He thought that his problems stemmed from his inability to have sex with girls as a teenager and he said he was sorry for the killings. The defense asked for a verdict of second degree murder, to spare Chase the death penalty, since he was clearly insane and had never been given proper help. Tochterman argued that he was a sexual sadist, a monster who knew what he was doing and who could not be salvaged.

On May 8, , after five hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of six counts of first degree murder. During the sanity phase, the jury found Chase legally sane after deliberating an hour. It took them four hours to decide that Chase should die in the gas chamber at San Quentin Penitentiary.

Early Life of Richard Chase

On the day after Christmas in , one day short of the third anniversary of the killing spree, the guard looked in on Richard Chase. The condemned man was lying on his back in his bunk, breathing normally. He did not return the guard? Chase was on his stomach, both legs extended off his bunk, and his feet were on the floor.

His head was against the mattress and his arms extended toward the pillow. The guard called out to Chase, who failed to move. He went in and pulled Chase off the bed. It was clear to him that the "Vampire of Sacramento", aka, "Dracula," was dead. Holmes, the coroner, was called. He searched the cell and located a strange suicide note about taking some pills.

Chase had been taking a daily dose of Sinequan for hallucinations and depression, which came to his cell in a package of three pills. Apparently he had hoarded the pills and then overdosed. The cause of his death was toxic ingestion. His heart was found to be normal and in good shape, despite his life-long concerns. The prison psychiatrist noted that Chase had been psychotic since the time he had entered the prison, but no one much bothered about the nature of his bizarre obsession with blood.

In , a movie called Unspeakable was made based on Chase as a model for the killer. His case is still used by the FBI as the archetypal model for understanding the disorganized killer. The Making of a Vampire. Richard Trenton Chase had a thing for blood. He also had a fear of disintegrating. Born May 23, , he liked to set fires as a child and to torment animals. He had a sister, four years younger, and his father was a strict disciplinarian who bickered constantly with his wife.

By the time Richard was ten, he was killing cats.

Richard Chase - Wikipedia

As a teenager, he drank and smoked dope, getting into trouble several times but showing no shame over it. He dated several girls, one of whom reported that "Rick" was unable to perform sexually because he could not keep an erection. This problem bothered him and when he was eighteen, he went to see a psychiatrist.

He learned that a root cause of impotence was repressed anger. The psychiatrist also thought he might be suffering from a major mental illness, but did not suggest he be committed. After he moved out of his parents' home, he went through a series of roommates, many of whom reported his bizarre behavior and heavy drug use. Even the few friends he had considered him weird. Once he nailed shut his bedroom closet door because "people" were invading his space from in there. Mug shot of Richard Chase in when arrested for marijuana possession.

He was preoccupied with any sign that something was wrong with him, which held true throughout his adult life, and he once entered an emergency room looking for the person who had stolen his pulmonary artery. He also complained that the bones were coming out through the back of his head, that his stomach was backwards, and that his heart often stopped beating.

Another psychiatrist diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic, but thought he might actually be suffering from a drug-induced toxic psychosis.

He was put under observation for 72 hours, and it was recommended that he stay but he was allowed to leave whenever he wanted without obtaining permission. Eventually he was released. His life grew increasingly slovenly, and he submersed into hypochondria and drug abuse. He was five foot eleven and weighed only pounds. He lived with his mother for awhile, now divorced, but believed he was being poisoned. His father made him move out and got him an apartment. Chase soon began to kill and disembowel rabbits that he either caught or bought, and to eat their entrails raw.

Sometimes he would put the intestines with the animal's blood into a blender, liquefy them, and drink this concoction in an effort to keep his heart from shrinking to the point of disappearing from his body. He once injected rabbit blood into his veins and got very ill. He believed this rabbit had ingested battery acid that had seeped into his stomach, but in fact he had a bad case of blood poisoning. Finally he was committed as a schizophrenic suffering from somatic delusions. The doctors tried anti-psychotic medications, which failed to work, indicating that his psychosis may have been precipitated by his drug abuse.

In , he escaped and showed up at his mother's house. He was returned to the hospital, ending up at Beverly Manor, a facility for mental patients, where he earned the nickname, "Dracula. Two dead birds, their necks broken, lay outside his window. The classic "Renfield Syndrome. Eventually he was released and deemed no longer a danger to anyone. That's what they believed, anyway. His parents were granted a conservatorship, renewed annually, and his mother paid his rent and shopped for his groceries. Two rifles lay on the seat, along with a pile of men's clothing.

It had "seeped out" of him. It was December 29th, The man's name was Ambrose Griffin. He was 51, an engineer, and the father of two sons. He had been yelling at something or someone, his wife reported to homicide cops in the emergency room, and he'd turned and just dropped right there in front of her.

She'd heard two odd popping noises, but had given them no thought. They had just returned from a shopping trip and Mrs. Griffin had opened the trunk of the car and taken out the bag of potatoes. Her husband had followed with two sacks of groceries and had been on his way back to the car when he had dropped, presumably from a heart attack.

Soon she would learn a more horrifying truth. Her husband had been shot in some sort of random, drive-by attack. One of the Griffin boys reported having seen a man with a rifle walking around in their East Sacramento neighborhood. They tailed him and then called the police, but he turned out not to be their man. His gun was not the. The following day, a news crew found two spent shell casings on the pavement near the Griffin residence. Detectives followed up on reports of a suspicious car driving around the neighborhood, but could get no clear description.

On the afternoon after the Griffin shooting, a twelve year-old boy reported that a man with brown hair, seemingly in his mid-twenties, had shot at him from a brown Pontiac Trans Am as he rode his bike. He was put under hypnosis and recalled a license plate number, EEP. Routine police work turned up a report from a woman who said that a shot had been fired into her home on December 27th.

She lived only a few blocks from the Griffins. A search of her kitchen produced a. It proved to have been fired from the same gun that had killed Ambrose Griffin. At that point, all leads dried up. On January 11, , Dawn Larson had a strange encounter with Chase. During the six months that they had been neighbors in the same East Sacramento apartment complex on Watt Avenue, she had seen him carry three animals into his apartment-against the rules-but had never seen those animals again.

She thought him odd, but worried that he was lonely. He asked her for a cigarette. She gave him one, but he stopped her from walking away. When she gave him the rest of the pack, he let her go. Nearly two weeks later, on the 23rd, at Burnece Street, Jeanne Layton spotted an unkempt young man with longish hair strolling toward her. She watched as he tried her patio door, found it locked, and went to the windows.

They, too, were locked, so he came back to the door. Layton met him there, face-to-face. He showed no emotion whatsoever as he scrutinized her. Then he turned, paused to light a cigarette, and walked away through her backyard. Down the street, Robert and Barbara Edwards were bringing their groceries into the house when they heard a noise inside.

Whoever was in there apparently heard them and started to run. They heard a window slam at the back of the house and then, oddly, a disheveled young man came around the corner toward them. Though Edwards tried to stop him, he sprinted past and got out to the street. Edwards gave chase, but lost him when he jumped a fence.

10 Insane And Unnerving Facts About The Vampire Richard Chase

The police arrived to find the house in a shambles, with theft of valuables the obvious motive. However, he had also urinated into a drawer of freshly-laundered baby's clothing and had defecated on a child's bed. The intruder kept going, veering off his path here and there to walk across the front porches of random houses. Then he came to a tract house at Tioga Way. When David Wallin came home that night at six, he found the house dark.

He entered and saw their dog, a German shepherd, waiting inside, but his wife was nowhere to be found. Oddly, the stereo was on. A bag of trash and what appeared to be oil stains on the carpet troubled him. He followed the stains to the bedroom. Then he began to scream. His wife lay just inside the door, on her back. There was blood in the bathroom and it was later learned that Chase had smeared Terry's blood all over his face and hands, licking it off his fingers. Evelyn was about to send her son Jason, 6, to a friend's house and when Jason failed to arrive, the friend sent her daughter over to check.

Inside Evelyn's rectum was a large amount of semen. Then they located an eleven year-old girl in the neighborhood who described a man near the victims' residence around eleven o'clock. Dan Meredith's red station wagon was missing from the front of the house where neighbors had seen it parked that morning. It later turned out that Chase had drank Evelyn's blood and had mutilated the baby's body in the bathroom, opening the head and spilling pieces of the brain into the tub.

Meredith's station wagon was found abandoned not far from the murder scene, the keys still in it.

First Murder

There was little hope that the baby was still alive. The police did not know it, but the parking lot where they located the missing car was only about one hundred yards from apartment 15 of the Watt Avenue complex where Richard Trenton Chase lived. The FBI were already on the case. Robert Ressler and Russ Vorpagel developed a profile of who they were probably looking for. They figured him for a disorganized killer as opposed to an organized one, with some clues pointing toward the possibility of psychosis. He clearly had not planned these crimes and did little to hide or destroy evidence.

He left footprints and fingerprints, and had probably walked around in daylight with blood on his clothing. In other words, he gave little thought to the consequences. At the very least, his domicile would be as sloppy as the places he ransacked after he was finished with them, and the fact that the murder scenes were fairly close together meant he might not have a car.

In fact, he'd taken a car from one house, so he must have walked to that one at least. That meant it was likely that he lived in the vicinity of the crimes. It was also likely that he would kill again, and keep on killing until he was caught. They had to work fast. They figured him to be a white male in his mid-twenties, thin and undernourished. Evidence of the crimes, they were sure, would be found in his residence, and if he had a vehicle, in there as well. He either would have a history of mental illness or drug use, or both, and he would be something of a loner.

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They thought he was probably employed at some menial labor or unemployed, given his apparent state of mind, and could be receiving some disability money. He probably lived alone. He might be paranoid. Many people were questioned around the area and some had seen a white male driving a red station wagon. Although the police artist tried to make a sketch, few of the descriptions were helpful, except for that of a young woman. On the same day that Robert Edwards had chased the intruder away from his home on Burnece Street, Nancy Holden had had an odd encounter.

She was shopping in the Town and Country Village shopping center, not far from Watt Avenue and close to the Wallin residence, when she saw a strange man approaching her who appeared to be confused. She tried to avoid him but he directed a question at her. Ten years earlier she had dated a boy named Kurt who had been killed on a motorcycle. It was then that she noticed something vaguely familiar about this interrogator.

She asked him who he was and he replied, "Rick Chase. This man before her was nothing like the studious, clean-cut Rick Chase that she had known in high school. She had heard he'd gotten into drugs, and looking at him now, she realized those rumors were true. He was grimy and stained, and his agitated manner made her nervous. She talked with him for a few minutes, seeking a way out, and finally got out of the store while he was still paying for something. However, he followed her into the parking lot, intent on getting a ride.

She managed to get into her car, roll up the windows, lock the doors, and pull out before he could stop her. She knew she'd been rude but she just wanted to get away. After viewing the police sketch of a disheveled man seen in the neighborhood wearing an orange ski parka, and recalling that Chase wore one that day the same color, she was sure this was the man the police were seeking. They also got another clue from the gun registration of a.

On January 10th, he had purchased ammunition. Then Dawn Larson, watching the news, recalled her strange neighbor. She had seen a large map of Sacramento on his wall, marked with black ink. However, she was afraid to make an enemy by reporting him. After hearing from Holden five days after the Wallin murder, the detectives ran a background check on Chase and found a history of mental illness including his escape from a hospital , a concealed weapons charge, a series of minor drug busts, and his arrest in Nevada.

They found his address on Watt Avenue and went out that Saturday afternoon, one day after the triple murder, to check it out. They learned from the apartment manager that Chase's mother paid his rent and that she felt her son was the victim of LSD abuse. Chase refused to let his mother into his apartment. The detectives knocked repeatedly, but Chase would not open the door. They pretended they were going to leave and then waited.

Chase emerged with a box in his arms and made his way toward his car. The detectives apprehended him, but not without a mighty struggle on his part. Then they found Dan Meredith's wallet in Chase's back pocket, along with a pair of latex gloves. A calendar showed the inscription "Today" on the dates of the Wallin and Miroth murders, and chillingly, the same word was written on forty-four more dates yet to come during that year. The entire place had an ominous feeling, but at least Chase was now in custody. Richard Chase on night of his arrest.

Evidence was gathered from Chase to compare to samples already being analyzed in the crime lab from the murder victims. There was plenty of blood on Chase's clothing, and they also took hair samples. However, when they tried to take a blood sample, he had to be restrained.

They had no idea then of his intense primal fear of losing his blood. Farris Salamy was appointed Chase's attorney and he was immediately separated from the detectives who had spent so much time trying to extract a confession. Police officers continued the search for the baby, using a bloodhound. They even went to Chase's mother's home and she was uncooperative, insisting that despite what they had found, it did not prove that her son had done anything.

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