This is the story of the horrific crimes committed by the man who was deemed The Vampire of Sacramento. Early on Richard Chase showed signs of violent tendencies. Over time these urges increased and lead to a gruesome display of depravity for human life. Was he insane? Did he not know right from wrong? Did he just not care? Listen and decide for yourself.
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TuneInRichard Chase’s Early Years
Richard “Rick” Trenton Chase was born on May 23, 1950, in Santa Clara, California to Richard Chase Sr, a computer specialist, and Beatrice, a teacher. When he was 3 they moved to Sacramento into a single-family home. The next year his sister Pamela was born.
Richard’s parents were strict disciplinarians who doled out punishment regularly. When he was only two years old, he was force-fed by his father until he vomited. Pamela Chase would later recall confrontations between her brother and their father that ended with Richard Sr. shaking the boy or throwing him against the wall. The elder Richard was allegedly also emotionally abusive and yelled at his son whenever the boy messed something up.
The Macdonald Triad
By 10 years old he was displaying all 3 parts of the Macdonald triad. He was known to set fires, wet the bed, and torture animals including killing cats.
This triad was first published in 1963 in the American Journal of Psychiatry by J.M. MacDonald. Displaying 2 of the 3 behaviors predicts violent tendencies particularly serial offenses.
Teenage Years
At 13, his parents went through economic hardship and lost their house. All the while, Richard was still exhibiting troubling behaviors.
As a teenager, his mental health disorders intensified. He started drinking and using drugs, mostly smoking marijuana and using LSD.
He had a social life but couldn’t keep a girlfriend because of his off-the-wall behavior and the fact that he was impotent. Richard Chase sought help for his impotence. His psychiatrist told him it was due to his severe mental health issues and repressed anger, there was nothing he could do. He didn’t offer further treatment. Richard Chase thought that his problem was due to a lack of blood. He needed to consume animal blood to fix it.
When Rick was 18 his father set him up with an apartment. He had been working as a typist and began attending American River College.
Roommate Troubles
At 21 he moved in with roommates. They soon asked him to leave because of his erratic behavior and the amount of drug use. He refused, so they moved out. He couldn’t afford the place by himself and had to move back in with his mother. By this point, his parents were divorced. He claimed to his father that his mother was trying to poison him, so his father started paying for an apartment for him.
His hypochondria and delusions continued to worsen. He believed that his heart was shrinking, so his cure was to disembowel and consume various small animals. He started seeing doctors saying that his pulmonary artery had been stolen and he had no blood flow. In 1973 he was in a psych unit for a short period and was released into his parent’s care.
Richard Chase is Involuntarily Hospitalized
In 1975, he was involuntarily hospitalized. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia after having been treated for blood poisoning due to injecting himself with the blood from a rabbit he killed.
The doctors tried many different medication combinations but nothing seemed to stabilize him. This led them to think that he was brain damaged from the drug use.
While committed was frequently found with blood smeared on his face which he claimed was from cutting himself shaving. However, he was actually biting the heads off of birds he would catch through the window and sucking their blood. Once they realized this he was moved to a hospital for the criminally insane.
By 1976, doctors decided that he was no longer a threat. He was medicated, including with psychotropic drugs, and released into his mother’s custody.
His mother weaned him off of his medication and set him up with an apartment. She paid for the apartment and bought him groceries.
A Bucket Of Blood Is Found In The Trunk
In August 1977 he was stopped by police and arrested on a reservation near Pyramid Lake Nevada. He was found covered in blood and with a bucket of blood in the trunk of his car. Police confirmed that it was cow’s blood and no charges were filed. That summer he had also been killing neighbor’s pets and eating them.
On Dec 29th, 51-year-old Ambrose Griffin was helping his wife bring groceries in when someone in a car pulled up and shot him twice with a .22 caliber gun. Richard would later say that he did it because he was mad at his mom for not letting him come home for Christmas.
On January 11, 1978, Rick attacked a neighbor after he asked for a cigarette. He restrained her until she turned over the entire pack. Two weeks later, he broke into a house, robbed it, urinated inside a drawer containing infant clothing, and defecated on the bed in a child’s room. Interrupted by the owner’s return, Rick was attacked but managed to escape. (I saw another source where he ran and the owner couldn’t catch up with him.)
To him, a locked door was a sign that he wasn’t welcome, but an unlocked door was an invitation.
In one instance he tried a front door but found it locked. He went around and checked all the windows, but they were locked as well. The creepy part was that Jeanne Layton, the owner, was in the house the whole time watching him. After trying all of the ways in he stood in the window looking Jeanne in the eyes and smoked a cigarette.
Richard Trent Goes On A Murder Spree
On January 23, 1978, in northern Sacramento David Wallin came home to find his wife murdered. 22-year-old Teresa Wallin was 3 months pregnant and at home alone. She was taking out the garbage when Richard entered through the unlocked front door. Using the same gun he used to kill Griffin, he shot Teresa three times, killing her. Then he raped her corpse while stabbing her several times with a butcher knife. He removed multiple organs, cut off one of her nipples, and drank her blood using a yogurt cup. Before leaving, he collected dog feces from the yard and stuffed it into the victim’s mouth and down her throat.
On January 27, 1978, the bodies of Evelyn Miroth, age 38, her six-year-old son Jason, and friend Dan Meredith were found murdered inside Evelyn’s home. Missing was Evelyn’s 22-month-old nephew David, whom she had been babysitting. The crime scene was horrific. Dan Meredith’s body was found in the hallway. He was killed by a direct gunshot wound to the head. Evelyn and Jason were found in Evelyn’s bedroom. Jason was shot twice in the head.
The depth of Chase’s insanity was clear when investigators reviewed the crime scene. Evelyn’s corpse had been raped and sodomized multiple times. Her stomach had been cut open and various organs were removed. Her throat was cut, she was sodomized with a knife, and there was a failed attempt to remove one of her eyeballs.
Not found at the murder scene was the infant, David. Blood in the baby’s crib gave police little hope the child was still alive. Chase later told police that he brought the dead infant to his apartment. After mutilating the baby’s body, he disposed of the corpse at a nearby church, where it was later found.
FBI Profile
After the Wallin murder, FBI agents Russ Vorpagel and Robert Ressler were called in to investigate. (For Mindhunter fans, character Bill Tench is based on Ressler)
They compiled a profile of the killer; they determined that the killer would be tall, malnourished, a loner, physically unclean. He would have a history of mental health problems and drug use and wouldn’t be working. The killer would be receiving funds from disability or something similar.
He was a disorganized killer that would be in his early to mid-twenties. The type of psychosis the perpetrator was displaying would have started around 15. If he were older at the time of the murders, he would be so consumed that they would have already seen similar crimes. Most importantly he would continue to kill.
FBI Profile Bears Fruit
Five days after the mass murder, and after hearing the FBI profile, Nancy Holden contacted police saying she believed Richard Chase could be the killer.
Nancy Holden knew Rick Chase. She had seen him just a few weeks before, the same night he had robbed a home. She had been leaving a shopping center when an unkempt man walked up to her and asked “Were you on the motorcycle when Kurt was killed?”
Ten years before, in high school, she had a boyfriend named Kurt who had died in a motorcycle accident. Still she had no idea who this man was.
Finally, he said, “it’s me, Rick Chase.” She tried to politely get away but he followed her to her car and begged her for a lift. She quickly drove away.
Police Arrest Richard Chase
The police ran a background check on him and found his registration of a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Detectives and a team of police went to his apartment, where they asked to speak with him. He refused; the detectives and the police hid down the hallway and waited for him to leave. When he did leave he was holding a bloodstained box; his parka and shoes were likewise bloodstained. Police arrested him and inside the box were pieces of shredded, blood-soaked wallpaper, and the bloodstained .22. Richard claimed that the bloody wallpaper and bloody gun were a result of his killing several dogs but they also found that he was carrying Dan Meredith’s wallet.
Lt. Ray Biondi, along with Ressler and Vorpagel, performed a search of Chase’s apartment. They found the walls, floor, ceiling, refrigerator, and all of Chase’s eating and drinking utensils soaked in blood; on the counter was the blender Chase used to make his smoothies. It was caked in coagulated blood and the rotting matter of internal organs.
Inside the refrigerator, police found several animal body parts wrapped in aluminum foil. Their brains were in a Tupperware container. Body parts wrapped in Saran Wrap were linked to the baby boy that had been missing from the last murder. Several of Evelyn Miroth and Teresa Wallin’s internal organs were also found. On another counter were several pet collars; on his kitchen table he had spread out numerous diagrams depicting various aspects of human biology.
Richard Chase Tries to Avoid The Death Penalty
In 1979 he stood trial for 6 counts of murder. To avoid the death penalty, the defense tried to have Rick found guilty of second-degree murder, which would result in a life sentence. Their case hinged on his history of mental illness and the lack of planning in his crimes. They felt this evidence showed that the crimes were not premeditated.
On May 8 the jury found Rick guilty of six counts of first-degree murder. The defense asked for a clemency hearing, in which a judge determined that he was not legally insane; Rick Chase was sentenced to die in the gas chamber.
Robert Ressler Interview Richard Chase
Rick Chase also granted a series of interviews with Robert Ressler. During these interview 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. Richard Chase 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. He believed that the prison officials were in league with the Nazis and attempting to kill him.
Richard Chase Commits Suicide
On December 26, 1980, a guard doing cell checks found Rick lying awkwardly on his bed, not breathing. An autopsy determined that he committed suicide with an overdose of prison doctor-prescribed antidepressants that he had been saving up for the last few weeks.
Resources
- Richard Trenton Chase
- Richard T Chase
- The Sacramento Vampire
- The Story Of Richard Chase, The Serial Killer Called The Vampire Killer