Richard Trenton Chase (May
23, 1950 – December 26, 1980) was an American
serial killer who killed six people in the
span of a month in Sacramento, California
. He was nicknamed "The Vampire of
Sacramento" because he drank his victims' blood and
cannibalized their remains. He did this as part
of a
delusion that he needed to prevent
Nazis from turning his blood into powder via
poison they had planted beneath his soap dish.
Childhood
A self-described victim of
abuse at the
hands of his mother, Chase exhibited by the age of 10 evidence of
the
Macdonald triad:
bedwetting,
pyromania,
and
zoosadism (allegations which were
later called into question). In his adolescence, he was known as an
alcoholic and a chronic drug abuser. He suffered from
erectile dysfunction due to
"psychological problems stemming from repressed anger".
Early adulthood
Chase developed
hypochondria as he
matured. He often complained that his heart would occasionally
"stop beating", or that "someone had stolen his
pulmonary artery". He would hold oranges on
his head, believing the
Vitamin C would be
absorbed by his brain via
diffusion. Chase
also believed that his
cranial bones
had become separated and were moving around, so he shaved his head
in order to watch this activity.
After leaving his mother's house (believing she was attempting to
poison him), Chase rented an apartment with
friends. Once he moved in, he immediately boarded up his bedroom
door and created an "escape hatch" through his closet wall so "no
one can sneak up on me". Chase's roommates complained that he was
constantly intoxicated on
alcohol,
marijuana, and
acid.
Chase would also walk around the apartment nude, even in front of
company. Chase's roommates demanded that he move out. When he
refused, the roommates moved out instead.
Once alone in the apartment, Chase began to capture, kill, and
disembowel various animals, which he would then devour raw,
sometimes mixing the raw organs with Coca-Cola in a blender and
drinking the concoction like a milkshake. Chase reasoned that by
ingesting the creatures he was preventing his heart from
shrinking.
Institutionalization
In 1975, Chase was involuntarily committed to a mental institution
after being taken to a hospital for
blood poisoning, which he contracted after
injecting rabbit's blood into his veins. He often shared with the
staff
fantasies about killing
rabbits. He was once found with blood smeared around his mouth.
Chase said, "I cut myself shaving", but hospital staff discovered
he had drunk the blood of birds; he had thrown the birds' corpses
out of his hospital room window. Staff began referring to him as
"
Dracula".
In one of the many incidents in which he was held at the
institution, he substituted the blood from the therapy-dog to curb
his addiction. He claimed he obtained the syringes from cracking
open the disposable boxes left in the doctor's offices. It took
them weeks before they figured it out, and now they have no longer
brought any therapeutic animals in.
There were arguments as to whether Chase was
schizophrenic or suffering from a drug-induced
psychosis.
After undergoing a battery of treatments involving
psychotropic drugs, Chase was deemed no longer
a danger to society and, in 1976, he was released under the
recognizance of his mother.
Chase's mother decided that he did not need to be on the prescribed
antipsychotic medication, stating it
made her son "a zombie". She weaned him off the medication and got
Chase his own apartment.
Later
investigation uncovered that in mid-1977, Chase was stopped and
arrested by a Native American agent
on a reservation in the Lake Tahoe
area. He was wearing a blood-soaked shirt,
and driving a truck containing guns and a bucket of blood. He
convinced police that it was a misunderstanding involving an animal
he'd hunted. No charges were filed.
Murders
On December 29, 1977, Chase killed his first victim in a
drive-by shooting. The victim, Ambrose
Griffin, was a 51-year-old engineer and father of two. After the
shooting, one of Griffin's sons reported seeing a neighbor walking
around their East Sacramento neighborhood with a .22 calibre rifle.
The neighbor's rifle was seized, but
ballistics tests determined that it was not the
murder weapon.
On January 11, 1978, Chase asked his neighbor for a cigarette and
then forcibly restrained her until she gave him every cigarette in
the house.
Two weeks later, he attempted to enter the home of another woman
but, finding that her doors were locked, walked away; Chase later
told detectives that he took locked doors as a sign that he was not
welcome, but that unlocked doors were an invitation to come inside.
He was later chased off by a returning couple as he pilfered
belongings from their home and urinated and defecated on their beds
and clothing.
Teresa Wallin was Chase's next victim on January 21. Three months
pregnant, Wallin was surprised at her home by Chase, who shot her
three times, killing her. He then had
sex
with the corpse, mutilated it, and bathed in the dead woman's
blood.
Two days after killing Wallin, Chase purchased two puppies from a
neighbor. He killed them and drank their blood.
On January 27, Chase committed his final murders. Entering the home
of 38-year-old Evelyn Miroth, he encountered her friend, Danny
Meredith, whom he shot with his .22 handgun. Stealing Meredith's
wallet and car keys, he rampaged through the house, fatally
shooting Miroth, her six-year-old son Jason, and her 22-month-old
nephew, David. As with Wallin, Chase engaged in
necrophilia and
cannibalism with Miroth's corpse.
A six-year-old girl with whom Jason Miroth had a playdate knocked
on the door, startling Chase, who fled the scene in Meredith's car,
taking David's body with him. The girl alerted a neighbor, who
alerted police. Upon entering the home, police discovered that
Chase had left perfect handprints and shoe imprints in Miroth's
blood.
Chase returned to his apartment on Watt Ave., where he drank
David's blood and ate several of the child's internal organs
(including the child's brain) before disposing of the body at a
nearby church.
When police raided Chase's residence, he made no effort to hide his
crimes, and there was blood-caked evidence throughout his house.
Yet Chase maintained his innocence. "All I did was kill a couple of
dogs", Chase said, telling the police he'd be willing to plead
guilty to
animal cruelty. While
there, authorities found further evidence for him to stand
trial.
Aftermath
In 1979, 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 in the highly publicized case found Chase guilty
of six counts of
first degree
murder and Chase was sentenced to die in the
gas chamber. They rejected the argument that he
was
not guilty by
reason of insanity. His fellow inmates, aware of the graphic
and bizarre nature of Chase's crimes, feared him, and according to
prison officials, they often tried to convince 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. Critics contend that Chase was putting on an act for
Ressler in order to gain public sympathy and get his insanity plea
reconsidered on appeal, thus avoiding the death sentence.
On December 26, 1980, a guard doing cell checks found Chase 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 over the last few weeks.
Fictional portrayals
The 1988 movie
Rampage was
loosely based on Chase's crimes.
Notes and references
- Amanda
Howard, Martin
Smith: River of Blood, Universal Publishers (August
30, 2004), ISBN 978-1581125184, pp. 82 accessed via Google Books
- Richard Chase - Profile of Serial Killer
Chase
- Richard Trenton Chase
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