The Vampire of Sacramento

Richard Trenton Chase was born in Santa Claria, California on 23rd May 1950. Growing up in a typical dysfunctional 1950s family, his parents regularly argued. and “the strap” was the usual tool for childhood discipline. By the age of 10, Chase was displaying all three trademarks of the Macdonald Triad - bed wetting, arson, and animal cruelty, which may indicate future aggression and violence in adulthood. As Chase matured he developed severe hypochondria. His complaints included believing that his heart would stop beating or that someone had stolen his pulmonary artery; vitamin C deficiency which he would hold oranges on his head believing it would be absorbed into his brain. Richard Trenton chase also shaved his head so that he would be able to watch his skull separate and move.

Despite his delusional behavior, Chase maintained a small social circle. however, he was unable to sustain a relationship with women in part due to his bizarre behavior and secondly due to his impotence. This condition weighed so heavily on Chase that he sought out psychiatric help. Unable to assist Chase with his problem the psychiatrist noted that it was a result of his severe mental disorder and repressed anger.

After turning 18, Chase moved out of his parent's home and in with roommates. This new living arrangement did not last long, due to his bizarre behavior and the fact that he had begun to heavily use drugs. The roommates insisted that Chase move out, but he refused and the roommates moved out instead. `Unable to financially maintain living on his own, Richard Trenton Chase was forced to move back in with his mother. This was another short stay as he believed that she was trying to poison him. Chases’ father arranged and paid for an apartment for him to live in.

Living on his own, Chase’s health delusions became increasingly worse, frequently presenting himself to the hospital emergency department searching for help. His ailments included complaints that someone had stolen his pulmonary artery, that his stomach was backward and that his heart had stopped beating. He was diagnosed as being a paranoid schizophrenic and spent a short time under psychiatric observation, but soon released. Eventually, Chase’s delusional mind invented a way to cure his shrinking heart and impotence. 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.

In 1975, Chase suffering from blood poisoning after injecting the blood of a rabbit into his veins was involuntarily hospitalized. Despite Chase’s schizophrenia being medication-resistant and his continuing psychosis which included an incident where he was found with two dead birds their heads cut off and blood sucked out, he was released to his parents' care in 1976.

Chase received even less support from his mother. Unbelievably, his mother made the decision that Chase no longer needed the anti-schizophrenia medications prescribed and stopped giving him the pills. One afternoon Chase knocked on his mother’s door with a dead cat and when she opened the door he began tearing and biting into the animal. Rather than get the help he needed, she closed the door and walked away. Eventually, she moved him out of the family home, paid his rent and bought his groceries. Left unchecked and without medication, Chase's mental disorders escalated from the need for animal organs and blood to human organs and blood.

Chase’s first murder occurred, on the 29th December 1977, 51-year-old Ambrose Griffin was helping his wife bring in the groceries when he fell dead on the driveway. Initially, Mrs. Griffin believed her husband had had a heart attack, but upon closer inspection, Ambrose had been fatally shot. Police believed it was the work of hooligans joy riding and randomly shooting, as other houses around the neighborhood reported being shot into. For the next month reports of a man lurking around houses and break-ins would be reported to the police. In one of the houses, Chase urinated inside a drawer containing infant clothing and defecated on the bed in a child's room. Interrupted by the owner's return, Chase was attacked but managed to escape and remain unidentified.

On January 23, 1978, Teresa Wallin, home alone and pregnant, was shot three times by Chase. He used the same gun that he had shot Ambrose Griffin the year before. He then had intercourse with her corpse while stabbing her several times with a butcher knife. Chase then removed multiple organs, cut off one of the nipples. and drank the blood. Before leaving, he collected dog feces from the yard and stuffed it into the victim's mouth and down her throat.

It was not long before The Vampire of Sacramento would strike again. Four days later, Chase entered the home of 38-year old Evelyn Miroth but was interrupted by Evelyn’s neighbor knocking on the door. The neighbor entered the house and was confronted with a horrific scene. They immediately called the police.

When investigators arrived, they were immediately aware of the depth of Chase’s insanity. Dan Meredith, a friend of Evelyn's, had been shot once in the head and lay in the hallway. Her six-year-old son Jason was found in the bedroom next to his mother. He had been shot twice in the head. Evelyn’s murder and the desecration of her corpse was beyond disturbing. 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 and there was a failed attempt to remove one of her eyeballs. Missing from the crime scene was Evelyn’s 22-month old nephew David Ferreira. Blood found in the baby’s crib gave police little hope that David was alive. A bloody handprint and footprint found in Meredith’s blood.T

FBI agents Russ Vorpagel and Robert Ressler compiled a profile of the killer; they determined that the killer would be tall, malnourished, a loner, physically unclean and that most importantly, he would continue to kill. 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.

Detectives and a team of police arrested Chase as he left his apartment, carrying a bloodstained box; his parka and shoes were likewise bloodstained. Inside were pieces of shredded, blood-soaked wallpaper, and the bloodstained .22 with which he had committed his murders. A search of his apartment revealed 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; David's brains in a Tupperware container and pieces of his body wrapped in Saran Wrap; and several of Evelyn Miroth and Teresa Wallin's internal organs. On another counter were several pet collars; on his kitchen table he had spread out numerous diagrams depicting various aspects of human biology. During interrogation, Chase refused to tell police the whereabouts of baby David. David Ferreira was not found until 24 March, his remains were left in a cardboard box at the vacant lot between a church and supermarket.

On 2nd January 1979, Richard Trenton Chase pleaded not guilty due to insanity. In order to avoid the death penalty, the defense tried to have Chase 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 lack of planning in his crimes, evidence that they were not premeditated, but the two psychiatrists who had interviewed Chase during his initial interrogation in 1978 deemed him sane at all times of the crimes. On May 8, Richard Trenton Chase, “The Vampire of Sacramento” was found guilty of six counts of first-degree murder, and was sentenced to die in the gas chamber. On Death Row Chase became a feared presence in prison; the other inmates (including several gang members), aware of the graphics and bizarre nature of his crimes, feared him. According to prison officials, they often tried to convince Chase to commit suicide, too fearful to get close enough to him to kill him themselves.

While incarcerated 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. Ressler, along with the prison mental health professionals, felt he ought to be transferred to a psychiatric hospital.

On December 26, 1980, a guard doing cell checks found Chase lying awkwardly on his bed, not breathing. An autopsy determined that Chase committed suicide with an overdose of prison doctor-prescribed antidepressants that he had been saving up for the last few weeks.

This macabre tale has raised a number of serious questions and it is of my opinion, had Richard Trenton Chase received the medical attention and family support that he required, had he not been released from the mental institution. The only victims of this gruesome true crime story would have been some unfortunate small animals and birds.