American Monsters: Richard Chase - "The Vampire of Sacramento"

0:00 Speaker 1: Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening now.

0:11 Speaker 2: I true crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish, the strange in the darkly comic, a podcast that's about more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension, home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories, the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it all just so long as it's kind of murdery.

0:40 Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, welcome. I am Zabnodelberg, and this is kind of murdery. Now you may have already noticed this, but season seven has a particular theme. It's red, white and blood as we tackle American monsters with the occasional American outlaw thrown in for good measure. But today I'm here to tell you about a real monster, a man whose darkness and depravity has few, if any comparisons. I'm referring to Richard Chase, whose violent, horrifying and unique madness manifested almost as a Gothic mythology, but with terrible, tragic, unimaginable real world consequences.

1:23 Speaker 3: Now, as you know, I'm not much of one for trigger warnings, but I have to tell you the story that's to come is a truly, truly awful story, and if you're not familiar with it, you probably can't imagine just how bad it is. And if you don't want to find out, turn back now. Otherwise, I suggest you prepare yourself, and when you're ready, please join me as we uncover what truths we can and solve what mysteries we may about a true American monster kind of murderies. Richard Chase, The Vampire of Sacramento starts now.

2:10 Speaker 3: Richard Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento stands apart even in the twisted world of serial killers. From a young age, he was gripped by powerful delusions, not just fleeting thoughts, but deeply ingrained beliefs that dictated his every move, every aspect of his life. These weren't mere childhood fantasies. They weren't imaginary friends. They were dark, pervasive ideas that set the stage for the horrors that he would later unleash. And these delusions would lead him down a path that resulted in terrible bloodshed and horror Chase etched his name into infamy through a series of brutal murders that shocked Sacramento, California, in the late nineteen seventies.

2:51 Speaker 3: He didn't just kill, he mutilated, leaving behind scenes of unimaginable depravity. Six victims fell prey to his deranged mind, each one marking another descent into deeper and deeper madness, and his nickname, the Vampire of Sacramento wasn't just a moniker. It was a chilling reflection of his deeds. After each kill, Chase would drink the blood of his victims, as if their life blood could somehow fill the dark void within him. Of course, Chase himself didn't see it in such pop psychology terms.

3:23 Speaker 3: He wasn't trying to overcome a yawning sense of unworthiness. He actually believed that his blood was slowly turning into dust and needed to be constantly replenished with fresh supply. Yet as grotesque as that sounds, Chase's blood drinking wasn't even the most disturbing aspect of his crimes. Beneath the surface of his psyche, there were layers of darkness that went beyond the acts of a mere killer. Revealing a man whose mind had truly fractured. From an early age, Richard exhibited clear signs that something was deeply wrong.

3:59 Speaker 3: He was a troubled child whose behavior hinted at the darkness within him. But instead of receiving the help he desperately needed, he was met with the harsh discipline of his father, a man known for his strictness, and at times, young Richard was physically abused. Any chance at psychological intervention was smothered under a rigid household where seeking health was not an option. As Chase grew up, so did the manifestations of his disturbed mind. His childhood unhappiness gave way to more sinister behaviors during adolescence.

4:30 Speaker 3: He set small fires, a classic cry for attention and control in a life where he had none. He also wet the bed with alarming frequency, a troubling sign that often correlates with deeper psychological issues. And then there was his cruelty towards animals. Chase didn't just harm them, didn't just kill them. He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in it, a chilling precursor to the violence that he would later inflict on human victims. Each of these behaviors taken individually might have been a red flag, but together they wore a neon sign screaming that Richard Chase was on a path to destruction both his and others.

5:07 Speaker 3: Yet, in a home where the only response to a troubled child was his father's heavy hand, these warning signs were ignored, allowing his sickness to fester unchecked. The particular behaviors that I've mentioned, setting fires, bedwetting, and cruelty to animals aren't just random acts of a troubled child. They form a pattern that is known in the field of psychiatry as the McDonald triad or the triangle of sociopathy. Proposed by psychiatrist J. M. McDonald in nineteen sixty three, this triad was suggested as a predicator of sociopathy, a sign that perhaps a person might be on a path towards severe antisocial behavior or even violence, and Richard Chase was a proof of theory that McDonald could not possibly have wished for.

5:57 Speaker 3: When Richard's father allegedly kicked him out of the house, his problems escalated. With no supervision and no support system, Chase spiraled deeper into mental illness, turning to alcohol and drugs. What started as an escape quickly morphed into full blown substance abuse, compounding the already severe symptoms of his unhinged mind. The psychotropic drugs that Chase consumed didn't offer relief. They made things worse. His delusions intensified, becoming more vivid and terrifying. Like the vampire whose name he would later be infamously tied to, Chase started to believe that his heart had stopped beating.

6:33 Speaker 3: He became convinced, on several occasions that he was no longer alive, that he was nothing more than a walking corpse, a living dead man navigating a world that made less and less sense to him. But even in his delusional state, Chase didn't entirely neglect his health, at least not in the way that most people would expect. He became convinced that his body was in desperate need of vitamin C and resorted to a bizarre method of supplementation. Instead of simply eating oranges, he reportedly pressed whole oranges against his forehead, believing that his brain could absorb the nutrients directly through his skin.

7:08 Speaker 3: This wasn't just a strange habit, It was a clear manifestation of his deteriorating grip on reality, where logic was contorted into something almost unrecognizable. One of Richard Chase's most unsettling delusions revolved around his own skull. He believed that his cranial bones had split apart and were shifting beneath his skin, moving around like disjointed puzzle pieces trying to fit together in the wrong places. This delusion was so powerful, so all consuming, that he shaved his head in a desperate attempt to monitor the movements of his bones, hoping to keep track of the chaos that he believed was happening just beneath the surface.

7:47 Speaker 3: At twenty five years old, Chase injected himself with rabbit's blood. The experiment made him violently ill, and finally the signs of his paranoid schizophrenia were impossible to ignore. In nineteen seven, seventy five, he was formally diagnosed and locked away in a psychiatric hospital. Authorities hoped that psychiatric care would temper Chase's drive towards self destruction. Inside the hospital, his obsession with blood earned him the nickname Dracula. The staff thought they had seen at all but Chase was something else.

8:21 Speaker 3: He caught small birds, killed them, and tried to drink their blood. He was convinced his own blood was turning to dust, poisoned by some unseen force, and that consuming fresh blood was the only way to stop it. Despite these behaviors, the hospital staff eventually convinced themselves that they had managed to rehabilitate him, and in nineteen seventy six, just a year after he was committed, they released Chase into the care of his mother. It was a decision that would have tragic consequences. Far from getting better, Richard Chase was spiraling further into his delusions, and the worst, by far the worst was yet to come.

8:59 Speaker 3: Though Chase had been released into his mother's care, there was no legal requirement forcing him to remain under her roof, and it wasn't long before he decided to leave. His paranoia fractured even the bond with his mother as he became convinced that she was poisoning him. Seeking distance, Chase moved into an apartment with a group of young men he considered friends. But this wasn't a move towards stability. It was just another step deeper into his own world of horrific fantasy. The men he lived with noticed that their new roommate was an odd duck, but they had no idea of the true obsidian darkness that was festering just beneath the surface.

9:41 Speaker 3: You see, his so called friends didn't actually know Chase that well, and it quickly became clear that he wasn't the kind of man they could reason with. His habits grew more disturbed by the day. He was constantly high, caught in a haze of drugs that left him disconnected from reality. Then there was the way he paraded around the apartment without a stitch of clothing, as if boundaries, social or otherwise no longer applied to him. When his roommates finally confronted him, asking him to leave, Chase didn't just refuse.

10:09 Speaker 3: He dug in he wasn't going anywhere. They could see it in his eyes, the wildness, the unpredictability. For them, pushing him out wasn't worth the risk, so instead they did what seemed safest. They packed up and left, abandoning the apartment to him. Chase, now alone had all the space he needed to let his delusions grow unchecked. The man who once shared a home with others. Now lived in a private hell of his own making, where the walls were closing in and reality was slipping further and further out of reach.

10:39 Speaker 3: In self imposed solitary confinement, Richard Chase's mind began to unravel even further. Isolation had a way of worsening his already fragile state, and this time was no different. Left to his own devices, his old obsession with blood resurfaced with a vengeance. He started capturing small animals, strays, birds, anything he could get his hands on. But he didn't just kill them. He consumed them in the most grotesque ways imaginable. Sometimes he ate them raw, savoring the taste of fresh blood. Other times he'd blend their organs with soda, creating a macabre cocktail that he would then drink, convinced it was sustaining him and keeping whatever force he believed was destroying him at bay.

11:20 Speaker 3: It was a helter skelter descent into madness, fueled by blood and driven by a mind that had long since lost its grip its bearings on anything remotely resembling reality. In August of nineteen seventy seven, Richard Chase's nightmare world collided with reality in the remote Lake Tahoe area. Late one night, Nevada police found him wandering drenched in blood, a sight that should have set off alarms. In the back of his pickup, they discovered a bucket containing a liver. Chase offered no explanation that made any sense, but the police, after determining the blood an organ or from a cow, decided to let him go.

12:02 Speaker 3: Much like his swift release from the psychiatric hospital, this was another critical moment where Chase slipped through the cracks, eluding the systems designed to catch men like him before they spiraled completely out of control. The chance to intervene to stop the train of terrors that was coming was lost. Instead, Chase was once again left to his own devices, alone and unchecked. As his mania and delusions tightened their grip on him, the line between his fantasies and reality blurred, further, driving him to a place where the unthinkable seemed not only possible, but inevitable, and with no one to pull him back from the edge, Richard Chase was about to cross that final deadly line and plunge head first into a murderous abyss.

12:49 Speaker 3: On December twenty ninth, nineteen seventy seven, Richard Chase was stewing in frustration and loneliness. The holidays had come and gone, and his mother, the last tether to anything resembling family, had refused to let him come home for Christmas. The rejection festered inside him like an untreated wound, turning his anger into something darker, more dangerous. That evening, as he aimlessly drove through the streets, something inside him snapped. Ambrose Griffin, a fifty one year old man who was helping his wife carry a groceries to their home, crossed paths with Richard Chase at exactly the wrong moment.

13:23 Speaker 3: Chase didn't know Griffin. He didn't have a reason, at least not one rooted in reality. But that didn't matter. He pulled out a twenty two caliber pistol and, without hesitation, shot Griffin in the chest from his car. Ambrose Griffin became the first name on a list that would grow far too long for Chase. This wasn't just a random act of violence. It was the spark that ignited an obsession, one that would drive him deeper into his delusions and onto a path of even greater bloodshed. On January twenty third, nineteen seventy eight, Richard Chase found his way into the home of Teresa Wallen, a young woman who was pregnant and alone.

14:02 Speaker 3: Her front door was unlocked, a small, seemingly insignificant detail to most, but to Chase, it was everything. He would later tell investigators that an unlocked door was an invitation, a sign that he was meant to be there, a justification for the horrors he was about to unleash. So on that night, January twenty third, nineteen seventy eight, Richard Chase walked up to Teresa Wallin's home and went inside, and what happened next was a pure, unconceivable nightmare. Richard Chase didn't hesitate.

14:35 Speaker 3: He shot Teresa Wallin three times with the same twenty two caliber pistol he'd used on Ambrose Griffin. But the gunshots were just the beginning. Chase was driven by something darker, much darker, something that didn't stop at pulling a trigger. He grabbed a butcher knife and stabbed her repeatedly, a frenzy of violence that didn't end until he started cutting out her organs. But still, the Vampire of Sacramento wasn't done. His obsession with blood took over. He found a yogurt container, and with a sick sort of practicality, he used it to drink her blood.

15:08 Speaker 3: This wasn't just a murder, It was something far worse, an act that cemented Richard Chase as a true American monster. And then, from that day on, every victim he chose had something in common. They all left their door unlocked. To Chase, that one simple mistake was all the excuse he needed. It was if he believed that that one lapse was an open invitation for the violations that his monster's heart and mind lusted after. Chase's descent into darkness reached its horrific peak on January twenty seventh, nineteen seventy eight, just four days after the murder of Teresa Wallen.

15:47 Speaker 3: This time he found his way into Evelyn Mirov's home. The door was unlocked, a small but fatal mistake. Inside Chase bound not just Evelyn, but also her six year old son Jason, her twenty two month old nephew David, and a family friend named Dan Meredith. What happened next was a level of brutality that defies comprehension. Dan Meredith was the first to die, shot in the head as he stepped into the hallway. Chase didn't hesitate. He killed Meredith and took his car keys. But that was just the start.

16:19 Speaker 3: The vampire of Sacramento's crimes went beyond murder. He was driven by something even more depraved. Cannibalism and necrophilia had become part of his sick rituals, and that day he indulged in both. Inside that house, Chase turned a place of safety and comfort into a charnel house of madness where no one, not even the children or the baby, were spared. You see, the horror didn't end with Dan Meredith. When investigators arrived, they found Evelyn and her six year old son, Jason, in her bedroom.

16:53 Speaker 3: Jason had been shot twice in the head, his child's life snuffed out in an instant. But what he'd done to Evelyn was even more gruesome. Her body had been partially cannibalized, her stomach slashed open, multiple organs missing. Chase had even tried, unsuccessfully to remove one of her eyes, and as if that weren't enough, her corpse had been violated in the most unspeakable way. But the nightmare didn't end there. The baby, David Ferrera, whom Evelyn had been babysitting, was nowhere to be found.

17:24 Speaker 3: His tiny body wasn't discovered until months later, decapitated and discarded in a box behind a church. It was the final horrifying reminder of the depths of Richard Chase's depravity, a man who took not only lives, but desecrated them in a way that defies all understanding. The full story of that night's horrors came to light during Richard Chase's trial. As it turned out, the arrival of an unexpected visitor had startled the vampire of Sacramento. Panicked, Chase grabbed the body of little David Ferrera and fled the scene, speeding away in dan meredith stolen car.

18:01 Speaker 3: The visitor, sensing something was terribly wrong, alerted a neighbor, and the neighbor didn't hesitate, he called the cops. When the authorities arrived, they found a blood bath, but they also found something that would seal Chase's fate, his finger prints left behind in Evelyn Maroth's blood. The police wasted no time in tracking Chase down. When they entered his apartment, they found a place that mirrored the chaos in his mind. Every utensil in the kitchen was stained with blood, and inside his fridge they made a grisly discovery human brains.

18:32 Speaker 3: It was the final, undeniable proof of the unimaginable axe Chase had committed, the axe that turned him from a troubled man into a name that would forever be linked with depravity. The trial of the Vampire of Sacramento was nothing short of sensational. It began on January second, nineteen seventy nine, and stretched on for five long months, with every gruesome detail of his crimes laid bare in the court room. The defense attorneys didn't argue the facts, those were indisputable. Instead, they focused on Chase's state of mind.

19:03 Speaker 3: They rejected the death penalty, arguing that he was not guilty by reason of insanity. Chase, they contended, wasn't fully aware of what he was doing, driven as he was by powerful delusions that had ruled his life for years. But the evidence was damning and atrocious, and in the end, it took the jury just five hours of deliberation to reach their decision. Despite the defense's arguments the weight of the evidence was undeniable, the jury sided with the prosecution, finding Richard Chase guilty of six counts of murder.

19:34 Speaker 3: Chase's delusions didn't absolve him of the horrors he'd inflicted. The sentence was death, to be carried out by gas chamber, and so the vampire killer of Sacramento, who had brought terror to so many would meet his end on death row, condemned for the monster's atrocities that shocked a nation. Once Richard Chase was locked away, even the hardened criminals he was surrounded by couldn't stomach the details of his crimes. His reputation as the vampire Killer preceded him, and it left a bad taste in the mouths of his fellow inmates.

20:07 Speaker 3: They were so revolted by what he'd done that they tried to push him toward taking his own life, seeing it as a fitting in for a man who had committed such unspeakable acts. Behind bars, Chase found himself isolated not just by the walls of his cell, but by the revulsion of those who shared the prison with him, and in the end, Richard Chase did exactly what his fellow inmates had pushed him toward. He began hoarding the anti anxiety medication given to him by the jail staff, quietly collecting enough pills to end his own life.

20:39 Speaker 3: And on December twenty sixth, nineteen eighty, the day after Christmas, Richard Chase was found dead in his jail cell from a fatal overdose. The man who had taken so many lives with such brutal disregard, took his own life in silence, alone in the confines of his cell. The vampire of Sacramento, who spread dead and atrocity like a biblical pestilence, finally met his own end, leaving behind a legacy so terrible that it will never be forgotten. Some stories don't have heroes. Richard Chase was the kind of evil that crawls out from the darkest corners of the human mind, something beyond reason, beyond understanding.

21:20 Speaker 3: You can try to make sense of it, but you won't find any The only thing we can hope to do is learn something from it. Lock your doors, pay attention to the world around you. Evil like this doesn't knock. It walks right in when you're not looking. Don't let it, and remember some people can't be saved, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise. When the warning signs are there, don't ignore them. Act before it's too late, because in the end, the only thing that stops a monster is someone who's willing to step up and do what needs to be done.

21:53 Speaker 3: Sometimes compassion isn't really compassion. It's dereliction. Letting Richard Chase out of the psychiatic hospital after barely a year, or letting the man the police found covered in blood with a liver in a bucket go because it turned out to be a cow's liver and cow's blood. That wasn't compassion. That wasn't giving a young man a second chance. It was kicking a can of horrors down the street for someone else to deal with, for someone else to pick up and put in the trash. And in the case of Richard Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento, the tragedies contained in that can of horrors nearly defied description.

22:31 Speaker 3: And remember the old legends, folks, Vampires can't enter your house without an invitation, But the interpretation of what is an invitation, well that's up to them. So please please please lock your doors. I'm Zevan Odelberg, and this has been kind of murdery.

22:52 Speaker 1: If you like the show, please subscribe to review, and tell your friends. You can find us on social media at kind of Murdery or email at kind of Murdery at gmail dot com.