Richard Chase Profile"The Vampire of Sacramento"By: L

auren Voke

s

“If the door was locked, that means you're not welcome.”

Life Before the MurdersFamily Life:

• Abused by his Mother & Father as a child• Divorced parents• Financial problems, lost house

Teenage years:• Drug and alcohol user• Had short term girlfriends, learned he was unable to become aroused

through conventional sex, but only through killing, mutilating, and drinking the blood of animals

• Schizophrenic and paranoid that his organs were moving around and his blood was turning into powder

• Obsession with his health and bodily functions heightened• Began eating dead, raw animals, making smoothies out of them claiming

it "prevented his heart from shrinking"

Education:• American River College

Career:• No known jobs

“Crimes” Committed as a

Teen0Began to capture, kill, and disembowel various animals, which he would then devour raw

0Put the entrails of the animals he had killed into a blender in order to make smoothies

0Killed the birds near his hospital room by breaking their necks and drinking their blood

0Killed and ate numerous amounts of peoples pets0Never caught for this until after his murders

Crimes CommittedAmbrose Griffin (51)-

December 29th 1997• Victim of a random drive by shooting• Killed with two bullets from a .22 caliber pistol• Man with brown hair, mid twenties and had license plate

number of 219EEPTeresa Wallin – January 23rd 1978• Husband David Wallin discovered body• Three months pregnant when she died• Killed by bullet through the skull• Chase took body to the bedroom, sexually

assaulted her and drained the blood from her body & drank itEvelyn Miroth (38), son Jason (6),

nephew David Ferreira (22 months),& boyfriend Daniel Meredith(51) – January 27th 1978• Police found out Chase drank Evenlyn’s blood and mutilated the baby’s body in

the bathtub• Knock at door startled Chase and he took David’s body with him• On March 24th David’s body was found buried in a box and left on a street.

EvidenceA clear footprint that was left at the crime scene of Evelyn Meredith's murder. Also said to have been matched to a footprint left at a previous crime scene of Teresa Wallin.

Blender owned by Chase to prepare his “smoothies”

The .22 caliber gun purchased for the murders was a semiautomatic handgun. The police gathered this as evidence from the gun registration. The gun was sold on December 1977, to Richard Chase on Watt Ave. On January 10th Chase had purchased ammunition.

Sentence• Was legally sane at the time of the crimes and was

guilty for six counts of murder. • Sentenced to death on May 8, 1979. • Committed suicide with an overdose of prison

doctor-prescribed antidepressants that he had been saving up for the last few weeks on December 26, 1980

“If anything goes wrong, you die first.”

Sociological Theory

Anomie Theory & Behavioral TheoryAs a kid, Chase was constantly beaten by his father and sometimes his

mother. At just age 10 he killed his first animal. He was labeled as Schizophrenic and was constantly paranoid. Growing up he turned to drugs and alcohol which he heavily used. His friends rejected him, while his parents were about to get a divorce and his behavioral problems took a new high. He began to believe his heart was actually shrinking and the only way to resolve the problem was to drink blood so the shrinking would stop. His normal cultural goal was to stay alive, but he was doing so by drinking the blood from others because he believed he had this irrational problem. What he is doing is illegal because he is invading others homes and killing them. This would be considered Innovation. I think this could also tie in with Behavioral Theory because he learned from a young age that violence was an everyday occurrence in the Chase household. He could have learned that violence was acceptable and doing deviant things was normal to him.

Cultural References

0 In 1992, 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.

0 A book made about the killings of Richard Chase, “The Dracula Killer” by Lt. Ray Biondi and Walt Hecox

0 1998 movie Rampage based on his crimes0 Deadly Obsessions: a two hour documentary on Richard

Chase (2011)0 CSI: Blood Hungry: based off his crimes