Serial Killer of the Month – Richard Chase “The Sacramento Vampire”

“How do you get a Goth out of a tree? Cut the rope.”

On a Monday in 1978, a pregnant 22-year-old newlywed Teresa Wallin was home, having taken the day off to catch up on household chores. A tall man, scruffy and unkempt, stepped into her front room holding a .22-caliber pistol in one hand. They stared at each other for a moment. The man fired a slug into her brain, and one into her chest, but only the third shot, to her temple, killed her. He dragged her body to the master bedroom and cut her belly open with a kitchen knife. He took an empty yogurt cup and dipped it into the tureen of her abdomen and, having filled it with blood, he drank it.

Richard Chase didn’t start off this way. He started out a smart young man with a good attitude and smarts, and by the time he should have, he almost didn’t graduate from high-school. After graduating high school, he started to neglect his own washing, and would often make unintelligible noises instead of talking. He also started to make bizarre complaints about his own health: that his aorta had been stolen, that he was being poisoned. His mother found him unconscious and in shock. It was revealed that he had drunk the blood of two rabbits which he claimed had been laced with acid. He was admitted to a psych ward.

In the loony-bin, he drank the blood from birds he would catch and behead with his own teeth. So, for some reason, a year later he was released.

It wasn’t long before pets started disappearing in the neighborhood where he lived. Though he lived in an apartment in Sacramento that didn’t allow pets, neighbors would see him bring home dogs and then hear nothing of them. No barking, nothing.

On August 3, 1977, Chase’s Ford Ranchero got stuck out in the desert, on an Indian reservation. He was found naked and covered with blood some miles away. And in the truck police found two blood-smeared rifles and a galvanized bucket full of blood. It turned out to be cow blood. He was working his way up the food chain.

Early that December, he added a .22-caliber handgun to his arsenal. He then shot and killed 51-year-old Ambrose Griffin. This began a killing spree that came to include five victims, the last of which was Teresa Wallin. Chase was seen covered in blood leaving Wallin’s house in broad-daylight.

It was only a couple of days before they found Chase’s apartment. When the police went in it was covered floor to ceiling in blood and gore. There was a blender filled with dried blood and flesh.

Found guilty of five murders, Chase was sentenced to death in the gas chamber. And to see that he would get there, the police kept him sedated with Sinequan. But Chase, in something resembling an intelligent act, hoarded them, and then overdosed, effectively cheating the state of California out of one of its more enjoyable activities…

Read more Serial Killer of the Month from the SLUG Archives:
Serial Killer of the Month: Kenneth Bianchi
Serial Killer of the Month: Henry Lee Lucas

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