Born on May 23, 1950, Richard Chase was later to become one of America’s most notorious serial killers. Earning the nickname, “Vampire of Sacramento,” he terrorized California and drank the blood of his victims to satisfy a persistent delusion. Under the belief that Nazis were attempting to turn his blood into powder, he drank blood to ward off this medical disaster.

Early Life of Richard Chase

Born into a strict family and subject to much physical abuse by his father, Richard Chase began showing signs of mental illness early. He became dependent on alcohol in his childhood and made a habit of starting fires and mutilating animals. As a teenager, he could not sustain normal sexual function without the aid of disturbing practices, such as necrophilia and animal murder. His delusions began around this time and his father forced him to move to his own apartment, where he began to eat animals raw after he killed them.

In 1975, Richard Chase was briefly institutionalized and given a heavy treatment of psychotropic drugs. Even though he killed animals while in the institution, they shortly released him and ceased his treatment of anti-schizophrenic drugs. This led to a miasma of worse behavior. He neglected his health, developed an obsession with handguns, and was found more than once covered in blood and screaming somewhere in the neighborhood.

In 1977, Chase fired his .22 into someone’s kitchen. No one was harmed, but it sparked something in him. Two days later, he shot and killed Ambrose Griffin in a random drive-by. Griffin was officially the first murder victim, but Chase took to breaking and entering, stealing, and generally victimizing behavior in the days following.

First Murder

In January 1978, Richard Chase was breaking and entering homes when he randomly entered the house of David and Teresa Wallin. David was at work and Teresa left the door unlocked to take out the garbage. Chase ambushed her and shot her with the same gun used to kill Griffin. He then raped her body after she died from her head wounds, and carved it up with a butcher knife. He drank the blood of the organs and bathed in it and finished the crime by stuffing dog feces into the mouth of the corpse.

Only two days after, Chase entered the home of Evelyn Miroth. She was babysitting her two-year-old nephew David and her son Jason. A neighbor named Dan Meredith was also in the house. With the same gun from the other murders, he shot Dan in the head. Then he murdered the two children as well. After killing Evelyn, he sodomized the corpse and drank blood from the neck. Then he allowed blood to pool in her abdomen before draining and drinking it. He was a sloppy killer though, as he left a lot of evidence laying around the crime scene. He stole David’s body and consumed the brain matter and blood. Before he left it at a nearby church, he mutilated the corpse.

Arrest and Death

Shortly thereafter, he was arrested because of the evidence he left behind. The police found the body parts of his victims in his apartment. Richard Chase was sentenced to death in prison by means of the gas chamber. Before the system could kill him, he saved up his prescribed anti-depressants and overdosed on them in his cell, effectively ending his life.

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Information from this article was pulled from many sources, consolidated on the website murderpedia.com.