Hello! Hello! I'm Kenna. I'm Koelle. Welcome back to Diagnosing a Killer. Woo!
I'm Koelle. Episode 7. At night. Taking out the trash. At night. No? No. Oh. I'm a millennial.
Anyways, actually I guess we both technically are millennials. I'm a millennial. You're like...
You're like... No, I'm not. I'm right on the cusp and you're right on the cusp. I think...
What is it? 87 to 96? I don't know. I'd have to Google it. Or no, it would be 89 to 96 and you're 88 and I'm 95.
So literally we're both right on the cusp. Oh. There's like a little graph. Graph? Graph.
Look at this graph. Look at this graph. Millennials are 1981 to 96. Yeah, so I'm a millennial. Wow.
And Casey is a bear. Not on the cusp. I'm not being one. I thought you were on the cusp. No offense.
But Gen Z would be 97 to 2012. So our niece is on the cusp of Jay-Z? Jay-Z. And Rihanna.
Our niece is on the cusp of Gen Z. Jay-Z. Hey Jay-Z, if you're listening, look at so crazy Rihanna.
Generation Alpha is the next one. That's 2010 to 2020. I don't like that. Your son's in that. Generation Alpha.
That sounds so like swole. Actually that makes sense because it's starting over at Gen Z and then Alpha would be the revamp of that.
So who would be the original? Was there ever a generation of Alpha? I don't know. There's the lost generation that's 1883 to 1900.
I would have been pissed if they named me that. What the fuck? The lost generation. Nobody gives a shit. Yeah, gee thanks.
Greatest generation. Wow. That's so big headed. 1901 to 1927. And then the sideline generation. So was Paul in there?
Paul was... I think he was born in like 36 actually. 39? I can't remember. Then the silent generation. 1928 to 1934.
1945. Ugly because that's like the Great Depression and like the wars and stuff. Then the okay boomers. LOL.
Then 1946 to 64. That's mom and dad. Yeah. And D-generation X. That's 1965 to 1980. Then millennials, Gen Z and Generation Alpha.
So next is gonna be Generation Beta. Down the line. Unless they go with a cool name like Greatest Generation.
Times two. Times two. Or 2.0. More better in action. So we actually set up the email like we said last time.
So if you haven't sent us an email please do so because I am still looking in that frickin wind turbine of an inbox that has nothing except for Bushbrough.
We also did set up a Patreon. So we had a number of people asking us if we had a Patreon and they wanted to know how they could support us and that is how.
So it's patreon.com slash diagnosing a killer. You can choose. It's like a monthly kind of thing. So you can choose anywhere from $1 up to how much you'd like to submit monthly.
And then that gives us an opportunity to create merchandise and then we'll do like depending on you know once we get a lot of patrons we will do our patrons I guess is what they're called. Patrons.
We will start doing bonus episodes just for them so you will only be able to access that content if you are a patron and yeah so I'm really excited about that. I know me too. I feel a fish.
It's a fish. Yeah it's definitely a fish. Like a beta. Gen Beta. Generation Beta.
So we wanted to touch on a couple of things before we get into the case. I think you had a couple of things you wanted to say.
Yeah so it was actually confirmed today that the remains that were found on that Wildlife Preserve was actually Brian Laundrie. So Brian Laundrie has been found deceased.
And they, it was the FBI that released the statement and they said that they had compared dental records meaning that he's probably been out there for a long time.
So probably since he's left, since he was reported missing. I mean it's been about a month right since he was reported missing. Yeah I think the last time that he was seen by his parents was the 14th reported missing on the 17th of September.
So yeah it's been about a month since he was last seen. So they did find his backpack and they found a journal of his.
And I know that everybody was saying, or everybody has been saying, oh wow what a coincidence like the parents went out there for the second time since he's been gone.
And they just so happened to find something. I mean if that's all you hear about it seems super sus. Of course. But they had had, this area has been known to flood a lot.
Every year it floods. And so they actually had dive teams that were in that what was like kind of this reservoir.
But it was also very murky and muddy since it again it's a highly vegetated area. So when they were walking through this time it was because a lot of that water had dissipated.
And then that's where they found these remains. He was in the water likely which also can contribute to decomposition. Oh it can increase that stuff. Absolutely.
That's probably why. And not only that but I mean it's hot outside. Yeah. Especially in Florida it's really humid. Of course.
So I'm sure that's why they had to identify him through dental records. So I think that that for me at least, and everybody has their own opinions, but for me at least I don't think that the parents will ever be charged with aiding and abetting
because if he has been passed away since the last time they saw him then they're likely never going to see the inside of a courtroom for that at least. They might have been savvy to where he was going and what he was going to do if he did take his own life.
And it wasn't wildlife or anything like that. They might have known where he was or where his whereabouts were the last time they saw him.
As far as I know they did tell the police officers that when they reported him missing they knew where he was going which was that area. I think it's one of the very first places they checked. Yeah.
And if that is the case that they did divulge that information to the police officers then I don't think they're legally responsible for anything. Yeah. And that was before he was a person of interest.
It's just kind of a bummer because not only did, like you said they're probably not going to be able, or not be able, but they're not going to get charged with anything.
However they didn't really do a hell of a lot to kind of help the investigation. They kind of just sat on their hands and waited for things to unfold the way that they did.
And so it almost makes me think that either he told them what his plan was and I don't know why or how as a parent you allow that to happen knowing whatever which makes me think that they didn't know.
Maybe he told them where he was going but he didn't tell them his plan and maybe he got there and his plans changed because he was overwhelmed with guilt or whatever it was.
Whatever the case, unfortunately the Petita family is not going to get that conversation or that closure of why he did what he did and he's the only one that knows that. And unfortunately they're not going to get closure in that sense which really hurts my heart because
yes they have, I don't even want to say justice, they have the knowledge that he is deceased and they can rest knowing that he's not out there and he's not going to harm anybody else. However, it's nice to have a little bit of an explanation which they're never going to get unfortunately.
I think that the only, at least what I might take away if I was in that situation, which again I've never been in so I'm not one to speak on that.
But a little bit of this all I would find is I don't have to go through a trial. I don't have to listen to the details.
I think about Chris Watts and all the stuff that he put Shanann's family through throughout an entire trial and hearing the details of their grandchildren being harmed and all those horrible ways and what he did to them and having to relive that.
That's got to be so hard. And again, now they know that he is not out there, he is not harming someone and they don't have to ever, I'm sorry, but they never have to look at his face ever a fucking again if they don't want to.
Well, either way, our hearts definitely go out to the Petito family and as unfortunate as it is, like I said, that they're not going to get that closure.
At least they can rest easy knowing that, not easy, but they can have that little bit of a silver lining that he is not out there and causing harm.
So it's just hard because I don't remember a lot of cases growing up where I was actively following it and then we learned new information, new information. All the cases that I know or that I've researched have happened way in the past.
And so it's really a weird thought to be like, oh my god, this is happening right now and it's like a nationwide thing too.
I remember Nicole Brown, Nicole Brown Simpson, I remember Lacey Peterson, that was another big one, Lacey Peterson was interesting.
I remember kind of following that a little bit and then of course the most recent Chris Watts and yeah, I do remember Chris Watts now that I think about it.
Yeah, that was in Tula, that was like two years ago, maybe.
Now we're going to get into the case. It took me a little longer because there's so much detail in this case.
I didn't include all of that detail in here of course because it's a lot and also there's some of the details that were very graphic that I didn't feel comfortable relaying over the podcast.
However, you're welcome to search that and find it just so that everybody know if you are going to search it. I did very easily stumble across some crime scene photos that were very graphic.
So if you are going to take it upon yourself to dive farther into this case and research, you might come across that just to give you a little warning.
I'm going to start off like I usually do with the early life of the person that we're speaking on and then I'll of course trigger warning when it gets pretty bad.
So, and I don't even think you know who I'm talking about.
I don't.
So I'm trying to keep it in a wrap.
I know, you've been like jonesing about it for days, so who is it?
It's all I've been thinking about for days. If you work with me, you know that I've been in a weird headspace because this case is like, it's a hard one.
So we're going to be talking about Richard Trenton Chase, aka the vampire Sacramento.
Okay.
All right.
Well, don't look at my notes.
She's so into stuff.
peeking over at my notes.
Okay.
All right.
Now, Richard Chase was born on May 23, 1950 to Richard Chase senior, which was he was a computer specialist and Beatrice Chase.
She was a teacher in Santa Clara County, California.
Now, his dad is also named Richard Chase. So I'm going to refer to him as senior.
So we don't get confused when I talk about, and I say Richard, I'm talking about Richard Chase, Trenton Chase, but when I say senior, I'm talking about his dad.
Now, by all accounts, his father was an alcoholic that frequently beat him.
We've heard this story before.
It happens unfortunately very often.
It's believed that cases like this.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's believed that Richard started showing signs of mental illness very early on in his life as early as 10 years old, which is really, really resonant.
It says something considering the fact that he was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and that does not present itself in men until the late teens, early 20s and in women until the late 20s, early 30s actually.
Wow.
That diagnosis.
So he was seemingly quote unquote normal as a child.
And when he was three years old, his parents managed to move into a house in Sacramento and a year later, his little sister Pamela was born.
He was a Cub Scout.
He also played four years of Little League.
He was really well known and well liked by his teachers.
They all said that he was a sweet, good child.
He was also really well liked by his peers.
And he was noted of having dozens of them coming to his birthday parties that he would throw.
So like popular little kid, you know.
Now on the outside, this family of course seemed very normal and sweet, but of course the story at home, like it usually happens, was much different.
And I'm not saying the household is much different like it usually happens, but when it is, it usually is not shown to the outside world.
Right.
Of course, this was the 1950s, so the household was much different than it is today.
This was the time where like the nuclear family concept was thriving.
It's like the perfect American family.
Yeah.
With mom and dad, one boy, one girl, you know, as their children.
It's like stepford-wise.
Yeah.
The mom was responsible for the housework.
The father was meant to work and make the money for the family.
The children were expected to help with the house and chores.
And unfortunately at this time, it wasn't far-fetched for children to get spanked, punished or abused, you know, unfortunately.
Pretty much things that we would consider abuse today was very normal back then in the household.
Of course.
Yeah.
However, the amount of physical abuse and mental abuse that Richard suffered was above average, even when compared to the abuse of other people that grew up to be serial killers.
So they actually compared his childhood abuse with other people in the same situation where they grew up to be killers and his was extensively worse.
Yeah.
Which is really a bummer because, I mean, like I said the other day, you want to feel bad for the kid, but you don't want to feel bad for the adult.
Yeah.
The use was not only physical, it was mental and emotional, and it was actually like creative for lack of a better term.
Like the father used like a lot of like unique ways to abuse his kids.
I say that in a bad way.
No, I...
No, it's, you know, and when you're describing little Richard, he seems like a pretty good kid.
So it's kind of interesting that he would receive that type of punishment at home.
Yeah.
Like what could he possibly be doing?
I think senior was just a dick.
I think he's a sadist.
Yeah.
And he's just like, I mean, maybe he's just into beating kids, which is horrible.
Yeah.
Now this was kind of bad.
One of the things that...
Hey.
Hi.
Do it.
What did you...
You picked up my hair dryer.
I think he's being quiet, but you can hear everything on the microphone.
So this is bad.
One of the things that Richard senior would do to little Richard was force feeding him
at the age of two until he would vomit.
That was like one of the ways he would abuse it, which is awful.
I think like there's...
I think food is one of those unsuspecting abuses.
It's one of my...
Oh my gosh, I was watching a show the other day about a girl who just got so upset because
somebody called her out for not eating specific foods.
And she has a trauma there.
And it's like, again, it's one of those things that's so under the radar because you're like,
how can you abuse your child with food?
You can.
But you can't.
You can withhold food and you can force feed food on children.
So awful.
Unfortunately, which is so terrible.
Pamela, his little sister also came out much later after the fact and she said that she
actually remembered multiple instances of little Richard and senior arguing.
And this ended up with Richard senior shaking little Richard and throwing him up against
the wall on multiple occasions.
So he could have definitely...
And he was like, how old?
Little.
Four or five?
She was only three years younger than him.
So he had to have been...
The elder Richard was not only physically abusive, but he was noted as yelling at little Richard
at any...
Now I want to say little Richard every time.
That's fine.
Shout out little Richie from work.
He was noted at yelling at little Richard at any instance that he was wrong or he made
his dad upset.
So he would be wrong about a fact and his dad would get mad at him.
Or he would put his opinion out that senior didn't agree with and he would yell at him
for it.
Seriously.
So not only was he super abusive to this children, but of course he was abusive to
his wife Beatrice and they would constantly fight about marital things, mostly money.
They would fight about his drinking problem and other things, you know, the stressful
in a relationship, but not to the point where you need to be abusive about it.
Unfortunately this fighting was usually very loud and in front of the children, which,
I mean, if you're going to beat your child, it's not off the wall to say that you're
going to...
Yeah, you're going to do the same thing to your wife in front of you.
You're going to do the same thing to your wife in front of your children.
But I didn't see any record of Pamela being abused, thank God, but isn't it interesting
that he only focused on Richard?
Well, you know what, maybe it's the fear that she witnessed a lot, like the fear that
she exuded from watching that alone.
Psychological abuse.
Well, of course, yeah.
Of course he would probably be emotionally abusive, but he probably felt like he didn't
have to discipline her because of what she was witness to.
That's true.
She was not above abusing women.
Yeah, of course.
Now on Beatrice's side, she was no angel either.
She seemed to have some sort of mental illness or substance abuse problem, and she would
frequently accuse senior of, quote, using dope and trying to poison her, which accusing
him of using dope is one thing, but accusing someone of trying to poison you that literally
indicates paranoia and delusion, which is a tall-tail sign of...
Maybe, I mean, I mean...
...because they're afraid of being able to care with other things.
Yeah, yeah, maybe.
But of course, yeah, if she's using that accusation quite often, then maybe that is a sign of mental
illness of some kind.
Now, she also would constantly accuse Richard Senior of cheating on her with their neighbors,
and one time they went on a family camping trip to Oregon, and she accused him of being
unfaithful during that trip, like with some random woman in Oregon.
Not anybody specific, like not like, oh, that lady, like you did something, but she just
accused him, like, since they were somewhere, you know, on that.
Maybe he, like, went to go take a poop or something, and then...
Mac!
My cat is very upset that he's not in here with us.
He's crying everywhere.
So because of all the marital problems that the parents were experiencing, they of course
didn't pay much attention to the children, and it was detrimental to Richard, especially
because they didn't notice all of the tall-tail mental health issues that he was exhibiting
in a very young age.
You know, he was having all of these, you know, concerning behaviors that his parents
didn't even realize because they were so enveloped in their problems.
So I said that he was 10 years old when he first really started showing symptoms of a
mental illness, or at least when he started acting on those symptoms.
It was, I mean, he could have been a lot younger when he started to realize symptoms.
So it was around this time, another very, very significant sign of serial killer in the making
for lack of a better term, Richard began to have a fascination with dead animals.
Serial killer thing.
He would find stray cats around the neighborhood, and he would torture and kill them to satisfy
his interest.
Now this is very specific to note, because at some point in all children's lives, they
will become interested in harming animals.
That's a normal person growing up thing.
Not saying all children will try to kill a cat or a dog, however, I mean, you can't
say that every child didn't like step on a roly-poly or pull the legs off of an insect
or burn an ant with the mic, or magnifying glass.
That's a normal kid thing.
When it escalates to not developing a conscience and not realizing that you're harming the
animal, that's when it becomes detrimental.
So a lot of children, of course, they will develop the conscience and they'll realize
that, oh my God, I'm hurting this poor thing, I need to stop.
Unfortunately, in cases like Richard, there's usually some sort of predisposition to mental
illness.
I'm not going to do that, and I'm not going to go and do it because I can do an entire
episode just on this.
But there is scientific evidence and theories and studies to prove that people are predisposition
to develop a mental illness just based on their genetics.
And when presented with an environmental situation such as a trauma or abuse or anything like
that, that can actually put you over the edge, for lack of a better term, into having this
mental illness actually express itself rather than staying stagnant.
Isn't that so interesting?
Okay, I'm done.
Because I will do an entire episode on that because that is so interesting.
And shout out Dr. Kahnbach because she's been telling me all about that in class.
So Richard seemed to have a very grim interest in these animals, blood, and their insides.
It was almost like a clinical interest, though.
So it wasn't like...
It wouldn't have been a bad thing.
If I was doing surgery or something.
Yeah, it wouldn't have been a bad thing if you didn't...
If you go two ways, he's becoming a serial killer or a surgeon.
Yeah, exactly.
If he didn't take it upon himself to do these things, then yeah, it would have been a cool
fascination, but like, no.
No, I got that out when I was a kid by taking apart CD players, not animals.
Yeah.
Well, because of his fascination, he was leaning more towards his mental illness rather than
a brilliant mind that wanted to pursue a career in the medical field.
As noted by the age of 10, I thought this was really interesting, Richard was already
exhibiting evidence of all three parts of the McDonald triad.
This is also known as the triad of sociopathie or the homicidal triad.
Now, this is a combination of three factors that states if somebody is exhibiting two
of these three things at once, or of course all three, they are more than likely going
to end up growing to be some sort of serial offender, a serial violent offender.
These three factors include cruelty of animals, obsession with fire starting, which we'll
see in a minute that he does exhibit, and bedwetting past the age of five years old.
And you know, you are on a true crime.
Yeah, I'm sorry, I go, yes, like I know.
No, but you do, like you study true crime, like that's kind of a common thing that people
know about, a lot of serial killers are bedwetters, they start with animals and stuff like that.
Now this is bizarre to me because if his parents had paid any bit of attention to him, then
this may have been able to be kept under wraps or at least controlled and possibly prevented.
Because they could have seen all of these things kind of falling into place.
Especially things like bedwetting.
Yeah.
Or like, I mean, again, and we said this during Josh Phillips case that we don't know what
kind of household it was.
Is it messy all the time?
Does it smell like cat or dog pee?
You know, whatever.
That smells like that.
But I feel like it, he said past the age of eight, oh five.
Okay, so yeah, it should be a normal milestone for any child.
So yeah, past the age of five, I would assume somebody would do his bed sheets.
They have to, I mean, they have to know.
Or maybe he would wake up and change himself really quick and they, I mean, they don't
fricking pay attention to their kids.
Yeah, almost they're pretty young.
So they're more concerned with their fighting.
And then the other ones were, the animal abuse.
And starting fires.
Starting fires.
Oh, okay.
We haven't gotten there yet.
Okay.
But it does happen.
Spoiler alert.
That's like not even the worst part of this case.
He's like, the fire's starting his life.
He lights something on fire.
The ends.
Now back to his violence with animals, which started with cats, like I said, but also led
up to birds, dogs and rabbits.
One of which his mother actually found in the garden in their backyard after Richard had
disposed of it.
See, like she's seeing shit.
You have to know.
Yeah.
And the mom does nothing.
Oh my God, you're going to be pissed later when you find out what she just turns a blind
eye to.
Now he had actually killed so many stray cats at this time that people around the neighborhood
started to take notice of their disappearance or their disappearances.
Now on top of this, he became obsessed with setting fire to things like I said earlier,
just small things, but still nonetheless.
He was also still frequently wetting the bed again, which is uncommon after the age of
five.
He was 10 at this point.
Unless I want to know, unless you've experienced sexual abuse because bedwetting is linked
to if you have sexual abuse when you're younger, you can have bedwetting episodes.
However, there was no account that that was ever recorded.
Not to say that it didn't happen, but that was never put out there that that happened
to him when he was growing up.
It was at this time as well that he began drinking alcohol very heavily.
At 10?
At 10 years old.
What?
So you can see how this is going to go.
Well, I mean, senior probably had a bunch of booze laying around.
Of course he did.
He was an alcoholic himself.
And again, back to the whole predisposition thing, it has actually been studied and proven
that alcoholism can be upwards of 75 to 80 percent genetic.
Oh, yeah.
And that's a ridiculous amount of, that's a ridiculous number.
That's crazy to me.
Now his behavior continued over the next two years and by the age of 12, Richard's parents
fighting had reached a boiling point.
It took them this long.
Sorry.
It's finally spilling over.
Right?
And they were like at each other's throats.
Now because of this Beatrice took it upon herself to book sessions with two different
psychiatrists for her emotional issues.
Her emotional issues?
So she can get herself.
Her own emotional issues?
What?
So she can get herself help, but she can't pay attention enough to Richard to realize
that he needs help as well.
She got her own self-help with two different psychiatrists because of her emotional issues.
And don't get me wrong, I guarantee you if she had like the money.
She's also a battered woman.
She probably was looking for, I mean honestly, personal experience, looking for an excuse
of course to get away from that mother.
Well I think that she could have very easily also been diagnosed with schizophrenia based
on her behavior.
She also could be completely brainwashed and have no idea.
She thinks that her husband is just disciplining those children.
You know?
Now at the age of...
I'm gonna give, what's her name?
Barbara?
Beatrice.
I'm gonna give Beatrice a bit of the doubt.
You're all right Beatrice.
I don't think she's alive.
I don't, that's okay.
Well, hey Beatrice.
Hey Beatrice.
Got her.
You got her.
Stimebacks love that, by the way.
You got her.
At the age of 13, Richard's parents' financial hardships ultimately caused them to lose the
house that they had bought in Sacramento.
Now this is when Richard's view of reality had actually really become skewed.
This is also the first time that it's noted that he became convinced that he was actually
a member of the James Younger gang, which was a group of outlaws from the 19th century
that included Jesse James.
So he thought he was one of those members of that gang, which is like, all right, whatever.
He's a country western fan.
Yeah, he had actually gotten a poster of the gang and taped him, a picture of himself
onto it so that it looked like he was part of the crew.
It's not funny.
Look, Mom.
Look, Mom, I'm Johnny Appleseed.
And he would actually constantly ask his mom to buy him a cowboy hat.
I mean, that's kind of sweet.
That's kind of very, that's actually very cute.
If it wasn't completely drenched with mental disorder.
Of course.
Yeah.
And it wasn't like an outlaw gang that like literally murdered people.
Like what if it's part of the deadlock gang?
He also developed a strange habit of burning pans on the stove while attempting to cook
for himself in the middle of the night.
Like I guess he was trying to cook and he would like burn something in the pan.
On purpose?
I don't know.
It sounds like it's on purpose.
Yeah.
He was also noted as leaving messes and puddles in the kitchen and refusing to clean them
up, which like classic teenager.
But on multiple occasions, he would turn up the heat in the house to 90 degrees while
he was alone and then strip naked and stay the night on the couch in the living room.
Well continuing to light small fires and still wetting the couch.
I said wetting the couch.
It's wetting the bed, but he was on the couch.
What?
And he's how old?
13.
13?
He's wetting the bed still at 13.
I'm sorry, but like I don't know what 13 year old wants to walk around naked in their
house.
By the time that Richard reached high school, his parents were completely done with each
other.
Took ya long enough.
Or so they said.
Our responsibilities with parents are done.
We can now separate.
Literally.
You guys did such a phenomenal job.
Well he reached high school.
He's 14 at this time.
He still has a little sister that's three years younger than him.
That's true.
Their job's far from done.
Right.
So they said that they were completely done with each other and be addressed left Sacramento
and took the children to LA to live with her and their relatives.
Richard was a ninth grade at this point.
Well his dad didn't want this so he followed them to LA to get them back where he showed
up at the house and said, you know, your guys are coming back with me.
Well Richard, literally Richard took it upon himself to go back to Sacramento with his
dad.
I mean he just got in high school.
I'd probably want to go back to my friends too.
You know, in high school.
Like senior, what are you thinking?
Like you clearly have this thought that like your wife and your children are burdened enough
that you have to abuse them.
And then you get away, I'm sorry, but Scott free, they moved to LA and now you're gonna
like you're not done terrorizing them.
Yeah, he didn't have anybody to abuse them.
You had to go get them back.
Oh my gosh.
Now four months later Beatrice and Pamela moved back to Sacramento to live with the men.
Now back at school, Richard was still very well liked by his peers.
He kept himself well groomed and clean and he was even popular going on a few dates with
some girls.
I bet he couldn't stay the night.
The only thing that's noted about his behavior in high school that was different, that was
that he dabbled in smoking marijuana, which who didn't in the fucking 60s, which is fine.
But he also experimented with a lot of LSD, which who didn't in the fucking 60s, but still
he's 15.
Yeah.
That's terrifying.
Oh, it's terrifying.
I knew people that did LSD when I was in high school.
You still friends with them?
No.
Are they in jail?
Some of them.
So this, like we said in the other case with marijuana, it doesn't matter if you're a teenager,
it's detrimental to the development of your brain.
Of course.
And LSD, even if you are 25, it's detrimental to your brain.
Especially when you're so young and you don't...
I mean, I know there's the term micro dosing and things like that, which apparently has
been beneficial as far as scientific developments have played out, but...
Were they micro dosing in the 60s?
No.
That's what I'm saying is like, I think that now...
They're macro dosing.
Take it to the highest, take it to the fullest.
Literally.
And that's what I'm saying.
Like when you're 15 and you've gotten away with smoking weed or doing shrooms or whatever
it is, and you graduate to LSD, do you really know what you're doing?
Probably not.
So yeah, you're just gonna...
You just go balls to the wall with an LSD.
And there were two girls in particular that he exclusively dated.
I couldn't find the name of one of them, but the other one by the name of Libby Christopher
he exclusively dated for a little over a year.
However, even though these two relationships were going well at the time that he was in
them, Richard ran into a deal-breaking issue.
While he was physically attracted to girls, he could not maintain an erection when becoming
intimate with them, and it was for this reason that the relationships didn't last.
So he knew he was attracted to girls, but he could not achieve erection or orgasm when
he was trying to be intimate with them, which can be very detrimental on your relationship.
Yeah, I mean, yeah.
Just from...
Clearly the dude has a lot on his mind.
Of course.
Now, this is humiliating for any man I can imagine, but especially for a young teenager
that's literally supposed to be the epitome of getting a boner is what I put because they
are.
Yeah, the high-sex drive and going through puberty and all that stuff and exploring relationships.
Yeah.
Yeah, of course.
Now, on top of this, he was also really underweight and he felt that he was weak-looking and he
was weak-feeling, and he began to obsess over the fact that he was unable to get an erection.
After stirring on this idea for a while, he came to the conclusion that he could not
get a boner because he did not have enough blood in his body to make this happen.
So, you know how, of course, everyone knows how a boner works, but if you don't, blood
rushes to the penis and it makes it big.
Well, he got the idea, I must not have enough blood in my body because I'm so small and
that's why it's not working.
It's not circulating correctly or I have not pumping enough blood.
That's an interesting thought.
So, if you can't see where this is going, I'll tell you.
In his mind, he needed to begin to consume the blood of the animals that he had been
killing in order to help himself achieve an erection.
Now, he's called the Vampire of Sacramento for a reason.
Who didn't see that coming?
Yeah.
Dun-dun-dun.
Plotus.
Regardless of his internal and physical struggles, Richard remained popular in high school and
it was invited to many different hangouts, such as parties, you know, with the red cups
you've seen movies.
And you're supposed to laugh.
That's a John Mulaney quote.
I didn't laugh until you had me said, you're supposed to laugh.
Well, he went to a house party one night and he drank a huge amount of alcohol.
He began behaviorally, running down the street and he was making noises that were like unintelligible
like people couldn't understand what he was saying.
One of his friends was worried about him so he drove him home, good friend, where Richard
actually opened up about his impotence and how it was affecting him mentally to his
friend.
Oh man, right?
I know.
I really feel for him at this point in his life because like that's not his fault.
And we'll find out later that it's due to like underlying stress and you know, all of
his mental illness.
Of course.
Now I mentioned earlier that he was involved in drug use and of course is only heightened
things.
It's noted that this is the time where he was no longer a Cub Scout, little league kid
and instead was this moody teen that hung out with acid heads and had no remorse for
stealing or harming animals.
So he was really like completely doing a 180.
You know what's kind of interesting though is that usually kids like that, they go through
that hurting animal phase really early on and the fact that he stretched this way into
his teens is kind of, I think, a little unique.
Because I really feel like once young boys realize that they are young men and that they're
capable and powerful, then they know that they could probably start doing worse things
to people.
So it's interesting that in his psyche he's so weak that he can only prey on animals.
Well he's been told that his whole life by his dad.
But like I said, I think it's interesting that he stretched that out into his young
adult years.
Now of course his parents became disappointed in this behavior and his dad was especially
disappointed which like fuck you because you're an abusive alcoholic so I don't really care
what you think.
At the age of 15, Richard had his first run in with the law.
He got arrested for possession of marijuana.
He denied that he took it, like that he had ingested the marijuana, but he was sentenced
to community service as his punishment.
His dad did not protest this, but he also did not hire a lawyer to represent his son
while he was going through this.
And this made Richard Jr.'s resentment for his parents grow.
Like, yeah.
Because his dad was like pretty much like figure it out, like you screw you.
You do this to yourself.
Now after this happened, Richard began to do very poorly in school with his grades going
from Bs to Fs.
He didn't care about school, he didn't care about much other things than drugs and blood
at this point.
Although his grades were slipping and he didn't seem to do much, he was still able to graduate
from Mira Loma High School in 1968 and his parents actually bought him a Volkswagen as
a present.
Won't bust him out of jail.
Won't bust him out of a legal situation.
Don't hire a lawyer.
Here's a car.
Yeah, literally.
Well, this is three years later.
Still, here's a car.
In 1969, he's now 18 years old and still suffering the embarrassment of his erectile dysfunction.
He actually took it upon himself to see a doctor for this problem who determined that he suffered
from erectile dysfunction due to repressed anger or mental illness.
Good on ya.
Not only did he want to visit the psychiatrist for this reason, but he had also been identifying
that his emotions were unable to be controlled and it was beginning to worry him.
So he's like seeking help for this.
He's like, he knows something's wrong.
Now the doctor, however, did not think that Richard was mentally ill to the point where
he needed treatment or prescription and he didn't receive any ongoing mental health treatment
afterwards.
What did he say?
Like go home and do some fucking yoga?
He's like.
Be mindful-ness.
Be mindful.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
So he began to look for his own explanation.
Well, this is when he went back to the idea that his body was low on blood like he thought
a couple years prior.
As time went by, Richard changed from this put together clean young man.
It was now a disheveled, dirty man with long, uncombed hair that was living in filth.
He began to withdraw.
He began to crumble.
And people unfortunately stopped coming by his house or inviting him to hang out because
of this.
The senior was becoming worried about his son, which is funny.
But Beatrice brushed it off as a typical 60s teenager that was hippy and normal for the
times and didn't seem to think anything was wrong with her son.
Now upon further research, I really, like I said earlier, I think that she could have
been diagnosed with at least some sort of mental illness had she gotten the chance to.
And I really think that she didn't want the blame of passing that on to him.
And maybe she was ignoring it because it was easier.
Yeah.
There was a point of contention between the two of them, Richard senior and Beatrice,
that you made our son crazy.
He's that way because of you.
All this stuff, and maybe it was hard for her to acknowledge that.
Also we have to remember that if she were to have been diagnosed with something similar,
she probably doesn't recognize that he looks like that or is that way.
For her, I mean, there are parts of schizophrenia that are, you know, when you talk about delusions
and stuff like that or hallucinations even.
In her mind, he might have just been a very well adjusted young man because he was such
a sweet kid growing up.
You know, I mean, I don't know.
Or maybe she felt like he got such a raw deal growing up.
She didn't want to bother him.
That's also true.
She's like, I'll just let him do his thing.
Now in late 1968, Richard actually got a job as a typist and he held this job for some
time, this was with the Retailers Credit Association.
Beatrice would say that his work was more than satisfactory and he was beginning to talk
about going to college, a decision that his parents both supported.
He went with it and he actually enrolled at American River College.
So he was doing all the right things.
As he got older, however, his mental health began to decline and he began expressing ideas
of hypochondria.
He would constantly claim that his heart would, heart would quote, stop beating or that somebody
had stolen his pulmonary artery, which is a very weird thing to think.
He also would hold oranges to his forehead, believing that the vitamin D could be transferred
through his skin and absorbed into his brain via diffusion.
Yeah.
At this time, he also believed that his cranial bones had become detached and were beginning
to move around his head.
So he would frequently shave his head in order to watch the progress.
Oh my God.
I'm sorry.
I can't keep this.
Poor man.
I just, it just made, like it, it's mind-blowing because I don't want to laugh because of the
ridiculous, I want to.
You're not laughing at him.
You're laughing about how ridiculous and unfortunate these ideas are.
And it's sad that that's like mentally what he must, like how traumatizing, how anxiety
written must you be?
Like no wonder you're deteriorating as a human because I mean, if that's, if those are things
that you are thinking, then life must be exhausting.
That's one of my biggest fears is losing my mind and that's like really, like it holds
a lot of weight for me because I'm like, that's terrifying.
Now he was also noted as telling a doctor that his stomach was upside down and that
he believed that his mother was slowly poisoning him.
Sound familiar?
Sounds so familiar.
So he was also noted, this is a little bit bad trigger warning about animals.
He was also noted as capturing many different small types of animals again, like he did
earlier, drinking their blood and eating their flesh raw.
He was also noted as mixing some of their organs with Coca-Cola and blending them together
and drinking it in an attempt to keep his heart from shrinking.
So he thought that if his heart shrank, he thought that his heart was shrinking and that
if it did, eventually it would get too small and disappear causing him to die.
So his way of preventing this was by-
And just being as much blood and protein as possible.
While drinking these, he called them smoothies and we'll see that he does that throughout
the rest of his life.
He'll make these concoctions and I'm not going to mention it again after this, but he will.
In 1975, Richard was involuntarily committed to a mental institution after being taken
to the hospital for blood poisoning, which he contracted after injecting rabbit blood
into his veins.
So instead of drinking the blood, he's now injecting it into his veins and he got blood
poisoning from it.
That's like sepsis.
You could die from that.
You usually die from that.
He actually escaped from this mental institution at one point from the hospital and he went
to his mom's house.
He was apprehended and he was sent to an institution for the criminally insane where he would-
All say?
Yeah.
Where he told staff of his fantasies about killing rabbits.
While fellow patients would frequently catch him capturing birds through his window, drinking
their blood and discarding them into the trash, he was also caught extracting blood from the
hospital's therapy dog and injecting it into himself just like the rabbit blood earlier.
Because of this bizarre behavior, he got his first nickname Dracula by the staff at this
place, which is awful.
They started calling him Dracula, which is like, dude, you're here to advocate for material.
To help people.
Yeah.
And you give them nasty nicknames.
It was during this time that Richard was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
So you think it's over, right?
He's gotten the treatment.
He's in a good place.
Yeah.
Well, I have like five pages.
He's got a cool nickname.
Now after undergoing several treatments, Richard was deemed no longer a threat to himself or
society.
How many?
Several.
It said several treatments.
I heard seven and a half.
Actually, it was less than a year.
And he was on, you know, anti-psychotic meds.
After this, I mean, in 1955, when Thorazine was invented, so yes, that's had to have been
what they were giving him, he was deemed no longer a threat to himself or society and
released from the hospital in 76 and was sent to live with his mother who said, hold on,
she gets worse.
Oh, he must be cured.
He doesn't need this medication anymore.
And she began to wean him off of it.
Okay.
Beatrice, you better be taking those drugs because home girl, you need them.
Schizophrenia is not curable.
You can never be cured if you are diagnosed with schizophrenia.
It's unfortunate reality.
However, you can live a very normal life if you are on your medication, you take it for
the rest of your life.
And even if you're on your medication and you start to feel better, do not stop taking
your medication because that's what's making you feel better.
I'm like getting annoyed.
Well, because he was not cured, of course, he again began accusing his mother of trying
to poison him.
This got so bad that Senior actually forced him to move out and they bought him his own
apartment.
That's going to work, right?
Didn't get a lawyer, bought him a car and an apartment.
Oh my God.
Well, I read somewhere that his parents bought him his own place, but I read somewhere else
that he moved into an apartment with friends, which I think they also paid for, began doing
a lot of LSD and smoking weed a lot and he would constantly walk around the apartment
naked like with the roommates in front of company even.
Well, because of this behavior, the roommates were like, hey, move out and he was like,
no.
And so they ended up moving out themselves.
So either way, it happened.
He was living alone at this point.
Now that he was alone again, he was free to do things as he pleased.
He continued to capture and eat dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, etc.
He was even noted as stealing and killing his neighbors pets.
And at one point he called one of his neighbors to tell them what he had done to their pet.
Like out of guilt or like out of psychosis.
Probably out of psychosis.
Now he became fascinated by the crimes of the hillside stranglers, which is a bonkers
case.
We'll have to cover it.
He believed that the stranglers were also the victim of the Nazi slash UFO conspiracy
that he believed he was the victim of.
So he's like, oh, these poor people are victim.
Then we'll get into that later with what he thought was going on.
He thought that he was abducted by aliens.
Well it says Nazi UFO conspiracy.
It doesn't go into detail until later.
So now he also became very lazy with his hygiene and didn't care to brush his teeth or his
hair.
He actually began to lose a bunch of weight and he actually became 145 pounds at one
point.
Oh, wow.
How tall is he?
511.
And how old is he?
20.
Okay.
Yeah, that's skinny.
I mean, that's a little skinny.
That's not like ridiculous.
I mean, who knows?
He might have been a little bit bigger before that.
Now I noted a couple more things that were weird that he did leading up to his kills,
which were, this one's bad, trigger warning.
He showed up to his mom's house and knocked on the door.
And when she answered, he thrusted a dead cat into her face.
He then threw the cat on the ground, knelt down, ripped open its stomach with his bare
hands and stuck his hands inside the cat, and then proceeded to smear its blood all
over his face, all the while screaming.
That is nightmare fuel.
That is horrifying.
That's at 20.
It doesn't matter if he's a grown-ass man or not.
That's fucking scary.
You want to know what Beatrice did?
Did she get another therapist?
She calmly returned inside the house and did not report the incident to anyone.
Oh my God.
Who does that?
Let alone his own mother.
I know.
That's haunting.
Now, on August 3, 1977, Nevada State Police discovered his Ford Ranchero stuck in a sanddrift
near Pyramid Lake, Nevada.
Inside were two rifles, a pile of clothes, a bucket full of blood, and also in the bucket,
a liver.
Like a human liver?
Now the officers followed Prince and found Richard, who was naked and screaming in the
sand, soaked from head to toe in blood.
Was it his own liver?
When questioned, he claimed that the blood was his own and it had leaked out of him through
his flesh.
It was later tested and it was determined to be bovine.
It was a cow liver.
Right?
I had to keep you guessing there.
It was great.
Audience is like, just look at you and smirk and just keep going.
On December 27, 1977, Richard randomly fired his 22-gauge handgun into a Sacramento woman's
kitchen.
He was not firing anybody, but sparking his intense liking of firing guns into innocent
situations.
So he decided, oh wow, really like that?
Like he likes to drive by or like that.
He was literally driving.
Yeah.
Wow.
Now two days later, this is December 29th, he was driving in a neighborhood when one
Ambrose Griffin was in his front yard helping his wife get the groceries out of the car.
Richard shot his gun at Ambrose, killing him in his own front yard.
This man was in his 50s.
This would become his first kill and they didn't know it was him for a really long time
because it was so random.
And it was so like out of like the blue.
Yeah.
Clearly he's a nice man.
He's just helping his wife with groceries.
Yeah.
And later-
Probably didn't have a lot of enemies.
Later, Richard called this a quote unquote warm up for all the crimes that he was going
to commit next.
Oh, that's awful.
Now what followed was an increase in breaking and entering, stealing and victimizing for
the next few days and later some very, very brutal murders.
Now on January 11th, 1978, Richard went to his neighbor's door and asked to bump a cigarette.
When she went for her pack of cigarettes, he restrained her until she gave him the entire
thing.
Didn't hurt her and just left.
Weird.
I mean, maybe he like hurt her, but he didn't, you know, he didn't hurt her.
Yeah.
Nearly two weeks later on the 23rd of January at 2909 Burnie Street, Jeannie Layton spotted
an unkempt young man with longish hair walking through her backyard towards her back door.
She watched as he tried her patio door, he found it locked and then he went to the windows.
They too were locked, so then he came back to the back door, like the patio door.
She met him there at the time that he came back because she's a bad bitch, face to face.
Well she said that he showed no emotion whatsoever as he scrutinized her.
I guess he said some choice words to her.
Yeah.
Well then he turned, paused to light a cigarette and then walked away through her backyard.
Like he was planning on breaking in, but doors were locked, windows were locked, she
was there and he was like.
But met some kind of a force and then he was like.
Well no, he's like, I think he might have scrutinized her through like a glass door
or something like she didn't open the door to like talk to him.
She like met him at the door and then he.
Yeah.
So now he didn't choose to bust windows or anything like that.
Yes.
Just like someone's home.
Yes.
Go on to the next one.
Well he was later noted as telling investigators that he considered a locked door as a sign
that he was not welcome, but an unlocked door as a sign to just come right in.
Like a vampire.
Oh my God.
I didn't even put that together until you said that and now I'm scared.
Yeah.
I wonder if garlic works.
Now well garlic comes up.
No I'm scared.
While wandering around, he encountered an old friend of his named Nancy Holden.
He attended high school with her.
He attempted to get a ride from her, but she refused.
We're going to go into details of this to counter a little bit later because it does
come back up.
Now down the street, Robert and Barbara Edwards were bringing their groceries into the house
when they heard a noise inside.
Whoever was there apparently had heard them and started to run.
They heard a window slam at the back of the house and then oddly a disheveled young man
came around the corner at them.
Edwards tried to stop him, Robert did, and he sprinted past and got out onto the street.
Well the man started to try to chase Richard, but lost him when he jumped their fence.
So he was in their house and they came home and he was doing something.
Now when they went to their home to make sure that everything was okay, they had actually
noticed that he urinated on their infant child's bed and defecated in her drawers.
So he like avoided his bells all over their house.
Oh my gosh.
I know.
Now if all of this was not already bizarre and bad enough, it's about to get way worse.
So this is where I'm going to detail that very, very graphic crime.
The trigger warning of the episode.
Now on January 23rd, Richard broke into the home of David and Teresa Waylon.
David was not home at the time and Teresa had left the door unlocked because she was
in the process of taking out the trash.
Richard shows up, goes inside and immediately shoots her three times.
Once in the hand, a defensive wound.
When she comes back in from taking out the trash.
So once in the hand, defensive wound, and twice in the head with the same gun that he
had used earlier to kill that Ambrose Griffin.
He killed her instantly.
He then committed necrophilia by having intercourse with her dead body, all the while stabbing
her with a butcher knife in the chest multiple times.
She's already dead at this point and he's just going for it.
But it's the blood.
He removed multiple of her organs, cut off one of her nipples and drank her blood.
This is really bad.
Before leaving, he took some dog feces from their yard and stuffed it in her throat.
I don't know what the motive behind that was or what the plan was for the...
Humiliation, maybe?
Maybe.
Or...
She was unfortunately three months pregnant at the time.
Oh gosh, that's unfortunate.
That's unfortunate.
That's so sad.
I know.
There's more to what happened that you can find, but I didn't want to go into too much
detail and that was the graphic picture that I saw just so that everyone knew.
Now two days later, Richard broke into the home of 38-year-old Evelyn Miroth.
She was babysitting her 22-month-old nephew David at the time and her 6-year-old Jason
was also there.
Also in the house was a neighbor named Dan Meredith and Evelyn was actually in the bath
and Dan was watching the kids when Richard entered the home.
Using the same gun as before, he shot Dan in the head, killing him instantly.
He then turned him over and stole his wallet and his car keys.
Jason, the 6-year-old, ran to where his mom was in the bathroom.
But before he could get there, Richard fatally shot him in the head as well.
And on the way to the little boy Jason, he shot the 22-month-old in the head as well.
And they both died instantly.
He then entered the bathroom and fatally shot Evelyn in the head.
This is where it gets bad.
He dragged her corpse to the bed and repeatedly sodomized her, all the while drinking blood
from multiple wounds on the back of her neck that he had made with a knife.
When the body was later examined by the medical examiners, they noted that they found a quote
unusual amount of semen in the rectal area indicating multiple ejaculations.
So he realized that he can only achieve erection when there is blood or a dead body involved.
Now after this, he remained in the home for quite some time and continued to defile the
corpses.
I do not want to get into the graphic detail because it is very hard.
Again all this is out there, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah, you can definitely find this information.
I just don't feel comfortable saying it.
Now at this point, a six-year-old little girl came over because she had scheduled a play
date with the older child, Jason, for that day.
The knock on the door scared Richard off, who then left the residence in Dan's car
and he actually took the youngest boy's body with him, the 22-month-old.
The little girl alerted neighbors because she saw him run, I guess.
The neighbors called the police and entered the home to find the horrible scene.
Fortunately, if there's any goodness at all, Richard left perfect handprints and shoe prints
at the scene.
Dummy, right?
Thank God for dumb killers.
So I said that Richard took the youngest boy with him, but of course I'm not going to
go into detail about what happened back in his apartment because if you can believe it,
it's a hundred times worse than what I've already said.
So you can look it up if you please, but I'm not going to say it here.
After he was finished with this part of his crime, he disposed of the body at a nearby
church.
Now Dan's station wagon, the car that Richard had stolen, was found abandoned not far from
the murder scene with the key still in it.
There was little hope that the baby was still alive because they didn't find the baby at
the scene.
The police didn't know it, but the parking lot where they had located the missing car
was only about a hundred yards from apartment 15 of the Watt Avenue complex where Richard,
Trenton Chase, lived.
What?
Yeah.
He was that close?
Yeah.
Now the FBI were already on the case.
Robert Restler and Russ Vorpijold developed a profile of who they were probably looking
for.
They figured him for a disorganized killer as opposed to an organized one with some clues
pointing towards the possibility of psychosis.
He clearly had not planned these crimes and he did little to hide or destroy any of the
evidence.
Of course he left those footprints and fingerprints and palm prints and he had probably walked
around in daylight with blood on his clothing.
In other words, he gave little thought to the consequences.
Of course.
Yeah.
At the very least, his domicile would be as sloppy as the places he ransacked after
he finished with them and the fact that the murder scenes were fairly close together meant
that he might not have a car.
In fact, he had actually taken the car from the house of course, so he must have walked
to that house.
Yeah.
Now they said that this meant that it was likely that he lived in the vicinity of the
crime of course and it was also likely that he would kill again and keep on killing until
he was caught.
So there was like a spree killing they were thinking.
So of course they had to work fast.
They also figured him to be a white male in his 20s, thin and undernourished, which is
like, whoa, that's like really accurate.
That's very specific.
So they were sure that if they found his residence, evidence of the crimes would be there and
if he had a vehicle, it would also have evidence in there as well.
They also said that he would either have a history of mental illness or drug use or
both and he would be something of a loner.
This is like so spot on.
What is this on criminal mind?
What is that?
This is the FBI profile.
Mind hunter.
Right.
This is actually verbatim.
I'm quoting, I'm not quoting, but I'm reading verbatim when I saw.
Well, they thought he was probably employed at some menial labor or unemployed given his
apparent state of mind and could be receiving some disability money.
He probably lived alone and he might be paranoid.
And then many people were questioned around the same area and some had seen a white male
driving a red station wagon.
So the police artist tried to make a sketch, but few of the descriptions were helpful except
for that of a young woman.
Remember the same woman from earlier that refused to give him a ride?
Nancy Holden.
She had called saying that she believed these horrible murders could have been Richard.
She had told him that she had an odd encounter.
This was the one from earlier.
She was shopping in the town and country village shopping center not far from his apartment
complex and close to the close to the residence of these horrible killings.
When she saw a strange man approaching her who appeared to be confused, she said she
tried to avoid him, but he directed a question at her.
The question said, were you on the motorcycle when Kurt was killed?
He asked Nancy was startled apparently.
She said that 10 years earlier she had dated a boy named Kurt who had been killed on a
motorcycle.
Wow.
So she said it was then that she noticed something really familiar about this interrogator,
the guy.
She asked him who he was and he replied, Rick Chase.
And she was absolutely dumbfounded.
She's like, this guy looked nothing like the clean cut Rick that I had known in high school.
She said she had heard that he had gotten into drugs and looking at him now she realized
that that was true.
She said he was grimy and stained and his agitated manner made her nervous.
Well she also said that she talked with him for a few minutes trying to seek her way out
and finally was able to leave when the store, when he was still paying for something.
However, he followed her into the parking lot, intent on getting a ride from her.
Well she managed to get into her car, roll up the windows, lock the doors and pull out
before he could stop her.
Thank God.
She was like, I just had to get away.
She's like, I knew I was being rude but I just need to get away.
Thankfully because of the amount of evidence left at the crime scene and this call, detectives
went to Richard's apartment where he refused to speak with them.
Of course, hiding down the hallway police waited for him to come outside and actually
knocked on the door and he didn't answer so they pretended to walk away.
They did that like, stepped up.
Yeah, just like that.
So he came outside eventually and they immediately arrested him when they noticed he was carrying
a bloodstained box.
Inside of this box were pieces of blood soaked wallpaper and the pistol that he had used.
They also noted that his apartment was covered in blood from the floor to the ceiling, up
the walls and on all of his eating utensils.
So he like, was like anointing his apartment with blood.
So inside the refrigerator, trigger warning, this is bad, police found several animal body
parts.
They also found the 22 month old David's brain in a Tupperware container and several of Evelyn
and Teresa's organs.
This was gathered from Richard to compare to samples that were already being analyzed
in the crowd from the murder victims.
While there was plenty of blood on his clothing, they also took samples from him.
However, when they tried to take a blood sample, he had to be restrained because they had no
idea of his intense fear of losing his blood.
Yeah.
And he was like, you're not taking my blood, my fuckers.
I worked hard for this.
Now, Ferris Sollamy was appointed as Richard's attorney and he immediately separated from
the detectives who had spent so much time trying to extract a confession.
Of course.
Now, police officers continued to search for the baby.
They used a bloodhound and they even went to Richard's mom's home and she was so uncooperative,
insisting that despite what they had found, it did not prove that her son had done anything.
Yeah.
At one point, Richard admitted to another inmate that he had drank the blood of his victims
because it had, because he had blood poisoning.
He needed blood and he had grown tired of hunting and killing animals.
Finally the 22 month old was found.
On March 24th, the church janitor came upon a box containing the remains of the baby.
Unfortunately, it's very sad.
When they arrived, they recognized the clothing and it was determined that it was the missing
boy from the mirth home.
Again, there is more detail here.
I'm not going to go into.
You can find it if you'd like.
Beneath the body was a ring of keys that fit Dan Meredith's now impounded car.
Huh.
So the car they had stolen, I guess they said a keys that were, even though the keys were
left in the car, they were key keys.
Well, he ditched the car and then he left the baby the car, or the car keys.
Yeah.
Now the lead prosecutor for the case of California versus Richard Trenton Chase, Ronald W. Tachterman,
he intended to seek the death penalty.
The defense actually entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, but the prosecutor
was the prosecutor was determined to show that he knew the difference between right
and wrong and that he was not compelled to murder.
Part of the prosecution strategy included playing up on the legends of Dracula.
He also had read about blood related crimes and blood rituals in various cultures and
noting that some people believed that ingesting another person's blood would strengthen or
heal them.
Uh, he of course wanted to paint that to the jury.
And he wanted to show that this, while this might be a belief, it was not a viable reason
for murder.
Richard then took the stand in his own defense.
At this point, no, no, no, he looked awful and he had dropped in a weight to 107 pounds.
So he's like a skeleton.
His eyes were sunken and lusturless.
I'm sure he thought that it was because he wasn't consuming any blood.
Now he claimed to have been semi-conscious during the wall and murder and he described
in detail the way that he had been mistreated much of his life.
He admitted to drinking the blood, but he did not recall much about the second series
of murders, but he knew that he had done something after the fact with the baby.
He thought his problems had stemmed from his inability to have sex with girls as a teenager
and he said he was sorry for the killings.
Well, in order to avoid the death penalty, the defense tried to have him found guilty
of second degree murder, which would have resulted in a life sentence.
Their case literally hinged on his history of mental illness and the lack of planning
in his crimes, evidence that they weren't premeditated.
The jury was not having it.
Well, I mean the premeditation is that he thinks he needs blood to survive.
That is premeditation in itself.
Now the defense asked for a clemency hearing actually in which a judge determined that
Richard was not legally insane.
But on May 8th, 1978, after only five hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict
of six counts of first degree murder.
He was sentenced to die in a gas chamber.
Now during the sanity phase, the judge found Richard legally sane after deliberating only
an hour.
It took them four hours to decide that he should die in the gas chamber at San Quentin
Penitentiary, which is a very rough prison.
In prison, the other inmates were actually super terrified of him, obviously aware of
his graphic crimes.
And according to prison officials, they often tried to convince him to kill himself because
they were too fearful to get close enough to do it themselves.
Wow.
That's creepy, right?
Now this is where that Nazi UFO theory comes back into play.
Richard was also granted a series of interviews with Robert Restler, during which he spoke
of his fears of Nazis and UFOs, claiming that although he had killed, it was not his fault
and he had been forced to kill to keep himself alive, which he believed any person would
do.
He asked Restler to give him access to a radar gun, which he could apprehend the Nazi UFO
so that the Nazis could stand trial for the murders.
So he was now saying a bunch of nonsense.
They made me do it, like I was possessed or whatever.
They were the ones that actually did it.
He also handed Restler 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.
I don't know why he needed to hoard mac and cheese to prevent that from happening, but
did he think that maybe the mac and cheese was like poison?
I don't know.
Probably.
And that he's like, oh, take this to the outside and get attempted.
Yeah.
They're trying to poison me.
Shit.
Now, on December 26th, 1980, a guard had found Richard lying on his bed, not breathing.
After autopsy, it was determined that he had committed suicide with an overdose of prison
doctor prescribed antidepressants, which he had been saving for up to weeks prior.
Which now they like wait for you to take something.
Yeah, you would have to.
K.P. Holmes, the coroner, was called.
He searched the cell and located the strange suicide note about taking some pills.
Richard had been taking a daily dose of Sinequin for hallucinations and depression, which came
to his cell in a package of three pills.
Apparently, he had hoarded the pills and then overdosed.
The cause of his death was toxic ingestion.
His heart was found to be in normal and in good shape despite his lifelong concerns about
it being shrunk.
Too tiny.
Like the Grinch.
Yeah.
The prison psychiatrist noted that Richard had been psychotic since the time he had entered
the prison, but no one much bothered about the nature of his bizarre obsession with blood.
In 1992, a movie called Unspeakable was made based on Richard as a model for the killer.
His case is actually still used by the FBI as the archetypal model for understanding
the disorganized killer.
Interesting.
That was a doozy.
That was a lot of information.
That was a lot of tragic things that happened to undeserving people.
Most of all, knowing that he has this mental disorder and it never got treated, and when
it was treated, he had people around him that didn't support him in that treatment.
That's just as awful.
It's really a tragic case, especially for the victims, but also for Richard.
He was diagnosed, periodoschizophrenia.
That's the thing that I don't understand.
He was diagnosed.
He got the treatment that he should have gotten.
He got the doctor and the prescription, and his mom decided that, no, he's not going to
take that medication and took him off his medication, and six people lost their lives
for it, which is absolutely tragic.
Now, we've touched on periodoschizophrenia before, but I am actually going to not mention much
about it in this episode because we have introduced a new bonus segment that we are going to do
next, after this episode and the next episode.
We're going to do something called the mental breakdown.
I'm really excited for it.
It's going to be pretty much a single diagnosis out of the DSM-5 that we will cover.
We'll talk a little bit about the definition of some of these disorders and try to do one
weekly for you guys.
It'll be about a 15, 20, 25-minute long episode, something that you can listen to on your way
to work or while you're doing the dishes or doing some chores or what may have you.
A quickie.
Yeah, a quickie.
We love doing these hour-long episodes for you guys, but yeah, we definitely want to
talk about the diagnosis and our mental breakdown.
It'll help you understand the psyche behind the people that we're talking about because
I know that I definitely don't want to come across as being sympathetic for the killer
because I am not.
I am sympathetic for the mental illness and a mental illness advocating stance.
Of course, it is all about the victims and that's why we detail the crimes the way that
we do because everybody's story deserves to be told in a respectful manner.
However, these mental illnesses are so interesting and they're so predominant to the reason behind
these crimes.
Maybe once you listen to this mental breakdown, you can listen back to another person that
we've touched on that has the same diagnosis or suspected diagnosis and then you'll be
able to understand a little bit more about the things that they did leading up to their
killings that were really tall-tail signs of those diagnosis.
I think nowadays it's really important to talk about just because we are in a society
that's getting to recognize that mental disorders and unique needs are something that I think
everybody struggles with and people deserve to be recognized with that as well.
I mean, there are plenty of people with mental disorders that do not commit crimes and do
not commit violent crimes.
As much as we want to give recognition to the victims, of course, it's horrible what
happens but to really talk and bring awareness to people about what schizophrenia is or what
bipolar disorder is so that you might not struggle with it but a loved one that you
have might struggle with it and it might be a little easier to empathize with them once
you get a true understanding of what that disorder is like.
Absolutely.
Also, it's much more fun to listen to us tell you all the research that we've done than
by reading it yourself.
I mean, reading is great.
Not going to be wrong.
Reading is what?
Fundamental.
Leave that in there.
Fundamental illness.
Well, thank you guys for sticking with us through that account.
Again, I do want to say one more time, I know I left out a lot of details in this case,
however, I did that on purpose.
So if you're going to try to email me or text me and tell me that I missed this and that
in the other eye, no I did.
I just didn't feel comfortable saying that.
Also, before we go, I wanted to quickly bring to light because I completely forgot to mention
it in the beginning of the episode.
One of our listeners texted me and gave me a little bit of information based on our last
case.
So I want to, it was Macy, shout out Macy.
Macy actually works right now as an embalmer and she is transitioning from an embalmer
to a funeral director position right now.
So she is just doing the damn thing.
But she texted me, first of all, she said, yo, your podcast is dope and all cows.
So I said, thank you for that.
I really appreciate that.
So she was telling me that she was listening to Monica Melissa Patterson episode.
And you know, we talked about how power, she had power of attorney or whatever.
She actually said in the state of Texas, power of attorney ceases at the time of death.
Now she said she can only speak on behalf of the way that business is conducted at her
funeral home.
But in order to proceed with disposition, they would need an AOA or an appointment of agent.
So a lot of, she said a lot of controlling children want to handle funeral arrangements
for the deceased's parent when their spouse is still alive.
She said they say things like, well, I have power of attorney and she has to tell them
that that doesn't mean anything because it ceases at the time of death.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So she said, although I have heard of funeral homes letting whoever will pay be in charge
of disposition of the body, I would hope the funeral home wouldn't have let that bitch
proceed with cremation.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
A valid point, maybe for sure.
Well, and it's nice to hear from somebody that kind of has a firsthand account of that.
And mom actually said the same thing when our grandfather passed away a few months ago
and she was having the, her, his spouse was no longer alive either, but she was having
that issue with power of attorney.
They were kind of giving them grief about it.
Yeah.
Like what's power of attorney versus like, yeah, because I guess power of attorney is
over the estate and things like that, but not necessarily what somebody wants to do
with their body.
Yeah, absolutely.
It might be like advocating for the person while when they're not of sound mind or something
like that.
But yeah, so thank you, Macy, for that information.
Yeah, thanks, Macy.
And thank you for listening.
It's so good to hear from you.
Yeah.
I'm glad that I'm glad that you're liking what we're doing.
Yeah.
Once again, guys, you know, you can always text us if you have our numbers.
We're not going to give out our numbers, but any friends or family that are listening
for sure, reach out or Instagram.
Instagram is a great way to get ahold of us.
Email of course, which is...
Well, our Instagram is at diagnosing a killer and then email is diagnosing a killer at gmail.com.
There we go.
We also have a Twitter, which is at killer diagnosis.
We do have our Patreon setup.
Once again, it's at patreon.com slash diagnosing a killer.
If you like what we're doing and you want us to continue to do it and you think we sound
great, then please, please donate if you feel so inclined.
We want to make stickers.
Oh yeah, we're going to make stickers.
And honestly, I think that we may, when it gets to the point where we're monetizing and
doing good things, we may start sending out gifts to our patrons.
Yeah, maybe some merch package.
Little goodies.
Packages.
It is spooky season, so we could do a lot of stuff with that.
That's true.
Well, thank you all for listening.
We come back and look forward to doing the mental breakdown.
Yeah, stay tuned for the mental breakdown, guys.
All right.
Love you.
Bye.
Love you.
Bye.