Latest / True Crime California / TCC #13 Richard Chase, Part 1

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TCC #13 Richard Chase, Part 1 · True Crime California

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Speaker 1: Dark Cast Network. Out of the shadows come the best
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indie podcasts. Hey everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm
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your host, Cindy, and I'm glad you're here. Hey everybody,
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welcome back. Sorry I took an unexpected two weeks off.
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I just had stuff going on in my regular life,
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and when you don't make a ton of money on
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a podcast, it's not always top priority when things go sideways.
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So I apologize. I definitely want to be better about
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not missing weeks, but life comes at you fast, like
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Ferris Bueller said, so you know you gotta do what
0:56
you gotta do. Anyway, I'm back. I promise not to
1:00
take such a long breaks again. I know it's bad,
1:04
especially considering how you know new this podcast is, but
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had to happen, won't happen again. Thank you all for
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tuning back in. Now that I am back, I'm gonna
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just jump in because it's been long enough. I've kept
1:19
you waiting long enough. I'm going to do the story
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of Richard Chase, otherwise known as the Vampire of Sacramento
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or the Dracula Killer. So we're doing another Sacramento based
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We did Dorothy A. Puente and now we're doing Richard Chase.
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You know, the major cities have a lot of serial
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killers murderers, so it's pretty easy to pingpong back and
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forth between them. And I gotta tell you, I hate
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this case, hate it, hate it. Glad I'm doing it,
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but man, this guy sucks. And honestly, it's just a
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bummer of a case start to finish. So let's just
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get into that. Richard Chase was born May twenty third,
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nineteen fifty in Santa Clara County, which is not too
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far from Sacramento. And I want to take a moment
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to call out that so many serial killers are geminis,
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which I don't love, because my son's birthday is May
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twenty fifth, and as far as I can tell, there
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is not yet a serial killer with that birth date.
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I'm totally kidding, but I do think about this because
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when you have a true crime podcast, these are the
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types of things you think about. So yes, I am
2:22
a little bit worried, but not really but also sort
2:24
of anyway. So, Richard Chase was born to Richard Edgar
2:29
and Beatrice Chase, and he was born very shortly after
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the couple married and had a younger sister Pamela. Now,
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Richard had a pretty unremarkable childhood. He was loved and
2:39
supported by his parents. His father was a bit of
2:42
a disciplinarian, but nothing out of the ordinary for the
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nineteen fifties. Now what that means, I'm not one hundred
2:49
percent sure. My dad grew up in the nineteen fifties
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and he went to a Catholic school, and the nuns
2:54
there could beat the children. So if your teachers could
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beat you in the fifties, then I imagine you're parents
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could as well. And if his father was known as
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a disciplinarian, then what it sounds like to me is
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the kids got hit. Whatever that means, whatever that looks like,
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I don't know. I do know that a lot of
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people at that time went through it, but I also
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know there's a lot of serial killers born in the
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forties and fifties, So is there a correlation, I don't know.
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Quite possibly. I do know that his mother took issue
3:23
with his father's methods, but this had more to do,
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probably with the fact that his parents just thought about everything,
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so it was just another thing for her to be
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mad at his dad about. And in fact, his parents
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split up for a time when he was young, but
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got back together, only to separate permanently when Richard was
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a young adult. So while we say, you know, he
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had a pretty normal childhood, there definitely was some discord
3:46
in the house. I don't know that that's enough to
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make a serial killer or mass murderer, or however you
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want to kind of I think serial killers the more appropriate,
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but it's definitely worth noting now that being said, he
4:00
was a popular kid. He had like I think it
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was like his first birthday party had like sixty people
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in attendance, So at least on the outside, things seemed
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very normal. But despite all of this, Richard was always
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a little off, I guess we could say. And it
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was later discovered that he exhibited all three major components
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of the McDonald triad. Now, for those who don't know
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the McDonald triad, it's not really used as one hundred
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percent like hardcore indicator anymore of like serial killers or murderers,
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but it's a set of three factors, the presence of
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any two of which are considered to be predictive of
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or associated with violent tendencies, particularly with relation to like
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serial offenses. So this used to be kind of like
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the Bible. Oh, if you have one, like two or
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three of those, you're for sure like a murderer. But
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now it's shown that like, yeah, those people who have
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these tendencies might not have like the greatest life, but
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they're not necessarily going to be violent. They're not necessarily
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going to be murderers or criminals. They might just have
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these tendencies, you know, and nothing comes of it. So anyway,
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these three factors are bedwetting after the age of five, arson,
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and harming animals. So this was proposed in nineteen sixty
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three by J. M. MacDonald, who was a psychiatrist and
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used by the FBI for a time. Like I said,
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though now again, like I said, it's not a truly
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valid line of thinking because anybody can have these and
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they may not nothing may happen, but it's never a
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good thing to hit all three marks for obvious reasons.
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And Richard nailed all three, probably the only time he
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got one hundred percent on a test. Anyway, by the
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age of ten, Richard had killed and buried a neighborhood
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cat in his mother's garden. When interviewed later, a neighbor
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of the family told police that Beatrice had told her
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she found the cat in the garden and that Richard
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had put it there after killing it. The neighbor said
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she also noticed around that time that a lot of
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cats had caught missing, but hadn't really put it together
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until much later, which I find interesting. You're like, a
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lot of cats are missing. My neighbor showed me a
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dead cat in or yard and said it was her kid,
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and then you don't make the connection. That's strange to me.
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And it's also strange to me that she remembered this
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like many many years later but hadn't ever connected the dots.
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It's an interesting set of circumstances. I don't know. Anyway,
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not a great sign for Richard. Even so, all the
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way through high school he was well liked. He had
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a lot of friends, a lot of dates, and a
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few girlfriends. He was clean cut, he was friendly, He
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was popular at least for a time. But as previously noted,
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he was also real fucking weird and still hurting animals
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regularly and got very, very into drugs during high school.
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He also had a lot of weird habits as a teen,
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including thinking he was part of Jesse James gang. Even
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though Jesse James died in eighteen eighty two. At first,
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people thought this was like a quirky little thing, you
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know how kids, or like a vampire, like I'm a goth. Whatever.
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People were like, oh, he's just like finding his identity.
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He's just like joking around. But like no, he really
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like thought like he had delusions that he was a
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part of this gang, so really really weird. He also
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did a lot of really weird things around the house
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at this time, like turning the heat up as high
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as it would go and lying naked in the middle
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of the family's living room with all the windows in
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the house open. So he was doing a lot of
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really strange things. And again from the age of ten
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all the way through the end of his life or
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whenever he was caught, he was consistently killing animals, cats, dogs, rabbits.
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We'll talk more about it. It's kind of a trigger
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warning case for that, if nothing else. It's always interesting
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when we have a true crime podcast and we're like
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talking about killing people. But then it's like, oh, trigger warning,
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kitty gets hurt. But like I get it. You know,
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we're here for one thing, We're not necessarily here for
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the other. So in any case, just please keep in
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mind that there will be some talking about that. I
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don't go into detail too much, but it is sort
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of important to the case, which I think is why
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I hate this case so much. So moving on, let's
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go back to talking about his girlfriends. He did have
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like a few, but none for very long, and the
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reason for this is that he was impotent. He could
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not maintain an erection. One woman later said she had
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attempted to have sex with him multiple times before finally
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giving up and ending the relationship because she didn't think
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that she could have a romantic relationship with somebody that
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she wasn't able to have sex with. So this is
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very frustrating for Richard, who up into this time actually
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went by the name Rick. But anyway, this led to
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him being very angry, very angry with women, and also
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it's thought that his impotence may have stemmed from a
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pre existing hatred for women, potentially kind of started by
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his hatred for his mother, and then not being able
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to have sex when he wanted to with you know,
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willing participants made it even worse. So it was sort
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of like a problem that became compounded and then the
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hatred for women, the hatred towards his mother, the impotence,
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It all just kind of kept feeding into itself like
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a feedback loop or something so really really bad. And again,
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there wasn't really any real reason for him to feel
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any hatred towards his mother, But sometimes you don't really
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need a reason. Maybe he blamed her for his parents split,
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Like I know that happens a lot. You know, the
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dad doesn't get blamed, but the mom does. Anyway, what
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I do know is that as time went on, Richard
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became more and more strange and more and more wrapped
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in up in drugs. He was regularly smoking weed, taking LSD,
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sometimes even using like amphetamines, you know, meth. After graduating
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high school, Richard became more unkempt and disheveled. So he'd
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been like clean cut, showered, looked pretty normal, and then
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as time went on he started to grow his hair,
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he stopped showering so much. He was just kind of gross.
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He he did go to college. He began attending American
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River College in Sacramento, which is a community college, but
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he missed most of his classes and eventually dropped out.
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So now we're in nineteen seventy one. Richard's nearly twenty
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one years old. He has no direction, no job besides
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selling drugs. He basically did that to support his own
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drug use. And he was a dirty, messy mess of
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a person, and again still regularly harming animals. Now I
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want to talk about why he was harming animals, because
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as of to this point, I've just kind of said, oh, yeah,
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he's harming animals and left it at that. The reason
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that he's harming animals was in order to drink their blood.
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And he would do this because he thought that was
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how he replaced his own blood, which he believed was
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turning to powder in his body or was not being
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pumped through his body because his heart would stop beating
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from time to time. And also occasionally, when asked, he
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would tell people that he stole his pulmonary artery. So
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he's having all of these weird delusions about the blood
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in his own body, and in his twisted up mind,
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his solution to this was to kill and pardon me
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animals and drink their blood, because obviously that's how it works.
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So in fact, even before leaving high school, Richard had
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killed a kitten named Calico Kitten which was given to
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him by one of his girlfriends. He actually loved this
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cat and had raised it for a while. But one
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night he was home alone and he saw a TV
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show about animals getting good veterinary care, and he became
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angry because he felt he could not get good care
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for his ailments. He had gone to the doctors multiple times,
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told them about his pulmonary artery being stolen, told them
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that he felt like his blood wasn't pumping. They would
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check him, everything would be fine, and they'd send him home.
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So to Richard, he was convinced something was wrong and
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he wasn't being taken seriously and he wasn't being helped.
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And then he saw these cats on TV getting good
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healthcare veterinary care, so that made him mad. He took
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the cat outside, killed it, and drank his blood. So
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this type of behavior started very young for him, as
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I noted, ten years old, and progressed before he was
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even a legal adult and now in his early twenties.
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While attending college and for a while after, Richard would
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take on odd jobs, none of which lasted very long,
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and continued just harming animals and selling drugs. Now, eventually
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he did move into an apartment and he got two roommates. Now,
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I've read that he met these women, sid Demarchi and
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Rachel Stadham by sitting in front of their apartment and
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asking to be their roommates. But I also read that
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one of them knew him from high school, so there
12:48
was some level of familiarity there. But essentially he was like, hey,
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y'all need a roommate. They were like, sure, and they
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all moved in together. This is something that they came
12:59
to regret for now. Richard would sell drugs to pay
13:02
his rent, and in addition to this, his parents gave
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him fifty dollars a month towards his bills. And they
13:07
did this because neither of them wanted to or could
13:10
handle living with Richard, so they were trying to keep
13:13
him out of their homes because you know, again he's
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doing these weird things, laying naked in the middle of
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the house, cranking the heat up, opening the windows, saying
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that you know, his blood's drying out and his pulmonary
13:26
artery's been stolen. And obviously his parents knew that he
13:30
was killing animals. His mom told somebody when he was ten,
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so she'd been living with him for you know, ten
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years plus knowing he's doing this. So of course as
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soon as they could get rid of him, his parents
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were like super happy to do so and paid him
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money to stay the fuck out of their house. Now,
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as you can imagine, or if you can't imagine, I'll
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tell you, things did not go well with his roommates,
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one of them, I'm sure both, but one of them
13:57
specifically thought that Richard was absolutely disgusting, noting that he
14:02
never bathed, never changed his clothing, never brushed his hair,
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and never cleaned anything at the house and again, super
14:11
fucking weird. He was just a super weird guy. They
14:14
did not like uh being around him. An example of
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his weirdness is that one time, just as he did
14:21
in his parents' home, he came into the living room
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completely naked and laid on the floor. Another time, he
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locked himself inside his room, then inside his closet and
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wouldn't come out. He later said he did this because
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people were sneaking up on him from inside the house.
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So this is, you know, obviously there's some mental health
14:41
issues going on. Obviously, this is this is not great. Now.
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At one point the women asked him to move out,
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but he refused, so instead they both just left. They
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didn't give him notice, They didn't want any kind of conflict.
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They just bailed out so as to avoid any conflict. Now.
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From there, Richard had another roommate briefly, but that went
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about the same way this first round of roommates went,
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and finally he was left alone in the apartment, which
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he could not afford even with dealing drugs and help
15:14
from his now divorced parents. In nineteen seventy two, he
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had to move back in with his mother and things
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went downhill from here. He accused her of poisoning him repeatedly,
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as well as continually saying he was dying. His heart
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wasn't beating. I mean, he'd have these like big blow
15:32
ups at the house where he was like seemingly in
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so much pain and so much distress, but really there
15:39
was nothing. He was all just mental. But his mom
15:41
was having to deal with this and having to deal
15:43
with him accusing her of trying to kill him. I mean,
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it's pretty pretty crazy. Now. He bounced back and forth
15:50
between his parents for a while because his mom was like,
15:52
I cannot do this on my own, but eventually neither
15:55
of them were able to deal with him. So they
15:56
finally sent him to live with his grandmother down in
15:59
Los Angeles. Now, in fact, they had done this before,
16:03
but this time he stayed with her for an entire year,
16:06
whereas before it was like a month or two, just
16:08
a little break, something to kind of like give them
16:10
a rest from this guy. But this time he stayed
16:13
down there. He even got a job with her and
16:15
his uncle, who ran a school for disabled children. Now, Richard,
16:19
this is insane, especially when you know more about this story.
16:22
He worked as a bus driver for the school, meaning
16:25
that this man had the lives of multiple children in
16:28
his care twice a day for an entire year. And
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these are at risk children. This is an at risk population,
16:36
absolutely fucking terrifying. After a while, he ended up back
16:40
in Sacramento after his grandma realized there was something very
16:43
wrong with him. And now she tried to tell him,
16:46
you know, she should try to get him on the
16:48
right track. She tried to help out, tell him he
16:51
was a good boy, you know, he was doing the
16:54
best he could. There's nothing wrong with him. But eventually
16:57
she was like, naw, you gotta go, like you're too
16:59
fucking weirk from there. Once he was back in Sacramento.
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He pretty quickly went to the hospital complained about his
17:06
blood not working, the artery thing. He said, I'm dead,
17:10
I'm dying. He one time said that his stomach was
17:13
in backwards, all sorts of crazy shit. He was diagnosed
17:18
as schizophrenic and remanded to a mental hospital, which he
17:22
quickly escaped by walking out the front door. Now, at
17:26
this point, he was not legally required to be there,
17:28
so they just let him go, despite knowing he should
17:30
stay and be treated. They didn't have any cause to
17:33
force him to stay, so they let him go. Now,
17:37
after this, his parents decided, we're gonna get you your
17:39
own apartment, Richard, and will pay for it because we
17:43
cannot deal with you. Richard wasn't working, but got himself
17:47
a bike and would bike around looking like a fucking
17:50
ghoul with his long, stringy hair, gaunt appearance, dirty clothing,
17:55
I mean absolutely gross. Now, around this time, as soon
17:59
as he was living by himself, he also started buying
18:01
rabbits from a local rabbit farm and would keep them
18:04
in cages in his house. And before you go, how
18:07
is that possible that he could buy rabbits from a
18:09
rabbit farm. He lives in a major city. Sacramento's a
18:12
farm town. Sacramento has tons of farmland, tons of farms,
18:16
tons of wild animals and you know, livestock, rabbits, this
18:20
kind of thing. So when I read that, I was like, oh, yeah,
18:23
I bet, I bet I could fucking find the corner
18:26
that place was on. You know, if you know Sacramento
18:28
at all, you know it's a lot of It's very
18:31
rural for a big city, weirdly, So anyway, he would
18:35
kill and eat the rabbits. He would not cook them,
18:39
he would drink their blood directly from their dead bodies.
18:42
He would also use a blender to grind up their organs,
18:44
which he would also eat. And he did this to
18:48
replace his own organs, most specifically his heart, which he
18:53
believed was shrinking and would eventually disappear. So just like
18:58
his answer to his missing blood was to animal blood,
19:01
his answer to his shrinking heart was to eat the
19:05
organs of rabbits to prevent that from happening. Now, you know,
19:10
he didn't have any oversight. He's living by himself, so
19:13
he was able to do this without anybody really knowing
19:16
what was going on. So he got away with this
19:18
for a really long time, and he would just sort
19:21
of drive around or sorry not drive bike around the
19:24
neighborhood on his bicycle and get these rabbits from this
19:28
rabbit farm. Who I wonder what they thought he was doing.
19:30
I mean, maybe they thought he was cooking and eating them.
19:33
I guess that's fair. I don't think if they knew
19:35
that he was eating them raw and drinking their blood,
19:37
they would have kept selling them to him. But basically
19:40
he went on doing this for like some months. His
19:43
dad would come over like occasionally for lunch kind of
19:47
to check in make sure he's okay. And one day
19:50
he came over and he found Richard shaking on his
19:55
living room floor, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. Now,
19:59
his father took him the hospital as Richard was clearly
20:02
very sick, and their doctors determined that he had blood poisoning. Now,
20:07
Richard told the doctors it's because he ate a rabbit
20:10
who had ingested battery acid, Which, like, how would the
20:14
rabbit have done that and how would that have poisoned him?
20:18
But that's what he told them happened. So he ate
20:21
the rabbit, the rabbit ate battery acids. Now there's battery
20:24
acid in his system, and it's like, okay, well did
20:26
you eat the rabbit's stomach, like right after it ate
20:29
the battery acid? Like what very very very strange, And
20:32
I'm sure the doctor the doctors were like, what the
20:34
fuck is wrong with this guy? So I think this
20:36
sort of tipped them off to do some more testing,
20:39
and doctors pretty quickly discovered that what had actually happened
20:43
is that Richard got a hold of some hypodermic needles
20:47
and had injected himself with the rabbit blood, which is
20:52
super super dangerous. Now. Later, when asked why he did this,
20:56
he said it's because his own blood wasn't enough, and
21:00
as we've talked about, you know, his ideal was to
21:02
supplement it with animal blood. Now, this trip to the hospital,
21:06
because he had been to the hospital a few times,
21:11
you know, because of his pulmonary artery missing and his
21:14
stomach being in backwards and his blood turning to dust.
21:16
But this trip landed him in the psych word. Unfortunately,
21:21
this was another very short stay, but it did get
21:25
him in there because clearly this man is mentally ill,
21:29
he's suffering, he needs help. Now. I believe he went
21:32
into the hospital in the early summer of nineteen seventy
21:36
six and was released in September. The nurses where he
21:43
was they were like, do not let this man out.
21:46
He's extremely sick. He could be dangerous, for sure, you
21:51
should not let him out. The nurses were all against it,
21:55
but his doctor, who probably didn't interact with him at
21:57
all because we know how that goes, decided he was
22:00
good to go. And he decided this despite his continued
22:03
obsession with blood and the fact that he was found
22:07
with blood covering his body two different times while in
22:10
the hospital. This blood came from birds that he caught
22:13
through his window, which he then decapitated and drank their
22:17
blood and also smeared it all over himself. So he's
22:22
in this mental hospital. We know that he has issues
22:25
with his blood and obsession with blood. He's catching, decapitating,
22:31
probably with his bare hands, these birds, bathing in and
22:36
drinking their blood. And the doctor's like, he's cool, he's cured.
22:40
Let him go. And his mother also was very much
22:45
in favor of his release. Now, I want to point
22:48
out here that one of the things that I read
22:51
about his mother when Richard was young, I think is
22:55
really important and I haven't heard a lot of podcasts
22:58
talk about this. During her marriage to Richard's father, she
23:03
repeatedly accused him of poisoning her. So to me, it
23:09
sounds like, not only may there be some you know,
23:12
mental illness with her, but this is also something that
23:16
was kind of normalized for Richard growing up. So whatever
23:20
he has going on mentally, I think we also have
23:23
to consider that he grew up with somebody who was
23:26
making these accusations against another parent. You know, he's got
23:30
the two people he loves and you know, depends on
23:32
most in the world having this type of relationship. So
23:36
on top of that, I think maybe something is up
23:40
with his mom as well, like mentally, and I can't
23:42
say for sure. I don't know, but that kind of
23:46
stuck out to me. And I haven't heard a lot
23:47
of podcasts talk about that. They really mostly kind of
23:50
paint his childhood as being very normal, but I do
23:53
feel like there's definitely some some weirdness there. Anyway, when
24:00
he was released, he was given medication, but his mother
24:03
very quickly weaned him off of it, saying it made
24:05
him like a zombie. So it's like, you know, would
24:10
you rather have a zombie or like a blood demon
24:13
like I don't really know. I don't think either situation
24:16
is great. But at least if he's a zombie, maybe
24:18
he's not being tortured, Like, he's not torturing himself with
24:22
like his mental obsessions, you know. So basically everybody is
24:27
failing this man. And to be clear, the nurses at
24:30
the hospital were like, absolutely not. You know, this is
24:34
a terrible idea, And when interviewed later, one nurse said, quote,
24:38
it was his turn to be released, and anything we
24:40
had to say or do about it was irrelevant. So
24:42
basically they were like, we need the space, Get him
24:44
the fuck out of here now. From this point, he
24:47
went back to living in his apartment and things escalated,
24:51
because of course they did. He refused to let anybody
24:54
into his apartment, not his father, not his mother. He
24:57
didn't have any friends. His sister was afraid of him,
24:59
so she never went near him, but he basically locked
25:03
himself inside of his apartment and nobody knew what was
25:06
going on in there. He also started to find stray
25:10
cats and dogs, more and more of them, and started
25:14
drinking their blood regularly, as well as smearing it all
25:17
over himself and then like going out like riding his
25:22
bike to the rabbit farm or walking around the neighborhood
25:26
covered in blood. So he's definitely escalating here now. He
25:30
also started to buy guns, which how did he do that, Like,
25:34
I'd really like to know, but in any case, he
25:36
was able to, and he'd always been into guns. But
25:39
it's just scary because at this point, with everything else
25:42
going on, he's also starting to carry loaded guns and
25:46
have them in his home. And again he's really just
25:50
entirely on his own. His parents have given up beyond
25:52
just paying for his apartment to keep him out of
25:54
their lives, and he's just kind of spinning out now.
25:58
Not quite a year later, this kind of just goes on.
26:00
He's like stalking people in the neighborhood. I read that
26:03
he would like follow women and like follow people and
26:05
spy through windows. But he's mostly keeping to himself unless
26:10
you're a domesticated animal, in which case you're in big
26:12
trouble with this guy. But about a year later, in
26:16
August nineteen seventy seven, Richard ended up in Nevada somehow
26:20
and police found his Ford Ranchero, which I think his
26:23
parents bought him. So he did finally get a car,
26:27
a Ford Ranchero, and he of course took it out
26:30
to Nevada and got it stuck in the sand on
26:33
a reservation. Because this guy's not gonna make a single
26:36
good choice. He's not gonna do a single thing that
26:38
he should do. Now, I guess somebody saw this and
26:41
called to report the car and suspicious activity. When police arrived,
26:46
they looked in the car and they found two blood
26:48
stained guns, a bucket with various organs inside, blood all
26:55
over the car. I mean, it was a crazy mess.
26:59
And near by they found a naked Richard Chase covered
27:04
in blood head to toe, just completely soaked. When they
27:11
asked Richard where the blood came from, he told them
27:16
it's seeping out of me. Now. In the end, this
27:23
actually turned out to be cow's blood, and that's good
27:26
because he had also been traveling to Nevada with a dog,
27:30
which was never found. But they did not find dog
27:33
blood on him. So my best hope for that sweet
27:36
dog is that it escaped and he did not hurt it.
27:40
I can't say, but I hope that's the case. However,
27:43
he was out on a reservation killing cows, bathing in
27:47
their blood, just being fucking crazy, and then telling the
27:50
police it was his blood and was literally seeping out
27:53
of him, which is absolutely Kuku Banana's bonkers. Now, he
27:57
was one hundred percent arrested and held until they could
27:59
figure out what was going on. But eventually they released
28:01
him and they didn't charge him because they didn't find
28:04
any dead cows and he wasn't really doing anything illegal.
28:08
This was on his record, but nothing really happened. Once again,
28:12
of course, So now he goes back to Sacramento and
28:15
he continues his super fucking weird lifestyle, continuing to kill
28:19
animals drink their blood, escalating morey. Today he's graduated from
28:23
the bicycle to the car. He's graduated from killing animals
28:27
with his hands to having guns. And he would shoot
28:30
these animals. He would shoot them in the head and
28:33
drink their blood that way. So an interesting thing is
28:37
that I want to note that he is not like
28:40
a process killer. I forget what it is like process
28:43
versus like whatever. But anyway, his point was not the killing,
28:48
it was the blood. So he never intended to torture
28:52
any animals or torture people in the killing part anyway.
28:58
And shit gets weird, and we'll get into it in
28:59
the second and half. There are going to be two parts,
29:02
but I do want to call out that, like the
29:04
murdering itself was not his main aim. That wasn't his
29:08
main thing. It was more about having the body kind
29:12
of like Dahmer in a way, like he wasn't the
29:16
killing wasn't the thing. It was like the control and
29:18
the keeping the people around. So anyway, he gets back,
29:22
you know, to or to uh Sacramento in August seventy seven,
29:26
and over the next few months he really starts stalking people.
29:30
He's really kind of escalating that behavior. He would follow
29:33
women home. He wouldn't interact with them, but he would
29:36
like watch them. And around this time, just after Christmas
29:39
nineteen seventy seven, he committed his first attempted murder. So
29:44
between August and December nineteen seventy seven, he really kind
29:48
of takes things up a notch. So December twenty seventh,
29:51
nineteen seventy seven, Dorothy Polanski was doing dishes in her
29:54
home in Sacramento when she heard a loud pop, then
29:58
heard some dishes in her home break, and then felt
30:01
some heat near her head. She went into the bathroom
30:05
to look, and it turned out the heat she was
30:08
feeling was a bullet that had come so close to
30:11
her head that it went through her hair, which was
30:13
tied up in a bun. It then went all the
30:17
way through her bun into some of the dishes in
30:19
her kitchen. This turned out to be a bullet that
30:24
matched a gun owned by Richard Chase, and we don't
30:28
know that yet, but later on they figure that out. Now,
30:30
the weird part of this is that during this time,
30:33
when he's escalating to attempted murder and successful murder, he's
30:37
sort of outwardly turning things around. He cuts his hair again,
30:42
starts acting normal, even tells his parents he's considering getting
30:46
a job, which like he should, but I think everybody
30:49
thought he was a lost cause and suddenly he starts
30:52
acting kind normal. Now, this could have definitely been in
30:57
response to the fact that his family banned him from
31:00
the family home because he shot their pet cat in
31:05
the head and smeared its blood all over his body.
31:09
He did this in front of his mother, who was like, Okay,
31:12
that's my limit. You can't come over anymore. So there
31:16
was a sort of a tipping point even with his mom.
31:18
I think that's pretty far over the line, but you know,
31:22
everybody has their own level of bullshit they'll put up with.
31:26
But I think after that he realized that he needed
31:29
to dial it back if he wanted to be able
31:32
to see his family, be able to be with his
31:34
parents now. Even so, his mom never again allowed him home,
31:39
and I think this really pissed him off and set
31:42
him off as well, and she didn't really buy into
31:44
like his little, oh look, how good I'm doing kind
31:47
of thing, But he still kind of outwardly was getting
31:50
his shit together. Inwardly though not so much. And the
31:53
day after the attack on Dorothy, Richard committed his first
31:57
actual murder. Now, this murder was a fifty one year
32:00
old Ambrose Griffin, who was unloading groceries with his wife
32:03
in their driveway when he suddenly grabbed his chest and
32:07
fell to the ground. At first, his wife thought he
32:10
was having a heart attack, but once emergency services arrived,
32:13
it was found he had been shot. Ambrose died at
32:17
the scene. There was a witness to this crime, but
32:20
they didn't have any good information, so Richard was not
32:23
caught or even considered a suspect. They kind of gave
32:27
like they said, oh, we saw like a brown car,
32:31
but I think they said it was like a Dodge
32:32
dart or something. They didn't say Ford ranchero or they
32:35
get the wrong color, and you know, they said like
32:37
a long haired guy in nineteen seventy seven, like good luck.
32:40
You know, that's everybody. So they didn't really have anything
32:43
to go on from here. Richard continues to escalate, and
32:47
he starts breaking into homes regularly and like during the day,
32:51
like he's just doing it kind of whenever. So on
32:54
January twenty third, nineteen seventy seven, Richard, who had been
32:58
more actively kind of stocking people like he'd always done this,
33:02
like since before he even had a car, but he
33:04
was now doing it like constantly, he attempted to break
33:08
into a woman's home. Now, at this woman's home, he
33:13
found that the doors and windows were locked, so he
33:16
walked away without trying to force his way in. The
33:19
woman whose home it was, she was home at the time,
33:22
and she went to her back door. She met him
33:25
face to face at her sliding glass door, and they
33:28
kind of just looked at each other and then he
33:31
turned around and walked away. Fucking terrifying. So she's in
33:35
the house and she sees this scruffy scraggly, potentially like
33:39
blood covered dude, trying her front door, trying her windows,
33:45
and then just calmly walking around to the back door,
33:47
which she has locked, and he just stares at her
33:50
and then lights a cigarette and walks away, he later
33:56
told police. And he's fucking terrifying. He later told police
33:59
that if a door or windows were locked, he took
34:03
that as a sign that he was not welcome into
34:07
the home, which is hilarious in a way because it's
34:11
like a real vampire, like you have to invite them
34:13
into your homes. I don't think that he knew that
34:17
lore or was sort of like maybe he was maybe
34:20
he was like aware of that lore and like played
34:22
into that because he's like, I'm a vampire. I don't know.
34:24
I don't think he ever referred to himself as a vampire,
34:27
So I really don't know, but I thought that was
34:28
funny because it's like, oh, that's like a you know,
34:30
in regular vampire low you can't come into somebody's house
34:33
until they invite you. So anyway, that same day, he
34:36
successfully entered the home of a young married couple, Barbara
34:40
and Robert Edwards, and ransacked their house for valuables. Now,
34:45
the couple came home while he was doing this, and
34:47
the husband actually chased Richard, who ran out the back door,
34:50
but eventually Richard was able to jump a fence and escape,
34:54
And while he was running from the guy, he said,
34:56
I'm just taking a shortcut, which is like the weirdest
35:00
thing to say, Like he was in their home, super
35:03
super strange. So anyway, after checking the home, the couple
35:06
found that Richard had gone into their baby's room and
35:10
pissed in one of the drawers containing the baby's clothing.
35:14
He also took a shit in the baby's crib, which
35:17
is honestly terrifying. Beyond weird, that's like a very aggressive
35:23
and scary thing to do. He also had rounded up
35:26
some valuables, but he left them at the home as
35:28
he'd been surprised at their return. But at least he
35:31
didn't shoot them, because he definitely had a loaded gun
35:34
in a shoulder holster which he was wearing at the time. Now,
35:38
it's unclear exactly how many burglaries he perpetrated, but his
35:42
willingness to do this in broad daylight shows like a
35:44
really terrifying escalation that could only end exactly the way
35:49
that it did. I'm gonna stop here for part one.
35:54
Part two is basically all the murders. I think one
35:57
of the reasons this case really bothered me is there's
35:59
so so much lead up. There's so many opportunities for
36:04
someone to step in and prevent this from happening, and
36:08
nobody did. And I know I could do. I know
36:12
we're only at about like forty minutes here, I think
36:14
not even but I don't want this to be like
36:17
an hour twenty and I think the murder end of
36:19
it is going to be a lot longer. I did
36:22
want to say also that at this point, what Richard
36:25
was doing was he was breaking into homes where he
36:28
didn't think anyone was home. So his point at this
36:32
time was stealing things, general chaos. He was stalking people,
36:38
but he I don't think he was stalking them to
36:41
attack them. He was stalking them and then like victimizing
36:45
them through burglary. So it's kind of an interesting, little
36:49
like sideways step in his sort of escalation, and it
36:53
definitely shows, you know, that he's not afraid to do
36:57
this in broad daylight ater on. You know, there is
37:00
a lot of talk about how severely mentally ill he is,
37:04
how that probably had a lot to do with his
37:06
decision making. But I do want to call out that
37:09
there's definitely and we'll talk about this more in the
37:12
second episode, but there's a lot of pre planning here,
37:17
whether you notice it or not, he definitely thought these
37:22
things out. Like even just saying if the doors are locked,
37:25
I don't go in. If they're open, I do go in,
37:27
Like that shows forethought, like he's thinking about what he's doing.
37:31
And there's a lot of back and forth because obviously
37:34
he's mentally ill. But I think a lot of his trial,
37:37
because he does get caught, obviously centered around was he
37:41
aware of what he was doing? And I just want
37:44
people to kind of think back through what I've already
37:45
talked about and think about whether or not this seems
37:49
pre planned or if this seems just random to me,
37:52
It seems pre planned, and there's gonna be a lot
37:54
more kind of evidence for that. And I think that's
37:58
a really interesting part of this case because it shows
38:00
that you can have somebody who is very mentally ill,
38:03
but who is not out of control and who is
38:06
not unable to know what they're doing. Anyway, Guys, sorry,
38:11
this one's a little short and sorry for the two
38:14
week break. Life comes at you fast. Like I said,
38:17
always going to quote Ferris Bueller when I can. I
38:21
will be back on a regular schedule. We'll have part
38:23
two of this out next week. I would love to
38:25
do back to back releases, but I'm still kind of
38:28
getting back into the groove from needing this time away.
38:32
Thank you everybody for listening. Please like, rate, review, share
38:35
with your friends and family. Let's keep these little indie
38:37
pods going and uh yeah, until the next half of
38:43
this horrible tale, stay safe.