Richard Chase Part II

 

Miroth family murder

On January 27, Chase entered the home of 38-year-old divorced mother Evelyn Miroth, and proceeded to murder everyone inside the building. Chase said he was only semi-conscious when this happened, so the exact sequence of events is unclear. Near the door, he encountered Miroth's friend, Dan Meredith. Meredith had been introduced to Miroth through his sister and was being treated for a brain tumor at the time. Chase shot him twice in the head, also fatally shooting in the head Miroth, her six-year-old son Jason, and her 22-month-old nephew David Ferreira, before mutilating Miroth with a knife from her kitchen and engaging in necrophilia and cannibalism. Like with Wallin, Chase cut open the organs of Evelyn Miroth, in addition to repeatedly stabbing her in the anus and attempting to cut out one of her eyes. Some of the stab wounds in her anus managed to puncture her uterus. Semen was found in Miroth's mutilated anus, suggesting that Chase was able to get an erection and have anal sex with her corpse, in spite of his impotence. Chase also stabbed Ferreira in the anus and cut open a section at the back of his skull, so it would be easier to drink his blood. Evidence suggests that Chase shot Ferreira in the head while he was in his crib, and that Evelyn's corpse was dragged to the bed in which it was found. There was a bathtub full of blood, meaning that Evelyn might have been having a bath when Chase entered the home. Investigators who worked on the case have said it is also possible that Chase was bathing in this bathtub full of blood. While the mutilations were occurring, six-year-old Tracy Grangaard began knocking on the door, since her family had a scheduled daytrip with Jason Miroth. Chase said that this startled him, and so he "took the baby and split". Three different knives were being used, with Chase leaving two behind at Miroth's house, and leaving another outside her yard. He fled in Meredith's car with Ferreira's body and took it to his apartment, saying that he had another blackout while fleeing. At his apartment, Chase went on to decapitate the baby and consumed parts of the brain. When subsequently asked why he did this, Chase claimed it was because he was hungry.

Police investigation and capture

The family of the girl who startled Chase at Miroth's house alerted a neighbor, who called police. Dan Meredith was lying in a pool of blood near the door when police entered. Sacramento detective Ray Biondi described Miroth's residence as "a house of carnage", and said it was difficult to look at the dead body of six-year-old Jason Miroth, since he also had a six-year-old son at the time. Jason Miroth was wearing new clothes for the daytrip he was meant to go on with Grangaard's family. When police found Evelyn Miroth's mutilated corpse spread out on a bed, they noticed that Ferreira was missing from his crib, subsequently saying they had little hope that the missing baby was still alive. They discovered that the murderer had left complete handprints and shoe imprints in Miroth's blood, and due to the nature of the murder, immediately connected it to the Wallin slaying. Police had initially been exploring the possibility that Wallin may have been murdered by one of her husband's ex-lovers, but soon abandoned this theory.

Russ Vorpagel, a special agent of the FBI based in Sacramento, got Virginia-based FBI profiler Robert Ressler to assist police during their investigation. The two went on to create their own profile of the killer. They believed that the killer was a white male in his 20s, and that he was suffering from mental illness, due to how much evidence he had left behind during the murders. They theorized that the killer's mental health issues began at around age 15, and had grown in severity over the past 8 years, to the point of committing murder. Another reason mental illness was strongly suspected was due to the strange nature of the crime scenes. In a 1997 interview on crime program The New Detectives, Vorpagel said, "We know darn well that your normal everyday person is not going to fill a tub with water, and bathe in the blood. So here we see personality, here we see mental illness, and we see mental deterioration." The FBI profile also said that as a result of this mental illness, the killer likely didn't take care of himself, and would have a dirty, disheveled appearance. During both murders, Chase was wearing an orange ski parka his father recently bought him. Neighbors later reported that a disheveled long haired man in an orange ski parka had been knocking on their doors on the day prior to the Miroth murder, asking if they had old newspapers. Police used these sightings and the FBI profile to create a sketch of this long haired suspect. Nancy Westfall (now Nancy Holden), an old high school acquaintance of Chase, later told police that a man in an orange ski parka had approached her while she was shopping. Westfall didn't realize it was Chase at first since his appearance had changed so much since he was a teenager. She noted that he had blood stains on him, and noticed a yellow crust encircled around his mouth. She also said it looked as though his eyes were sunken into their sockets. When Chase first approached Westfall, he asked her if she had been on the motorcycle when Curt was killed. Curt was an ex-boyfriend of hers who died in a motorcycle accident while the pair were in high school. She said no, and asked who he was. He introduced himself as Rick and she soon realized it was Chase. Westfall was shocked by his appearance and was so unsettled that she locked her car and drove off when he asked her for a ride. The encounter occurred shortly before Chase murdered Wallin.

Chase was arrested after this woman came forward and they checked his background. Police who searched Chase's apartment found that the walls, floor, ceiling, refrigerator, and all of Chase's eating and drinking utensils were soaked in blood. Several dog collars were also found, along with rotting organs, which belonged to animals and some of his victims. He had been reading gun magazines, psychology magazines, a book titled Psychic People and he had circled classified ads in the paper about dogs for sale. For the dates of the Wallin and Miroth murders, Chase had written the word "today" on a calendar, with the word "today" being written on 44 more dates throughout 1978. At first, Chase wouldn't let police in his apartment, so they loudly spoke to each other outside it, pretending that they were leaving. This tactic worked, and they got Chase once he left his apartment. When Chase saw police, he initially tried to run from them, and resisted arrest when they tackled him. Chase was armed at the time, and it wasn't known whether David Ferreira was still alive or not, so Detective Wayne Irey contemplated shooting Chase. He said in 2010, "that's when I found out I'm not like him. Even though it would have been a good shooting, it would have been a justified shooting, I couldn't kill him. And I would have been justified in doing it. Because the average person, cops included, are not like these people. He's a cold blooded killer, and we aren't."

Once captured, Chase was uncooperative with police, claiming that he had only killed some dogs, and that he was being framed by the Italians. He speculated that the murders had been committed by a blond man in an orange jacket, and that someone had been coming in and out of his apartment.  It would take until March 1978 for the police to find Ferreira's decomposed corpse in a garbage bin; it had been placed inside a box. A few days after his January 1978 capture, Chase was interviewed by psychiatrists, and only went into vague detail about his mental health history. When they asked what was on his mind, Chase was not forthcoming. They rephrased the question and asked what was on the "screen" of his mind, as if he were watching his thoughts on a television. Chase said "normal things" and "an exploding 747 jetliner". He also said that he saw lights in the sky that might be UFOs, and incorrectly claimed that he was Jewish, saying that he was beaten up by gangs of Italians because of his ethnicity.

Aftermath

Trial

In 1979, Chase stood trial on six counts of murder. Due to his delusions of being a persecuted Jew, Chase wanted a lawyer from the Jewish Defense League, with this motion being denied. His defense attorney would end up being Farris Salamy, who was the son of Lebanese migrants and local to the Sacramento area. While in custody and awaiting trial, Chase claimed the food he was being served was poisoned. He ordered his defense attorney to have the food tested, and it came back negative. In order to avoid the death penalty, the defense tried to have him found guilty of second degree murder, which would result in a life sentence. Their case hinged on Chase's history of mental illness and the suggestion that his crimes were not premeditated. Farris Salamy remembered in 2010 that Chase was "the most deranged" person he'd ever met, and that his case was "one of mental disease". In more interviews with psychiatrists during the trial, Chase admitted his guilt, saying "I didn't kill anybody, just a few people." He remembered very little from the Miroth family murder, and regarding the Wallin murder, Chase explained to psychiatrists, "I was sick, poisoned by iodine or mercury [...] I was trying to get free of poison place and go live with my grandmother's relatives. The car had broken down and I had no money, so I walked into somebody's house and killed them." Chase acknowledged that he needed blood, saying that he'd gone to several places to get some, but was unable to. He believed that his lack of blood was preventing him from living a normal life. Chase claimed that the blood from animals hadn't helped him, explaining, "I couldn't cope with the world anymore because every time I tried to get up and act like a human being I couldn't because of the weakness. I went on welfare and got in Beverly Manor, so now I've got a trial pending I guess." He went on to plead not guilty by reason of "temporary insanity", and requested he be seen by a heart specialist for his supposed stolen pulmonary artery. Chase told the jury that he was a good person, but had a weak heart and mind. Chase also said that he was afraid that his victims would come back from the dead. Teresa Wallin's husband was involved in the trial, giving victim impact statements. One day during the trial, Chase's mother confronted him, and criticized their German Shepherd for not protecting them the day the murder happened. This comment left Wallin's husband stunned, who responded by saying that she should have protected them from her son.

On May 8, 1979, the jury found Chase guilty of six counts of first degree murder and, rejecting the argument that he was not guilty by reason of insanity, sentenced him to die in the gas chamber. Lead prosecutor Ronald W. Tochterman convinced jurors that Chase, while mentally disturbed, still knew what he was doing was wrong. Tochterman subsequently said he knew that it was going to be a difficult task trying to convince jurors that Chase was legally sane. Some doctors who interviewed Chase during the trial had come to the same conclusions as Tochterman, which strengthened the case against him. The fact that Chase wore gloves during the murders helped prove there was a level of premeditation. Farris Salamy said in 2010, "he did a lot of things, which prosecutors will tell you, show that he was thinking. He took rubber gloves with him. But he never, on the other hand, cleaned himself up. People saw this blood on him all the time. He never got a haircut; he wandered in and out of people's yards. He never seemed to be trying to conceal this appearance, which is kind of the other side of it."

Incarceration and death

Chase's inmates in San Quentin prison, aware of the extremely violent and grisly nature of his crimes, feared him and, according to prison officials, often tried to persuade Chase to commit suicide. Chase was described as behaving psychotically from the moment he entered prison, and was temporarily sent to a facility for the criminally insane in Vacaville, California during December 1979. This was suggested by psychiatrists, who said he was "psychotic, insane, and incompetent, and chronically so." He was eventually sent back to San Quentin in April 1980, once he was deemed to be stabilized. Chase wanted to be transferred to a prison on the east coast in 1979, so he could be closer to the government and safe from UFOs, and that same year he had also written several documents, in which he blamed the murders on UFOs, the CIA, and the mafia and airline disasters. In one of the documents, Chase wrote that UFO intelligence began tracking him six months prior to the murder spree, also theorizing that he was born as a result of UFO cloning experiments, and claiming that his mother had been secretly poisoning him since he was a year old. Chase also wrote that he had been born with a Jewish Star of David symbol on his forehead and that this was as a result of the UFO cloning experiment. During late 1979, Chase was considering appealing his death sentence, since he thought his life was under threat when the murders happened, which could have made his actions justifiable under Californian law.

In 1979, Robert Ressler conducted an interview with Chase at San Quentin. A reason Ressler did this interview was since he wanted to validate the original criminal profile he had made of Chase, while the murders were occurring during 1978. When Ressler met Chase, he noted that he was very thin, and described his eyes as being like black dots rather than normal pupils, saying that they resembled those of a shark. In this interview, Chase spoke of his fears of Nazis, UFOs and being poisoned. He told Ressler that he was going to appeal his death sentence, and this was since he was the victim of soap-dish poisoning. Chase explained to Ressler that everyone has a soap-dish, and if they lift up the soap and the part underneath the soap is dry, they are fine, but if it's gooey, that means they have soap-dish poisoning. When Ressler asked what the soap-dish poisoning had done to Chase, he responded by saying it had turned his blood to powder, and that the reason he killed was to replenish his blood. Chase added that the soap-dish poisoning was being perpetuated by Nazi UFOs, and asked Ressler to give him access to a radar gun, with which he could apprehend the Nazi UFOs, so that the Nazis could stand trial for the murders. Chase again claimed that he was Jewish, and said that there was a Star of David symbol on his forehead. He handed Ressler 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 with poisoned food. Chase wanted Ressler to have the food tested at the FBI lab in Quantico, and Ressler said he would do this. During the interview, Ressler went along with the statements Chase was saying. For example, Ressler said he couldn't see the Star of David symbol on Chase's forehead since he hadn't brought his glasses with him that day, but didn't question the statement as being false. In 1992, Ressler said, "the rule is, you stay out of commenting on the fantasy, and, by your comments, urge him to continue. So I couldn't say about soap-dish poisoning, 'There isn’t any such thing,' because that wouldn't have helped. Neither could I say, 'Oh, yes, I know people who’ve had soap-dish poisoning.' I merely accepted his explanation and didn’t debate him about it." When Chase was temporarily sent to the Vacaville facility for the criminally insane shortly afterwards, Ressler was supportive of this decision. Ressler had also opposed the initial decision to send Chase to San Quentin in May 1979, believing that he should have been permanently institutionalized instead.

At 11:05 a.m. on December 26, 1980, Chase was found dead in his prison cell at San Quentin. An autopsy revealed that he died from an overdose of sinequan, a drug that was prescribed to treat depression and hallucinations. Chase took 36 times the normal dose, and had been secretly hoarding the pills in his cell, unbeknownst to officers. He was lying on his stomach with his head buried in the mattress, and his legs extended off his bunk. Next to the bed were four sheets of paper covered in handwriting. Two of them contained drawn squares filled with an unknown code. On the other two pages was a message in which Chase indicated that he might drink some pills which could cause his heart to stop beating. Earlier that morning, an officer who checked on Chase observed that he was lying on his back and breathing normally The exact reasons for Chase's apparent suicide remain unknown. Ressler stated in 1992 that some believed Chase's death was accidental rather than a suicide, and that he had taken the large dose of pills in an effort to quiet the voices in his head.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Chase