Richard Chase

[2] By the age of 5, Chase privately exhibited evidence of all three parts of the Macdonald triad, a theory suggesting the development of violent psychopathy.

[1] While Chase was described as being popular and clean-cut during his high school years, he started to become withdrawn once he entered adulthood, and had a more unkempt appearance.

[8] Chase first worked in a typing and phone answering job for Retailers Credit Association during 1969, while enrolled in American River College.

In the next few years, Chase continued to find other odd jobs in Sacramento, but he was still using heavy amounts of drugs and none of them lasted long.

[1] During one lone trip to Utah in 1972, Chase was arrested for driving under the influence, and he told his parents that he had been gassed in the local jail, and that he wanted to sue the police.

When Chase's father kicked him out of his residence, neighbors reported that he would stand still by the property, blankly staring at it for extended periods of time.

[1] At this point, his father didn't believe that the troubles in his life were due to mental illness, but rather a lazy work ethic and misguided values.

[1] In late 1972, Chase's mother attempted to call the police on him during an argument, when suddenly Richard grabbed the phone and whacked her on the head with it.

[1] When Chase returned to Sacramento for good in the summer of 1973, he began cutting out photos of human organs from a medical book, and pasting them all over his bedroom.

[1] Chase spent two days in a psychiatric ward in December 1973, after walking into the emergency room of American River Hospital, complaining about a variety of imagined ailments.

[1] Doctor Irwin Lyons noted in his report that Chase was "tense, nervous and wild eyed", describing him as a "filthy, disheveled, deteriorated and foul smelling white male".

[1] Once Chase slapped his mother in the face, and sometimes when he argued with her, she would put his father on the phone, which led him to have fits of rage, causing damage throughout the house.

[5] After undergoing a battery of treatments involving psychotropic drugs, Chase was deemed no longer a danger to society, and later in 1976, he was released to his mother's custody.

[1] Later investigation uncovered that, in August 1977, Chase was stopped and arrested on a Native American reservation in the Pyramid Lake, Nevada, area.

She wouldn't allow him in her house since his sister had become afraid of him, following a recent incident where he ripped apart a cat in front of his mother during an argument, smearing its blood over his body.

On one occasion, he was caught and chased off by a couple returning home as he pilfered their belongings; he had also urinated and defecated on their infant child's bed and clothing.

[12] Despite wearing rubber gloves to the murder, Chase made no effort to cover up the crime scene, and he left behind the butcher's knife.

[1] Wallin's eyes were open and her tongue was sticking out, with Detective Wayne Irey saying that the terrified expression on her face had continued to haunt him over the years.

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.

[1] 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.

[13] 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.

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.

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.

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.

[19] 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.

[21] 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.

[21] 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.

[13] 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.

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.

[1] 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.