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Bloodlust and Madness: The Vampire Crimes of Richard Chase
Bloodlust and Madness: The Vampire Crimes of Richard Chase
Bloodlust and Madness: The Vampire Crimes of Richard Chase Richard Chase’s descent into madness wasn’t subtle… it was a loud, blood-soaked…
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Dec. 24, 2024

Bloodlust and Madness: The Vampire Crimes of Richard Chase

Bloodlust and Madness: The Vampire Crimes of Richard Chase

Bloodlust and Madness: The Vampire Crimes of Richard Chase

Richard Chase’s descent into madness wasn’t subtle… it was a loud, blood-soaked alarm bell that went unanswered for years. Diagnosed with severe mental illness but repeatedly dismissed by...

Bloodlust and Madness: The Vampire Crimes of Richard Chase

Richard Chase’s descent into madness wasn’t subtle… it was a loud, blood-soaked alarm bell that went unanswered for years. Diagnosed with severe mental illness but repeatedly dismissed by those around him, Chase spiraled into horrifying acts of violence fueled by delusion. From bizarre rituals involving rabbits to unthinkable crimes against innocent people, his story is a grim reminder of the devastating consequences of untreated psychosis. In this episode, we unravel the tragic and disturbing life of the man who would come to be known as the “Vampire of Sacramento.”Join us as we navigate the origins of his delusions, the ignored warning signs, and the series of murders that shocked California in the late 1970s. This episode is a harrowing exploration of mental illness, violence, and the systems that failed to intervene.

#TrueCrimePodcast
#RichardChaseCase
#VampireOfSacramento
#UntreatedMentalIllness
#CrimeHistory1970s
#SerialKillerProfiles
#TrueCrimeStories



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email: joe@10minutemurder.com


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Transcript
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(upbeat music)

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You know those moments where you think,

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wow, someone should really step in and help this guy.

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Well, welcome to the life of Richard Chase,

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a man who went from blaming his mom for controlling his mind,

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to let's just say, developing a very personal relationship

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with the neighborhood rabbit population.

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Diagnosed with severe mental illness,

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but consistently ignored,

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his spiral was a full-on crash,

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and everyone around him just kept handing him the keys.

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This is a story of a man whose untreated delusions

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turned gruesome and left a permanent stain on Sacramento.

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From the bizarre to the downright horrifying,

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this episode's gonna leave you wondering

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how many red flags could possibly go unnoticed,

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for just flat out ignored.

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But before we get into that story,

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if you like your true crime, brief and bingeable,

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you have found the right podcast.

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Hit the follow button now for access

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to at least two episodes per week.

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Welcome to 10 Minute Murder.

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(upbeat music)

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When it comes to true crime,

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some cases read like poorly thought out fiction,

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implausible, grotesque and baffling.

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Then there's Richard Chase,

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whose life was a parade of warning signs ignored

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until the catastrophic crescendo.

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Chase wasn't so much born into chaos

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as he was marinated in it.

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Every aspect of his life seemed to scream for intervention,

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but no one picked up the phone.

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Born in 1950 in Sacramento, California,

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Richard Chase arrived as an unplanned stress test

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for a marriage already teetering on the brink.

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His parents weren't exactly relationship goals.

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Their arguments made the hat fills and McCoy's

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look like diplomats.

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Richard's mother, a master class in paranoia,

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regularly accused her husband of poisoning her.

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Why?

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So he could supposedly have his way with her while she slept.

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A claim as baseless as it was disturbing.

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The accusations didn't stop there.

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According to her, there was also a secret mistress involved,

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one so dedicated to skulking

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that she supposedly hid in the bushes during a family trip.

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No one else ever saw this phantom bush lady,

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but the allegations stuck around like a bad house guest.

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By the time Richard was a teenager,

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all that parental toxicity had soaked straight into his DNA.

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He was a walking testament to unresolved trauma,

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channeling his angst into drugs, likely to numb

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the festering unease that his childhood left behind.

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Unfortunately, those substances didn't just dull the edges.

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They fueled the particular behaviors

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that would become part of his calling card.

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It's safe to say Richard's early years were a disaster,

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unfolding in slow motion, setting the stage

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for the chilling chapters to come.

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Richard Chase's behavior often left people scratching

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their heads.

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One of his stranger habits, falling asleep naked

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in the family room,

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heaters cranked to full blast

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while every window in the house was wide open.

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Was it a rebellion against a chaotic upbringing

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or an early glimpse of something far more troubling?

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Hindsight makes the answer unsettlingly clear.

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Despite his oddities, Richard managed to maintain

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a surface level normalcy,

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popular, well-dressed, seemingly composed,

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but beneath that polished exterior

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brewed a storm of dread and anxiety.

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One he couldn't suppress once he got a girlfriend.

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The relationship unraveled when she revealed

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that his impotence was the breaking point.

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The breakup marked the start of Richard's downward spiral.

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Hygiene became the first casualty.

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He stopped bathing.

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He let his hair grow out,

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and he neglected himself completely.

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Though he graduated high school with solid grades,

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his college experience was a disaster.

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Poor attendance and failing results

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pushed him to drop out.

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Then came the supposed symptoms.

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Richard claimed his heart would sometimes stop beating.

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Medical tests found nothing physically wrong,

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but no amount of evidence could sway him.

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He was convinced that something inside him

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was catastrophically broken.

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What began as a vague complaint

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quickly became a cornerstone of Richard's

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increasingly fractured reality.

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The first in a series of delusions

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that would define and ultimately destroy his life.

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Richard Chase's heart wasn't just

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metaphorically broken.

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He became convinced it was physically falling apart.

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His delusions escalated quickly.

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First, he believed that someone had stolen his pulmonary artery.

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It's very specific.

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Then he became convinced that his bones and his skull

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had detached and were rattling around in his head.

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As his mind unraveled, his body followed.

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Richard grew painfully thin and jittery,

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a result of heavy drug use and bizarre behavior.

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Holding down a job became impossible,

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and one horrifying incident at home got him kicked out for good.

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Believing his heart was shrinking

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and his blood had turned into dust,

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Richard killed the family dog and drank its blood

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in a desperate attempt to heal himself.

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He soon found a new living arrangement

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in the strangest way.

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Loitering in the yard of two strangers,

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Sid, Demarchie, and Rachel Stadham.

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After what must have been a pretty surreal conversation,

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they agreed to let him move in.

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His parents even shipped in 50 bucks a month for rent.

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But Richard's habits made him the roommate from hell.

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He often wandered around the house,

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naked, and intoxicated, barricaded himself in his room,

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and even nailed his wardrobe shut

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to keep intruders out.

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Sid and Rachel quickly left,

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passing their rooms to Rachel's brother and his friends.

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They didn't last long either.

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Richard's behavior drove them out too.

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Left alone, Richard couldn't afford the rent,

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and his delusions only grew darker

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as his isolation deepened.

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After years of erratic behavior in paranoia,

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Richard ended up where many troubled adults

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reluctantly returned.

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His parents' house.

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But things there were anything but stable.

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His parents had recently divorced,

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and Richard's delusions escalated.

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Laving alone with his mother,

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he became convinced that she was poisoning him

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and moved in with his father instead.

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That didn't work out either.

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His behavior became too much for his father,

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leading Richard to bounce between households,

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leaving both parents drained and desperate.

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The breaking point came in 1972.

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During an argument, Richard's mother called the police,

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but while on the phone, he attacked her,

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hitting her over the head with a phone receiver.

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In a baffling move, she did not press charges,

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but the incident permanently barred Richard from her home.

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He moved to Los Angeles to live with his grandmother,

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but his unraveling continued.

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She often heard him muttering to himself,

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carrying on conversations with absolutely no one.

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One night, she walked into his room

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to find him standing on his head.

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Richard calmly explained,

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it was his way of getting blood to flow back into his brain.

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A homemade fix for a problem no doctor had ever diagnosed.

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As Richard became thinner, more disheveled

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and increasingly erratic, his obsessions grew darker.

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His fascination with human anatomy

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turned into a gruesome hobby,

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cutting out pictures of organs from medical books

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and pinning them to his walls.

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His paranoia also became harder to ignore.

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Once he called an ambulance, claiming severe heart pain.

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Doctors found nothing wrong with him physically,

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but the untreated mental illness

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was becoming impossible to miss,

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except it seemed by his family.

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When Richard Chase was finally evaluated

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by medical professionals, the diagnosis was blunt.

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He suffered from a psychiatric disturbance of major proportion.

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That's a quote, but his parents weren't convinced.

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Instead of pursuing the necessary treatment,

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they dismissed the diagnosis and brought him back home,

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a decision with dire consequences.

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Richard's behavior did what it had always done, escalated.

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One evening while watching television,

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he saw a program about a cat receiving medical treatment.

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To Richard, even a cat was being treated better than he ever had.

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Enraged, he took the family cat outside.

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His mother heard a gunshot and ran to find him covered in blood,

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tearing apart the cat's remains

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and smearing them all over his body.

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This horrifying act led to another hospital admission,

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where Richard was diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia,

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a condition requiring intensive care.

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But once again, his mother intervened.

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Convinced she knew better than the doctors,

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she removed Richard from their care

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and brought him home with her.

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She later claimed that he had fully recovered

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under her supervision, a claim that would

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tragically be proven false.

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To Richard chase his father, his son's relationship with his mother

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was a constant war.

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Richard believed she controlled his mind

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and their arguments often turned physical.

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After each fight, she'd call his father for help,

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but these interventions only worsened Richard's anger.

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Desperate, his parents set him up with his own apartment,

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hoping for stability.

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His father visited regularly until one day

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found Richard barely alive on the floor.

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Richard had been injecting rabbit blood into his veins,

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a twisted attempt to cure his delusion

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that his heart was shrinking, and his blood had turned into powder.

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Admitted to a psychiatric hospital,

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Richard insisted fresh blood was his only cure.

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Despite his erratic behaviors, doctors released him

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into his mother's care again.

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She began weaning him off his medication

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and any progress unraveled as his untreated psychosis

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dragged him deeper into violence and delusion.

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He began purchasing puppies and small pets

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through classified ads, killing them and gruesome rituals,

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whether this was delusional compulsion or practice

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for something worse remains unclear.

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Richard also obtained a gun, amplifying the danger.

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Neighbors frequently reported hearing gun shots

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from his apartment, sometimes aimed

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at the animals he consumed, other times

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at the voices in his head.

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On December 29th, 1977, Richard turned

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to his violence outward.

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Denied the chance to spend the holidays

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at his mother's house because his sister feared him,

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Richard lashed out.

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He spotted 51-year-old Ambrose Griffin,

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unloading groceries in his driveway

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and killed him in a senseless drive-by shooting.

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Less than a month later, on January 23rd, 1978,

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Richard broke into the home of Teresa Walling,

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shooting her three times.

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He mutilated her body, repeatedly stabbing her stomach,

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sexually assaulting her and removing her organs.

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Teresa tragically was alive for much of this

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and three months pregnant at the time of her murder.

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Four days later, Richard escalated further,

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breaking into the home of Evelyn Moroth,

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killing her, her six-year-old son Jason,

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her 22-month-old nephew David and her friend, Dan Meredith.

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After killing them, he mutilated Evelyn's body,

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sexually assaulted her remains,

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and did the same to little David before fleeing

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with David's remains in his car.

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The aftermath mirrored the brutality scene

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at Teresa Walling's house.

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Neighbors reported a disheveled man

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in an orange ski park near both crime scenes.

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When the police released a composite sketch,

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a high school acquaintance of Richard came forward,

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recalling seeing him wearing the distinctive jacket.

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When police entered his apartment,

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they found a blood-soaked scene.

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With David's remains in a box in the trash.

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I was sick.

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Richard later told Psychiatrists,

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I was trying to get free of poison place

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and go live with my grandmother's relatives.

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Richard was arrested and admitted to a mental facility

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while the courts debated whether he was competent

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to stand trial.

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Ultimately, he was convicted and sentenced to death,

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but Richard would not live long enough to face execution.

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On December 26, 1980, he was found dead in his cell

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after overdosing on anti-depressant medication

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he'd been stockpiling.

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Beside him, lay a four-page note, part of it written in code,

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and the rest revealing his final delusion.

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He believed taking his own life was the only way

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to stop his heart from beating for good.

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Richard, Chase's short, horrifying reign of terror was over,

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but his story remains a chilling reminder

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of what can happen when untreated mental illness,

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delusion, and violence collide.

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(upbeat music)

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That's 10-minute murder for today.

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Brief and bingeable true crime.

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I'm Joe, I'm the host, thank you for joining today,

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especially if you're a new listener.

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If you've just joined the podcast,

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I hope that you enjoyed this episode.

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And let me tell you, it could have been,

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man, if you don't know this story,

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that this Richard Chase story,

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the vampire of Sacramento is what he's called.

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It could have been a lot worse.

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I intentionally don't put in a bunch of the gross details.

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This one had a bunch.

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And if you think this was bad,

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you should see what I left on the cutting room floor,

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so to speak.

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They was, it's real bad, like nightmare bad.

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But anyway, if you're a new listener,

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make sure you hit subscribe wherever you like

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to listen to podcasts, and in all of those places.

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I've mentioned this before.

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If you listen to podcasts on two, three, four,

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it's gonna be right there.

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The websites, you can go to that.

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It's got all the information about the podcast,

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and a blog, a blog is there as well.

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And I know I mentioned it and then shut up about it,

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but I'm gonna mention it again.

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I will be doing eventually a newsletter.

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I'll send out a newsletter eventually,

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and you can go to the website and sign up for that newsletter,

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If you wanna send me an email,

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you can do that, Joe@10minuteMurder.com.

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And that's gonna do it.

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Thank you so much for listening to the podcast.