FROM THE VAULT - Richard Chase: The Vampire of Sacramento - Parts 1&2

**Suruthi** (0:00)
All right, guys, we're halfway through our virtual road trip through the whole of North America.

**Hannah** (0:06)
We've been looking at cases through Canada, the US and Mexico, tracing a gruesome journey across the continent.

**Suruthi** (0:11)
I'm also taking a look back at some of our classic cases and reminiscing about our big American memories from our last US tour back in 2023

**Hannah** (0:20)
And today, we are looking all the way back to Suruthi Bala's boyfriend, Richard Chase.

**Suruthi** (0:27)
Oh my god, this was such an early episode. I don't know. I feel like sometimes I feel like sad when we've done a really big case really early on because I'm like, oh, I wish we could do that again.

**Hannah** (0:38)
Yeah.

**Suruthi** (0:39)
Not that I think our research or our storytelling was bad at all in those early cases, but sometimes the sound quality, yeah, a little bit scratchy.
And also just because we've done it, so I don't get to do it again. And obviously, as we all know, Richard Chase is my boyfriend. All I said, if you listen to this episode, you will realize that for the vampire of Sacramento, how he ends up looking at the end versus how he looks at the start, it's mind blowing. It's honestly mind blowing. He is just one of the most insane. And I mean that in the truest sense.

**Hannah** (1:14)
Yes, absolutely. He is-

**Suruthi** (1:16)
Rabbits in the blender.

**Hannah** (1:18)
Legally insane. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

**Suruthi** (1:20)
Did we go to Sacramento?

**Hannah** (1:22)
I don't think we did because we-

**Suruthi** (1:26)
We did LA.

**Hannah** (1:26)
We did the 101 And then I think we got rid of the car in San Francisco and then flew down to LA.

**Suruthi** (1:31)
Oh, yeah.

**Hannah** (1:32)
So I think we missed that.

**Suruthi** (1:34)
That area.

**Hannah** (1:35)
Well, let me check my map.

**Suruthi** (1:38)
So yes, we probably did miss Sacramento, but you know, this is a great case in the most horrible sense of everything.

**Hannah** (1:47)
Yeah.
And it wasn't his fault. Yeah.

**Suruthi** (1:51)
F***ed. F***ed in a big way. That's it, guys. Enjoy. See you in the next one.
I'm Suruthi.

**Hannah** (2:08)
I'm Hannah.

**Suruthi** (2:09)
And welcome to RedHanded, where today it's time, because we've held off for long enough, and today we are covering the case of the vampire of Sacramento, Mr. Richard Trenton Chase.
Firstly, that is a banker's name. How much does he just, he's now Richard Trenton Chase banker extraordinaire. But no, Richard wasn't a banker. In fact, he was a psychotic spree killer, and he's the first truly psychotic killer we've covered. That's, yeah, I think that's right.

**Hannah** (2:41)
I think the only one who could possibly contend would be Robert Maudsley. But I think that Maudsley had a bit more of like a trigger than seeing red type situation, whereas Richard Chase is just living in a completely different universe.

**Suruthi** (2:59)
A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And he was so brutal, so brutal in fact that he needs two episodes. So guys, it's going to be a two parter. And fair warning, these are not going to be easy listening episodes. Definitely no eating.

**Hannah** (3:15)
He killed totally indiscriminately.
And for the short few months he was active. He took six lives and absolutely terrified America. His spree didn't last long, as is usual with this type of killer, because he made very little effort to cover up his crimes. And when we say very little effort, he would just wander out of crime scenes covered in the victim's blood. Like that was no problem. He genuinely didn't try and hide what he was doing at all.

**Suruthi** (3:45)
And we can definitely call him a spree killer rather than a serial killer, because he had very little, if any, calling off period between his kills. But build up to Chase's murders. Yes, they took years, but once he got started fucking hell, he blitzed through his victims. And psychopathic serial killers, as opposed to psychotic spree killers, tend to kill, wait, relive the kill, call off and then ramp themselves up again for the next kill.

**Hannah** (4:11)
And a question that comes up with psychotic killers, in the same way that we've discussed the past of psychopaths, the question is, was Richard Chase born to be a psychotic killer or was he made?
And to answer this and the many other questions this case throws up, we need to start right at the beginning. Richard Trenton Chase was born on May 23rd, 1950, in Sacramento, California. Pretty classic.

**Suruthi** (4:39)
Yeah. And when we were doing a research for this, I really just immediately wanted to be like, fucking hell California, like do you want to just stop murdering everyone that lives there? But I was actually surprised to find out that California is not the state with the highest murder rate, serial murder rate. Where do you think it is?