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Hi, I'm Jessi Pere. And I'm Andy. Cassette. Welcome to Love Murder, where we unravel the darkest tales of romance turned deadly. Our episodes are long form, narrative driven and deeply researched. Perfect for the true crime aficionados seeking stories beyond the headlines. Like the chilling case of Blanche Taylor Moore, the so called black widow who left a trail of poisoned lovers. Or the shocking murders of Chad Shelton and Dwayne Johnson, where family ties masked a sinister plot. Subscribe to Love Murder on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
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I'm Brett.
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And I'm Alice.
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And we are the prosecut today on the Prosecutors. There is one thing you could say about Richard Chase. He never drank wine. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this October episode of the Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my vamp of a co host, Alice.
A
Hello, Brett. Very, very fitting for October and also very fitting for this case. You know, I feel like if you're gonna listen to a true crime podcast, you don't need trigger warnings. But this one, this trigger warning, it is a run for the hills. If you think, you know, twisted, you're about to get into some of the truest of crimes, twisted crimes I've ever read in my life. And let me just be clear, this is the truest of crimes. There is nothing paranormal about it. What's so freaky about it is, in fact, it's not paranormal. It's not at all.
B
Yeah. You know, we always say with these October episodes, people think they're not true crime. I mean, this one is true crime. This is horror. It's true crime. I can't believe they haven't made movies about this. I had never heard about this until somebody. People were recommending episodes. I don't know which one of you sick people recommended this one, but people were recommending episodes for Halloween.
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You know how they make like Netflix and HBO documentaries on like, Dahmer and all these other, you know, really twisted characters. I think the reason we haven't heard about this case is because it would not get rated to be able to be published to the masses because it's that disturbing. I actually think there's something to that. So, like, Dahmer is just gross enough that you can actually make a documentary about it. You cannot really make any sort of a visual representation of this because I don't think it would be allowed anywhere, dark or otherwise. Webinar.
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Well, it's a good thing this is not a visual podcast. Yay for the audio medium because today we are talking about the vampire of Sacramento, Richard Trenton Chase. And I think we've warned you enough, if you're still with us, to walk into this darkness. It's only going to get darker. This is the end of the light. I mean, this is the most cheerful it's going to be because it's all darkness from here on out. So. Richard Chase was born May 23, 1950, in Sacramento, California. His father, Richard Senior, worked as a computer specialist in McClellan Air Force Base, and his mother, Beatrice, was a school teacher, which sounds like just a delightful family to grow up in. Now, Richard, he was the eldest of two children, and he enjoyed a relatively normal life for the first part of his childhood at least. He was well liked. He had many friends. They had a birthday party where like 80 kids showed up, which is a lot of kids for a birthday party. So he was outgoing. He was part of the Cub Scouts, he played in Little League. Everything seemed fine. Now, this was true until the mid-1960s, when his mother, Beatrice, became convinced that her husband was having several affairs and also developed a drinking problem. Like, they would go out camping and she would claim there were women hiding in the bushes that he was having affairs with. So she had some paranoia going on whether or not it's true, and it's something that would affect Richard in these sort of developmental years. And look, when you talk about a case where you have somebody who is a serial killer, there's always a question of sort of nature versus nurture. And you got a little bit of both, as you're going to see in this case. And in any event, in 1973, the couple were officially divorced, though this was after both Richard and his sister were adults. And this is one of those things where I guess they kept the family together until the kids were grown. Is some of you who've been in that situation can be good. You know, I have friends who they graduated from high school and their parents got divorced, and they had no idea it was coming. And then I had friends who lived through some pretty terrible home lives and frankly wished their parents had gone their separate ways earlier. You never know how it's going to go. It seems like in this case, this was a very unstable family, even if they did remain married. But the fact of the matter is, Richard's problems began to manifest well before his parents divorced. He would later be said that he showed all the signs of the triad of serial killers. He liked to light fires, he liked to torture animals, and he had a bedwetting problem well into his teens. Now, no one knew that outside of his family, he had a relatively normal life until he was a sophomore at Mira Loma High School. And at this point, his personality took a drastic turn. Now, he had started dating, but he had difficulty with it, in part because he had chronic impotence. And this was a problem for him throughout his life. And he wanted to date, but it was just one of those things where, for whatever reason, he could not be aroused, except in extreme circumstances. We're going to learn about later. Now his grades started to suffer, and he began to experiment with drugs such as marijuana, LSD and amphetamines. And his disposition shifts with his appearance. It becomes slovenly in appearance. He's rude, he's inconsiderate. And the Richard Chase that people had known up till this point is gone.
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And this is really interesting, especially when you're trying to understand the why. We're about to get into all the things that he did. But, like, it's really hard to understand how someone can take such a dark turn, especially when they're a teenager and everything up to that point. It's not like he was a strange kid who was an outsider up until this point. It seems almost like a 180. And obviously, when you add drugs to the mix, it. It can truly have a magnifying effect on whatever is happening to someone who is mentally vulnerable. We're already seeing, you know, maybe signs of paranoia or a little bit of instability with his mom. And when you add drugs to the mix, which can have this, like, mental effect on really the most mentally stable people, There are cases where people take LSD for the first time or methamphetamine for the first time, and it, as they say, like, breaks their brain, right? And they had no issues before one.
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Shot, as the kids like to say these days. They're one shotted, one shot.
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It. Exactly. And so, you know, you're already seeing these things, and all of a sudden, I think when you add drugs to the mix, it truly, it's like you have no idea what sort of Pandora's box you've opened. And we're about to see that boy, did a Pandora's box open here. So in 1965, Richard was arrested for the first time when he was just 15 years old, and he was just caught with marijuana. This was the catalyst for a strained relationship with his father as well, with the pair often arguing about drugs and Richard's poor hygiene. Honestly, sounds like a pretty typical father son dispute, right? Like, what father thinks that their teenage son is, like, doing great in his appearance and how he's acting like. But we're going to see it's not just your typical father son dispute. So despite his poor grades, Richard Chase graduated high school in 1968, and he enrolled at American River College. He moved into an apartment with some other students at the university. But his behavior, which was getting increasingly strange, was just so bizarre to his other roommates. And that's putting it lightly. He was always stoned, unproductive, and extremely paranoid. He would board himself up in his room, always fearful that someone would sneak up on him. Kind of the definition of paranoia. At one point, one of his roommates saw him waving a gun at someone as they walked past his window. These roommates were kind of freaked out, understandably, and they moved out. And Richard dropped out of College in 1971. Honestly, with that kind of behavior, I'm kind of surprised that he lasted at college for that long. Having dropped out of college, he moves back home. But his mental health was in severe decline. Now, his mother said he couldn't hold a conversation or sign his name, and that even became very physically violent. These are all, now we know, typical signs of like having a mental issue that really needs some sort of treatment. So he's not going to get better on his own, we can see now in hindsight. So Chase went to live with his grandmother because he was too much for his parents to handle, and she lived in Los Angeles. But this change of scenery didn't exactly help. He got even more paranoid. And we see this happen often because this is a completely new place, right? There's no like familiarity with it. So new place. He already has the paranoia, it increases now and he begins talking to himself. He sleeps all day while roaming the halls at night. He's also become obsessed with his physical well being. And he's always convinced that something is wrong with him. He said his head hurt, so he thought he was changing shape, that there was something wrong with his nervous system, et cetera, et cetera. Sounds like a classic hypochondriac. This obsession continued to fester and he started cutting pictures of organs out of the textbook, Grey's Anatomy. And he taped these organs on his wall. Now he would call the fire department, visit his doctor, show up at the ER telling them that he was in cardiac arrest or that he was desperately seeking out a diagnosis. But as you may be able to tell, there was probably much more wrong with his head than his physical body.
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He really believed, like part of his heart had been stolen, he was missing, like his aorta or something. He also thought that, like, his skull had become detached. So he shaved his head so he could see the bones move around in his skull because they were detached. I mean, maybe he did see them move around. It's hard to say. But, yeah, he has lots of issues and he begins to think that he needs blood. So during one of these ER visits, he is finally diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia. And his condition continues to deteriorate. Unfortunately, he was on these drugs, and the drugs, they actually worked pretty well for him. He put on some weight. He was starting to get back to sort of a normal physical appearance, but his mother said the drugs made him like a zombie, so she decided to wean him off of those. And that didn't work. So by 1976, he is now incredibly violent with animals. He would take the family dog and actually cut the dog's paws so that he could squeeze blood out of the paws and he would do other things to the dogs. We're not going to talk about it because it's just, like I said, we're gonna self censor a little bit on this episode. So just go with it. He started buying rabbits, and he would kill those rabbits so that he could drink their blood. At one point, he decided drinking their blood was not efficient enough. So he actually took the blood, put it in a needle, and started injecting it into his body, which made him incredibly ill. And he ended up back in the er, and I think that time with a psychiatric hold for a little while. At this point, he's transferred to Beverly Manor, which is a psychiatric hospital for extended care in May of 1976. While there, I mean, I don't know if you guys have read the book Dracula, but there's a character in Dracula that is in an insane asylum and is constantly catching animals and insects and all this other stuff eating them. And that's what he would do. He would catch birds that somehow made their way into the hospital and kill them so he could drink the blood of the birds. And the nurses and the orderlies were absolutely convinced he should never be released. They told the doctors, this guy is dangerous. He is destabilizing. He's not getting better. But despite that, and probably because of, you know, budgetary issues and everything else, the doctors decided, no, he's. He's good. He's good, you know, birds much better than rabbits. And he was discharged in September of 1976. And this would turn out to be a massive mistake.
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All right guys, this story isn't gonna get any lighter. So if this is too much, go ahead and see you next week.
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See you next week.
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It's see you next week, friends. Another true crime. Because we're about to dive into the timeline and as you can probably tell, he's not going to be a one hit wonder with respect to crime. This is going to be quite the spree. So January of 1977, only four months after being discharged, despite the people treating him thinking that he was not fit for discharge, he gets discharged. He stops taking all of the medication he was prescribed for his schizophrenia and he stopped attending any follow up visits to outpatient care. Around the same time, Richard Chase became entirely obsessed with blood. You thought he was obsessed with blood before. It's about to get so much worse. He wandered into his doctor's office one day saying he wanted blood. Obviously the doctor turned him away. So he relied on killing animals in order to drink their blood. First. It was just small animals like he'd been doing before with those rabbits and those birds. But as many fixations and addictions go, it wasn't going to stay stable. He needed more blood, bigger animals to satisfy his need for blood. So he began killing these larger animals and drinking their blood. By the summer of 1977, he had killed both of his family dogs. So no longer was he just squeezing their paws for blood. He had completely killed them. And a neighbor even saw him bringing two dogs and a cat into his apartment. Spoiler alert. It wasn't to rescue them from the streets. That neighbor never saw those animals again after they were brought into his apartment. I think we all know what happened to them.
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And they would say that he would go to, you know, a lot of this. Did this actually happen or is this sort of like post hoc? But apparently people who saw him at rescues and shelters would say that all the animals were afraid of him, they were scared of him, they were suspicious of him, and they would have to sort of force the animals to go along with him. So apparently if that's true, they had a six cents. Because by November of 1977, over a period of just a couple weeks, he would buy or steal at least six dogs in order to drink their blood. Then on December 2, 1977, he purchased a Steger Arms, Luger style.22 caliber pistol. Now there was, by the way, that.
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He can buy that.
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So he lied on all the forms. It's probably not surprising. Said he'd never had any mental issues, said he'd never been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. And despite the fact that there was a waiting period of two weeks, apparently no one checked. So the two weeks came, the two weeks went, and he picked up his gun on December 18th. And also a 50 round box of ammunition. Which brings us to December 29th, 1977. So just before 8:30pm, Ambrose and Carol Griffin returned to their Sacramento home from the grocery store. They were getting their groceries out of the car while their daughter in law, Gail, held the front door of the house open. So Ambrose, he puts some bags down in the kitchen and then he heads back outside to grab the remainder of the bags. Now While he's walking back down to the car, a man driving down the street raises a.22 caliber pistol out of the driver's side window and shoots him before speeding away. Interestingly, he just sort of collapses on the ground. His family doesn't even really hear or recognize the gunshot. They initially think he's had some sort of heart attack. So they rush up to him and he says, says, I've been shot. He's then brought to the ER by ambulance, but he doesn't make it. He'll be pronounced dead at 9:25pm so, obviously, investigators begin looking into this murder. They're canvassing the neighborhood. They hear reports of people who were hearing gunshots in the neighborhood on the days leading up to the murder. And there were even several neighbors who had had bullets fired into their house, but no one was injured. What police would later find out is that Richard was actually not only shooting his gun outside in the neighborhood, but in his apartment. He would shoot it at the demons that were tormenting him. So, like, when they finally went to his apartment, there were gunshot holes all in the walls where he had shot at whatever entities he saw. But the thing about it was, no one could figure out why anyone would target Ambrose Griffin. Like, initially, they thought he must be involved in some sort of crime. Maybe he's secretly in the Mafia, he's got some sort of side deal going on, maybe he's having an affair. But none of it was true. When they looked into him, he had an absolutely clean record. No problems in the marriage, no one who disliked him, and they really had nothing to go on. And so this crime goes cold very quickly. And it seems like this is just a completely random act of violence.
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So fast forward a couple weeks, the trail's gone cold on Griffin's murder. January 16, 1978, Richard Chase sets a garage on fire on Watt Avenue. Luckily, no one is injured. Then on January 22, 1978, Richard Chase broke into the Nelson family's residence and set the drapes on fire. The fire department was called, but again, thankfully, no one was injured. Remember, earlier, we were talking about kind of the trifecta of characteristics for a serial killer. The he's very much in spades. Had the animal torture down, clearly has a fascination with fire, and now he is just breaking into homes and setting things on fire. Richard Chase leaves his apartment on January 23, 1978. He walks a few blocks to Bernice street, and with him he had his loaded semi, automatic.22 and rubber gloves. So sometime between 9 and 10am he tries to break into the home of Gene Layton, located at 2909 Bernice Street. Now, Jean sees him on the back porch and she yells out the window before calling police. 9:00am Guys, broad daylight. Now, Chase considered killing her, but instead he decides to leave right before the police arrive. I don't know. Good lesson. Scream out the window before you call 91 1. Like great. I have heard that you're supposed to like yell fire, you know, even if someone's attacking you because people run towards that. So he's not done though. He's out there with rubber gloves. He's not just cold on this January day. So he continues on to the Edwards household, which is located at 2929 Bernice street just down the street. No one was home, so he decides to break in. And he steals $16 and some other valuables. As he was leaving out of the back window, Mr. Edwards returns home and spots him. Now, Mr. Edwards chases him down, but was not able to catch up with Richard, who briefly decided to return to his apartment, I guess to drop off his goods before he continues on his way. Luckily for Mr. Edwards, really, he didn't know it at the time. He did not catch Richard. So Richard goes back to his apartment. At 11:45, he leaves his apartment and he goes to the parking lot of the Pantry Market. There he ran into a former classmate of his from high school. He follows this former classmate around the store, asking her strange questions and just generally acting bizarrely. He's been off his medications for more than a year at this point. He's doing all these bizarre things. You can imagine what it's like. She kind of knew him, but certainly not this version of him. So his classmate's pretty freaked out. She quickly checks out and leaves the store. Now, when she's leaving, he called after her, asking her to wait, but luckily she doesn't. She runs to her car, slams the door shut and leaves. But as she's doing it, as if out of a horror movie, Richard reaches out and tries to grab the handle of her passenger car door, but narrowly misses. This is like a blockbuster movie because she speeds out of the parking lot and that quite literally probably saved her life. Meanwhile, 22 year old Teresa Whelan was also at the Pantry Market shopping. From about 10:30 to 12, she shops around, cashes a check before leaving the store to walk back to her home at 2630 Tioga Way. Around that same time, Chase, who had been in Pantry Market, leaves the market and heads toward Tioga Way, which was located directly behind the grocery store.
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Okay. So Teresa, she makes it back from the market and she's cleaning up around the house and she's about to bring out a bag of trash when her front door, which was unlocked, is flung open. And in walks Richard Chase. He pulls out his.22 caliber pistol and points it at her. She throws up her hands, but before she can even say anything, Chase shoots her three times, first through the wrist, which grazes her head, then in the cheek, and finally in the head. So at this point, she is mortally wounded. It's a little unclear whether she is actually deceased, but certainly close to it, thankfully. He then takes her, drags her to the bedroom, which is at the rear of the house, where he partially undresses her. And then he takes a knife and cuts her open and mutilates her body in just a incredibly awful, disgusting way. I am not going to read to you everything he did. Suffice it to say, he cut some things off, he moved some things around, he took some things out and he then.
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He is the maddest of surgeons.
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Yes. And then he got an empty yogurt cup from the trash can and filled it with blood so that he could drink it. Now, Teresa at this time was three months pregnant. David Whelan, her husband, returns home after stopping by Slick Willie's bar after work. Probably wishes he'd stayed there. He walks in, the house is dark. He calls out for Teresa. He doesn't hear anything. He sees trash everywhere and a trail of blood leading to the bedroom. He walks in, he sees Teresa's body and he screams and runs screaming out of the apartment and tells his neighbors what had happened, who called the police. And when police responded to this scene, they had never seen anything like it. It was one of the most horrific scenes that you could possibly imagine.
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Yeah. Remember, we didn't describe to you what he saw, but it wasn't just a dead body that he saw. He saw something that is more horrific than any Hollywood movie could ever portray. So Richard's not done. January 24th, Richard Chase went to the home where he previously purchased two Labradors when no one was home. He wasn't buying those Labradors for pets. So he shoots one of the dogs that's there, he cuts open its stomach and he drinks some of that dog's blood. On January 27th, at 7am, Karen Ferreira drops her 22 month old son, David Michael Ferreira, off at her sister's Evelyn Miroth's house, which is located at 3207 Merriwood Drive. 36 year old Evelyn was a stay at home single mother to her two sons, 13 year old Vernon and 6 year old Jason. So because she was at home with her sons she also watched her nephew while her sister in law worked. At 8:30am One of Evelyn's neighbors Neon Grangard called to ask if her son Jason could come play up in the mountains with them and Evelyn agreed. At 9:05 Evelyn called Neon back and asked her if they could wait to leave until 10am because she had to go purchase some snowshoes for Jason. Now at 9:30 Evelyn's friend Daniel Meredith stopped by to pick up Jason to buy those shoes.
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So at 10am Jason, he doesn't walk across the street to meet the Grand Guard family as expected. And around this time witnesses first recall seeing Richard Chase's car parked at the country club center which was only a couple minutes from Merriwood Drive. So sometime between 10am and at 11:15am Chase entered the Merrith home from an open garage. So he first comes across Evelyn in the hallway and he shoots her in the head once. At this point he finds David in his crib and he kills him there. At 10:30 Daniel Meredith returned back to the Meredith home with Jason. He walked in and was met in the front room by Richard Chase. At this point Chase shot Daniel in the head and Jason in both the neck and the head. So at this point Daniel is already dead. But Chase shoots him again in the head. Once again he does the same and similar things that he had done before. He takes a knife and he does horrific unspeakable things to the people who are in that home. He has killed everyone in the home. One thing that is worth noting, when the police find the bodies, there is semen in one of the wounds. Recall he had had a chronic problem with impotence. It appears this was the only thing that could arouse Richard. So he does all these terrible things. He drinks a lot of blood, he eats a lot of things you shouldn't eat, he cuts up a bunch of stuff and he's in the room in the house when the daughter, the grand guards six year old Tracy walks across the street to the Miras to check on what was taking Jason so long. She knocks and knocks but no one comes to the door. Richard Chase was still inside but for some reason this freaked him out. So he actually takes the body of the baby and leaves. Tracy goes home and she tells her mother that no one answered the door. She tries calling over there, no one picks up the phone and so she decides to call the police. Richard Actually steals Meredith's car, takes his wallet as well, and he takes David the baby back with him to his apartment where he both once again drinks some more blood and consumes part of David. When the police arrive on this scene, they once again find this incredibly bloody awful scene. They actually find a bathtub which appears to be filled with blood. And the theory is that Richard actually bathed in blood while he was at this apartment. I guess I took some of your part, but I'm sure happy with that.
A
It's really fine. It's just this is a lot of, lot of blood and a lot of murder happening right now. I mean, jeez, darn it, like, I'm so glad that the six year old girl was spared for whatever reason. But if only Daniel Meredith had taken shopped like 10 minutes longer, you know, and not returned home and they wouldn't have also been murdered. But as you can tell, I mean, he is just on a rage and he's not going to be stopped until someone stops him. So at 12:15, the neighbor Neon, had grown concerned because they were supposed to meet up. And now hours have gone by. Tracy has gone over to knock on the door. No one's answered. They know that their neighbors are supposed to be home. So she stops to ask another neighbor, Nancy Turner, if she had any idea where Evelyn was. Nancy and her son then decide to go over to the house with the grand guards and check on the Miroth family. The front door was locked, but the back door was open. Now, Neon waited outside and Nancy and her son entered the home. At first, Nancy doesn't see anything notable in the kitchen, but of course, as she walks into the house, she's completely and utterly shocked and horrified when she enters the bedroom, finds Evelyn's mutilated body. Now, just like the other case that we heard of, Nancy rushes out of the home screaming. And she tells Neon that Evelyn is hurt and there's blood everywhere. At the same time, a Goodwill truck is coming down the street and stops when he sees these two women screaming and crying in utter distress. The women told the driver what they saw and the truck radioed into the dispatcher who contacted police.
B
And you may wonder, like, how is he picking who he's murdering? And later on police will talk to him. And it was completely random. He literally would go to houses and try the door. He said, and y' all know vampire lore, right? You have to be invited in. He said if the door was locked, that meant the person didn't want him to enter. But if the door was unlocked, he Considered that an invitation. So he.
A
Okay, so since I've researched this case, this is not a joke. Just in the last couple of weeks, I used to do what I think most people did. I pull into my garage, leave the garage door open while I got the groceries out because, like, it's nice weather, right? Like getting some air. I have closed my garage door while I'm still locked in my car ever since I've researched this case. And I probably will never stop doing that.
B
Yeah, no, you know, might save your life. So at 12.43pm, the police arrive on the scene. They're interviewing people, they're going in, they're seeing this horrific crime and they start to get to work piecing together who might be responsible for this string of murders. Because obviously when they found the first body and it was so horrifically mutilated, they didn't know what to make of that. Then they see this and they realize we have some sort of serial killer on our hands. One who is just incredibly violent, incredibly disturbed and needs to be caught. Now, luckily, they did have a witness. 71 year old Retta Scott had seen Chase driving Meredith's bright red station wagon and remembered it because the pair had almost collided. Chase was driving all over the road. So this was something that stuck with her. Let's talk about that. Like, why do you remember the things you do? Well, if he'd just been driving down the road, she probably wouldn't have because he almost hit her. She remembered this vehicle and she remembered the driver. She described him as a white male between 20 and 40 with long hair and looking scruffy, which, I mean, in 1978, California probably described half the population. But nevertheless, at least we have some sort of idea. Meanwhile, Richard has now made it back to his apartment where, as I said, he takes the body of this baby and does the things that he does with it.
A
So January 28th, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department began saturation patrol in the east area of Sacramento where all these crimes occurred. Yeah, you gotta flood the streets because you clearly have a madman or maybe multiple people on the loose. That very same day, they got a lead about Richard Chase. That high school classmate of his who he had run into when he was shopping was the daughter of a retired sergeant. And when she told her father about the encounter, he had her call the police to report the encounter. By the way, remember when we always tell you guys, even if you think it's not a huge deal, go ahead and report it. You never know if you're the missing link of Something else. I hear this a lot. Well, it didn't bother me that much. It wasn't that big of a deal. He didn't actually touch me. I'm like, just report it. You don't know what other string of crimes this person may or may not be doing. So her dad, retired sergeant, makes her call it in and she identifies this man as Richard Chase. This is a huge deal because even though we had an eyewitness to what the driver looked like, we didn't have a name yet. But she knows his name because she went to school with him. Now, police looked into this Richard Chase and they saw that he did have a criminal record. And when they looked at his booking photos, they were remarkably close to the sketch that was drawn up based on what that 71 year old witness had described. They also saw that Richard owned a.22 caliber weapon and more disturbingly, had a history of mental health issues that was very violent and in line with the things they were beginning to see at these crime scenes. So the police gets Richard's address from DMV records and they went to his apartment. Now, the manager of the complex said that he was very strange and that he would not answer the door for anyone. In fact, she said that his mother could only talk to him through a crack in the door when she visited. She wouldn't go in the apartment. You're about to find out why. So the manager knocks on Richard's door with the police there just out of sight. Now, at first, Richard doesn't answer. So they go back to the manager's office and they call Richard. This time he picks up the phone, but he hangs up really quickly. So he's clearly in the apartment, but he's not letting anyone in.
B
But the police know he's there at this point. I mean, when he answers the phone, he can't hang up, right? So they start knocking on the door again. They're identifying themselves, saying they just want to talk to him. He won't respond, he won't come to the door. Now, it turns out that the next door apartment is vacant. So basically, most of the cops go into the next door apartment while one of them is like, well, I guess we're gonna leave. I guess we're done. You know, he's not coming door. I guess he's not really here. And Richard, being the genius that he is, falls for this and actually exits the apartment carrying a box. Now, as he's going out, he sees one of these police officers and he tries to run, but they've got Him. They've got him at gunpoint and there's nowhere he can go. He actually takes the box and throws it at one of these officers to try and get away. It doesn't work. Inside the box are bloody rags and papers. Brain matter in an envelope. I don't know what's going on with that, why it's in an envelope, but it was there. And David, the baby's diaper pen. So they knock him to the ground. They're on top of him, they put him into custody. One of them basically whacks him with a pistol and they're able to cuff him. He keeps repeating he's done nothing wrong. He doesn't know why they're there. He's an innocent man. Despite the fact that that they find the murder weapon on him, the.22 caliber, David Meredith's wallet, the box of bloody rags and brain matter, as well as David's diaper pin. And so they have him in custody, he's been arrested, and investigators enter the apartment.
A
Okay, so when they go into his apartment, the first thing they noticed was this absolutely putrid smell. There is blood everywhere. It is stomach turning, gagging, hits you in the face. Death is in the room. Now, in the bedroom was found a bloody plate on the bed along with some men's blood stained clothing. The image of this stuff on a plate is all the more disturbing, right, because we know that he's consuming these body parts and blood. And on the bed the investigators also find three brain particles. So no surprise, it was already thrown at them from that bloody box. Now, there's additional brain matter on the bed. Now, the reports noted that these things were from the body of David, the baby. And a blood stained hatchet was also in the kitchen. And a bloody machete was found in a bedroom drawer. And there was a large blood stain in the middle of the kitchen floor and in the freezer they also found a half gallon container of animal meat consisting of kidney, liver or heart. And they also found feces on the bedroom floor. And Chase had decorated his walls with pictures of human internal organs. So not only were they on the wall as decoration, it was quite literally smeared all over his apartment. Now, Richard Chase was interviewed four times that evening, but he denied any involvement in the murders. Don't know how those scenes got in my apartment. Absolutely innocent. Now, he stated that he had only killed dogs in his apartment. That's what they were seeing. Not people, just dogs.
B
Well, the press didn't believe him. The Sacramento Union ran a story with a headline. They called him The Vampire. And you can imagine why. And at this point, they're interviewing nurses at one of the psychiatric hospitals. And as we said, those nurses had really pressed for him not to be released. And they were fine throwing blame. They weren't gonna blame them. They were telling everybody, look, this guy, we called him the Vampire because he would, as we said earlier, he would catch those birds, he'd bite their heads off and drink the blood. And we said, don't release him. And yet he was. And this article would lead to Chase being known as the Vampire of Sacramento. Now, the thing is, they found brain matter, etc. From David, but they didn't find David. And it would actually take a while. On March 24th. So about two months later, the mutilated body of David Ferreira was found by a janitor at the Arcade Wesleyan Church. It was actually found in a box outside in a gated area that's usually locked. And inside the box, the keys to Daniel Meredith's car were also found. Little unclear how Richard got in there, but, hey, maybe it wasn't locked at the time she usually was. Now, you could imagine at this point, now we're in the legal world, we've caught the guy. He clearly has some issues. And if you've listened to our podcast before, you know, when you have someone who has this many mental issues, you're going to have some competency problems. May 1978, he is declared competent to stand trial. He is examined by four doctors, and maybe they're the same four doctors who let him out of the asylum earlier and want to make it up to the state because they say he is confident. Now, thinking about this for a second, remember the difference between being insane for the purposes of your crime, incompetent, stand trial. To be competent, you have to understand the charges against you, be able to assist your attorney, that sort of thing. And I would just note throughout this, although Richard has evinced some serious mental issues, he's also shown planning, intention. He attempted to flee the police. He said he was innocent. Invasion. When he was interviewed by the police, he didn't say, the demons controlled me. You know, he makes up a story like, no, no, no. All that you're finding are animal remains. I didn't. I haven't killed anyone. So I think there's a pretty good argument that he is, in fact, competent to stand trial. And he is found competent. In June of 1978, he is again evaluated by two psychiatrists. And during these evaluations, he admits to having killed people. And they determined that while he was schizophrenic. He was still responsible for his actions and understood that killing people was wrong. So this is for the purpose of the insanity defense. So if you're going to do the insanity defense, you open yourself up to these kind of examinations and you're going to have experts who are saying whether or not when you committed the crimes you were saying or not. And these psychiatrists determined that he was sane at the time of the murders. Now, that final determination is always for the jury. Ultimately, the jury decides whether or not you're sane at the time of the murders. But obviously, usually the views of the experts go a long way in cases like this.
A
So on January 2, 1979, Richard Chase's trial began. Now his defense attorney, Ferris Salami. Salami.
B
I like salami. Let's just go with salami.
A
Let's go with salami.
B
We need a little levity in this episode. Salami.
A
I've really guessed on a lot of names from the 60s here. So he's a defense attorney. I don't know why I keep saying his a defense attorney like I am an Italian. It's he's a salami and defense attorney. Guys, we got a laugh so we don't cry. On January 2, 1979, Richard Chase's trial began. His defense attorney, Farah Salami, was hoping for a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity because it seems very clear that he did it all. So that's his best defense. But that does seem unlikely, especially because of the two psychiatrists who had previously evaluated him, finding that he knew what he was doing. Now, Chase's case wasn't helped by him taking the stand. Not good. And admitting to murdering people and drinking their blood. Really hard to get over that. So I don't think that's the best tactic. Obviously, we've said before that if the defendant wants to testify, the defendant can do what he wants. On May 8, 1979, this is not shocking, but Richard Chase was convicted of six counts of murder after the jury deliberated for just five hours. A week later, at the sentencing hearing, Chase was sentenced to death. Fitting. I mean, he's clearly not going to stop killing people and mutilated drinking blood if ever.
B
Like, if this were a different podcast, if this were. There's one podcast I can think of that really likes going into this stuff. Like, if we had read to you the things he did, it's unbelievable.
A
Let's say this, if you want to go find out more specifically what he did to his victim, don't watch anything on it. I don't think there's any footage, but, like, just reading it, and it's not written in flowery language. It is a pure, cold, hard, you know, report recitation of what he's done. It will make the strongest of men and women cry.
B
And we're not done with this yet. We only have a little bit more. But if you do want to read it, there's a book called the Richard Chase Murders, which lays it all out for you, lays out every single thing he did in detail. It's a well written book. It's a difficult read, as you can imagine. But, yeah, I mean, we don't normally shy away from things on this podcast, but this was just. We talked about this beforehand. We were like, are we gonna read this?
A
Not. Not just actually, you know, I thought about this. So I think this is worth noting because, like, when you talk about victims and when you don't. So this is so incredibly horrific and outside of the box. And we do this all the time. We read lots of autopsies, we read lots of horrific crimes. This is outside the realm of anything you could probably ever imagine with your own imagination. Even being someone who is very knowledgeable in this area. That's how horrific this is. There's a box of what your mind probably can think of. It's so far outside of that box that unless you were to read exactly what happened, you cannot imagine what he did to them right now, because no semi sane mind would even begin to think of all these things. And because of that, we all live in worlds where our brains have to draw boundaries around itself in order to make sense of the world. I don't want to break that box for you because I don't think you will ever be able to build that box back up. And this is one of the descriptions. There are some things you cannot unsee. This is one of the things where I don't think you can unhear. And I'd like to leave it up to you. If you want to break that box and completely reconfigure how you view the world, go for it. But I'm not going to be the one to do it on this podcast.
B
The last thing I'll say about his activities, for those of you who are curious but don't want to know the answer.
A
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B
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A
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B
Guys, you've heard me talk about my Quint's sports coat. And if you've seen me lately, you have seen me in it. Oh, you saw us on Hulu. Guess what? I was wearing my Quint's sports coat. Oh, you were at Crimecon. Same thing. We just recorded a documentary you'll be seeing soon. And guess what? I was wearing my Quint's sports coat. Because it's that good. It looks good. It feels good. You're gonna love it too. So find your fall staples at quints. Go to quints.com prosecutors for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com prosecutors to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com prosecutors this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Guys, October 10th is World Mental Health Day and this year we're saying thank you therapists. Better Help Therapists have helped over 5 million people worldwide on their mental health journeys. That's millions of stories, millions of journeys. And behind everyone is a therapist who showed up, listened and helped someone take a step forward. Moments in therapy, like the right question, a safe space to cry, or a small win can change lives. This World mental health day, BetterHelp is honoring those connections and the therapists who make them possible while showing how easy it is to get guidance from a licensed therapist online with better help.
A
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B
If you are familiar with Jack the Ripper and Jack the Ripper's Final canonical murder. And you're familiar with what he did in that crime. Take that, multiply it by like 10, and you'll get what Richard Chase did.
A
In these murders and that he did like 10 times in the span of like a week and a half.
B
Yeah.
A
So like many cowards, Chase gets sentenced to death. But he doesn't wait for the justice system to carry out justice in a timely manner. Instead, on December 26, 1980, Richard Chase kills himself in prison by overdosing he had done. So this again, I think, goes to show that he was not insane at the time of the crime and he was also competent to stand trial. He knew he didn't want to die by whatever the death sentence method was. He had stashed away his Sinequan that he was prescribed for depression, and then he took them all at one time to overdose. Incredible amount of planning, stealthy, and also that type of foresight. I mean, he was sane enough to know that it was so wrong and that he was never going to get out of prison the legal way. So he killed himself.
B
And I looked this up and apparently if you take Cinequel, it can make you smell like garlic. So, like, I'm just saying, I'm just saying. I don't. Wow. I don't know what's going on there, but there have been a few vampire things throughout this. You know, this is our. This is a Halloween episode number one because it's horrifying, but also because he's a vampire Sacramento know, but just another won't go into a house unless he's invited, drinks blood and ends up being killed by a garlic like substance. So just saying, okay, one of all this. And we talked about a lot of stuff as we talked about this case, but there is one aspect of it which I find to be particularly creepy and we wanted to leave you with this. So when the police go into Chase's apartment, they don't only find, you know, the walls soaked with blood and gallon jugs of blood in the freezer and all this other stuff. They also find a calendar. And on that calendar are marked the days of the Wallen Wayland. I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce that name. And miroth murders. So remember, he kills one woman and then he kills everyone in the Mirroth household on a different day. And on those days in the calendar, Chase had written one word. Today. Why wrote today? I don't know. But what's interesting about it is the word today was written only 44 other dates for 1978. Had he not been caught, there is no telling how much horror he would have inflicted. So that's the vampire of Sacramento. Welcome to October. That was the most true crime of true crime murders that we've done. You know, we did the. You weren't on this episode, but we did the Palo Mayimbe, or however you pronounce it, cult murders in Mexico. And I thought those were bad. Those were pretty bad. But this one, I think this is the most disturbing case we have covered. Alice has no words.
A
Hands down, this is the most disturbing.
B
Like, yeah, yeah. And. But let me tell you this. So if you're someone who loves true crime, I hope you enjoyed this. If you like the October episodes, I hope you enjoyed this. I will tell you this. The rest of the October episodes are a little bit more happy and uplifting. I mean, I guess, I don't know.
A
In comparison, everything is happy and uplifting.
B
I would not. I'll say this, I would not have called next week's episode happy and uplifting without this episode. This episode makes everything seem a little bit more rosy and sunshine filled, I think.
A
Yes, I know some people. I have no words because truly this is. You know, sometimes you come across a case that changes your perspective on everything. Literally every night. Since I've researched this case, I've gone around the house twice to check all my doors are locked. And like I said, I keep my kids in the car until the garage door has hit the bottom, like, completely come down. I don't want anyone. I don't want no Richard chase, like, running and diving into my garage. So the doors are locked and the garage comes down before I leave. Now, I look like a paranoid crazy person, but I know it's because there are really crazy people. I just have to ask, like, where were his parents during all this? Just talking through the crack in the door and being like, kind of smells bad in there, honey. Wanna go take a shower?
B
So before it got really bad, his dad would actually visit him in the apartment to play chess. They played chess together. So his dad would come by and one time his dad comes by and Richard, he has all these cages and there are all these rabbits in the cages. And. And his dad's like, so what are all the rabbits for, Richard? And he's like, oh, I drink their blood. His dad's like, yeah, Rook to Queen 7 or whatever. And they asked his dad about it and he was like, well, he said weird stuff all the time. I just assumed he was joking. But no, in fact, he had basically, like, I Said we didn't get into all this because it was pretty, but he had basically turned his apartment into a slaughterhouse. He had a room where he would hang things. I'll just say things up from the ceiling so that he could drain their blood and butcher them in various ways. I mean, basically, if you've seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre, just take that.
A
Way worse than that.
B
Way worse than that. So much worse.
A
Nothing like that.
B
Than that.
A
No, like, this is what I actually mean when I say that if we described everything, it would break your brain and you would never be able to go back to who you were before. And I don't want to break your brain if you don't want your brain to be broken. Because there are things that I would have preferred never to seen before. I've said this before. The types of child exploitation cases that I've had to prosecute that I've had to look at the images for. I wish I could never have seen those. But my brain can never erase those images. And I hope that we can at least have told you a story today but not have broken your brain.
B
So, as we always do, we're going to watch a movie this week loosely affiliated with this in the loosest possible way. We're going to watch a vampire movie.
A
I was going to say nothing's going to be like this.
B
This the best vampire western set in Iran ever made. A girl walks home alone at night. If you haven't seen it, it is fantastic. It is just a tremendous movie. Much better than this story. You'll enjoy it a lot more. It is in Farsy, so you will have to read, but that's fine. Even if you, you know, not a huge fan of reading subtitles. Honestly, there's not a lot of dialogue. It's mostly just this incredibly beautiful movie with a vampire in it. Spoiler alert. And you're gonna enjoy it. So we'll watch that. We'll try to do it on Friday, obviously. Let's get a little closer. Go to the gallery, go to the Halloween movie chat and you'll see where we plan for that. But it's really good. You're going to enjoy it. So we don't really want to know what you think about this case. We'd frankly just like to forget it ever happened.
A
But I was going to say, I hope you don't tell us you like. I hope you didn't like it.
B
Thanks to whoever it was that recommended it. You psycho. Shoot us an email on prosecutorspot gmail.com if you want to recommend Stories. That's a great place to do it. We're on all the social media at Prosecutors pod. Join the gallery to discuss this case and others. If you want to watch us record these, we're recording this on, like, September 15th. You could have had a whole extra half month of Halloween if you were a member of Patreon. You could have watched us record this. You could have seen Alice's face throughout, which was worth, I think, the price of admission. If you don't want to see Alice's face, which I can understand, you can also hear our episodes early and ad free for just $3 a month as well. So join us on Patreon if that's your thing, or enjoy the ads because they're awesome too, and we're big fans of our sponsors. Alice, do you want to answer a question?
A
Yes, Please stop me thinking about this.
B
Yeah. I was telling Alice earlier I haven't felt well, so I didn't even get to drink bourbon through this.
A
You needed a drink for this one.
B
I just had to power through it. So anyway, this is a case, by the way. Oh, Wrestler Robert Wrestler. Is that his name? Someone will correct me if I'm wrong. One of the founders of behavioral analysis wrote a book, wrote several books on it. He looked into this case, seeing his after the first murder, and the profile they put together, I mean, was 100 accurate. Now, I think, frankly, that was probably a pretty easy profile. I feel like you could have said gonna be male, in his twenties with mental issues, etc. Etc. But this is one of those cases they did. And one of the people he was interviewing as part of sort of the Mindhunter series of sort of interviews that took place in the late 70s and early 80s as the FBI was trying to figure out serial killers and what in psychosexual murderers and that sort of thing, what they did. So part of history and also disturbing. Okay, let's really quick note.
A
Really quick note on this. If you look at this, like, horrendous, clearly he was going to continue to kill, like, immensely and may not have been caught. But for. Remember that classmate? Nothing happened to her, right? Like, technically he was weird, followed her around, but they knew each other. Like, he wasn't a stranger. And he, like, swiped at her car door and missed. But, like, not really assault, just being a general creeper. If she never reported this, he probably would have gone on to kill a lot more before they stopped him. So that's just like a. If you want. You. If we want to take a silver lining story, you know, Lesson out of this. I don't know, report things that you think, are we weird? Because it really could be that one link. She knew his name and was able to stop it.
B
Exactly. Okay, so, Kathy. And this is a. I found this. And I don't know when you asked this, Kathy, but we're going to answer it now because it's appropriate. Wants to know what our family Halloween costumes are going to be this year. May have to answer this later because I'm not sure exactly what they're gonna.
A
I was gonna say it's a little bit early because we have, like, at least six weeks to go. So I don't know. So I don't. You are always very good at a matching family costume. I just have children who have very strong opinions that they want to pick their own costumes. But right now, Squanto number two is, like, obsessed. This is gonna be really cute. He's obsessed with two things right now. They're not similar at all. He's obsessed with Stormtroopers. He's never seen Star Wars. Never read Star Wars. I don't know how he knows about stormtroopers, but he likes the bad guys in Star wars, so he loves Stormtroopers. He dresses around in, like, a white shirt and khakis all day because he wants to be all white in, like, a Stormtrooper. But number two, he's obsessed with being a Southwest pilot, specifically the airplane Southwest. So much so that tonight when I put him to bed, he asked me, his birthday is not for many, many months, like half a year away. And he said, mama, can I have a Southwest themed birthday party this year?
B
And you relied.
A
And I said, yeah, sure, baby.
B
That's awesome.
A
You can have a Southwest themed birthday party. So he might be a Southwest theme pilot specifically.
B
So I gotta find one. I read today this is the problem because I then lose them, but I. Because I have to do that. I have, like, a time limit on this one, so I got it. Okay. So I'm not sure where this one went. Maybe they changed it or it disappeared or something. Hold on. Give me two seconds. I'm just gonna make sure I can't find it because I remember the question, but I wanted to give credit.
A
Okay, okay.
B
To whoever it was, but I'm not saying it.
A
The oldest currently wants to either be Pteranodon. Spoiler alert. There are no Pteranodon costumes because he doesn't want to be a pterodactyl. He wants to be the other flying reptile. I was told it was not a dinosaur specifically there. Yeah. But it's not. He told me very sternly that it's not a dinosaur, it's a flying reptile. Didn't know that. But he wants to be a pteranodon. Searched everywhere, there's not a realistic pteranodon looking costume. Or he wants to be Darth Vader, but only because his brother wants to be a Stormtrooper. So he also has never seen Star Wars. I don't know how this happened.
B
Darth Vader would be pretty cool.
A
Darth. He is actually kind of a Darth Vader personality. So it would work well.
B
Okay, I found the question. This is from Puck and Puck says this is their diamond level question, which I appreciate people who listen for all my random details that's out there. I want to buy my husband a bottle of Pappy. Van Win Ankle had a challenging time and he's never had it. But he talks about it the same way that I do. As a non bourbon drinker, how do I go about selecting a bottle of Pappy that lives up to the hype without all the trappings of capitalism? That's really hard, by the way.
A
That's. That's really.
B
And is there a distributor store you recommend that I can access on the East Coast? I've seen it ranging from 600 to $1600 a bottle. Labels look similar while looking the same. She's a wine drinker and shopping for bourbon is hard. Okay, can we just. Can we be honest about Pappy for a second? Can we be honest? Is this a safe space? Is this a safe space?
A
This is a safe space. But. Oh, wait. Before. Before, I'm just as your friend. I have to tell you something, though. If you say what I think you're gonna say about Pappy's. Pappy's is never going to send you a free bottle of Pappy's to sponsor the show. So I'm just saying, I am just your friend. I am just your friend.
B
I said I would never lie to them, but I want to lie.
A
You would never lie. Except for Pappy's.
B
I want to lie to them.
A
So read the lines.
B
I'm falling on my sword of truth. I'm falling on the sword of truth. You guys, I hope y' all appreciate this. Y' all know how I feel about bourbon, right? I mean, I've got my emergency bourbon right here just in case I need it. And I got a bottle like so, you know, just in case I need it.
A
In case you need it, like you need a tourniquet.
B
But here's the thing. Bourbon. I Mean, you know how wine is, and it's got like all these varieties and all the different grapes and all the different regions. And, you know, if you're in, like, a particular place in the ocean and the salt spray is landing on the grapes and it gives it this, like, nice whatever. Bourbon's not like that. Okay? Now, bourbon can vary in quality, obviously. A lot of it depends on the quality of the water, right. Or, like, what's in the water that only this one place has. You know, like, the water travels through a chalk canyon and picks up some, like, whatevers, and then what percentage of corn it has and what percentage of wheat it has or what percentage of rye it has or whatever. Right, right. So it's not like there's not some variation. But honestly, once you get to about, like, the really nice bottles of bourbon, close to a hundred bucks, there's really no point in spending more than that. I mean, there's really not like, you can get amazing, fantastic bourbons for $100 a bottle, which to me is still a lot. It's a lot to spend $100 on a bottle of liquor. In my mind, right. Like, I've talked about some of this, like, Rowan's Creek. So what I always call it's actually Rowan's Creek. But I can't.
A
I didn't know that.
B
I can't get behind that. So I'm going to Rowan's Creek. Fantastic bourbon you can get for, like $80 a bottle. Really good. Cheaper than that some places. When it comes to Pappy, Pappy is a couple things. It's marketing, number one. Number two, you know, it's just like old family recipe that was the private stock of Pappy back whatever when he founded the whatever distillery. And obviously Justified, like, there was a lot of in justified, Pappy was like a big deal. And so scarcity and advertising and really cool bottles drove the price of Pappy. Not that it's not a fantastic bourbon. It is like I would pay twice what I would pay for Rowan's for a bottle of Pappy and feel fine about it. It. But you ain't finding a bottle of Pappy for $200. Like, I have a bottle of Pappy that was like $800, right? That I drink on special occasions. And it's fine. It's really good. It's really good. I'm not saying it's not really good, but it's not worth the prices. You see, here's the thing about it, personally, I think if you're going to get Pappy, go with a 10 year Rip Van Winkle, number one, the bottle is way cooler than any of the rest of them. Them like the Rip Van Winkle cover, like artwork and scrolling and everything else is really pretty. And it's also the cheapest and it's really good. So if you want to do it just to have a celebration bourbon, which I fully understand, that's what I would go with. Don't go more than the 12. So you can get the 12 year old Pappy for a couple hundred dollars more than the 10 year old. Anything above 12 is really an investment. I mean, especially if you get up to like the 20 year.
A
Can I just say though, investment in the way that Beanie Babies were investments. Okay, y'. All.
B
I mean, yeah, I mean it's hard to say, right?
A
Like, like, like I, I say it's an investment in the sense that like people buy it because they love it. You're not gonna do it in place of your 529 or like for your retirement plan. You clearly are doing that because you have a lot of money and, and this is your justification of buying these bottles and you're not going to drink them. But it's kind of one of those things you tell yourself. I'm only saying this just in case some of y' all are like, let me go buy a bottle because it's going to secure, you know, my college fund for my kid. Don't do it.
B
I mean, yeah, like if you buy a $5,000 bottle of bourbon today, it will probably be worth more in the future. One thing I will note along what Alice is saying, the bourbon bubble is bursting. So for a long time this is completely random, but we're just going to keep going. So alcohol is a lot like everything else, like taste change, what people like changes. A couple things are happening. Number one, the younger generation doesn't drink, period. Like the percentage of zinnials or whatever, that drink is the lowest it's ever been of any generation at their age. I mean, normally you think of people in their 20s are drinking all the time, so a lot of them don't drink. Part of that's because marijuana legalization. Part of it's just because of health issues. Like, you know, there's a lot more science on drinking is not good for you and everything else. The second thing, bourbon really had its moment about 10 years ago. Really the last 20 years, Bourbons had a moment. It's the most popular liquor. Everybody was drinking old fashions.
A
It was like the hipster movement, right? Like exactly the hipster bar, like bourbon bars and whatnot.
B
And that's when Pappy got huge and the value went really high. Now you're starting to see distilleries close. People are now seeing bourbon is sort of like, that's like, that's what the uncs drink, right? Like they want something else. They want something different. They want something new. You're seeing tequila and vodka really having their moment now. Several different reasons. Anyway, all this is to say Alice is right. Don't buy a bottle of papi for $10,000 thinking that I'll hold it for five years to be worth 50. That's probably not going to happen. So long answer to a short question. Short answer is get the 10 or the 12 if you really want Pappy. But if you want alternatives, I got a ton. I will say this. Eagle Rare. I love Eagle Rare.
A
Rare.
B
Eagle Rare is really good. And it's also rare. It's hard to find. Name fits like the Eagle. Double rare, whatever is even better. There's just a lot of bourbons you can get for a lot less that are just as good. So if you want any of those, email us. Otherwise, if you're in Kentucky, which it sounds like you're not, like you walk into a liquor store in Kentucky and buy a bottle of Pappy's. If you're on the east coast, if you go to, like, what's it? Wines. Wine. What's that store? There's a store with wine in the name that actually is a really good liquor store, too, and can get you anything. Wine. Not wine. Not wines Dot com. What's the name? Somebody give me the name of the. The wine store in the Northeast. That's like a wine. It's like the Costco of alcohol.
A
I really don't know.
B
Say I don't know, just in case.
A
Whoever'S listening, Total Wine.
B
Total Wine. Go to Total Wine. Talk to the person there. Say you want a bottle of Pappy's. They should be able to get you one at a relatively low price. Or there are people who will ship it to you. If you're in a state where you can have bourbon shipped and you can get it for these price points that I was mentioning.
A
So just in case Pappy's advertisers didn't listen to all 100 minutes of our episode and they just pressed fast forward 30 seconds. Pappy's is the best. Everyone should send Brett a bottle of Pappy's. And we just couldn't recommend it enough. You should definitely sink all of your life savings into Pappy's. The ever this person that the prosecutor.
B
Sent you offered to send me a bottle of Pappy's if I answered this question before November 15th.
A
Who said that?
B
The person who asked the question. You don't have to do that.
A
Don't do it. You don't know how much it cost.
B
Just bring it with you when you come to Vegas and we'll find that room.
A
Do not find a room. Drink it in the open. Oh, my goodness. How about you?
B
Is that better matter? We'll go to dinner if you bring me a bottle of Pappy's. 10 years. Fine. Don't spend more than 10 years. I will go to dinner with you. If there's multiple people, we're gonna have to go to dinner with multiple people.
A
But it's fine. This is in real time, what you're seeing when, like, every client thinks that they're the smartest person and can talk themselves out of any crime on a stand.
B
You invited people to a concert. I invited people to dinner.
A
What Brett has just offered for the one hour alone in a room. This is going to be negotiable. It is not an offer that can be accepted at this moment. So we are still in discussions, and it is not an offer extended for purposes of legal things. So don't think that this is going to happen.
B
Yeah, I mean, don't spend, like, all your money on a bottle of Pappy's. Just come frankly. We'll hang out with you anyway. Like, we'll hang out with you for free. This is the thing. So we always tell people, yes, can we go to Vegas?
A
Can we clarify that? I did see some people asking, like, they were like, okay, can I tell you a secret? Don't, don't, don't tell crime con.
B
We said this.
A
Don't tell. We love you, crime con. We actually truly love you.
B
Love you.
A
You should definitely go to crime con on.
B
But prosecutors code.
A
Prosecutors. But if you can't afford a ticket, because it kind of breaks my heart when I'm hearing about you guys posting that you're saving up all of your money in order to, like, pay it in installments. If you cannot afford a ticket and you're in Vegas, we will hang out with you.
B
Yeah.
A
Okay. Vegas is not. It's not free, but it's like, you're allowed on the streets of Vegas. We're going to be on the streets of Vegas. So I'm just saying, just come. We are not inaccessible. We are super accessible, as Brett is offering. He's, like, accessible to everybody.
B
It's funny because if you'd come to Vegas. The last time we had Crime Con in Vegas, we had a meet and greet at a bar, and there were, like, five people there. You could have got all the personal time you wanted.
A
I forgot about that. We. That tiny little couch. There were four couches, and there were just enough people to sit on the couches.
B
We kind of, like, moved all the chairs together into the corner.
A
Oh, my goodness. Wow.
B
Yeah.
A
See, that's. That's awesome. Okay, so all this. And. And look, a bunch of us went to Lady Gaga last time. Most of them didn't go to Crimecon, who I went with.
B
So you only need the Crimecon ticket if you want to go to Podcast row or if you want to see any of the stuff.
A
Right. Which is really cool. The stuff is really cool. I'm just saying, people, like, because of the way Vegas is, there are so many flights to Vegas, and hotel rooms are relatively inexpensive for any big city. If you can't then spend the hundreds of dollars on top of that for a Crimecon ticket, we're still there. And if you sent us a message, we'll totally meet up with you. Like, we're not. They book us solid for like 15 hours a day, but there's like a whole eight other hours that we could be hanging out with you. We don't need sleep.
B
Yeah. And actually, I'm planning on being in Vegas a little bit longer than I was in Denver.
A
Yes. We will bring you swag even if you don't go to Crimecon. We just. Just didn't carry around with us this time. Well, we carry swag in our pockets all the time.
B
Yeah. So anyways, so Crimecon's amazing. You definitely should get a ticket. But if you can't afford a ticket, don't let that stop you. Vegas can be expensive, but it also can be relatively affordable. Remember, I mean, there's a ton of places to stay in Vegas, so you can make it happen. All right, well, I think that's all we know.
A
It's a bad, like, case we had to cover when we answer questions for half as long as we talked about the case. Because we just want to get our minds off of it.
B
Yes. I thought that was a one parter. I could have done 24 episodes. No, no original chase. Nope.
A
Nope. I would. We. We would for sure retire before we did that.
B
So next week, I'll just give you a spoiler alert. I'll say this very interesting case with a lot of sort of challenging things that happened in it. And after it, lots of sort of things to debate. But also one of my very favorite characters in all of horror is involved in this case. So join us next week for that chilling episode of the Prosecutors. But until then, I'm Brett.
A
And I'm Alice.
B
And we are the Prosecutors.
A
I decided to go with Electric Pink today.
B
Love it.
A
Just to make sure everyone can see the shirt.
B
I got my cons, the. The consult.
A
Oh, I like that. Look at that brain. It's gonna. It's gonna play a part here.
B
Yeah.
A
Oh, my goodness. You know, there's gross. No, there's like twisted and then there's this.
B
Yep. We get to. We could just like play music for like an hour. We could have live that.
A
A new podcast, April Fools.
B
And there's Halloween.
A
Sam. Thanks, Sophie. I like this color too. It was not.
B
You can tell she's wearing a shirt. So that's good.
A
Just come here. Okay. We're gonna need a bright color, guys, because it's some beautiful dark stuff we're about to get into.
B
This October, fear is free on Pluto tv. With horror movie collections from Paranormal Activity.
A
The real you will die in seven days.
B
Scream. And from dusk till Dawn. This is my kind of place. And don't miss the man made nightmares in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Or the world ending chaos in 28 days later.
A
Something in the blood.
B
All the scares, all for free. Pluto TV stream now pay never.
Date: October 7, 2025
Hosts: Brett and Alice
Podcast: The Prosecutors (PodcastOne)
In this harrowing October episode, Brett and Alice delve into the case of Richard Trenton Chase—the "Vampire of Sacramento"—one of the most shocking and disturbing serial killers in American history. They offer not only their prosecutorial analysis but also candid reactions to a series of gruesome crimes that push the boundaries of even true crime podcasting. The episode examines Chase’s background, the escalation of his psychosis and violence, the chilling sequence of his murders, and why his crimes continue to horrify. The hosts also discuss the criminal justice and mental health system’s role, and the legacy and lessons of the case.
Despite his history, Chase was found competent to stand trial (47:40), a distinction explained by the hosts as being able to understand charges and assist his defense even while extremely mentally ill.
At trial in early 1979, Chase’s insanity defense failed—he admitted his crimes on stand, undermining his own case. The jury quickly convicted him of six counts of murder and sentenced him to death (49:11).
Quote – Alice (47:55): “We got to laugh so we don’t cry… His defense attorney… was hoping for a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity because it seems very clear that he did it all. So that's his best defense…”
Before the sentence could be carried out, Chase killed himself in prison by saving up and overdosing on prescribed medication (Sinequan) on December 26, 1980 (57:24).
Poignant “vampire” irony: Sinequan can make one smell like garlic (“He ends up being killed by a garlic-like substance” – Brett at 58:11).
Hosts Brett and Alice candidly admit this is the darkest episode they’ve ever done, and express a hope that future October cases will not approach these depths. They caution listeners against delving too deeply into the crime scene specifics—“there are things you cannot unsee”—and urge vigilance both personally and community-wide. They stress, too, the importance of reporting odd behavior, as one classmate’s call likely saved further lives.
Listener Note:
If you’re new to "The Prosecutors," this is not a typical case—most cases are less graphic and less psychologically taxing, making this a fitting, if deeply unsettling, episode for true crime enthusiasts seeking the extreme limits of the genre.
Next Episode Teaser:
Upcoming October episodes promise to be “a little more happy and uplifting” by comparison, with the hosts giving a strong nudge to lock your doors—and perhaps cleanse your mind with a good horror movie instead.