Richard Trenton Chase, the “Vampire of Sacramento” was a vicious killer that would have made Hannibal Lecter proud. Like most serial killers, he has led a quiet life and kept to himself most of the time, he has had trouble with intimacy with women, has been diagnosed with different forms of mental illness and started out by torturing and killing animals.

Richard Trenton Chase was first diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic in his adult life and suffered from hypochondria. He always thought something was wrong with him. Whether it was his blood turning to powder, parts of his body missing, Richard Trenton Chase thought it was happening to him. One time he stormed into a hospital emergency room and wanted to know who stole his pulmonary artery. Chase was truly fixated on his blood; he thought it was turning to powder so he killed rabbits and ate their entrails raw, thinking that their blood would help his blood stay liquefied. One time he even went to the extreme to inject rabbit blood into his bloodstream. He became ill after this and thought the rabbit had ingested something poisonous, when in fact he had a bad case of blood poisoning.

Finally, Richard Chase grew tired of hunting and capturing animals so he turned his attention to humans. As a serial killer, he was very disorganized and sloppy. He didn’t care about cleaning his mess or his tracks for that matter. He would kill his victims eviscerate and disembowel them and then he would either eat the parts or save them for later ad would drink their blood too. With one woman he slaughtered, he pulled a yogurt cup out of the trash bag she was carrying and it was presumed that he drank her blood from it as it was left at the scene and covered with her blood. There was also a time that Richard Chase was in a mental hospital and received the moniker of “Dracula” as he was seen with blood around his mouth and outside there were two birds found dead and their necks were broken.

After following some very promising leads, Richard Trenton Chase was apprehended outside of his apartment. He struggled with police but they finally subdued him. They took a blood-stained .22 caliber pistol from him, a wallet from one of his victims and a pair of latex gloves. He was carrying a box that had bloody rags and a bloody piece of paper. He stated the blood was from animals he had killed and while he was in custody, the police searched his apartment for clues to a missing baby. They couldn’t find any. They did however find things like bloody blenders, several small pieces of bone, and some dishes in the refrigerator with body parts and even a container that housed human brain tissue.

In December of 1980, Richard Trenton Chase committed suicide in his jail cell by taking anti-psychotic medicine that he had been apparently hoarding. Ironically, he died just one day short of the third anniversary of his first killing. Richard Trenton Chase is not as well known as the likes of Jeffery Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy, but he was a dangerous man nonetheless. The FBI uses him as a case study today for the disorganized killer and in 1992, a killer in a movie called “Unspeakable”, was based on Chase. For more in depth reading on this killer, please follow the links at the bottom of this article.