Richard Chase
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Noire #1 by Music By Pedro https://goo.gl/sJT2e8 Promoted by MrSnooze https://youtu.be/iYOvAO1rAM0 VHS Dreams by Shane Ivers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://www.silvermansound.com Cold Open: Richard Chase. The Vampire of Sacramento. This is NOT an episode to listen to if you are easily disturbed. This one’s rough. REAL rough. But also…. darkly fascinating. Richard Chase had some strange beliefs. Real, REAL strange. He believed that someone was stealing his blood. He thought that his skull was moving and falling apart. He thought he could make himself feel better by finding small animals and drinking their blood. And then he started drinking human blood. Before he was caught, he would massacre multiple victims in ways that the Sacramento police had never seen before. Then, after he was apprehended, he said he did what he did because … Nazi aliens were poisoning his blood. Chase was a paranoid schizophrenic with violent instincts. He was a sadistic monster who loved to hurt animals, start fires, and make life Hell for his family. What was going on inside Richard Chase’s head? What horrors would he unleash on the people of Sacramento? How many pets would meet their untimely end in Richard Chase’s gory apartment? Bojangles does NOT like Richard Chase. All of this, and more, on a bizarre - what did I just hear? - true crime edition of Timesuck. PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO I.Welcome! A.Happy Monday: Happy Monday, Meat sacks! Welcome back to the Cult of the Curious. Or - if this is your first time here - boy howdy. Buckle the fuck up. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, Bojangles is sitting this one OUT. He’s not amused AT ALL by today’s topic. Glory be to Michael Motherfucking McDonald. The silver fox crooner was doing arena tours when today’s dirtbag was doing his nasty thing. I’m Dan Cummins, the Suck Sorcerer, the Mustachioed Mouth of Mush, the Master Sucker, the King of the Suck - and you are listening to Timesuck. B.Standup Special: God some good comedy news this week. My most recent standup special, Get Outta Here Devil is now on Amazon PRIME. It is now free to stream for Prime Members. So if you have Prime, and haven’t watched it yet, what the fuck are you doing with your life? WORKING? PROVIDING FOR YOUR FAMILY? SERVING OVERSEAS IN THE MILITARY? Okay, fine. Those excuses are really valid actually. Also - so random - a bit off my recent album - Live in Denver - has blown up on Tik Tok. Almost three million views as I record this in just a week. So now I’m on Tik Tok. Dan Cummins Comedy. Fuck it. I’ll be your weird Tik Tok uncle. And there’s a bit on there - “It’s My Gym Connie!” that has blown up with over 300k views in less than 24 hours when I recorded this episode. C.Additional Announcements: Also - did you know we have a new Timesuck blanket in the store at Bad Magic Merch dot com? Yeah, we do. And yeah, it is made out of 350% Lemur Puss. And no, I don’t care how much that upsets your mom. She’s not the boss of me! And it’s your life. So live it. Snuggle up in some suck already. Yeah. I’m feeling saucy today. Tik Tok has gone to my head. Let’s get to suckin’. PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE D. Segue to Topic: We once again find ourselves looking into the life of among the worst humans to have ever existed on the earth. Given the nickname of the “Vampire of Sacramento”, Richard Chase would spend most of his life as a super-creepy, mentally unstable, nightmare for his parents and basically everyone who met him. He would become the “poster boy” for the FBI’s “disorganized killer” profile. Richard Chase was about as troubled as they come. But - he also knew what he was doing was wrong. As mentally ill as he was - I have a hard time giving him a pass for a lot of what he did. Keep that in mind as I ruthlessly mock him. While we used a few books and numerous sources, we leaned heavily on a book called Vampire: the Richard Chase Murders by Kevin Sullivan. Thanks, Kevin. Not a lot of context needed to set this one up. In the timeline, we’ll follow Richard Chase’s short, tragic life and his steady descent into utter madness. Was Richard Chase pretty much doomed to become a monster from the beginning? Maybe. Before we get into it, we should note that a lot of the personal details about Richard Chase and his fucked up adventures before the murders come from interviews with friends and family and some give conflicting dates. We did our best to pick the ones we felt were probably correct. Now let’s get right into this story and hop into this week’s Timesuck Timeline. PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE INTRO II.Timesuck Timeline http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14330237.2015.1101263 http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Chase, %20Richard%20-%20fall,%202005.pdf 1.May 23, 1950: On May 23rd, 1950, Richard Trenton Chase was born in Sacramento, in Santa Clara County, California just nine and a half months after his parents Richard and Beatrice were married. And I feel like his terrible future trajectory begins right at birth. Or, even before he was born. It began whenever he was named. When your father’s name is Dick Chase, and he doesn’t understand to NOT also name you Dick Chase after he was FOR SURE teased growing up… you’re fucking doomed. You’re not in outstanding parental hands. Dick Chase. That sounds like a term a group of horny, single sorority girls would use to refer to heading out to some clubs with the sole purpose of getting laid. (Sorority Party Girl) “C’mon, Becky! You’re hair looks hot as fuck girl, let’s go! Let’s start this Dick Chase. Whoooo!!!” The world into which Chase was born was very different from this one. Things were a lot calmer in American in general in 1950 than it is in 2020. After World War II, the economy was BOOMING! Lot of jobs - good jobs to go ‘round. And the generation that survived the war got busy making babies, resulting in a “baby boom” that would last from 1946 to 1960. Dick Chase Jr. would be a life-long resident of Sacramento, spending the majority of his life just a few miles from where he’d grown up. And Sacramento was emblematic of a national post war feeling of optimism. It was, for most, a solid town to grow up in in the 50s and 60s. The city of Sacramento has acquired a lot of nicknames throughout its history: Gateway to the Gold Rush, City of the Plains, City of Trees, the Big Tomato, River City, America’s Most Diverse City, The Lemon-Puss Meat Grinder, Capital of the 6th Largest Economy in the World, America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital, Almond Capital of the World, Camellia [ kuh-mee-lee-uh ] Capital of the World, Birthplace of the Transcontinental Railroad and - Mark Twain’s favorite - City of Saloons. And those were ALL actual Sacramento nicknames. Except Lemon-Puss Meat Grinder. I don’t even know where that came from or what it means. Begone Lucifina! That feels like something foul that you’ve put in my head. https://themetropole.blog/2018/04/12/sacramento-city-of- redevelopments/ In the years leading up to Chase’s birth and in the decade following it, in the 1940s and 50s, redevelopment would define Sacramento. After World War II, urban cores nationwide were being carved up and transformed. And The Lemon-Puss Meat Grinder was one of those urban cores. Beginning in the 1940s, Sacramento would turn from a folksy western town into a center of urban development. Life for the Chases during this time was good. 2.1952: In 1952, Dick Chase Sr - ol’ Papa Dick - acquired a federal position as a computer specialist at McClellan Air Force Base, while Beatrice taught school. 3.1953: The following year, in 1953, Richard’s sister Pamela was born, and the same year the family moved into their first house on Kings Way. 4.1961: In ’61, the family of four moved to a home on Wheat Street. This home, however, they would soon lose to financial troubles. And I know we’re skipping pretty fast past his early childhood. Nothing much is written about the first ten or eleven years of Dick Chase’s life. Based on what we know about the following years, I’m guessing they were pretty quiet and that he didn’t do anything terribly unusual. No arrests. No school incidents we know of. He DID participate in Cub Scouts for several years. He WAS a chronic bed-wetter - BUT - that was over by his eighth birthday. Seems pretty normal to me. And he did pass each grade on the first try - so no serious behavioral or mental illness-related problems that would hold him back a year or get him suspended. He may have been abused a few times by his father in moments of anger when he was real young. On one occasion when Richard was two, Beatrice said Richard Sr. force-fed their son, which caused him to vomit. And she said sometimes Richard Sr. shook Richard Jr.