Richard Chase

What the record shows

Richard Trenton Chase was an American serial killer who shot six people in the Sacramento area of California between December 29, 1977, and January 27, 1978. A Superior Court jury in Palo Alto convicted him in May 1979 of six counts of first-degree murder, rejected his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, and returned a verdict of death. He never reached execution or the end of his appeals: on December 26, 1980, he was found dead in his cell on death row at San Quentin State Prison, and an autopsy attributed his death to an overdose of medication he had been saving.

Chase was born on May 23, 1950. The Wikipedia article is inconsistent about the place, giving Santa Clara County in one section and Sacramento in another. He attended American River College from 1968 to 1971, according to the college newspaper, and spent much of his adult life in and out of psychiatric care. HISTORY.com reports that he was released from a hospital roughly a year before the killings after a psychiatrist judged his problems to be under control. Trial records cited by the American River Current said he had first sought psychiatric help at 18 and believed he suffered from a blood disorder that only fresh blood could cure.

The first killing took place on December 29, 1977, when Ambrose Griffin, 51, an engineer and father of two, was shot while unloading groceries in the driveway of his home, United Press International reported. On January 23, 1978, Chase entered the home of Teresa Wallin on Tioga Way and killed her. She was pregnant; Wikipedia gives her age as 22 and UPI as 23. Her husband, David Wallin, came home from work and found her, he told CBS Sacramento in 2014. Four days later, on January 27, Chase entered a house on Merrywood Drive and killed Evelyn Miroth, 36; her six-year-old son, Jason; her 22-month-old nephew, David Ferreira; and a family friend, Daniel Meredith, 52. The victims were strangers to him. UPI reported that they were shot and their bodies mutilated, and Sacramento County Sheriff Duane Lowe called the killings the worst he had seen in 28 years of police work.

According to the Wikipedia article, detectives identified Chase through motor vehicle records, a composite drawing and a witness who recognized him, and arrested him on January 28, 1978, outside his apartment on Watt Avenue after a short chase. Other published accounts give slightly different arrest dates. The body of David Ferreira, which had been missing from the Miroth home, was found on March 24, 1978, in a box in an alley, the Wikipedia article says.

Because of heavy pretrial publicity, the case was moved from Sacramento to Palo Alto, where the trial opened on January 2, 1979, before Judge John Schatz, with Ronald Tochterman prosecuting. The defense, led by Farris Salamy, argued that Chase was insane, and testimony over five months centered on his mental illness and his own statements that he had drunk the blood of at least one victim, UPI reported. Chase testified in his own defense in March. The jury found him guilty of six counts of first-degree murder in May 1979, ruled on May 14 that he had been legally sane, and three days later returned a verdict of death. Judge Schatz formally imposed the sentence on June 8, 1979, according to the Wikipedia article, which in its opening section gives the date as May 8.

A San Quentin guard bringing lunch found Chase dead in his cell shortly after 11 a.m. on December 26, 1980. The Marin County coroner estimated that he had died about an hour earlier, UPI reported that day, and officials said an overdose was possible. The Wikipedia article says the autopsy later found that he had taken a large quantity of a prescribed antidepressant that he had hoarded for two to three weeks. UPI gave his age as 29; by the birth date in the Wikipedia article he was 30. The lead homicide detective on the case, Ray Biondi, later co-wrote a book about the investigation.

Relatives of the victims have objected to the way the case is retold. In 2014 the Wallin family's complaints led organizers of a Sacramento haunted house to drop scenes based on the killings, CBS Sacramento reported. In a 2025 opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee, Vern Miroth, who was 12 when his mother, brother and cousin were killed, wrote that true crime presentations had turned his family into props and asked that the victims be remembered as people.