True Crime With Caledonian Kitty

(Richard Trenton Chase. Picture credit: Express)

Before anyone asks what made me cover this case, it was a request from one of my amazing supporters on Patreon. I have to say that, it's been a long time since I looked into the Richard Trenton Chase case and I had forgotten how truly gruesome this evil monster was and as a huge animal lover, this case really sickened me.

I have written various true crime stories and some have been very close to the bone with some of the horrible details I have had to share because I want to give you the complete picture of what actually happened. This case has to be the most sickening case I have covered in terms of the gore aspect and the animal cruelty. I found myself feeling sick at some of the areas of research (in fact not some, basically 99% of it) but this is a request and I will do my best to deliver the details in as sensitive a way as I can. I have to say that if you are an animal lover (and I hope you are) you may want to skip this post as I will be sharing quite a few disgusting and disturbing details.

Before I begin, as always, a reminder that you can find me now on Patreon, Ko-fi as well as elsewhere on social media (My birthday is coming up on the 5th of November if you are a regular reader of my weekly posts & would like to make a donation to help keep my blog & research going).

So where do I begin with Richard Trenton Chase?, well let me start at the very beginning and as this post goes on you will find out why this very very sick individual was known as 'The Vampire of Sacramento'. Richard was born on the 23rd of May 1950 in Sacramento, California. He had a troubled childhood and suffered regular beatings from his father who was a very strict disciplinarian. As Richard grew older his anxiety had gotten worse and he became paranoid about his health, in particular his heart which he claimed would stop beating at random moments, it's unclear if this was just one of his delusions or if he was actually experiencing heart palpitations as a result of his anxiety. 

He became an alcoholic in his early teens and it was allegedly at this stage that he began capturing, torturing and killing animals. He may have started doing this earlier in his childhood but from my research it reportedly started in his early teens. He also developed a habit of starting fires and seemed to have a penchant for destroying things as if it gave him some sort of power.

In high school you would expect someone as troubled and sick as Richard to be quite the loner, obviously at this time in his life he kept his private sickening habits to himself and managed to have a few girlfriends but they were always short term relationships. Part of the reason the relationships wouldn't last was because Richard had issues with trying to gain an erection and could not have full sexual intercourse with the girls he was in relationships with. This was a constant struggle to the point he had to see a psychiatrist to find out what was going on. The psychiatrist put it down to Richard's past trauma and anxiety but deep down Richard knew it was because he could only get sexually aroused by taking the life of animals and through other sickening acts. 

After he left school he moved into his mother's house but soon his extreme anxiety and paranoia was beginning to affect their relationship. He became convinced that his mother was trying to poison him. He also believed that Nazis were trying to kill him by hiding poison underneath his soap dish. With the help of his parents they thought it would be best for him to have an apartment of his own. A strange decision as I'm sure a lot of parents would have gotten the authorities involved if their son was acting in such a strange, paranoid state. It was almost as if the parents just wanted some peace and quiet from him or tried to pretend there was nothing going on with their son (this is just my opinion). 

Having his own apartment was a horrendous idea, leaving someone who is in a paranoid, over anxious state with their own thoughts for company is a recipe for disaster. Richard carried on with the sick torture and killing of animals in the comfort of his own home. He would drink the blood of the animals and eat the flesh raw. If there was any remains left over he would put them in a blender to make disgustingly gruesome smoothies that he believed made his heart stronger and bigger so that it wouldn't vanish. 

Finally in 1975 Richard was committed to a psychiatric hospital (where he should have been in the first place) because there was an incident where he developed blood poisoning from injecting rabbit blood into his veins (now you know why I was feeling sick researching all the details of this case). I don't know how he managed to escape from this facility but he did and went straight to his parents who did the right thing and had him sent to an Institution for the criminally insane. 

In the beginning the staff struggled with Richard, sometimes the medications worked and sometimes they didn't. He would ramble to the staff, who nicknamed him 'Dracula' about how badly he wanted to kill rabbits and there was an incident where he was found with blood all over his mouth. He also managed to trap two birds through the bars in the window in his room. The birds had their necks broken and Richard proceeded to drink the blood.

I was shocked to discover that he was released back into the care of his parents in 1976 because he had been put on medication and seemed to be responding well. For someone who had been acting the way he did and for the staff to have seen with their own eyes the way he was talking and acting before, I found that very shocking because all it would take would be a few missed dosages and he could be back to harming animals again. The red flags were all over the place with this guy and guess what happened as soon as he went back to his parents? His mother felt that he was better and didn't need the medication anymore.

The parents soon stuck him out of the way in another apartment where Richard went back to the usual routine of capturing, torturing and drinking the blood of animals. He didn't care what kind of animal he killed or who the animal belonged to. He just didn't care and would often take his neighbours pets. He was said to have once telephoned one of his neighbours to tell them what he had done to their pet.

Sometimes serial killers can be obsessed with other killers and for Richard, his idols was The Hillside Stranglers, I couldn't find which one he was the most obsessed with, maybe it was both of them? but he convinced himself that these guys or one of the guys was a target by the Nazis just like he was. Richard started having an interest in guns and enjoyed shooting practice and stopped washing himself. 

For someone so preoccupied with their health it was strange behaviour that Richard would stop brushing his teeth and eating. I know he was a grown man at this point but one wonders where his parents (and the authorities) were and were they even bothering to check up on this individual who was a ticking time bomb.

I think the answer to his parents attitude to the situation is pretty clear when he randomly turned up on the doorstep in 1977 and basically ripped open the body of a dead cat, screaming and rubbing the blood all over his face and his mother just went back into the house and didn't contact the authorities. Were the authorities contacting the parents for updates on Richard and the parents were downplaying everything? who knows but here we have a very sick individual who eats animals raw, drinks their blood, makes smoothies out of their remains and they give the guy an apartment to live in by himself. It was only a matter of time before he started hunting humans. 

Continued in part two...