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November 3, 2022 56 mins

In the first of a 2-part series, Anne Marie examines one of the most sadistic cases in Sacramento history. She is joined by Albert Locher, retired Sacramento Assistant District Attorney and Carol Daly, retired under sheriff of Sacramento Sheriff's Dept to recount the case of Richard Trenton Chase. Known as the The Vampire Killer, he is spread fear in the late 70’s with his murders marked by Necrophilia and Cannibalism.

(Originally aired 2November22)

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Announcer (00:00):
The views and opinions expressed in this program are those
of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views
or positions of any entities they represent, including OLAS media.

VO (00:12):
OLAS Media Presents Inside the Crime Files with Anne Marie Schubert.

Carol (00:22):
So it seems that he had some underlying difficulties. But
could it have precipitated the murders?

Anne Marie (00:28):
Not in and of itself.

Announcer (00:31):
He was in great physical pain. It was all imagined,
of course. He began to address ways to alleviate that pain.
And what he did was he began to kill small
animals and use their blood and and body parts, animals
and birds, you know.

Albert (00:53):
Killing them back in their blood.

Anne Marie (00:54):
He needed extensive care. He was not.

Carol (00:58):
Receiving as much.

Anne Marie (00:59):
Care as he should have gotten.

Announcer (01:03):
Victim was found in the residence and that she had been,
they believe, shot and have been opened up with a knife.
You'd almost want to say Butcher.

Anne Marie (01:21):
I am Anne Marie Schubert and this is inside the
crime files.

VO (01:27):
Inside the crime files is produced by all media in
San Diego, California.

Anne Marie (01:43):
Welcome to Inside Crime Files with Anne Marie Schubert. I'm
Anne Marie Schubert and this podcast takes listeners inside and
behind the scenes of the investigation and the prosecution of
some of the most horrific and notorious criminal cases in
California history. Today, we are going to talk about one
of the most horrifying and sadistic cases in Sacramento County history.

(02:05):
That is the case of Richard Trenton Chase, who some
people have coined the vampire killer. Today is part one
of a two part series in my guest today that
I'm honored to have are Sacramento Assistant District Attorney Albert Loker,
who's retired now, and Carol Daly, who's the retired undersheriff
for the Sacramento Sheriff's office, who involved in this case.

(02:26):
So thank you, both of you. And if we can
each maybe just give us a little introduction. We'll start
with Carol, if that's okay.

Carol (02:32):
Hi. Yes. At the time of the Richard Chase case,
I was a detective working with Sacramento County Sheriff's Department.
During that time, Emery, as you remember, we had gone
through two years of terror in the community with the
East Area rapist. And so this crime compounded the fear,

(02:54):
especially out in the north area of what was going
on in the community. On top of everything else. I
was full time assigned to the task force for the
East Area Rapist, but was also pulled back into various
homicide investigations for interview purposes or follow up purposes. And
at this time, I was working with my partner, Sergeant

(03:15):
Jim Bevins, and we were called into this investigation to
make contact with the Ferrara family. And this was after
the baby had been kidnapped to try to put them
at ease and let them know we were doing everything
that we could. And then we had did a follow

(03:35):
up contact at Richard Chase's apartment. And of course, he
didn't answer the door. And so really, my next involvement
in this case was when the arrest was made and
we went to the scene to help process the crime
scene and to look at everything there and to collect evidence.
And so my part was really on the peripheral, but

(03:58):
very much a part of what happened at the time
of the arrest.

Anne Marie (04:03):
All right. And we're going to get into that in
specific segment. Let me let me introduce Albert. Just how
do you introduce yourself and what kind of walk into
what the crimes were in each of your particular involvements?

Albert (04:15):
My name is Albert Locher. And as Anne Marie said, I
was eventually the assistant district attorney of Sacramento County. But
going back to the time of the Chase case, I
was fairly new in my career. I'd been with the
DA's office about a year and a half, and after
the arrest, the crimes have been committed and the arrest.
Ron Tuckerman, who was at that time in the DA's office,

(04:38):
was an assistant chief deputy. He decided that he wanted
to handle the case himself, and he brought me in
as a second chair to handle some of the case,
the presentation of it, and and putting together the case
and the evidence, because it was a it was a
case that had lots of aspects to it, lots of evidence,

(05:01):
lots of witnesses, lots of physical evidence, lots of lab
stuff and lots of psychiatric stuff, because it was a
case where the defendant had a psychiatric background. And the
the ultimately the defense was a psychiatric defense. And so
I became involved just he was arrested on a Saturday.

(05:27):
I became involved on a monday or Tuesday and was
perpetually involved with it to the end of the case.

Anne Marie (05:34):
Carol, just tell us, how long were you with the
sheriff's office?

Carol (05:37):
I hired on in 1968 and retired in 2001. So
the first few years of my career, I specialized in
crimes against children and work, sexual assaults and seven years
in the homicide detail before I promoted to sergeant in
1994 and spent a couple of years in internal Affairs.

(05:58):
After that, my investigative career went more to community service
and administrative assignments.

Anne Marie (06:06):
And then, Albert, how long were you a prosecutor before
you retired?

Albert (06:10):
37 years. Three months, I think. 13 days. But who's counting?
Something like that.

Anne Marie (06:16):
Okay. Well, the point to me for the listeners is
the two of you represent kind of the institutional knowledge,
not only of this case, but just of law enforcement
in Sacramento. So I hopefully the listeners understand that, that
you two have some amazing experience and bring some facts
of this case that perhaps people don't know. So let
me let me start off by telling folks that this

(06:40):
is even for someone like myself. Who've seen a lot
and all of you. This is a very, very disturbing case.
So some of the facts that may come out today
in this podcast are very disturbing. So I just want
to give the listeners that that sense of of what
we're talking about here. Let me just kind of just
describe the crimes. Albert, if I any point or Carol,

(07:01):
if I missed some significant details, please let me correct
me and make sure we fill those in. There were
many things that led up to this killing spree, and
that's really why we have our kind of talk about
what led up to it. And then how did we get.
How did you get through the investigation, a trial. But essentially,

(07:23):
just to give the listeners an idea, during a one
month period of time from December of 1977 to January
of 1978, Richard Canton Chase killed six people. And that
initially began. There was a lot of other stuff leading
up to it, which I'll let Carol and Albert talk about.
But the killing itself. Killing spree began in December 29th,

(07:46):
in 1977, when Chase shot and killed a gentleman by
the name of Ambrose Griffin, 51 year old engineer who
was getting groceries out of his car. This all occurred
in a fairly small part of Sacramento, the Arden Arcade area,
and that was what was believed at the time to
be a random killing. And then about three weeks later,

(08:07):
Richard Chase broke into the home, into a home on July,
a January 23rd, 1978. He ransacked that house and stole money.
He then urinated on clothing and defecated on a child's bed.
Later that day, he then went to the home of
a 22 year old pregnant woman by the name of
Theresa Warren. She was three months pregnant and shot and

(08:28):
killed her. And then he mutilated her body, sexually posed
to engaged in what people may call necrophilia, and then disturbingly,
put feces in her mouth. And then he drank her blood.
And an autopsy showed that her spleen had been removed
and some of the organs had been displaced as well.

(08:49):
Within the next couple of days, Chase spent time canvassing
the neighborhood where he would choose his next victims. On
January 25th, Chase shot and killed a puppy, a Labrador puppy,
and then proceeded to mutilated body. Then the culmination of
this murder spree happened on January 27th, 1978, when he

(09:10):
broke into the home of a woman, 38 year old woman,
by the name of Evelyn Roth. Evelyn lived in an
Arden arcade home. She was babysitting a child by the
name of David Ferrara, who was 22 months old. She
also had a son named Jason and a friend of
hers named Danny Marriott. That was over there. Chase broke in.

(09:31):
He shot Danny. Meredith shot and killed him. He also
killed Evelyn and her six year old son, Jason, as
well as the 22 month old nephew, David PEREIRA. As
most folks are know that he then proceeded to mutilate civilians,
body engaged in necrophilia and cannibalism with her corpse, which
I'm sure I can describe in more detail. He fled

(09:54):
in David Meredith's car with the baby. Sadly, the baby
was missing for three months and was later found abandoned
in a box behind a church and a grocery store.
The morning of that, later that morning after the murders,
a neighbor knocked on his door and no one answered.
The police were alerted that something suspicious was going on

(10:16):
and they arrived to find the bodies of Evelyn McGrath,
her six year old son, and David Daniel Meredith. The
baby was missing again. Mr. Marriott. His car was found
at the defendant's apartment complex later that day. And we're
going to talk about the arrest. But Richard Chase was
arrested later that day with the sheriff's office, went to

(10:37):
his apartment. He tried to flee and he threw a
bloody cardboard box at the detectives with various items, including
the baby's diaper pin and the number of bloody items.
I think both Albert and Carol can describe the gruesome
findings inside that apartment. But there was blood all over
the place, body parts of both people in humans. So

(11:01):
it was. And so obviously, Chase was then arrested and
prosecuted by the DA's office. So that's where I kind
of hopefully I did that justice. Albert, if I missed
anything or Carol, maybe you want to fill those gaps
in for us right now?

Carol (11:14):
Well, no, I think. I think you covered it from
my angle.

Anne Marie (11:17):
So, Carol, you're working homicide. You already kind of told
the viewers or the listeners that, you know, we're in
the height of the Easter era and those of us
in Sacramento call the Golden State killer the Easter rapist.
But we're talking about the Golden State killer who we
now know killed 13 people and raped a number of people.

(11:38):
So kind of what what the listeners through, what was
it like in Sacramento at this time, 1977?

Carol (11:46):
Well, in 1977, when the Golden State killer, the East
Area rapist, started his rampage, that was to last for
two years in Sacramento County with all of the victims
of sexual assault victims and of course, the double homicide
of the majority. The community was in an absolute state
of fear. There was not a house that wasn't barricaded.

(12:07):
It didn't have locks on it. Gun sales went off
the radar. Stores were empty, locks of safety seminars going
on everywhere to tell people how to be safe. There
were people who were staying awake in shifts during the
night to make sure that the East area rapist wasn't
going to be able to come in to their house.

(12:29):
There was a lot of disbelief in the community that
such a crime could occur, and the victims, especially when
there became other people at the crime scene, other people
in the home, there was such a disbelief that any
crime like that could happen when there was more than
one person in the home. There was a lot of

(12:52):
education that had to be done in the community. I
remember at that time we had large community meetings of
600 to 900 people where we let them know what
was going on and there was so much fear in
the community. There was a lot of erroneous information that
was going on, and we were just trying to not
put the community at ease, but to let them know
what was really happening and what they could do to

(13:13):
protect themselves. We had at the time we had a
lot of overtime. We had people volunteering to work overtime.
We had officers from other outside agencies coming and volunteering
to work in Sacramento. This was a huge deal because
we at one point he had started to go to
other jurisdictions and then come back to Sacramento. And so

(13:36):
there was a lot of fear in the community at
that time.

Anne Marie (13:40):
So we now have got the East Erie rapist, Golden
State killer running around. And now we have a serial killer,
you know, in pretty much the same area in the
Garden area of Sacramento. But it's a very different kind
of killer. So how does that we've got somebody that's
really essentially engaging in mutilation, you know, necrophilia, which is essentially,

(14:04):
you know, sex with dead bodies, cannibalism, you know, eviscerating
their bodies to kind of tell us how that all
fit in when you're in the middle of this other
massive investigation.

Carol (14:15):
Well, here again, it's it was the fear in the
community and in the media because the media was picking
up on these crimes and they were you know, some
of them were front page and there were articles being
written about it. And I'm sure at the time I
don't I don't believe I have copies of the articles,
but I don't believe there was any detail of the

(14:36):
really horrendous things that were going on in the crimes,
just if there had been a murder. You know, a
child was missing. And so it just it just fueled
the fear in the community. Looking back, because I was
not a part of the crime scene of any one
of these, I don't know if I could count it

(14:57):
as a blessing, but these were horrendous crimes. Even reading
about them when I received the summary that our local dead,
I didn't even want to read it at night because
it's so horrendous as to what this man did. And
that was stuff that really could not be shared with
the community. But any time that you walk outside and

(15:18):
your next door neighbor has been murdered, any time a
family has a great loss like this, that's in effect,
just set them, it's. A whole neighborhood. It's the whole community.
And it was it was a very, very difficult time
in the community. And I think about the officers who

(15:39):
had to respond to those crime scenes and what they saw.
I worked some pretty horrific crimes and homicides, but nothing
really compares to what these crimes were all about. I
came in when we were. Sergeant Evans and I were
doing some of the follow up leads. And I remember
that we had gone to chase his apartment, and I'm

(15:59):
not even quite sure remembering exactly why we were there,
but we went to make contact with Chase Richard Chase
at his apartment, and there was no answer at the door.
And we left. We were just doing lead follow up
as as the leads came in. Any time you have
a crime like this, the whole homicide detail is involved.

(16:21):
When a crime occurs, the whole team responds. And then
after that, it's assigned to maybe a couple of investigators
to do the follow up. And so when the arrest occurred,
the whole the whole homicide detail responded at the direction
of Ray Biondi and some of the others who were there.
And most of the officers who were involved with homicide

(16:43):
at that time have now are now deceased and not
with us anymore. But it was a unit effort. And
in trying to process that crime scene and work with
the criminals and everything.

Anne Marie (16:56):
Did you go into his apartment, chase his apartment?

Carol (16:59):
Yes. Yes. After he was arrested, we responded to the
apartment to see what the directions were, what you know,
what follow up that we needed to do. And I
remember the horrific ness of the apartment, but mostly what
I remember is opening the refrigerator and opening the freezer

(17:20):
and seeing body organs preserved and ready for him to eat.
And it just it was it was so real. When
you open your freezer, maybe you see chicken or roast
beef and open his refrigerator and freezer and you see
body parts and knowing that he was going to consume them.
It's hard to even wrap your head around it, right? Yes.

Anne Marie (17:43):
Yes, I understand that. Let me talk to Albert for
a few minutes. So, Albert, you and dare I ask,
but how long had you been a prosecutor at the
time you got assigned to be kind of the second
chair of this case?

Albert (17:55):
I had been a prosecutor about a year and a half,
maybe even a touch less than that. I had a
very unusual career path from the DA's office from my
first few years, and this was probably the most about
out of the usual thing that would involve me. So

(18:18):
but I was I was asked to participate in the case,
and I did. And Ron in the entrusted me with
a lot of things. And I had a lot of responsibility.
And it was a fascinating experience from so many points
of view.

Anne Marie (18:35):
I can only imagine when you and I were talking
kind of a couple of weeks ago of preparation. You
describe Chase as a sexual sadist to me. And perhaps
for the listeners you can kind of describe what does
that mean? And then we'll kind of talk about his
mental health history leading up to all this.

Albert (18:53):
Well, a sexual sadist simply is somebody who gets who
derives sexual excitement, sexual gratification from being sadistic with other
people and doing sadistic things with other people. And Chase
had a psychiatric history that involved other things, and he

(19:16):
had other diagnoses. But in the end, when you looked
at all of its all of its history and the
things that he had done and certainly the things that
he did in this case, he also met the diagnostic
criteria for being a sexual sadist.

Anne Marie (19:33):
So let's talk about his mental health history, because just
to give the listeners an understanding, he gets charged in
Sacramento County with with, what, six counts of murder, I assume?

Albert (19:45):
Yes.

Anne Marie (19:46):
And then a decision was made back at the time
that the office would seek the death penalty against Richard Chase, correct?

Albert (19:53):
Yes.

Anne Marie (19:54):
So. Just to tee this up. When you're seeking a
death penalty, you have to do two phases, right? And
get what we call a guilt phase and a penalty phase.

Albert (20:05):
Or guilt phase in a penalty phase. And then in
a case like this where there's also an insanity defense,
you have to do a third phase, which is the
sanity phase. So it's actually a three phase trial.

Anne Marie (20:16):
So what came first? Guilt or sanity?

Albert (20:19):
Guilt first, then sanity, then penalty.

Anne Marie (20:22):
Okay. So before we kind of talk about the trial, maybe,
you know, in preparation, I assume that the whole defense
for Chase is not that he didn't do it. It
was he's mentally disturbed and shouldn't be held responsible.

Albert (20:36):
Yes. That's not to say that the defense didn't try
and punch holes in in some of their key, did
it kind of stuff. And in particular, there was there
was an effort made. It's a little complicated factually to
to explain how this came about. But there was an

(20:59):
effort made on the part of the defense to punch
holes in the evidence that linked Chase to the Ambrose Griffin,
killing the man who was shot out by his driveway,
getting the groceries out of the car because that didn't
fit the pattern of the of the, you know, crazy
psychotic guy. Right. And and so to the extent that

(21:20):
the defense could knock that out of the pattern, it would,
you know, fit in more with the the. The picture
that they wanted to present. Then if we have this
and actually a couple of incidents that led up to
it to sort of indicate that, you know, Chase was

(21:42):
building up to this and testing the waters and finally,
when he killed Griffin and tried to kill somebody and
get away with it, then he started doing what he
really wanted to do, which is breaking into homes, mutilating people,
engaging in sexual sadistic acts.

Anne Marie (21:57):
And so. Go ahead. Yeah, I think I mean, the
point that I think the point you make is really valid,
which is you were there as a prosecutor. You have
to show what we call premeditation of deliberation, which means
that he thought about it. You know, he had an
intent to kill those kinds of things with. You've got
a guy with a psychiatric start with a psychiatric history.

(22:18):
Could you know this stuff very well? Like, you know,
what did it include and then how did you prepare
yourself for presenting this or having the prosecution team present this?

Albert (22:30):
He had a psychiatric history that went back several years.
He was he was born in 1950. So he was 27,
and I think by May of 1950 says, you know, 1827,
not not quite 28 when he's when he's committing these crimes.

(22:51):
His his psychiatric problems have really started in retrospect. Some
of the things where he started to change happened at
the end of his high school time, but really more
when he was in junior college, he started becoming more

(23:12):
separate from people, isolating himself, those sorts of things. And
and eventually he he wound up having psychiatric evaluations and
was placed on a psychiatric conservatorship and was on a
psychiatric conservatorship for for about a year and was in

(23:36):
a a locked treatment facility. But during the time he
was there, his psychiatric condition improved somewhat. And the conservatorship
only lasts for a year. It can be renewed. But
there was no no real thought or effort giving to
renew it. At that point, he seemed to have improved

(23:57):
somewhat and he he wound up off the psychiatric conservatorship.
But then he would have things things happen which from
time to time would would bring him into the consideration,
if you if you will, of various aspects of the
psychiatric community. You know, he showed up at a doctor's
office and and and said he was ill and needed

(24:20):
medical oxygen because one of the one of the features
of his psychiatric illness was he had this idea that
he was physically ill, not that he was mentally ill,
but that he was physically ill and that he needed
medical treatment for that. And one of the things he
felt he needed for that was blood. Right. And there

(24:40):
were some indications that he had it actually trapped birds
when he was in the psychiatric facility and and had
ingested blood from them. And at another point after was
out of the psychiatric facility, he wound up being hospitalized
because he had septicemia and the type of septicemia he

(25:00):
had could really have only come if he tried to
essentially transfuse himself with blood out of some type of
animal blood probably, and never fully diagnosed. So he was
he was doing, you know, those those kinds of things.
But at times and in his interaction with with people,

(25:22):
he would act bizarrely. He was withdrawn, but he was
also capable of interacting somewhat normally from time to time,
certainly with his with his father and with some other
people as well. But but withdrawn.

Anne Marie (25:42):
So let me ask this in terms of his mental
health history, because I know you mentioned he was institutionalized
here and there. He got medicated. But some of the
things that you know. Maybe are the most graphic is,
you know, tell tell the listeners about what he did
with rabbits.

Albert (26:00):
Well, he basically he he. You've got rabbits and butchered
rabbits and and would you probably try to ingest somehow
the blood of of a rabbit. And that's how he
got septicaemia and his, his excuse and there's truth to

(26:21):
this is, is that you know he was just it
was using them for food. Rabbits are not a big
food in this country but in some parts of this
country that have been historically and in other parts of
the world, you know, rabbits, you know, dogs are sometimes
used for food. But he was he was using rabbits

(26:42):
that way. And he was using he was using dogs
that way. There was a period of time in in
in the several months leading up to the murders where
where he had either gotten dogs from the SPCA or
he had kidnapped dogs from from people's homes or things
like that. And and he didn't he'd, you know, eaten

(27:06):
a body in the organs at one point having kidnapped
the dog. But the dog had a collar with a
tag on it with identifying stuff. The family had put
an advertisement out for the dog. They didn't know what
happened to dog. They're trying to find the dog. Chase
called them up to torment them a little bit about,
you know, what's going on with your dog and stuff

(27:27):
like that. And eventually that was all link back to Chase,
because when his apartment was searched after after the arrest,
the the caller with the tag for that dog was
in his apartment.

Anne Marie (27:37):
Oh, my goodness. He also, if my memory is correct,
he also killed his mother's cat and.

Albert (27:44):
It killed his mother's cat. He killed his mother's cat
right out in the front yard. He'd come over and
it's gotten to a point where his mother wouldn't let
him in the house sometimes. His mother lived there with
with her mother, his grandmother. And they looked out. Ah,
they he wanted to come in and they wouldn't let
him in. And then they heard a big bang, a

(28:05):
loud noise, and looked out and Chase was out there
and was holding up the cat by the tail, obviously
dead and bloody. And and he, you know, took his
hands and smeared some of the blood around his around
his neck and his upper body.

Anne Marie (28:22):
And then you also part of his mental health. You
then didn't go to like pyramid and do something with
a bigger animal.

Albert (28:31):
Well, that Pyramid Lake, this is an odd sort of incident.
It it he he was found at the Pyramid Lake area,
which is in Nevada. And he was basically sort of
I mean, this is desert. There is a lake there,
but it's sort of a sandy area. He he had
a vehicle at that time, a ranchero, a pickup truck.

(28:54):
It's a pickup truck made to look in some respects
like a car, but it's a pickup truck. And he
had had this for a while. He's out in the
middle of nowhere there, and he gets spotted by Rangers
who go in and see what he's up to. He
had two rifles in the car, a 33 and a 22.

(29:15):
His vehicle was was stuck in the sand. He couldn't
get it out. And there was like a bucket or
some sort of container in the back of the vehicle
that had an organ in it. And it turned out
to be a liver. And at first, the officers didn't
know what it was. They were concerned he was taken

(29:35):
into custody. He was in custody for a few days.
But when I just came back and showed that it
was a cow liver and and they couldn't match it
up to any, you know, crime with respect to cows.
So they released him. They kept the the.

Anne Marie (29:51):
Wasn't he running around naked And.

Albert (29:53):
Yes, I was all over. Yeah, he was yeah. When
they got out there he's, he's out there running around
naked and he's got blood smeared on him and he's,
and he's got this pickup truck with, with the rifles and,
and the cow liver in it and you know, they,
they asked him what he was up to and he
gave some answers that really didn't make any sense. But

(30:15):
then in the end, they ultimately kept the rifles. They
released him and he they wouldn't give him the car
at first. And his father tried to get the car
back without success. But but Richard on his own somehow
got got the car back from the police agency up there.

(30:36):
This this all goes back to August of 77, which is,
you know, the following December when when Ambrose Griffin was shot.

Anne Marie (30:45):
Okay, So he gets arrested for this mutilation of this
cow he's released. You describe that it's you know that
sometimes you get act normal is weaned off his medications
and now we're whatever four months or so before the
Griffin murder. So he obviously gets a new God. Right.

Albert (31:07):
He didn't. He got completely lawful. Except that I'm first
of all, I have to say that, you know, gun
checks and that and the procedures and mechanisms for doing
that in 1977 were not what they are today. Right.
But but he went to a sporting goods store and
and he. Purchased a gun. It was a pistol. It

(31:30):
was a 22 caliber pistol, but a Luger style. And
he had to wait for a couple of weeks or
the waiting period for a background check. But he went
through that and picked up the gun on December 18.

Anne Marie (31:48):
So how does this all. You know, when we talk
about preparing a case here, you got to prepare the
guilt phase and you've got to show premeditation, deliberation, maybe
you can describe for lessers. Okay. There's no question this
guy has a serious psychiatric history, right? This is engage
in it. He's obviously killing people, necrophilia, cannibalism. What are

(32:10):
you doing as a prosecutor to to put on evidence
or to prepare for the jury to show? No. Even
though he's got some mental health issues, he still has
the ability to form intent to kill?

Albert (32:21):
Well, you know, without going into a law school class
and all the different elements that are composed in in
both the insanity defense and the mental states necessary for murder,
you know, malice aforethought, premeditation, those kinds of things, we're
basically looking at whether or not the person knew what

(32:43):
they were doing. In other words, did they know that
they that they were cutting up a human being or
did they think they were cutting up an orange? Right.
And and then did they were they capable of of
of planning and reflecting on this? Did they know that
what they were doing was wrong? Those are the kind

(33:03):
of elements that go in to to this. And so
from our point of view, we were looking at all
the evidence that would show that he engaged in reflective behavior, planning,
behavior that that he knew that what he was doing
was wrong. And as it turned out in this case,

(33:24):
there was a lot of that kind of evidence. There
was a whole sort of building up, if you will,
from that from the time he got the gun in
mid-December until the time he he killed Ambrose Griffin, there
was some sort of random shooting around the neighborhood. And
then he shot into a house on December 20, around
December 25th or 26th, he he shot into a2a house just,

(33:50):
you know, wall on the side of the house late
it late at night. And then a couple of days later,
on December 27th, this was two days before Ambrose Griffin
was killed. He shot into a into a house where
there was a woman standing at the at what was
her her kitchen window. She's doing the dishes and a
bullet came in through the window and actually went through

(34:12):
her hair, went right through here, there through her hair
and lodged in the cabinets behind her. And that bullet
ultimately came back to Richard Chase and Richard Chase's gun.
So he's trying to kill her. Not quite as good
a shot. And so she she wound up uninjured. But obviously,

(34:33):
you know, a frightful incident. And then two days later
in about the same neighborhood, again, he's driving past where Mr.
Griffin has, as you know, gone to the store and
brought in some groceries and gone back out to the
car to get some more groceries out of the out
of the trunk of the car and chase drives by
and fires two shots at him from his car as

(34:55):
he passes by. One of them is completely but one
of them hits Mr. Griffin in the chest and he dies.
And so from our point of view, then that's that's
sort of, you know, building up testing the waters kind
of behavior, because after after he did that, he had
bought some ammunition when he bought the gun. But after
he did that, a couple of weeks later, he went

(35:15):
back and he brought three more boxes of ammunition. And
he went out and practiced somewhere because in the end,
the number of rounds of ammunition that were found, you know,
in his gun, in his apartment and stuff like that
did not add up to the number of rounds of
ammunition that he purchased. So he got out and practiced
somewhere in the middle of January. And then and then

(35:37):
it was on January 23rd that he first broke into
the Edwards house. There was nobody there and, you know,
stole some things, but also did some bizarre things. He he,
you know.

Anne Marie (35:53):
Definitely one.

Albert (35:54):
He defecated there, defecated on the bed and urinated into
a drawer of clothing. The Edwards came home when he
was there. He managed to get out of the house
and get away or they saw him and they yelled
at him and he said, oh, I'm just jumped the
fence to take a shortcut, because that's what he did.
He jumped the fence there. But when he did that,
he was wearing a blue coat. He went home, which

(36:15):
wasn't a long distance away for him, and he changed
to an orange coat. So this just shows that that
he knew that. Right, That he had been seen somewhere.
And he ought to change his appearance or changes to
an orange coat. And then he goes in and ultimately
goes into Teresa Warren's house where he shoots and kills

(36:37):
her and mutilates her, leaves her sexually posed as as
you indicated. And and then four days later, he and
and one thing that's significant to point out is in
that in that scene he wore he wore gloves, he
wore latex kitchen gloves. We know that he did because

(37:01):
those gloves have a fingerprint pattern. I mean, it's not
a fingerprints like but it's sort of the, you know,
for for friction in handling dishes and stuff like that.
And some of those were those fingerprint patterns from the
gloves were around the scene.

Anne Marie (37:16):
That was the Teresa Walensky.

Albert (37:18):
That was at the Teresa Rawlins scene. And and then also,
he used a knife in mutilating her. And it was
it was a knife that belonged to the Warrens, and
it was there in the wall house. But after he
was done using it, it cleaned it up and it

(37:38):
had apparently come from some dishes that had been washed
and were in a drying rack next to the sink
as people will do it. And he had cleaned it
up and he any stick it back in the drying
rack and it's underneath another glass casserole dish at the
scene and and wouldn't have caused a second a second

(38:01):
look except that officer saw a little bit of a
blood smear on the drain rack itself. And so they
examined everything was in the drain rack and and they
when they get that knife out from under the casserole dish,
they find they find a little bit of blood smear
on it. And ultimately the crime lab find some more
blood smears. So all of this kind of behavior shows

(38:22):
that that he knows.

Anne Marie (38:23):
Thinking.

Albert (38:24):
He's thinking he knows what he's doing and he's trying
to cover up when he when he left the house
because of the sequence of what doors were open and
closed to lock and then and stuff like that. When
he left the house, he got through through the back
door of the house and went through the back yard,
through a gate in the back, and the gate in
the back opened up onto a shopping center parking lot.

(38:46):
So instead of going out the front, having done all
this stuff, he chooses an escape path that zipped right,
keeps him concealed.

Anne Marie (38:54):
When did one of your kids go to trial?

Albert (38:57):
The case went to trial. Technically, the trial started in
in December of 78.

Anne Marie (39:07):
And then very fast, by the way.

Albert (39:09):
It's very fast by today's standards. It's, you know, 1977,
1978 standards. It's not not quite as fast. But I mean,
it was you know, we pushed it forward. But it
but it was not extraordinary or unusual for a murder
case to to go to trial within a year in
those days. And and I mean, there had been some

(39:33):
motions and some other things and eventually a change of venue,
motion and and venue was changed to Santa Clara County.
But and so that's where the case was tried. But
the jury selection began and began in December of 1978.
And the jury section selection was completed before before the holidays.

(39:53):
And so we took a recess until and until after
the holidays, and we started putting on our. I think
January 2nd of 1979, you know, the first business day
back after the New year and and the trial continued
on until the middle of May. The penalty verdicts came

(40:14):
on May, May 17th.

Anne Marie (40:19):
Okay. So maybe you can just briefly kind of describe
so you're doing the guilt phase first. So you're putting
all the evidence on showing that he was responsible for
all these murders and you're proving, you know, was premeditated
and deliberate. And they come back, the jury comes back
with the guilty on that first, correct?

Albert (40:36):
Yes.

Anne Marie (40:37):
And then then you have to move to the sanity phase.
So maybe you can describe what does that mean? What's
the sanity phase? And was there something about this case
that was a little bit different?

Albert (40:47):
Well, the thing that was perhaps a little bit different
is that the sanity phase was very short because the
all of the psychiatrists who would have testified in the
in the sanity phase had already testified in the guilt phase,
because there are overlapping points of law and legal concepts

(41:08):
relating to premeditation, deliberation. The legal mental state of mind
and so forth. And what's involved in those overlaps a
great deal with the same kinds of concepts that are
involved in the insanity defense. And so to address those
issues in the guilt phase, there were several psychiatric witnesses

(41:31):
came from both sides that were called by both sides,
and they were fully questioned about all of this stuff
in the in the guilt phase. Right. And so when
you got to the sanity phase, there wasn't any more
evidence to put on. I mean, you know, we could
have the defense could have called back those psychiatrist, but
there wasn't anything new for them to say. And so

(41:54):
the insanity phase consisted really of, okay, the jury, you've
heard all of this evidence. Now this is this is
what the law of insanity is. You decided some issues
related to this case. And under one standard which which
are that the mental states necessary to be guilty of murder. Now,
if the mental state is guilty to be or to

(42:15):
be to be considered for for sanity, this is the
legal standard for that. And and both sides argued and
the judge gave instructions and and then the jury went out.
So so that the sanity phase itself was was very short.

Anne Marie (42:31):
Okay. So I assume they obviously found him saying correct.

Albert (42:34):
Him sane or we wouldn't have gone on to the
penalty phase.

Anne Marie (42:36):
Okay. So then tell I mean, penalty phase is reserved
for death penalty cases, maybe kind of describe what's what's
the purpose of the penalty phase and what happened in
this particular penalty phase?

Albert (42:48):
Well, the purpose of the penalty phase is to decide
whether or not this extraordinary penalty provided for in the
law is appropriate in this case for this defendant. And
so you you look at both what are called aggravating
factors and mitigating factors, and the standard of relevance has

(43:11):
a certain amount of breadth to it. There are things
that that would come in at this phase that wouldn't
come in before this, you know, the impact on on
the victims families and those sorts of things or other
criminal conduct that the defendant might have engaged in. Although
I don't I don't think in this case we had

(43:32):
much of that nature to play with in that certainly
nothing much that would have eclipsed what the jury had
already heard about these murders. Right. And then and then
the defense has a chance to put on, you know,
mitigating kinds of things as well. And and members of
the defendant's family can come in and talk about the

(43:54):
defendant and his background and those sorts of things in
ways that would not have been relevant before. So you
get this more complete picture, not just of the crimes,
but of the whole person to see whether or not
they are worthy of this of this punishment. And then
the jury is instructed on the legal standards for that. Both.
Both sides argue argue for this, and then the jury

(44:17):
goes out and decides that it is the defendant, get
the death penalty or get life without parole.

Anne Marie (44:24):
Carol, Did you testify in the trial at all?

Carol (44:26):
I don't believe I did.

Anne Marie (44:28):
Okay. Obviously, lots of other death penalty cases you've been
involved in. But, Albert, what would you say in terms
of the penalty phase? You know, I assume family members
of the six victims were called to testify.

Albert (44:42):
Yes. And I can't recall the specifics of who all did.
But but absolutely, some some family members from the victims
were recalled. And then the defense called, you know, some
of the defendant's family members.

Anne Marie (44:58):
Right. Right. What do you what would you say? I mean,
sitting back today, you know, it's been 40 something years
or whatever since the crime. What would you say is
the most significant memory you have of the trial or
the case, I should say?

Albert (45:16):
It's funny. How much about this case that I do remember,
even though it was more than 40 years ago? It's
hard to say that there's one specific thing. I mean,
certainly certainly I remember several different things the way the
case was divided up. Ron talked him in. The lead

(45:36):
attorney did most of the psychiatric and psychological evidence, and
he put on the prosecution psychiatrist witnesses and he cross-examined
the defense psychiatrist witnesses. But in the end, there was
also a psychologist who had examined the defendant and and

(45:59):
and Ron had me handle that. And I ran a
rebuttal psychologist that we put on. And that was certainly
a high point for for me in in the trial,
having the opportunity to do that. And in a case
of that magnitude that the just the fact of being

(46:22):
there in the courtroom and and sitting there every day,
you know, seeing all of this stuff go on and
and and for me, you know, watching two excellent, much
more experienced attorneys than I am presenting their case, because
Ferris Salami, who was the chief public defender at the time,

(46:44):
was defense attorney. Well, very experienced attorney and a very
good attorney. And to watch him and then to watch
Ron and Ron was was was just a master. And ultimately,
you know, won awards and statewide and even national recognition
for how he he had not really been an expert

(47:08):
in psychiatric evidence before, but he made himself that he
came down and he became a recognized authority and someone
who was consulted because of how he developed the things
in the case and to to watch him do that.
I mean, just just the whole package of watching him,

(47:30):
I learned I learned so much. And in the very
last case that I tried as a prosecutor involved, you know,
several expert witnesses of different disciplines, not for the most
pertinent psychiatric witnesses, but but I was in reflection, after
I tried that case, I was reflecting back. I am

(47:52):
I am using things that I learned 35, 40 years
ago in the Chase case. And I'm using those things
now today still in a in a case that I
was trying in and, you know, ended in the 2000.

Anne Marie (48:09):
Because let me ask Carol this, you know. I can't
imagine you've seen anything worse. I mean, we've seen a
lot You've seen a lot of murders. We saw the
rapist go and say, killer, this is just a different
level of gravity, right?

Carol (48:23):
Yes.

Anne Marie (48:24):
So what would you say? I mean, just kind of
looking back on it, You know, I always talk about
the human toll of crime. I mean, how do you
look at this yourself, both as a, you know, just
a person and as a detective?

Carol (48:37):
Well, I think the most difficult part of any investigative
case is centering on the victim, the victim's family, what
they're going through, doing everything that you can to help
them through the process. This these crimes were incomprehensible as
to what he had done. How do you console a family?

(48:58):
What do you say to them? You're at such a loss.
So the human element of it is the devastation for
the families and what was going on in the community.
But you also look at in this particular case, the
mental health issues that Richard Chase had. And I look
at his family and everything that they were doing, they

(49:20):
are putting up an apartment. They were paying his rent,
paying its bills, bringing food to him. They were taking
him on excursions. They were taking him out to buy
a Christmas present. The jacket that he was wearing. When
you look at the human element, I think that is
the most difficult. Yes, the crime scene, all of the

(49:40):
things that you see, you process processos. But to me,
the most difficult thing is trying to ease victims through
the process. And I used to think, gosh, we made
an arrest, we brought closure and, you know, Emory and
now there is never closure for people that have gone
to the horrific crimes like we have seen in this community.

(50:03):
You deal with it, but the memory is always there.
How do you erase a parent's memory of a child
who was kidnapped and all of the horrific things that
happened to that child? All you can do is be
present and try to console or do whatever you can,
get them the help that they need through all of

(50:23):
their channels that we have available in the community. And
you do everything you can. So to me, investigations, no
matter how horrific they were, always centered on the victims,
the families and what we could do to help them.
And I think that's the only way I was ever
able to cope with all of the things that I

(50:45):
saw and all of the things that I was involved
in in all the years I worked homicide and sexual
assaults is what can we do for the people who
are here now to help them through this and be
a part of their moving forward? And I know that
you feel very strongly about that, too.

Anne Marie (51:04):
I do. I do. You know, when I first read
Albert's summary and you know, I grew up in Sacramento,
you all know that I live down the street from
this apartment complex where Chase lived is still there. It's
right across from a golf course. It's about a mile
from where I grew up. And I. I can't drive
by that apartment complex without thinking about Richard Chase. And

(51:26):
I didn't know all the details until I read the summary.
But I think about David Walling finding his pregnant wife
deceased and mutilated in her apartment. And I can only imagine,
I think, about the brother of the baby who's going
to be our next guest, Kevin Ferrera, about what it
was like for him that baby was missing for how long?

(51:48):
Two or three months before they found the body. Right. So, Albert,
what about you? I mean, do you think I mean,
what do you think about, you know, from your own
personal perspective? You know, obviously, this case still sits with you.
It's been 40 something years.

Albert (52:07):
It is one of those things where, like you say,
I don't live in that part of that town.

Anne Marie (52:14):
Right.

Albert (52:15):
But when whenever I am in that part of town,
you know, if I drive by that apartment complex or
if I drive by the shopping center, which which at
that time had the pantry market which backed up to
the wrong place, and the pantry market played a part
in the investigation. You know, if I ever buy the

(52:43):
shopping center that was adjacent to the MIROFF House, you know,
I mean, those those things just just always come back
to you. And I mean, it's hard not to not
to have those. I mean, I can't go by those
places without having those things come to mind. And then

(53:06):
you start thinking not only about, well, it looks different now,
which some of these places do. It looks different now
than it. I looked in 1977, 1978. But you you
reach that by your mind, going back through the catalog
of all the things that you saw in those times
and all those photos and stuff like that. And it

(53:28):
is something that that just it stays with you.

Anne Marie (53:32):
Well, no doubt about that. I mean, I probably just
like the two of you. You drive around town and
you're like, oh, that's where that happened and that's where
that happened and that's where this other terrible thing happened.
You know, I think I want to try to end
it quite by just coming back to what you both
have kind of emphasized. And at the end of all
of this this this crime, this crime spree. I don't

(53:52):
think that the gravity has ever been seen. I mean,
we've seen a lot of bad crimes, but the necrophilia,
the cannibalism, all of those things are what makes it
so horrific. But we can't ignore and I'm always going
to say this, the human toll, the consequences of these crimes,
not just. I mean, what he did to these poor

(54:13):
human beings, but their families, to the community. And so
I just want to say thank you to both of you,
because that's always been your guiding light. Albert, you've been
a model prosecutor to me for many, many years, Carol.
They're the best of the best in terms of investigation.
So I just any any final thoughts?

Albert (54:32):
One thing that I would mention that perhaps that the
listeners might not know that we haven't mentioned here is
Richard Chase was sentenced to death. He was on death
row in San Quentin, but the appeal was never heard
and the case never went much forward beyond the point

(54:57):
of the verdicts having been rendered because he took an
overdose of drugs while he was on death row. And
in the end he died from that. And I talked
to one psychiatrist who thought that it was clearly an
intentional suicide. And I talked to another psychiatrist who said, no.

(55:19):
Richard Richard was trying to kill himself. He still believed
he was sick. And in taking the meds on a
regular basis, that the way the doctors were having him
wasn't curing him. And so he he hoarded the drugs
until he had one big dose to take because he
thought that would kill him. I don't try to go
into the mind of Richard Chase to figure out which
it was, But but Richard Chase, about two or three

(55:40):
years after the verdict died on death row in San Quentin.
And so that's that's why we don't have any of
those later proceedings to talk about because Richard Chase was gone.

Anne Marie (55:53):
Good to know. Well, thank you both very much. I
really appreciate it. And I look forward to doing the
next second part of this series. And that will be
with Kevin PEREIRA, who is the brother of the baby
that was killed by Richard James. So thank you both
very much for the listeners out there. I hope you
keep listening to these podcasts and find us on Inside

(56:16):
Crime Files dot com and listen to more about the
true consequences of crime and the innovation and inspiration that
comes out of these cases. So I just thank you all.

VO (56:28):
Inside the Crime Files is produced by OLAS Media in
San Diego, California. To listen to more episodes, visit inside
Crime Files dot com.

Anne Marie (56:38):
I am Anne Marie Schubert and this is inside the
crime files.

VO (56:50):
OLAS media.
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