Disorganized Serial Killer: Cannibal Richard Trenton Chase
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A serial killer who believed he was the victim of soap-dish poisoning told FBI profiler Robert Ressler: “ if you lift up the soap and the part underneath the soap is dry, then you are good but if it's gooey, then you have soap-dish poisoning”. When Robert Ressler asked the killer what effect the soap-dish poisoning had on him, he responded by saying, it had turned his blood to powder, and that was the reason why he killed animals and six people, to replenish his blood. The justification sounds absurd, but instead of attaching some synthetic sensational moniker such as the Vampire of Sacramento, or using in the ‘gory’ details of his crimes as clickbait, a professional criminal profiling approach based upon academic insight into the mental illness of Richard Trenton Chase, may be more productive in the understanding of the motivation of disorganized serial killers.
One of the most valuable and simplistic tools to apply on a crime scene when profiling a serial killer, is the FBI profilers’ John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood’s distinction between organized and disorganized serial killers. In 1993 Dr Stephen Jeffers summarized the differences: As opposed to the organized serial killer, the disorganised serial killer would have a spontaneous blitz attack, with a lack of planning, overpowering a random victim with excessive violence and depersonalizing the victim. The weapon is usually found at the location of the crime, such as a kitchen knife and left behind at the crime scene. The crime scene itself is chaotic, with multiple stab wounds, including post-mortem wounds, disembowelment and elements of bizarre ritual. The body is not concealed but left at the scene and the offender probably took no precautions to destroy evidence such as DNA.
A textbook example of a disorganized serial killer would be Richard Trenton Chase, who killed six people in Sacramento in the late 1970’s. Before escalating to people, Chase had a bizarre history of killing animals to drink their blood.
Chase’s odd behaviour was not apparent during his school years. He was a clean-cut American boy. He began misusing marijuana and drugs. However, during his early adulthood he began manifesting typical signs of mental illness. He could not hold a job, he was nomadic - living with his mother, his father, his grandmother to sharing apartments with friends, but was repeatedly asked to leave due to his odd behaviour. He complained that his pulmonary vein was lost, he posted photographs of human organs on his walls trying to figure out what was wrong with him, he would walk around naked, until finally at the age of 23 he was admitted to the American River Hospital claiming the blood stopped flowing through his veins. Doctor Irwin Lyons described him as "tense, nervous and wild eyed, a filthy, dishevelled, deteriorated and foul smelling white male”. He was diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia, but he was discharged into his mother’s care after two days, because she insisted upon it and denied his illness.
Schizophrenia is considered a disease of young people, where symptoms of odd behaviour emerge in the late teens to early twenties. There are several theories on the aetiology of schizophrenia, but suffice to say it can be described as a gradual deterioration of the brain, where neurons misfire and degrade. Neurological medication has much advanced since the 1970’s, where schizophrenia can now be controlled, with many living productive lives, provided they take their medication according to prescription. There are different categories of schizophrenia: catatonic, disorganized, paranoid, undeferential and residual.
One of the symptoms of schizophrenia is delusions. A delusion is a false belief or judgment about an external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, occurring especially in mental conditions. Chase could be diagnosed with a somatic delusion – a false belief involving the functioning of one’s body, as he believed his blood was turning into powder; a bizarre delusion - an absurd totally implausible very strange belief – he believed he was the product of an alien abduction and a paranoid delusion, a belief that one is being persecuted or controlled by external forces – he believed he was a Jew and was being persecuted by Nazi’s.
Another symptom is hallucinations- a false sensory perception, not associated with real external stimuli. Chase had auditory and somatic hallucinations. He fired shots at voices he heard in his apartment, and he shaved his head to observe his cranial plates moving.
After his discharge, Chase alternated between living with his two separated parents but eventually, after several aggressive attacks, his parents got him his own apartment. Chase would ride his bicycle to a rabbit farm where he would purchase rabbits, which he consumed raw in his apartment. At the age of 26, he was again admitted to the emergency ward of the American River Hospital after injecting himself with rabbit’s blood. He told the staff he had eaten a rabbit that was infected with battery acid. He was transferred to the Beverley Manor Psychiatric Hospital, where he would catch birds, break their necks and consume them. Despite the objections of the nursing staff, he was again released in the care of his mother, who against doctors’ orders, weaned him off his medication. Chase moved back into his own apartment where he progressed to killing puppies, by hanging them, gutting them and drinking their blood.
At the age of 27 Chase managed to buy a firearm, lying about his mental condition. He used this to kill the dogs and fired shots in his apartment at the voices instructing him to do things. His neighbours were aware of this behaviour.
On 29 December 1977 he shot 51-year-old Ambrose Griffin in his driveway, because he was angry at his mother. Police failed to solve the case – it was a random victim. Chase broke into homes, urinated and defecated on children’s beds and set the drapes on fire. He killed a cow on an Indian reserve and smeared himself with blood.
Then in January1978 Chase’s schizophrenia erupted and he committed the most bizarre murders in two separate incidences within one week, where he disembowelled women and a baby, committed necrophilia and cannibalism and drank their blood, all in an attempt to replenish his own blood, which he believed was turning into powder. FBI profilers recognized him as a disorganized serial killer, with a mental disease – he was arrested shortly after his last murder…