Despite the diagnosis, he still somehow managed to graduate from high school in 1957. He then went on to work as an electronics technician. Then in 1961, his life appeared to turn around when he married a seventeen year old girl. He then went on father two children and seemed to settle down in Salem. He still continued to have strange fetishes though. He would ask his wife to do the housework while naked, except for her wearing a pair of heels. He would then take pictures or her.
Around this time he started to complain of headaches, migraines and blackouts. He would relieve his symptoms by going out on night time raids for lacy underwear and by stealing shoes. He would keep these stolen items in his garage, where his wife was forbidden to enter unless she first requested permission via an intercom he had installed. It was not the only thing he was hiding from his wife. He had now also progressed to far darker deeds.
In 1968 to 1969, Brudos bludgeoned and strangled four women. For a time, the bodies of these victims were also stored in his garage. The only evidence that first linked Brudos to the murders was that a large man was seen wearing women’s clothing clothes to one of the murders. In the garage, Brudos ended up keeping souvenirs from his victims.
His first victim was 19 year old Linda Slawson. She had called at the home of Brudos selling encyclopedias and she was looking at a smeared piece of paper unsure of the correct address to visit. Brudos invited the young woman into his house, and told her that his mother and daughter were playing upstairs. He suggested that they go down into his basement where they would not be disturbed.
Slawson agreed to go into the basement and they continued the conversation about encyclopedias. Brudos pulled up a chair for her to sit on, then went behind her and smashed her over the head with a lump of wood. She fell to the floor unconscious, and he then choked her to death with his bare hands. He undressed and re-dressed the body in a variety of the clothes that he had stolen. When he had finished his games, he waited until darkness and moved the body to his car. He then disposed of her body in the Willamette river.
His second victim was the 57 year old Jan Susan Witney. In November of 1968, she had left her friend’s house and was travelling on interstate 5. It was here that she encountered car trouble, and Brudos was the man who stopped to help. Her car was found locked and intact and it seemed like a random isolated disappearance.
The third victim was named Karen Sprinkler. She was due to meet her mother for a lunch meeting, but then she failed to show up. Her mother searched for her for a few hours, but there was no sign of her, her mother then reported her missing to the Salem police. Police had to wait for the mandatory 24 hours before they would begin to search for the girl.
Police soon found the girl’s car at the top level of a garage, but with no visible sign of a struggle and the car intact, it again appeared as if the girl had just vanished. Witnesses at the area did mention that they had seen a cross dresser at the scene, who was seen adjusting his suspenders. This was the first link to a potential suspect.
The next victim was a pretty blonde named Linda Salle. The woman failed to turn up for a meeting with her boyfriend. The next day, she also failed to turn up for work. Her car was also found at the top level of a parking garage. Her body was found in a river less than a month later.
Widespread investigations were launched by the local police. They knew that they had a killer on the loose that would soon kill again. They questioned people who knew Karen Sprinkler at Oregon State University. Interviews with co-eds soon led them to an interesting discovery. Three women had recently received phone calls and were asked for directly by name, the man on the phone claimed to be a Vietnam vet, and asked the girls if they were available for coke and conversation.
In a separate investigation a red haired man with freckles, had recently tried to wrestle two girls into a car. One of the girls who had received the phone call had actually met with the man, but didn’t like him. The police asked her that if he ever rang her again then she was to stall him until they could get to her. A few weeks later, the man rang again, and she agreed to meet him in an hour.
When the caller showed up at the meeting point, he was greeted by the police. He gave his name as Jerome Henry Brudos. The police let him go, but by now they had started to delve deeper into his back ground and then they started to tail him. Officers caught him as he tried to load up his boot in a suspected effort to flee and at this point they arrested him. Brudos, despite warnings from his attorney just kept talking and he quickly confessed to the murders of the four women in detail.
Brudos revealed details of how he murdered the women. He dragged them to his garage tied them up and put a noose around their necks. He secured the rope to an overhead beam and then winched them off the floor to strangle them. As they were dying he liked to take pictures. In one of the pictures, the face of the photographer was reflected in the mirror. It was the face of Brudos. Police now had solid evidence.
In his garage Brudos kept two pairs of breasts that he had removed from his victims, he used these as paperweights. He also kept the foot of his first murder victim, 19 year old Linda Slawson. He used her foot to model the shoes that he had collected. Whenever he committed the act of murder, he would dress up in women’s clothes and he would masturbate.
Brudos was sentenced to life imprisonment, and appealed on numerous occasions. While in his cell, he substituted pornography with catalogues of women’s shoes that he requested from major retailers. Brudos died in prison of liver cancer in March 2006.
Richard Chase
In January of 1978, Richard chase went on a four day killing spree. The blood binge would claim the lives of six people and earn him the name the Vampire Killer of Sacremento.
Chase was born in May 1960. As a child he had unusual hobbies. He liked to start fires, and he liked to torture animals. His mother and father would constantly bicker and argue and his father was a strict disciplinarian. By the time he was ten years old Chase was killing cats. Entering into his teenage years he would drink and also smoke cannabis. He was constantly in trouble but never showed any signs of remorse.
When he started dating girls, he found that he had trouble maintaining an erection. The problem got so bad for him that at the age of 18 he went to see a physiatrist about the issue. The root of the problem was diagnosed as being repressed anger, it was also thought that he may be suffering from a major mental illness, but it was not suggested that he be committed.
After he moved out of his parent’s house, he had numerous different room-mates, a number of them recalled that he had exhibited strange behaviour and excessive drug usage. It got to the point that even his close friends considered him weird. He also was convinced that he was suffering from major medical problems and these delusions appeared to increase in intensity. At one point he even nailed his bedroom door closed.
Chase once entered a hospital emergency room claiming that someone had stolen his pulmonary artery. He was looking for the person responsible for the theft. He also complained on separate occasions that the bones were coming out of the back of his head, that his stomach was backward, and that his heart would often stop beating. He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.
Chase moved back in with his mother, but he believed that she was poisoning him. His father then got him an apartment and made him move out. Chase then started catching or buying rabbits. He would then kill the animals and disembowel them. He would sometimes eat the animal’s entrails raw. On occasion he would put the intestines into a blender with the animal’s blood and liquidise them and drank them in order he believed, to stop his heart from shrinking, as he thought that if he didn’t then his heart would disappear from his body.
He once injected blood from a rabbit directly into his veins. He then became very ill with blood poisoning, but he believed that the rabbit had ingested battery acid, and that had made its way into his stomach. Eventually he was committed to hospital as a schizophrenic suffering from somatic delusions. Doctors tried various different medicatio
ns, but none of them appeared to have worked. He escaped from the hospital and then went to his mother’s house.
Chase was returned to hospital, and ended up at a facility for mental patients named Beverly manor. It was here that he earned the nickname of ‘Dracula’. He often spoke about killing rabbits, and he was once found with blood around his mouth from two birds that he had killed. At some point he was assessed as not being a danger to anyone and was then released. His mother then paid his rent and would also do his shopping for him.
Chase moved apartments and he then started to catch and torture cats, dogs and rabbits. Once again he began to drink the blood of the animals. Chase was still on his medication but became unsupervised. His mother decided that he no longer needed his medication and she stupidly weaned him off of them. His mother once found her son at her door holding a dead cat, she saw him tear the animal open in front of her and smear blood all over his face and neck, but she did not report it.
In August of that year, police officers found Chase’s car, it was stuck in sand in Nevada. There were two rifles in the car, along with some men’s clothing. There was blood on the inside of the car, and a plastic bucket filled with blood and a liver. They became suspicious and they spotted Chase through binoculars. He was naked, and he was covered in blood. He ran, but the police caught him, and he claimed the blood was his and it had seeped out of him. The liver was actually a cow’s liver.
In the news, the Hillside strangler was making headlines. Chase was following the case with increased intensity. He became a fan of the killer and of what was happening. He followed events closely in the press and on television. He became totally fascinated with the murders.
On the 29th of December Mr Ambrose Griffin and his wife returned home from a shopping trip. Mrs Griffin heard her husband shouting at someone and then he just seemed to drop to the ground in front of her. She suspected that he had had a heart attack. At the same time she heard two noises that made a popping sound, but had thought no more of them. Her husband had actually been shot.
The following day, a twelve year old boy was riding his bike when he was also shot at. While under hypnosis, he managed to recall the number plate of the car which was a brown Pontiac Trans am, but the investigation would lead no further. Police then discovered a report had been filed two days before the murder. It told of where a shot was fired into a kitchen. A .22 calibre slug was found, and it matched those that had killed Ambrose Griffin. The investigations then went stale.
In early 1978, Chase’s neighbours recalled incidents of erratic behaviour from Chase. He was seen carrying animals into his apartment, but they never came back out again. He asked a neighbour for a cigarette, but then stopped her from walking away, he only moved when she gave him the rest of the packet. He was also seen trying to gain access to a property, when he was confronted he simply lit a cigarette and just calmly walked away.
He was actually later caught in one of his neighbour’s houses. He managed to escape by running away, but he had left the house in an utter mess, and it appeared that he was trying to steal valuables. He had also defecated on a child’s bed, and urinated into a drawer of babies freshly washed clothes.
Chase had an unusual method that he used to select his victims, if he tried the door and it was locked he took it to mean that he was not welcome, if he found the door unlocked, he would enter. By leaving the door unlocked, it would mean the death of a 22 year old woman, who at the time was three months pregnant. Before he entered her house, he placed a .22 calibre shell in her mailbox. Then he ran into her house.
As Chase ran into the house, he encountered 22 year old Terry Wallin just as she was taking out her rubbish. As Chase raised his gun, Wallin dropped her bag of rubbish. As she did so, she was shot twice. One bullet struck her hand then nicked her neck as it exited then her hand, the other bullet hit the top part of her skull. As she fell to the ground, Chase fired another bullet into her skull. Chase then dragged the woman into a bedroom and returned with a knife and an empty container.
When David Wallin returned home at around 6 that evening, he found the family dog waiting. Music was playing and there seemed to be some sort of stain on the carpet, there was also rubbish strewn all over the floor. He could not locate his wife and so he followed the stains to where he made a horrific discovery that would turn his world upside down.
David located his wife just inside the couples bedroom. She was on her back and her sweater had been pulled up over her breasts. Her pants and underwear were around her ankles and her knees were forced apart as if she had been sexually assaulted. Her left nipple had been carved off, her torso had been cut open and her spleen and intestines had been pulled out.
It was later discovered that Chase had repeatedly stabbed her in the lung, liver and in the left breast. He had cut out her kidneys and then cut her pancreas into two. He then had replaced the kidneys. He has used an empty yoghurt pot to drink the woman’s blood and in a gruesome act of depravity, he had then shoved animal faeces into her mouth.
On the 27th of January, the body of 51 year old Daniel Meredith was discovered. He lay in a hallway in a pool of blood. He had a gunshot wound to the head. In the bath lay the body of 38 year old Evelyn Miroth. She had also been shot in the head. Her legs had also been splayed open and her intestines removed. Two carving knives lay nearby. She had previously been dragged to the bed and stabbed through the anus at least six times.
Chase had also made several cuts across the woman’s neck, and had tried to remove one of her eyes. There was a large amount of semen in her anus, where she had been sodomised, and the killer had once again stabbed internal organs and had drank the victim’s blood. Blood stains covered the carpet. The body of a six year old boy named Jason Miroth was also found by the bed, and he had also been shot twice in the head. Police discovered bloody footprints at the scene, and witnesses provided a good description of a man who was recently seen in the neighbourhood asking for magazines.
Dan Meredith’s car was missing from the house. It was around this time that Karen Ferreira had realised that he baby son David was missing from the house. David had also been left with Evelyn that morning and a bullet hole was discovered in a pillow that had been in the crib. There was also a lot of blood in the area.
While Chase was in the house, he had drunk Evelyn’s blood. He had taken the baby’s body to the bathroom and mutilated the tiny body. He had opened up the head and pieces of the child’s brain had fallen into the bath tub. He was then disturbed by a knock and the door and fled with the child’s body. He took the body home and severed the head, and then he removed and ate some of the child’s organs. The Police were quick to act and were closing in on Chase.
The FBI had already drawn up a profile of the killer. They thought him to be a white male in his mid twenties. He was sloppy and left evidence at the scenes. He had seemingly not planned any of these killings as he had left this evidence. It was likely he was walking around in broad daylight and was covered in blood. He was a local who was likely to continue killing until he was caught, and he was likely to be suffering from psychosis. He would also be a drug user or have been a mental patient at some point. He probably lived alone and was paranoid.
The police questioned many people in the area, and one young woman recalled a rather strange encounter. At a local shopping centre, a strange man approached her, who appeared to be somewhat confused. She tried to avoid him but he came directly up to her. He asked her
“Were you on the motorcycle when Kurt was killed? “
Ten years prior, the woman had actually been dating a boy called Kurt, who had actually been killed in a bike accident. She thought the man looked familiar so she asked him his name, and he replied
“Richard Chase.”
It then emerged that in December of 1977 Chase had bought a .22 calibre handgun, and in the following January, he had purchased ammunition for the gun. Detectives ran a background check on Chase, and his history of mental illness then came to light. He
also had several minor drug charges and also a concealed weapons charge. The day after the triple murder, they went to visit Chase’s apartment.
Chase was at home when they called, but he refused to answer the door. The police pretended that they were leaving the house and then waited for him to emerge. He left the house holding a box in his arms, and made his way towards a car. It was at this point that the police surprised him. After a somewhat violent struggle, he has finally apprehended. His shoes appeared to be covered in blood. He also carried a handgun that had blood stains on it, and one of the victims wallets in his back pocket, he also had a pair of latex gloves with him.
The box that Chase was carrying contained bits of bloodstained paper and rags. They took him to the police station but he would only confess to killing several dogs and would not talk about any of the murders. While he was held captive detectives were desperate to find information about the missing child, and decided to search Chase’s apartment for clues. They encountered a putrid disgusting smelling lair.
The Killers Trilogy Page 14
