JURY FAVORS DEATH FOR VAMPIRE SLAYER: OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER, MAY 18, 1979
The jury in Palo Alto took four and a half hours to decide what should happen to Richard Chase, and on May 18, 1979, the Associated Press story of its answer ran on page 3A of the Ogden Standard-Examiner. The same eight women and four men who had convicted him recommended that the man the papers called the "vampire killer" die in San Quentin's gas chamber. The paper is careful about what that meant. The last word belonged to Superior Court Judge John Schatz, who had set sentencing for June 8 and could still send Chase to prison for life without parole.
Earlier that week the same jurors had found him sane. Chase had pleaded insanity, and the psychiatrists who testified described a man with a persecution complex and delusions, driven to drink the blood of some of his victims in the belief that he would be "cleansed." None of it saved him. The jury found that his crimes fit the special circumstances provision of California law covering multiple murder, the finding that allowed a sentence of death. He was being tried in Palo Alto at all only because pretrial publicity had made a fair trial in Sacramento impossible.
The story ends with the dead, and the list runs from the end of December 1977 to the end of January 1978. Ambrose Griffin, 51, an engineer and father of two, was helping his wife carry in groceries when a shot from a passing car struck him in the chest. Teresa Wallin, 22, was three months pregnant with a son she and her husband, David, meant to name Dane. Then came the house of Evelyn Miroth, where Chase killed her, her six-year-old son, Jason, her friend Daniel Meredith, and the 22-month-old nephew she was babysitting, David Ferreira.
This is wire copy from the penalty phase, filed before the judge had passed sentence, and it is a news summary rather than a court record. Some of its figures differ from the record of the case: it gives Evelyn Miroth's age as 36 and Daniel Meredith's as 52, where the record gives 38 and 51, and it spells the baby's surname Ferriera instead of Ferreira. It calls Chase burly; the witnesses who saw him during the killings described a thin, disheveled man. He was convicted on May 8, 1979, of six counts of first degree murder, found sane and sentenced to death. On December 26, 1980, before his appeal was decided, he died in his San Quentin cell of an overdose of pills he had saved.
Utah Digital Newspapers, the collection of the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah, holds this page of the Ogden Standard-Examiner for May 18, 1979, and its rights field for the issue reads "In Copyright (InC)." The story itself is Associated Press wire copy, credited "(AP)" in the dateline, with no staff byline. No copyright notice appears on the masthead or on the article, but a newspaper published after 1977 does not fall into the public domain for want of one. The full citation and the library's rights statement are printed beneath the scan.
The column was copied word for word from the page scan, and every word could be read, so no [illegible] marks were needed. Two slips of the original type are kept as printed: "disembowled" for disemboweled, and "David Ferriera" for the child the record names David Ferreira. The Palo Alto dateline is accurate rather than a mistake, since the trial had been moved there from Sacramento. The story is complete on page 3A and does not continue on another page.
Transcription
Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.
Jury Favors Death For Vampire Slayer
PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) — The "vampire killer," who drank the blood of some of his six victims, deserves to die in San Quentin's gas chamber for his crimes, says the jury that convicted him.
But Superior Court Judge John Schatz, who set sentencing for June 8, is not bound to impose the death penalty on Richard Chase, as decided Thursday by the eight-woman, four-man panel. The judge could sentence Chase to life in prison without possibility of parole.
The jury last week found the burly, 28-year-old Chase guilty of the 1978 Sacramento murders and deliberated for 4½ hours in the penalty phase. The trial site was moved because of pretrial publicity.
In the penalty phase, the jury found Chase's crimes fit the definition of the special circumstances provision of state law, which deals with multiple murder. The section permits either a sentence of death, or life imprisonment without a chance for parole.
Earlier this week, the jury found Chase was sane when he did away with his victims, who included a pregnant woman and two children. He had pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.
Psychiatrists testified Chase had a persecution complex and delusions and was driven to drink the blood of some of his victims in the belief he would be "cleansed."
Evidence in the case linked Chase to a grisly string of murders that started with the random shooting of Ambrose Griffin, 51. Shortly afterward, the shot and disembowled body of Teresa Wallin, 22, was found. His other victims were Evelyn Miroth, 36, her 6-year-old son Jason; Mrs. Miroth's friend, Daniel Meredith, 52; and Mrs. Miroth's 22-month-old nephew, David Ferriera, who had been decapitated.
Notes: Kept as printed: "disembowled"; "David Ferriera". The dateline is Palo Alto, because the trial was moved there from Sacramento. No words were illegible.