A FATHER-to-be whose pregnant wife was tragically murdered by a serial killer who became known as the Vampire of Sacramento has recounted the horror of discovering her mutilated body inside their home 44-years-ago.
David Wallin, now 68, left home for work on the morning of January 23, 1978, completely unaware that the goodbye kiss he gave his 22-year-old wife Teresa would be the last they’d share.
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Teresa, or Terry as David affectionately called her, was three months pregnant with their first child – a baby boy they planned to call Dane.
A sales executive at a linen company, David set off for a 250 mile round trip to Lake Tahoe. He expected to be back home later that afternoon, but his truck broke down 30 miles outside of Sacramento, and hours spent waiting for repairs meant he didn’t return until after dark.
When he finally walked back through the front door just after 6 pm, David found the home in complete darkness.
Their dog, a German shepherd, was sitting waiting inside but there was no sign of Teresa.
Strangely, the stereo had been left playing, and a garbage bag full of trash lay in the middle of the hallway, surrounded by dark stains on the carpet that he initially mistook for oil.
David followed the stains through the hallway and towards the bedroom.
The expectant father then began uncontrollably screaming and wailing as he looked down to see Teresa lying on her back in the doorway, with her torso split open, her intestines pulled out, and her underwear down by her ankles.
“I had no idea where I was, or who or what I had seen,” David told The Sun. “It was just beyond all comprehension.
“All I know is the noise I was making; I was screaming and screaming so much that my neighbors raced over to help me.”
THE VAMPIRE OF SACRAMENTO
Unknown to David at the time, Teresa had become the second victim of Richard Trenton Chase, a cannibal and necrophile who killed a total of six people in Sacramento between December 1977 and January 1978.
Teresa’s brutal murder was preceded by the killing of Chase’s first victim, 51-year-old father-of-two Ambrose Griffin, who was randomly gunned down on December 29 as he helped his wife bring groceries in from their car.
Then on January 11, one of Chase’s neighbors Dawn Larson reported having a strange encounter with him outside of the apartment complex where they lived.
During the six months they’d lived at the complex, Larson said she had seen Chase carry three animals into his apartment against the rules of their tenancy and never saw them come out again.
While she thought he was odd, Larson said she feared Chase was lonely so would occasionally speak to him.
On January 11, he had stopped Larson to ask her for a cigarette. She obliged, but Chase physically restrained her until she handed over the entire packet.
Then, less than two weeks later, Chase broke into the home of a married couple while they were out, stealing some of their valuables, urinating in a draw filled with their child’s clothing, and defecating on their son’s bed.
The couple returned home while Chase was still inside. The husband attacked him but Chase was able to flee.
Chase continued running to the neighborhood, trying the front doors of random homes to see if they were unlocked before happening upon the Wallin home.
A HEINOUS MURDER
As he entered, Chase encountered Teresa as she was just about to step outside to take out the garbage.
He pulled out a .22 caliber pistol and aimed it at the mother-to-be. Teresa dropped the garbage and raised her hand as Chase opened fire, striking her in the hand, neck, and head.
Chase then knelt down over Teresa’s lifeless body and fired an additional shot into her temple at point-blank range, before dragging her into the bedroom, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.
The 27-year-old raped Teresa’s corpse and then fetched a knife from the kitchen, which he used to repeatedly stab her.
Chase then carved her corpse open, removed several of her organs, and collected her blood in a bucket which he took into to bathroom to bathe in and smear across the walls.
He returned to Teresa’s corpse, sliced off her nipple, and drank her blood from a yogurt container he found inside the trash bag she’d been holding.
Before leaving, Chase then heinously collected dog feces from the yard and returned to place them in Teresa’s mouth and throat.
Chase then left the Wallin home, leaving behind an incomprehensibly sickening scene that haunted David and other members of his family for decades to come.
“It was just horrific,” David recounted in an interview with The Sun. “Walking into that spot and seeing what I saw, it was just beyond.
“I was just crying out ‘Why? Why? Why?'” he continued. “Whoever it was, why had they been so cruel to me? Why would they do this?”
In his state of despair, David said he made a mistake by calling his parents who raced over to his home and came inside before police could arrive.
“My dad was very strong, but seeing [Teresa’s body] ruined my mother – it completely destroyed her.
“And I just completely lost it. But my dad picked me up that night when they had all the media and everything – big lights, cameras, action – he picked me up off the ground right next to a police car.
“He looked me in the eyes and said, ‘You’ve got to stay with me. You’ve got to stay with me mentally.'”
TERRIFYING MURDER SPREE
Two days after David found Teresa’s body, Chase purchased two puppies from a nearby neighbor which he killed, drank the blood of, and then discarded of them on the lawn of a home close to the Wallins.
Chase’s final murders would come on January 27, when he entered the home of 38-year-old Evelyn Miroth, who was babysitting her one-year-old nephew, David.
Also inside the home were Eveyln’s six-year-old son Jason, and Dan Meredith, a neighbor who had come over to check on her.
Evelyn was in the bath while Dan watched the children. He went into the front hallway as Chase entered the home and was shot in the head at point-blank range.
Chase shot Jason as he attempted to run into his mom’s bedroom to hide, and also executed David at point-blank range.
The twisted killer then forced his way into the bathroom, where he fatally shot Evelyn once in the head.
He dragged her corpse onto the bed, where he had sex with it while simultaneously drinking her blood from a series of cuts he’d made with a knife at the back of her neck.
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Once he had finished, Chase stabbed Evelyn’s corpse half-a-dozen times in the anus and other parts of her body. He then cut her body open, removed several organs, and once again started drinking her blood.
Chase then went to retrieve David’s corpse, split his skull open, and began eating parts of his brain.
A knock at the door from a child Jason had a scheduled playdate with startled Chase.
He fled the home with David’s body and continued to cannibalize the corpse before disposing of it at a nearby church.
Chase was arrested by police five days later. His sickening spree of crimes would later earn him the moniker, the Vampire of Sacramento.
‘SELF DESTRUCTION’
In the aftermath of Teresa’s death, David – devastated both by the loss his wife and his unborn child – said he lost all will to live.
“I was in a state of just self-destruction at that time,” David said. “You know, a little bit of drinking here, a little bit of drugs there.
“My son was hone. My wife was gone – and I really didn’t care whether I was alive or dead.”
Only days earlier he had been so excited for the next chapter of his and Teresa’s lives together, as they prepared to be first-time parents.
Describing Teresa as a free spirit, David had met her three years earlier through his sister, also named Teresa, with whom she had been in the same class at school.
“Terry was just a very friendly, nice person,” David said. “We took to each other right away. She was a free-spirit hippie-type, and she also had such a green thumb.
“She was just she was very supportive of me and we were just getting started,” he continued.
“Teresa had just gotten a job with the state, she was a very intelligent young lady.”
Teresa, like David, was ecstatic at the prospect of becoming a parent.
She had broken the news to David in late 1977 the night before they were due to watch a boxing bout at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium.
Remembering the conversation, David said: “She looked at me and said, ‘You’re not gonna believe it, but before the fight starts, I just want to tell you you’re gonna be a dad.'”
The couple soon learned that they were having a boy. They settled on the name Dane, which was a favorite of David’s.
“We were just getting started,” David reiterated. “We were starting our family and I was just getting back on my feet again [after a knee surgery] and then Kaboom – it was all gone after terrible day in 1978.”
THE TRIAL
In 1979, Chase stood trial on six counts of first-degree murder.
Hoping to avoid the death penalty, Chase’s defense attorneys attempted to lessen his charges down to second-degree murder, arguing his history of mental illness and the apparent spontaneity of his crimes were evidence that the killings were not premeditated.
David attended the trial and was the first of more than 100 witnesses to take to the stand.
He told The Sun how he was escorted into the courtroom with an entourage made up of five police officers.
“They thought I was going to do something [to Chase],” he said, “and I told the guys, ‘I wouldn’t keep that pen in your pocket, everything is a weapon to me, buddy.'”
David said that Chase routinely refused to make eye contact with him throughout the entirety of the four-month trial, describing him as “just gone” like a “comatose stoner.”
However, David said he did share a verbal altercation with Chase’s mother, who reportedly turned to him one day and sickeningly asked: “Why didn’t your dog protect you?”
Stunned by the remark, David retorted: “Why didn’t you protect us, you sick individual? You raised that [Chase]! You raised that!”
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For David, relieving the details of Chase’s murderous spree, and having to recount the moment he found Teresa dead in painstaking details, was an incredibly harrowing experience.
However, he said he never lost sight of the higher purpose for which he was in court: To put Teresa’s killer to death.
“I was dead set on getting this guy put away and to ensure he got the death penalty,” David said. “So that helped get me through it.
“I said afterward, you can study him for two weeks and then give him to me. Then we’ll see what happens to him.'”
On May 8, after just five hours of deliberations, the jury returned a guilty verdict on all six counts of first-degree murder.
During the sanity phase of the trial, the jury found Chase legally sane after deliberating an hour. It took them four hours to decide that Chase should be put to death in the gas chamber at San Quentin Penitentiary.
Chase would later tell investigators he believed that his blood was turning to powder and that he needed to drink the blood of others in order to replenish it.
He also falsely claimed to be Jewish and said that he’d been persecuted by Nazis because he had a Star of David on his forehead, which he didn’t.
Chase explained that the Nazis were connected to UFOs which had telepathically commanded him to kill to replenish his blood.
During his time behind bars, other prisoners were said to be unnerved by Chase and often taunted him and urged him to kill himself.
One day before the third anniversary of his murderous spree, in December 1980, Chase killed himself by overdosing on medication pills he’d been secretly stashing in his cell.
‘NO SUCH THING AS CLOSURE’
News of Chase’s death did little in the way of providing David and his family with closure.
For weeks, months, and even years afterward, David said he would awake in sweats in the middle of the night, haunted by images of Teresa’s corpse flashing into his mind.
He would later realize he was suffering from PTSD, David said, though little was known about the condition at the time.
David eventually went on to re-marry and had a daughter named Krista with his second wife, before separating a couple of years after she was born.
The horrific circumstances in which he’d lost Teresa continued to haunt him as Krista was growing up.
“I told her what happened from a very young age,” David said. “She understood that I needed to know where she was and exactly when she was going to be back.
“Even if she was 10 minutes later than she said she’d be, the whole scenario would feel like it was repeating itself – and then I’d be panicking, thinking what the hell happened? Is she dead? – it was horrible.”
After battling his own demons for several years, David said he found his purpose again by teaching local sports teams, and coaching kids in the art of baseball.
“As my son was gone, I took on as many kids as I could – becoming close with many of them – teaching them basketball, football, baseball, and just about anything I could – it didn’t matter.
“So my life after what happened in 1978 was kind of like I had a million sons. And many of them went on to play in the big leagues.
“We taught a lot of good people,” he continued.
Fort-four years on, David said he has never found any form of closure over Teresa’s death, insisting there’s actually “no such thing.”
“I don’t believe in the word closure,” he said. “It never leaves.
“When I see somebody, or something happens and someone says something, it never leaves me.
“Each and every time I have to go right back to, you know, opening that door and walking into what I walked into.”
David added: “Teresa was a very innocent young lady who didn’t deserve this, same as the other five people who died.
“I’ve had many people over the years who’ll suddenly find out who I am because I don’t usually tell anybody.
“They just look at me and go, ‘Oh my god. That happened to you?’ I say, ‘Yeah, I did. But I’m still the same clown I always was. I still have a goddam sense of humor.
“And that will never change.”
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