Serial Chase: A True Story of the Lives and Deaths of a Doctor and a Deputy

Serial Chase is the true story of the tragic intersection of two lives in a hotel bar one night in Everett, Washington in 1950. One individual is a prominent 52-year-old optometrist, while the other is a 21-year-old man in a Sheriff's posse special deputy uniform. The optometrist appears inebriated when he stands to leave and the young man volunteers to drive him home. An hour later, they arrive at the hospital emergency entrance, the passenger dead of apparent heart attack according to the deputy. He accompanies other deputies to the doctor's home where they explain her husband's death to his stunned wife. The young deputy expresses that he wishes he could have done more to help. The doctor is buried with the presumptive cause of death being a heart attack. Thirteen months later, the former posse deputy is himself being held in the county jail on charges of arson. One night in his cell, he confesses to a spree of serial killing, arson, robbery, assault, and production of pornography, starting when he entered the army at age 17 and ending with his arrest at age 22. The optometrist was the author's grandfather, murdered by the killer. The book reviews his life path to that bar stool in December 1950. The book then explores the life of the Sheriff's posse deputy, Harold Glenn Chase, and his path through acts of arson, murder, and a myriad of other crimes. The story follows the man through his murder trials, and how he used his incredible powers of persuasion to deceive a prison psychiatrist and spend less than a decade in the state penitentiary, despite having been sentenced to life imprisonment.