A self-styled "death merchant" who enjoyed killing for pleasure, Chadd has confessed to three murders and various rapes in at least two states. In 1974, according to his own statement, the 20-year-old drifter invaded the home of a San Diego woman, choked and raped his victim , then slashed her throat and continued the sexual assault as she lay dying. She may have been his first victim, but she would not be the last. A year later, in August 1975, Chadd was working at a Las Vegas restaurant when he met Delmar Bright, 29, employed as a porter at a nearby hotel. As Chadd tells the story, Bright offered him twenty dollars and a six-pack of beer in return for a nude photo-modeling session. Chadd agreed, but claimed that Bright attempted homosexual assault, compelling Chadd to kill in self-defense. In fact, when found, the victim lay face-down and naked on his bed, hands and feet bound with electrical cord, stabbed in the back with his throat slashed. ("I'd heard that stabbing someone in the kidney would kill him," Chadd explained, "but I didn't know, so I went ahead and cut his throat, too.") By 1978, serving with the Marine Corps, Billy Chadd was back in San Diego. There, he kidnapped and raped another woman, along with her teenage daughter, after tying up the victim's elderly parents and her younger children. Arrested on that charge and sentenced to thirteen years in prison, he also confessed the 1974 slaying and a second local murder, in 1978. His sentence of life in the first homicide was later overturned by the California Supreme Court. Talkative in custody, Chadd leaked his involvement in the murder of Delmar Bright, and officers sent his fingerprints off to Las Vegas, where they matched latent prints from the 1975 murder scene. Chadd was a persistent problem for his keepers, twice setting his cell on fire in December 1981, sitting in the middle of the floor with a towel over his face while smoke curled around him. By April 1982, he claimed to be "born again," a new man, but the old Billy Chadd was convicted of murder and sentenced to life, the term to run consecutive with his 13 years in California.
A self-styled "death merchant" who enjoyed killing for pleasure, Chadd has confessed to three murders and various rapes in at least two states. In 1974, according to his own statement, the 20-year-old drifter invaded the home of a San Diego woman, choked and raped his victim , then slashed her throat and continued the sexual assault as she lay dying. She may have been his first victim, but she would not be the last. A year later, in August 1975, Chadd was working at a Las Vegas restaurant when he met Delmar Bright, 29, employed as a porter at a nearby hotel. As Chadd tells the story, Bright offered him twenty dollars and a six-pack of beer in return for a nude photo-modeling session. Chadd agreed, but claimed that Bright attempted homosexual assault, compelling Chadd to kill in self-defense. In fact, when found, the victim lay face-down and naked on his bed, hands and feet bound with electrical cord, stabbed in the back with his throat slashed. ("I'd heard that stabbing someone in the kidney would kill him," Chadd explained, "but I didn't know, so I went ahead and cut his throat, too.") By 1978, serving with the Marine Corps, Billy Chadd was back in San Diego. There, he kidnapped and raped another woman, along with her teenage daughter, after tying up the victim's elderly parents and her younger children. Arrested on that charge and sentenced to thirteen years in prison, he also confessed the 1974 slaying and a second local murder, in 1978. His sentence of life in the first homicide was later overturned by the California Supreme Court. Talkative in custody, Chadd leaked his involvement in the murder of Delmar Bright, and officers sent his fingerprints off to Las Vegas, where they matched latent prints from the 1975 murder scene. Chadd was a persistent problem for his keepers, twice setting his cell on fire in December 1981, sitting in the middle of the floor with a towel over his face while smoke curled around him. By April 1982, he claimed to be "born again," a new man, but the old Billy Chadd was convicted of murder and sentenced to life, the term to run consecutive with his 13 years in California. |
