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Matt Chase

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Matt Chase

Matt Chase

Real Name: Matthew Marshall Chase
Nicknames: Matt
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: June 8, 1988

Bio[]

Occupation: Department Store Employee
Date of Birth: April 10, 1966
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 150 lbs.
Marital Status: Single
Characteristics: White male with brown hair and brown eyes. He has a small tattoo of a dollar sign behind his right ear.

Case[]

Details: Twenty-two-year-old Matt Chase grew up in Medford, Oregon, and graduated from Medford High School in 1984. He was active in the school's music and drama departments. He led their musical production of "Oklahoma," performed in regional and state choirs, and toured Europe with a national choir. He later moved to the Pico-Union neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, with siblings Steve and Teresa Dahl, whom he had known since childhood. He and Teresa worked at Bullock's department store on Wilshire Boulevard. He hoped to one day attend Otis College of Art and Design.
At 11:45pm on June 8, 1988, Matt and Teresa returned home from dinner. When they got inside, he remembered he had to deposit his paycheck. She lent him her car, a red two-door 1983 Volkswagen GTI, and asked if he could pick up some cat food on the way home. When he left, he took only his bank card and left his wallet behind. According to her, it should have taken him approximately fifteen minutes to run the errand. The Wells Fargo bank was about two blocks from their home. Normally, he would walk there, but that night, he took her car. It is known that he did arrive at the bank's ATM that night, but he never returned home. His friends and family are still searching for him.
The next morning, when Matt still had not come home, Steve and Teresa called the police. Using Matt's Social Security number, Steve then called the bank and convinced them he was Matt. He and Teresa wanted to find out if Matt had used his bank card the night before. The bank said he had – several times. Steve and Teresa called the police again. Detective Scott Burkhart of the Los Angeles Police Department realized that Matt's case was not "normal" and would require an in-depth investigation. He suspected foul play was involved.
When detectives reviewed the bank records, they discovered that around midnight, Matt had successfully deposited his paycheck and received cash back. Approximately thirty minutes later, he returned to the same bank branch and attempted to withdraw $280, despite knowing it exceeded his daily cash withdrawal limit. Detectives theorized that he either was being forced to withdraw the amount or was signaling to the bank for help.
That night, two more attempts were made to withdraw cash using Matt's bank card. The first was for $200. It was refused because of insufficient funds. Then, a minute later, $100 was requested. Again, as his paycheck had not been posted, this amount was refused. Eleven minutes later, at 12:34am, the card was used at another bank branch in a different neighborhood. Again, the withdrawals were unsuccessful. This time, a hidden camera took photographs of Matt. A strange man appeared in the pictures, standing over Matt's right shoulder.
According to the branch's surveillance cameras, the man was somewhat shorter and stockier than Matt. According to Detective Burkhart, the man should not have been in the photographs at all. Under normal circumstances, a person would not let someone stand that close to them while they were using an ATM because the other person could see their PIN.
The police suspect that the man may have robbed and abducted Matt while he was making his first transactions. Then, Matt may have deliberately entered erroneous amounts, hoping to attract attention and call for help. Over the next day and a half, there were five more withdrawal attempts. By then, Matt's paycheck had cleared, so $400 was withdrawn from his account. Finally, his card was confiscated by the ATM.
Earlier, Steve and Teresa had put a freeze on Matt's card. They figured that if they could get the card back, they could find out which bank it was used at and possibly locate Matt and his abductor(s). They also hoped the police could get fingerprints off it. However, when it was dusted for prints, none were found. The police believe either it was wiped clean or Matt's abductor used gloves.
Matt's parents, Frank and Susan, came down from Oregon to search for him and the car he had been driving. They hoped they would find it somewhere close to where he lived. However, after several nights of searching, they became frustrated. Susan noted that Los Angeles was dangerous at night, and they had seen some "frightening things" there. This made them feel that something bad had probably happened to Matt.
The police believed that Matt may have been injured in a mugging and was walking the streets with amnesia. Steve and Teresa distributed missing persons posters at the Midnight Mission, a local homeless shelter. At one point, she ran out of posters, so she showed people his driver's license. Some of the shelter's volunteers recognized him and said he had been there several times to eat. They accurately described him as tall, thin, and lanky. At that point, Teresa became hopeful that he was alive, especially because the volunteers had recognized him from such a small picture.
Almost three weeks after Matt's disappearance, on June 27, 1988, Teresa's car was finally found by the police, abandoned close to where he had vanished. When it was found, officers ran its license plate through the Stolen Vehicle System, which indicated that it was associated with a missing person. Detective Burkhart had the car held so that it could be checked for fingerprints. The criminalist dusted it for prints and examined it for other evidence of a crime. However, nothing was found. Detective Burkhart thought this was unusual, as people normally leave at least some fingerprints while driving.
The police found one clue in the car: a blue bandana with the letters "ES PBS CLS" on it. It did not belong to either Matt or Teresa, and detectives believe it may have been left by Matt's abductor(s).
Susan hopes that Matt is alive and alright and that she will be with him again. She has had nightmares about what may have happened to him, but she hopes they do not reflect reality. Teresa also hopes and believes that he is alive. She notes that her hope keeps her going. She considers him her best friend, and she plans to continue searching for him until he is found.
The pictures taken by the bank camera are mute testimony that something sinister may have happened to Matt on his midnight trip to the ATM. His friends and family have not given up hope. They want to know what happened on that June night.

Suspects: Matt's suspected abductor was a male who appeared somewhat shorter and stockier than Matt. Two composites were created of the man, based on computer enhancements of the bank photographs.
The police believe someone may have seen Matt's abductor driving Teresa's car, a red two-door 1983 Volkswagen GTI, in early June 1988.
A blue bandana was found in Teresa's car that did not belong to her or Matt. It had the following letters written on it: ES PBS CLS. The lettering may stand for the East Side Playboys, a Mexican-American street gang founded in Los Angeles.
Extra Notes:

  • This case first aired on the December 21, 1988 episode. It was updated on the April 26, 1989 episode.
  • According to TV Guide, it was originally scheduled to air on the November 23, 1988 episode, but it was postponed.
  • A similar case involving an abduction from an ATM was Gretchen Burford.
  • Teresa discussed Matt's case on the "Learning Not To Swear" podcast. According to Teresa, the Los Angeles Police Department did not take his disappearance seriously at first and refused to take a missing persons report. She tried to report her car as stolen, but they did not follow up on that either. They also suggested that he left voluntarily. She later contacted the local news, which led to Mayor Tom Bradley stepping in and transferring the case to another department.
  • Some sources state that: Matt, Teresa, and Steve lived in West Hollywood; Matt and Teresa were dating; he was gay and had taken a mannequin to prom to protest not being able to take his boyfriend; his body was found in March 1989; and he was shot twice.

Results: Solved. Three months after Matt disappeared, on September 17, 1988, his body was discovered in a ravine in nearby Pasadena, California. His cause of death was a gunshot wound. On March 29, 1989, the Los Angeles Coroner's Office positively identified the remains as his. The identification was delayed due to the difficulty of locating his dental records. The police believe he was killed shortly after he disappeared. They classified his case as a robbery/homicide and considered the man in the bank photographs the prime suspect.
In March 1990, Frank and Susan sued Wells Fargo, claiming the bank's poor security and negligence led to Matt's abduction and murder. They alleged he was abducted after the ATM mistakenly indicated that he had insufficient funds to withdraw cash, which presumably angered his abductor(s). The outcome of the lawsuit is not known.
Frank remained in regular contact with the police over the years and kept his own investigative notes on the case. Sadly, on August 31, 2007, he died at sixty-seven. After his death, Matt's sister, Kristina, took over the family's investigation.
In 2018, the Los Angeles Police Department "cleared" Matt's case. They told Kristina they felt confident that his killer was twenty-year-old David "Bear" Meza, a suspected gang member from Los Angeles. Ironically, Meza was killed in a drive-by shooting while standing with friends on a sidewalk on South Columbia Avenue near downtown Los Angeles on the night of June 10, 1988, less than two days after Matt vanished. The police believed that other gang members killed Meza. That same weekend, the police arrested over 700 gang members in Los Angeles during an "anti-gang sweep."
When interviewed by the police, Meza's girlfriend identified him as the man in the bank photographs. Other circumstantial evidence linked him to the crime. Although the possibility of accomplices cannot be dismissed, the case is considered closed since the main perpetrator is deceased.
Sadly, on September 8, 2024, Susan died at eighty-four.
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