Vampire criminals, vampire killers or psychopatic vampires are people who commit murders and drink the blood of their victims. In order to for a crime to be considered a vampire crime, the drinking of blood or the desire to drink blood must be a major motive.
The three known reasons why vampire crimes are committed are:
- Hematomania, or the deriving of pleasure from drinking blood,
- Renfield’s Syndrome, the belief that a person is actually a vampire,
- involvement in satanic rituals
The vampire subculture as a whole does not associate themselves with these individuals, stating that they are not real vampires, and that the subculture does not promote violence or crime in any form.
The following vampire killers are listed in chronological order. It is only a very small sample since many crimes remain insolved.
Fritz Haarmann
Also known as the Vampire of Hanover or The butcher of Hanover, this German serial killer is believed to be responsible for at least 27 murders, and was convicted of 24. Although his criminal career began in 1898 (for molesting children) and later came to include assault, petty theft and burglary, his first known murder did not take place until September of 1918.
From September of 1898 to June of 1924, he would go on to rape, murder and butcher at least 27 youths (spanning from ages 10 to 22). He killed many of his victims by biting through their throats. He sold personal belongings acquired from his victims, and reportedly sold their flesh on the black market, although this may just be a rumor.
Haarmann is considered one of Germany’s most prolific killers, both for the number of victims and the extremely grisly nature of his crimes. He was guillotined, on April 15, 1925. His last words were: “I repent, but I do not fear death.”
His head was preserved in a jar by scientists so they could study his brain, and is now at Gottingen medical school.
Peter Kürten
Kürten admitted to a feeling of tension before and after the crime: a condition that convinced the experts of the sexual character of the motive. The attacks were planned and carried out in order to achieve a sexual satisfaction that could only be obtained through acts of violence. This is the ultimate operation of a monstrous and unique egotism — the satisfaction of one’s sexual urges at all costs.
Charged with a total of nine murders and seven attempted murders (he claimed 79), the trial of the ‘Düsseldorf Vampire’ opened on April 13th 1931. In answer to the judge’s question as to whether he had a conscience, Kuerten replied:
“I have none. Never have I felt any misgiving in my soul; never did I think to myself that what I did was bad, even though human society condemns it. My blood and the blood of my victims will be on the heads of my torturers. There must be a Higher Being who gave in the first place the first vital spark to life. That Higher Being would deem my actions good since I revenged injustice. The punishments I have suffered have destroyed all my feelings as a human being. That was why I had no pity for my victims.”
On July 2nd 1932, the ‘Düsseldorf Vampire’ went to his death at a guillotine erected in the yard of the Klingelputz Prison. Kürten expressed his last earthly desire on the way to the yard: “Tell me”, he asked the prison psychiatrist, “after my head has been chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck?” He savoured this thought for a while, then added, “that would be the pleasure to end all pleasures.”
John George Haigh
John George Haigh (July 24, 1909 — August 10, 1949), nicknamed the Acid Bath Murderer and The Vampire of London was an English serial killer during the 1940s.
First arrested in England in 1949, Haigh confessed to the murder of nine people. He claimed he hit them over the head, opened an artery in their throats, and drank the blood to make him feel better.
He was convicted of the murders of six people, dissolving their bodies in sulphuric acid before forging papers in order to sell their possessions and collect substantial sums of money. He acted under the mistaken belief that police needed a body before they could bring a charge of murder. He was convicted through forensic evidence and executed.
Richard Chase
Richard Chase (May 23, 1950 – December 26, 1980) was an American serial killer who killed six people in California in one month. He was called the Vampire of Sacramento due to his drinking of his victims’ blood and his cannibalism. The product of a troubled household, Chase showed signs of psychological problems at an early age and, later, gained himself a reputation as an alcoholic and chronic drug user during his adolescence. He became obsessed with bodily fluids, once being hospitalized for blood poisoning due to injecting himself with rabbit’s blood.
He committed his first murder on December 29, 1977. He would prowl homes and enter if the door was unlocked, believing that a locked door was a sign that he was not wanted but an unlocked door was an invitation to enter.
On January 27, he committed his last murder, slaying 38-year-old Evelyn Miroth, her six-year-old son, Jason, and her 22-month-old nephew, David. He engaged in necrophilia and cannibalism with Evelyn’s corpse. He also drank her son’s blood and ate several of his internal organs, including his brain. On May 8, 1979, he was found guilty of six counts of murder in the first degree and was sentence to die in the gas chamber.
He was found dead in his prison cell on December 26, 1980, having committed suicide with doctor-prescribed anti-depressants that he had stored up over several weeks.
Wayne Boden
Wayne Clifford Boden (c. 1948 – March 27, 2006) was a Canadian serial killer and rapist active from 1968-1971. He earned the nickname the Vampire Rapist because he had the penchant of biting the breasts of his victims, a modus operandi that led to his conviction due to forensic odontological evidence, the first such conviction in North America. Essentially indulging himself in vampirism, Boden liked the taste of blood, especially when it came directly from the breast.
Boden was locked up in 1972 after four women in Montreal were found raped and strangled, all with bite marks on their breasts, between 1968 and 1970.
He was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Elizabeth Porteous, Shirley Audette, Marielle Archambault, and Jean Wray. After serving 25 years in prison, Wayne Boden died of skin cancer in 2006 at the age of 58.
Andrei Chikatilo
Also known as the Rostov Ripper and the Shelter Belt killer, Andrei Chikatilo claimed his first victim (a nine year old girl by the name of Lena Zakotnova) on December 22nd, 1978, and would go on to kill 52 more. He evaded capture for almost 15 years. Mutilation of the eyes and complete or partial removal of the sexual organs became two signatures of his grisly crimes.
He targeted adolescent boys and girls, often raping and cannibalizing them, as well as drinking their blood. Despite the ineptitude of local police, he was eventually captured and found guilty of 53 counts of murder.
During the trial, he behaved erratically, screaming obscenities and beating himself against the bars of the cage to which he had been confined for the duration of the proceedings. He stated “I am a mistake of nature, a mad beast.” He was executed in 1994.
James P. Riva
In April of 1980, when James P. Riva was 22 old, he shot his handicapped grandmother twice as she sat in her wheelchair. The gun was loaded with golden bullets. He drank the warm blood gushing from the wounds before trying to cover his tracks by burning her body and her home.
Jimmy Riva was a troubled youngster who developed a bloodlust in his kindergarden days. He became obsessed with the notion that his infirm grandmother was a vampire predator, who was robbing him of his blood as he slept. He believed that his only hope lay in shooting her with golden bullets. Not only did he shoot her, but he also stabbed her repeatedly because a “vampire told him that was what he had to do.” He thought that if he killed “everybody who was bad to him, he would come back as a handsome man and have a car and girls and his life would be fine.”
He was convicted of second degree murder, arson, assault and battery. He was sentenced to life in prison on the murder charge, and ten to twenty years for the arson charge.
Tsutomu Miyazaki
Known as The Little Girl Killer, The Otaku Killer and Dracula, this Japanese serial killer mutilated and murdered four little girls. His murders spanned 1988–1989 and took place in Tokyo’s Saitama Prefecture. His youngest victim was four years old, the oldest was seven. He molested their corpses and drank the blood of one victim, also eating her hands.
He terrorized the families of all four victims, sending them letters and postcards where he described his heinous crimes, and also may have called their houses.
Tsutomu never repented for his crimes, was sentenced to death on April 14, 1997, and executed on June 17, 2008. The very mention of his name still draws contempt and disgust from the Japanese public.
Marcelo de Andrade
Marcelo de Andrade was the son of poor, Northeastern migrants and grew up in Rio de Janeiro’s Rocinha Slum. As a child, he was the victim of physical and sexual abuse and lived without running water. In 1991, over a period of nine months Andrade brutally raped and strangled 14 boys aged 6 to 13. His victims of choice were poor street kids whom he attracted to deserted areas.
He practiced necrophilia, decapitated one of them, crushed the head of another one, and, in two occasions, drank their blood. He later confessed that he did it to “become as beautiful as them”. His mind unbalanced by the sermons of a priest from the “Universal Church of the Kingdom of God”, Andrade declared that children would automatically go to heaven if they died before they’re thirteen and that he had done them a favour by sending them to heaven. I.
He is now in a psychiatric asylum, having been recaptured after escaping, in 1997.
Nicolas Claux
Nicolas Claux (born March 22, 1972, in Cameroon) is a convicted French murderer and was a self-proclaimed cannibal and vampire. He is sometimes referred to as Nico Claux or even the Vampire of Paris. After serving seven years of his sentence, he was released from prison on March, 2002.
Described as a “nearly psychotic sadist” Nicola Claux was a mortician at the time of his arrest, in 1994. Upon interrogation, Nico confessed to murder and grave robbing. When his apartment was searched, police found unidentified skeletal remains and blood stolen from the local blood bank. A self-confessed cannibal, Claux would eat strips of flesh cut from corpses to which he had access as an assistant mortician.
Claux was found guilty of one count of murder and then condemned to 12 years in prison, despite debates over whether or not he was sane enough to be held accountable for his acts. After his release from prison, he has been painting portraits of serial killers and depictions of crime scenes and murder victims. On his website (dedicated to selling his murder-themed art) he stated:
“This website is my only official website… I have worked hard to improve myself through the development of artistic abilities. I cannot erase the past, but my goal is to channel the negativity that I have caused into pure creativity … I do not encourage other people into doing the things that I have done. The spiritual and social prices to pay are far too high.”
He is currently residing in Paris. In 2006, a company in the U.S. began marketing a 2007 calendar showcasing Claux’s paintings.
Rod Ferrell
Rodrick Justin Ferrell (born March 28, 1980) was the leader of a loose-knit gang of teenagers from Murray, Kentucky infamously known as the “Vampire Clan”. In 1998 Ferrell pled guilty to the double-slaying of a couple from Eustis, Florida, becoming the youngest person in the United States on Death Row. Ferrell told people that he was a 500-year-old vampire named “Vesago.”
The tendency of teenagers to be drawn to this group, and to the charismatic Rod Ferrell is thought to have been helped by the presence of a ruined structure nicknamed “Vampire Hotel” that sat in the hills of the Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area located in southwestern Kentucky and northwestern Tennessee.
On September 1999 the Florida Supreme Court reduced his sentence to life without parole. Ferrell is serving his sentence at the Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida as inmate DC# 124473.
Philip Onyancha
With a murder toll of at least 17 (possibly 19), 32 year old Philip Oyancha confessed to Kenyan police that he had murdered and drunk the blood of his victims, supposedly as part of a cult ritual. His victims were women and children, and he claims to have committed his crime under the influence of evil “spirits” that made him thirst for blood. He claimed the same spirits gave him special powers to subdue his victims.
He did admit that he only killed women, because they are more vulnerable, saying; “When the urge comes, they are the easiest victims.” According to his confession, he was initiated into a blood cult by a female teacher who initiated him into ritual murder. He has led police to the bodies of some of his victims, and claims to have been aiming to kill 100 people in total “My target was to kill 100 women. I managed 17 and there were 83 to go”.
In an emotionless explanation of why he claimed to senselessly take lives, Mr Onyacha said he felt a “powerful and unstoppable” urge to kill and derived pleasure and satisfaction from strangling his victims and drinking their blood. The urge became more and more powerful as time went on, he said.
Daniel and Manuela Ruda
In 2002 in Bochum, Germany, Manuela Ruda and her husband Daniel, a couple in their twenties, stabbed their friend Frank Haagen to death and drank his blood. Afterwards, they had sex in Manuela’s coffin. His decomposing body, a pentagram carved into the chest, was kept near the coffin where Manuela slept. They claim to have acted on the devil’s orders and said they chose their victim because he was “so funny and would be the perfect court jester for Satan”
Manuela claimed she got a taste for blood at vampire cult “bite parties” where willing donors volunteer to be bitten. She then became involved in Satanism, and believed a sacrifice was necessary.
During their trial, they acted completely without remorse, threatening witnesses and flashing satanic symbols. Daniel Ruda was committed for 15 years and his wife for 13. In passing the sentence, Judge Arnjo Kerstingtombroke commented that “This case was not about satanism but about a crime committed by two people with severe disorders. Nothing mystical or cult-like happened here; just simple, base murder.”
Anastasie Dieudonne
Anastasie Dieudonne, a coppery-haired, handsome mulatto woman, confessed in 2009 that she had for several months been draining the blood from her nine-year old niece.
The child, once healthy and robust, had begun to fade away. Neighbors and relatives thought she had some wasting disease. Physicians, including those of the American clinic at Trouin, could find nothing wrong with her. Then an old black native doctor was called into conference. “She is the victim,” he said, “of a vampire, or a loup garou.
The life-blood is being secretly sucked from her body. If the monster is not discovered, she will die.” “Bosh!” said many of the natives, who are not very superstitious in a modernized town like Aux Cayes. It looked like, bosh, indeed, when the old man carefully went over the girl’s entire body and found not even a pinch-prick. But he was not satisfied and made a second examination.
This time he discovered, a small, clean, unhealed incision hidden on the middle of her great toe. Anastasie Dieudonne subsequently confessed that she had been giving the girl a stupefying vegetable drug and then sucking her blood. She was, of course, an unbalanced creature, driven to this dreadful practice by an uncontrollable urge.
Mauricio Lopez
In 2010 Mauricio Lopez found out that his niece (Mariella Mendez) was having an affair with her sister’s husband, Macario Cruz. He stabbed Macario Cruz in his heart and liver in front of Mendez and her four children. He then proceeded to fill a plastic cup with Cruz’s blood and drank it before fleeing the scene.
Lopez remained free for three days until he tried to get a ride from a woman. The woman recognized him from wanted posters and he was quickly captured by police in Bartow, Florida.
Lopez told the cops that he drank the blood based on a ritual from Mexico. It was supposed to allow him to evade the police, but we’re guessing it doesn’t work very well, judging by the results.
