Fetish or Frenzy

More from the News Block

SAN FRANCISCO, California: A man who allegedly slashed the throats of at least four homeless people, killing one, has told police he is a 2,000-year-old vampire who thrives on drinking blood. Joshua Rudiger, 21, was in custody Wednesday on charges of slashing the throat of a homeless man in San Francisco's Chinatown. The victim, who survived the attack, pointed Rudiger out to police, who arrested him and found a bloody knife stuck in his belt. Police sources told reporters that Rudiger claimed to be a vampire and in at least three cases had apparently used his victims' blood to scrawl the Chinese character for "death" on the pavement near the scenes of the attacks.

"He talked for a long time and said a lot of weird things," one police source told the San Francisco Examiner, noting that none of the slashing victims had reported that their attacker attempted to drink their blood. "We'll never know if he really drank the victims' blood, but we're sure he's the guy who slashed their throats." Prosecutors have charged Rudiger with one murder -- that of 48-year-old Shirley Dillahunty, who was found with her throat slit on Oct. 29. More charges of attempted murder are expected to be lodged later in the week, and Rudiger is scheduled to undergo a full psychiatric evaluation.
San Francisco Police Chief Fred Lau said the case, which had sent shivers through the city's large homeless population, could grow stranger as police continue their investigation. "It's unique," Lau said. "I'm sure as we gather more facts we'll probably come up with a lot of information that is probably going to reveal a lot of things about the suspect."[Reuters].

MILAN, Italy: Known as "Dracula, in the double-breasted suit," a natty ice-cream salesman was accused of raping and biting the necks of more than forty women over a period of seven years when he made a court appearance in Milan in January of 1984.

Victims described how Renato Antonio Cirillo, 40, struck every two months, threatening his victim with a knife, tying her up, raping her, and finally biting her on the neck "vampire-style."
He was eventually brought to justice because several of the ice-cream Dracula's victim's identified Cirillo as having a tatoo in a foreign language on his chest! [Monaco]

WARSAW, Poland: A blood-drinking sex killer, Julian Koltun, 31, a railway laborer dubbed the "Podlaski Vampire," was sentanced to death in August, 1982, after being convicted of killing two women and attempting to murder five others. [Monaco]

SANTA CRUZ, California: A twenty-year-old woman killed a young neighbor and drank his blood as part of a bizarre vampire fantasy, a court here was told.

Deborah Joan Finch, a former amusement park rollercoaster operator, was accused in June, 1992, of the first-degree murder of Brandon McMichaels, 22, stabbing him twenty-seven times in the neck and chest.
In a taped interview with detectives, Finch originally said the killing was the result of a suicide pact after a day of drunken revelry. But Assistant District Attourney George Kovacevich claims the killing was more sinister... "the climax of Finch's two-year obsession with vampires." [Monaco] (Because we always go for the simplest explainations - not to mention the local is a bit noteworthy. Trivia buffs will note that Santa Cruz, CA was the setting for the classic 80s vampire movie, "The Lost Boys" starring Kiefer Sutherland, Coreys Haim and Feldman, Jami Gertz, and heartthrob Jason Patrick. And I guess that means I'm overdue, as I've been pretty obsessed for much longer than two years, pshaw. ~Marrah)

MIAMI, Florida: Police launched a full scale manhunt in 1990 before they finally arrested Miami's "Biting Bandit," Bobby Lester, who chomped his way through more than a dozen robbery victims before he was caught. As he mugged them, he bit chunks out of them. [Monaco]

POUGHKEEPSIE, New York: Sweet Mary Lensfield made her living translating children's books in the 1930s. But her life-style belied her strange secret - she had an uncontrollable urge to drink blood, a habit picked up while a student at Vassar. [Monaco]

JUNIN, Peru: In 1990, in the backwoods town of Junin, would-be vampire, Octavio Flores, 21, was too scared of AIDS to stalk victims - so he frequently slashed his wrists and drank his OWN blood. Over a period of months he nearly drank himself dry and ended up hospitalized for acute anemia. [Monaco]

FRANCE: Ten years before Jack the Ripper became a household name, a young man named Eusebius Pieydagnelle became so obsessed with the smell of blood in teh butcher's shop where he worked, that he went prowling at night, slaughtering six women. He admitted that the sight and smell of fresh human blood brought him to orgasm. [Monaco]

VALLAM, Tamil Nadu: An alleged double murderer has been nicknamed India's Dracula for drinking the blood of his victims. Police say Arulraj Subbiah killed one man, then celebrated with a cocktail of blood and alcohol. He has reportedly said the smell of human blood gives him pleasure, and the taste energises his body. He is facing two murder charges. Locals in his home town of Vallam, Tamil Nadu, have nicknamed the 24-year-old Dracula. Subbiah is currently in prison awaiting trial on charges of double murder. Police have lodged an appeal with the court to have him examined by a psychiatrist. When he was arrested for stabbing his brother-in-law, police say he admitted licking the blood-stained knife. He is also accused of killing a man with a boulder and then mixing his blood with alcohol, and knifing a witness to death before drinking his blood. His mother says he has a "vengeful attitude and uncontrollable temper", The Week newspaper reports. She says he doesn't drink blood and only confessed to doing so under duress. [Ananova]

CALIFORNIA: In 1979, Karen Greenlee was to deliver the body of a 33-year-old man to a cemetery for a funeral, but instead she drove off in the hearse, abducting the corpse to keep for herself.  She was found and charged with stealing a hearse and interfering with a funeral, and apparently it wasn't the first time she'd felt such a sexual attraction to the dead.  Into this casket she had put a long letter that detailed her erotic episodes with what she estimated had been over 20 male corpses.  Calling herself a "morgue rat," she didn't understand why she felt so compelled to touch dead bodies, but it was an addiction she couldn't seem to break.  

Because the letter was found, Greenlee was kicked out of the profession.  In an interview later with Jim Morton, she told him that the erotic moment involved the entire atmosphere: the aura of death, the smell, the funeral home, the mourning, and all the trappings.  It wasn't just about sexual stimulation, it was about a complete mindset.  She enjoyed the odor of the freshly embalmed corpse of a male in his twenties, and even the blood that might come out of his mouth as she got on top of him.  She admitted having broken into some mortuaries and tombs in order to pursue her habit, and once she was nearly caught with the goods. Ashamed at first, she'd later accepted her desires. "That's my nature," she said, "and I might as well enjoy it." [The Crime Library] Interview w/ Greenlee

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