Crawling from the cobwebbed crypts of fiction, each and every one of these real-life killers claimed they were vampires. Were they legit bloodsuckers, or just plain bonkers? Decide for yourself when you meet the literally blood-thirstiest killers ever to bare their fangs!
Peter Kurten, a.k.a. “The Vampire of Dusseldorf”
Kurten’s reign of terror began in 1913 with the heinous murder of a nine-year old girl… which went unnoticed by police until he later confessed. This crazed serial killer committed 9 murders, in which he slit open the victims’ throats and drank their blood. He also slew swans and supped on their blood as well. From February to November 1929, he centered his crimes in the German city of Dusseldorf. Using a variety of methods — bludgeoning, stabbings and strangulations — he confounded police who thought there may have been multiple maniacs on the loose.
Upon capture, he told a psychiatrist that he would become sexually aroused by drinking the blood of his helpless victims. Kurten claimed to have ingested so much blood after one murder that he became physically ill.
His bloodlust was unabated… even by death: executed by guillotine in 1931 in Cologne, Kurten’s last words were “Tell me… after my head is 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? That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures.”
Not creepy enough for you yet? Suspecting an abnormality in his brain, scientists dissected and mummified his head. For years, Kurten’s desiccated noggin was displayed at Ripley’s Believe It or NotMuseum in Wisconsin.
Joshua Rudiger, a.k.a. “The Vampire Slasher”
Once attempting suicide by samurai sword, Rudiger had a long history of mental illness. Claiming to be a 2,000-year-old vampire, he went on a slaying spree in San Francisco in 1998. Roaming the hills of San Francisco, Rudiger slashed the throats of homeless victims, injuring three and killing a woman who slept in a Mission District doorway.
At his trial, attempting to cop an insanity plea, Rudiger told jurors “Prey is prey.” He also admitted to vampirism in a police videotape, which was presented as evidence of his alleged two-millennial blood lust. One victim said he lost consciousness when he was assaulted; he awoke to find his throat slit with the accused kneeling over him, slurping blood as one might from a water fountain.
Rudiger’s lawyer told jurors he drank blood for much-needed “vitality.” The self-proclaimed vampire was found guilty and sentenced to 23 years behind bars.
Sean Richard Sellers, a.k.a. “The Teenage Vampire”
Voted “Most likely to become a vampire” by his high school class, Sellers tired his darndest to prove them right. He carried Anton La Vey’s Satanic Bible, supped blood during lunch and wrote notes to his pen pal Satan using his own blood. He and his blood “addicted” pals were said to have willingly drunk from one another’s veins.
Claiming possession by the demon “Ezurate,” Sellers shot and killed a clerk at a Circle K convenience store for refusing to sell him beer. Days before his 17th birthday, in 1986, he murdered his mother and stepfather as they slept in the bedroom of their Oklahoma City home. He attempted to cover up the murder by making it appear as if an intruder had done the deed.
During his bombshell trial, Sellers pulled the old “Satan made me do it!” defense, claiming possession by demons. After converting to Christianity and making the talk show rounds with the likes of Oprah and Geraldo, he was put to death in 1999 by lethal injection.
Richard Trenton Chase, “The Vampire of Sacramento”
Within the span of one month in 1977, Chase killed six people, drank their blood, fed on their flesh and also engaged in necrophilia. He killed two women, one of whom was pregnant. He raped both corpses, removed multiple organs and downed their blood. In and out of mental institutions since childhood, Chase often killed small animals, and after gutting them, swilled the heady mix in a Coke. Chase was a firm believer in vampire lore: he saw an unlocked door as an open invitation… for murder.
Police caught up with the door-to-door maniac after he carelessly left a bloody handprint at a crime scene, where he had callously killed and eaten three victims. Purportedly sane enough to stand trial, Chase was convicted on six counts of first degree murder and sentenced to death. Prescribed meds by prison docs, he stockpiled them, committing suicide.
Wayne Clifford Boden, a.k.a. “The Vampire Rapist”
This toothy terror didn’t hail from Transylvania but Canada. During a two-year spree, he killed four women following what his defense attorney described as “rough sex.” He was dubbed The Vampire Rapist after leaving several tell-tale bite wounds on his victims’ breasts as he feasted on flesh and blood.
Described as a “flashy dresser,” Boden, a former fashion model, plied his murderous trade from Calgary to Montreal during 1969 and 1971. His unfortunate predilection toward vampirism proved to be his undoing. Thanks to an orthodontist, police were able to link forensic evidence. Using a plaster cast of Boden’s bicuspids, prosecutors demonstrated no less than 29 points of similarities between bite marks entered as evidence and the crazed killer’s chompers.
After an escape attempt — thanks to American Express laxly issuing a credit card to the killer, who made good use of it — Boden was recaptured, dying in prison in 2006.
Categorised in: Serial Killers, vampires
This post was written by LaraCuschieri