8 Real-Life Vampire Crimes

This Sunday, America’s war against vampire-kind will be reignited when the sixth season of True Blood premieres on HBO. While there’s no real evidence to prove the existence of vampires (unless you count that creepy photo of Nicolas Cage), murderers and other nefarious types have been blaming their evil deeds on bloodlust for more than 400 years. Here are eight examples.

1. COUNTESS ELIZABETH BÁTHORY

An early adopter of the vampire defense was Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a member of the Hungarian royal family whose cruelty toward her female servants was said to have included drenching them in water and leaving them to freeze to death outside in the winter. But it wasn’t until 1609, following the murder of a young noblewoman which Báthory staged to look like a suicide, that she was made accountable for her crimes.

While it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction in Báthory’s case, the legend surrounding her suggests that she killed more than 650 women and bathed in their blood (which she believed to have restorative powers). Báthory and four of her servants were eventually charged with 80 counts of murder, though the countess died while under house arrest before ever being brought to trial. In the book Dracula Was a Woman, historian Raymond T. McNally claims that Báthory was in part the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s famous bloodsucker.

2. FRITZ HAARMANN

Also known as “The Vampire of Hanover,” Fritz Haarmann was one of the world’s first serial killers. And one of its most prolific. Between 1918 and 1924, he murdered at least two dozen people, many of whom he killed by biting through their necks. On December 19, 1924, Haarmann was sentenced to death by guillotine for his crimes; he was beheaded on April 15, 1925. So that scientists could study Haarmann’s brain, his head was preserved in a jar. It is kept at a medical school in Göttingen, Germany.

3. RICHARD CHASE

A lifelong fascination with blood led to a horrific, month-long murder spree that turned Richard Chase into “The Vampire of Sacramento.” Between 1977 and 1978, Chase murdered, disemboweled, and drank the blood of six people, ranging in age from 22 months to 36 years. Chase chose his victims at random, but only entered those homes where the door was open. “If the door was locked that meant you weren't welcome,” he stated in court. Chase was sentenced to death after being found guilty on all six counts of first-degree murder, but took his own life with an overdose of stockpiled antidepressants in December of 1979.

4. JAMES P. RIVA

James P. Riva was just 23 years old when he killed his wheelchair-bound grandmother in Marshfield, Massachusetts in 1980, stabbing her repeatedly and shooting her four times through the heart with bullets he had painted gold. In order to cover up the crime, he then burned down her house. When questioned, Riva claimed that he was a 700-year-old vampire who killed his grandmother in order to drink her blood. He later changed his story, saying that he had acted in self-defense; Riva believed that his grandmother was the vampire and that she was using an ice pick to drain his blood at night. In 1981, Riva was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder and arson.

5. RODERICK FERRELL

Role-playing crossed into real life for “Vampire Killer” Roderick Ferrell in 1996, when the teenaged leader of a Vampire Clan brought a few of his followers from Murray, Kentucky to Eustis, Florida to murder the parents of his girlfriend, Heather, so that she could be initiated into his coven. After beating Heather’s father with a crowbar, Ferrell and a friend used cigarettes to burn a “V” into his chest. Upon his arrest, Ferrell told police that they would never be able to contain him because he was an all-powerful, 500-year-old vampire named Vesago. He wasn’t. Ferrell became the country’s youngest prisoner on death row in 1998, though his sentence has since been commuted to life without parole.

6. CAIUS DOMITIUS VEIOVIS

If you’re wondering what “real-life” vampires think of Twilight, Caius Domitius Veiovis has a very firm opinion. “Pop culture inspires me to vomit hot blood,” Veiovis wrote in a letter to Massachusetts’ Berkshire Eagle newspaper in 2011. Veiovis—who is set to stand trial in early 2014 for the abduction and murder of three men in Massachusetts and was convicted of aggravated assault charges in Maine over the ritualistic drinking of a teenage girl’s blood years before—has a forked tongue, sharpened teeth, implanted horns and the numbers “666” tattooed across his forehead. “I have never seen this silly movie,” he continued, “nor have I read the books, nor would I ever—even now—waste my time with such useless drivel.” Point taken.

7. ALLAN MENZIES

Allan Menzies was obsessed with the 2002 vampire film Queen of the Damned, which he had borrowed from his best friend, Thomas McKendrick. Watching it up to three times each day, Menzies began to believe that the main character, Akasha, was real and wanted him to kill someone so that he, too, could become a vampire. “I knew I had to murder somebody,” Menzies said at his trial. He decided on McKendrick after his friend insulted Akasha, prompting Menzies to stab him 42 times, hit him with a hammer, drink his blood and consume part of his brain. Menzies died in prison of an apparent suicide just over a year after being sentenced to life.

8. JOSEPHINE SMITH

A shuttered Hooters restaurant may not be the first place you’d think of as a vampire lair, but it’s where 22-year-old Josephine Smith attacked a 69-year-old homeless man in 2011 as he slept in St. Petersburg, Florida. Smith allegedly told the man that “I am a vampire, I am going to eat you,” before she bit off pieces of his face, lips, and arm. The victim managed to escape and call police, who found Smith covered in blood at the crime scene with no recollection of the incident.