| Vampyres continued |
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| Vlad Tepes (right) also known as Vlad the Impaler who ruled over Walachia, now part of modern Romania as Vlad V in the 15th century. He signed his letters Vlad Dracula, which can be translated roughly as 'son of the dragon, or devil'. His father had been called "Dracul" because he used a dragon on his shield in battle. Vlad Tepes' cruelties shocked even his own contemporaries, used to a fairly brutal level of warfare and punishment. He was known to drink the blood of his freshly slain enemies in the belief that it would make him a even stronger opponent, and impale his enemies on large wooden stakes driven into the ground. The enemy would be impaled through the rectum, whereas the body's own weight would increase, therefore, the stake would slowly be driven further into the body causing a very slow and agonizing death. His ingenuity in devising prolonged and agonizing deaths for those he considered his opponents/enemies was remarkable. He was a military genius, however, and his stand against the Islamic Turks convinced his own people that he was a hero in spite of all. |
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| (Above and above right - newspaper clipping) John George Haigh the successful English confidence man who claimed he had murdered nine people mainly to drink their blood, but whose bank account grew in size after each killing. He disposed of the dead bodies in enormous water barrels filled with sulfuric acid. Although he pleaded insanity as his defense, he was convicted and hung in 1949. Case Study - Kuno Hofmann In 1972, Kuno Hofmann was a deaf mute German labourer, a cripple who had spent nine years in mental institutions (he escaped 12 times). According to the public prosecutors, he was perfectly sane and fully accountable for his actions. But his actions were extraordinary by any normal standards. The police have records of at least 35 occasions between 1971 and 1972 when Hofmann forced entry into graveyards and mortuaries near his home in Nurenberg. He made copies of the keys to the local cemetary where he stole among the tombstones, heading unerringly for the fresh graves. He chose his victims from death notices in the newspapers, and methodically made his way to a new corpse, stabbing into it with razor blades or a knife. Sometimes, he cut the head off, sometimes he drank the blood. From his prison cell, Hofmann explained matter of factly, that he did it to make himself "good looking and strong". In May 1972, Hofmann decided on a new approach. He found two young lovers in a car, shot them dead, and drank the blood from their wounds. It made him happy, he told police, adding that the young and pretty girl had been much better than the women in the graveyards. Case Study - Countess Bathory The beautiful Countess Elisabeth Bathory of Transylvania holds a prominent position. In her blood spattered castle torture chamber, the Countess often in ecstatic transports of sexual pleasure, delighted in the slow torture and murder of 650 girls. She delighted in sinking her teeth into their bodies and drinking their blood in the desperate effort to retain her youthful beauty. Her women accomplices scoured the countryside to find young virgins for her pleasure. It was the careless dumping of four bodies - drained of blood - outside the castle that led the terrified local people to denounce the terrible Countess to the King. She was truly extraordinary. Her immense cruelty seemed to be a separate part of her life. While her letters express conventional religious sentiments, she apparently never applied any sense of right or wrong to her blood rituals. In 1611, the accomplices were brought to trial, found guilty, and cruelly executed. The Countess herself, protected by powerful relatives, was not tried. She was imprisoned in a small room whose windows and doors were walled up. There, after three years of icy blackness, the Vampire Lady died. |
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