John Brennan Crutchley - The "Vampire Rapist"

The "Vampire Rapist"

According to FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler, Crutchley fit the profile of a serial killer, even though he was convicted of only a single non-fatal kidnapping and sexual assault.

In late November 1985, in Malabar, Brevard County, Florida, a nude teenaged woman, handcuffed at both feet and ankles, was found crawling along the side of the road. She had been passed by several trucks before someone stopped to help her. She begged the driver to not take her back "to that house,"; when he asked where, she told him to remember a certain house. He noted the location, took her home, and called for police and an ambulance.

The hospital determined she was missing between 40 and 45 percent of her blood and had ligature marks on her neck. She'd been hitchhiking the day before and the man who gave her a ride was willing to take her where she needed to go, but said he had to stop off at home first. He invited her in, and she refused, and he got into the back seat of the car and choked her unconscious.

The hitchhiker awoke to find that she was tied to a kitchen countertop, arms and legs immobilized. A video camera had been set up, along with lights. The man raped her and videotaped the action. Then he inserted needles into her arm and wrist and carefully extracted blood and began to drink it, telling her that he was a vampire. After that, he handcuffed her and put her in the bathtub, returning later for another round of sexual assault and blood extraction. The next morning, after a third round, the man handcuffed the hitchhiker and left her in the bathroom, saying that he would be back later for further assaults, and that if she tried to escape in the interim, his brother would come and kill her. It was after the attacker had left the house that she was able to push out of the bathroom window and crawl to the road. Had she not escaped then, doctors believed, she might well have died from a further round of blood extraction.

A search warrant was served for John Brennan Crutchley, whose wife and child were away for the Thanksgiving holiday. The videotape in the camera was partially erased, which according to the victim would otherwise have contained footage of her rape and the extraction of her blood. Crutchley was arrested during the search, which took place at 2:30 a.m. Photographs of the house taken at the time of this first search showed, among other things, a stack of credit cards several inches thick. A second, later, search did not turn up these credit cards, nor a collection of women's necklaces concealed in a closet which had been noted, but not confiscated, by the police during the first search.

After being contacted by local authorities for his input, Ressler was convinced that Crutchley had almost certainly killed before, identified him as a "serial killer of the organized type." Ressler instigated a second search, which was of much wider scope and detail than the first. Ressler noted that there had been four female bodies found in Brevard County in the previous year, and that unexplained bodies had been found and missing women reported in Pennsylvania while he lived there. No evidence was found to link these deaths to Crutchley, however.

In addition to suspecting Crutchley of murders in Florida and Pennsylvania, Ressler also suspected Crutchley for murder in the 1977 disappearance of Debbora Fitzjohn, the secretary whom he met in Fairfax, Virginia. She had been in his mobile home, and police identified Crutchley as the last person to see her alive.

What was found during the second search in the Brevard County teen case included a stack of 72 3x5 cards on which Crutchley had recorded women's names and described their sexual performances. When contacted, some of the partners indicated that Crutchley had crossed the line from "kinky" consensual acts into sexual assaults involving restraint. His wife had apparently cooperated in similar acts, and spoke to the press about him. Among other remarks, she commented on his attack on the handcuffed teen — which took place while she was away with their own daughter for Thanksgiving — calling it "a gentle rape, devoid of any overt brutality."

In June 1986, Crutchley pleaded guilty on kidnapping and rape charges in exchange for prosecutors dropping the "grievous bodily harm" charge for extracting the victim's blood and for drug possession. During the sentencing phase, the blood issue came up nonetheless, and Crutchley claimed to have been introduced to blood drinking by a nurse in roughly 1970, as part of a sexual ritual. He said it should not be considered in his sentencing, because in this case, he had not drunk the blood; he claimed that it had coagulated before he could drink it, "and he couldn't get it down." His wife did not take the stand, but told reporters that her husband wasn't guilty, but was just "a kinky sort of guy."

Based on testimony from Ressler at the sentencing hearing, the judge chose to exceed state guidelines and sentenced Crutchley to 25 years to life in prison with 50 years of subsequent parole.