British Teen on Trial for 'Vampire Murder'
July 17, 2002 08:25 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - A British teenager described as being obsessed with vampires is accused of butchering a 90-year-old woman, cutting out her heart and drinking her blood, newspapers reported on Wednesday.
Prosecutors told a court in Mold, north Wales, the 17-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, stabbed Mabel Leyshon at her home before ripping out her heart and wrapping it in newspaper.
The teenager has denied the charges.
"This was a murder carried out to satisfy the defendant's own sadistic selfish ends," the Independent newspaper quoted prosecution lawyer Roger Thomas as saying.
"What may have started out as a bizarre interest became an obsession and led ultimately to murder," he said.
Mold Crown Court heard that the deaf pensioner was attacked as she sat watching television and ferociously stabbed 22 times.
Her dead body, found last November, was then perched on an armchair where the killer made deep gashes in her legs and drank her blood after draining it into a saucepan, prosecutors said.
Fire pokers were found at her feet in the shape of a cross.
Thomas told the court the accused was fascinated by vampires and devoted himself to studying books and magazines on how to become one.
In a separate case which attracted widespread attention in Britain, a German couple were sentenced to lengthy jail sentences in January after they killed a friend by stabbing him 66 times in a Satanic ritual.
One of the killers, 23-year-old Manula Ruda, said she had acquired a taste for vampirism during a visit to London, where she attended "bite parties" at which people voluntarily had blood sucked from their veins.
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