Now let's turn our attention to a few more-recent vampires. There is a great deal of evidence available to support the factual nature of the actions of these mortal blood drinkers, due to the efficiency of the legal system in effect during the cases. When the vampires were "hunted", no evidence or testimony was hidden. The vampire hunters in the following cases used notebooks in addition to badges, handcuffs, and guns.
We can assume that the law enforcement agents who hunted the following vampires knew they were after mortals, so the abundance of information just mentioned should not seem out of the ordinary. However, as you read the cases, try to imagine what the investigators would have done if they had reason to believe that the vampires they were hunting were not human. Would cases of immortal blood drinkers receive the same publicity as the following ones, or would they be kept secret?
Fritz Haarman
Born in Germany in 1879, Fritz Haarman was another military man turned vampire. He was the sixth child in an impoverished family, and openly showed his hatred for his father from a young age. Haarman was a disturbed child, and his condition worsened as he approached his teen years. At the age of seventeen, he was arrested for child molesting and was put in a mental institution. He escaped soon after and made his way back home, where he became engaged to a young lady who became pregnanet with his child. When the baby was stillborn, Haarman called off the wedding plans and left to join the army.
For someone as disturbed as Haarman, it is surprising that he did well in the military. He probably would have remained in the army were it not for medical problems. Haarman was diagnosed as having newrasthenia and was discharged in 1903. Desperate, Haarman changed his lifestyle to the complte opposite of what it was in the military. He went from his brief period of following orders and being disciplined, to break laws and being a criminal. Hewas caught and arrested often for mior offenses, and spent a good portion of the next decade in prison.
Sometime around 1917 or 1918, Haarman met a male prostitute named Hans Grans, who would abecome his partner in some sadistic and vampiric crimes. Haarman and Grans would bring young men to their home and feed them a filling dinner, with plenty of alcohol to wash it down. Then, when a victim became tired from all the food and alcohol, Haarman would seize and bite into his neck, sucking on his blood until the helpless victim died.
It is estimated that Haarman vampirized some fifty young men, although he was only acused of killing twnety-seven. What did he and Grans do with all of those bodies? The answer to that is pretty gruesome--they chopped the bodies into steaks and sold them on the streets as beef. That "underground" meat market went on from 1918 to 1924.
Of course, the complete codies of the victims could not be turned into sellable meats. Grans an dHaarman dumped the bones and organs into a canal. That would eventually become their undoing; bones and skulss and floated to the surface in 1924. The police were already suspicious of Haarman because of his history, and went to question him about the cases ofmissing men from the area during the past six years.
They found more than enough evidence to connect Haarman to the victims--their clothes were still in his house. Haarman eventually confessed to the crimes and became known as the "Vampire of Hanover". He was sentenced to death, and at his own request, was decapitated in a public execution in December of 1924. Hans Grans would go on to serve only twelve years in jail.
The evidence in the case of Franz Haarman is complete enought to show us that he was truly a disturbed individual. What is not known is whether he was imitating fictional vampires when he attacked his victims in the manner described, or whether he was simply acting ons ome monstrous instinct.
Now let's move on to another early twentieth-century vampire who has achieved notoriety for his gristly actions.
