John Brennan Crutchley

John Brennan Crutchley
Crutchley‘s c. 1998 mugshot.
Born	(1946-10-01)October 1, 1946 Clarksburg, West Virginia, U.S.
Died	March 30, 2002(2002-03-30) (aged 55) Bowling Green, Florida, U.S.
Other names	The Vampire Rapist
Occupation	System engineer
Criminal status	Deceased
Conviction(s)	Kidnapping, Sexual battery
Criminal penalty	Life sentence
Details
Victims	2–30+
Span of crimes	January 28, 1978 – November 22, 1985 (Confirmed)

John Brennan Crutchley (October 1, 1946 – March 30, 2002) was an American convicted kidnapper and rapist. A possible serial killer, he was suspected of murdering up to thirty women. He was called the Vampire Rapist because he drained the blood of his one confirmed victim almost to the point of death while he repeatedly raped her.

Early life and career

Crutchley was born the youngest of three children into an affluent family in

Crutchley's first marriage showed strains by the time he graduated from college, and it had all but ended by the time he moved to Kokomo, Indiana, to work at Delco Electronics. Crutchley had previously worked at General Motors' Central Foundry Division in Defiance, Ohio, where he was responsible for the installation of a new plant security system. He applied for a transfer to Delco Electronics in Kokomo, where the systems were designed and built, and worked there for several years as an electrical systems engineer.^[4][5]

Crutchley's departure from Kokomo came after an investigation was made by plant security into missing materials. He later moved to

On the evening of November 22, 1985, in Malabar, Florida, a nude teenaged girl later identified as 19-year-old Laura Murphy, handcuffed at both feet and ankles, was found crawling along the side of the road. She had been passed by several trucks before a motorist stopped to help her. She begged the motorist 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.^[6]

The hospital determined that the victim was missing between 40 and 45 percent of her blood and had ligature marks on her neck. She had been hitchhiking the day before on November 21 and she claimed that Crutchley had picked her up and was willing to take her to where she needed to go, which was the nearby city of Melbourne, Florida, but said he had to stop off at home first to pick up the notebook he claimed he needed for work. Once in his driveway, Crutchley invited her in but she refused, at which time he tied a ligature around the teenager's neck, choked her into unconsciousness, and dragged her into his house. Then, he removed all of the young woman's clothing and strapped her to the counter in his kitchen. Murphy awoke to find that she was tied to the kitchen countertop, arms and legs immobilized. A video camera had been set up, along with lights, presumably so that he could watch the footage later to relive the attack. Crutchley then raped her and inserted needles into her arm and wrist and carefully extracted blood and began to drink it, telling her that he was a vampire. Afterward, he handcuffed her and put her in the bathtub, returning later for another round of sexual assault and blood extraction.

The following morning, after a third round, Crutchley handcuffed Murphy 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 Crutchley had left the house that she was able to push out of the bathroom window and crawl to the road. A

A search warrant was served for Crutchley, whose wife and child were away for the Thanksgiving holiday visiting relatives in Maryland. 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 later search did not turn up these credit cards, nor a collection of women's necklaces and multiple locks of hair concealed in a closet which had been noted, but not confiscated, by the police during the first search.^[6]

During the second search in relation to the Malabar case, police discovered a stack of seventy-two index cards on which Crutchley had recorded the names of multiple women and some men along with their described sexual performances. When contacted, some of the partners indicated that he had crossed the line from "kinky" consensual acts into sexual assaults involving restraint. Crutchley's 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, calling it "a gentle rape, devoid of any overt brutality."^[6] When authorities searched Crutchley's office, they found a number of sexually explicit photographs of an unidentified woman tied up and gagged, with Crutchley choking the woman with his hands. They also found homemade sex tapes of Crutchley and his wife, and dozens of photographs of women in public places.

In June 1986, Crutchley pleaded guilty on kidnapping and rape charges in exchange for prosecutors dropping the "

• Since Crutchley's second family lived in
  Lyon sisters who disappeared while visiting a shopping center in Wheaton, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., on March 25, 1975.^[8]
  In September 2017, an individual pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder for the abduction and killing of the two sisters and received two 48-year sentences. Beatty's murder remains unsolved.
• On January 28, 1978, Deborah Rita “Dee” Fitzjohn, a 25-year-old secretary from Fairfax, Virginia, disappeared. Crutchley was placed under close scrutiny because he was Fitzjohn's boyfriend and she was last seen alive at the trailer park where he lived at Waple's Mobile Home Estates. As a result, he was questioned several times for his possible involvement in her disappearance. Crutchley claimed that Deborah had visited him the night before she vanished, but he fell asleep in front of the television. He said that she had left when he awoke. Fitzjohn's skeletal remains were found by a hunter in October the following year. When Crutchley was arrested in November 1985, investigators said they found the business card of the chief investigator in the Fitzjohn case among Crutchley's possessions.^[9]
• 29-year-old Patti Lou Volansky was last seen by her roommate between 4:30 and 5:30 p.m. on March 15, 1985, when Volansky decided to hitchhike, and left their Mims, Florida residence on foot. She has not been seen since. Crutchley is considered a suspect in Volansky's case. At his workplace, Volansky's photo ID card was discovered, and he acknowledged that he had picked her up hitchhiking about six months before his arrest in November 1985.^[10] Crutchley claimed that he ordered Volansky out of his car after she started making "obnoxious" demands. The following day, he found her identification on the seat of his vehicle and took them to his office. Her body has not been found.
• In addition to Volansky, the identification cards of five other women were found by police in Crutchley's work desk. One of them belonged to Nancy Kay Brown, a 25-year-old native of
  Merritt Island in 1984.^[12]
• Twenty-three bone fragments, believed to be the partial remains of two women, were found in dense brush south of
  Grant, Florida on November 26, 1985. She was last seen hitchhiking outside the Colonial Motel where she resided in Melbourne, Florida. Her death was ruled a homicide. Identification belonging to both Walker and Desantis were found in Crutchley's possession.^{[citation needed}
  ]
• In 1995, Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents began investigating Crutchley, who had access to the
  Norfolk Naval Air Station during the time two women were murdered at the base.^[14] Pamela Anne Kimbrue, a 23-year-old Navy messenger, disappeared from the base on March 25, 1982. Later, at the end of a seaplane ramp, her body was discovered floating in her submerged vehicle. Her assailant attempted to choke her while tying her arms behind her with clothesline. Carol Ann Molnar, a 21-year-old Navy clerk, disappeared on February 6, 1983. Three months later, at the Norfolk base, her decomposing body was discovered partially buried beneath rocks of a sea wall. She had been choked to death. Following their investigation, a man was sentenced in 1997 to two life terms in prison for the slaying of Kimbrue.^[15]
  Molnar's murder has not been solved.
• In 2010, the
  Brevard County Sheriff's Office released an image of a skull reconstruction based on the remains of an unidentified woman known only as the Brevard County Doe.^[16] Teen hunters found the decedent's remains in a densely wooded area off of Hollywood Boulevard in West Melbourne, Florida, on December 15, 1985, not far from Crutchley's home.^[17] The victim was one of four unidentified women whose bodies were discovered in the south Brevard area in 1985.^{[citation needed}
  ]

Writing about the case in 1992, Ressler predicted that Crutchley's "25 to life" sentence would result in release as soon as 1998.[6] In fact, Crutchley was released two years earlier than that. After serving eleven years of his sentence, Crutchley was released on August 8, 1996, from Union Correctional Institution in Rainford for good behavior. Officials in Bridgeport, West Virginia, where his mother lived, did not want him, nor did authorities in Malabar and Melbourne. Therefore, Crutchley was transferred to the Orlando Probation and Restitution Center, a halfway house where he would undergo counseling and pay restitution even while serving his fifty years of parole.^{[citation needed]}

Less than a day later, Crutchley was arrested for violating his parole after testing positive for

On October 30, 2010, the cable channel Investigation Discovery broadcast a twenty-minute summary of the Brevard County incident which led to Crutchley's incarceration. This episode of American Occult includes interviews with "vampirism sociologist" Katherine Ramsland, as well as Brevard County investigators. This episode also included archival video footage of Crutchley, including his declaration that the attribution of vampirism is pointless, declaring that "it's all about the label of the 'big V', the 'big V' is empty, that's not me".

Ramsland noted of Crutchley that there was nothing about him which would send danger signals to potential victims, indeed, she states that there was "nothing about him that would indicate he was anything but an engineer".^[20]

References