Men Of Flesh And Blood (2 page)

However, clothing and
personal items known to be possessions of several missing youths
were also found in his home. Under interrogation, Haarmann quickly
confessed to raping, killing, and butchering young men since 1918.
When asked how many he had killed, Haarmann claimed "somewhere
between 50 and 70". The police, however, could only connect
Haarmann with the disappearance of 27 youths, and therefore he was
charged with 27 murders.

Fritz Haarmann's trial
began on December 4, 1924 and it was spectacular, it was one of the
first major media events in Germany. The term "serial killer" had
not yet been coined, and the public and press were at a loss for
words to describe the case. Haarmann was concurrently referred to
as the "werewolf", a "vampire", and "The Wolf Man". Apart from the
cruelty of what Haarmann had admittedly done, even more scandalous
was the involvement of the police in the case. Haarmann was a
police informant who frequently gave up other criminals to
investigators, until he was arrested it had never occurred to
police that the serial killer they were looking for was well known
to them and right under their nose, even though some of the victims
were last seen in his company.

The trial lasted barely two
weeks. On December 19, 1924, Haarmann was found guilty of 24 of the
27 murders and sentenced to death. He was acquitted of three
murders, which he denied, even though the personal possessions of
the boys were in his either possession or acquaintances of his at
the time of his arrest. Haarmann made no appeal against the
verdict. Haarmann was beheaded by guillotine on April 15, 1925. His
last words before he was beheaded were, "
I
repent, but I do not fear death
."

CHAPTER 2:
T
SUTOMU MIYAZAKI

The Japanese Vampire
Serial Killer

(August 21, 1962 – June 17,
2008)

Tsutomu Miyazaki, also
known as The Otaku Murderer, The Little Girl Murderer, and Dracula,
was a Japanese vampire serial killer.

Miyazaki’s premature birth
left him with deformed hands, which were permanently bent and fused
directly to the wrists, necessitating him to move his entire
forearm in order to rotate the hand. Due to his deformity, he was
not accepted when he attended Itsukaichi Elementary School, and
consequently kept to himself. Although he was originally a star
student, his grades at Meidai Nakano High School dropped
dramatically, he had a class rank of 40 out of 56 and did not
receive the customary admission to Meiji University. Instead of
studying English and becoming a teacher as he originally intended,
he attended a local junior college, studying to become a photo
technician.

Between 1988 and 1989,
Miyazaki mutilated and killed four girls, aged between four and
seven, and sexually molested their corpses. He drank the blood of
one victim and ate a part of her hand. These crimes, which, prior
to Miyazaki's apprehension and trial were named "The Little Girl
Murders", and later known as the Tokyo/Saitama Serial Kidnapping
Murders of Little Girls shocked Saitama Prefecture, which had few
crimes against children. During the day, Miyazaki was a
mild-mannered employee. Outside of work, he randomly selected
children to kill. He terrorized the families of his victims,
sending them letters recalling in graphic detail what he had done
to their children. To the family of victim Erika Nanba, Miyazaki
sent a morbid postcard assembled using words cut out of
magazines:
"Erika. Cold. Cough. Throat.
Rest. Death."

He allowed the corpse of
his first victim, Mari Konno, to decompose in the hills near his
home, than chopped off the hands and feet, which he kept in his
closet. They were recovered upon his arrest. He burnt her remaining
bones in his furnace, ground them into powder, and sent them to her
family in a box, along with several of her teeth, photos of her
clothes, and a postcard reading:
"Mari.
Cremated. Bones. Investigate. Prove."

Police found that the
families of the victims had something else in common; all were
bothered by silent annoying phone calls. If they did not pick up
the phone, it would sometimes ring for 20 minutes.

On July 23, 1989, Miyazaki
attempted to insert a zoom lens into the vagina of a young girl.
This was in a park near her home and he was attacked by the girl's
grandfather. After fleeing naked on foot, Miyazaki eventually
returned to the park to retrieve his Toyota car, at which point he
was promptly arrested by police who had responded to a call by the
grandfather. A search of Miyazaki's two-room bungalow turned up a
collection of 5,763 videotapes, some containing Slasher films,
later used as reasoning for his crimes.

Among them was video
footage and pictures of his victims. He was also reported to be a
fan of horror films and had an extensive collection, including the
fourth film of the Guinea Pig film series (Mermaid in a Manhole).
Miyazaki, who retained a perpetually calm and collected demeanor
during his trial, appeared indifferent to his capture.

Miyazaki's father refused
to pay for his son's legal defense. The trial began on March 30,
1990. Often talking nonsense, he blamed his violence on "Rat Man,"
an alter ego whom Miyazaki claimed forced him to kill; he spent a
great deal of the trial drawing "Rat Man" in cartoon form. Believed
to be insane, Miyazaki remained incarcerated throughout the 1990s
while Saitama Prefecture put him through a battery of psychiatric
evaluations. Teams of psychiatrists from Tokyo University diagnosed
him as suffering from dissociative identity disorder (multiple
personalities) or extreme schizophrenia. However, the Tokyo
District Court judged him still aware of the gravity and
consequences of his crimes and therefore accountable. He was
sentenced to death on April 14, 1997. His death sentence was upheld
by both the Tokyo High Court, on June 28, 2001, and the Supreme
Court of Justice on January 17, 2006.

He described his serial
murders as an "
act of
benevolence
" and never apologized. Child
killer Kaoru Kobayashi described himself as "the next Tsutomu
Miyazaki or Mamoru Takuma." However, Miyazaki claimed that "I won't
allow him to call himself 'the second Tsutomu Miyazaki' when he
hasn't even undergone a psychiatric examination."

Kunio Hatoyama signed his
death warrant and Miyazaki was hanged on June 17, 2008.

CHAPTER 3: NICO
CLAUX

March 22, 1972 -
Present

Nicolas Claux, also known
as “The Vampire of Paris”, was born on March 22, 1972 in the
African nation of Cameroon. His father was a French banker. He
moved back to Paris when he was 16. While Nico was too young to
remember his early years in Cameroon, he does recall the family
moving to London around the age of five, and then off to the
southern most part of Paris when he was seven, where they remained
until he was 12.

He started robbing graves
in Paris when he was only 17, stole bones, and mutilated mummified
remains. He moved on to eating human remains when he worked as a
morgue attendant and stretcher-bearer at Saint Joseph Hospital,
which is also in Paris. Nico says human flesh tastes like
horsemeat.

On Nov. 15, 1994, officers
of the Parisian "Brigade Criminelle" arrested 22-year-old Nicolas
Claux outside the world famous cabaret Moulin Rouge on suspicion of
the killing of Thierry Bissonnier, 34. Bissonnier's murder was one
of a string of homosexual murders, seven of which occurred in
October alone. The murder squad's preliminary investigator, Gilbert
Thiel, believed that a single killer was responsible and was eager
to get Claux back to headquarters for questioning. Claux says that
Thiel, veteran of several high-profile cases, was not prepared for
the web of murder, cannibalism, and sadistic acts that he had woven
in his short lifetime.

The following account
includes several narrations by Mr. Claux to provide a better window
on a killer's life and crimes. Some of Claux's commentaries, while
delivered in writing, have been edited, and arranged for more
narrative reading:

Claux: "Following my
arrest I was taken back to the Parisian Crime Department for
questioning. Unbeknownst to me, crime scene investigators were
already in the process of exercising a search warrant on my
apartment at 9 Rue Cousteau. Inside they found a .22-caliber
handgun under my bed, which they immediately sent off for
ballistics tests. While they were probably not surprised to have
found the pistol, they were almost certainly not prepared for the
grisly scene that welcomed them.

"Throughout my apartment,
bone fragments and human teeth were scattered about like loose
change, vertebras and leg bones hung from the ceiling like morbid
mobiles, and hundreds of videocassettes, mostly Slasher and
hardcore S&M flicks, filled my shelves. One can only imagine
what went through the minds of the investigators as they looked
around my living quarters. On one wall hung a bullet-riddled
target, while across the room sat a TV set with jars of human ashes
resting on top of it. Several bondage magazines were piled in a far
corner, and nearby my backpack were found, which contained
handcuffs, surgical instruments, and duct tape. In addition to my
tastes and choice of décor, investigators also discovered several
stolen blood bags inside of my refrigerator."

It did not take long for
the ballistic test results to come back, and when confronted with
the evidence that the tests were positive, Nico confessed to
Bissonnier's murder. Claux claimed that while investigators were
happy to have solved a brutal crime, they were justifiably
concerned with all of the human bones scattered throughout his
apartment, and the blood bags, which filled his
refrigerator.

Claux: "With little
hesitation on my part, I informed them that I had been robbing the
graves of several Parisian gothic graveyards and mutilating the
mummified remains. When asked the reason why I was storing stolen
blood bags inside my refrigerator, I simply answered that I drank
the blood on a regular basis. Working as a mortuary assistant for
10 months, I had been using my position as a means to fulfill a
lifelong fantasy of mine revolving around cannibalism. When left
alone to stitch the bodies after the autopsies, I would cut strips
of meat from the ribs and eat them. On some occasions, I
would bring pieces of flesh back to my place,
where I would cook and eat those pieces as well."

Upon hearing his
confessions, Claux claimed investigators asked,
"WHY? Why did you kill? Why did you eat flesh and drink
blood? And why did you dig up corpses?"
As
simple as those questions may seem, the answers were not readily
found. Perhaps some clues exist in Nico's past.

Claux: "My childhood was
basically normal, except that I was very withdrawn and only had a
few friends. I was a lonely child, lacking brothers and sisters to
play with, so I spent most of my time alone in my room. While my
parents were very kind and gave me everything that I needed, I
never really felt a strong bond between us. They never hugged me or
kissed me, they just let me be on my own most of the time.
Eventually I grew emotionally cold. I had difficulties feeling
empathy for other people, just indifference most of the
time.