John Brennan Crutchley
I wonder if this case might be related to the disappearance of Tammy Lynn Leppert?
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Detectives hope to link skull to "vampire rapist"
Written by:
Christopher Collette
8 October 2010
Malabar, Florida -- A reconstruction of a skull found in Malabar, enhanced by a forensic artist who added a face to it, has yet to yield the results cold case homicide agents hoped for.
Agents with the Brevard County Sheriff's Office think the reconstructed skull will not only lead to the dead woman's identity but also tie John B. Crutchley, the "Vampire Rapist" to a string of murders that occurred locally in the mid-1980s.
In May, agents released photographs of the enhanced skull but still have no leads.
"We normally get two or three calls on something like this," Homicide Agent Sgt. Carlos Reyes said. "On this one, we did not."
Reyes said he received a call from another police agency on Florida's west coast investigating a disappearance, but it was determined quickly that it was not a match.
Crutchley kidnapped and raped a young hitchhiker in 1985. Then, while she was tied up, he inserted a hypodermic needle into her arm and attached it to a hose leading to his mouth. On several occasions, while she was bound and gagged in his Malabar home, Crutchley drank her blood. He even poured some into a large glass and gulped it all down. The girl managed to escape, and Crutchley pleaded guilty to rape.
That's when he became known as the "Vampire Rapist."
Crutchley, who died in prison in 2002 while practicing autoerotic asphyxiation -- suffocating himself during sexual arousal -- was a suspect in several states in more than 30 homicides or missing women cases.
Even though six driver's licenses belonging to dead women were found in his desk at Harris Corp. where he worked, no murders could ever be linked to Crutchley.
Melbourne attorney Joe Mitchell, who represented Crutchley, said earlier this year that it was thought Crutchley drank his victim's blood until they died. He would then dismember the bodies and scatter the parts all over.
That would explain why investigators found partial skeletal remains of a half-dozen women in the wooded area of Malabar, where this skull was found in 1985.
DNA and other information was sent to a nationwide program at the University of North Texas, Reyes said, which eventually will become a massive database aimed at identifying remains. The Center for Human Identification works to generate anthropological and DNA profiles then searches all FBI DNA profiles to see whether there is a match.
Reyes said that process could take some time before yielding a result but still hopes he can help bring closure to the dead woman's family.
"Sometimes we win these things," he said. "Sometimes we don't."
John A. Torres, Florida Today
See photos at link below.
LINK:
http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/crime/story.aspx?storyid=149917
