Читать книгу Real Vampires, Night Stalkers and Creatures from the Darkside - Brad Steiger - Страница 20

Vincent Verzini’s crimes in Italy were committed between 1867 and 1871. The sexual nature of the 22-year-old vampire’s acts is unmistakable. It is reported that he achieved orgasm by grasping his female victim by the throat and tearing her flesh with his teeth. He then proceeded to suck the blood through the wound.

One day pretty Maria Previtali, a 19-year-old cousin of Verzini, went out into the fields to work. Suddenly she became aware of footsteps other than her own. Frightened, she looked over her shoulder. Vincent was following.

Fingers like bands of steel closed around her throat. She started to faint, and the hasty vampire relaxed his grip on her throat.

Maria’s footsteps picked up speed as she fought back waves of fear and panic. She thought of 14-year-old Johanna Motta, who had been viciously murdered the preceding December as she traveled on foot to a nearby village.

She remembered how she had lain awake that night, too frightened to sleep, and listened to Papa as he told her mother of the incident. “Si, Mama,” he had said, his voice filled with emotion, “her throat was black and blue, and her mouth was full of dirt. All of her clothes were ripped off and her thighs were bloody with teeth marks. Her belly was cut wide open, and her insides were pulled out. And the parts that make her a woman had been torn out.” With such a memory to goad her, Maria shuddered and began to run.

Maria recalled Mrs. Frigeni, who had gone out to work in the fields one morning, and by nightfall, had still not returned. When her husband had gone out to look for her, he found her naked and mutilated body. She had been strangled with a leather thong and flesh had been torn from her abdomen.

Maria was almost breathless now. She could run no more. Her footsteps faltered, and two powerful hands grabbed her. She felt herself thrown to the ground. Fingers like bands of steel closed around her throat. She started to faint, and the hasty vampire relaxed his grip on her throat. Drawing in her breath, the courageous girl brought up her knee and kicked her insane cousin in the stomach. Maria’s blow had temporarily drained the vampire of his blood lust. He muttered obscenities, then walked off across the field.

Maria ran home, told her horrified mother of the attack by her cousin, and she was taken at once to the village prefect. Verzini was immediately arrested, and after being questioned at length, made a full and detailed confession. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Verzini’s vampirism was the expression of deep derangement and sexual perversion. In Verzini’s own words:

I had an unspeakable delight in strangling women, experiencing during the act erections and real sexual pleasure. The feeling of pleasure while strangling them was much greater than that which I experienced while masturbating.

I took great delight in drinking Motta’s blood. It also gave me great pleasure to pull the hairpins out of the hair of my victims.

It never occurred to me to touch or to look at the genitals….It satisfied me to seize the women by the neck and suck their blood.