Читать книгу Real Hauntings 5-Book Bundle - Mark Leslie - Страница 32

He didn’t look like a vampire. Wayne Clifford Boden was a charming twenty-three-year-old Montrealer with a boyish look and winning smile when he went on a killing spree beginning in the late 1960s. It ended with five young women raped, murdered, and bitten. That’s right, Boden, also known as the Vampire Rapist, had the bizarre modus operandi of biting his victims on their breasts, leaving behind dental evidence which eventually led to his arrest and conviction.

You might be tempted to dismiss Boden as a pop-culture fanatic, spurred on by the trend toward vampires on TV and the silver screen, and convinced by some inner madness to allow his bloody impulses free in real life. Remember, however, this was decades ago, long before Twilight, or The Vampire Diaries, or Interview with the Vampire. So, what was it that pushed Boden to not only murder, but deliver the dark kiss? Could it be that he was in fact a real-life vampire?

There is some debate as to which victim was Boden’s first. In The Serial Killer Files, Harold Schechter asserts that schoolteacher Norma Vaillancourt was the first to go, in July 1968. The twenty-one-year-old was raped and strangled to death in her apartment, with bite marks covering her breasts. The police found no sign of a struggle, either on the deceased’s body or in the apartment, implying that Vaillancourt had let her killer in. Oddly, the dead girl was found with a smile on her face.

Next to go, nearly a year later, was Shirley Audette, whose body was dumped behind an apartment complex downtown. Though she had been raped, strangled, and bitten on the breasts — exactly like Norma Vaillancourt — her body was fully clothed when found and there were no signs of a struggle.

In November of 1969, it happened again. Marielle Archambault, a young employee at a downtown jewellery shop, was found by her employer after she didn’t show up for work. She was in her apartment, dead, raped, and bitten. This time, however, it seemed some kind of struggle had occurred, as the apartment was a mess and Archambault’s clothes were ripped. Though such a fight might make one think Archambault had been attacked by a stranger, Schechter claims the police were led to believe otherwise when they found a crumpled photo of a good-looking young man at the scene. Archambault’s co-workers identified the man as Bill, a guy they’d seen the dead girl chatting with that very day.

Jean Way was almost saved. Her boyfriend came to pick her up for a date on the day she died. When she didn’t answer the door he left and returned an hour later, by which time the poor girl was dead. It’s believed Boden was in the apartment with Way when the boyfriend first came by and, alarmed by his knock on the door, fled the scene. This would explain the fact that Way’s body was left naked and her breasts were unmolested, unlike the other victims. She had been raped and strangled, though. Boden left before he could finish the job. One thing to note about Jean Way is that skin was found under her fingernails. She might not have won, but she fought back.

Perhaps intuiting that he wasn’t going to get away with it much longer in Montreal, Boden trekked across the country to Calgary to carry out his final murder on May 18, 1971. Elizabeth Porteous, a thirty-three-year-old teacher, met her end like the rest. One final clue was left behind: A cufflink hidden underneath her body. Schechter reports that Porteous’s friends knew she was dating a man named Bill, and that he drove a blue Mercedes. It was this car, in the end, that led to Boden’s apprehension, when the police spotted it near Porteous’s apartment and nabbed the killer as he was walking toward it the very next day.

Boden, now in police custody, didn’t confess right away. He admitted to going by the name Bill and taking Porteous on a date on the night of her murder, but insisted she had been perfectly fine when he’d left her. Yes, the cufflink was his, but he was no killer. But as he resembled the man in the photo found in Archambault’s apartment, the police held him anyway on suspicion of murder.

It was the bite marks that did him in. At his trial for the murder of Elizabeth Porteous, a local orthodontist was able to prove through bite mark evidence that the marks on Porteous’s body could not have been made by anyone but Boden. Boden’s conviction was the first in North America to be made by forensic odontological evidence, the same method that would eventually take down Ted Bundy.

For Porteous’s murder, Boden was sentenced to life in prison.

Boden eventually confessed to the Montreal murders, as well, save that of Vaillancourt, which he claimed to know nothing about, though hers was the death that started it all. For the rapes and killings of Audette, Archambault, and Way, Boden was given an additional three life sentences.

No explanation was ever given by Wayne Boden as to why he bit his victim’s breasts, nor did he ever claim to be a vampire — an interesting defence and one that would surely have turned his court case into a circus — but one cannot deny that he did seem to have some of the characteristics commonly attributed to them. Aren’t vampires known to be young, good-looking, and able to use their charms to get the girl into their arms before baring their fangs? It would explain how he managed to get into his victim’s apartments — a vampire can’t force his way in. He has to be invited.

Wild imagining aside, Boden, who died in prison in 2006, was an evil man, a serial killer with a strange quirk, and a murderer who eventually got what he deserved.