Throughout the ages, attacks on people have been attributed to supernatural creatures like werewolves and vampires, but in 1886, a German neurologist named Richard von Krafft-Ebing noted the compulsive and sexual presentation of the attacks. He wrote about them in Psychopathia Sexualis, and many of his 238 case histories concerned a violent eroticism triggered by blood.
What seems to inspire the psychopathic or psychotic mind is the aspect of dominance mixed with blood. Many sexually compulsive murderers have described their excitement over seeing a victim's blood.

One man described was a 24-year-old vine-dresser who murdered a 12-year-old girl, drank her blood, mutilated her genitals, and ate part of her heart. When caught, he confessed with indifference.

Another man would cut his arm for his wife to suck on because it aroused her so strongly.

"A great number of so-called lust murders," says Krafft-Ebing, "depend upon combined sexual hyperesthesia and parasthesia. As a result of this perverse coloring of the feelings, further acts of bestiality with the corpse may result." He also points out that it's generally accepted among experts on serial sex crimes that white males commit most of the truly perverse acts.

While there are several dozen so-called vampire killers, a brief list would include:

Martin Dumollard, who killed several girls in France in 1861 and drank their blood
Also in France, in 1897, Joseph Vacher drank blood from the necks of a dozen murder victims
Vincenzo Verzenia murdered two people in Italy to drink their blood
In 1878 in Milan, Eusebius Pieydagnelle killed six women when the smell of blood in a butcher's shop obsessed him. He became so excited by it that he'd go prowling for victims at night.
Fifteen women identified Argentinean Florencio Roque Fernandez as the man who broke into their bedrooms and drank their blood.
In Poland, Stanislav Modzieliewski was also identified by a woman he attacked, and he admitted that blood was delicious to him.
Also in Poland in 1982, Juan Koltrun was dubbed "the Podlaski Vampire" after killing two of his seven rape victims and drinking their blood.
In 1992 in Santa Cruz, California, Deborah Finch murdered Brandon McMichaels in what she called a suicide pact. She stabbed him 27 times and allegedly drank his blood.
Forty-year-old Rantao Antonio Cirillo of Milan attacked more than 40 women, one every two months over a seven year period from the late 1970's. He'd tie them up, rape them, and bite them on the neck.
In 1985, John Crutchley held a woman prisoner to take blood from her and drink it. After his arrest, it turned out that he'd been drinking blood from others for years.
Andrei Chikatilo, the "Forest Strip Vampire," called himself a "mistake of nature" and "a mad beast" after being arrested for the murders of over fifty people in the former Soviet Union from 1978 to 1990. He admitted to eating their body parts and drinking their blood.
Marcello de Andrade, 25, killed fourteen young boys in Rio de Janiero in 1991, sodomizing them and drinking their blood as a means of becoming as beautiful as they were. His youngest victim was six.
Magdalena Solis participated in a blood-drinking sex cult in Mexico. She helped to convince villagers in Yerba Buena that she was a goddess and orchestrated blood rituals that involved numerous murders. When the human sacrifices were discovered outside the village, police came in and rounded up the cult.