Kansas City Vampire Term Papers

The Kansas City Vampire

Amy Carney

Johnson & Wales University

Have you ever wondered, what drives a person to kill innocent people? Every Criminologist asks themselves the same question, along with people who are either related to victims of serial killings, or simply hear about them on the news. I think it is safe to say that the people who might ask that question the most are parents of serial killers, who had never expected their own children to carry out such violent and inhumane acts. In 2001, Marc Vincent Sappington officially became labeled as a serial killer at the age of twenty-one years old. The main reason for his spontaneous killings was not due to his upbringing like most serial killers, but instead was caused by his involvement with drugs. Now known as the “Kansas City Vampire”, Marc Sappington was born on February 9, 1978 in Wyandotte County, Kansas. He is an only child, and was raised solely by his mother after his father left before he was even born. He grew up in a poor neighborhood, where poverty and crime slowly took over. For these

It did not take long for police to connect all four of the crimes together based on witnesses descriptions. The “Kansas City Vampire” confessed and was arrested and convicted in 2004 of killing four people. In one interview with the homicide detective, Sappington asked more than once if he could, “chomp on the cop’s leg” (McGraw, 2001, p. 3). The detectives and investigators believed that he was a strange case due to how young he was, with no history of sociopathic behavior. Usually serial killers sexualize their victims, but in this case the crimes were not motivated by sex. Also, detectives thought it was a strange case because serial killers are usually white men, and in this case Sappington is black. They also noted that it is uncommon for cannibalism to even be