The Vampire Next Door: The True Story of the Vampire Rapist.

• Author: Ward, Joseph
• Position: Book review

The Vampire Next Door: The True Story of the Vampire Rapist

By J.T. Hunter

"The hunger was eternal, and once again, the hunger had returned." So begins J.T. Hunter's debut true crime novel, which recounts the fascinating, but frightening, story of John Brennan Crutchley, the vampire rapist. During the 1970s and first half of the 1980s, Crutchley preyed on anywhere from 12 to three dozen women, ruthlessly raping and killing them, often after draining and drinking their blood. He was finally caught in 1985 while living in the small town of Malabar, near Melbourne, after his latest victim managed to escape from confinement and flag down a passing motorist as she hobbled along the road, handcuffed, shackled, and naked, except for a small towel draped loosely around her.

As J.T. Hunter chillingly conveys in this book, what made Crutchley so dangerous was his seemingly normal, mild-mannered appearance. He presented himself as a hard-working family man with a white collar job. With a genius-level I.Q., he worked as a computer engineer for a high-tech civil defense contractor based in Palm Bay. He held top-secret security clearance at the Pentagon and handled projects for NASA and the U.S. Navy. Yet, he had a dark side, hidden in plain sight, a side that craved blood and death; a side that made...