R
Ripp3r
Internet Warrior
A.K.A.: "The Kansas City Vampire"
Classification: Spree killer
Characteristics: History of schizophrenia and daily use of the hallucinogenic drug PCP. He gained notoriety for eating part of the leg of one of his victims
Number of victims: 4
Date of murders: March-April 2001
Date of arrest: April 12, 2001
Date of birth: February 9, 1978
Victims profile: David Mashak / Terry T. Green, 25 / Michael Weaver Jr., 22 / Alton "Fred" Brown Jr., 16
Method of murder: Shooting - Stabbing with knife
Location: Kansas City, Wyandotte County, Kansas, USA
He grew up on the north side of Kansas City, a world punctuated by church bells and police sirens. It’s a place where Sunday morning preachers paint vivid word pictures of Hell, and congregants don’t have to look very far to find it. Abject poverty is as common as welfare. The African-American infants there – like their counterparts in the rest of the country – have a mortality rate twice that of white babies. While politicians thump their chests about declining crime rates, somehow the crime reductions never seem to happen in places like Kansas City’s north side. But it’s also a neighbourhood where thousands of decent people try to scrape by, a place where single mothers do what they can to keep their kids from falling into the traps of crime and violence. Sappington’s mother was one of them. A hard-working single mother who relied on her religion for solace, she had struggled to raise her son, Marc, alone. The boy’s father vanished before Marc was born. In fact, Marc never even met the man. That meant that his mother had to be particularly strong, and one of the ways she tried to instill a set of values in her son was to drag him to church every Sunday.
No one paid much attention to Marc Sappington in March 2001 as he ambled along the side streets of Kansas City, Kansas. As he walked, Sappington weighed his options. Was it going to be a man? woman? child? him? her? The questions were part of an attempt to quell the voices Sappington was hearing in his head. These voices – auditory hallucinations – were commanding him to harvest human blood and flesh. And what if he didn’t comply? The voices had an answer. They would kill the 21-year-old churchgoer.
What truly shocks about Sappington is not the savagery of his crimes. It is his very ordinariness. Cops who have spoken to him say he is bright and articulate, even funny. Yet, the pathology is never too far away. In one interview with a Kansas City homicide detective, Sappington asked facetiously if he could chomp on the cop’s leg. But Sappington remains somewhat of a mystery to veteran investigators, defying almost every known profile of a serial killer or a cannibal. Serial killers tend to be older, usually in their thirties; it takes them a while to build up a pattern. Sappington is young and so were his victims. Moreover, his alleged serial spree was unusually sudden. Serial killers also tend to sexualize their crimes and never more so than when cannibalism is involved, law enforcement experts say. Jeffrey Dahmer is a case in point. He described his cannibalism as the ultimate act of sexual control. But Sappington, the cops say, showed no sign of sexual deviance. Of course, serial killers - with the noted exception of the Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams a generation ago - are almost always white. Sappington is African-American, as were all of his alleged victims. So how did this charming young man, with a quick smile and a quicker wit, become a conniving cannibal?
Sappington searched for three weeks before finding his first victim. Despite Sappington’s perambulations in search of a stranger, the person he alighted upon was a neighbourhood friend. Terry T. Green, 25, was a longtime friend of Sappington’s. They would often spend time at each other’s homes. So there was nothing atypical when Green showed up unannounced at Sappington’s door on April 7, 2001. It was, Davenport later said, just an extreme case of “being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Soon, according to Sappington, the voices took over. They told him to lure Green to the basement of his mother’s home. They also told Sappington to attack Green with a hunting knife that he had hidden in one of the basement’s corners. The killing happened with such fury and ferocity that the walls of the basement were splattered with blood, crime scene investigators noted. With Green lifeless on the floor, the voices allegedly told Sappington that they had one more command for him. Obeying the voices, Sappington later said, he knelt down over the body of his friend, and began to lap up his blood. But Sappington left the task unfinished. He heard a noise and the voices told Sappington to dispose of the body immediately. Sappington could not have picked a more obvious place to dump Green’s remains. Using his mother’s car, Sappington crossed the river and entered Kansas City, Missouri. Sappington then drove to the edge of a parking lot at a nightclub he and Green frequented. He dumped the covered body into a car’s backseat. Of course it did not take long for the Missouri police to find the body. The Missouri police saw the homicide as a Missouri crime. Although Kansas City, Kansas, authorities heard about the discovery, they were simply relieved that they did not have another murder on their hands. “We heard about it,” said Gorman, the Kansas prosecutor. “But we figured it was their murder and we have enough murders of our own.” It took police three days to link Sappington to Green’s murder. For now that his killing spree was finally underway, Sappington managed to kill two more people before his capture.
Twenty-two year-old Michael Weaver -- another friend of Sappington’s -- was next.
It was April 10, just three days after Green’s death. The voices told Sappington to go hunting again, and despite the arduous selection process he used for the second time, Sappington wound up with a victim much like Green. Sappington spotted Weaver sitting on the steps of his house. The pair struck up a conversation with Sappington suggesting they go for a drive in Weaver’s car. In a shadowy alley only three blocks from Sappington’s home, he fatally stabbed Weaver. Then Sappington went through the Terry Green routine. The voices told him to drink Weaver’s blood, but he soon abandoned the task out of fear of discovery. Sappington fled, leaving the body behind. Sappington had killed three people -- Marshak, Green and Weaver. With a trio of homicides behind him, Sappington was officially now a serial killer. That murder tally did not last long, however. On his way home from the Weaver murder, Sappington spotted “Freddie,” the teenager who adored Sappington. The voices liked the new target, and Sappington invited Freddie back to his house. This time Sappington used a shotgun to kill. Finally, Sappington was free of distractions and could quaff blood. But there was one more ingredient. Sappington crudely butchered Freddie’s body, and then proceeded to feast upon raw flesh. His repast complete, he stuffed what was left of Freddie into a trash bag, leaving his leftovers on the basement floor. Then Sappington left the house to go on a stroll. Sappington’s mother discovered the crimson-drenched scene a few hours later. Although she rarely ventured down to the basement – which was considered her son’s territory – she could hardly ignore a trail of blood drops near and along the cellar stairs. After she had a panoramic view, Sappington’s mom called police. It didn’t take long for the cops to find Sappington on the street. But Sappington decided to flee, commandeering a passing car. He forced the female driver into the passenger seat and led police on a brief chase. Back at the youth detention center, Armando Gaitan, the co-conspirator in the robbery that led to Sappington’s first murder, was still refusing to name his accomplice. Based on a sketchy description from a witness to the hold-up, police began to suspect that Sappington was the killer. So Gaitan’s interrogators deployed perhaps the most effective tool in police work: the truth. They told Gaitan about Sappington’s other horrific murders. Realizing that he was no longer protecting another neighborhood street thug, but rather, a homicidal psychopath, Gaitan named Sappington.
On April 14, 2001 Marc V. Sappington, 21, was charged with killing three men since April 7. He was being held on $2 million bond.
Finally on Sappington, 25, was convicted of murdering three aquantinces on June 23, 2004. Lawyers for Sappington blamed the four-day killing spree in April of 2001 on a history of schizophrenia and use of the hallucinogenic drug PCP. Sappington himself, claims that he was instructed to kill by voices in his head which instructed him to eat flesh and blood or die. His victims included Terry Green, 25, Michael Weaver Jr., 22, and Alton "Fred" Brown Jr., 16.In an April 2001 videotape, Sappington had confessed to stabbing Weaver to death, leaving Green's body in a car, and shooting Brown, before dismembering his body and eating a small piece of his leg.
Sappington is currently serving four consecutive life sentences.
Classification: Spree killer
Characteristics: History of schizophrenia and daily use of the hallucinogenic drug PCP. He gained notoriety for eating part of the leg of one of his victims
Number of victims: 4
Date of murders: March-April 2001
Date of arrest: April 12, 2001
Date of birth: February 9, 1978
Victims profile: David Mashak / Terry T. Green, 25 / Michael Weaver Jr., 22 / Alton "Fred" Brown Jr., 16
Method of murder: Shooting - Stabbing with knife
Location: Kansas City, Wyandotte County, Kansas, USA
He grew up on the north side of Kansas City, a world punctuated by church bells and police sirens. It’s a place where Sunday morning preachers paint vivid word pictures of Hell, and congregants don’t have to look very far to find it. Abject poverty is as common as welfare. The African-American infants there – like their counterparts in the rest of the country – have a mortality rate twice that of white babies. While politicians thump their chests about declining crime rates, somehow the crime reductions never seem to happen in places like Kansas City’s north side. But it’s also a neighbourhood where thousands of decent people try to scrape by, a place where single mothers do what they can to keep their kids from falling into the traps of crime and violence. Sappington’s mother was one of them. A hard-working single mother who relied on her religion for solace, she had struggled to raise her son, Marc, alone. The boy’s father vanished before Marc was born. In fact, Marc never even met the man. That meant that his mother had to be particularly strong, and one of the ways she tried to instill a set of values in her son was to drag him to church every Sunday.
No one paid much attention to Marc Sappington in March 2001 as he ambled along the side streets of Kansas City, Kansas. As he walked, Sappington weighed his options. Was it going to be a man? woman? child? him? her? The questions were part of an attempt to quell the voices Sappington was hearing in his head. These voices – auditory hallucinations – were commanding him to harvest human blood and flesh. And what if he didn’t comply? The voices had an answer. They would kill the 21-year-old churchgoer.
What truly shocks about Sappington is not the savagery of his crimes. It is his very ordinariness. Cops who have spoken to him say he is bright and articulate, even funny. Yet, the pathology is never too far away. In one interview with a Kansas City homicide detective, Sappington asked facetiously if he could chomp on the cop’s leg. But Sappington remains somewhat of a mystery to veteran investigators, defying almost every known profile of a serial killer or a cannibal. Serial killers tend to be older, usually in their thirties; it takes them a while to build up a pattern. Sappington is young and so were his victims. Moreover, his alleged serial spree was unusually sudden. Serial killers also tend to sexualize their crimes and never more so than when cannibalism is involved, law enforcement experts say. Jeffrey Dahmer is a case in point. He described his cannibalism as the ultimate act of sexual control. But Sappington, the cops say, showed no sign of sexual deviance. Of course, serial killers - with the noted exception of the Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams a generation ago - are almost always white. Sappington is African-American, as were all of his alleged victims. So how did this charming young man, with a quick smile and a quicker wit, become a conniving cannibal?
Sappington searched for three weeks before finding his first victim. Despite Sappington’s perambulations in search of a stranger, the person he alighted upon was a neighbourhood friend. Terry T. Green, 25, was a longtime friend of Sappington’s. They would often spend time at each other’s homes. So there was nothing atypical when Green showed up unannounced at Sappington’s door on April 7, 2001. It was, Davenport later said, just an extreme case of “being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Soon, according to Sappington, the voices took over. They told him to lure Green to the basement of his mother’s home. They also told Sappington to attack Green with a hunting knife that he had hidden in one of the basement’s corners. The killing happened with such fury and ferocity that the walls of the basement were splattered with blood, crime scene investigators noted. With Green lifeless on the floor, the voices allegedly told Sappington that they had one more command for him. Obeying the voices, Sappington later said, he knelt down over the body of his friend, and began to lap up his blood. But Sappington left the task unfinished. He heard a noise and the voices told Sappington to dispose of the body immediately. Sappington could not have picked a more obvious place to dump Green’s remains. Using his mother’s car, Sappington crossed the river and entered Kansas City, Missouri. Sappington then drove to the edge of a parking lot at a nightclub he and Green frequented. He dumped the covered body into a car’s backseat. Of course it did not take long for the Missouri police to find the body. The Missouri police saw the homicide as a Missouri crime. Although Kansas City, Kansas, authorities heard about the discovery, they were simply relieved that they did not have another murder on their hands. “We heard about it,” said Gorman, the Kansas prosecutor. “But we figured it was their murder and we have enough murders of our own.” It took police three days to link Sappington to Green’s murder. For now that his killing spree was finally underway, Sappington managed to kill two more people before his capture.
Twenty-two year-old Michael Weaver -- another friend of Sappington’s -- was next.
It was April 10, just three days after Green’s death. The voices told Sappington to go hunting again, and despite the arduous selection process he used for the second time, Sappington wound up with a victim much like Green. Sappington spotted Weaver sitting on the steps of his house. The pair struck up a conversation with Sappington suggesting they go for a drive in Weaver’s car. In a shadowy alley only three blocks from Sappington’s home, he fatally stabbed Weaver. Then Sappington went through the Terry Green routine. The voices told him to drink Weaver’s blood, but he soon abandoned the task out of fear of discovery. Sappington fled, leaving the body behind. Sappington had killed three people -- Marshak, Green and Weaver. With a trio of homicides behind him, Sappington was officially now a serial killer. That murder tally did not last long, however. On his way home from the Weaver murder, Sappington spotted “Freddie,” the teenager who adored Sappington. The voices liked the new target, and Sappington invited Freddie back to his house. This time Sappington used a shotgun to kill. Finally, Sappington was free of distractions and could quaff blood. But there was one more ingredient. Sappington crudely butchered Freddie’s body, and then proceeded to feast upon raw flesh. His repast complete, he stuffed what was left of Freddie into a trash bag, leaving his leftovers on the basement floor. Then Sappington left the house to go on a stroll. Sappington’s mother discovered the crimson-drenched scene a few hours later. Although she rarely ventured down to the basement – which was considered her son’s territory – she could hardly ignore a trail of blood drops near and along the cellar stairs. After she had a panoramic view, Sappington’s mom called police. It didn’t take long for the cops to find Sappington on the street. But Sappington decided to flee, commandeering a passing car. He forced the female driver into the passenger seat and led police on a brief chase. Back at the youth detention center, Armando Gaitan, the co-conspirator in the robbery that led to Sappington’s first murder, was still refusing to name his accomplice. Based on a sketchy description from a witness to the hold-up, police began to suspect that Sappington was the killer. So Gaitan’s interrogators deployed perhaps the most effective tool in police work: the truth. They told Gaitan about Sappington’s other horrific murders. Realizing that he was no longer protecting another neighborhood street thug, but rather, a homicidal psychopath, Gaitan named Sappington.
On April 14, 2001 Marc V. Sappington, 21, was charged with killing three men since April 7. He was being held on $2 million bond.
Finally on Sappington, 25, was convicted of murdering three aquantinces on June 23, 2004. Lawyers for Sappington blamed the four-day killing spree in April of 2001 on a history of schizophrenia and use of the hallucinogenic drug PCP. Sappington himself, claims that he was instructed to kill by voices in his head which instructed him to eat flesh and blood or die. His victims included Terry Green, 25, Michael Weaver Jr., 22, and Alton "Fred" Brown Jr., 16.In an April 2001 videotape, Sappington had confessed to stabbing Weaver to death, leaving Green's body in a car, and shooting Brown, before dismembering his body and eating a small piece of his leg.
Sappington is currently serving four consecutive life sentences.
