‘Vampire Rapist’ Release Worries Officials

Prison officials are scrambling to find a home for the “Vampire Rapist,” who served 10 years behind bars for raping a hitchhiker and drinking her blood.

John Crutchley will be free to leave prison Thursday, but no one wants him. West Virginia, where his mother lives, has told Florida to keep him away. In Melbourne, where he was convicted, a Christian mission has offered to house him and help him find a job, but city officials are against it.

“I can’t be convinced that he’s not going to do it again,” Melbourne Police Chef Keith Chandler said.

Furthermore, he said, given the community’s lingering hostility toward Crutchley, “I’m not sure we can guarantee his safety if he comes here.”

Crutchley, 49, was an engineer at Harris Corp. in Melbourne when he was charged with kidnapping and raping a 19-year-old California woman he picked up hitchhiking in 1985.

She said he subdued her, then drained and drank nearly half her blood using surgical equipment over an 18-hour period. She escaped through a bathroom window when he left her alone for a short time in his home.

Crutchley pleaded guilty to sexual assault and was sentenced to 25 years in prison followed by 50 years probation. But under prison rules then in effect, he received enough time off automatically and for good behavior that his sentence was cut to little more than 10 years.

“Legally we can’t hold him past Thursday,” said Debbie Buchanan, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections. “We certainly can’t let him out the front door and not know where he’s going.”

The lawyer who represented him at trial, Joe Mitchell, said Crutchley would still be in prison if prosecutors had accepted his offer to plead guilty to six murders in exchange for life sentences.

Mitchell said Crutchley made the offer after his arrest in November 1985 in order to avoid the electric chair. At the time, police and prosecutors were trying to tie Crutchley to a number of unsolved murders in Brevard County and Fairfax County, Virginia, where Crutchley used to live.

Six months later, Crutchley pleaded guilty to sexual assault.

But Norm Wolfinger, the state attorney for Brevard County, said he wasn’t aware of any plea offer, and it would have been pointless anyway because investigators never could link Crutchley to the killings.

Meanwhile, Wolfinger said he is closely watching the state’s efforts to relocate Crutchley and has been in contact with the victim, who is now 29.

“She’s a victim of a violent crime,” he said. “I’m sure she has some concern about his release.”