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Well, you gotta admit they have something there -- what with all those millions of kids casting curses and conjuring demons out there ... Oh wait. None of that's occured, has it?

Two articles follow:
Satanic killers tell of blood drinking rites
Teen Accused of 'Vampire' Killing

Satanic killers tell of blood drinking rites

By Hannah Cleaver in Berlin (Filed: 18/01/2002)

A WOMAN who says she and her husband killed a German friend with 66 knife wounds on orders from the devil has claimed that she became a satanist in Britain.

German police say any evidence pointing to possible crimes or an illegal satanic ring in Britain will be sent to the relevant authorities.

Manuela Ruda and her husband, Daniel, have admitted killing their friend, Frank Haagen, "for Satan". She said she got a taste for vampirism and the occult while in London and Scotland.

She appeared at the regional court in Bochum in full gothic garb, her head partly shaved to reveal an upside down crucifix and a target tattooed on her skull.

Mrs Ruda, 23, gave a chilling account of drinking blood from volunteers contacted on the internet. She said: "I was in England and Scotland, met people and vampires in London. We went out at night, to cemeteries, in ruins and in the woods.

"We drank blood together, from willing donors. You can't drink from the arteries, no-one is allowed that. I had implanted pegs put in the teeth which were pulled out and were replaced with fangs.

"I also slept on graves and even allowed myself to be buried in a grave to test the feeling. I signed over my soul to Satan two and a half years ago."

The couple have denied responsibility for killing Mr Haagen, 33, although both have admitted committing the crime.

Mrs Ruda told the court: "It was not murder. We are not murderers. It was the execution of an order. Satan ordered us to. We had to comply. It was not something bad. It simply had to be. We wanted to make sure that the victim suffered well."

Her husband compared himself and his wife to a vehicle involved in a fatal accident. "The car would not be charged," he said. "The driver is the bad guy. I have nothing to regret because I haven't done anything." Mrs Ruda said she and her 26-year-old husband lured their victim to their flat. When they arrived a "strange force" and "other beings" were present.

"We were sitting on the couch the whole time, then my husband stood up," she said. "He had terrible, glowing eyes and hit out with the hammer.

"Frank stood up and said something, or wanted to say something. The knife was glowing and a voice told me: 'Stab him in the heart.'

"He then sank down. I saw a light flickering around him. That was the sign that his soul was going down. We said a satanic prayer.

"We were then exhausted, and alone, wanted to die ourselves. But the visitation was too short. We could no longer kill ourselves."

After killing Mr Haagen the couple cut an occult star on his stomach, drank his blood from a bowl and had sex in an oak coffin in which Mrs Ruda usually slept.

The couple were arrested in their flat, the walls of which were covered in satanic slogans and hung with an array of knives, axes and machetes.

Mr Haagen's mutilated and partially-decomposed body was found next to the coffin in the living room.

Dieter Justinsky, the public prosecutor, said: "I have never, ever seen such a picture of cruelty and depravity before. They simply had a lust for murder.

"Both believed in Satan, they worshipped him. A death list found in the flat contained the names of future victims. They drank his blood, slept in coffins and believed they would achieve immortality as vampires."

Several witnesses have testified that the couple suffered from personality disorders. They could both face long terms at secure psychiatric institutions.

The Rudas told police that they went to Britain twice, spending five months in Scotland in 1996 and visiting London in February 1997. The gothic phenomenon, an off-shoot of the punk scene, emerged in the late 1970s. A spokesman for Bochum police said last night that any information relating to crimes in Britain would be passed to the relevant authorities.

,b>Teen Accused of 'Vampire' Killing Tue Jul 16,11:37 AM ET

LONDON (AP) - A teenager obsessed with vampires killed an elderly neighbor and drank her blood because he believed that would make him immortal, prosecutors said Tuesday at the start of his murder trial.

The 17-year-old youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is accused of killing 90-year-old widow Mabel Leyshon at her home in Llanfair in north Wales on Nov. 24. He denies the charge.

Prosecutors said Leyshon's chest was ripped open and her heart removed, wrapped in newspaper and placed in a saucepan on top of a silver platter. Blood was drained from her legs, probably for drinking, prosecutors told the jury at Mold Crown Court. Two fireplace pokers were left crossed at her feet.

Prosecutor Roger Thomas said the teenager was obsessed by "his two main questions — how do I become a vampire and how do I become immortal?"

The defendant decided "a sacrifice, the murder of another human being, was necessary," Thomas said. With his parents away, the youth committed a "planned, deliberate murder to satisfy his own grotesque and selfish ends," he said. The prosecution said the teen entered Leyshon's house by breaking glass in the back door and attacked her from behind as she watched television, stabbing her 22 times and removing her heart.

Thomas said the defendant "was fascinated by" vampires. "He believed they existed, believed they drank human blood, and believed most importantly that they could achieve immortality — and he wanted to be immortal. What may have started out as a bizarre interest became an obsession and led ultimately to murder."

Thomas said the youth had been arrested a month before the killing after using force to get a 16-year-old German exchange student he believed was a vampire to bite his neck so that he, too, could become a vampire.

Neither of those stories has anything to do with Harry Potter, those are just stories about loons. There's plenty of loons in this world and eradicating HP won't reduce the numbers any.

What do either of those stories have to do with Rowling's books, in which (I must note) vampires do not appear?

Gee, neither one mentioned Harry Potter. Indeed, umpteen million people have read the books and/or seen the movies, and, aside from an article in The Onion a few years back that fundamentalists took for Gospel, you can't find any direct correlation between Harry Potter and Satan worshipping. Hell, there was more interest in the occult back in the '70s when I was a kid (and The Exorcist had just come out).

Satanic killers tell of blood drinking rites
Teen Accused of 'Vampire' Killing

Vampires haven't really been introduced in the HP books, except for comparing Prof. Snape to one. Maybe you should blame this on the classic tale of Dracula instead of pointing fingers at something totally unrelated.

I was tempted to do the same after watching "John Carpenter's Vampires".

I was this close, pal!

claimed that she became a satanist in Britain

Who can honestly say that they HAVEN'T become a satanist in Britain. I know I have. Most normal adolescents go through a phase of satanizing three or four times a day, but some are certainly attracted to it by its very illegality.