FIVE Terrifying Facts About Marcelo Costa de Andrade, the Vampire of Niterói | Real Life Vampires

Marcelo Costa de Andrade, the Vampire of Niterói, killed at least 14 young boys before drinking their blood to maintain his youthful appearance. He was active as a killer from between April to December 1991.

Born and raised in Brazil’s largest Favela.

Marcelo was born in January 1967 into an existence marred by darkness and abuse.

He was born in Rocinha, the largest and most populous favela in Brazil, settled into the hillside overlooking Rio de Janeiro’s South Zone. It is home to over 200,000 people.

His mother was regularly beaten and abused by his father, and he was forced to watch. When family members found out, he was sent to his grandparents where he had a couple of years of normal upbringing.

When his grandparents aged and were unable to look after him, and at the age of ten, he was sent back to his mother and father, where the abuse had escalated.

The family home was constantly full of his father’s companions, some of whom abused Marcelo, including an older man who raped him on multiple occasions. At the age of 14, he turned to sex work.

Sent children to Heaven to escape Hell.

After being bullied at a boy’s shelter, he lived with an older man for eight years when he was 16, who introduced him to a Christian Church.

When he was not practicing the word of God, he was reading and collecting pornographic magazines. He also took an unusual liking to children’s TV shows and songs.

In one of the services at the church, he heard that when children die, they go to Heaven.

Adults would either go to Heaven or Hell, depending on how they had lived their live and whether or not they had repented for any sins.

But in Marcelo’s head, it meant he could kill children as they would go to heaven. It meant he had the power to send children to Heaven. And he did, at least 14 of them.

He drank blood to help him stay young.

His first victim was a street urchin, a child who spent most of the time on the streets partaking in petty crime, as were most of his victims.

He lured the unsuspecting boy to an isolated area in the hills surrounding Rio by asking him to help light some candles for the church.

When there was no one around, he strangled him to death with his own t-shirt before raping the corpse. He returned to the body every day for three days to see if it had been discovered but it hadn’t.

With one victim, he crushed the boy’s head with a rock, then scooped out the blood in his hands and drank it. Marcelo had come to believe that if he drank the blood of his victims, he would become as youthful as they were.

On some occasions, after raping them, he would slice their arteries and drink blood directly from the body. Either from the wrists, neck, or occasionally from the genital area.

He always carried a bowl with him, as he found it easy to collect the blood in a bowl and drink direct from it. Though he didn’t believe in vampires, he was on the path to becoming one.

The Vampire of Niterói is untreatable.

He was arrested after falling in love with a 10-year-old boy who he let escape after killing the boy’s younger brother in front of him.

He was arrested shortly after. When interviewed by police, Marcelo confessed to the other 13 murders and led them to the burial sites.

He was eventually declared insane and sentenced to life in a maximum-security psychiatric hospital.

Those who interviewed him stated he came across as someone childlike in nature, with the mind of a 12-year-old, and no real understanding of what he had done.

In 2001, it was confirmed that the medical staff at the hospital have no idea how to treat him, so they keep him sedated with drugs, where he remains to this day.

His quotes are from the devil itself.

His reasoning for the murders:

‘I preferred young boys because they are better looking and have soft skin. And the priest said that children automatically go to heaven if they die before they’re thirteen. So, I know I did them a favour by sending them to heaven.’

When talking of his first victim:

‘When we got there, I raped him. I then strangled him with his own shirt. I returned to the spot where the body was three times, to see if anyone had discovered anything. Nobody ever suspected me.’

Upon finding the body of one his victims undisturbed, he cut off the boy’s head and left it near the torso. When he was interviewed in 2001 by Helen Morrison, an American criminal psychiatrist, Marcelo said of the murder:

‘I sawed off his head so that the children would make fun of him when he arrived in heaven.’

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