GIRL AS DECOY

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 302, 16 September 1933, Page 18

GIRL AS DECOY

Hypnotic Bandit’s Toll

After a hunt of more than two years’ duration, during which aeroplanes, gas bombs, small armies of soldiers and droves of police were used, Jugo-Slav-ian authorities believe they have captured a “vampire man,” who, in his amazing career of banditry and kidnapping, is alleged to have murdered no fewer than twenty-two Serbian girls, states a special correspondent of the "Sunday Chronicle.” They have arrested a 26-year-old Adonis, six feet two inches In height, magnificently built, with luminous dark eyes by means of which he exercised a hypnotic power that enabled him to work cures among the peasantry, so winning their confidence and fear that, despite the offer of a substantial reward, no one who knew him would reveal his hiding place. There were about twenty men in his band, but his main ally was the daughter of a high official at Backar, who had formed an infatuation for the handsome bandit.

This woman, it was alleged, because of her father’s position, was able to warn her lover of most of the schemes that were evolved for his capture.

Tlie police hunt began when it came to the notice of the authorities that some twelve peasant girls had disappeared mysteriously under similar cirstances. Each had gone to the market at Backar to sell fish and had been returning home with the money when she vanished. Frightened peasants fearing a stml-

lar fate for their daughters, yet afraid to allow the bandit leader to learn that they had betrayed him, told the authorities it was well known that the Adonis was a “vampire man.”

They described how, at certain times, he became possessed of an insatiable desire for the letting of human blood. These times coincided with the full moon periods. The bandit’s lover, it is said, lured young girls whom she had selected for victims to come to the market to sell their wares.

Then, keeping secret tryst with her lover a short distance outside the town, she warned him to be in readiness to intercept the girl on her return to her own village.

Aided by several of his followers, the bandit suddenly sprang upon the defenceless maiden at a lonely part of the road, and carried her off into the mountains, where the bodies of the girls were thrown over a precipice into a fast-flowing stream.

During the two years of the seach for the murderer girls continued to disappear at frequent intervals. In every case the victim was young and pretty. Some were taken just a few days before they were to have been married, and it was to the attempted seizure of one of these would-be brides that the bandit ultimately owed nis capture. After a short chase he was captured, handcuffed, and was hurried off at once to Zagreb, where, it is reported, he has made a full confession