Marc Sappington, mugshot

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. “What about him?” he asked. “What about 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.

“He feared for his own safety,” said one cop who questioned Sappington.

Eventually, Sappington submitted to the imaginary demands.  He killed four people, two of them in a single day.  The murders were grisly.  Sappington tried to suck the blood of two his victims, both of whom were also his friends.  This effort in phlebotomy earned him the sobriquet, “Kansas City Vampire.”  In another instance, he hacked a 16-year-old’s body into bite-size morsels that he consumed in his mother’s basement.

But 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.

And, 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?