Ion Rîmaru
Encyclopedia
Ion Rîmaru was a Romania
n serial killer
dubbed "The Vampire of Bucharest". He terrorized Bucharest
in 1970-1971.
and had three sons, Ion being their eldest child. His father, Florea, would beat his mother daily; the couple eventually separated and his father moved to Bucharest, taking a job as a night tram driver. After his death years later, Florea was discovered to have been a serial killer. (see below)
Ion was born in Corabia
. His early life was a troubled one: he repeated the ninth grade, provoked a public scandal in his home town when he was found to be having a sexual relationship with the minor
daughter of his teacher, and, at age 18, was convicted of aggravated theft
. Nevertheless, during high school, he always received a perfect grade in conduct.
in 1966 with a grade of 5.33 (out of 10). He repeated his second year there. At the time of his arrest, Rîmaru was in the course of repeating his third year. Although he entered a university, one of his professors described him as shy and semi-literate, with a very poor vocabulary and an extremely narrow set of interests.
His roommates reported that he behaved strangely, so they avoided him. When he became enraged, he would puncture himself; he was found to have over 20 cuts on his arms and legs. From adolescence, Rîmaru had an uncontrollable libido
. For instance, a university classmate reported that one night, at the dormitory, Rîmaru did not sleep at all, but instead prowled outside a room where he knew a girl had come to visit a classmate. Doctors diagnosed him with esophageal spasm
, reactive nervous syndrome and mental problems in 1967.
, a small axe
, an iron bar or a knife
to attack restaurant waitresses who were alone and returning from work. He struck after midnight during unusual weather conditions such as snowstorms, driving rain, high winds, freezing cold or fog. Many women would not go outside after 9:00 pm except in large groups or with men. Their terror was heightened by the police's reluctance to release details, leading to wildly exaggerated rumours. After a few crimes, the Communist authorities
realised that they were dealing with a serial killer; a yearlong investigation, with the help of victims who had survived, led to Rîmaru's arrest on May 27, 1971.
However, the clue which led directly to Rîmaru's arrest was a medical diagnosis sheet. On March 4, 1971, a group of six doctors found that he had "suspected periodic epilepsy
"; the doctors' note was found beneath the body of Mihaela Ursu, whom he murdered in especially brutal fashion two months later. Between her fingers she had strands of his hair that were used to identify him. (Some have suggested that he went to the doctors to eventually be able to claim insanity at trial.) Because the note was wet and bloody, only the letterhead from the Bucharest Students' Hospital was visible.
At this point the criminal began acting more randomly, not attacking waitresses exclusively and even going after two women who were together. On May 15, specialists determined that the note had been produced in Dr. Octavian Ienişte's office in March 1971. He had seen 83 students that month, of whom 15, including Rîmaru, had not deposited their diagnoses with university officials. The police closely monitored each suspect and three officers went to his dormitory on May 27; he was not home but while they searched his room he came back at 1:00 pm. In his sack he had an axe and a knife; tests on the hair and bite marks
he left and the testimony of witnesses left no reasonable doubt as to his guilt.
The 16 gravest offences of which Rîmaru was convicted are, chronologically:
After the murder of Popa, a waitress, the authorities went on high alert, launching "Operation Vulture", named after the street where she had been murdered. 6,000 men from various law-enforcement agencies patrolled the streets of Bucharest each night, as well as 100 cars and 40 motorcycles. Medical personnel, night bus and tram operators, hotel and bar employees – all were mobilised, not to mention great numbers of Securitate
, Police
and Interior Ministry
staff. 2,565 arrests were made and over 8,000 individuals were asked for identification, but Rîmaru would commit one more murder and attempt to commit several more before being arrested.
Authorities rated Rîmaru's modus operandi
as ferocious and cruel, based on his propensity for cutting off clothes, biting off flesh, dragging his victims, and hacking away at them with his weapons, also raping
them while they were unconscious. Rîmaru was judged to be aggressive, impulsive and sadistic. He showed signs of vampirism; for instance, he poked several holes into the flesh of Florica Marcu, who later related how he sucked blood out of them. Cannibalism
was also present; he would bite women's vagina
s, pubic areas
and breast
s, and the missing pieces of flesh were no longer found at the crime scenes. Additionally, he had necrophilia
c tendencies, continuing his rapes after his victims had died and also beating and stabbing their corpses.
After two months of interrogations, Rîmaru admitted to 23 very serious crimes. In fact, he had been arrested for only three murders; the rest (another murder, six attempted murders, five rapes, one attempted rape, and seven thefts of various degrees) he or his father confessed. On the one hand, he tried to convince the authorities that he was not responsible on grounds of insanity and that he did not realise the women would die; on the other hand, he insisted he was guilty, asking to be taken to the scenes of his crimes. During police lineup
s, victims brought in to identify him would tremble when their eyes met his, despite there being no danger to them now. Allegedly, for the public at large, Rîmaru's name itself inspired a vague dread; rîmă/râmă means "earthworm
" in Romanian
.
The authorities believed that suggestive remarks from his father, who knew all about his son's crimes, had led him to commit violence. During the investigation, his father was arrested three times but released because close relatives could not be forced to testify against other family members. After Ion's last crime, when he robbed a cashier, his mother visited him and found the money under his pillow. His father made him go to the crime scene and show him what he had done. He then took the money and placed it in his Caracal home, intending to use it to buy a new house. His father was first brought in to the police station during one of Ion's silent phases; the son merely gave his father an ugly look, prompting the latter to say, "How should I know what you did? How?" But he had reason to suspect it, as he had been washing his son's bloody clothes after the attacks. After Ion robbed the cashier, Florea confiscated the axe and knife and it was with these that he was secretly returning when he was arrested.
Rîmaru, whose trial drew significant public attention, thought he had convinced investigators of his insanity defence. He was apparently shocked when he read the report stating that his judgment was not impaired by mental illness, that he did not suffer from hallucination
s, delirium
, or similar conditions. He immediately changed his plea, recanting his previous confessions in their entirety; thenceforth, he refused to answer even his lawyer's questions.
Eventually, Rîmaru was sentenced to death, with the courtroom erupting in applause when the penalty was pronounced. He appealed, but the Supreme Tribunal
upheld the sentence.
On October 23, 1971, Rîmaru was taken to Jilava
prison in a van. He had to be dragged to the place of execution from the moment he left the van. Until he was dead, he was in a rage and vigorously tried to escape. The three officers charged with shooting him tied him to a post in the prison yard. Asked, in accordance with the law, if he had any last wishes, he said no. The men noticed him become more agitated, trying to bite off his clothes and twisting around the post. He yelled, "Call my father, so he can see what's happening to me! Make him come! He's the only guilty one!" and "I want to live!" Because of his constant movement, it was difficult to aim accurately and in the end, his backside was riddled with bullets (as he had turned all the way round). He was buried in the town cemetery; his grave remains unmarked.
, Col. Dr. Tudorel Butoi, viewed tapes of Rîmaru's interrogations several years after his execution. In Butoi's opinion, Rîmaru's crimes were a form of compensation for the inferiority complex
he had felt since his youth: he was relatively poor, a social misfit, and had had dysfunctional relations with women.
At the time, Rîmaru was labelled a "wolf-man", and Butoi theorises that he suffered from a form of clinical lycanthropy
. As evidence, he cites his solitary nocturnal prowling and stalking
, the instinct
ual animalistic energy he drew from unusual weather conditions, and how he considered his victims as prey. Rîmaru would figure out his victims' route, following them home several nights in a row, and attack them when they were almost home. Butoi rejects Rîmaru's claim to have tried to engage a woman in ordinary conversation one night as "merely dissimulations, perverse excuses".
, where the criminal would enter at night during a storm and bash their heads with a blunt object. Each time, the killer left fingerprints and footprints from military boots of size
42 or 43. On 23 October 1972, a year after his son's execution, Florea Rîmaru died at age 53 after falling off a train. This was officially an accident, but some authors suggest he might have been eliminated by Securitate
agents, though the reason for this alleged assassination remains unclear. His body was brought to the Medico-Legal Institute, where the man's height of 174 cm and his shoe size of 42 attracted attention. Sure enough, the 1944 fingerprints matched his. Their first victims even had similar names: Florea first killed Elena Udrea; Ion, Elena Oprea. Butoi, the psychologist, theorises that a gene
predisposing one to violent crime was transmitted from father to son, as the murders happened under remarkably similar circumstances.
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
dubbed "The Vampire of Bucharest". He terrorized Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
in 1970-1971.
Early life
Rîmaru's parents married in CaracalCaracal, Romania
Caracal is a city in Olt county, Romania, situated in the historic region of Oltenia, on the plains between the lower reaches of the Jiu and Olt rivers. The region's plains are well known for their agricultural specialty in cultivating grains and over the centuries, Caracal has been the trading...
and had three sons, Ion being their eldest child. His father, Florea, would beat his mother daily; the couple eventually separated and his father moved to Bucharest, taking a job as a night tram driver. After his death years later, Florea was discovered to have been a serial killer. (see below)
Ion was born in Corabia
Corabia
Corabia is a small Danube port located in Olt County, Romania, which used to be part of the now-dissolved Romanaţi County before World War II...
. His early life was a troubled one: he repeated the ninth grade, provoked a public scandal in his home town when he was found to be having a sexual relationship with the minor
Statutory rape
The phrase statutory rape is a term used in some legal jurisdictions to describe sexual activities where one participant is below the age required to legally consent to the behavior...
daughter of his teacher, and, at age 18, was convicted of aggravated theft
Theft
In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...
. Nevertheless, during high school, he always received a perfect grade in conduct.
University
He entered the Faculty of Veterinary MedicineUniversitatea de Stiinte Agricole si Medicina Veterinara
University of Agronomical Sciences and Veterinary Medicine is a university in Bucharest, Romania which specializes in agriculture and veterinary medicine. Its campus is located on 59, Mărăşti Blvd.-External links:* * * * * * * * *...
in 1966 with a grade of 5.33 (out of 10). He repeated his second year there. At the time of his arrest, Rîmaru was in the course of repeating his third year. Although he entered a university, one of his professors described him as shy and semi-literate, with a very poor vocabulary and an extremely narrow set of interests.
His roommates reported that he behaved strangely, so they avoided him. When he became enraged, he would puncture himself; he was found to have over 20 cuts on his arms and legs. From adolescence, Rîmaru had an uncontrollable libido
Libido
Libido refers to a person's sex drive or desire for sexual activity. The desire for sex is an aspect of a person's sexuality, but varies enormously from one person to another, and it also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly...
. For instance, a university classmate reported that one night, at the dormitory, Rîmaru did not sleep at all, but instead prowled outside a room where he knew a girl had come to visit a classmate. Doctors diagnosed him with esophageal spasm
Diffuse esophageal spasm
Diffuse esophageal spasm is a condition in which uncoordinated contractions of the esophagus occur. It is thought to result from motility disorders of the esophagus. These spasms do not propel food effectively to the stomach...
, reactive nervous syndrome and mental problems in 1967.
Crimes
Bucharest was shaken by a series of crimes committed in the latter half of 1970 and the first months of 1971. An unknown individual would use a hammerHammer
A hammer is a tool meant to deliver an impact to an object. The most common uses are for driving nails, fitting parts, forging metal and breaking up objects. Hammers are often designed for a specific purpose, and vary widely in their shape and structure. The usual features are a handle and a head,...
, a small axe
Axe
The axe, or ax, is an implement that has been used for millennia to shape, split and cut wood; to harvest timber; as a weapon; and as a ceremonial or heraldic symbol...
, an iron bar or a knife
Knife
A knife is a cutting tool with an exposed cutting edge or blade, hand-held or otherwise, with or without a handle. Knives were used at least two-and-a-half million years ago, as evidenced by the Oldowan tools...
to attack restaurant waitresses who were alone and returning from work. He struck after midnight during unusual weather conditions such as snowstorms, driving rain, high winds, freezing cold or fog. Many women would not go outside after 9:00 pm except in large groups or with men. Their terror was heightened by the police's reluctance to release details, leading to wildly exaggerated rumours. After a few crimes, the Communist authorities
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
realised that they were dealing with a serial killer; a yearlong investigation, with the help of victims who had survived, led to Rîmaru's arrest on May 27, 1971.
However, the clue which led directly to Rîmaru's arrest was a medical diagnosis sheet. On March 4, 1971, a group of six doctors found that he had "suspected periodic epilepsy
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. These seizures are transient signs and/or symptoms of abnormal, excessive or hypersynchronous neuronal activity in the brain.About 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and nearly two out of every three new cases...
"; the doctors' note was found beneath the body of Mihaela Ursu, whom he murdered in especially brutal fashion two months later. Between her fingers she had strands of his hair that were used to identify him. (Some have suggested that he went to the doctors to eventually be able to claim insanity at trial.) Because the note was wet and bloody, only the letterhead from the Bucharest Students' Hospital was visible.
At this point the criminal began acting more randomly, not attacking waitresses exclusively and even going after two women who were together. On May 15, specialists determined that the note had been produced in Dr. Octavian Ienişte's office in March 1971. He had seen 83 students that month, of whom 15, including Rîmaru, had not deposited their diagnoses with university officials. The police closely monitored each suspect and three officers went to his dormitory on May 27; he was not home but while they searched his room he came back at 1:00 pm. In his sack he had an axe and a knife; tests on the hair and bite marks
Forensic Dentistry
Forensic dentistry or forensic odontology is the proper handling, examination and evaluation of dental evidence, which will be then presented in the interest of justice. The evidence that may be derived from teeth, is the age and identification of the person to whom the teeth belong...
he left and the testimony of witnesses left no reasonable doubt as to his guilt.
The 16 gravest offences of which Rîmaru was convicted are, chronologically:
- 8/9 April 1970 – Elena Oprea – premeditated murder (not raped because a neighbour scared him away)
- 1/2 June 1970 – Florica Marcu – rape (knocked unconscious in front of her house, carried to Sfânta Vineri cemetery, pushed hard off the fence there, raped, stabbed and had her blood sucked while walking home with him, saved by a truck driver)
- 19/20 July 1970 – OCL Confecţia store – theft of public property
- 24 July 1970 – Margareta Hanganu – aggravated theft
- 22/23 November 1970 – Olga Bărăitaru – aggravated attempted murder, rape and aggravated theft
- 15/16 February 1971 – Gheorghiţă Sfetcu – aggravated attempted murder and aggravated theft
- 17/18 February 1971 – Elisabeta Florea – aggravated attempted murder
- 4/5 March 1971 – Fănică Ilie – aggravated premeditated murder, rape and aggravated theft
- 8/9 April 1971 – Gheorghiţa Popa – aggravated murder, rape and aggravated theft (48 stab wounds to the head, chest, groin and legs, five blows to the head, ribs crushed by stomping, genitalia bitten out)
- 1/2 May 1971 – Stana Saracin – attempted rape
- 4/5 May 1971 – Mihaela Ursu – aggravated murder, rape (he was interrupted in the act and left unsatisfied, leading him to seek a new victim)
- 4/5 May 1971 – Maria Iordache – aggravated attempted murder (attacked two hours after Ursu; escaped when he dropped the metal bar with which he was beating her while she was running)
- 6/7 May 1971 – Viorica Tatu – aggravated attempted murder
- 6/7 May 1971 – Elena Buluci – aggravated attempted murder
- May 1971 – Iuliana Funzinschi – aggravated theft of public property and aggravated theft of private property.
After the murder of Popa, a waitress, the authorities went on high alert, launching "Operation Vulture", named after the street where she had been murdered. 6,000 men from various law-enforcement agencies patrolled the streets of Bucharest each night, as well as 100 cars and 40 motorcycles. Medical personnel, night bus and tram operators, hotel and bar employees – all were mobilised, not to mention great numbers of Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
, Police
Romanian Police
The Romanian Police is the national police force and main civil law enforcement agency in Romania. It is subordinated to the Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform.-Duties:The Romanian Police are responsible for:...
and Interior Ministry
Ministry of Administration and Interior of Romania
The Ministry of Administration and Interior of Romania is one of the fifteen ministries of the Government of Romania.From 23 August 1944 to 18 March 1975 the minister held the title of Minister of Internal Affairs, between 2004 and 2007, held the title of Minister of Administration and Interior,...
staff. 2,565 arrests were made and over 8,000 individuals were asked for identification, but Rîmaru would commit one more murder and attempt to commit several more before being arrested.
Authorities rated Rîmaru's modus operandi
Modus operandi
Modus operandi is a Latin phrase, approximately translated as "mode of operation". The term is used to describe someone's habits or manner of working, their method of operating or functioning...
as ferocious and cruel, based on his propensity for cutting off clothes, biting off flesh, dragging his victims, and hacking away at them with his weapons, also raping
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
them while they were unconscious. Rîmaru was judged to be aggressive, impulsive and sadistic. He showed signs of vampirism; for instance, he poked several holes into the flesh of Florica Marcu, who later related how he sucked blood out of them. Cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
was also present; he would bite women's vagina
Vagina
The vagina is a fibromuscular tubular tract leading from the uterus to the exterior of the body in female placental mammals and marsupials, or to the cloaca in female birds, monotremes, and some reptiles. Female insects and other invertebrates also have a vagina, which is the terminal part of the...
s, pubic areas
Mons pubis
In human anatomy or in mammals in general, the mons pubis , also known as the mons veneris or simply the mons, is the adipose tissue lying above the pubic bone of adult females, anterior to the pubic symphysis...
and breast
Breast
The breast is the upper ventral region of the torso of a primate, in left and right sides, which in a female contains the mammary gland that secretes milk used to feed infants.Both men and women develop breasts from the same embryological tissues...
s, and the missing pieces of flesh were no longer found at the crime scenes. Additionally, he had necrophilia
Necrophilia
Necrophilia, also called thanatophilia or necrolagnia, is the sexual attraction to corpses,It is classified as a paraphilia by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The word is artificially derived from the ancient Greek words: νεκρός and φιλία...
c tendencies, continuing his rapes after his victims had died and also beating and stabbing their corpses.
Investigation, trial and execution
After his arrest, Rîmaru remained completely silent, staring expressionlessly into space. The investigators went into an office to decide on a plan; they introduced a police officer who pretended to be a thief into his cell and got him to talk.After two months of interrogations, Rîmaru admitted to 23 very serious crimes. In fact, he had been arrested for only three murders; the rest (another murder, six attempted murders, five rapes, one attempted rape, and seven thefts of various degrees) he or his father confessed. On the one hand, he tried to convince the authorities that he was not responsible on grounds of insanity and that he did not realise the women would die; on the other hand, he insisted he was guilty, asking to be taken to the scenes of his crimes. During police lineup
Police lineup
A police lineup or identity parade is a process by which a crime victim or witness's putative identification of a suspect is confirmed to a level that can count as evidence at trial....
s, victims brought in to identify him would tremble when their eyes met his, despite there being no danger to them now. Allegedly, for the public at large, Rîmaru's name itself inspired a vague dread; rîmă/râmă means "earthworm
Earthworm
Earthworm is the common name for the largest members of Oligochaeta in the phylum Annelida. In classical systems they were placed in the order Opisthopora, on the basis of the male pores opening posterior to the female pores, even though the internal male segments are anterior to the female...
" in Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
.
The authorities believed that suggestive remarks from his father, who knew all about his son's crimes, had led him to commit violence. During the investigation, his father was arrested three times but released because close relatives could not be forced to testify against other family members. After Ion's last crime, when he robbed a cashier, his mother visited him and found the money under his pillow. His father made him go to the crime scene and show him what he had done. He then took the money and placed it in his Caracal home, intending to use it to buy a new house. His father was first brought in to the police station during one of Ion's silent phases; the son merely gave his father an ugly look, prompting the latter to say, "How should I know what you did? How?" But he had reason to suspect it, as he had been washing his son's bloody clothes after the attacks. After Ion robbed the cashier, Florea confiscated the axe and knife and it was with these that he was secretly returning when he was arrested.
Rîmaru, whose trial drew significant public attention, thought he had convinced investigators of his insanity defence. He was apparently shocked when he read the report stating that his judgment was not impaired by mental illness, that he did not suffer from hallucination
Hallucination
A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid,...
s, delirium
Delirium
Delirium or acute confusional state is a common and severe neuropsychiatric syndrome with core features of acute onset and fluctuating course, attentional deficits and generalized severe disorganization of behavior...
, or similar conditions. He immediately changed his plea, recanting his previous confessions in their entirety; thenceforth, he refused to answer even his lawyer's questions.
Eventually, Rîmaru was sentenced to death, with the courtroom erupting in applause when the penalty was pronounced. He appealed, but the Supreme Tribunal
High Court of Cassation and Justice
The High Court of Cassation and Justice is Romania's supreme court, and the court of last resort. It is the equivalent of France's Cour de cassation and serves a similar function to other courts of cassation around the world...
upheld the sentence.
On October 23, 1971, Rîmaru was taken to Jilava
Jilava
Jilava is a commune in Ilfov county, Romania, near Bucharest. It is composed of a single village, Jilava.The name derives from a Romanian word of Slavic origin meaning "humid place". Jilava was the location of a fort built by King Carol I of Romania, as part of the capital's defense system...
prison in a van. He had to be dragged to the place of execution from the moment he left the van. Until he was dead, he was in a rage and vigorously tried to escape. The three officers charged with shooting him tied him to a post in the prison yard. Asked, in accordance with the law, if he had any last wishes, he said no. The men noticed him become more agitated, trying to bite off his clothes and twisting around the post. He yelled, "Call my father, so he can see what's happening to me! Make him come! He's the only guilty one!" and "I want to live!" Because of his constant movement, it was difficult to aim accurately and in the end, his backside was riddled with bullets (as he had turned all the way round). He was buried in the town cemetery; his grave remains unmarked.
Possible motives
A psychologistPsychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, Col. Dr. Tudorel Butoi, viewed tapes of Rîmaru's interrogations several years after his execution. In Butoi's opinion, Rîmaru's crimes were a form of compensation for the inferiority complex
Inferiority complex
An inferiority complex, in the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis, is a feeling that one is inferior to others in some way. Such feelings can arise from an imagined or actual inferiority in the afflicted person...
he had felt since his youth: he was relatively poor, a social misfit, and had had dysfunctional relations with women.
At the time, Rîmaru was labelled a "wolf-man", and Butoi theorises that he suffered from a form of clinical lycanthropy
Clinical lycanthropy
Clinical lycanthropy is defined as a rare psychiatric syndrome that involves a delusion that the affected person can transform or has transformed into a non-human animal or that he or she is an animal. Its name is connected to the mythical condition of lycanthropy, a supernatural affliction in...
. As evidence, he cites his solitary nocturnal prowling and stalking
Stalking
Stalking is a term commonly used to refer to unwanted and obsessive attention by an individual or group to another person. Stalking behaviors are related to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person and/or monitoring them via the internet...
, the instinct
Instinct
Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior.The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a...
ual animalistic energy he drew from unusual weather conditions, and how he considered his victims as prey. Rîmaru would figure out his victims' route, following them home several nights in a row, and attack them when they were almost home. Butoi rejects Rîmaru's claim to have tried to engage a woman in ordinary conversation one night as "merely dissimulations, perverse excuses".
A family affair
Rîmaru's father Florea was also a serial killer. In the summer of 1944, a string of four murders rocked wartime Bucharest. Each victim (all were female) lived in a basement apartmentBasement apartment
A basement apartment is an apartment located below street level, underneath another structure—usually an apartment building, but possibly a house or a business. Rent in basement apartments is usually much lower than it is in above-ground units, due to a number of deficiencies common to basement...
, where the criminal would enter at night during a storm and bash their heads with a blunt object. Each time, the killer left fingerprints and footprints from military boots of size
Shoe size
A shoe size is an alphanumerical indication of the fitting size of a shoe for a person. Often it just consists of a number indicating the length because many shoemakers only provide a standard width for economic reasons....
42 or 43. On 23 October 1972, a year after his son's execution, Florea Rîmaru died at age 53 after falling off a train. This was officially an accident, but some authors suggest he might have been eliminated by Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
agents, though the reason for this alleged assassination remains unclear. His body was brought to the Medico-Legal Institute, where the man's height of 174 cm and his shoe size of 42 attracted attention. Sure enough, the 1944 fingerprints matched his. Their first victims even had similar names: Florea first killed Elena Udrea; Ion, Elena Oprea. Butoi, the psychologist, theorises that a gene
Gene
A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
predisposing one to violent crime was transmitted from father to son, as the murders happened under remarkably similar circumstances.