Murder, Mystery & Makeup - The Kansas City Vampire - Convinced he had to eat human flesh to live?! (Podcast Exclusive)

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

Hi friends, happy Tuesday! Friends... I often wonder what drives someone to cross every fricken line imaginable. Like where do we, as people, go wrong? It tends to be head trauma... but sometimes... It's other things that drive people to go off the deep end. Well, in this episode, we dive into the chilling story of Marc Vincent Sappington, the Kansas City killer whose shocking crimes and disturbing acts of cannibalism left a community absolutely destroyed. Hopped up on drugs and paranoia, Marc's downward spiral turned deadly in ways no one could have seen coming.  Today, I'm going to unpack Marc's life, what motivated him, and the terrifying chaos he unleashed. Sometimes these stories keep me up at night. This, my friends, is one of them. Also, let me know who you want me to talk about next time. Hope you have a great rest of your week, make good choices and I'll be seeing you very soon xo Bailey Sarian I sometimes talk about my Good Reads in show. So here's the link if you want to check it out. IDK. lol: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/139701263-bailey ________ FOLLOW ME AROUND  Tik Tok: https://bit.ly/3e3jL9v Instagram: http://bit.ly/2nbO4PR Facebook: http://bit.ly/2mdZtK6 Twitter: http://bit.ly/2yT4BLV Pinterest: http://bit.ly/2mVpXnY Youtube: http://bit.ly/1HGw3Og Snapchat: https://bit.ly/3cC0V9d Discord: https://discord.gg/BaileySarian RECOMMEND A STORY HERE: [e-mail]  Business Related Emails: [e-mail] Business Related Mail:  Bailey Sarian  4400 W. Riverside Dr., Ste 110-300  Burbank, CA 91505 ________ Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to https://www.RocketMoney.com/MAKEUP today. Get the right life insurance for YOU, for LESS, at https://www.SelectQuote.com/MAKEUP. 

Hi friends, how are you today? My name is Bailey Sarian and this is the Murder, Mystery, and Makeup Podcast. Today's story is a podcast exclusive. Oh yes, that's right. Today's story is about a vampire. Oh yes, this time it is about the Kansas City vampire. His name is Mark Sappington. Have you heard of him? Now Mark is not the stereotypical vampire that you tend to think of, you know? I mean, many think of like a modern vampire as goth, dressing in dark clothing. Maybe they're wearing like spooky makeup or maybe they like do some blood rituals. Because like if there's no blood involved in some way, are you even really a vampire? Well, Mark wasn't like that at all, but he does do the whole blood drinking thing. And then some. Well,

let's get into Mark's story, huh? Mark Vincent Tappington was born on February 9th in 1978, and he grew up on the north side of Kansas City. Now this part of town was pretty religious, but it also, I guess it wasn't the safest. The most common sounds that you would hear in this area would be church bells and police sirens. It was the kind of place where Sunday preachers would paint really vivid pictures of hell during their sermons and would say that you didn't have to go very far outside the church parking lot to experience hell. Kansas City at this time was going through a massive crime spree and nothing the cops did seemed to make a dent in lowering the crime rate. So in this neighborhood

where thousands of decent people are trying to scrape by, a lot of them were single mothers and Mark's mom, Mary White, she was one of them. And she did everything she could to try to keep Mark out of trouble and away from a life of crime and violence. Since Mark's dad just up and disappeared before Mark was even born, she turned to the church to help raise her son. She hoped that taking Mark to church every Sunday would help like teach him strength and values in a way she knew his father never would. And for a while it seemed to work. Mark stayed out of trouble and became a choir boy spending his time at the church rather than like out in the streets. So Mark is hanging with the

church and for the most part like he's a pretty good kid and things are super normal, you know? He's not a great student, but he's smart, he's articulate, and some would say he was pretty funny. He had a quick wit and a smile that paired with his quiet charm and it would just kind of like draw you in. But then, just as his mom feared, Mark started getting sucked into like hanging out with the wrong crowd and he starts getting into some drug habits. Mark was into smoking something called Danks, which is street slang for cigarettes that are soaked in embalming fluid, dried, and then smoked. Yes, embalming fluid. For those of you who don't know, embalming fluid is the mixture of chemicals that are used to preserve dead bodies. And typically the mixture contains formaldehyde, menthol, and glutaraldehyde.

Look, this stuff, it's chemicals, okay? And it keeps bodies from decaying in funeral homes or in medical labs. It's stuff that you don't want to be putting into your body while you're alive. So the reason that people would be smoking embalming fluid, I guess it would give you like, you would hallucinate. You would see stuff. Okay. I had to look it up because I was like, why is someone smoking embalming fluid? What a weird combination. Who thought of that? I've got a lot of questions about Dank alone. Okay. But that's not what the story is about. Okay, so he's smoking that and Dink wasn't

like the only drug that Mark was using. He also got into angel dust or PCP, which is a serious hallucinogen. Now, PCP is sometimes added to the embalming fluid used to make Dinks, so that could be how like maybe Mark got into it. Originally Originally PCP was used in the 1950s as an anesthetic but because it has some really serious side effects, doctors stopped using it for medical purposes. But people loved it. People loved it and they loved how it distorted sights, colors, and sounds and it just like changed your whole environment man. So Mark he's smoking danks and using PCP and it's not uncommon for him to have some run-ins with the police but at this point he hasn't really gotten himself into any serious trouble yet. That is not until March of 2001. Now this Armando guy

is everything Mark's mom wanted him to stay away from. This is the kind of guy she feared Mark would end up like by living in their neighborhood. Armando sees himself as a bit of a tough guy who believes he should live by the code of the street. But he's not actually involved with any gangs at this time, which means he's got to do something to prove himself and prove that he can roll with the big boys. In March, Armando and Mark get their hands on an assault rifle. To them, this gun was beautiful.

It's the ultimate weapon for like a tough guy on the streets. It's the kind of gun that could elevate their status in the way that they were looking for. But the only way to make that happen was to actually use it. It's the kind of gun that could elevate their status in the way that they were looking for. But the only way to make that happen was to actually use it. So Armando comes up with a plan that will get them the status that they're looking for. The plan is to pull off an armed robbery. Now, there's no particular target in mind, but Armando tells Mark that any random dude will get the job done. And that's how they find David Marshok, owner of one of the local auto dealerships, when Armando goes in to buy a car.

So Armando bought a 1984 Chevy Impala from David's dealership on March 5th, 2001. But David warned Armando that the tags weren't right. So he should leave the car parked until it gets sorted out. Then two days later, a cop pulls Armando over because the 30-day tags had been altered and legally shouldn't be on the road. So the cop ends up having his car impounded. Well, Armando is pissed that his new car is now, you know, in the impound. So on March 10th, Armando calls David to complain and make him pay to get the car towed out of the lot because he believed it was the dealership's fault that the tags were wrong. Now, because of Armando's beef with David for selling him a car with faulty tags,

Armando decides that David will be their target. Armando's plan was pretty simple. They are just gonna like walk up to David. They're gonna show him the gun and demand cash to get his car out of the impound. Armando would do the talking and Mark would like flash the rifle. I mean, that was it.

Very clean, no fuss, and that was it, period. Thank you. So on March 16th, 2001, the guys roll up to the car dealership around 2 p.m. and Armando goes in first. David is having lunch with one of his employees, but otherwise the place was empty. So Armando goes in.

He's super riled up and he starts harassing David about getting his car out of the impound lot. David tells his employee, just ignore this guy. Enjoy your lunch, you know, whatever. So Armando, he's, I guess, annoyed. He decides to walk out. Then Mark, wearing a black mask and a black coat with a hood, enters the dealership. And then something happens that's not part of the plan. For seemingly no reason at all, Mark opens fire.

The employee is able to make his escape out of the office and into the back garage area like diving under a car but David was not as lucky. He was shot inside the dealership. After about 10 minutes the employee feels safe enough to emerge from under the car and call 911 while David lies on the floor awake and conscious but dying. Meanwhile a customer from the audio store across the street heard the shots and ran outside. And he was able to witness Mark shooting David while Armando ran to get the car before the two sped off. Now using the gun was never part of the plan. So after that, Armando fled to Texas while Mark stayed in Kansas City.

Armando was eventually arrested a little while later, but refused to tell the police the shooter's identity. Now you're probably like, hey Bailey, I thought this was a story about vampires. What's going on? Well, shut up. We're getting to it right now. So Armando has left Mark in Kansas City, but Mark hasn't really like left the drug and gang life. Now here's the thing about PCP. It's a hallucinogen, right?

But it can also make people feel paranoid or even psychotic. And around this time, Mark is starting to hear voices in his head, which is also known as auditory hallucinations. And these voices are telling Mark to eat flesh and blood or he would die. Yeah, the voices would kill him. Hallucination or not, I mean, that was really scary. Now, despite Mark's religious upbringing, there didn't seem to be like a fear of God mixed in with all this. A lot of times when someone hears voices, there is a divine nature attached to that voice.

People believe they are getting these commands from God or Satan or sometimes both. Mark never claims any of that. He only says he was afraid of punishment, that he feared for his own life if they didn't do as they said. Now, as controlling as these voices were, they didn't set up any rules regarding the eating of the flesh and the drinking of the blood, when to kill or like what to do after,

who the victims were. I mean, that was up to Mark. And kind of like his first crime with Armando, Mark's approach was more of a leave it to chance and let the victim be a random target in the moment. So in March of 2001, Mark starts walking around the streets of Kansas City and as he passes by people, he kind of asks himself, what about him? What about her? But the voices never seem to be satisfied with any of these people. So Mark is searching for three weeks before he finally finds his first victim

that will hopefully get the voices to shut up, even if it's just for a little bit. Originally, Mark planned on finding a random stranger, but for some reason, he ends up settling on a friend from his neighborhood. Terry T. Green, who is 25 years old, had been a longtime friend of Mark's. They often hung out at each other's places, so it wasn't weird for Mark to come home on April 7, 2001, and find Terry hanging out on his front steps. And poor Terry.

I mean, this was a real case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mark was coming home from going on one of his hunting walks. And when Mark sees Terry, he said the voices took over. They told him to lure Terry to the basement of his house and then attack Terry with the hunting knife Mark has hidden in one of the corners of the basement. And so Mark makes up some excuse and was like, hey man, I got this thing in the basement. You just gotta see it. And Terry was like, okay, cool man. So then he lures him down into the basement and then attacks Terry. Now killing someone with a knife, I would assume is way different than killing someone with

a gun. And at this point, Mark had never killed someone with a knife before. So when he kills Terry, it's kind of this high energy thing. And Mark is just splattering the walls with poor Terry's blood. Then once Terry was lying dead on the ground, the voices gave the next command. They were telling him to drink his blood. So Mark kneels down and starts to lap up the blood, kind of like an animal. But he isn't able to finish this task the voices had given him because he hears some noises and is afraid of getting caught. And he later says that the voices tell him to get rid of the body immediately. Now Mark is kind of panicked obviously I don't know maybe because he just killed his friend and decides

that he needs to get rid of the body and fast so he puts the body in the back seat of Terry's car covers it up with a blue tarp and drives drives across the river to Kansas City, Missouri. I know this is a side note, but the fact that there's a Kansas City, Kansas, and then a Kansas City, Missouri is the most questionable thing in America. Period. Thank you. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. What is that about? Now, this next part isn't the smartest move, but remember he's probably still high on PCP. So Mark decides

that he's going to leave the car with Terry's body in it at the edge of a parking lot at a nightclub that he and Terry often went to, and then he takes a taxi home. Three days later, on April 10th, the Missouri police find Terry's body and start looking into the homicide. But lucky for Mark, they're not looking in the right spot. Now the Kansas police are also kind of like breathing a sigh of relief because this new murder was like not in their own state. Because if the body had been found in Kansas City, Kansas, rather than Kansas City, Missouri, police maybe, probably not, but maybe they would have linked it to david's death over at the car

dealership which would have like meant that they had a spree killer on their hands but i hate to give um police that much credit because we see time and time again on word of mystery makeup that the police never want to connect the dots ever. Earlier that same morning on April 10th, Mark, I guess he smoked some drugs. He doesn't remember if it was dank or PCP, but then he goes over to his best friend, Eric Phoenix's house really early in the morning. He's on drugs, so he doesn't really have an awareness of time

or like what's an acceptable hour to visit people's houses. Eric was living with his wife, his mother, and his younger stepbrother whose name is Michael Weaver. Everyone is asleep when Mark arrives. He knocks on the door, wakes up Eric's mom who answers and she's like, Mark, what are you doing here? It's so early in the morning, you know? And Mark tells her, I need to borrow a screwdriver. And she's like, okay, go look in the kitchen. And then she heads back to bed. So Mark hangs out for a little bit. He watches some TV and then goes upstairs to grab a jacket apparently. And then runs back downstairs and into the backyard grabbing a knife off the kitchen counter on his way out. Mark hangs out in the backyard for a bit and then

starts to hear the voices again. This time they gave him a deadline. Mark remembers quote I heard the voices tell me it's do or die. If I don't eat, I'm going to die within six or seven hours." So Mark's hanging out in the backyard at his buddy Eric's house when the voices give Mark this deadline. And a few minutes later, Eric's stepbrother Michael comes outside. Well, you know, Mark, he has his marching orders and he sees Michael and is thinking well Michael will have to do. So using the knife Mark took from the kitchen he stabs Michael in the back but I guess the blade was pretty long because the knife goes completely through this poor man's chest. Michael tries to get in the car and drive away from Mark but he crashes into a light pole. Mark sees this

as an opportunity to try and give the voices what they want and drink Michael's blood, but the car crash wakes up one of the neighbors who ends up calling the cops. Now it's not long before Mark can hear police sirens coming his way. Mark tries to move the car away from the scene and is able to move it like a little ways away before just abandoning it in an alley a few blocks from his house. Now the death of Michael is significant because this is Mark's official third kill. He is now classified as a serial killer. According to the rules, you have to kill three in order to be considered a serial killer. So Mark is on his way home when he spots a 16 year old named Freddie Brown.

Now Freddie looks up to Mark. He sees Mark like a, you know, a big brother. Well, poor Freddie happens to also be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The voices tell Mark that Freddie is now the new target. So Mark is like, hey Freddie, you know, want to come into my house and like smoke some wet? I had to look up what wet is. I guess wet is like dank.

But instead of it being a tobacco cigarette, it's got marijuana. And it's either dipped in fluids or laced with something else. Wet. Either way, not great. Not great. Not a great role model either. So Mark's like, hey, you want to come like smoke some wit? And because Freddy pretty much idolizes Mark, he's like, yeah. So like Terry, Mark lures Freddy down to the basement. But this time Mark switches up his method. He shoots Freddy in his back with a shotgun. Blood explodes everywhere,

but this time Mark seems to finally be free of distractions. He's finally able to drink Freddy's blood like the voices wanted him to, but this time Mark doesn't stop at the blood. The voices in his head are telling him now to consume flesh. So Mark does just that. He butchers Freddy's body, cutting off the arms and the legs before eating a small part of Freddy's leg raw. He makes Mark feel kind of sick. And instead of thinking like, maybe I feel sick because I'm eating, I don't know, a leg. He thinks that it's because the flesh is raw. So he decides to try and like

fry it and uh try it that way I guess frying the flesh was better because Mark finishes it's not funny it's just like I I know it's not it's not funny it's just probably it's just so wild it's not funny it's not funny i'm not laughing at that it's just like awkward and like what because like he fries the flesh and mark finishes the piece and drinks some of freddy's blood so yep with the voices finally satisfied at least like for the moment mark stuffs what was left of freddie in a trash bag but leaves his leftovers on the floor mark ends up leaving the basement a wreck and goes for a walk to i don't know maybe digest his meal or maybe he just wants to finally be able to go for a walk without the voices making him turn it into like a hunt. So

Mark is on a walk. He's out you know. His mom comes home like a few hours later and guess what? She goes down to the basement and she's like what the hell it's covered in blood. Now normally his mom doesn't go into the basement but she spots the trail of blood drops near the cellar. She opens the door and sees more blood on the cellar stairs. So she decides to follow them and investigate. Well, mom not only gets a huge surprise, but she also gets a bird's eye view of the crime scene from the stairs. She immediately calls the cops. So Mark's pretty sure the cops are after him

because he left a giant crime scene in his basement for his mom to find. But also he's probably, I don't know, he's probably high or at least experiencing the delayed side effects from the PCP and is like super paranoid. Anyway at around 9 30 p.m on April 10th, the same day he killed both Michael and Freddie, Mark runs into one of the women who lives in the neighborhood named Anita Washington. Anita is just getting home from the grocery store and was sitting in her driveway when Mark knocks on her window. She looks at him and sees he's pointing a gun directly at her.

He climbs in the backseat of her car and tells her to drive to Kansas City, Missouri. She does what he says and, you know, they start driving. Meanwhile, Mark just keeps saying, I'm a dead man over and over again. And at some point, Mark decides it's better if he drives. So he has her pull over. Anita, you know, being the smart woman that she is,

takes this opportunity to run away. And she does. She runs to like the nearest house. She runs up to this house and she does. She runs like the nearest house. She runs up to this house and she's like telling these people, I just had my car jacked by a guy with a gun. Like I need to call the police. Mark gives the cops a good chase for a bit, but eventually they were able to arrest him on April 12th.

So police have arrested Mark for the carjacking and they've got him in the interrogation room for hours. But no matter what they say, Mark is dead silent. He doesn't say a peep. The police are thinking to themselves like there's got to be a way to get him to talk you know. There's always one question using the right words and the right tone that will crack him and like make him open up. Well it looks like Mark is about to win this round so police are getting ready to put on their coats and go home when they hear Mark's voice. At first, they weren't sure that they actually heard Mark say anything,

but then Mark repeated the words, "'Vampirism, cannibalism.'" All right, case closed, you know? Now, originally, the cops thought that they had this guy in for a carjacking, so they were a bit taken aback, and rightfully so. I mean, they don't know what to say. So I don't know. Mark just starts talking and he starts at the beginning telling them about the

voices. And now that Mark had broken his silence, he just kept talking and talking and talking. He ended up confessing to the murder of Terry, who Missouri police thought was like an isolated incident. And he confessed to the murder of his friends Michael and Freddie. Mark goes into a super detailed and really emotional recounting of his crimes. He talked about how he drank his victim's blood and ate Freddie's flesh. The scariest part for police was Mark's kind of like nonchalant attitude when it came to picking victims. I mean to them there was like no method to his madness. The victims could have been anybody. Mark would ask himself what about him or what about her as people like passed him by

and these people were totally clueless. I mean they were barely escaping being killed and potentially eaten. Yuck. You know sometimes this is a sign up sometimes I'm like oh I would love to have like that super power where I can read people's minds but then do you really want to read people's minds? Do you really want to read people's minds? One of the weird things was that once Mark started talking he was just on a roll. Not only did he tell them everything but he would later take them to where he dumped the keys to Michael's car, as well as where he dumped the keys to Terry's car. So the question on the police's mind was, what kept Mark quiet for so long? Detectives think that maybe it could have been shame. Maybe Mark had some remorse for what he did. So Mark is in jail and bail is set for

$2 million dollars but investigators are starting to realize there's more to all these murders than meets the eye. Mark undergoes a series of psychological and psychiatric tests but it turns out Mark has been suffering from schizophrenia since he was 16 and it had only gotten worse as he's gotten older. Plus, adding PCP to the mix did not help. It turned out that his mother also had schizophrenia. Bummer. So he probably didn't even realize it, huh? So between the drug use, his history, and his family history of mental illness, the defense claimed that Mark was incapable of the required criminal intent to commit the charged offenses. So Mark pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease. Over the next three years, the trial kind of

starts and stops based on Mark's periods of competency. Ultimately, Mark is deemed competent to stand trial and it started in July of 2004. His first trial was for the death of Terry, Michael and Freddie, as well as the carjacking. He would later be tried separately for the death of David. During his first trial, the prosecution plays Mark's hour long confession tape for the jury, where Mark confessed to stabbing Michael Weaver to death,

leaving Terry Green's body in his car in Missouri and shooting Freddie Brown before dismembering his body and eating a small piece of his leg. Could you imagine sitting um as a jury member and like you were listening to someone describe eating a person's leg? Yeah me neither. Me neither. During this interview tape the jury also hears Mark ask if he could chomp on the cop's leg. So just wasn't a good look, wasn't really gonna help his case much. So prosecutors kind of doubt the story about the voices,

even though the doctors say he suffers severe mental illness, since it seems to them that Mark only heard the voices when he was high on PCP. But that fact aside, prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. Instead, they hoped that maybe Mark would be sentenced to life in a mental hospital

where he could get help and treatment. After an hour of deliberation, the jury would find Mark guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and the count of kidnapping and aggravated burglary. He was sentenced to three consecutive life terms for the murders, 79 months for the kidnapping, and 32 months for the aggravated burglary. On December 10, 2004, Mark was convicted of attempted aggravated robbery and for the murder of David at his auto dealership in March of 2001. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Basically, this guy's never getting out of jail. He's never getting out of jail. He was convicted of everything. During this time, Mark also began taking medication for his schizophrenia. So I guess the bright side is like, hey, he's in prison, but at least like the voices are quiet. There's something positive for him to think about. I don't know.

I don't know why I'm trying to find a bright side for this murderer, but, you know, I don't know. So, in addition to the families of the victims being devastated by the damage Mark did, neighbors kind of had a weird reaction to Mark and his crimes. They initially felt that Mark wanted to go out like a legend. That he wanted to be like Jeffrey Dahmer, you know, a serial killer known for eating his victims. During Mark's sentencing for the three murders, the judge told Mark, quote, you are the closest thing to a homicide time bomb there is, end quote. And I think many could agree there because, um, between his untreated schizophrenia and his drug

use, you know, it was like fueling these voices in his head. Who knows how many more people Mark would have killed if he hadn't been caught. He would have been caught eventually. He was messy, right? Thank God he got caught. And that, my friends, is a story about the Kansas City vampire. Mark Sappington will be locked up for the rest of his life and pay for his crimes. I mean, I don't know what else there is to say. Don't do drugs. Shit. These poor people died for no damn reason, right? Jeez. I'd love to know your thoughts. Do you have any? What do you say? I don't know. Well, thanks for hanging out with me today.

I hope you have a good rest of your day. You be safe out there, please. You make good choices. And I'll be seeing you guys later. Goodbye.