SANTA CRUZ — A prosecutor who tried--but failed--to persuade a jury
that a murder defendant believed herself to be a vampire said he has
no regrets over the unusual trial strategy.
Assistant Dist. Atty. George Kovacevich had sought a first-degree
murder conviction against Deborah Finch, 20. But Finch was convicted
only of assault with a deadly weapon in the stabbing death of her
neighbor.
The prosecutor called a former roommate of Finch who testified that
the defendant admitted drinking the victim's blood. A juror who wished
to remain anonymous said after the trial that the panel "didn't buy
into" the vampire strategy.
"I thought, hey, if it was going to fly anywhere, it would fly in
Santa Cruz," Kovacevich said,
Woman Turned Vampire And Drank Her Victim's
Blood, Prosecutors Say
By Paul Rogers - Seattle Times.com
June 5, 1992
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - A routine murder trial in Santa Cruz has
turned into a modern-day Dracula drama as prosecutors accuse a
20-year-old woman of being a vampire who killed a neighbor and drank
his blood as part of a bizarre fantasy.
Deborah Jean Finch, a former roller-coaster operator at the Beach
Boardwalk amusement park, is charged with first-degree murder.
During opening statements in Santa Cruz County Superior Court
Wednesday, prosecutors said they will prove that Finch stabbed
22-year-old Brandon McMichaels 27 times in the neck and chest at his
apartment the night of April 25, 1991.
Detectives originally reported that the killing was carried out as
a suicide pact after a day of drunken revelry, when McMichaels, a
mentally unstable heavy drinker, had begged Finch to stab him.
Police found her bloody fingerprint on the wall of her apartment.
Finch confessed to the suicide deal during taped interviews with
police last year.
But as the trial opened, Assistant District Attorney George
Kovacevich wove a much more sinister tale.
Kovacevich said the slaying was the climax of Finch's two-year
obsession with vampires.
Finch's defense attorney, Bill Minkner, angrily derided the vampire
accusations as a desperate search by prosecutors for a motive other
than suicide.
"This is a hoax," Minkner said. "They've got nothing."
Finch joked about vampires often, Minkner said, after high-school
friends gave her the nickname because she had touched a dead cat in
the road on a dare.
The trial is expected to last up to five weeks.
A key witness - and the source of the vampire accusations - is
Finch's former roommate, Heather Maxwell, 18, who will testify for the
prosecution.
Maxwell and Finch met while working at a fast-food restaurant in
Vail, Colo. They drove to Santa Cruz in early 1991.
Maxwell, an admitted Satan worshiper, originally was arrested as a
possible accessory to the crime, but was released days later.
When she returned to Santa Cruz from New Mexico for the trial, she
told district attorney's investigator Dennis Clark for the first time
that Finch had told her she drank McMichaels' blood.
Finch's father, Clifton Finch, called the vampire charges
"outrageous." He described his daughter as a regular worshiper at the
local Catholic church in Colorado who fell in with the wrong crowd
after he and his wife divorced.
"All this isn't consistent with the Debbie I lived with for 17
years," he said. "She's a loving, caring person."
