There are certain headlines that just naturally draw the eye.
And, ao it was on November 6, 1892 in newspapers across the United States when readers saw a story with the following heading:
"HUMAN VAMPIRE
Horrible Practices of a Deranged Portuguese Sailor"
Though the story itself described the more-or-less routine transfer of a prisoner from the Ohio Penitentiary to the National Asylum at Washington, D.C. (now know as St. Elizabeths Hospital), it also mentioned that the "deranged" inmate "fought like a tiger" when federal marshals came to take him (he had apparently thought he was going to be hanged). Six guards were needed to hold him down long enough to be dressed and to secure him for the transfer.
But it was the bizarre backstory about this particular prisoner that really accounted for the sensational headline. According to the reporter who wrote the story, the convicted man, who was only known by the name "James Brown", had been convicted of two gruesome vampire-like murders on a ship, twenty-five years earlier.
Described as a Portuguese sailor (though later accounts disputed this), Brown had been part of the crew of a fishing vessel sailing out of Boston in 1867. During course of the trip, a crewman named James Foster went missing. While nobody had any idea about what had happened to Foster, the disappearance of a second crewman not long afterward led to the ship's captain ordering a shipwide search. The bodies of both crewmen were found in the ship's hold though accounts seem to differ at this point concerning what happened next. According to the most lurid account, Brown was actually "caught in the act" of sucking the blood out of one of the bodies. A second account stated that Brown was caught trying to move the bodies to another part of the hold. Whichever account you believe, there was no disputing the physical injuries were found on both bodies, not to mention reports that they had been drained of blood.
Following his arrest by the crew, Brown was taken back to Boston where he was promptly convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged in October, 1866. Though the date of the hanging had been set for March 15 of the following year, an appeal to then-President Andrew Johnson resulting in Brown's sentence being commuted to life imprisonment. Sent to the penitentiary in Charleston, Massachusetts, Brown became well known for his peculiar and, at times alarming, behaviour. Along with being paranoid about anyone who tried entering his cell, he was also vigilant about his few possessions, especially a Latin book which he used to store important documents. This included the commutation order signed by the President and Secretary of State William Seward which Brown guarded zealously at all times.
Even among hardened convicts, Brown apparently stood out. Described as a "small, dark-skinned man", people who interacted with him also reported that "when enraged, his eyes shine out like coals of fire." Along with his physical 
Due to questions about Brown's sanity, he was sent to the National Asylum in Washington, D.C. for a psychiatric examination. Whether because he wasn't showing severe enough symptoms or simply because they didn't want to have to deal with him, the doctors in Washington soon declared him sane and he was returned to the Charleston penitentiary. As for Brown, he kept making repeated complaints about the treatment he was receiving there. This included sending letters to the governor though all that he got in reply were polite form letters which he included with his other "legal documents." In 1889, Brown was abruptly transferred to Ohio Penitentiary along with many other prisoners. Though he was originally leery of the new prison, he would later describe it as a "paradise" compared to some of the other prisons where he had been housed. His behaviour improved and he was even allowed to work outside the prison walls for a time. Still, Brown's mental state deteriorated soon enough and he was eventually placed in restraints after stabbing one guard with a fork and trying to stab several others.
During his more lucid periods, Brown continued to work on his release and even wrote letters to then-President Grover Cleveland in which he tried to set the record straight about his original conviction. It likely didn't help that he rarely stuck to one story for long and was also prone to bizarre psychotic episodes. At different times, he would claim to be the president of the New York Central Railroad and to be fabulously rich. This included offering billions of dollars to have certain of his enemies brought to justice and $150 a day to have servants provide his meals (nobody took him up on this). He also sent out daily requests for special meals including one memorable note that proclaimed him to be "Thomas Azzote James Brown, warden of the Ohio penitentiary" and which called for "one barrel of potatoes, one barrel of onions, and one barrel of apples." Despite his odd requests, there were times when he refused to eat food for days at a time after insisting that a former sweetheart of his, Mary Carey, had touched his food.
When not writing or otherwise acting out, Brown often spent much of his time scrubbing the floor of his cell with a piece of pumice stone. He also neglected his personal hygiene, including allowing his nails to grow "like talons" and refusing to be shaved. But the story of James Brown, vampire, largely peters out after his transfer.
Still, his story wasn't completely forgotten. In his 1932 book, Wild Talents, Charles Fort wrote about the original shipboard murders for which Brown was convicted though his book failed to shed any light on his eventual fate. Still, despite the quiet fame Fort's book brought to James Brown's case, the strange lack of publicity surrounding the supposed double murder for which he had been originally convicted seems strange. Certainly I was never able to find the original news story surrounding his conviction in 1869, something that seems unbelievable considering the bizarre details that were related decades later.
So, did the vampire murders actually take place? And how accurate were the later news stories about James Brown's mental state and the reason he was transferred to the National Asylum? These questions might have gone unanswered if Robert Schneck hadn't explored the actual history of Brown's case in his 2005 book, The President's Vampire. Not only did Schneck examine many of the original court documents surrounding Brown's trial and conviction but he also went into the actual case files on Brown that are still on record.
What he learned was that there was only one actual murder on board the ship and, if the eyewitness accounts are to be believed, basically involved Brown retaliating against the victim, James Foster,who made a racial slur. No vampirism was involved, just a knife which Brown used to stab Foster in the chest. One eyewitness didn't even realize that Foster had been stabbed until he saw the blood. As for the rest, it was simply a matter of what usually usually happened in cases of African-Americans killing victims who happened to be white. It only took a jury seventy-five minutes to sentence him to death.
About the only remarkable thing about the case was that President Johnson commuted the death sentence citing "extenuating circumstances." Certainly there's nothing surprising about the lack of publicity surrounding Brown's trial or his escaping the death penalty. Though the rest of his story seems factual enough, there is still the question of how a relatively routine maritime murder was transformed into a lurid tale of high seas vampirism. Though Shneck suggested that the story may have simply sprung out of the imagination of the reporter who wrote the story, possibly to spice up a slow news day, he did explore Brown's file at the Washington hospital where he had been sent in 1892.
Brown's file included the many letter he wrote to President Grover Cleveland in which he pleaded to be released. He also outlined the various mistakes that had been made at his original trial as well as conditions at the hospital where he was being kept. Brown also wrote numerous letters to his treating physician, Dr. William Godding complaining of the physical abuse he had received from the attendants (which was likely true enough considering he was hardly the only one to report abuse). And, aside from a brief note in his file indicating that he died in 1895 and buried in the hospital cemetery, that was pretty much it for James Brown.
As how the original vampire story even got started and whether or not he was ever the serial killer later stories made him out to be seem impossible to determine today. Still, there was an unusual amount of vampire hysteria during the early 1880s, including the notorious Mercy Brown case which occurred at around the same time. Could that have played a role in the how James Brown's story was reported? At this point, it's anybody's guess.
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