The Mărotinu de Sus strigoi exhumation: Petre Toma's heart burned at a crossroads

Mărotinu de Sus is a village of about 300 people in Celaru commune, Dolj County, in Oltenia near Craiova. Petre Toma was 76, a former schoolteacher, said to drink heavily and to have a strong temper. He died on 26 December 2003. He was buried on New Year's Day 2004.

Then the family began to weaken. Mirela Marinescu, the wife of Toma's nephew Costel, said: "One night I saw him in my room, and in the morning I was too weak to get up." She had chest pain, and her health grew worse every day. She said he visited her at night and fed on her heart. Objects moved by themselves, and there were loud noises and frightening voices.

Relatives felt tired and weak, as if they had no blood left. Toma's sister, Flora Marinescu, said everyone was dying, and that the whole family had seen him in the same dream. One villager said they saw Toma leave his house before dawn, a flock of crows flying over his head. Mircea Mitrică, a shepherd, said the dead man came to Mirela in the form of a bird or animal, to drag her to the grave.

Flora's husband, Gheorghe Marinescu, made the call. "I decided to unbury him," he said. Six men drank to find their courage. On the first night, Gheorghe was too drunk to use the shovel. The next night, shortly before midnight, they reached the grave.

"His arms were not on his chest as we had left them, but at his sides," Marinescu said. "His head was turned to one side, and his lips were stained with dried blood." The chest was opened with a scythe blade. Mitrică said he cut four ribs.

The heart, they said, was full of fresh blood. They left garlic in the grave. The heart went on a pitchfork to a crossroads, where the sick relatives waited, and it was burned there. The ash was mixed with water, and they drank it. Mirela said he never came back.

Two days later, Toma's daughter, Floarea Cotoran, went to the police. A second exhumation and an autopsy in Craiova confirmed the heart had been removed. Blood, garlic and the scythe blade lay in the grave. Prosecutor Grigorie Cristian called it desecration of graves. On 21 February 2004, Evenimentul Zilei broke the story. UPI carried it abroad days later.

A court in Craiova convicted all six men: Gheorghe Marinescu, Mircea Mitrică, Stelică Popa, Ion Ionescu, Constantin Florea and Oprea Pascu. Each received six months. Some reports say the sentences were suspended. Others say the men were jailed. "We had no idea we were committing a crime," Marinescu said.

In 2008, William C. Rodriguez III of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's Office presented "Death of a Vampire?", a forensic paper on a case of exhumation and mutilation of a corpse in rural Romania. He argued that vampire belief comes from misreading decomposition. Bloody fluid purged from the mouth and nose can look like a recent feeding. Stella Celăreanu, a former mayor, saw something else: revenge against a dead man none of the participants had got on with.

Police said there had been up to 20 vampire "executions" in neighbouring villages in recent years. Nearby Amărăștii de Jos had its own strigoi stories. In 2015, the PBS series Secrets of the Dead returned to the case, and Mitrică gave his account publicly for the first time. In Mărotinu de Sus, a year after the ritual, Anișoara Constantin offered her verdict: "it must have worked."