Marshfield ‘vampire killer’ loses suit against Parole Board – The Patriot Ledger

The state supreme court has ruled against a 59-year-old man who killed his grandmother in Marshfield in 1980.

The Parole Board in 2015 denied James Riva's third request for parole, saying he continues to pose a threat to the public despite his assurances that his mental illness and delusions are under control.

Riva's parole application had been opposed by many of his own family members, the Plymouth County district attorney's office and Marshfield Police Chief Phillip Tavares.

In a decision released Thursday, the Supreme Judicial Court sided with a judge who rejected Riva's argument that the Parole Board violated his constitutional rights.

Riva, who went by "Jimmy," was 23 and tormented by delusions about a society of vampires when he shot his 74-year-old grandmother, Carmen Lopez, with gold-painted bullets and tried to suck blood from her wounds before dousing her body with dry gas and lighting it aflame. He testified in October that powerful hallucinations led him to believe that vampires were stealing his blood and that he could only stop it by joining them and drinking blood himself.

Tavares said Riva had terrorized the town even before the murder, cutting the heads off cats and sneaking into barns to drink blood from cows and horses. Several months before his grandmother's murder, Riva broke into a local shop and stole a gun and bullets that he would later paint gold, believing it was the only way to kill vampires.

Riva, who has now spent 36 years behind bars, told the Parole Board he has been taking medication to control his mental illness and has not had any symptoms since 1999.

But Riva's time behind bars also includes a violent attack on a correctional officer in 1990 and threatening messages sent to his mother as recently as 2009, a decade after he said he stopped experiencing symptoms of mental illness, according to the parole board decision. Riva has said he was abused by both his parents but singled out his mother, who he said performed "weird witch's rituals" on him that included making him drink "witch's brew." His family disputes those claims.

At his parole hearing three years ago, Riva testified that he had resolved his anger toward his mother in therapy after realizing that it had been misguided. But members of his family told the board that Riva continues to write threatening messages directed toward his mother on a website that accepts submissions from inmates.

Some members of Riva's extended family spoke in favor his release, including a woman who was married to his cousin for 15 years. The woman testified that she had never heard of Riva having any desire to hurt his grandmother and said he had only expressed remorse since her murder.

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Marshfield 'vampire killer' loses suit against Parole Board - The Patriot Ledger

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