Woman sentenced in blood-drinking sex case

The Tempe woman who stabbed her lover to drink his blood the night before Valentine’s Day was sentenced to 10 years in prison Tuesday.

Tiffany Sutton, 24, attempted to show her remorse to Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Udall during the hearing in Mesa.

“I’m really sorry that all this went on,” Sutton told the judge. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”

Sutton pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault on Aug. 24 following her Feb. 13 arrest by Tempe police.

In one incident, she and the victim, 46-year-old Robert McDaniel, were high on drugs and drunk when he agreed to be tied up during sex, a police report states.

McDaniel told police he became scared and asked Sutton to untie him when she attacked him with a knife. Instead, she sliced his leg, punctured his arm, shoulder and back, and cut his neck and stomach, court records show. When he escaped, she chased him with a pickax.

Eventually a friend came to McDaniel’s assistance and called 911. Officers reported that Sutton said McDaniel signed a disclaimer promising “he wouldn’t prosecute when the sex got crazy.”

Sutton’s second aggravated assault conviction stemmed from a Feb. 5 incident in which she resisted arrest for trespassing at a west Mesa trailer park. She dug her fingernails into the hand of a police officer, drawing blood and leaving cuts, the police report states.

Sutton received a one-year prison sentence for the second charge, which will run concurrently with the 10-year sentence she received for the Feb. 13 incident.

On Tuesday morning, Udall said Sutton committed the crime in an especially heinous manner with a deadly weapon and didn’t attempt to obtain medical help for the victim afterward.

Sutton’s mother, who declined to give her name, and Sutton’s attorney, Elizabeth Houck, spoke on Sutton’s behalf.

“She cannot believe that she did this,” Houck said.

She noted that Sutton struggles with borderline personality disorder, a condition characterized by extreme instability, impulsive behavior and fear of abandonment.

She said Sutton has taken responsibility for her actions and is back on medication. Sutton’s mother explained that her daughter is “totally different” when she’s on her medications.

Houck submitted a memo to the court stating that Sutton suffered physical and sexual abuse from ages 3 to 13, and she has had mental health problems since she was 14.

Sutton improved with mental health counseling and medication up until her insurance ended six months before her February arrests, Houck wrote.

According to prison health records, Sutton thought she was a vampire for the first several weeks she was in jail, Houck wrote.