1973 The Night Strangler with Darren McGavin ABC Movie of the Week

When I was a kid, I didn't even know there was a follow up to 1972's The Night Stalker...I watched the Kolchak TV show in my youth but, did not know about this movie. Imagine my surprise when I discovered 1973's The Night Strangler...The Night Strangler, TV Movie, January 16, 1973.
A reporter hunts down a 144-year old alchemist who is killing women for their blood.
Director Dan Curtis
Writers Richard Matheson, Jeffrey Grant Rice
Stars Darren McGavin, Jo Ann Pflug, Simon Oakland
After newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak and his managing editor Tony Vincenzo parted company on less than good terms in Las Vegas due to Kolchak's incredulous and thus unpublishable story of a vampire killer, they are reunited in their independently chosen new home base of Seattle, Vincenzo, somewhat against his better judgment, offering Kolchak a job on his paper, the Daily Chronicle, in knowing that Kolchak is dogged at getting the story and that the vampire story was probably true. The first story Vincenzo assigns Kolchak is the murder of belly dancer Ethel Parker in the Pioneer Square neighborhood. Her murder is the first in what ends up being a series of murders in the same neighborhood, all of young women. In discovering some similarities between the murders and some historical information seemingly tying them back to murders over the past century, Kolchak believes that the perpetrator is a living corpse who requires the blood of young women to stay alive. While this story again raises the ire in Vincenzo who is at least used to it with Kolchak, it also raises the ire with Vincenzo's boss, publisher Llewellyn Crossbinder, and Police Chief Roscoe Schubert who is leading the investigation into the murders. Needing to get irrefutable evidence as to his belief, Kolchak enlists the help of college student Louise Harper, one of Parker's belly dancing colleagues, they putting her in potential harm's way as a decoy i.e. the killer's next victim.—Huggo