I trust the Onion baby dumpster article is still in the archives,
unlike the one about the American People being judged unfit to
govern.
Paul Barber wrote a great book on dragons, vampires, and other
mythological creatures. It turns out that many of the classical
signs of vampirism: blood pooled around the mouth, found dead in
daylight near running water, etc. are merely symptoms of either just
plain being dead or of poor burial. If you're going to pick a
scapegoat in a small community, a dead person isn't very likely to
pursue justice.
According to the LAPD forensics department, if you wish to stash a
body in a lake or something, it generally takes a bit more weight
than you'd naively think. When a body gets to decomposing, it often
becomes bouyant enough to get called to the attention of the LAPD,
despite an initially suitable set of cement overshoes. The remedy
for this is the stake through the heart -- it doesn't really have to
be through the heart, simply puncturing the abdominal cavity should
suffice to keep your corpse from popping up in embarrassing
circumstances. If you've waited a bit too long to do the puncturing
(such as after it's come back up once already), you may even get a
"groan" from the body as you do so.
Be sure to have your friends around for the groaning killed vampire
-- but make sure they aren't carrying torches in a small enclosed
space, such as a fancy tomb. That's a good way to discover that
poorly prepared dead people (or their stock and retainers) can be
inflammable as well as bouyant, although we'd tend to blame that on
dragons rather than vampires.
-Dave