Episode Details

In November 1996, a group of teenagers from Murray, Kentucky, headed south toward Florida with plans to eventually make their way to New Orleans. They called themselves a Vampire Clan, drank one another’s blood, embraced vampire mythology, and followed their charismatic teenage leader, Roderick “Rod” Ferrell.

Ferrell was only 16 years old.

He called himself Vesago and had become deeply immersed in vampire role-playing and the identity he had created around it. Among the teenagers connected to the group was Heather Wendorf, a friend of Ferrell’s who wanted to leave her home in Eustis, Florida.

Then, on November 25, 1996, Heather’s parents were found murdered.

Richard Wendorf and Naoma Ruth Queen had been beaten to death inside their home. Ferrell and fellow teenager Howard Scott Anderson had entered through the garage, and Ferrell later admitted killing the couple with a crowbar. Heather and the other girls traveling with the group were not at the house when the murders occurred.

The teenagers fled Florida, setting off a multistate manhunt. Their run ended in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after a phone call made by one of the group members helped authorities locate them.

In 1998, Ferrell pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, along with armed burglary and armed robbery. He was sentenced to death, making him one of the youngest people on Florida’s death row at the time.

But because Ferrell had been only 16 when he committed the murders, the Florida Supreme Court overturned his death sentences in 2000 and reduced them to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

The murders became known as the Vampire Murders, a case where teenage rebellion, fantasy, troubled family lives, and an obsession with vampirism collided with very real violence.

This is the true crime story of Rod Ferrell and the Vampire Clan—a 16-year-old who called himself a centuries-old vampire, a group of teenagers searching for a new life, and the brutal murders of Richard Wendorf and Naoma Queen that turned teenage fantasy into a nightmare.

Thank you to special guest: Author, Robyn Peterman.  For more on Robyn and her books on vampires and more hilarious paranormal adventures, go to RobynPeterman.com

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