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The Vampire Murders

November 3, 2025

On this episode, Garrett and Payton dive into the case of Rod Ferrel, a teen who was convinced he was a vampire.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband.

I'm Payton Moreland.
And I'm Garrett Moreland.
And he's the husband.
And I'm the husband.

Quick, before we get into the episode, I have a question to ask everybody listening. Have you ever woken up in a bad mood and then gone to work in a horrible mood?

Okay—anyways—because no, don't do this. Don't do this.

Last week—don’t do this—last episode, I was in a horrible mood. Garrett gave me a hug before we started recording. He was like, “It’s okay. We’re going to get through this. We can do this.” Like, I just woke up in a bad mood. I was having a bad day.

We recorded the episode, uploaded it, just to read a whole bunch of comments saying that I am a very mean person to Garrett and that my energy is off and I’m a horrible person.

And so, this is my formal apology to everyone who picked up on my bad mood last week. I just simply was in a bad mood, that’s all. No conspiracies here.

All right.
Thank you, baby. Thank you very much.
You’re welcome.

Yeah, I don’t know. I’m just always happy, you know.
Oh my gosh.
Just kidding. Um, I don’t know. Do you want me to say anything about that?

I ain’t got much to say about it. I mean, you can say—my favorite comment was—we were just doing our thing.

They said Garrett’s walking on eggshells.
Yeah. I’m not, I promise.

I don’t think—Garrett stomps on eggshells.
Yeah. Yeah, I like that.
I like it too.

He is so grounded and confident, you would never ever walk on eggshells around someone. And it’s actually admirable.
Thanks, baby. I appreciate that.

As crazy as I look right now on YouTube, I appreciate that.
At least they’ll just call you crazy, not mean to me.

Well, Payton’s not mean. Just been a busy month for us. We love you guys. Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting us.

If you’re watching on YouTube, I’m sorry I look insane. Honestly, we kind of woke up and came down to record. I’ve been sick for like a week and a half, so I’m just still congested and stuff.

And I was like, I’m not going to take a shower and get ready. My hair can look crazy. I’m going to show off my hair transplant—I got some hair going—and here we are recording.

Again, thank you for being here. We hope you all had a great Halloween.

If you did something—if not—Payton and I didn’t really do anything. We kind of just sat at home. We passed out some candy. We hung out.

Payton dressed up.
Yeah, that was our Halloween, huh, baby?
Yeah, it was fun actually.

It was lowkey, but honestly, the vibes were it. Like, it was fun. It was good. It was a good time.

We got our morning coffee, we got our morning drinks, we are here to tell you guys a good case.

And on that note, hopping into my ten seconds—I have nothing because I’ve been sick. And if one of you out there is like, “Yeah, you’re always sick,” you know what? You can shove it. Okay? Shove it.

Do you have IBS?
No.
All right then, I don’t want to hear it.

I always see these TikToks and people are like, “Oh, that one friend with stomach issues.” You don’t understand. You do not know what it’s like to have IBS. I just deal with it. And I’m not gonna lie—I’m pretty good at dealing with it.
Huh.
Yeah.
Yeah, you heard it here first, folks.

Anyways, let’s hop into today’s case.

Oh, we got Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up—we got the holidays coming up.
Sure do.

So, for everyone celebrating holidays, it’s a good time of year. We’re probably going to do—as it gets closer, usually around Thanksgiving and Christmas every year—we kind of pick a couple families and we help them with the holidays.

So, stay tuned for that. We’re going to be doing that—just submit a family like we did last year.
Yeah.

So, we’ll give you more updates on that. If you’re new here, we’ll give an update soon on that.

Other than that, let’s hop into today’s case.

Our sources for this episode are mynews13.com, hauntedhistory.com, courttv.com, sacrosanctum.org, horrorobsessive.com, w.com, oxygen.com, newyorktimes.com, wkms.org, and Dudley Cult Season 1.

Now, there is nothing wrong with looking for a little magic and fantasy in the world, especially when the news nowadays feels so dark. We all want to believe that there’s something out there that can fix everything with the wave of a wand or the snap of a finger—or at least something that can offer us a temporary escape from reality.

I think that’s why so many of us love Halloween. It’s the one time a year where we can become someone other than ourselves—and it’s accepted.
Yeah.

We can exist in a world that feels different from the one we live in every day.

You know, I think that’s why—sorry to interrupt—I think that’s why a lot of people also do, what are those called, like the Renaissance fairs? But there’s a name for it. Not a Renaissance fair.
Cosplay.
No, no, no. There’s an actual name for it. I don’t know why—
Yes.
LARPing.
Yes.

It’s just kind of nice to escape the world for a second.

Just kind of… I think it’s no different than watching a sci-fi movie, an action movie, a TV show, or playing video games. You can kind of just escape.

Anyways, everyone needs that. Honestly, it’s healthy to have one foot in reality—being aware of what’s going on, being a responsible citizen and adult—but at the same time, for everyone’s survival and mental health, you have to have those things to escape into.

And on Halloween, at least for one day, we can pretend that magic and the supernatural exist.

But for some people, Halloween doesn’t end when spooky season is over. For some, the fantasy world is a place they choose to live in every single day. And when the lines between fantasy and reality start to blur, it can have dangerous repercussions—especially when the ones playing pretend don’t think there will be any consequences for their actions.

So, let me start today’s story by introducing you to Rick Wendorf and Naom Ruth Queen, or Ruth as she went by.

In 1996, Ruth was a stay-at-home mom living in Eustace, Florida, with her life partner Rick. The two had met years earlier after Ruth separated from her first husband, with whom she had two daughters.

Both Rick and Ruth were working at a metal and plastic factory when they were first introduced, and they fell in love. That’s when Ruth got pregnant with Rick’s baby—adding a third daughter to the now blended family, a little girl they would call Jennifer.

While Rick and Ruth never got married, they decided to move in together. After Rick climbed the corporate ladder at the factory, they decided they were making enough money for Ruth to be a stay-at-home mom for their new daughter.

They bought five acres of property in Eustace and built their dream home together. Then, in 1981, they welcomed another little girl to their family, whom they named Heather.

By many accounts, this family seemed really happy. They took frequent vacations to Disney World, went camping together, the girls took music lessons, and Ruth and Rick were basically saving for their daughters’ futures.

Okay, sounds like a pretty fun life—not gonna lie.

But the two youngest daughters, Jennifer and Heather, grew up to be very different people, and Ruth and Rick had a hard time navigating that—how to parent these two girls differently because they were so different.

Jennifer kind of took the popular cheerleader route. She was runner-up for the title of Miss Eustace, smart and studious, with a scholarship to attend Florida State University in the fall. Meanwhile, Heather was a little more introverted. She was artistic and alternative, with an interest in the supernatural and the occult—which, before the year 2000, was a pretty big deal.

She wanted nothing to do with beauty pageants or sports. But Heather and Jennifer seemed mostly okay with being two different people. There didn’t appear to be much animosity or jealousy between them.

Still, there were some things about both girls’ behavior that didn’t work for their parents.

By her junior year, seventeen-year-old Jennifer—the beauty queen—had started cutting classes because she’d begun seeing a twenty-one-year-old boy named Tony. Jennifer, who worked at a supermarket with Tony, started lying to her parents about her whereabouts. Her parents tried to keep her from seeing him, this much older boy.

I mean, this is pretty typical teenage behavior.

That was until Tony crashed and totaled Jennifer’s car.

That’s when Ruth and Rick really stepped up their monitoring of their daughters. Ruth even took a part-time job at Eustace High School just so she could be there to keep an eye on Heather and Jennifer, because it was around this time that Heather also started acting out in her own ways.

It started off small. She began changing her style. She put dead flowers in vases around her room, an inverted cross hanging on her bedroom wall. Then her drawings and art got darker. She was starting to attract the attention of other teachers and students—and not in a good way.

Heather actually strung up a Barbie doll with a noose, tied it to her school backpack, and walked around school with it for everyone to see.

What is up?

According to her sister, Jennifer, she also walked in on Heather harming herself around this time.

Okay, sorry. Keep going.

So the two sisters were kind of just, you know, struggling and acting out in their own ways.
Yeah. I mean, it’s sad.

It was then that Ruth and Rick—the parents—were planning on sitting their girls down to have a serious talk about the future.

But unfortunately, they never got the chance.

On the night of November 25th, 1996—which also was the day I was born, by the way.
That is true.

November 25th, 1996.

Seventeen-year-old Jennifer comes home in the new car her parents got for her—because her older boyfriend had totaled hers. It’s a little after 10:00 p.m., which is past her curfew. And since she knows she’s broken the rules, she tries to sneak into the house, being extra quiet.

That’s when she sees her dad, Rick, lying there on the couch. The TV is still on. She’s like, “Okay, good, he’s asleep. I’m just going to sneak right by him.”

But when she tiptoes into the kitchen to grab a glass of water, she notices something terrifying. There’s blood everywhere.

She’s kept the lights off because she’s trying to be sneaky.
No way. Rick’s dead on the couch?

At this point, she’s like, I’ve got to flip this light on. So she switches the light on and sees the blood has actually come from her mother, Ruth, who is lying face-up on the kitchen floor. She looks over and notices her dad has also been stabbed to death on the couch.

At this point, she goes to look for her sister, Heather—the only remaining member of the family. She can’t find Heather anywhere in the house. So Jennifer dials 911.

I don’t—okay, I already have some thoughts on this, but I’m going to let you keep going.

She tells the operator, “I think my mother and father have been murdered, and my fifteen-year-old sister, Heather, is missing.”

I’m not going to say much, but I think my first instinct is Heather might be involved. That’s all I’m going to say for now.

Police arrive at the crime scene and find forty-nine-year-old Rick has been beaten to death.
Oh my god.

Chances are he never even saw his attacker coming. It looks like, from the one pool of blood on the couch, he was sound asleep when whoever murdered him delivered the fatal blows. Later, an autopsy finds he had twenty-two wounds in total.

Okay, I take back my statement about Heather being involved—because it was a beating.
Yeah, because it was a beating. It just doesn’t seem possible or plausible to me.

Meanwhile, fifty-four-year-old Ruth looks like she had been trying to defend herself from the attacker. Her hands are above her face. It appears she was beaten so badly there are actually pieces of her skull that landed in the next room. An autopsy finds she has twenty-three wounds in total—sixteen of them on her head.

At first, this does appear to police to be a robbery gone wrong. Some jewelry is missing, a credit card is gone, and so is the family’s blue Ford Explorer.

They collect DNA from under Ruth’s fingernails, since it’s clear she fought back. There’s also a bloody shoe print in the home for police to examine as evidence.

What’s interesting, though, as police investigate this double murder and possible kidnapping, they find a note from the missing daughter, Heather. The note is basically a goodbye to her parents, indicating that she was running away.

Okay.

But even more shocking is that on the right side of Rick’s chest, there’s a burn that looks deliberately made—in the shape of the letter “V.”

When police speak with Jennifer, she tells them that whatever happened to her parents, she now believes—after sitting with the scene a little—that her sister or her sister’s friends were likely involved.

Okay, never mind.

She’s like, I’m not sure Heather did it on her own. She might have even been forced. It’s not like I feel she wanted to hurt our parents, but this is just kind of what I’m starting to feel.

Jennifer points to one person in particular that Heather hung out with who always seemed to be bad news.

Fifteen years old, correct?
Yes.

So, the person Jennifer suspects is a friend of Heather’s who used to live in Eustace but had since moved back to his hometown in Kentucky—someone who definitely lived in a world of fantasy and had seemingly been slowly roping Heather into it as well.

He was a sixteen-year-old kid named Rod Ferrell.

Rod was born and raised in a small town called Murray, Kentucky. His mother, Sondra Gibson, was only seventeen when she had Rod, and his father, Rick—not the same Rick who was murdered—was also a teenager when they got pregnant.

While the two got married a few days after Rod was born, they split up a few weeks later. So Rod and Sondra, mother and son, moved in with her parents—which was a very strict Christian home.

Sondra obviously didn’t want to move in with her parents. She felt out of place there because she’d just had a baby as a teenager. But she worked hard to get herself and Rod out from under her parents’ roof so they could live their own lives.

Sondra later claimed her parents were the “mentally and emotionally abusive” type who made her existence a living hell.

So, as a result, Sondra rebelled in a lot of ways, which included turning to sex work and exotic dancing as a way to make her own money.

As he grew up, Rod saw the rebellious side of his mother. It was just the two of them, and he seemingly started to follow suit. Not only that, the two were very close—they shared many of the same interests as mother and son.

For example, some of Sondra’s neighbors spoke about seeing them wandering around the neighborhood holding hands, even into Rod’s teenage years. From the outside looking in, a lot of people said they appeared more like boyfriend and girlfriend than mother and son.

Okay.

Rod also became fascinated with Sondra’s obsession with the occult. She introduced him to a role-playing game called Vampire: The Masquerade. Rod also claimed he was exposed to occult rituals as a child, including human sacrifices.

I’m not sure how true that is, but this is just what he told people.
That’s—okay.

So, as you can imagine, friends were kind of hard for Rod to come by, considering the way he grew up—at least in his preteen years.

When his mother Sondra met another man, one living down in Eustace, Florida, Rod didn’t put up a fight when she said, “Hey, pack your bags. We’re moving to Eustace to be with my new boyfriend.”

But it was clear right away that Eustace wasn’t going to change the path Rod was on with his obsession with the occult.

As he entered high school there, he was seen outside in the schoolyard wearing a thick black trench coat—even in the 100-degree Florida heat. He began taking martial arts training and learned how to wield swords and other weapons. Remember, he loved this role-playing vampire game.

And his mother had very few rules when it came to what Rod could and couldn’t do. She didn’t give him a curfew. He was allowed to stay out all night as a teenager. He could skip school when he wanted. He began using drugs, and it presumably got worse once Rod made some new friends—one of them being Heather Wendorf.

The two would stay out late at night, going to cemeteries, hanging out by old mausoleums. They’d have deep discussions about art and the occult. I think it’s pretty safe to say that as teenagers with underdeveloped brains hanging out in cemeteries, their reality began to differ from other people’s reality.

Oh, yeah. I was going to say—especially as a male, too. Like, I feel like my brain wasn’t developed until a couple years ago. It just takes a long time.
Right.

Rod began telling Heather things—he genuinely told his teenage friend that he was immortal.
And he was being serious.
Dead serious.

He said he was “the devil’s child walking the earth.”
Okay, that’s not good.

And he’d ask Heather things like, “What if you and I were deemed rulers of the world?”
Okay. All right. Look, I’m all for video games, I’m all for role-playing, but… this is just—

I think also, at this point in time, that’s not good. Like, it started kind of in the ’70s, but going into the ’80s and ’90s, like, Satanic Panic and all that.
Yes, the occult.
But we’re kind of far from the Satanic Panic, I think.

Well, I think it spread into other places—it was still a big thing around this time.
When was Dungeons & Dragons big? Around this time? Does anyone know?
I don’t remember.
It starts around this time, and people did believe Dungeons & Dragons was like an evil game.

Okay.

And I will say, because of that—because of the older generation’s belief in Satanic Panic and the occult and “evil taking over the world”—it became a way for kids to rebel.
Yeah.

Like, kids who wanted to rebel were like, “Well, if I just get into the occult, I’m cool and I’m rebelling against my parents.”

But I mean, thinking you’re the devil’s child and ruler of the world—that’s not good.
Well, it’s also a little different than liking the color black and hanging out in cemeteries. You know what I mean? Like, being “emo” or “goth” is very different than saying, “I’m Satan’s baby.”
Yes. You know what I mean? There’s just a step farther here that’s no longer reality.

So over time, Heather introduced her new friend Rod to another friend from a different school in the area named Janelle.

Rod and Janelle actually started dating, which Heather, according to sources, didn’t seem to mind. Their relationship appeared pretty platonic—just friends—but with one more person to entertain, Rod’s lies got even stranger.

Now he had two girls who were kind of into what he was saying and believing him. His beliefs became a little more convincing—especially to himself.

He told Janelle, his girlfriend, that she was an ancient queen, and that he had been alive as far back as the 1500s. He actually told her, “I am a 500-year-old vampire, not named Edward, but named Visago.”
Holy crap. Okay, cool.

But Rod’s time in Eustace was actually short-lived.

So, after his mother’s relationship didn’t work out with the new boyfriend, she said, “Hey, Rod, we’re moving back to Murray, Kentucky.” This was around the start of his sophomore year.

Rod moved with his mom but kept in touch with Heather, often racking up huge phone bills as they talked for hours every night. They were best friends.

But that time in Eustace had awakened something in Rod. The time he’d spent with those two girls—living in a kind of false reality—had helped him find a sense of charm and charisma that followed him when he moved back to Kentucky.

Upon his return, Rod met a student at his high school who was also into the occult—a teenager named Jaden Murphy. Naturally, Rod gravitated toward Jaden and his small group of friends, who, in a devoutly Christian school, stood out in a pretty big way.

For Rod, it felt like he had finally found the community he’d been searching for—like those two girls had given him the confidence to come back and be bold enough to form a solid friend group who were like him.

Jaden and his friends were also really into the role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade. So this group began dabbling in vampiric rituals. Jaden and Rod became fast friends.

In January of 1996, after a little over a year of knowing Rod, Jaden officially invited him to become part of his “vampire family,” if you will—his coven.

They would have loved Twilight around this time.
Loved it.
Loved it.

Jaden offered to help “cross him over” into the vampire family in a sort of initiation ritual.

Now, Rod’s dream of becoming an actual vampire was starting to come true—at least to him.

Late one night, the two friends met in a local cemetery. Jaden cut himself with a razor blade and said, “Here, Rod—drink my blood.” And then Rod—
No thank you.
—did the same, cutting himself and letting Jaden drink his blood.

Then they sat in quiet meditation, waiting for the transformation into a vampire to take over.

And, well, they believed it was happening. But it was clear that Rod didn’t see himself as a follower. Even though this was Jaden’s idea, Rod wasn’t the type to say, “I’ll just do what you tell me.”

Shortly after the initiation ceremony, Rod decided, “Thanks for turning me into a vampire, but I think it’s time I start my own vampire cult.”

Okay.

So he approached a kid he’d known for a long time named Howard Scott Anderson. Scott, as his friends called him, and Rod had a lot in common in more grounded ways. They both came from unstable households, both had parents struggling to make ends meet, and both had caretakers said to be emotionally—maybe even physically—abusive.

So when Rod introduced his new vampire cult idea to Scott, Scott was like, “Actually, yeah, that sounds like a great escape from my real life—a way to feel like I have some control.”

Which is why Rod said, “Yeah, all you’ve got to do is drink my blood, and you can join my cult.”

So Scott accepted Rod’s invitation to partake in the blood-drinking ritual. From there, Rod used the charisma and charm he’d developed in Florida to recruit two other local friends to his cult: Charity Keesee and Dana Cooper.

This is crazy—the number of people who think they could actually be vampires.
I was going to say it’s crazy, but I don’t know—maybe not that crazy. Isn’t there a huge group in Washington, where Twilight was set, where they all think they’re vampires?
Seattle?
Yeah.
Well, I don’t think it’s in Seattle. Isn’t it like West Washington or something?
It’s not Forks.
I don’t think so.
No.
Oh, I’ve never heard of a vampire cult there.
I do know Seattle is rumored to have vampire cults—and also New Orleans is rumored to have pretty big ones.
Okay.

But here’s the thing: there were also pretty popular vampire movies around this time.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.

And especially, like, The Lost Boys. I’ve watched it—it’s basically this group of bad boys who are actually vampires. They’re teenagers or early twenties, and they’re kind of cool—kind of like The Vampire Diaries in a sense—but way more gang-like and culty.

It’s this cultish group of vampires, and I think it’s called The Lost Boys if I’m remembering right. They torment this local group of teenagers. But essentially, I mean, Rod and his group could’ve been looking at themselves kind of like that.

It’s just crazy. I mean, I get it—but I don’t get it—but I get it, you know?

And I think with Rod’s abnormal upbringing—where rules didn’t really apply to him and it was okay, even encouraged, to be different—he started slowly morphing into the perfect cult leader.

Because the next two girls he asked to join his cult also came from dysfunctional households, which is typical in predatory cult dynamics.

I’m just trying to figure out—do these kids and people who do this actually believe they’re vampires? Or do they know, deep down, they’re not—they just want it to be true? You know what I’m saying?

I don’t think it matters.
I know, but I’m just curious—how many of them actually think, “No, I’m a vampire,” versus how many are just like, “Let me belong to something.”
Correct.
Yes.
I don’t know.

So now that Rod had started his own vampire family, it was them against the world. Real-life responsibilities were slowly slipping away from these kids—or at least from Rod.

Not only did Rod begin skipping class, but he was now being openly disobedient at school. He smoked on school grounds, talked back to teachers, and supposedly started recruiting even more members. At one point, Rod and Jaden’s vampire covens had seemingly merged, forming one larger group—about twenty-five kids in total.

And one of those members, get this, was apparently Rod’s own mother, Sondra.

So she joined her son’s vampire family. It was said that Sondra even wrote letters to Jaden Murphy’s fourteen-year-old brother saying she wanted to be his “vampire bride for eternity.”
What—the fourteen-year-old boy?
So she goes full force into this.
That’s insane.
That is insane.
His mom!

So you have to think—in this delusion, if your own mother is involved, Rod really believes this. His reality has now completely shifted.

They often had their meetings and gatherings at an abandoned cement structure in the middle of the woods that they called Hotel California. There, they would drink each other’s blood and partake in other occult rituals.

And while I don’t know if this was true of the other members, I do know that Rod started taking heavy drugs during this time. He was doing PCP, LSD, heroin—and he got more violent.

By May of 1996, Rod had been suspended from high school for being too disruptive on campus, and things at home seemed to be getting worse too.

Sondra actually filed a “beyond parental control” report on her son, Rod.

Now, this is interesting because we don’t see this happen a lot. Basically, these reports are legal documents a parent can file for someone sixteen or younger to say, “I can’t parent this person anymore. I don’t have any control. I can’t manage them.” It indicates that the child’s behavior is possibly a risk to themselves or others and gives permission for the juvenile court or social services to get involved when things get out of hand.

Though I will say, this doesn’t legally absolve a parent of responsibility or accountability for their child’s actions—it’s basically just red-flagging the system.

But apparently, a big part of why Sondra even did this—while also partaking in her son’s delusion—was because she claimed Rod had started being verbally abusive and was threatening to kill her.

According to other members of the vampire family, though, Sondra wasn’t much better. She was said to be just as abusive, at least verbally, back to Rod.

Things got so out of hand in that family that, in September of the same year, Jaden was even pulled into it. He and Rod got into a massive argument that turned into a physical altercation. I don’t know what sparked it, but I know it ended with Rod threatening Jaden and Jaden throwing Rod up against a wall.

Jaden actually served six months in prison for the assault, and Rod got off scot-free.

Over time, though, Rod’s violence escalated further. He started becoming violent toward animals. I’m not going to go into detail, but he was killing animals—several from the Humane Society—by breaking in.

So, I mean, all the signs are there that he’s basically going to kill somebody.
Yes.

Rod was brought in for questioning after killing these animals, but police couldn’t find any evidence that it was him. He denied all involvement and ended up getting off without a conviction.

Unfortunately, that would just be the precursor to what Rod was planning next.

As I mentioned, Heather Wendorf and Rod had stayed in touch this entire time after he moved back to Kentucky. From the outskirts, she was hearing everything that was happening—that he’d started this huge cult, that he had a following.

There were a lot of late-night phone calls where Rod kept her up to date.
I would assume law enforcement had to be aware of this at this point, right?
I mean, I don’t think enough to do anything or understand how serious it was.
They probably thought it was a joke—just high school kids being kids.

So Heather was also keeping him up to date on what was happening back in Eustace. And during one of these late-night phone calls, she mentioned something to Rod.

She said her father was sexually abusing her.

Now, from what I could find, there was never any evidence or police reports to reflect this. But nonetheless, Rod saw this as an opportunity—a chance to swoop in and save Heather, to be her knight in shining armor… or her vampire in shining armor.

So sixteen-year-old Rod, at this point, rounded up his followers: sixteen-year-old Charity, who was his new girlfriend; nineteen-year-old Dana; and sixteen-year-old Howard Scott. He told them, “Hey guys, we’re heading to Florida on a vampire mission.”

In the early morning hours of November 23rd, 1996, they hopped into Scott’s car and began driving south. Initially, Rod told them the plan was just to pick Heather up and then all go to New Orleans together. They thought that in a city known for embracing the occult, they’d be among like-minded people. Maybe they could even expand their vampire clan further—maybe live there long-term together.

Except there was clearly more to the plan that Rod wasn’t sharing with the others.

Two days after Rod and the group arrived in Eustace, they picked Heather up and went to a local cemetery. Rod and Heather walked off together for about an hour and a half. During that time, Rod “crossed Heather over” in his standard ritual—“Drink my blood, I’ll drink yours.”

During that meeting, Heather explained to the others that her father had been abusing her, her mother refused to believe her, and she needed someone who could finally do something about it—someone who could get her out of her situation.

So Rod introduced a detailed plan to the rest of the cult. Since they’d gotten a flat tire on Scott’s Buick earlier that day, they now needed another car to drive to New Orleans. Heather’s family had a nice new Ford Explorer.

That night, Heather would sneak out of her house and meet the other girls in the group about a quarter mile up the road. Meanwhile, Rod and Scott would sneak into Heather’s house, steal her parents’ Ford Explorer, and take the car to Louisiana.

And that’s what happened—sort of.
Except people died.
Yeah.

After Heather left that night, Rod and Scott went into the Wendorfs’ garage and saw the Explorer. But they didn’t just hop in and drive off. Instead, Rod grabbed a crowbar and went into Heather’s house, with Scott nervously following behind him.

Rod told Scott, “We’re just going to steal a few more things from the home. We also need to arm ourselves—that’s why I’m grabbing the crowbar, just in case.”

So Scott went in with him and started snooping around for money and jewelry. Then Rod spotted Heather’s dad, Rick, sound asleep on the couch.

And I don’t know what went through his head. Maybe he thought, I’m a vampire, and felt he had to unleash this violent rage that had been building up inside of him. Maybe he was just completely delusional.

At this point, Rod—or rather “Visago,” his vampire alter ego, as he was calling himself—walked over, lifted the crowbar, and started swinging at sleeping Rick, beating him to death on the couch.

Oh my gosh.

When Scott saw what was happening, he freaked out. He didn’t think they were going to hurt anyone. He ran up to Rod, yelling, “What are you doing?” According to Scott, Rod had a demonic look in his eyes and screamed back at him to go find the keys to the car.

Scott claimed he was terrified. He did what he was told.

That’s when Ruth came out of the bathroom and spotted Rod. According to Scott, she began fighting back. She threw a cup of hot coffee at him and scratched his face, which only made him angrier. He started swinging at her with the crowbar, attacking her even worse than he had attacked Rick.

After both Rick and Ruth were clearly dead, Rod burned the letter “V” into Rick’s skin.
Oh—like “V” for his vampire name, Visago.
Yeah. Yeah.

While Rod was marking his territory, if you will, Scott grabbed the keys and the couple’s credit cards. Then they both jumped into the Ford Explorer and caught up with the girls a little ways down the road.

They swapped the license plates between the two cars—putting the plates from Scott’s Buick on the Explorer—and took off for New Orleans.

Now, obviously, Rod was covered in blood, and there was a crowbar in the backseat.
What did Heather think?

Well, Rod had to tell them what happened, because they were confused. And when he told them, it supposedly came as a shock to the three girls. They began screaming and crying—especially Heather. She was like, “This was not supposed to be a murder. You were just supposed to take my parents’ car.”

But Scott said he wasn’t really buying Heather’s tears. While he didn’t know for sure, he felt like he’d been set up—that Heather and Rod, during their earlier walk that night, had planned this together, then set him up as part of it.

He believed Heather knew about it beforehand.
Interesting.

So, it’s not long after that that Jennifer comes home—sneaks in, finds her parents dead, and her sister missing. She calls 911.

The trial that follows is going to be insane because you have a bunch of different young kids who are all going to rat each other out, disagree with each other, and lie. It’s going to be a mess.

And it’s kind of like what you were saying earlier—I think the curtain will fall really quickly on who actually believed the delusion they were living in and who was just doing it to belong to something, who will quickly be like, “I had no part in this.”
Yes.

And obviously, when police arrive, Jennifer says, “Hey, my sister’s missing. I don’t know what’s going on, but she has some scary friends that could have done this.”

So she’s completely right with her assumption that maybe her sister’s friends had something to do with it.

Once police realize the family’s car has been stolen, they have a big piece of evidence to work with. They put out the license plate information that night, and within a few hours, they actually get a hit. Police in Suwannee County—just thirty-eight miles away—say they found an abandoned vehicle with those plates in their jurisdiction.

Obviously, it’s not the Ford Explorer—it’s on Scott’s Buick, because they’d switched the license plates. So police look up the VIN number on the car with the Wendorfs’ plates and find that it’s registered to Howard Scott Anderson in Kentucky.

After hearing that he’s friends with Rod and has been traveling with him—and likely has Heather with them—police now have a solid lead on the investigation.

The problem is, they don’t know where the teenagers are headed. They just have what they assume to be the license plates on the stolen Ford Explorer.

But these kids make a lot of mistakes along the way. For instance, they use the Wendorfs’ stolen credit card to buy gas and a knife on their route to Louisiana. They keep going, even after seeing reports on the news that police are on to them.

A few days later, they reach Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It’s there they start dumping things—their clothes, the murder weapon. None of them have slept; they’re exhausted and running out of money.

So Charity—Rod’s girlfriend—does something drastic at this point. Out of confusion, fear, and pure hysteria, she calls her grandmother and says, “Hey, can you send me some money?”

Now, obviously, Charity’s grandmother has already heard that her granddaughter is in trouble, because her parents have been contacted. She’s like, “So, you’re on the road with murderers? You know you guys are wanted right now, right?”

And Charity’s grandmother tells her, “Girl, go to the police. Turn yourself in. Tell them what happened.”

The grandmother hands over the number Charity called from, and police are able to trace it to a phone booth just outside of Baton Rouge. Grandma doesn’t send the money—instead, she sends a team of police officers.

They find and arrest the five teenagers on November 28th—just three days after the murders.

It doesn’t take long for Rod Ferrell to confess to the murders and to being the mastermind. As you can imagine, fully believing his delusion, he’s like, “Oh yeah, this is what had to happen.” He’s more than happy to say, “I’m a vampire, and I murdered these people.”

Okay.

Now, Scott, however, says, “Listen, I was at the scene of the crime, but I didn’t murder anyone. I had no idea this was going to happen. I didn’t know that was the plan.”

Meanwhile, Charity and Dana both say they had no idea the plan involved murder either—at least not until after the boys got back in the car and told them what had happened.

And here’s the thing—there’s a massive difference between stealing a car and murdering two people, right?

The girls insist, “No, no, no. We just thought we were helping Heather get away from her abusive dad and that we were all going to run away to New Orleans.”

And now, I mean, I guess we’ll see what happens with Heather and all that.

I just—I think it’s hard. Rod is obviously delusional, and Heather sounds like she might be as well. It’s hard. I’m not saying the abuse didn’t happen—I don’t want to discredit that—but it’s also hard to believe because this whole thing is such a mess.

So how do you know what’s true and what’s not?

And I think police didn’t know whether to believe Heather about whether she knew the plan or not. But after investigating and talking to everyone, they started to lean toward the idea that Heather did come up with the murder plan with Rod.
Okay.

But she claimed, through and through, that she didn’t know he was going to murder her parents.
Yeah, I don’t know about this.

Rod’s mom, Sondra, was also questioned.

She’s like—once they start to learn about the dynamic back in Kentucky—police question Sondra.

They ask, “Did you know about the murders?”

And she says, “Well, actually, I overheard Heather asking Rod to kill her parents.”

Okay, but how can we trust her, too?
Because she’s delusional.

Well, and also, it’s like she’s protecting her son by shifting some of the blame—claiming he only did it for Heather.
That’s a good point.

They give her a polygraph, and Sondra fails it.

After she fails, she recants her statement, saying, “Never mind, I lied. I didn’t hear that.”

Eventually, Rod Ferrell is charged with armed burglary, armed robbery, and two counts of first-degree murder.

He pleads guilty to all charges at the start of his trial in February 1998.

Seventeen-year-old Rod is sentenced to death, making him the youngest person on death row in Florida at the time.

I mean, this is brutal murder—I’m not surprised he got the death penalty.
It’s Florida, too. Yeah, I mean, justice. He killed two sleeping people. It’s insane.

However, the sentence is later overturned in 2005 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that juveniles couldn’t receive the death penalty—which, as you guys know, I also agree with.

Rod is re-sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

As for the others—those who were maybe under his spell—was this truly a cult? Were they manipulated? We don’t really know.

Rod’s girlfriend, Charity Keesee, is convicted of two counts of third-degree murder—because after learning about the murders, she didn’t turn anyone in—along with robbery with a deadly weapon and armed burglary.

She’s sentenced to ten and a half years in state prison.

Dana Cooper is convicted of the same charges and receives seventeen and a half years.
Wow.
That actually surprises me—they got so long.

Meanwhile, Scott Anderson is convicted of the same charges as Rod and sentenced to life in prison.
Really?
Yeah.

He isn’t sentenced to death like Rod originally was, but later his sentence is reduced to forty years behind bars.

Life in prison at seventeen—as everyone admits he didn’t even touch the murder weapon.
You’re still there? I don’t know if I agree with that.

I think we’ve seen other cases where people have been—maybe not brainwashed, but influenced—to do something.

I mean, brainwashed or not, if the story’s true and he showed up thinking they were just going to steal a car and then his friend murdered two people, life in prison does seem pretty heavy for that.

Even forty years seems heavy.

Usually, I’m on the aggressive side when it comes to sentencing, but granted, afterward, he didn’t go to police immediately. Still, they were teenagers—in a group mentality.
Yeah.
I don’t know. I don’t know if I agree with that.

Anyways—not to make excuses, because obviously what happened was horrific—but it’s interesting. The whole group adamantly claims, including Rod himself, that Rod was the only one who touched the murder weapon.
Yeah.

So it’s not like those typical teenage cases where it’s confusing who actually did it.
Yep.

The interesting part about this aftermath is that when it came to Heather Wendorf, she seemed to get off the hook easily.

The state attorney decided not to prosecute her.
You’re kidding me.
Nope.

Her lawyers argued she didn’t know about the murders until after they were over—that she was a victim, that she went with the group because she feared for her own safety since the person driving the car had just murdered her parents.

That’s what her defense argued.
Wow.

So she never even faced charges for her parents’ deaths.
Disagree with that.

But Heather’s family still seemed to blame her for Rick and Ruth’s murders.

Afterward, Jennifer was sent to live with her aunt and uncle before going to college, and they refused to let her have any contact with Heather.

Meanwhile, Heather was sent to live with her grandmother.

Then she went to a psychiatric facility, followed by a foster family.

Later, she attended art school, got married, moved to North Carolina, and eventually reconnected with some members of her family.

The question still remains, though—did Heather know what was going to happen to her parents?

I don’t know if we’ll ever know.

Is it possible she thought Rod and all his claims were nothing more than storytelling and fantasy?

Perhaps everyone underestimated Rod Ferrell—and what he was really capable of.

Which just goes to show: when we believe something long and hard enough, the lines between reality and fantasy really do blur.

And it’s in that gray area that possibly the most dangerous decisions are made.

And that is the story of the murders of Ruth Queen and Rick Wendorf.

I think the only thing I’m not sure about is Scott’s sentencing—and maybe the other girls’ sentencing—because I think it was group mentality. Rod led the whole thing. If this happened today, I think the sentencing would actually be less. We’re less harsh than we used to be.

But also, I don’t know. I don’t think we’ll ever truly know exactly what happened, what really went down. We don’t have text messages or digital evidence like we do now. It’s insane—those parents are dead. Crazy, crazy case.

I don’t know. Five kids on the run for three days—it’s mind-blowing.

I will say, though, the reason why sentencing might have been harsher back then is because we have a better understanding of psychology now. When you understand manipulation, group mentality, and underdeveloped teenage brains—especially the way teens follow one leader—you realize how much influence plays into these situations.

I’m not saying this excuses anyone’s behavior, because every decision made in this case was wrong. Every single one. Even the decision to steal a car was wrong. And as soon as they found out it was murder, they should have immediately gone to the cops.

But think about it—let’s say Scott tried to stop Rod. What if Rod had turned on him?

That’s what Heather’s defense argued: “How could Heather be expected to get out of that car and go to the police when the person she was with had just brutally murdered her parents?”

I just think it’s crazy that Scott got forty years. I don’t know why that sticks with me, but it’s wild. Everyone admitted he didn’t touch anything—he was just swept up in it all, probably thinking, Oh, shoot, what’s happening? Things are going insane.

At seventeen, too. Forty years.

I’m usually not someone who argues against long sentences or the death penalty, but this one—I don’t agree with it.

And I’d actually be curious to know more about Scott—what he was like, what he’s said since, what he thinks now. But I disagree with that sentence.

You just brought up a good point, though. The majority of these kids didn’t come from stable families. Take Heather out of it—the people Rod recruited were all from dysfunctional, vulnerable backgrounds.

Yeah.

I just want to make it clear before we end—Garrett and I are not excusing any of the bad behavior. We’re just trying to understand the psychology behind how this happened.

This is ridiculous. And Rod—screw him. He deserves exactly what he got.
One hundred percent. Please rot in prison for life. I don’t know how else to say it. And if you don’t agree with me—sorry. That’s it.

Yeah. I think there are no excuses, but pondering the psychology behind how we get to this place is necessary. It’s how we further understand humanity and realize that things aren’t always black and white.

Mhm.

All right, you guys, that’s our episode for this week.

Spooky season is officially over—so vampire cults and all the creepy stories will take a break.

We’ll be going back to our regular true crime cases. Even though this was true crime, I try to do a spookier theme for October.

I’ll see you next time with another episode.

I love it.
I hate it.
Goodbye.

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