Latest / Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast / The Vampire Clan Murders - Rod Ferrell -Part 1

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The Vampire Clan Murders - Rod Ferrell -Part 1 · Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: They called themselves vampires. They drank one another's blood. They
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: carved symbols into their skin and built an identity around
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: darkness and death. But in November of 1996, the fantasy
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: surrounding a particular 16-year-old boy crossed into something horrifyingly real
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: when two people were found savagely beaten to death inside
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: their Florida home. What followed was a story of teenage runaways,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: blood rituals, and murder that would soon become known around
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the world. This is the dark and true story of
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: the Vampire Clan Killings. My name's Ben.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: I'm Nicole. And you're listening to Wicked and Grim.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: A true crime podcast.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: I almost fell on my ass this morning.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: You did. You almost went down.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Because we are now in the season where you
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: have to be careful when you walk. Because it's icy.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Yep. Officially had probably like, like we've had frost, but
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: this was like the first good frost this morning and
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: it was slick out there.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: I was quite excited because it just looked stunning with
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: the sun rising and like the frost or sorry, like
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: steam kind of coming up from the field.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Because the sun was melting.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: So I like was running out there and our mat
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: was slippery as shit and I almost bailed hard.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Well, to be fair, it also rained last night, too.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: So it's probably, yeah, just a bit icy from the
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: rain and the frost combination.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: But it really took the wind out of my sails, actually.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: I was like, I didn't need that photo.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's no fun having the wind taken out of
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: your sails like that. But if you want some wind
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: in your sails, you can go ahead and go over
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: to Patreon like we had with Laura McWilliams and April Hassenfratz,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: who went over there. And they joined up for Patreon.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: They get the behind the scenes, the good content, ads,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: free content, and exclusive episodes even.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Perfect.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: So just saying that.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I wonder if sometimes people think that I'm setting you up.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Because it almost seems like that, but I'm not.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: You're not. No, I just, I take what I can
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: get and I roll with it.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Especially this one. I felt like it really felt like
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: I set you up there, but I didn't.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I just, I did improv classes in high school. Like,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: 25 years ago. It's all good. Wow, longer, right?
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, shit. I don't know.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I feel old.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: No.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Stop me. I'm spiraling.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Wait, 20 years ago.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: You're okay.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: I was panicking for a second. I was like, how
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: old am I?
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, that hurt.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Gosh, I feel like your life just kind of flashed.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Between your eyes there for a minute.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Before my eyes.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Before your eyes? Between your eyes? What's the saying?
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Flash before my eyes.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I kind of like between your eyes.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: But also the thing is, I was kind of right
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: with 25 years. We gratted 20 years ago.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: I know. But I was giving you something there. You
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: should have just taken it and ran.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: You didn't give me much. I'm still having an existential
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: crisis at the moment. I need coffee.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy. Hey.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. Well, I don't think I have much else to
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: talk about except my degrading years in front of me.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: If you want, we can just jump into this unless
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: you have anything else you want to go over.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: It sounds like a doozy, so I'm ready.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: This is definitely a doozy case, and I need to
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: go out there and say this first. There is some
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: animal cruelty in this episode, so fair warning now. With
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: also that being said, this is a part one. There
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: is a part two coming up in a couple days,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: but if you're ready, here we go. In November of 1996,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Murray was a small city tucked into the western corner
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: of Kentucky, USA. It's not far from the Tennessee state line,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: and it sat well away from the state's larger cities,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: surrounded by farmland, patches of forest, and narrow roads connecting
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: smaller communities across the region. Nashville was roughly two hours
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: to the southeast, while the home to Murray State University,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: giving the city the unusual mixture of a small rural
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: community feels plus that college town vibe. By late November,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: autumn was already nearly finished here. Most of the brilliant
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: colors that had covered the western Kentucky area for months, well,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: it soon disappeared, and it left the bare hardwood trees
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: standing still, with their fallen leaves along the roadside and
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: across the forest floor. The days had become noticeably shorter,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: and the temperatures could drop considerably, so much so that
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: you had to watch your step going out in the mornings,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: otherwise you might fall on some frost and ice. Right, Nicole?
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: I know about that, yeah.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Afternoons might still be quite mild, but the evenings and
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: mornings were increasingly cold as the region moved towards winter.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: It was the time of year when darkness arrived early,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: and the countryside became quiet after sunset. Outside the city,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: The landscape opened into agricultural land broken apart by wooded areas, creeks,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: and other small communities. To the east was the enormous
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: recreation area known as the Land Between the Lakes, a
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: long strip of heavily forested land running between Kentucky Lake
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: and Lake Barkley. The region contained campgrounds, hiking trails, old cemeteries,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: and long stretches of woodlands where it was possible to
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: travel for miles without encountering anyone or anything resembling a city.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: But all in all, Murray itself was considerably ordinary. The
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: city revolved around its university, schools, restaurants, stores, and everyday
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: routines of a community only a few tens of thousands
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: of people called home. Roads led away to other towns
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: and gave way to the farms, but there was also
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: the patch of old Salem Cemetery that sat along with
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: quiet corners of surrounding countryside. What I'm saying is it's
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: the kind of place... where distance between a busy college
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: campus and an isolated patch of wood could be surprisingly small.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: And in 1996, it was also a world before smartphones,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: social media, or constant internet access. A teenager leaving home
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: could simply not be tracked by their phone in their
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: pocket like you can today. Long-distance relationships, well, they were
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: maintained through letters and expensive telephone calls. Directions were followed
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: from paper maps. And once a car disappeared onto the highway,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: determining where its occupants had gone could require some extensive
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: police department work from departments hundreds of miles apart to
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: communicate with one another. This was Western Kentucky in the
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: final weeks of 1996. And it was here on March 28th, 1980,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: that Roderick Justin Furrell was born in Murray to two
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: teenage parents whose relationship wouldn't last long enough for for Rod,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: as they called him, to grow up with both of
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: them in the same home. His mother, Sondra Joan Gibson,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: was still a teenager herself when she became pregnant, and
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Rod's father, Rick, separated from Sondra while Rod was still
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: quite young, leaving Rod to grow up with a very
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: little connection or relationship even with his father. For most
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: of his childhood, the responsibility of raising him fell onto Sondra,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: with considerable involvement from her parents. And even with that help, though,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: it was not a particularly stable childhood that he had.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Sondra and Rod moved between Murray, Kentucky, and Central Florida,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: sometimes staying with Sondra's parents and other times living in
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: public housing. Sondra supported herself through a variety of jobs,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: doing what she needed to do to survive, including work
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: in fast food restaurants, and as an exotic dancer, and
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: even reportedly periods of sex work as well. Sondra herself
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: even acknowledged during that time she was abusing alcohol and
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: using drugs during those years, including ecstasy and speed and essentially,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: according to her words, whatever else she can get a
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: hold of. Now, as a young child, Rod had gone
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: through some very traumatic things of his own. See, when
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: he was approximately six or only seven years old, according
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: to Sondra, her father, Harold Gibson, had taken Rod on
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: a fishing trip. But when Rod returned... Sandra said he
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: was shaking, nauseated, and even vomiting. He told her that
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: several of the men out there had sexually abused him
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: and raped him in the woods. Now, some accounts even
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: allege that Harold himself participated in that abuse. Sandra's sisters
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: would even later go on record to say that Harold
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: had also sexually abused both her and Sandra when they
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: were younger.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Gosh, that's horrifying.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: Yes, it is.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: However, I do have to clarify that Harold was never
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: criminally charged over the allegations. They were strictly that, just allegations.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: And whatever happened during those early years, Rod's relationship with
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: his family remained rather complicated. He had no consistent father figure.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: He moved rapidly between Kentucky and Florida. And by his adolescence,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: he had developed an increasingly dark identity of his own.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: He dressed differently from many of the other teenagers around
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: him and became interested in gothic imagery and filled his
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: personal space with some darker things that interested him. His room,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: for example, had an upside-down cross hanging on the wall.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: It was draped in black, and Sondra even said that
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: he deliberately cut himself and that he became involved in
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: drinking blood with other teenagers. Those behaviors... They developed gradually, though.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Rod never woke up one morning and involved himself in
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: the occult and just dove in headfirst. That's not how
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: it worked. It grew slowly, one piece after the next,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: one step after the other, until it evolved into who
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: he was. Fantasy and role-playing games became part of his life, too.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: One of the games associated with Rod was called Vampire
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: the Masquerade. It's a very famous tabletop role-playing game in
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: which players assume the role of fictional vampire identities. Sondra
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: herself had an interest in the game too, and she
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: was reported to have been the one to introduce Rod
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: to it. But the distinction between the game and what
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Rod eventually became and what he was involved in is
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: very important. Thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: can play a vampire in a role-playing game without believing
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: they're actually a vampire in real life. and researcher Catherine Ramsland,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: later cautioned against treating vampire imagery as something that had
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: inherently produced mental illness or violence. In her assessment, that
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: imagery could provide a framework for impulses that were already
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: present in an individual, but it could not create those
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: impulses by itself. Now this was already a very sensitive
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: subject through the 1980s and into the 1990s even, when
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: the game such as Dungeons and Dragons became caught up
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: in the broader satanic panic. Critics sometimes portrayed fantasy role-playing
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: games as gateways to the occult, Satanism, and even violence,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: despite little evidence supporting any of those fears. But now Rod, nevertheless,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: began taking his interests beyond an ordinary fictional character. As
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: he moved through his teenage years, the line between role-playing,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: personal identity, and the darker persona he was constructing became
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: increasingly difficult to separate. By 1995, Rod was again living
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: in Murray, Kentucky and attending high school there. He was
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: 15 years old and an outsider by his own later
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: description even. It was during this period that he met
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: another teenager who dressed much like he did and even
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: shared the same sort of interests. His name was Stephen Murphy,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: or Jaden as he went by. The two met in
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: school in September of 1995. And Jaden later explained that
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Rod looked like someone he could relate to. Neither of
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: them seemed to fit comfortably within the more conventional groups
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: around them. Jaden dressed differently. Rod dressed differently. And they
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: were both interested in the darker side of fantasy and roleplaying.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: But Jaden was already involved in something Rod had only
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: just begun exploring. You see, Jaden practiced what he called vampirism.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: His version had little to do with turning into a
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: bat or sleeping in a coffin or being destroyed by sunlight,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: of course, but instead Jaden described it as more of
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: a lifestyle rather than a religion or something fantasy-based. He
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: didn't believe garlic or crosses could harm him, nor did
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: he claim that he could fly. What separated his beliefs
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: from an ordinary role-playing game, though, was his genuine interest
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: in blood. He described having cravings for it, whether human
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: or animal. and he developed his own set of beliefs
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: and rules surrounding its consumption. And over the following months,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Jaden began explaining that world to Rod. Now, for a
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: teenager already drawn to darker imagery, fantasy, and the idea of,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: you know, something other than an ordinary life, it offered
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: more than just another game to him. It offered an identity.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: It offered a hierarchy. And perhaps most importantly, a group
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: in which Rod did not have to feel like an
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: outsider anymore. And it was in January of 1996, only
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: a few months after meeting Jaden, when Rod was invited
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: to take their relationship a step further. Jaden was already
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: part of a small circle of teenagers in Murray who
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: described themselves as vampires. And within that group, he occupied
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: the position that he called sire. And for Rod becoming
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: a part of this family, well, it required that they
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: did something that he called, quote, crossing over. which was
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: a blood sharing ritual that represented a new member being
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: accepted into their group.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Gosh, this is just so interesting to listen to, but
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: that's like really dangerous.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: It's very dangerous in many different perspectives.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Now, Jaden took Rod to the old Salem cemetery just
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: outside Murray, where Rod was led to a particular tree. Here,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: according to Jaden's beliefs, others had previously been brought through
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: this same ritual of their own by their own sires
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: and Jaden carried with him a blade. Rod then made
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: three cuts across his left arm and Jaden began to
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: drink directly from these cut wounds. Jaden then did the same.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: He cut his own arm and Rod drank the blood
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: in return. Gosh, there was no elaborate ceremony that happened
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: afterwards or anything like that though. The two reportedly just
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: sat there together, in a quiet sort of meditation for
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: several hours before they finally left the cemetery. The ritual
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: was over. And from that point forward, Rod considered himself
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: part of Jaden's vampire family.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: That is some nasty shit right there.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: It grossed you out a little bit?
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: It really grossed me out, yeah.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Understandable. I picked this case for a reason, because we
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: are getting up towards spooky season, and this has some
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: spooky elements to it, let's put it that way.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Now, Rod also briefly had contact with groups of another, sorry,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: with a group called VAMPS, V-A-M-P-S. So it stands for
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: something called the Victorian Age Masquerade Performance Society. It's a
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: local group in his area whose members dressed in Victorian
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: clothing and role-played the vampire masquerade game. But I do
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: need to make the distinction that despite later confusion between
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the two groups, VAMPS was separate from the blood-drinking vampire group.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Rod was now, you know, in and actually working really
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: drinking blood. So he had some associations with that vamps group,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: but for all intents and purposes, they are not part
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: of the story. They do get dragged into it a lot.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: So the only reason I have them here is to
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: clarify that they're not part of this story. So Rod
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: had association with them, sorry, association with them. There we go.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: But they certainly were not involved in any of the
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: blood drinking or the grotesque things that came off this.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Makes sense.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Now, Jaden also maintained that there were rules to govern
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: the group. Loyalty mattered, as did the relationship between a
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: new vampire and the sire who brought them in. And
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: most importantly, Jaden later insisted that human life was supposed
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: to be respected. He said that becoming a vampire did
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: not give someone permission to hurt or even kill someone.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: And Rod would increasingly have difficulty with those distinctions. Now
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: around this time, Rod had also been developing a separate
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: identity for himself. He began using the name Vassago and
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: eventually claimed that he was not a real Kentucky teenager
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: at all. No, he was a vampire, he said, who
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: had existed for approximately 500 years. His stories grew to
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: include things like demons and previous lives and supernatural abilities.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: But whether Rod genuinely believed every supernatural claim he made
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: It's difficult to determine, but even people close to him
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: sometimes described him as a teenager who moved freely between belief, fantasy, exaggeration,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: and even outright lies. But what was easier to establish
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: was that his behavior was becoming more and more violent,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: whether he thought he was an ancient vampire or not.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: One incident actually involved a kitten, and Rod later described
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: the event himself. He said he'd been walking, while angry
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: and upset over something, whatever it was. But he encountered
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: a kitten along the way. He knelt down and picked
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: it up. But when the kitten clawed him, he reacted
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: by turning it over onto its back, grabbing it around
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: its neck, and throwing it against a tree hard enough
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: to break its spine. Jaden actually witnessed the incident himself,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: and he remembered seeing him slam the defenseless animal into
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: this tree. That moment... disturbed Jaden a lot, and it
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: contributed to the growing distance between these two teenagers. Violent
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: language and all this sort of stuff was kind of
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: becoming more prominent and common with them too. Rod talked
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: about killing people often enough to the, that some of
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: the teenagers around him, they stopped taking these threats seriously.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: It became common language. Oh, I'm going to kill someone. Yeah, sure, sure.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Laugh it off as a dark, bad joke. Murder could
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: be discussed almost casually at this point, as though it
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: were just another dark joker fantasy of his, and that
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: ultimately made determining when Rod was merely talking, and when
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: he genuinely became interested in intending to hurt someone, where
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: that line was between those two. Now, during this period,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Rod was also involved in a relationship with someone named
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: April Doden, a 19-year-old student at Murray State University. But
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: the relationship didn't last. It soon deteriorated, and Rod's threats
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: reportedly extended to April, too. Allegedly, he made threats involving April,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: her future unborn children, and he described violent fantasies about
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: cutting her throat. Now, by the summer of 1996, the
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: relationship between Rod and Jaden had deteriorated badly. Their eventual
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: confrontation has been told in some slightly different ways. Well,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't say slightly, I should say more significant. In
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: one version, it says Jaden attacked Rod during an argument,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: grabbing him by the throat, slamming him up against a
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: brick wall and choking him. While another count says Rod
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: arrived armed with a baseball bat and a knife after
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: making threats. and that Jaden overpowered and disarmed him. Rod
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: himself later acknowledged being slammed against the wall, but insisted
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: that if the confrontation had continued, he would have killed Jaden. Now,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: whatever the exact sequence of those events that day, the
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: result was the same. The friendship was effectively done. For Jaden,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Rod had violated what their vampire family was supposed to represent.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Jaden later said Rod did not respect his sire. He
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: did not follow their rules. And most importantly, he didn't
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: respect life. So Rod was no longer welcome within that group.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, I was just going to ask, does that mean
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: he's kicked out, basically?
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: He was basically kicked out, removed, however you want to
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: say it. Banished, who knows.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: He wasn't following the rules.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, correct. So he wasn't part of their group anymore. However,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: losing Jaden's family, vampire dynamic thing, didn't end Rod's fascination
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: with vampirism.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Instead.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: He did what any petty teenager would do in that situation. Well,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: if I'm not allowed in your group, I'm going to
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: go make my own. So he created his own little
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: vampire family. And this time, he himself intended to be
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: the sire. He took what he had learned from Jaden
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: and placed himself at the center of his new group.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: One of the teenagers who became closest with him was
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Michael Schaffer, who was then 15 years old. Michael was
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: among the first people Rod personally crossed over into his group,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: allowing Rod to perform the same basic role that Jaden
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: had once performed with him. Rod later described the people
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: around him looking at him as a vampiric father. They
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: came to him for advice. They came to him for guidance.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: While Rod occupied the position of authority within this group.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Another member was Howard Scott Anderson, usually known simply as Scott.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Scott was 16 years and had known Rod since they
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: were very young kids. He came from a difficult home
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: himself and later described growing up poor with an alcoholic father,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: sometimes even just bringing leftover food home for his younger brothers.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Of the teenagers gathered around Rod, Scott would have become
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: very particularly close to him, essentially his right-hand man, you
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: could say. There was also Charity Lynn Kesey, who was 16,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: who was romantically involved with Rod, and Dana Lynn Cooper,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: who at 19 was the oldest member of this group.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Together they spent time talking, playing Vampire the Masquerade game,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: and participating in the blood rituals that had become part
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: of Rod's version of vampirism. Cutting to draw their own
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: blood was of course incorporated into those gatherings too, with
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: the members allowing others to drink from their wounds on
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: a regular basis. They wore predominantly black clothing, spent time
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: in cemeteries, and increasingly built their social lives surrounding one another. Meanwhile,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Rod's claims about himself grew along with his position of
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: power in the group. He presented himself as this Visago,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the century-old vampire identity he had adopted, and the teenagers
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: around him were described as his family or clan. Violence
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: was also a regular subject of conversation here, too. Michael
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: later remembered discussing killing people, although he said much of
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: it sounded like joking at the time. Threats could be
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: tossed around casually enough that the teenagers listened to Rod,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and they had little way of knowing whether any particular
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: statement was fantasy, intimidation, or something he had actually intended
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: to do. And that's the big theme here, is he
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: constantly talked about this. He constantly made these threats, but
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: it was constantly brushed off as a joke, as, you know, fantasy.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Okay, and at this point, he's still himself a teenager too, right?
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: He's 16.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Holy, okay. This is just not a very good environment
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: for growing young adults or growing teenagers, you know?
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: Young mind.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I get you.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: 100%.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: But that's the thing that was, okay, if he is
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: diving into this dark world, he's making these threats and
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: he is this young, malleable mind. When did it get
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: from fantasy and jokes to something serious? That's something I
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: don't think we can ever pinpoint in this story. But
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: it's a common theme and it's a big question mark
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: that's hanging in the air.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but at some point it wasn't just... Yeah, I mean,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: we're just waiting to hear this turn, but at some
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: point it wasn't just a fantasy. It was going to
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: be an act, I suppose.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: You're right on the button. But let's not get ahead
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: of ourselves. So, by the fall of 1996, however, violence
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: surrounding Rod was no longer confined just to conversations. On
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: the morning of October 14th, 1996... Workers arriving at the
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Murray-Calloway County Animal Shelter discovered that someone had broken into
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the property overnight. A section of the fencing had been
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: cut and pulled away, allowing dogs to even escape. One
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: account from the scene described approximately 30 to 40 dogs
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: running loose, while flattened grass extended roughly around 30 feet
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: of the damaged area, which suggested to investigators that more
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: than one person had been present to cut this fence down. Now,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: inside and around the shelter, though, the damage was worse
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: than just, you know, some flat grass and cut fence.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: In fact, two puppies had been killed inside. The then
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Calloway County Sheriff Stan Scott described one of them as
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: having been stomped to death, while the other was also dead,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: but it had suffered mutilation to its legs, which Sheriff
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Scott said it appeared to have been either pulled or
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: cut off. Dozens of other dogs had been released from
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: their enclosures, of course, causing them to run loose. And
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: the sheriff made it clear almost immediately that he did
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: not view what had happened here as ordinary vandalism. He
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: described whoever was responsible as, quote, sick individuals.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: That's some messed up shit right there.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this clearly goes beyond just, you know, a simple break-in.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: The way the puppies had been treated also caused investigators
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: to consider whether the vandalism might have had some connection
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: to cult activity. And that possibility became more significant as
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: deputies began speaking with teenagers around Murray, trying to determine
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: who had been at that shelter. As those interviews continued,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: investigators began hearing descriptions of a much darker reason for
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: the break-in. People associated with the group described ritualistic behavior
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: involving these puppies that had died, including allegations that their
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: blood had been used as part of a vampire initiation
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: ceremony and And was poured over top of the participants.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Holy frick. Okay, like a puppy is literally the most
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: pure angel scent from above, really.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: And anyone that would do any harm to it is
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: just a complete monster.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: I can't put it into words how sadistic that is. Yeah,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: you're right. A complete monster. And that's being kind. Like
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: extremely kind.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Like, just this pure, innocent little creature, like, and you
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: could hurt it? Holy frick, what is wrong with you?
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: But exactly what happened at the shelter, beyond the killings,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: was difficult to establish. Sheriff Scott's investigation could confirm that
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: someone had entered the property, released dozens of dogs from
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: their enclosures, and deliberately killed and mutilated two puppies. But
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: the more elaborate descriptions of, you know, an initiation ceremony
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: depended largely on statements investigators received from people connected to
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: the group. Still, those interviews gave deputies a new direction
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: to pursue, and they began drawing their attention towards a
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: small circle of teenagers in Murray, and so Rod quickly
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: became part of that investigation. By November 2, 1996, Sheriff
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Scott said authorities were prepared to pursue charges against Rod
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: and another juvenile involved who was named Frankie Brattain. Those
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: charges included animal cruelty, criminal attempt to commit burglary, and
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: criminal trespassing. Sheriff Scott also estimated that the larger group
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: associated with the teenagers could include as many as 10 people,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: although that did not mean that all 10 had participated
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: in this shelter attack, though. Ultimately, the dark incident grew
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: considerable attention around Murray. The shelter received donations, and approximately $ 2, 000
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: was raised for a new security system. Now, the shelter
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: investigation continued through November, but Rod's attention was already turning elsewhere,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: even with the police breathing down his neck. More than
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: 800 miles away, in Eustis, Florida, was a 15-year-old girl
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: that Rod had known before he returned to Kentucky. He
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: had remained in contact with her despite the distance, and
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: sometimes even spent hours talking over the phone with her.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: The calls had become frequent enough, and expensive enough, that
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: her parents had got pretty frustrated by the costs of
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: all the collect charges that Rod frequently left with her
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: to pay. According to one account, Rod accumulated approximately $ 850
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: in charges speaking with her over the phone, and her parents,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: of course, quickly began to try and limit those calls. Now,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: this girl's name was Heather Wendorf. Heather lived with her father, Richard,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: and her mother, Naomi, who generally went by Ruth, though. Now,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: her older sister, Jennifer Wendorf, was 17 years old and
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: also lived there, and the family was described as a
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: relatively ordinary middle-class household. Richard worked to support the family
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: while Ruth spent much of her time taking care of
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: things at home and was involved in volunteer work. Jennifer
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: was outgoing and involved in school activities, while Heather was
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: generally described as quieter and more artistic and increasingly interested
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: in the darker subculture Rod had also embraced. Rod and
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Heather had met as students in Florida, and they became
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: extremely close. Some accounts described them as friends, others as
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: having dated, but either way the relationship clearly continued after
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Rod moved away and went back to Kentucky. Now, Heather
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: was becoming increasingly immersed in the same vampire identity that
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Rod had adopted, and within that world that she used,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: she had the name Zoe. Now, she talked about demons
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: and previous lives and reportedly named a cat Visago, which
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: was a small variation of the name Rod himself was
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: using for his vampire identity. Friends even heard Heather saying
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: that she had been a demon in a previous existence,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: and she described experiences involving spirits and blood rituals. With
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: this sort of dark interest creeping into her life, tensions
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: were growing at home with her and her family. Her
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: sister Jennifer remembered her young sister as someone becoming intensely
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: angry with her parents over relatively ordinary requests. Heather complained
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: about rules and about feeling misunderstood. She described life at
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: home as hell and Rod heard many of those complaints
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: during their long distance conversations. But exactly how far Heather's
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: anger went became considerably more difficult to determine because, like Rod,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: the darker side of her imagination and conversations were growing.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Several people later remembered statements that sounded far more serious
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: than ordinary teenage frustration. One friend said Heather sometimes wished
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: her parents were dead, particularly after they interfered with Rod's
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: collect calls to her. Another account had Heather telling Rod
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: that her parents would never allow her to leave, and
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Jennifer herself even said an unsettling conversation had occurred which
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Heather asked her whether she ever thought about killing their parents.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: According to the account Jennifer gave, Heather even suggested that
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Rod could kill someone for her if she ever needed it.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: There were other allegations and alleged statements as well. One
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: witness said she overheard Heather express to Rod that she
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: wanted her parents dead. Another described a letter in which
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Heather supposedly wrote wanting her parents, quote, gone. And those
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: recollections would eventually become very important, but at the time
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: they existed mostly as scattered conversations among teenagers, some of
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: whom were already accustomed to Rod and his friends making
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: exaggerated statements about death and violence already, so they thought
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: nothing of it. Heather would also give a very different
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: account of her intentions. She maintained that she didn't actually
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: want her parents, Richard or Ruth, harmed at all. She
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: even said Rod abruptly asked whether she wanted him to
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: kill her parents once, but she said no. But there
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: was another allegation developing within Rod's circles too. See, Rod
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: claimed Heather had told him Richard was sexually abusing her.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: The accusation was serious, but there was no evidence establishing
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: that Richard was committing any sort of sexual assault against her.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Heather's complaints about home nevertheless became part of the justification
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Rod gave his friends for why she needed to leave Florida.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: And Heather did want to leave. So for Rod, the
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: idea fit neatly into plans he was already making himself.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: He later said that he'd been thinking about leaving Murray
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: for approximately six months at that point. And at the
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: time police were investigating him, his relationship with Jaden's group
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: had collapsed too, and his new circle was increasingly becoming
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: his chosen family. So the destination taking shape for a
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: better place was going to be New Orleans, Louisiana. The
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: perfect place for him to start over. Rod imagined leaving
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Kentucky with members of his group, collecting Heather in Florida
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: and continuing towards New Orleans, where they could live together.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: Scott was prepared to go. So was Charity. So was Dana.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Michael Schaffer nearly went with them, too. Michael had been
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Rod's first recruit after the break with Jaden's group. He'd
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: spent a considerable amount of time with them and, well, unfortunately,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: his personal circumstances made it so he couldn't go to Florida. Well,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't say unfortunately. I guess unfortunately for him in
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: that situation, but ultimately it was the better thing.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because I feel like this is not a.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: Very good idea. Definitely not. But by the time the
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: others were on their way to Kentucky, Michael wanted to
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: go with them, but he had been placed in a
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: treatment facility for teenagers with behavioral problems. Now that removed
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: him from what was about to happen, even though he
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: had been close enough with Rod to hear the group
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: talk casually about killing people and he himself wanting to go.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Now that meant by November 1996, the plan to leave
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Murray was no longer a hypothetical plan. Rod was 16,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Scott was 16, Charity was 16, and Dana was 19,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: the only legal adult among the four of them. They
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: had transportation, which was Scott's car, but it was hardly
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: ideal for a long road trip carrying seven people across
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: multiple states. They also had limited money and no particular
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: stable plan for what to do when they would actually
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: reach New Orleans either. What they did have was a
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: destination before New Orleans. They were going to Eustace because
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Rod wanted Heather to come with them. And Heather, well,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: she was planning to leave home. To all the teenagers involved,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: the trip could be framed as an escape. Get out
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: of Murray, collect Heather, keep moving. In fact, in their minds,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: it very well could have felt like an adventure, something
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: straight out of their role-playing games. But now they were
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: living it. So in late November of 1996, Rod, Scott, Charity,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: and Dana climbed into Scott's car and began the drive,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: heading south. And they weren't traveling with much of a
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: safety net either. Their ultimate destination was going to be
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: New Orleans, but they needed to make that 800-mile drive
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: to pick up Heather and Eustace first, and convince anyone
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: else interested in leaving to come with them, too. And
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: along the way, Scott's aging car was rather unreliable. In fact,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: enough so that simply reaching New Orleans was going to
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: look questionable at best. But as the group approached Eustace,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: those problems became worse, and the teenagers began talking about
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: finding something more dependable soon. By Monday, November 25th, they
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: made their way to Eustace. Rod and his group made
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: contact with people he knew from his time in Florida,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: and during the visits, he began saying things that would
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: have sounded considerably more alarming if had his friends not
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: already known him as someone who consistently exaggerated and talked
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: about violence. One of those people was Shannon, a friend
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Rod knew in Eustace. While Rod, Scott, and Charity and
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Dana were gathered in her kitchen, Rod began talking about
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Heather's parents and their vehicle. Rod said he wanted to
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: steal Richard and Ruth Wendorf's Ford Explorer so they could
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: make it to New Orleans, since his probably wasn't going
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: to make it. but the conversation quickly turned a lot
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: darker than that. According to Shannon, Rod said he intended
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: to kill Heather's parents and take their car. Now, Shannon
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: didn't believe Rod when he said he was going to
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: kill them and take their vehicle, of course. Rod lied frequently.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: He had a history of exaggeration. In fact, constantly. I mean,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: he'd spent months presenting himself as a centuries-old vampire capable
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: of extraordinary things, when in reality, he's A 16-year-old kid.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: But also, if they're needing a new vehicle, I'm assuming
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: they have no money. So how the hell else are
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: they going to get this?
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: I think everything they're doing is on a wing and
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: a prayer sort of thing. They're just doing it and
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: not planning anything. Because say, for example, they do get
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: a vehicle. Say they do buy one or they do
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: obtain one somehow. Maybe they win a lottery. I don't know.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: What are they doing when they get to New Orleans?
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Where are they staying?
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: They don't have any of this planned.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: They have nothing planned. Not where they're staying, not where
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: they can get money. I bet you they're scrounging up
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: dollars for gas along the way, not even thinking if
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: they have enough to make it there that way.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Holy moly.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: As I mentioned, he's a kid. They're all kids. They're
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: not planning this. They're not thinking. What were you thinking
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: about when you were 16? Certainly, well, not what you're
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: thinking about. What kind of frame of mind were you in?
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: How well did you think things through? You might have
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: thought you did. You certainly didn't.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I guess at this point they're like just
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: runaway kids, really.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Exactly. I remember at 16 counting the change in my
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: pocket to see if I had enough to get a
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: cheeseburger at McDonald's, you know? Like that's the sort of
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: people we're dealing with. They're children.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But also they're doing like this big, as they're
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: calling it, adventure, I guess.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Well, I called it an adventure. Okay.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Well, journey or whatever. You think that you would have
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: a little bit in you to think about like how
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: you're going to survive or what the outcome exactly is
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: going to be.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: You would think, but I don't think they were thinking.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: I don't think they thunk at all.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: But with this conversation with Shannon, it's to her, it
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: sounded like the same old story. You know, him just
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: spitting out, you know, fantasy things. I'm going to kill
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: and take this vehicle. Like she's like, yeah, sure.
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: Whatever.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Now at the same time, something was different though. Rod
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: had changed considerably since she had known him in Florida,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: but still she didn't believe that there was any sort
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: of real threats coming from off all this. But Rod
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: then demonstrated another part of his life that he had
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: actually created in Kentucky, something she hadn't seen before because
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: then standing in Shannon's kitchen, he took a knife and
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: And he drew the blade across his arm, cutting himself.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: And then that's when the members of his group approached
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: and began drinking the blood from the wound.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: Oh man, that is just vile.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Dana even commented about Rod's blood and how it tasted
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: better when it came from his neck. Rod continued talking
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: casually about violence, telling Shannon that decapitation was his preferred
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: method of killing. And at one point he even attempted
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: to take her kitchen knives with him out the door,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: but Shannon stopped him. At approximately 5.30 to 6 p.m.,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Rod repeated the plan to another person the group encountered
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: in Eustace. The car had been giving them trouble, and
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Rod explained that he intended to take the Wendorf's vehicle
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: because he did not trust their own car to make
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: the rest of the trip. But more importantly, he again
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: spoke openly about killing Heather's parents in order to get it.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: When asked why Heather's parents needed to die, Rod answered
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: he wanted the car. It was that simple. The people
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: hearing these statements still had the same problem Shannon did.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Rod talked like this all the time. He was known
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: as someone who ran his mouth. He was just telling stories.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: It was fiction. So in hindsight, yeah, it sounds terrible.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: But it was just another outrageous claim from a teenager
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: who routinely boasted about these things. That's what they were seeing. Heather, meanwhile,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: had finished school for the day. She met up with
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Rod and the group. And at some point after school
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: on Monday, Rod asked her a question that Heather would
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: later remember very clearly. Did she want her parents dead
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: or alive? Heather plainly said alive. She even told Rod directly, quote,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: don't go near my parents. Now, whatever Rod intended, the
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: plan to leave Florida continued. And that evening, the group
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: met up again near the Wendorf home with Heather. Heather
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: wanted to say goodbye with some people before heading out
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: of Eustace, so Rod and Scott got out of the
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: car while Charity and Dana remained with Heather and the
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: three girls drove away. One of their stops was the
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: home of Heather's boyfriend, Jeremy Huber. At approximately 8pm, Heather
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: arrived and told Jeremy she was leaving town. She asked
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: if he wanted to come with them, but Jeremy said no.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: He knew about Heather's fascination with Rod and the vampire
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: identity surrounding him too. Heather had even previously told Jeremy
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: about Rod's claims, that he was a reincarnated demon or
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: some kind of higher power 500-year-old vampire thing. And Jeremy
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: believed that she was becoming deeply invested in what Rod
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: was telling her. He had tolerated some of it because
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: he cared about Heather. But leaving Florida with this guy,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: that's a whole different story. Jeremy tried to convince her
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: to stay, but Heather had already made her mind up.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: So the two said their goodbyes. And Heather left with
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Charity and Dana. They then went to see Heather's friend, Janine,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: who had also known Rod and had previously been included
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: in the plan to leave Florida with them. They asked
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: her to come along, but she declined. Now back near
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: the Wendorf house, Rod and Scott were there on their own.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: There had been plenty of talk during the trip about
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: getting Heather out of Florida, about Scott and his failing car,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: about taking the Ford Explorer, and repeatedly about killing Richard
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: and Ruth. And whether every teenager traveling with Rod actually
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: believed those threats or not was another matter. But Rod
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: and Scott were no longer just talking in someone's kitchen
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: about it. Now it was the evening of November 25th, 1996,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: and they were standing not far from the Wendorf home. Inside,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: was Richard and Ruth Wendorf. Jennifer was away, Heather was
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: with Charity and Dana, and Rod and Scott began making
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: their way towards the house. This was the moment they
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: had talked about, the moment they had fantasized about, the
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: moment they had joked about. This was the moment that
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: they were going to find out if their words carried
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: any real weight, and if they could truly follow through
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: with it all. And that's where we're going to end
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: part one.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. You're kidding. Nope.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: That's where we're ending part one.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: Holy shit. That is a spot to end.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that kind of did that on purpose.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Holy.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Sometimes a cliffhanger is a good thing. Sometimes.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Wow, because I was like really buckling in right in
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: that moment to hear what else you had to say.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: I even forgot that this was two-parter and I was just, okay.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Well, you're not going to get any information out of
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: me until we record the second part.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: This is quite an interesting story to listen to. It's
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: because it's so, I don't know, in my brain, it
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: just seems so far-fetched.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: It's very fantasy driven by their– they're fucked up reality. They're,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: they're stories they're creating. I don't even know how to
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: put it.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: And just like how bad of an idea all of
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: this is. Exactly.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: And it's funny. Sorry, not funny, but it's interesting because
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: this is the sort of thing that the whole satanic
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: panic was about with these, these board games and everything.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: People worrying that, you know what, these games, dungeons and dragons,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: you know, all this sort of stuff, vampire masquerade opened
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: the door to To people and these occult things and
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: mixing fantasy with reality and doing dangerous stuff. That is
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: the satanic panic. So this is actually very interesting because
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: most satanic panic stuff we hear, it's like, oh yeah, bullshit, whatever.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: This gives us a look at that exact fear people
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: were scared of.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: And talking about it. The articles were written. This is
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: the very sort of thing.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: I do want to say, too, I am a bit
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: surprised that Heather left him alone like that, I guess.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: I guess she really, truly didn't believe he would be
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: of any harm to her family, I guess.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: I guess that's probably the case, yeah. But it's interesting.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I've got another thing I wanted to say.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's definitely interesting that she left him.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: You're right. She probably just didn't believe. But this also
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: brings up nature versus nurturer. He did not have the
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: best upbringing, but I don't believe that that's what attributed
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: to who he became. I think, sure, maybe him not
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: having the best upbringing maybe made him a bit of
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: a social outcast.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Awkward.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: But it was finding this fantasy life as a vampire
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: and then having people surrounding him, holding him up to
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: a higher sire position, as they called it. I think
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: that it was delusion.
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: Uh-huh.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: As that doctor had said that I discussed with the
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: role-playing games, it's not that the role-playing games can make
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: someone do this. The role-playing games, this fantasy, can be
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: a layer onto someone who's already willing to commit these
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: and just be that final piece.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: Well, and then getting other kids in trouble too because
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: I don't think everyone in the group probably had a
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: terrible upbringing.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: No, I don't imagine so, no.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: And so now they're just being influenced by– you know,
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: someone who they shouldn't, who shouldn't be influencing other people.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: No, he shouldn't be. But that's the case because he's
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: their leader. He's telling them that he's a, would you,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: if you truly believed that you had a 500 year
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: old semi demonic, whatever entity vampire dude, if you truly
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: believe that this friend of yours was that they're, they're
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: probably a wise individual. And sure, it makes some sense
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: to listen to them, to look up to them, to
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: have them as, you know what, my leader. It makes
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: sense if you truly believe that.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: But how do you get someone to truly believe that, though?
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know. You know what? Fitting in when you
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: don't usually fit in has a lot of power for
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of people.
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very true. If they.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: If they don't fit in, they don't have friends, they
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: don't have a family or a sense of belonging. If
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: you can offer that to someone, that does so much.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Which is why it's good for people in the real
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: world to actually be nice to one another. Because you
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: can prevent people from going into these dark paths because
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: the wrong type of person welcomed them in.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, gosh, that just gave me the shivers.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: All you have to do is be kind to someone,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: say hello, good morning. Hey, I like your shirt today.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: You look good. You did real good work in the
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: office this week. Good on you. Hey, high five. Happy Monday.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: That sort of stuff goes so far to make someone
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: feel belonged.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Well, it's especially difficult and hard in like your teenage
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: years too. because kids are freaking rude and mean.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: And so if they're nice like that, it can drive
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: someone who's easily influenced into a better direction in their
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: life to do better.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: But if they have this, what they truly believe is
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: this 500 year old vampire dude leading them, making them belong,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: feel loved well they're going to follow that darkness instead
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: and they're in turn going to do some dark shit.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah i guess so but i mean you would have
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: to convince me i don't even know if i could
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: be convinced to freaking drink blood out of someone to
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: be honest oh yeah no matter how desperate i was
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: in need of friends.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah i'd be like no i'm i'm gonna have a
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: coffee you guys are do your thing no thanks yeah
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: i'm i'm gonna go for a tim hortons run and
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: then i just wouldn't come back You know?
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: You'd run for the hills.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Yes. Anyways, that's part one. If you guys want to
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: check out our socials, we have our description of this podcast.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: We've got our Instagram, our Facebook. We've got our Patreon
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: where you can sign up for exclusive content. And as
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: I said, ads free as well. With this October coming up,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: we were having some pretty cool stuff go on. So
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: now is a good time to sign up if you've
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: been thinking about it. Reviews also go a long way.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: We are an independent show, researched, written, All of that
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: with just us and you listening. So your support goes
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: a long way and we seriously appreciate it. We couldn't
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: do it without you. So thank you. And until part two.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: Stay wicked.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you.