Page 2 - Rod Ferrell News Today

Friday, January 29, 2021 by Joe Byrnes (WMFE) Play Audio Stay tuned in to our local news coverage: Listen to 90.7 WMFE on your FM or HD radio, the WMFE mobile app or your smart speaker — say “Alexa, play NPR” and you’ll be connected. The court case involving a 1996 vampire cult-related double homicide in Eustis will be featured 8 p.m. Sunday on Court TV’s “Judgement with Ashleigh Banfield.” Former vampire cult leader Rod Ferrell is serving life sentences for two murders. Imag...

“Judgment with Ashleigh Banfield” is scheduled to air at 8 p.m. The show features original trial footage from 1998 and interviews with people familiar with the case. One of those witnesses will be journalist Frank Stanfield, who has covered the case for decades, including Ferrell’s rehearing, for the Daily Commercial. Ferrell and a small band of followers from Kentucky came to Florida to pick up cult member Heather Wendorf, 15, and head for New Orleans. Heather left in a car with two cul...

I failed him so miserably then. because he asked me for help. and i didnt give it. >> in november 1996, the demon growing inside rod ferrell would be tragically unleashed. while living in florida, he had met heather wendorf. she was a year younger than him and eager to participate in rods vampire culture. theyd spent many hours in a eustis graveyard and considered themselves bonded after tasting each others teenaged blood. >> it wasnt about the gore. it wasnt, you know, the disgustingness of it....

His face and head looked like hamburger. thats the only thing i could relate to it. it was just a bloody mess. as i came back out through the living room, i could see mrs. wendorf laying face down between the kitchen and the dining room. >> she was in a pool of blood also. you could see the back of her head looked like a huge hole in the back of her head, like the size of a softball. >> my name is jay cardell. i heard the call go out over the radio. i arrived at approximately 12:30 a.m. this was...

When i walked in, i walked right past him. i had no intention of harming him at that point. it was only when i returned back to the living area where he laid, i guess my mind just shattered finally. >> the blows were so forceful, blood spatters were found 360 degrees around that living room. we even found tooth fragments on his shirt, where he was struck so hard that it had knocked his teeth out. >> i did not see naomi anywhere in the house at that time. >> mrs. wendorf was showering for the nig...

>> then she clawed my face and grabbed my wrist. thats when i took the straight end of the crowbar, i just started bashing the back of her head. her brains were just like oozing out of her skull. >> very cold, very callous. >> the three girls that were at the car, did they know what you were up to when you were going up to the house? >> i didnt tell them. because i wanted to keep them out of it. >> did scott do anything? watched you? >> he watched and smiled. >> by taking the blame on myself, i ...

>> ferrell told the girls that under the cover of darkness, he would steal the wendorf family suv. on november 25th, 1996, heathers 19-year-old sister jennifer returned from an evening out around 11:00. >> my mother and my father have just been killed. i just walked in the door. i dont know what happened. theyre dead. >> what makes you think that they have been killed? >> theres blood everywhere. please, its bad. >> okay. were on the way. >> when i got the call, i was approximately two blocks aw...

>> the only person i contact outside of this place is gina. everyone else, i have severed all ties with. >> the murray vampire clan soon disbanded after ferrells arrest. its one-time leader like rod says hes denounced vampirism for good. >> im a straight-up christian, man, 100%. i do not practice vampirism for anymore. i have not for a number of years. could i take that away from myself? no. thats not ever going to change. its a butterfly denying it was ever a caterpillar. i cant. >> now in his ...

What. you dont have a desk bed? dont be left in the dark. get proactive alerts 24/7. comcast business. built for business. rod ferrell is facing decades of unchanging prison routine, though his life did change significantly in october of 2010. in the prison chapel, he married the woman hed been corresponding with for two years, gina maria, a former nurse studying to be a crime scene investigator. >> he is the best husband i could have ever hoped for, but hes -- and then some. i mean, its great...

>> how would this victim have been chosen? where did he come from? >> they will find transients, mainly, because you cant miss what they dont know is there. other people that they would have to actually i suppose track. they will take their time to assure that it looks like a runaway or perhaps the way that they do sacrifice them, they might leave them as a suicide victim. just from the methods ive heard from murderers they house back in this area where i dwell, they have told me things that i c...