This sinister saga began in the 1990s in Eustis, Florida, where troubled teenager Rod Ferrell lived.
Rod was a loner and outcast at school, and he also considered himself a goth and wore all black, growing long hair, which he also dyed black.
In cold weather, he wore the same long black coat, in which he seemed to be hiding from the rest of the world.
Rod from early childhood was fascinated by the culture of death, and in adolescence became addicted to horror films and the occult. He soon became interested in Satanism and demonology, and began calling himself a 500-year-old vampire named Vesago.
Rod also took LSD from adolescence, smoked marijuana, tried cocaine and other drugs. Ultimately, in 9th grade, he was expelled from school for bullying and frequent tantrums, and his family moved to Murray, Kentucky to try to start over.
But things turned out even worse. In Murray, Rod felt even more that occultism and vampirism are exactly what he wants from life. Moreover, he found friends in this city who shared his hobbies.
Promotional video:
All together, they began to gather and perform some secret rituals, and soon Rod and another teenager named Howard Scott Anderson were arrested for cruelty to animals. They attacked the dogs at a local shelter and stabbed them with a knife.
After that, the group began to gather away from people in an abandoned building they called the "vampire hotel". In this building, they began to continue their gatherings, which each time became more and more fierce. They killed animals on them and began to drink their blood, and then began to drink blood from each other.
Then they officially began to call their group the Vampire Clan and began to lure new members into it. When another difficult teenager seeking understanding came to them, at the initiation ceremony Rod himself made a cut on his arm and the newcomer had to drink his blood.
Once a girl named Heather Wendorf, with whom Rod was friends in childhood, wanted to join the Vampire Clan. However, her parents forbade her to do this and this angered Rod. He decided to go to their home in Florida and talk to them. Rod took with him the faithful Howard Scott Anderson and two other girls.
On a cold evening on November 26, 1996, Rod and his friends arrived at the house of Heather's parents - Naomi Ruth Quinn and Richard Wendorf. Rod entered the house through an unlocked garage door, and when he entered the living room, he saw Richard sleeping on the couch.
Rod was immediately seized by a "fierce desire to kill" and he raised the iron bar, which was going to open the door and brought it down on the man's head. He did this several times before he was convinced that his victim was dead. Howard Scott helped him and beat the man in the ribs.
Awakened by the noise, Naomi Ruth ran into the living room and screamed loudly in horror at the sight of her husband's bloody body. Then Rod attacked her and also beat her to death with a crowbar.
“I really have no idea why I made this decision. But I just decided to kill him and Scott helped me. Like children, Scott and I danced around his body until he was dead. I was in a whirlpool of my own madness."
After that, Rod and his friends found a shotgun in the house and decided to go to New Orleans. When they found themselves in Baton Rouge along the way, they were finally overtaken by the police.
The trial of Rod Ferrell and members of his vampire clan was a gift for the newspapers and was featured on all the editorials. Rod confessed everything and describing his actions, he felt great pleasure that he was in the center of attention and everyone was listening to him.
However, he assured that at first he did not want to kill Heather's parents and does not understand why this happened. Heather herself was also initially wanted to be involved in the murder, but then they proved that the girl did not know anything about Ferrell's intentions and did not help him.
The court sentenced 16-year-old Ferrell to death, and thus Ferrell at the time would have become the youngest executed in the United States. However, later the sentence was changed to life.
Howard Scott Anderson also received life sentences, and their two assistants received different prison sentences.
In 2002, the horror film The Vampire Clan was released, based on the story of Ferrell and his accomplices.
The nature of the Ferrell "clan" has remained controversial for psychologists and forensic scientists. Was it just the far-flung "games" of dysfunctional teenagers, or something far more sinister? Did their passions for Satanism and vampirism affect their psyche, or did they initially have a defect that was only embodied in reality in this way?