Children Who Kill: Profiles of Pre-Teen and Teenage Killers

by Carol Anne Davis

  The murders

  The boys let Heather Wendorf think that they were going to collect another friend who was supposed to run away with them. In truth, they went looking for the Wendorfs’ house. Rod had lived some distance away from Heather throughout much of their friendship so had never been to her home before but another friend had told him how to identify the place. At first he approached a neighbouring dwelling but looked inside and saw little children playing so knew that couldn’t be Heather’s home.

  The teens soon located the Wendorfs’ garage and Rod grabbed a crowbar to use as a weapon. The door was unlocked so he and Scott entered the house, had a drink in the kitchen and looked around. The youths saw Heather’s father sleeping on the settee, something the hardworking man often did at the end of another long day.

  Rod had allegedly heard Heather complain about her parents many times. She’d cried on the phone and he’d assumed that she was being abused, just as he’d been. He’d decided, without telling her, that her parents were going to die.

  Rod started to batter the man – a man he’d never met – over the head with the crowbar. The first few blows rendered him unconscious but Rod continued to batter him, causing blood and brain tissue to fly everywhere. He delivered more than a dozen blows to the man’s skull until he eventually stopped breathing, his face unrecognisable, the bar briefly forced deep into his chest. Faced with the reality of watching a brutal death, Scott froze. He believed, in principle, in blood sacrifices – but seeing all this real blood and brains was completely different.

  Moments after killing Rick Wendorf, Rod lifted the dead man’s shirt and burnt a V for vampire into his stomach with a lit cigarette then took his credit card. Scott went into one of the other rooms to see if there was any cash available and Rod, holding the bloodstained crowbar, walked out into the hall.

  At that moment Ruth Wendorf stepped into the hallway carrying a coffee. Startled at suddenly finding this long-haired stranger in her house, she asked him what he wanted. He lashed out at her, and she threw the hot liquid over him. They fought and she scratched him – the police would later find his DNA under her nails. Enraged, the teenager battered the crowbar into her head again and again.

  Then Rod and Scott left, knowing that Heather’s older sister would shortly walk into the scene of horror. They’d already cut the phone lines so that she couldn’t immediately summon help.

  The great escape

  Scott took the wheel of the Wendorfs’ Explorer (an act of theft that, in the eyes of the law, would make him almost as guilty as Rod) and soon caught up with the other car that Charity was now driving. They eventually all transferred to the Explorer and ditched the Buick.

  Heather was shocked when she saw that they’d stolen her parents’ vehicle and said that they’d be livid – but, after dropping several hints, Rod admitted that they were dead. Heather appeared shocked, then angry for a time, and later said she’d thought about running away from the group but decided to stay in case Rod killed her too.

  Independent life is hard – and the five teenagers had little money and only a vague notion of where they were heading. They got lost several times and burgled a house to find cash to buy food. Rod had thought he might live on his wits in the wilderness – but the girls were cold and scared and Charity was two months pregnant with his child. Like most teenagers, he had only a sketchy idea of how he’d survive in the real world, telling the others that they might be able to stay with his former friends in New Orleans.

  Meanwhile – as they’d suspected – Heather’s sister had come home and discovered the bodies so an APB was out for the Explorer. Charity decided to phone her mum and ask for help. Her mother told them to go to a motel and she’d arrange to pay for it. The police raced to the motel and the teens surrendered immediately.

  Rod’s statement

  Rod was questioned in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on 28th November 1996. He said, in answer to their question, that he’d been seeing a psychiatrist at the behest of either his school or his mother. He couldn’t remember which. He admitted that he no longer cared about anything, adding ‘It’s because I don’t have any concern for life anymore.’

  He went on to answer questions about the proposed trip then said that he and Scott had gone to Heather’s garage for ‘weapons, food and cash.’ Moments later he added ‘I went to her dad and smacked the fuck out of him until he finally quit breathing so yes, I’m admitting to murder.’ He also said that he’d rained numerous blows on Ruth Wendorf’s head ‘until I saw her brains falling on the floor.’

  His statement showed that Scott hadn’t taken part in the bloodshed, because ‘he totally froze,’ adding later that ‘the most he did was move the bodies a little bit.’

  Rod added that they hadn’t gotten caught until he let his girlfriend phone home as she was the only thing he cared about. By then they were lost and hungry and walking through a bad neighbourhood which scared Charity.

  Rod was very amicable with the Baton Rouge police saying that they didn’t beat him like the Murray and Florida cops had. He said that such violence had made him wary of everyone. Asked if he’d seen a murder before he replied ‘I’ve fucking seen murders all my life, ever since I was five…’ He implicated a male relative in one such murder and added that the cult the relative was part of had raped five-year-old Rod as part of an initiation rite.

  Moments later he asked if he’d get the death penalty. When told that he probably would, he said ‘I was kind of hoping… please go ahead, ha!’

  He added that he didn’t currently know where his mother was, but that she was staying with a new boyfriend who had just gotten out of prison for forgery. Earlier in his statement he’d talked about one of her ex-boyfriends who, he alleged, did drugs.

  Towards the end of his statement he said that he hoped the police who were coming to collect him were as nice as the ones currently interrogating him. He said that if they weren’t he would clam up, adding ‘I didn’t speak for two years at one time so I can do it again.’

  Scott’s statement

  Scott said that he’d planned to kill Ruth Wendorf whilst Rod killed Rick Wendorf. But when he’d seen Rod strike Rick for the first time he knew that he couldn’t go through with it. He said that they’d told Charity and Dana minutes before the deaths that they were going to kill the couple and steal their car. Scott said that Heather hadn’t had prior knowledge of the murders. He was unable to explain to the police why he’d agreed to kill the couple or why he’d let Rod go ahead with such vicious acts. The girls had remained in the Buick whilst the murders were taking place in the house so there was little they could add.

  The trial

  It was a foregone conclusion that Rod would be found guilty of killing Rick and Ruth Wendorf, a couple who had done him no harm and whom he’d met for the first time moments before he bludgeoned them to death. His skin had been found under Ruth’s fingernails as she’d scratched his arms whilst they wrestled. His footprints were also found at the scene. He had told Dana and Charity that he and Scott planned to kill the couple and the police had his full confession on tape.

  It’s not a court’s place to explain why an act occurred, only that it did. But obviously the defence wanted to show any mitigating circumstances. They spoke of Rod’s miserable childhood, being moved around from one place to another. They spoke of Sondra’s prison sentence for soliciting sex from a fourteen-year-old child. An expert who’d interviewed Sondra said that she had the maturity of a twelve-year-old and was sometimes delusional.

  Rod had also told them that he’d been sexually abused by his grandfather – and by other men – at age five or six as part of a Black Mass. As he was also claiming to be a vampire who had lived for hundreds of years, no one paid much attention to these allegations. But Sondra said that Rod’s grandfather had taken him out for the day fishing when he was five and that he’d come back looking hugely traumatised and vomiting. He’d later drawn pictures of demons and pictures that suggested oral and anal abu
se.

  Sondra’s sister Lyzetta spoke up in court saying that her father – Rod’s grandfather – had kissed her and fondled her, and that he’d rubbed her childish body against his. As a result of this she had left home at age fourteen.

  Rod’s grandfather has never been charged with any sexual offence so must be assumed innocent. But he told reporters that a Christian wouldn’t do such things, and in this he was wrong for professionals who have studied sexual addiction have found that men and women who act in sexually inappropriate ways have often spent years adopting the moral high ground. As a result, they are well known for their strong moral values both by their families and in the wider community When the man – or woman – is then arrested for, say, flashing or making obscene phone calls, everyone refuses to believe it at first because it contrasts so strongly with the values he or she has always professed.

  Such men and women are often desperate for outside approval so they try harder than normal to appear extra good. But deep down they believe that they are bad people who are not lovable and whose needs will not be met. They see sex as their most important need and will risk their careers, marriages and children’s happiness to have these needs met.

  Patrick Carnes, author of Out Of The Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction has noted that such sexual obsessives are often drawn to helping professions such as the ministry, social work and nursing. These are all professions in which people can either nurture or dominate. Both roles are attractive to the sexual addict who believes that he or she cannot be loved for themselves, only for what they can give to others – or can force from them.

  Rod Ferrell admitted to psychiatrists that being sexualised at the age of six had left him a nymphomaniac and that he’d had numerous lovers. The vampire embrace – though he didn’t say so – is also a very sexual act. During it the teens embrace closely and one grazes his teeth against the neck of the other. When performed by two same sex members of the clan it had a homo-erotic element.

  Spreading blame

  Rod’s statement in court seemed to differ from what he’d originally told police. In his statement at Baton Rouge he’d said that Scott just froze when he, Rod, started to bludgeon Rick. But in court he said that Scott smiled whilst watching this first murder and that Scott had seemed high afterwards.

  He hadn’t said much about Heather initially, but now said that she didn’t like her mum and suggested that Heather had masterminded the two murders – but this contrasted with what he’d told Scott and the other girls earlier Rod now seemed to be trying to spread the blame in order to get a reduced sentence for himself.

  Sondra had planned to say in court that she’d overheard Heather and Rod planning the deaths together. But she failed a lie detector test on the subject so her testimony couldn’t go ahead.

  Death penalty

  Rod now changed his plea to guilty. Later that month (February 1998) he was sentenced to die in Florida’s electric chair. He remained implacable, only looking momentarily close to tears when his mother began to sob.

  Charity was given ten years for robbery with a firearm or deadly weapon. She was also guilty of driving Heather away from the Wendorfs’ home that night. Dana was given seventeen years for similar offences as she was an adult offender rather than a juvenile. Scott, who had watched the killings and stolen the Explorer, was given two life sentences for first degree murder.

  A programme aired in Britain about the vampire murders said that the judiciary was looking closely at Heather as they believed she might have played a part in planning her parent’s deaths. But subsequent to the programme being aired, a Grand Jury said that they’d found no evidence against her and she was cleared.

  Update

  Scott will remain incarcerated for life without the possibility of parole. Charity’s original release date was set at 2007 but she will probably be released in 2004. Within weeks of her arrest, she lost the baby she was carrying. It’s believed that Dana’s sentence will also be reduced. Heather, who was cleared of all charges, moved away from the area and returned to school.

  Rod was put on Florida’s Death Row. Interviewed in Lake County Jail in Tavares after being sentenced, he said that he didn’t realise the impact of his actions. This seems unlikely: he was long-term disturbed but he wasn’t delusional when committing the homicides. After all, he’d made sure that the couple didn’t have company, had cut the phone lines, gotten rid of his bloodstained shirt and changed the registration of the Explorer to that of the Buick in order to confuse the law.

  As is often the case with high profile youthful killers, teenager ‘fans’ soon set up websites dedicated to the vampire clan and tried to find Rod’s prison address so that they could write to him. One boy on a vampire message board said he’d been told by another web-user that he could have the address for seventy-five dollars. The boy seemed fascinated with Rod Ferrell because he sounded articulate, looked impressively Gothic with his flowing black hair and had committed the murders when he was so young.

  But appearances can be deceptive. Most of Rod’s statements, when carefully analysed, made little sense. And with his dyed black hair shorn off in jail, he looked weak and hopeless. One of the policemen associated with the case summed it up best, saying that he talked a good talk but was really just a scared little kid.

  In April 1998 Rod’s lawyers tried to have his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment, arguing that the jury hadn’t given enough weight to the psychological reports about his multiply-abused childhood. The judge disagreed so he is still likely to die in the electric chair.

  9 Don’t Cry Out Loud

  Mary Flora Bell

  Mary was born on 26th May 1957 to Betty, a seventeen-year-old single mother. She was a beautiful baby with a sweet smile and large violet-blue eyes. But Betty shrieked ‘Take the thing away from me’ when a nurse tried to put the baby girl into her arms. Betty had been hidden away in a convent for the duration of her pregnancy as she came from a Catholic family and in those days illegitimacy was frowned upon.

  No one knew who Mary’s father was and Betty – who was deeply religious – just said that he was the Devil. Whatever Mary’s true paternity, Betty reluctantly took her home to the house she shared with her widowed mother and younger sister in Gateshead, England. Thankfully her relatives loved Mary from the start.

  Betty returned to her factory job leaving her mother to care for the child. Seven months later she met a handsome young man named Billy Bell. They married within weeks of meeting (by which time she was pregnant again) and Billy moved in with Betty and her mum. Billy was very proud of his new bride who had won many local beauty competitions and who loved to dance.

  Mary’s mother tries to kill her

  Betty continued to look upon her firstborn with unconcealed loathing. She gave the one-year-old some of her own mother’s tranquillisers and Mary almost died. Luckily Betty’s relatives found the baby and rushed her to hospital where she had her stomach pumped out. Everyone knew that a one-year-old could not have reached the secure hiding place where Betty’s mother kept her tranquillisers but no one wanted to believe that Betty was to blame…

  That autumn Betty gave birth to a son, Mary’s first half-brother. At this stage the rest of the family moved back to their original home town of Glasgow in Scotland, leaving Betty and Billy in Newcastle, England, with their little brood.

  Billy soon found that he alone had to take care of the two children. Betty would do the cleaning but she didn’t cook and wouldn’t get up to feed the babies during the night. When her little boy was six months old she left him and Mary with her husband for a few weeks and no one knew where she’d gone. On other occasions she took Mary with her to stay with an assortment of friends and relatives. Robbed of the routine that young children so desperately need, Mary often looked pale and tense.

  She had received so little attention from her mother that she’d had to deny her own need for hugs and now wouldn’t let her relatives hug her. (Gwendolyn Graham, profiled in t
his author’s book Women Who Kill, had a similarly neglectful mother and also could not respond to physical affection when it was finally offered.)

  Mary’s mother tries to kill her again

  Mary’s mother now gave her away to a female acquaintance and the woman cut Mary’s hair because it was full of lice. The frightened toddler had no idea what was happening. Unfortunately the woman soon returned the child and Betty explained this rejection by telling Mary that she was a bad child. The following year, it’s apparent that Betty gave both Mary and her little brother pills that could have resulted in their deaths. Luckily a relative saw the children eating the tablets – though she didn’t see Betty handing them over – and she made both children sick.

  A few months later Betty took Mary to visit her grandmother in Glasgow. Betty was holding Mary near the window when she suddenly ‘fell’ out. Her uncle managed to grab the three-year-old by an ankle, seriously straining the ligaments in his back. The following week Betty left Mary with a stranger that she’d met at an adoption agency but her relatives reclaimed her within hours. The woman, who clearly meant well, had already bought the confused little girl some new clothes.

  One of Billy’s relatives suggested that she and her husband adopt Mary as they were so worried about her being ill-treated and given away to strangers, but for some reason Betty refused to consider this. Instead, she took the sad-faced little girl back to Newcastle.