The Embrace: A True Vampire Story [Mass Market Paperback]

Aphrodite Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2000

With an extraordinary talent for staring evil dead in the eye, New York Times bestselling author and journalist Aphrodite Jones plunges readers into the front lines of a modern nightmare.

On November 25, 1996, in their home in the lakeside community of Eustis, Florida, Rick and Ruth Wendorf were savagely beaten to death with a tire iron. The Wendorfs' new Ford Explorer was stolen, but this was no routine robbery gone bad. This was a crime carried out by one Roderick Ferrell, a sixteen-year-old self-avowed Antichrist. His human sacrifice was a testament to the unique and sinister bond of four brainwashed teens. Heather Wendorf was a straight "A" student, a petite blonde with wide-set brown eyes. Yet she had been heard to wish her parents "off the face of the planet." Heather never dreamed that when she joined her friends for a joyride one fall evening, her wish had already come true.

Including exclusive interviews with every living character involved in the case, The Embrace will forever change the way we look at one of the fastest-growing religious movements in the country, and its most vulnerable fold: our children.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The "Vampire Clan" was a loosely knit gang of Southern U.S. teenagers who played at being outcasts and goths, and then pretended to be vampires. The twisted fantasies and dark mind of their young leader, Rod Ferrell, dominate The Embrace. Aphrodite Jones wastes no time in getting inside the troubled 16-year-old's head, detailing his elaborate delusions (he sometimes claims to be 500 years old; at other points, he was born 60,000 years ago and "sent to earth to destroy it") and his eerie abilities to control other troubled souls. With a Jim Jones-like knack for bizarre showmanship, Ferrell picked up followers and "true loves" with ease, then led his small, unmerry band on a mission from his home base in Kentucky to pick up yet another groupie--15-year-old Heather Wendorf--in Florida. The journey ended in violence in 1996, however, when Ferrell decided to kill Heather's parents with a crowbar. The group (Heather in tow) fled to New Orleans, where Rod promised his "vampire friends" would take them in; they were arrested a few days later. Ferrell, who now holds the record as the youngest inmate on death row, still insists he's the Antichrist.

Jones's account is rather spare, but feels balanced and honest. Like untold thousands of other American youths, Ferrell had the requisite bad childhood and unpleasant memories to later cause him both melancholy and grief. But unlike most of his peers, Rod Ferrell seems to have been born with a genius intelligence and the ability to memorize names, accents, and customs from different eras and places with ease, along with a talent to "perform" what he claimed to be. That he also happened to be deranged shouldn't be overlooked, but the real tragedy and concern here is that there might exist a rip in the fabric of our society large enough to allow healthy, normal teenagers like his group to fall through the tear and into the arms of animalistic hucksters like Rod Ferrell. --Tjames Madison --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

On November 25, 1996, in Eustis, Fla., Ruth and Richard Wendorf were found bludgeoned to death in their home, with their youngest daughter, Heather, 15, missing. Jones (Cruel Sacrifice, etc.) portrays Heather as a lonely girl whose desire to transcend her "mundane," privileged life brought her under the influence of a charismatic monster who introduced her to an underground world of teenagers dressing in black, practicing ritual bloodletting and dreaming of traveling to Paris and New Orleans. Was Heather part of a gruesome execution planned by self-described vampires or a brainwashed victim seduced by pack leader Rod Ferrell? Jones makes a case for the latter, minimizing Heather's involvement in the murders ("She was without an ego"). While Jones claims to have used "proven sources of journalistic research," she does admit to altering "certain details" and taking "certain storytelling liberties." Jones seems to think Ferrell was just born mean, and she turns him into a larger-than-life character, calling him "the embodiment of insanity." Her entire account suffers from psychological na?vet?, as she appears to believe whatever HeatherAwho stands to inherit half a million dollars from her parents' deathAtells her and dismisses those who contradict the girl, including Heather's own sister. Jones provides a good overview of the facts surrounding the murder and her prose glows with a voyeuristic intensity, but she comes off as so wholly biased in favor of Heather, "the victim," that her presentation lacks full credibility. (June) FYI: Jones's All She Wanted is soon to be filmed with Drew Barrymore.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (June 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671034677
• ISBN-13: 978-0671034672
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #859,112 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Horrible tragedy and dull, dull, dull book, June 17, 2004

By 

BarkLessWagMore (USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Embrace: A True Vampire Story (Mass Market Paperback)

The back blurb of my copy of "The Embrace" claims "The Embrace will forever change the way we look at one of the fastest-growing religious movements in the country and its most vulnerable fold: our children."

Are they claiming Satanism or "vampirism" is one of the fastest growing religious movements? Since when? Or are they insinuating that modern day witchcraft = Satanism/vampirism. If that's the case someone really needs to do some homework. I sure hope the book is researched better than the back cover copy . . .

The Embrace is the author's pieced together account of a vicious true life crime perpetuated by a vicious, disturbed young man who believed he was immortal (among other wacked out theories). Rod Ferrell and his group of mindless followers are aimlessly traveling from Kentucky to Florida where Ferrell intends to add his ex-girlfriend Heather to his "coven", kill Heather's parents and steal their vehicle. The group then plans to head to New Orleans and crash with Ferrell's "vampire" friends. The sheep-like clan members don't take Ferrell's claims of murder seriously and laugh it off. Unfortunately, he wasn't kidding around and they find themselves accessories to a crime that is anything but funny.

I won't comment on how accurate this retelling of the events leading to the murder happens to be as I was completely unfamiliar with the case until now. The book reads like what I'm assuming it is: a collection of interviews pieced together by the author. The problem lies with the dull way the author presents her material. The book is extremely tedious and very repetitive and could've been trimmed by a hundred or more pages. This all makes for a very dull read for anyone not familiar with this case.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I knew she would messed this up., May 26, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Embrace: A True Vampire Story (Mass Market Paperback)

Don't bother reading this book. I went to school with several of the characters in this book, the ones from Florida, and I was a friend of a couple of them. Aphrodite does a terrible job of writing this book, the story has no flow, and she revisits simplistic ideas, while breezing over major issues. There was more to the story than vampire novels and Goth music. Trying to explain Rod's action in that fashion is like trying to say, "Oh, well Hitler just had a bad family life and self-esteem issues."
The real question is how could sane people follow such a freak. I would suggest that you rent the movie "Vampire Clan" instead. I will cost less, it goes by quicker, and tells the story just as fully without any of Aphrodite's conclusions. Plus in the movie everyone looks a lot better than they did in real life.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a "Religion", a sick kid with a vampire fantasy life, June 5, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Embrace: A True Vampire Story (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is about a 16 American boy from Kentucky named Rod Ferrel, a Schizotypal wannabe "vampire" addicted to Anne Rice and Marilyn Manson music, who took his vampiric friends Scott, Charity, and Dana down to Florida where he used to live to basically kidnap his other friend Heather Wendorf and all go to the location of Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles", New Orleans, to live as an immortal coven for the rest of their eternal lifes. However, while in Florida, because Rod Ferrel was so stressed from escaping Kentucky, he killed Heather's parents with a metal crowbar in the process of liberating her and she didn't find out until later on the road. Her older sister Jennifer came home, found the dead parents, called the police, and Rod and his "coven" were arrested several days later, all convicted of murder and put in jail.
Sure, it may sound like an open-close case, but what makes it so interesting is two things...
1. The media really exploited this case as a way to slam the "Goth" culture, which T.V. knows nearly nothing about. Most of the emphasis they put on the case is that Rod Ferrel dressed and acted like his vampire character Vesago in his insane/immortal fantasy world. He was so insane and had such a Charles Manson/Jim Jones thing going with his friends, he made them all believe they were vampiric demons sent to Earth to open the gates of Hell. At times he sounds dillusional but intelligent, but at other times he just sounds like a misguided idiotic teenager, which he basically was. News and T.V. said he drank his victim's blood but the murders were actually not based on vampirism, but based suprisingly soley on stealing a car and not being arrested for that! So the actual crime wasn't a vampire sort of thing, it was a theft gone wrong of thing. The media though just because he dyed his hair black and wore all black he was a goth, but really he just had a highly disfunctional family and suffered from schizotypal personality disorder.
2. In the author's opinion, this double murder showcased a decline of moral and sweetness in the American youth, paticularly the alternative crowd. Indeed, she calls whatever this is, I'm guessing schizotypal disorder, a "religion", which implies it has something to do with Wicca/Pagan/Satanism, or some other alternative religion which isn't fair to groups of those crowds. They get enough crap from intolerant Christians enough, and don't like having an isolated sick, drugged up, bad seed teenager's crime being traced to them.

I recommend this book if you want to know about the case in great detail, what happened before the murders in Kentucky and Florida and how the coven came together, and after the murders and what happened at the trials. After reading the book, I felt sympathy for Ferrel, he was messed up and it sounds like his horrible mother had a very negative influence on him. I enjoyed reading about what Rod was tied up in while he was in Kentucky, and about how he almost went on a rampage there, got expelled from school, tried to kill his mom, drank his friend's blood, gained countless followers with his dark showmanship, and allegedly tortured cats and dogs. Buy it to get a good look at the possibilities of what can happen when unstable teenagers go absolutely out of control.