Going West: True Crime · Dark West Productions

The Teen Vampire Murders // 547

·51 min·4 clips

Rod beat Richard Wendorf 22 times with a crowbar, then attacked Naoma 21 times as she fought back.

In November 1996, Naoma and Richard Wendorf were bludgeoned to death in their home in Eustis, Florida. The killers were a group of teenagers from Murray, Kentucky who called themselves vampires. Hosts Heath and Daphne trace the origins of the case through the life of Rod Farrell, the group's ringleader. Rod grew up without a father and with a mother, Sondra Gibson, who had herself been sexually abused by her father Harold Gibson, who also molested Rod. Sondra was deeply enmeshed in Rod's vampire world, painting a pentagram on the living room floor and later facing criminal charges for propositioning a 14-year-old boy as part of a cult initiation rite. Rod became fixated on vampirism after his friend Jaden Murphy performed a blood exchange ritual with him in a local cemetery. Rod claimed this made him a 500-year-old vampire named Vassago. His violence first manifested when he killed a kitten that scratched him, hurling it against a tree — an act that shocked even Jaden and ended their friendship. Rod then threatened to murder and decapitate Jaden's fiancée. Rod's connection to the Wendorf family came through Heather Wendorf, a moody and socially isolated teenager who had befriended Rod during his brief time in Florida before he moved back to Kentucky. The episode establishes the family backgrounds of the victims, Richard and Naoma Wendorf, and their two daughters Jennifer and Heather. The cult planned to travel to New Orleans and used the Wendorf home as a stop along the way, with catastrophic consequences. The hosts discuss how this case illustrates how trauma can cascade through generations and how subcultures that begin as harmless expression can, in rare cases, escalate toward real violence.

As heard by us

A grim 1996 murder story about teens calling themselves vampires, told with pace and no soft edges.

Going West treats the Teen Vampire Murders as a grim, straight-ahead account of how Naoma and Richard Wendorf were killed in 1996 by teenagers from Kentucky who called themselves vampires and were heading for New Orleans.

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Why you'd press play

A teen vampire cult, a double murder, and a Kentucky-to-New Orleans trail that turned a 1996 case into the Teen Vampire Murders.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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