Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.15230975922
EAN num: 9780671034672
ISBN number: 0671034677
Label: Pocket
Manufacturer: Pocket
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 448
Printing Date: June 01, 2000
Publishing house: Pocket
Sale Popularity Level: 173709
Studio: Pocket
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
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.
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
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Rated by buyers 
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-possible spoiler-This is the story of the "vampire kids" who killed one of the girls parents in Florida. It focuses heavily on the pre-crime portion, way too much of the vampire games played by these wacko kids in Kentucky, lead by Rod. But my major problem was that the author was too pro-Heather, the girl whose parents were killed. When Heather told things, she "confided" them to the author or whomever and when anyone did, they "claimed" such and such. It was easy to see that the writer totally believed in Heather's innocence-yet this girl too was drinking blood, engaging in ridiculous "satanic" acts, believed that this skinny teen freak of a boy was an "undead" etc...and left with the gang and never tried to get away even once she knew what they had done...
I read a lot of true crime and this author is one of the better ones, but the use of the word "confided" must appear hundreds of times as she quotes what Heather, and sometimes Charity say...
I feel Heather should have been charged with acccessory after the fact, at the very least-
Rated by buyers 
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The book was way too long but interesting. It told alot of things that were just boring day to day stuff. Like they actually told of days and days of phone conversations they had, years later? How did they remember that? But it wasnt too bad.
Rated by buyers 
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This book starts out good and keeps your attention with the antics of these wanna-be "vampires", and their idiot schemes. The court readings are just that, court room scripts and thus very boring...couldn't wait to finish this book, just to be out of my misery. The pictures were better then the writings and that's not saying a whole lot either.
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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 grey and wore all grey 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.
Rated by buyers -
I recommend the book "The Embrace" for any reader that is intrigued by true crime and/or vampire culture. Through every chapter I could not wait for the next. Every character is individually recognized for there part in the events that occurred. I found more great information at the following site. http://www.vampireclan.skcentral.com
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