Analysis
by Barbara Kirwin, Ph.D.
Fla.
v. Ferrell
The
egregiously incriminating details of the double murder to which
Rod Ferrell confessed defy easy explanation. If Neeley and Broderick,
at least on the surface, looked like upstanding members of their
communities, Ferrell with his Goth clothing and coal- black nearly
waist-length hair was clearly an outsider to all but the members
of his vampire cult. He was charged with the brutal bludgeoning
of his ex-girlfriends parents. The bodies of Ruth and Richard
Wendorf were found horribly mutilated with cigarette burns and
gashes shaped like "Vs" carved into their flesh.
Although only 17, Ferrell already had a significant arrest record
in Kentucky for animal torture and sacrifice. He once pulled the
legs off a dog.
After
his arrest, Ferrell confessed to the murders in a bragging, erotically-tinged
oration, regaling detectives with the grisly details. He claimed
that he got a high from the killings and felt no remorse. This
ensured that regardless of his age, Ferrell would face the death
penalty. Ferrells confession can be seen as an extension
of his crime the Hostile/Exhibitionistic Confession.
Ferrell was a stranger to societys norms from the start.
As a child, he lived in the chaotic world of a deranged mother
who herself was charged with having sex with a 14-year-old boy
as part of a vampire cult initiation. Although Ferrells
mother was later acquitted because of mental illness, she persisted
in her beliefs that her sons cult had supernatural powers.
Ferrells natural father had disappeared years before. Rod
and his mother drifted from state to state. The vampire cult and
the Goth world were his only family, the only place he fit in,
the only setting in which he was empowered and belonged.
Ferrells
confession contains the adolescent bravado and grandiose exaggeration
of theatrical role-playing. Throughout his trial he blew kisses
to reporters, wagged his tongue and grimaced menacingly at the
cameras. Ferrell was desperate for attention, to be noticed, to
be somebody. A damaged, emotionally disturbed young man, he had
long ago given up hope of achieving anything in the normal world.
He started to fantasize about himself as an anti-Christ, a Satanic
creature. "There was a rush to actually feel that I was taking
a life," Ferrell said. "When you take a life you become
a god for a split second, and I felt that way."
Coming from an undeniably dysfunctional background, Ferrell had
created a negative persona for himself. He displaced all the fear
and longing he experienced as an abused child with hatred and
arrogance. Ferrells confession is a masterpiece of performance
art, the last and final installment in his personal vampire theatre
of the gruesome and absurd. The effect it had, of course, was
to alienate a jury even further, to place Ferrell even further
beyond hope of sympathy or redemption. In essence, Ferrell had
the final control; he was committing legal suicide and self-annihilation.
The
one statement of the confession that impresses me as emotionally
telling is when Ferrell matter-of-factly states that he would
never kill, "little kids thats my rule. I dont
kill anything that little." In Ferrells twisted code
of conduct, he still draws the line somewhere.
Ferrell
appears to be severely mentally ill. His crime does not have as
clear a connection to personal motivations of anger or revenge.
At some level, I believe, Ferrell feels an overriding death wish
despite his inability to express guilt or remorse.
Ferrell
seems to have found on death row some kind of peace and security.
He lives in an imposed "family" of which he is a member:
in a life of predictable rules and order -- something he never
had outside except in the sadistic rituals of the Vampire cult.
The second video clip shows an older, drug-free Ferrell with scrubbed
face and short hair, wearing his fluorescent orange jumpsuit.
He is subdued, reflective, as he answers, "I was definitely
evil at that time
and I enjoyed my evil." When he is
asked how he feels about the murders, there appears some faint
glimmer of emotion in his eyes, a pulsation in his neck, a cracking
in his voice. He, among all the murderers profiled here, seems
to be the most honest with himself and us, the most resigned to
his fate and perhaps because of his age, the most tragic.