The Embrace: A True Vampire Story

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.

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.

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 Heather--who stands to inherit half a million dollars from her parents' death--tells 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. FYI: Jones's All She Wanted is soon to be filmed with Drew Barrymore. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Aphrodite Jones is the author of the New York Times bestseller Cruel Sacrifice; the bestseller The FBI Killer, which was made into an ABC-TV movie titled Betrayed by Love, starring Patricia Arquette; All She Wanted; and Della's Web. She began her professional writing career at age twenty-one, with a nationally syndicated column for United Feature Syndicate. A published journalist for more than twenty years, she has also worked as a radio news director, lectured about writing as an assistant professor of English, and, for the last decade, has devoted herself to human interest and hard-news stories. Born in Chicago, raised in New York, and schooled in Los Angeles, Jones now works from her home in West Hollywood. Visit her Web site at www.aphroditejones.com.