Books

Cold Blooded" book cover

Books by Frank E. Stanfield

Cold-Blooded

“Signal five! Signal five!” the sheriff’s deputy shouted into his radio, signaling a homicide.

The killer, or killers, had transformed a suburban central Florida home into a house of horrors on Nov 26, 1996, by beating a couple to death with a crowbar.

“My parents have been killed. Please send ambulances,” frantic 17-year-old Jennifer Wendorf said moments earlier in a 911 call.

“How do you know they have been killed?” the operator asked.

“There is blood everywhere. Please, as fast as you can,” she begged.

“My sister is gone. She should be here. She’s only fifteen, and she’s gone.”

The key suspect was Rod Ferrell, a 16-year-old friend of Jennifer’s sister, Heather.

Ferrell was the leader of a blood-drinking vampire cult, and Heather was a member.

Deputies surveying the grisly scene had a long list of questions but few answers. Was Heather a murder victim, too? Was she kidnapped? Or did she help kill her parents?

A veteran newspaper editor and reporter, my hands hovered over the keyboard before writing “vampire cult murders.” “Is this for real?” I wondered?

Not only was it for real, but I would end up covering the case for more than 20 years, while psychologists probed the dark recesses of his mind and his family history. For me, trying to figure out the why of a story is the most difficult and exciting task. This case, I told myself, will allow me to report on the most depraved murder I have ever covered, and that is saying a lot.

Ferrell’s mother, for example, was charged with trying to have sex with a 14-year-old boy in a vampire ritual. She said she had been raped during a cult orgy. And she was also okay with her 16-year-old painting his room black and setting up an altar with skulls.

Ferrell told police he had been raped by his grandfather’s cult friends when he was five years old, and one of his best friends summoned demons to take over his soul.

A defense lawyer said, “This is not the [Charles] Manson case,” but there are similarities to the cult that terrorized Los Angeles in 1969.

Ferrell was sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life. He then begged to have that sentence reduced, saying he was a different person. Was he telling the truth, or was it yet another monstrous lie?

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Vampires, Gators, and Wackos: A Newspaperman’s Life

Forty years in the newspaper business, and I still can’t get enough. Then again, where else can you come to work and write true stories about vampire cults, sex-starved teachers, cattle rustlers throwing bodies down a “bottomless pit,” monstrous alligators, and, in one case at least, a plane full of naked people buzzing houses?

That would just be the tip of the iceberg, if Florida had icebergs. What it does have are hurricanes, wildfires, sinkholes, and tornadoes. It also has some of the most gruesome, cruel murders, and millions of people rushing to the state to fry their brains in the hot sun.

Among the stories: a missing millionaire, cops who try to sweep a murder under the rug, a killer caught by a computer, a little boy who disappears, a cop who ends up on death row, and law enforcement officers who are forever heroes.

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True crime book cover with dramatic design
Book cover with photos and caution tape

Unbroken: The Dorothy Lewis Story

Dorothy Lewis sat in the back seat trying to comfort her young daughters while carjackers cursed and shouted for them to be quiet. As she began to pray, one of the attackers sneered, “This isn't Jesus doing this; this is Satan doing this.”

The two teens lived up to the billing. Dorothy, a young widow, was raped, shot in the head three times, and left for dead, and the children were murdered in a crime so senseless the killers couldn’t even explain it.

Dorothy, who was a young widow, once told her sister, “If anything happens to the girls, you might as well lock me up.” Instead, she embarked on a long, remarkable recovery.

She had only one question for God: “Why was I spared?” The answer is the thing that has kept her unbroken. Today, she offers hope and comfort to anyone facing tragedy or what seems to be a hopeless situation in the telling of this inspirational story.

Unbroken is both a memoir and a true crime story that contrasts the wildly dysfunctional lives of two young assailants with one woman’s overcoming faith.

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Murder In The Graveyard: A Family Cult Tragedy

The 911 Call That Opened Hell’s Door. One Confession. A Lifetime of Terror.

The 911 call was harrowing.

"I accidentally killed someone. Please!" the man said, his voice rising.

"Who?"

"My stepmom. My name is Ian Anselmo. Sue-Ellen Anselmo, she's in the car with me. My dad is going to kill me. I guess I strangled her. I don't remember doing it. I remember the argument."

The call disintegrated quickly, with the 20-year-old howling and sobbing so pitifully that the dispatcher could not understand what he was saying, except that he was calling from a cemetery.

The graveyard had its own lurid past as the site of a murderous teen vampire cult initiation 20 years earlier, now it was a bloody crime scene and would later become the site of the pregnant woman's burial, more family violence, and the removal of her body.

The call was just the beginning. Investigators would discover a family cult stained with allegations of sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, brain-washing, and total patriarchal control.

It would end in an insanity defense, with Ian's lawyer calling the family atmosphere "crazy" and pitting psychiatrists and psychologists against each other, revealing questionable practices, motives, and techniques by those experts.

Frank Stanfield, a 50-year newspaper man, covered the case from the beginning. It is one of the most twisted tales he has covered, including the vampire case, alligator attacks, murdered cops, and countless "Florida man" stories.

Book Excerpt

Dejah’s letter to her mother:

“Dear Mommy: I want to start by saying I hope you choose to read this by yourself and that you decide not to share it. There has been so much I’ve wanted to tell you and have you there for, but alas, I know even if you wanted to you couldn’t.

“I’ll start with why I left the house because you never truly got an answer to that question, and at first you blamed yourself, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

“To begin, the amount of fights you and my dad had was awful for me. Every time I saw you get hit it was like I was getting hit myself. Every time you cried my heart hurt for you, and it was so terrible hearing you beg for help and for me to be so helpless and not be able to do anything.

“You are not crazy and you don’t deserve to be told you are because you get mad or fight back when you are provoked in such terrible ways.

Quotes From The Book

“I guess I strangled her.” – Ian Anselmo to police

“I left so I could have a life and not be stuck in a bubble. I wanted kids and a family and to get to have a job and save money and buy my own house. Part of me wants to think you are proud of me, but I don’t truly know. The biggest reason why I left, though, was because my dad was sexually abusing me, and it went on for the duration of two years off and on. – Dejah-Thoris Waite in the letter to her mother

“I can’t tell you if you’re telling the truth. Ian told me he wants to skin me alive and cut out my intestines and strangle me with them. He said he has no problem telling me he hates me. I don’t know what to believe.” – Sue-Ellen Anselmo in conversation to John Anselmo

“Is there anybody here who thinks brainwashing is voodoo or fake or made up or stuff that defense attorneys like me kind of raise in cases?” – Defense attorney Richard Hornsby to prospective jurors

“Is this like Alice in Wonderland, where up is down and down is up? Is this like the inmates’ jail where we have an extreme patriarch relationship where everybody else is subservient to the patriarch? Is this a cult? – Defense attorney Richard Hornsbyto jurors

“…he got up there and pounded his fists and said very loudly, ‘crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy’ because he can’t argue from the actual jury instruction about insanity.” -- Prosecutor Nick Camuccio on Richard Hornsby’s defense of Ian

“This family was brought up on violence. And they carried out violence. They preached loving and kindness, but they practiced hate. I agree with that. I agree that John Anselmo was where all of that started. But that’s not insanity. – Prosecutor Nick Camuccio in his closing statement to jurors

“The sheer brutality of this murder takes my breath away, and that Ian could have possibly done this. This was not a quick death or a reaction like shooting a gun. To strangle someone to the point of death, you slowly watch their life fade away. – Sue-Ellen Anselmo’s daughter, Dejah-Thoris Waite in her victim impact statement

“Sue-Ellen loved Ian. In the last text on her phone, she and Ian said, ‘I love you’ to each other. I can’t imagine the betrayal that she must have felt when he was killing her the same afternoon that he texted that he loved her. – Sue-Ellen Anselmo’s mother, Cindy Miller in her victim impact statement

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