Goths Gone Bad or Bad Gone Goth?
[ From a message received in E-mail - my comments are all italicized, so as to not be confused with text posted in the original e-mail - please note that I do not in any way endorse any role-playing games nor do I in any way endorse getting too involved in a shared-delusional system promoting animal abuse and murder. It must also be noted that as a rule, goth culture disavows any and all sympathy for or solidarity with role-playing gamers or people who can't tell the difference between a gaming system or fiction, and reality. Such as it is... - klaatu ]

This is too "UnGoth" (ooow, I get a trendie point for coining a new term...) er, I think it was really watching that Ollie Stone NB Killers movie & reading that Rice chick's 1/2-baked wanna-be stories that did it. V:tm is getting a bad rap out of this, even though it's sold 5 MILLION copies todate. Board Game? geez, I expect Reuters to get the facts straight. Its a Live Action Role Play, I.E. Audience Participation Theatre. Mark Rein-Hagen needs to publically declare a blood hunt on these "characters" who have "broken the masquarade". tis the one thing that anyone who makes a game dreads, irresponsible Phools who refuse to take responsibility for their acts & the bogus media circus that hypes it up & tries to make you feel guilty, like you handed the idiots a loaded gun. RTFM baby, Page one, Big Bold Letter Disclaimer "ITS ONLY A GAME".

Note from this webmaster - for a clue as to the levels of conceptual weirdness which are possible within the RPG "world" of "Vampires: The Masquerade" and related role-playing mythos, take a look at Pranktology.

Note: Murray KY is a big College Town in a DRY Baptist county. (& you thought you already lived in hell-on-earth town)

IQ Test: hmm,Drive off in the victim's car & keep it for a few days, naw, nobody will bother to run those OUT-OF-STATE plates as you tour the nation, never mind the blood stains. I think Jules & Vincent need to put a Royal-with-cheese Cap in their collective ass, Zed's dead baby & Johnnie Woo Ain't gonna be buying the film rights to this one.

some sigs snipped

From Reuters
Vampire Cult Mother Says Game Was ``Fun''
EUSTIS, Fla. (Reuter) - What started as a role-playing game for a group of teenagers turned into a cult of self-proclaimed ``vampires,'' who cut their bodies, drank blood and now face charges of murdering one members' parents.

The five teens, aged 15 to 19, have been extradited to Florida from Louisiana for the slaying of a Eustis couple bludgeoned to death in their home last month.

The mother of the accused ringleader of the group told on Saturday of how she played a ``vampire'' game with her son and how she thought it was just fun and make-believe.

But police say Sondra Gibson's son Roderick Ferrell, 16, became lost in a delusional world of ``vampire'' rituals and conspiracies that led to the horrific double murder of Richard and Ruth Wendorf on Nov. 25.

Police believe the murder weapon was either an axe or claw hammer and that the deadly blows were inflicted by at least three different people.

The Wendorf's daughter Heather, 15, was among the group. She, Ferrell, and three others -- 19-year-old Dana Lynn Cooper, Howard Scott Anderson, 16, and Charity Keesee, 16 -- were arrested on Nov. 28 in the murdered couple's car while checking into a Baton Rouge motel.

All the teens except Wendorf are residents of rural Murray, Kentucky, a small, predominantly Baptist town where Ferrell's interest in a role-playing board game, ``Vampire: The Masquerade,'' turned into an obsession, according to police.

Ferrell had recruited Wendorf, his girlfriend, into the game, his mother said.

``There didn't seem to be anything wrong with it,'' Gibson told Reuters in a telephone interview.

``I played it with him. It's hard enough to find something you can do with your kids today, and the game was fun. It was something, anyway.''

Ferrell moved to Murray from Florida in 1995 to live with his mother and her boyfriend, Kile Newton, a tattoo artist who changed his name to ``Kile,'' a word self-styled vampires are said to use to describe someone who ``crossed over'' to become ``one of the undead.''

The game is similar to the better-known Dungeon & Dragons in which players adapt character names and are led through a series of adventures by a game leader, or storyteller.

Ferrell and Gibson met other Vampire players, most of them teens, after moving to Murray. Over time, a group of about 30 youths began trying to live out vampire identities.

Gibson said the game had remained a fantasy. ``It was a thrill, sure. But it was still role playing. People pretended to do stuff, but didn't really do it,'' she said.

Gibson faces misdemeanor charges of trying to seduce a 14-year-old boy as part of a vampire ritual.

Calloway County, Kentucky, prosecutors have released a letter in which she writes, ``I long to be near you ... to become a Vampire, a part of the family immortal and truly yours forever.''

Gibson scoffed. ``All part of the game,'' she said.

Ferrell began wearing black shirts, black trousers, a long black jacket and black cowboy boots. He died his blond hair black and painted his fingernails black. He began to call himself Vesago, after a character in a novel by Ann Rice, an author known for her books about vampires.

In September, Ferrell was suspended from school, after which, Gibson said, he did not go back, sleeping all day and going out at night with his vampire friends.

Calloway County authorites said Ferrell and the other would-be vampires gathered at a ruined building painted with messages like, ``Please deposit dead bodies here,'' but also littered with empty liquor bottles and signs of drug use.

``It's pretty easy to tell who's been a vampire for any length of time,'' said Calloway County Sheriff Stan Scott. ``Most of them are going to have self-inflicted razor cuts or knife cuts. They like to drink each other's blood.''

In October, Ferrell and Anderson were charged with breaking into the county humane society, beating 40 dogs and mutilating two puppies. One dog's hind legs were torn off.

Greg Fountain, an executive with White Wolf, of Clarkson, Georgia, which markets ``Vampire: The Masquerade,'' said the game could get intense, but that it was not a cult.

``It can be quite intense,'' he said. ``The core premise is personal exploration.''

It should be noted that on 27 February 1998, Roderick Justin Ferrell, of Murray Kentucky, was sentenced to death for the murders of Richard Wendorf and Naoma Queen, in their Eustis Florida home. Lake County Florida Circuit Judge Jerry T. Lockett called Ferrell "a disturbed young man ... there is genuine evil in the world."

Please see also This followup of the case.

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