5 Craziest Murders and Rituals Committed by Cults

Warning: This isn’t for the faint hearted. Cults across America have committed some of the most bizarre ritual murders you’ll ever hear of. Brutal and grisly, these killings will turn your stomach and make you wonder what humans are really capable off. These cults have either convinced people or taken people to be part of their sometimes occultish, sometimes otherworldly plans, so you might want to think twice next time someone tries to sell you on a suspicious seeming group activity.

1. The Vampire Clan

Yes you read that right. The Vampire clan came together in the ‘90s when 16-year-old Rod Ferrell, also a 500-year-old vampire called Vesago, apparently, met Heather Wendorf at their Florida high school. Ferrell eventually moved back to his hometown in Kentucky, where his alter ego, Vesago, was the leader of a vampire clan/cult that engaged in rituals where they would drink one another’s blood. Wendorf kept in touch with him, and soon told him she was miserable living at home with her folks. Vesago then stepped in to “save” the day.

In 1996, Ferrell and his clan (three other teens; two girls and a boy), drove to Wendorf’s house, where Ferrell and the other boy vampire beat her father to death with a crowbar while he slept. Her mother found the gruesome scene, and threw hot coffee on Ferrell, and he beat her to death too. Ferrell, like some very twisted evil Zorro, burned a letter V into Wendorf’s father’s body. The clan were apprehended when one of the girls phoned her parents to ask for money, and Ferrell received a life sentence for the murders.

2. The Order Of The Solar Temple

The rituals of Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret’s cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, were truly absurd--especially when they resulted in the deaths of 74 people. The cult began in 1984, and believed that Jesus was a “Solar God” who was soon to return to earth and create a religion that was a fusion of Islam and Christianity (clearly they didn’t prescribe to the same ideas as Trump’s new America, which is kind of nice despite the full on crazy that followed). The first murder was of a OST member’s three month old son in 1994, who was stabbed to death with a wooden stake beccause Di Mambro thought he was the Antichrist.

It got even weirder: three days after a ritual Last Supper, 15 OST inner circle members killed themselves with poison, 30 will bullets or smothering, and 8 by other causes. In Switzerland, some of these members were found in an underground temple, dressed in ceremonial robes and arranged in a circle with their feet all touching and heads, which were covered in plastic bags, pointing out. Later, in France, 16 bodies were found in the same way, either shot or immolated.

3. The Chicago Rippers

Formed by Robin Gecht, the Chicago Rippers (also including Edward Spreitzer and two brothers, Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis) were a truly disturbing cult. Their first murder was discovered in 1981, after the abduction of 28 year old Linda Sutton, who was found after 10 days missing stabbed to death and raped, with her left breast cut off (which came to be a “hallmark” of the cult’s killings). The Rippers killed 18 women in total, kidnapping them all first. The ritual murdered involved taking turns raping the victims at Gecht’s apartment, then removing their left breast with piano wire. Here’s where it gets very upsetting: the Rippers would then masturbate into the breast before cutting it up and eating it while Grecht read from the Satanic Bible.

They were thankfully brought to justice when one of their victims, Beverly Washington, survived the ordeal, and after they dumped her by railroad tracks and she was found, she was able to describe the disgusting cult members and the van they drove to the police.

4. The Fall Rivers Cult

Led by Carl Drew, a pimp that controlled prostitutes by scaring them with Satanism, the Fall Rivers Cult was operational through the ‘70s. Drew believed himself to be the son of Satan, and during rituals held in the woods he would speak in voices and tongues. When Drew decided human sacrifices were necessary (the cult began “innocently” enough: sex and drugs), Donna Levesque, a 19 year old prostitute, was tied up and beaten in the head with a rock. The second victim, Barbara Raposa, was found posed on a pile of rocks arranged like some kind of altar, killed the same way as Levesque. The most gruesome murder of all was of 22 year old Karen Marsden, who had witnessed Levesque’s murder and was ready to go to the police. Drew found out and killed her the same way as the other women--but didn’t stop there. He broke her neck with his bare hands, ordered another cult member, Robin Murphy, to cut her throat. He then cut an X into Marsden’s chest and used the blood to draw an X on Murphy’s forehead, before kicking Marsden’s head until it came off.

5. The Carnival Killers

Jimmie Penick, Mark Goodwin, and brothers Keith and David Lawrence were part of a Satanic cult, and in 1991, their co-worker at a traveling carnival, William Anthony Ault, wanted to join. His application was rejected, but he already knew about a murder the cult had committed, so he tried to blackmail his way in. Penick, Goodwin and the two Lawrence brothers took Ault to a hidden altar where he was asked to lie down. After praying to Satan, Penick cut Ault from his neck to his stomach, and then each man took his turn cutting an inverted cross into Ault’s body. Ault was still alive until they finally slit his throat, and then cut off his head and hands, burning them, and discarding Ault’s body in a field. They then treated themselves to dinner at Arby’s with money they took from Ault’s pockets.