Section Two: Cult Killings
Adolfo De Jesus Constanzo
Murder in Matamoros, Mexico
In 1989, only three months since New Year’s Day, 60 people had been reported missing in the region of Matamoros, Mexico. Whether or not this was common knowledge, it would not have deterred the spring-break students of that year who had been planning their holiday, as generations of college-leavers had done for over 50 years before them, in the vice-ridden border town. Matamoros was the obvious choice for the fresh-faced students who had just completed their exams and wanted to party in a town where prostitution, sex-shows, drugs and alcohol were freely available. Matamoros was easily accessible across the Rio Grande from Brownsville in Texas, and so the students, an estimated 250,000 per year, came in their droves. In March 1989, Mark Kilroy was one of the college students to make the same time-honoured journey. Yet, unlike the others, he was never to return.
Mark Kilroy, however, did not simply become the 61st person to go missing. When his disappearance was reported his family demanded action, and his was a family with connections in high places. Immediately, a $15,000 reward was offered for either returning Mark safely to his family, or for information on who was responsible for his disappearance. The US Customs Service, who feared the involvement of Mexico’s evil drug traffickers, and the Texas authorities, kept up the pressure on the case in the USA, while in Mexico, the police in Matamoros began to question 127 of the area’s known criminals. In spite of trying to extract the required information by way of beating and torturing, the Mexican police were given no leads. It seemed to them that Mark Kilroy had simply ‘disappeared’.
OCCULT ACTIVITY
As the search for Mark continued in Mexico, the police were beginning another of their routine drug crackdowns. Knowing that they were not able to permeate the inner circles of the Mexican drug barons directly, the police used roadblocks at border towns to catch those who did the dirty work of passing the drugs from country to country for them. At one such roadblock just outside Matamoros, known drug-runner Serafin Hernandez Garcia failed to stop at the police checkpoint and ignored the police who followed him in hot pursuit signalling continuously for him to pull over. The police tailed Garcia until he eventually stopped at a nearby derelict ranch. Inside the property, the police found not only evidence of drugs but also of occult activity.
Garcia and another man, David Serna Valdez, were arrested on drug-related charges, yet their behaviour in custody disturbed the police. Their situation appeared to be of little concern to them, and they claimed that their fate was in the hands of a much higher power which they knew would protect them. Unnerved by the pair’s comments, the police returned to the ranch where they spoke to a caretaker who confirmed that the property was used frequently by members of a drug ring run by Garcia’s uncle, Elio Hernandez Rivera. On the police’s presentation of a photograph, the caretaker also confirmed to them Mark Kilroy had visited the ranch, but just one time.
On receipt of this information, the police returned with no delay to interrogate Garcia in custody. To their surprise, Garcia disclosed further details willingly. He told police that Mark Kilroy had indeed been kidnapped and killed, and that he himself had been involved in his murder. Yet, he didn’t describe it as murder but rather as human sacrifice, one of many he claimed, which were performed in order to ensure occult protection over the drug syndicate. He called it their religion, their ‘voodoo’. The leader of this group, according to Garcia, was Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo. He was a master of magic and ordered the murders of the victims, first raping them and then making a ‘magic stew’ from their internal organs and dismembered bodies.
Police needed to amass the evidence, and so took Garcia back to the ranch. He accompanied them willingly and led them straight to the makeshift graveyard where he showed them where to begin digging to uncover the remains of the first of 12 bodies. One of the bodies was that of Mark Kilroy, his skull was split in two, and his brain had been removed. Garcia led police to where they could find the missing brain – floating in a mixture of blood, animal remains and insects in a cauldron located in a nearby shed.
With all the evidence they had collected at the ranch, and Garcia’s willingness to assist them with their enquiries, the police were now evaded by only one last detail – the whereabouts of Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo.
ADOLFO DE JESUS CONSTANZO
Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo was born to a Cuban immigrant in Miami in 1962. He had two siblings, and all three children had different fathers. The priest who blessed the infant Adolfo at the age of six months declared to his mother that the child was the chosen one, and destined for great things. The priest was of the Palo Mayombe religion, and blessed the young boy accordingly. Palo mayombe is an African religion, and believes that everything on earth is controlled by the spirits. Accordingly, its followers practise communicating with the spirits in order to control their own fate. It is considered an amoral religion as it allows each worshipper to create his own destiny using either black or white magic and drawing no distinction between the two.
When Adolfo’s mother moved her family to Puerto Rico, she kept their Palo Mayombe faith a secret and allowed the San Juan society to believe that her son had been baptized a Catholic. In private however, she was devoted to her faith and began Adolfo’s education in witchcraft and magic with fellow followers in both San Juan and Haiti. When they moved back to Miami in 1972, Adolfo began his formal training with a priest in Little Havana.
In school, Adolfo was a poor student. He was far more interested in the secrets of Palo Mayombe and chose to spend his time with his teacher. They went together to dig up graves in order to steal the contents for the sacrificial cauldron known to the religion as a ‘Nganga’, around which the main worship and practice of palo mayombe is carried out. Adolfo also began to get involved in petty crime, and within a couple of years had been arrested twice for shoplifting. He believed his ‘powers’ to be increasing though, and his mother and teacher proclaimed him to be developing strong psychic abilities.
Adolfo’s faith took a sinister turn in 1983 when he chose Kadiempembe, Palo Mayombe’s equivalent of Satan, as his own patron saint and henceforth devoted his life to the worship of evil for profit. Encouraged by his mentor, he carved symbols into his own flesh and declared his soul to be dead. This signified the end of his training.
MAGICAL POWERS
Later the same year, Adolfo took a modelling job in Mexico City and when he wasn’t working he went down to the red light district to tell fortunes with tarot cards. He became increasingly popular and developed a reputation as being a clairvoyant and having magic abilities. He attracted supporters and admirers, and took two male lovers from the group who followed him. He did return to Miami when the modelling was over, but he came back to Mexico City the following year. He moved in with his two lovers, and began a profitable career as a fortune teller and cleanser of enemy curses. His services were expensive, and it is recorded that some of his clients paid as much as $4,500 for just one treatment. Adolfo added magical potions to his list of services offered, and used the heads of goats, zebras, snakes and other animals in his costly concoctions.