Ordinary citizens provided Adolfo with a steady and satisfactory income but the real money, he was soon to discover, was to be made from Mexico’s drug dealers. They came to him to predict the outcome of larger deals and to forewarn them of police raids. They even paid him for magic which they believed would make them invisible to the police. For the money they were paying him, Adolfo realised that he would have to put on more of a performance than he had been and so his magical ceremonies became all the more elaborate. It was at this time that he began robbing graves of bones to add to his own cauldron.
Adolfo’s clientele became more and more high-profile. He even attracted members of the Federal Judicial Police, amongst them the commander in charge of narcotics investigations, and the head of the Mexican branch of Interpol. They were not just convinced by Adolfo’s fortune-telling and magic tricks, but revered him as a kind of god – he was their direct link to the spirits. Through his connections in the corrupt Mexican police force, Adolfo became acquainted with more of Mexico’s major drugs dealers and his profits began to soar.
HUMAN SACRIFICES
It is not known at what point Adolfo stopped using the remains of those who were already dead, and instead began to make his own human sacrifices. It was, however, a massive drawing card for the drug barons he sought to impress, and his readiness to mutilate and murder both strangers and friends secured him what he believed to be firm connections within the upper echelons of the drug-dealing cartels. He had perhaps got a little carried away. He approached the Caldaza family, whose business and interests he had been closely protecting and nurturing over an entire year, and declared that he and his powers were the sole reason for their success and mere existence. He claimed that he should be granted full partnership in the association accordingly. The Caldaza family was one of the largest and most notorious drug cartels in Mexico, and they refused his presumptuous request.
Adolfo did not take this rejection well. Days later, the head of the family and six of the household disappeared. One week later, police found seven bodies, which had been dumped in the Zumpango River. They had been tortured, mutilated and some parts of the bodies had been removed. In Adolfo’s cauldron, these missing fingers, toes, hearts and genitals were bubbling away satisfactorily.
SARA MARIA ALDRETE VILLAREAL
Across the border in Brownsville, Texas, Sara Maria Aldrete Villareal was a conscientious and successful student at the Porter High School. A model pupil according to her teachers, she was encouraged to pursue a college education but she became distracted by the attentions of Miguel Zacharias. They married, but it was not to last and after only five months they had separated.
With her failed marriage behind her, the Mexican-born Sara returned home to her parents’ house in Matamoros, but also resumed her academic career and enrolled at Texas Southmost College to study physical education. Once again, she excelled in her chosen field and quickly became one of the college’s most outstanding students. She devoted a lot of time to her studies and even commenced part-time work as both an aerobics instructor and a secretary in the college’s athletic department. She was so busy that she only went home for weekends and holidays. When she did go home, she spent time with her boyfriend, the drug-dealer Gilberto Sosa, who had close links with the notorious Hernandez family.
The relationship with Sosa brought Sara swiftly to the attention of Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo who had been carefully monitoring Sosa’s movements in order to assess his position on the Mexican drug scene, and to evaluate his possible connections. When he spied the tall, athletic and very beautiful Sara, he engineered a meeting.
Adolfo swung his Mercedes into Sara’s car as she drove through Matamoros one afternoon in July 1987, choreographing the accident to ensure that he just missed her. He got out of the car, and apologised profusely to Sara. Instantly she was attracted by his good looks and charming manner, and there was clearly a very obvious attraction between them. They became friends, and slowly Adolfo set about destroying her relationship with Sosa. He achieved this by planting doubt in Sosa’s mind about Sara’s fidelity. Finally, he made an anonymous phone-call to Sosa and informed him that Sara was cheating on him. Despite her protestations of innocence, the jealous Sosa finished with Sara and she turned to Adolfo for comfort.
The pair did embark on a sexual relationship, but Adolfo’s homosexuality could not be suppressed, and the physical side of their relationship soon petered out. By the time this happened though, it mattered little to Sara who had, in quite a short time, become completely brainwashed by Adolfo’s beliefs and practices. She became fascinated by the occult and discarded her passion for her physical education at college to pursue a deeper interest in magic and witchcraft. To Adolfo she became ‘La Madrina’, the godmother.
THE HERNANDEZ FAMILY
Sara had retained her links, originally established via Sosa, with the Hernandez family, and Adolfo was keen to exploit them. He predicted that the family would consult Sara over a problem, and that when they did, she was to introduce them to him. It all came to pass.
Adolfo’s plan couldn’t have been orchestrated at a better time. There was much discontent in the Hernandez family and their position on the drug scene was threatened by heavy competition. Adolfo walked in with the answers to all their problems – magic. For the nominal fee of 50 per cent of their wealth, and their complete compliance with his instructions, Adolfo promised to rid them of their enemies. He would not only dispose of the rival drug dealers, but would do so by sacrificing them to the spirits. This way the spirits would offer safety and protection to the family. He also claimed that by trusting him implicitly, he could make the family members and their employees invisible to the police and resistant to their bullets.
And so the killing began, becoming more bloodthirsty and sadistic with every sacrifice. According to Adolfo, excruciating suffering was fundamental to the beliefs of Palo Mayombe and the more agonising the death, the more pleased the spirits were. When two members of the Hernandez family were abducted by a rival drug gang, and subsequently released unharmed, Adolfo claimed that they had been saved purely by a ghastly torture and sacrifice that he had conducted, and by the family’s faith in him and in Palo Mayombe.
Adolfo increased the slaughter, and drug dealers were sacrificed indiscriminately. Adolfo even murdered a 14-year-old member of the Hernandez family, realising too late who the young boy was. There were however, no consequences. Adolfo stole contraband from all the dealers he murdered, and by early 1989 had accumulated 800 kilos of marijuana. He decided to smuggle it into the US, but realising that it was such a big job, knew that he would need a very special sacrifice to ensure a safe journey. Having struggled with a previous sacrifice whom he ended up simply having to shoot, he instructed his followers to go out and bring back someone who would not fight, but who would really scream. They returned with Mark Kilroy.
AFTERMATH OF THE KILROY KILLING
Adolfo did not expect the reaction which the Kilroy murder triggered.
Perhaps society had turned a blind eye to the dark and sinister dealings of the drugs world, and allowed the dealers and henchmen to operate within their own rules. Maybe they felt that those who had suffered such gruesome deaths deserved their fate. But when an innocent college student met with such a violent end, there was silence no longer.
Kilroy’s family, with the support of the US and their political connections behind them, demanded that Mark’s killer be found. The Mexican police were forced to take action, recognising that by killing an American – and a wealthy, white one at that – Adolfo had this time gone too far. They were going to have to bring him to justice to avoid a disastrously damaging international outcry.