TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/042489/04248900.029

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.5 KB | 110 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 30

Cult of the Red-Haired Devil


A drug bust uncovers an evil brew of satanism and murder

By Richard Woodbury/MATAMOROS


    On the bleak, brown plains of Mexico's Rio Grande valley,
drug smuggling is nearly as common as a coyote's yowl. Thus
Mexican police were not all that surprised last week when a
search of a cattle ranch 20 miles outside the town of Matamoros
turned up 75 lbs. of marijuana. But the investigation took a
darker turn when the authorities showed the  ranch's caretaker a
photo of Mark Kilroy, 21, a University of Texas senior who had
vanished a month ago.

    Yes, the worker recalled, he had seen Kilroy, and pointed to
a rust-colored wooden shed 400 yards away. There, under a gray,
misty sky, the police made a ghastly discovery. In and around
a corral, they found several makeshift graves; the overpowering
stench of decaying flesh led to digging that eventually
uncovered the corpses of 13 males, one as young as 14. Several
of the victims had been slashed with knives, others bludgeoned
on the head. One had been hanged, another apparently set afire
and at least two pumped with bullets. Some had been tortured
with razor blades or had their hearts ripped out. Nearly all had
been severely mutilated: ears, nipples and testicles removed,
the eyes gouged from one victim, the head missing from another.

    When officers entered the darkness of the 15-by-25-ft.
shack, they found a squat iron kettle whose contents suggested
that more than just a band of ruthless killers had been at
work. Inside the pot, resting in dried blood, were a charred
human brain and a roasted turtle. Other containers held a
witch's brew of human hair, a goat's head and chicken parts.
After arresting and questioning four suspects, the Mexican
police pieced together a horrific tale of a voodoo-practicing
cult of drug smugglers who believed that orgies of human
sacrifice would win satanic protection for its 2,000-lb.-a-week
marijuana-running operation to the U.S. "They felt that all the
killing would draw a protective shield around them," observed
Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox. "It was religious craziness."

    All but two of the victims were apparently plucked at random
from the countryside surrounding Matamoros. They included
Kilroy, a premed major who vanished March 14 after a night of
spring-break revelry in the town's cantinas. At 2 a.m. he was
lured toward a pickup truck by a thin, scar-faced man who
offered a ride. Two toughs threw him into the back and sped
off. Five blocks away, Kilroy attempted to escape, but was
recaptured and driven to the ranch. There he was gagged and
blindfolded with heavy gray tape and tossed into the darkened
shed.

    Kilroy's captors brought bread and water, assuring him there
was no danger. But twelve hours later he was abruptly led
outside and executed with a machete slash to the back of his
neck. The man who wielded the weapon, according to Mexican
police, was the cult's ringleader, Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo,
26, a lanky, red-haired Cuban American who grew up in Miami.
Constanzo, still being sought at week's end, inspired such
fervent loyalty among his followers that he was known as El
Padrino, the Godfather.

    According to officials, Constanzo commissioned Kilroy's
abduction by ordering his followers to "go out and bring in an
Anglo male." Constanzo, who as a youth in South Florida
reportedly practiced Santeria, the Caribbean voodoo, led the
crazed rituals that accompanied the bloodletting. In the
killing field, police found dozens of long candles as well as
garlic, peppers and scores of half-burned cigars -- the
accoutrements of an African offshoot of Santeria known as Palo
Mayombe.

    To ingratiate themselves with the devil, the killers boiled
the brains and hearts of their victims, mixing the concoction
with leg and arm bones and animal heads. So vicious were the
devil worshipers that it took two pathologists laboring at a
Matamoros mortuary almost four days to complete the autopsies.
Several victims remained unidentified, but at least one other
young male may have been an American kidnaped from neighboring
Brownsville, Texas. Besides Constanzo, authorities sought three
other suspects, including the Godfather's companion, Sara Maria
Aldrete, 24, a Mexican honor student at Texas Southmost College
in Brownsville. Searching Aldrete's home in Matamoros, police
found a blood-spattered altar and candles.

    Paraded before reporters in Matamoros, the four already
under arrest acknowledged the grisly deeds but showed little
remorse. The shirt of one suspect was pulled back to show a
series of scars in the form of inverted crosses, an apparent
sign that he was selected to kill. Later, police dispensed
their own summary justice. Hauling one of the dopers back to the
grave site, they forced him to dig in the blazing sun until he
uncovered the 13th body.

    Texas officials credited the discovery of El Padrino's cult
in part to Mexico City's drug crackdown along the border, but
that was small comfort to the families of Mark Kilroy and the
other dead. As relatives of more than 100 missing people
crowded Matamoros' funeral homes to learn if their loved ones
were among the victims, whispers of other demonic bands and
hideous deeds swept the Rio Grande valley. As preposterous as
the rumors were, they would have sounded far more bizarre a week
ago, before the tale of El Padrino and his followers became
known.