Adolfo Constanzo - The Witch Doctor
CASE FILE #1
Adolfo Constanzo
- Abel Lima "El Sodomita de Iztapalapa" (alleged suspect for the kidnappings in the mid-90s).
- Rubén Estrada "Patitas Cortas"
- Christian Campos "El Panzas"
- Emmanuel Romero "El Trompas"
- Saúl Sánchez "El Macaco"
- Ricardo Peña "El Cepillín
Early Life...
Adolfo Constanzo was born in Miami, Florida 1962. His mother was Delia Aurora González, a Cuban immigrant. She gave birth to Adolfo when she was 15 years old. She moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, after her first husband died, and remarried there.
Adolfo served as an altar boy and was baptized catholic, but he also went with his mother to Haiti to learn about Vodou.
His family returned to Miami in 1972 and his stepfather died soon after. As a teenager, Constanzo became an apprentice of a local sorcerer and began to practice a religion involving animal sacrifice called "Palo Mayombe".
Constanzo and his mother were arrested numerous times for minor crimes like theft, vandalism and shoplifting. He graduated from high school, but was expelled from prep school.
As an adult Adolfo moved to Mexico City and met the men who were to become his followers:
Martín Quintana
They began to run a profitable business casting spells to bring good luck, which involved expensive ritual sacrifices of chickens, goats, snakes, zebras and even lion cubs. Many of his clients were drug dealers and hitmen who enjoyed the violence of Constanzo's rituals and killings.
He also attracted other rich members of Mexican society, including high-ranking corrupt policemen who introduced him to the city's narcotics cartels.
Constanzo raided graveyards for human bones to put in his nganga or cauldron. Before long, his cult decided that the spirits of the dead that resides in the nganga would be stronger with live human sacrifices.
Before long, his cult decided that the spirits of the dead that resides in the nganga would be stronger (providing the cult more powerful protection) with live human sacrifices instead of old bones.
The killings soon totaled more than 20 victims, whose mutilated bodies were found in and around Mexico City.
Constanzo's journals, recovered after his death, document 31 regular customers, some paying up to $4,500 for a single ceremony. Constanzo established a menu for sacrificial beasts, with roosters going for $6 a head, goats for $30, boa constrictors for $450, adult zebras for $1,100, and African lion cubs listed at $3,100 each.
Murders...
Adolfo began to believe that his magic spells, many of which he took from Palo Mayombe, were responsible for the success of the cartels and demanded to become a full business partner with one of the most powerful families he knew, the Calzadas. When his demand was rejected, seven family members disappeared. Their bodies turned up later with fingers, toes, ears, brains, and even (in one case) the spine missing. Adolfo soon made friends with a new cartel, the Hernandez brothers. He also took up with a young woman named Sara Aldrete, who became the high priestess of the cult. Adolfo made Aldrete second-in-command of his cult and directed her to supervise his followers while he was shipping marijuana over the border into the US.
In 1988, Adolfo moved to Rancho
Santa Elena, a house in the desert. It is there where he carried out more
sadistic ritual murders, sometimes of strangers and other times of rival drug
dealers. He also used the ranch to store huge shipments of cocaine and
marijuana.
On March 13, 1989,
Adolfo’s henchmen abducted a pre-med student, Mark Kilroy, from outside a
Mexican bar and took him back to the ranch. Kilroy was a US citizen who had
been in Mexico on spring break. When Kilroy was brought to the ranch, Constanzo
murdered him. Under pressure from Texan politicians, Mexican police initially
picked up four of Adolfo's followers, including two of the Hernandez brothers.
Police quickly discovered the cult and that Adolfo had been responsible for
Kilroy's death; he sought a superior brain for one of his ritual spells.
Officers raided the ranch and discovered Adolfo's cauldron, which contained
various items such as a dead black cat and a human brain.[4] Fifteen mutilated
corpses were dug up at the ranch, one of them Kilroy's. Officials said Kilroy
was killed by Adolfo’s with a machete chop to the back of the neck when Kilroy
tried to escape about 12 hours after being taken to the ranch.
Death...
Constanzo fled to Mexico City with four of his followers. They were only discovered when police were called to the apartment because of an unrelated dispute taking place there. As the officers approached, Constanzo, mistakenly believing they had located him, opened fire with a machine gun. This brought in police reinforcements. Determined not to go to prison, he handed the gun to follower Álvaro de León and ordered him to open fire on him and Martín Quintana. By the time police reached the apartment, both Constanzo and Quintana were dead. De León, known as "El Duby", and Sara Aldrete were immediately arrested.
A total of 14 cult members were charged with a range of crimes, from murder and drug-running to obstructing the course of justice. Sara Aldrete, Elio Hernández and Serafín Hernández were convicted of multiple murders and were ordered to serve prison sentences of over 60 years each. De León was given a 30-year term. If co-leader Aldrete is ever released from prison, American authorities plan to prosecute her for the murder of Mark Kilroy.
Story of Mark Kilroy...
Matamoros, Mexico has been a popular hangout for vacationing college students since the 1930s. Each spring, some 250,000 students descend on Brownsville and Matamoros en masse, cutting loose after finals, relishing the extra kick of sowing wild oats on foreign soil. Those who came to celebrate in March 1989 didn't know that Matamoros had logged 60 unsolved disappearances since New Year's Day. If they had known, few would have cared.
One who made the scene that spring was Mark Kilroy, a pre-med junior from the University of Texas. Friends lost track of him in Matamoros, in the predawn hours of March 14, 1989, and reported his disappearance to police the next day. Unlike the others who had disappeared over the past 10 weeks, Kilroy was an Anglo with connections, including an uncle employed by the U.S. Customs Service. His disappearance conjured memories of the Enrique Camarena murder four years earlier, involving Mexico's sinister "narcotrafficantes." The heat was immediate and intense, spurred by a $15,000 reward for information leading to Kilroy's safe recovery or the arrest of his abductors. American officials kept a close eye on the case, while Matamoros police interrogated 127 known criminals—a process frequently involving clubs and carbonated water laced with hot sauce, sprayed into a suspect's nostrils.
It was all in vain.
Some of those held for questioning were fugitives, and so
remained in jail, but none of them had seen Mark Kilroy. None could solve the
mystery.
During the same time period Mexican authorities were busy
with one of their periodic anti-drug campaigns, erecting roadblocks at random
and sweeping border districts for unwary smugglers. The operations were
designed to leave the wealthy drug lords unscathed and to target their henchmen
and runners.
Serafin Hernandez Garcia
One of those people lower on the totem pole, and well known in Matamoros, was Serafin Hernandez Garcia. The 20-year-old was the nephew, and lackey, of local drug baron Elio Hernandez Rivera. On April 1, 1989, Serafin drove past a police checkpoint outside Matamoros, seemingly oblivious to uniformed officers guarding the highway. They pursued him, their quarry still seeming to ignore, until he led them to a rundown ranch nearby. A quick search of the property revealed occult paraphernalia and traces of marijuana. Eight days later, returning in force, police arrested Serafin Hernandez and another drug dealer, David Serna Valdez. In custody, the pair seemed relaxed, even defiant. Police could not hold them, the prisoners insisted; they were "protected" by a power over and above man's law.
Still, the two remained in jail while detectives quizzed a caretaker at the ranch. The caretaker readily named other members of the Hernandez drug syndicate as frequent visitors what was known as Rancho Santa Elena. Another one-time visitor was none other than Mark Kilroy, identified from a school photograph. In custody, Serafin Hernandez freely admitted participating in Kilroy's abduction and murder—one of many committed over the past year or so at Rancho Santa Elena. The slayings were human sacrifices, he explained, executed to secure occult protection for various drug deals. "It's our religion," Hernandez explained. "Our voodoo."
Hernandez identified the leader of his cult—El Padrino, the Godfather—as Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, a master practitioner of the African magic called "palo mayombe." It was Constanzo who ordered the slayings, Hernandez explained, and El Padrino who tortured and sodomized the victims prior to killing them and harvesting their organs for his ritual cauldron.
Black magic artifacts seized by police.
Police returned to the ranch with Hernandez in tow. He readily pointed out the cult's private graveyard and then when asked, used a shovel to unearth the first of 12 bodies buried in a tidy row. All the victims were men. Some had been shot at close range and others hacked to death with a machete. One of the bodies was Mark Kilroy, his skull split open, his brain missing. Detectives entering a nearby shed found the cult's cast-iron kettle called a nganga brimming with blood, animal remains and 28 sticks—the "palos" of palo mayombe—which Constanzo's disciples said they used to communicate with spirits in the afterlife. Floating in the pot with spiders, scorpions and other items that could scarcely be identified, they found Mark Kilroy's brain.
La Madrina...
Sara Maria Aldrete Villareal was born on September 6, 1964, the daughter of a Matamoros electrician. She crossed the border to attend Porter High School in Brownsville, where teachers remember her as a model student and a good kid. She maintained her star-pupil status in secretarial school, instructors urging her to attend a real college, but romance intervened. On Halloween Day in 1983 Aldrete married Brownsville resident Miguel Zacharias, 11 years her senior. The relationship quickly soured and five months later they were separated, moving inexorably toward divorce.
Late in 1985 Aldrete applied for and received resident alien status in the United States. Her next step was enrollment at Texas Southmost College, a two-year school in Brownsville. Admitted on a "work-study" program that deferred part of her tuition, Sara began classes in January 1986 as a physical education major, holding down two part-time jobs as an aerobics teacher and assistant secretary in the school's athletic department
By the end of her first semester Aldrete stood out physically and academically. Standing at 6-foot-1, she was unusually tall for a Mexican woman and her grades were excellent. She was one of 33 students chosen from TSC's 6,500-member student body for listing in the school's Who's Who directory for 1987-88. Aside from grades that placed her on the honor roll, Aldrete also organized and led a Booster Club for TSC's soccer team, earning the school's Outstanding Physical Education Award in her spare time.
Aldrete was driving through Matamoros on July 30, 1987 when
a shiny new Mercedes cut her off in traffic, narrowly avoiding a collision. The
driver was apologetic, suave and handsome. He introduced himself as Adolfo
Constanzo, a Cuban-American living in Mexico City. There was an instant
chemistry between them, but Constanzo made no sexual overtures. He noted with
pleasure that Aldrete's birthday was the same as his mother's.
In fact, the meeting was no accident. Constanzo had been
watching Gilberto Sosa, weighing his connections. The meeting with Sara Aldrete
was carefully stage-managed, as was their burgeoning friendship and her gradual
introduction into the occult. Two weeks after their first encounter, Constanzo
met Aldrete and Sosa in Brownsville, pointedly refusing to shake Sosa's hand.
Days later, an anonymous caller told Sosa that Aldrete was seeing another man.
Jealous, he refused to accept her denials and broke off the relationship. She
turned to Constanzo for solace, surprised when he told her he had seen the
break-up coming in his tarot cards.
Constanzo finally took Aldrete to bed, but their sexual union was short-lived. He made no secret of his preference for men, and Aldrete grudgingly accepted it, already hooked on the religious aspect of their relationship. By summer's end, Aldrete's TSC classmates found her dramatically changed, an overnight expert on witchcraft and magic, eager to debate the relative powers of darkness and light. In private, Constanzo called her La Madrina, the "godmother" of his growing cult. He probed her links to the Hernandez clan, predicting that leader Elio would soon approach her for advice about a problem. When Elio did so, in November 1987, Sara introduced the dealer to El Padrino.
Season of the witch...
As it happened, the Hernandez family was ripe for a takeover, torn by internal dissension and threatened by outside competitors. Using every "magic" trick at his disposal, Constanzo persuaded Elio and the rest that palo mayombe could solve all their problems. Enemies could be eliminated in the course of sacrificial rituals; those rituals, in turn, would keep the family and its employees safe from harm. If they were faithful to Constanzo, his disciples would become invisible to the authorities and bulletproof in combat. In return, all he asked was 50 percent of the profits and effective control of the family.
Shed Constanzo used for black magic
Constanzo's rituals became more elaborate and sadistic after he moved his cult headquarters to Rancho Santa Elena, 20 miles outside Matamoros. There, on May 28, 1988, Constanzo shot drug dealer Hector de la Fuente and a farmer named Moises Castillo, but the sacrifices didn't satisfy him. Back in Mexico City, on July 16, he supervised the torture and dismemberment of Raul Paz Esquivel, a transvestite and former lover of cult member Jorge Montes. The gruesome remains were dumped on a public street, found by children who ran shrieking to summon police.
Mutilation and pain were essential to palo mayombe. Blood and viscera fed the nganga, manipulated with sticks as Constanzo tuned in the spirit world. The demons he served were more likely to smile on a sacrifice that died in agony. "They must die screaming," El Padrino told his flock. As for the point in nearly every sacrifice where Constanzo sodomized his victims, that was simply a fringe benefit of playing god.
On August 10, 1988, in reprisal for an $800,000 drug rip-off, rival narcotics dealers kidnapped Ovidio Hernandez and his 2 -year-old sons. Constanzo's ghoul squad kidnapped a stranger two days later and tortured him to death at Rancho Santa Elena, chanting prayers for the safe release of Hernandez and son. When the hostages were released on August 13, without a peso's ransom changing hands, Constanzo claimed full credit for the triumph. His star was rising, and Constanzo paid little attention to the suicide of his disciple Florentino Ventura in Mexico City on September 17. (Ventura also killed his wife and a friend with the same burst of gunfire.)
By that time Constanzo was sitting on 800 kilos of
marijuana stolen from another gang, but felt he needed one more sacrifice to
guarantee safe shipment across the Rio Grande. Another ritual was staged on
March 13, 1989, but the victim's suffering was insufficient for Constanzo's
taste. "Bring me someone I can use," he told his minions.
"Someone who will scream."
Witch Hunt...
Constanzo's psychic powers must have failed him in March
1989, for he was stunned by the reaction to Mark Kilroy's disappearance. Not
even the Calzada family slaughter had produced such an outcry, most observers
concluding that drug dealers and their lackeys were beyond protection of the
law, a violent death their just reward. Some of Constanzo's victims had never
been reported missing; three of them, later unearthed with the rest at Rancho
Santa Elena, have never been identified.
But Mark Kilroy was different. He came from an affluent
family with political connections. More to the point, he was an Anglo tourist
whose fate threatened to become an international incident. Local police wanted
to solve the case quickly, before their tarnished reputation suffered any
further damage.
Constanzo, for his part, still had 800 kilos of marijuana to move across the border. To safeguard the shipment, he staged one final sacrifice at the ranch, choosing Sara Aldrete's old lover as the guest of honor. Gilberto Sosa died screaming on March 28, 1989, and the dope was safely transported on April 8, despite Serafin Hernandez leading police to the ranch one week earlier. Constanzo's mules collected $300,000 for the load, while El Padrino congratulated himself on his magical powers.
Elio Hernandez Rivera, arrest at ranch.
The discoveries at Matamoros were tailor-made for tabloid television circa 1989. Geraldo Rivera aired a special prime-time segment on the case, while TV journalists flew in from the United States, Europe, and even Japan. Constanzo was "sighted" as far north as Chicago, where rumors placed him in league with the Windy City Mafia. Sara Aldrete was "seen" lurking around schools throughout the Rio Grande Valley, word-of-mouth reports claiming she had threatened to kidnap and murder 10 Anglo children for each of her disciples jailed in Mexico. An alternative church at Pharr, Texas, was burned by nightriders after tales spread that its congregants were witches in thrall to Constanzo.
Still lawmen scoured the border in vain for El Padrino and
his entourage, barely mollified by the April 17 arrest of gang patriarch
Serafin Hernandez Rivera in Houston. Searching the house where he had been
hiding, they seized weapons and cash, but found no occult paraphernalia.
Constanzo and his closest aides, meanwhile, had simply disappeared.
Like magic.
They'll never take me...
Black magic shed burned by police.
Those plans unraveled on May 6, 1989, when police arrived
on Rio Sena, going door-to-door and asking questions. As luck would have it,
they were searching for a missing child—a completely unrelated case—but when
Constanzo glimpsed them from a window he panicked, opening fire with his
submachine gun. Within moments, 180 policemen surrounded the apartment house
returning fire in a fierce exchange that lasted some 45 minutes. Miraculously,
the only person wounded was an officer struck by Constanzo's first shots.
When Constanzo realized that escape was impossible, he
handed his weapon to El Duby and issued new orders. As the hit man later told
police, "He told me to kill him and Martin. I told him I couldn't do it,
but he hit me in the face and threatened that everything would go bad for me in
hell. Then he hugged Martin, and I just stood in front of them and shot them
with a machine gun."
Constanzo and Quintana were dead when police stormed the apartment, slumped together in a closet, Constanzo dressed in shorts as if for a day at the beach. The three survivors—El Duby, Orea and Sara Aldrete—were promptly arrested and rushed off to jail. In custody, El Duby admitted shooting Constanzo, but he cheerfully informed police, "The godfather will not be dead for long."
The Legacy...
Mexican authorities were less concerned with Constanzo's impending resurrection than with making charges stick against the surviving cultists. El Duby's case was open-and-shut, his confession recorded on two murder counts, but Sara Aldrete first posed as a victim, betraying herself when she protested too much, revealing intimate knowledge of the cult's bloody rituals.
In the wake of the Mexico City shootout, 14 cult members were indicted on various charges, including multiple murder, weapons and narcotics violations, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. In August 1990, El Duby was convicted of killing Constanzo and Quintana, drawing a 35-year prison term. Cultists Juan Fragosa and Jorge Montes were both convicted of Raul Esquivel's murder and sentenced to 35 years each; Omar Orea, convicted in the same case, died of AIDS before he could be sentenced. Sara Aldrete was acquitted of Constanzo's slaying in 1990 but was sentenced to a six-year term on conviction of criminal association. La Madrina insisted that she never practiced any religion but "Christian Santeria"; televised reports of the murders at Rancho Santa Elena, she said, took her completely by surprise. Jurors disagreed, and in 1994 , when Aldrete and four male accomplices were convicted of multiple slayings at the ranch. Aldrete was sentenced to 62 years, while her cohorts—including Elio Hernandez and Serafin Jr.—drew prison terms of 67 years. American authorities stand ready to prosecute Aldrete, El Duby and the Hernandez clan for Mark Kilroy's murder, should they ever be released from custody.
Pictures...
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