Adolfo Constanzo
Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo (November 1, 1962 – May 6, 1989) was a serial killer and cult leader in Mexico. His nickname was The Godfather of Matamoros.
Adulthood
Constanzo visited Mexico City in 1983, supporting himself as a tarot card reader. There, he recruited two younger men; Martín Quintana Rodríguez and Omar Chewe Orea Ochoa to be his servants, lovers and disciples. Constanzo returned to Miami shortly thereafter, but he moved to Mexico City in mid-1984. Over the next few years he was the leader of a full-fledged cult with drug dealers, musicians and even police officers under his command. The cult, based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, sold drugs, held high-priced occult ceremonies and by at latest 1987 murdered people for use in human sacrifices. These victims fell along with the cult's rivals in dealing drugs.
When an US citizen tourist, 21-year-old Mark J. Kilroy, disappeared in Matamoros during Spring Break 1989, local police, facing pressures from Texas authorities, began to search in earnest for him. They discovered Constanzo's cult quite by accident (in an unrelated drug investigation) and, after arresting some of the members, quickly discovered that they were responsible for the murder of Kilroy, whose body had been dismembered and burned.[1]
More and more of the cult's members were arrested until, on May 6, they had cornered Constanzo and four of his followers, two of whom were his male lovers, in a dilapidated Mexico City apartment. Determined not to go to prison, Constanzo ordered one of the disciples to shoot him and Quintana Rodríguez. They were both dead when the police finally broke in.[2]
One of Constanzo's most trusted leaders within his cult, Sara María Aldrete, was arrested not long after his death. She was sentenced to a total of 68 years in prison for her involvement in the cult and the murders.
Pop culture
- Borderland, a 2007 film based on Constanzo and his cult.
- Brujería, a death metal band whose lyrics focus on Satanism, anti-Christianity, sex and drug smuggling.
- Japanese doom metal band Church of Misery reference Constanzo in their song El Padrino (Godfather, in Spanish). It appears on their Houses of the Unholy album, each song being about a serial killer/mass murderer.
References
- ^ "Drugs, Death and the Occult Meet In Grisly Inquiry at Mexico Border". New York Times. April 13, 1989. Retrieved 2008-07-28.
Officials from two countries told a gruesome story today of drugs, ritual murder and the occult that has begun to unfold at a remote ranch in the bleak, empty countryside near the United States border. On Tuesday, the officials found the bodies of 12 people, including a 21-year-old University of Texas student who had vanished here a month ago, in eight crude graves on the ranch. Today, at news conferences here and in Brownsville, Tex., the officials said that a drug gang, seeing human sacrifice as a magical shield that would protect it from the police, was responsible for the murders.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ "Leader in Cult Slayings Ordered Own Death, Two Companions Say". New York Times. May 8, 1989.
The leader of a drug-smuggling cult that is believed to have killed 15 people and buried their bodies along the United States-Mexican border ordered his own killing when the police closed in on him, two of his companions said today.
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External links
- Crime Library 2 another Court TV article on the "Death Priests"
- "The Mexican Voodoo Massacre" Bizarre Magazine
- The Godfather of Matamoros