Transcript of The Matamoros Devil Murders (Part 2)

Hey, weirdos. I'm Alayna. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.

Did you just hear my stomach grumble? Grumble, grumble.

It said, "Brrr." It's usually my stomach that's grumbling.

I know. I don't know what's going on. Mine's loud. I just had a tuna sub.

You did?

So I'm digesting.

It looked wild, but I—

It wasn't good.

Wasn't good? No. So we'll see how that pans out.

Fuck. I know. It wasn't bad. It was just like—

It just didn't hit like you wanted it to?

No.

That's the worst.

Yeah, I know.

I hate that.

Hopefully I don't have to run out of here in the middle of this.

Hopefully.

Imagine. You won't know, listener. Yeah, so that's my lunch.

That's my lunch.

This bitch over here shoveled some cheese fries in. She said, whatever, I'm having cheese fries. I did. That I won't be joining you.

I really wanted some. I was craving some since I've been sick, and I was like, give me it.

She wasn't sure how soon she could have cheese fries post-NARO.

Yeah, so I just, I went for it. I feel good about it, you know.

Not only that, can I just call you out full blast? Spicy chicken nuggets? Yeah. Who is she? How do you live this life? Who lives this way? I would if I could, but I cannot. I got a 6-inch tuna sub and I'm like, hopefully that's chill.

Hopefully that's all right.

Hopefully that stays there.

Uh, yeah, I don't know. I, I'm like my dad.

I know that shit can eat anything.

I'm just my dad. I can just eat things at all hours of night.

I know, you're crazy, girl.

Spicy doesn't really bother me too much.

I love spicy, but spicy does not love me, and that's the saddest thing I know I've ever heard. I did— I do go spicy sometimes, like last night.

But you pay for it.

I got these little like, um, like tater tot mac and cheese things that had buffalo sauce on them. Oh shit, they were good.

That sounds good.

You know what, Beau? I paid for that.

Yeah, you pay.

I had to order Tums at 11 PM.

Damn.

But they make chewable Tums.

Which, hey.

And let me tell you, when I got those. Drew said, aren't they all chewable? And I said, I meant chewy.

Like chewy, like gummy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They're so good. I had to stop myself from eating the whole thing. Yeah.

You can't just eat Tums as a snack. No.

There's a whole warning label on the back.

There's a whole warning that you can't use those as a snack.

You're not supposed to have more than 6 in like a 24-hour period.

I had 3. Were wondering.

It's like that, um, Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids. I took 9. I took 9.

I think I've overcommitted. Me with Chewy Tums.

Yes, I took 9.

So I mean, in business, uh, buy The Butcher Legacy. You can pre-order it anywhere you want to pre-order it.

I'm going to finish it this weekend.

Yeah, there's a lot of— there's some, there's some little announcements and little fun things that might be happening in the pre-order space, so keep an eye on my socials. Next week. Yeah. Because there's some cool stuff I get to tell you.

Perhaps a new series starting.

Perhaps a new series that I'm going to do on socials. I don't know.

Maybe.

Could be. Who could be sure?

We're really good at Easter eggs.

Yeah. So just, you know, keep an eye. Keep an eye. You know? Keep two. And maybe it'll make you want to preorder because some incentives might be coming your way to preorder. So.

Period. Give it a try.

Give it a try. Hold on to that receipt, maybe. I don't know. Uh, but yeah, just go pre-order it wherever you want. ButcherLegacy.com.

Yeah, it's really, really fucking good.

Thank you.

And I know I'm biased, but like, I'm not even being biased right now. I like this one. I love the first two. I like this one a million times more.

That honestly, I love hearing that.

I like it. The vibe is perfect.

Yeah.

And we're back in New Orleans. I think that's important to say.

We are back in New Orleans.

We're back in New Orleans. Like, it's the vibe, and it's like Halloween time.

I'm excited about it.

It's the fall time. Like, these are the things you gotta tell people.

It's true. I know I'm not good at selling my own book. I'll help you. I appreciate it. That's why I need you. Yeah.

And 'cause we're in the morgue a lot in this one, it feels.

Yeah, we are. There's a lot of morgue in this one. This one was the one I had a lot of fun writing this one.

You can tell. It comes through.

And this one, and that's, I love hearing that.

It does.

And yeah, this one was really fun. This one was like, A long time coming. A lot of weird research for this one.

I'm sure.

Yeah.

I have to admit something. I love Jeremy.

Honestly, that's okay.

I feel so wrong. I kind of wanted that.

I wanted people to love him, but like—

I want to punch him.

Like I wanted people to not want him to go away. Yeah. But like hate him.

I'm like a little upset that he's behind bars.

Yeah.

Like just let him live.

Just let him live. You know?

Don't, obviously.

Like don't, but yeah.

But he's fake. So just like, don't get mad at me for saying that.

Yeah, he's not real.

And I'm rooting for Wren at the same time.

Of course you are.

Like, I want her to kick him in the kneecaps.

Who wouldn't? We love Wren.

I love her so much.

My girl.

She's such a baddie.

And she's friends with Kay Scarpetta. I know. So, guys, did you hear that? I know. Did you hear that?

Like, I'll never get over that.

That Patricia Cornwell is like, I think Kay and Wren are really good buds.

I think they are too.

And honestly, like, maybe that's true.

Maybe.

And maybe if you preorder the book, you can find out more about that. Maybe you can find out more about that. All right.

I think we plugged the shit out of this. I think we did good. That was our best plug yet.

I think we did good, guys.

I think we need to plug a little more like that because a lot of times we're just like, order it.

Yeah. I know.

But we don't give any detail.

And I realize that's not good enough of an incentive to do anything is to just be like, preorder this. Just do it, I guess. You're probably like, shut the fuck up. What do you mean? Like, I get it. So hopefully that tickled your pickle a little bit.

I hope so.

Yeah.

Mikey said it didn't tickle his pickle.

Mikey doesn't like that phrase.

He gave us a thumbs down. I think that phrase is so funny.

I do too.

What do you like? Tickle your fancy? Oh, big eyes.

Oh, there you go.

He said yes.

Or like blow your skirt up. Does that blow your skirt up?

Drew loves to say that.

I like that.

That didn't really blow my skirt up.

I love that a lot.

What are you going to say?

Tickle your pickle sounds really kind of perverse to me. It makes me uncomfortable when you say it out of your mouth.

I'm gonna keep doing it.

I love that a lot. It does sound weird. It does.

Um, another thing that we should probably plug— don't stop your timer just yet, Carl, because we're still going.

Not yet, Jason.

Is it actually Jason? I don't know. Uh, we are doing a fucking Radio City show.

Yes, in case you didn't know, in June, June 27th.

June 27th. I should say that confidently. That's the date of my show.

And yours is going to be awesome.

We just booked a special guest and I fear you're going to shit your dicks.

Yeah. So you got to get excited.

You got to book your tickets. We just booked— can I just say something? We're having dresses made in Romania.

Yeah. And we've never done anything like that.

We're getting Romanian dresses up in this bitch. And so we're going to shout out the maker once everything is like settled. Coolest people.

Yeah, coolest people. Truly.

I can't wait to like sing their praises.

Yeah, honestly, because let me tell you, BookTok girlies and friends, you'll love this gal.

You'll love her. Oh yeah.

So yeah, just put it out there.

I don't want to say too much, but you need to get your ticket.

Yeah.

Book your hotel.

There's not too many tickets left, so go get them. Yeah.

And you know what? You don't even have to stay in New York for the night. You could take a train.

Yeah, you can. There and back. The train is nice.

I don't know how late it runs, but.

Yeah, it's okay.

Yeah, whatever.

You know, wander the streets a little bit.

I wouldn't go that far. That's insane.

Wander the streets until dawn and then leave.

What the fuck?

It's actually everything we tell people not to do. But I'm just kidding.

All right, Carl, Jason, hit them.

All right, tell them the number. Yeah, let's go.

So we finished part 1, and the Mexican authorities had raided the Hernandez ranch and took multiple people into custody. Everybody was being very cocky, seemed to kind of think they were untouchable. What like weren't really saying anything aside from the caretaker.

Yes.

Domingo Bustamante. He pretty quickly folded and told investigators everything he knew, including the fact that a young American man had been held at the ranch. And when he was shown a photo of Mark Kilroy, he confirmed, yes, that was the man he was talking about.

I fear this is going to get really bad.

I would like to warn you at the top, this is a very— and I will, I'll give you another little warning right when we're about to get into it. This is a very gruesome case.

Yes. And from what I remember, yes.

What happened to Mark Kilroy is unimaginable. It's heartbreaking. And I hate that his family has to know that.

Yeah.

Like it's awful. But I do think like we were saying in part one, it's such an important story to tell.

Yeah.

Because these cases do become cautionary tales. Yeah, for sure. And if it helps one person be a little more vigilant while they're traveling.

And just have more knowledge going in. Yeah.

So Domingo Bustamante's statement broke the case wide open. Less than an hour later, little Serafín was dragged from his cell and he was brought into one of the interrogation rooms. If you remember, he was the one who blew through the checkpoint.

Yep.

This time, Commander Benítez was in no mood for the 20-year-old's cocky attitude and self-certainty. He had had enough.

Yeah, I can't say blame him.

So after slamming the soda water and hot sauce concoction down on the table, he started rattling off every single detail they had learned about the operation at the ranch. From the moment that little Serafín had blown through that checkpoint all the way up to what had just happened in Domingo Bustamante's interrogation. He was like, "We know everything, so you might as well talk." Yeah. Like, you're not having divine protection.

No.

It might have been the bottle of soda water and the hot sauce on the table, or it might have just been Benitez's unwillingness to tolerate any more lies. Whatever it was, mystical protection or not, little Serafín started talking.

I feel like it was a good mix of all of it, but I really think that soda bottle. Yeah, maybe pushed it over the edge.

For me, it would for sure be the hot sauce.

That would be it.

The concoction of it all. So he started talking. He confirmed what the agents already knew, that they were running the drug smuggling ring out of the ranch, moving drugs back and forth between Matamoros and Texas. And then he confirmed what they already suspected. They had murdered Mark Kilroy at the ranch. He told the commander, it was our religion, our voodoo. We did it for success. We did it for protection. He told us killing would bring us power. He told us our souls were dead. When that happens, you can do anything to anyone.

But you shouldn't want to.

No. And I want to point out, I know that what we're talking about here is not voodoo. I'm not super educated in voodoo at all, but that's a quote. And I know that— I'm sure this is vastly different what we're talking about today than actual voodoo.

Yeah, like that— this is— this was a quote from this person.

Exactly. So the interrogation took a little over 5 hours, and in that time, Benitez and the other agents in the room, they learned everything that they wanted to know about the smuggling operation but also a lot of stuff that they were not prepared to hear. So the interrogation took a little over 5 hours. And in that time, Benitez and the other agents, they learned things that they needed to know, like about the smuggling operation and everything going on in that department.

Yeah.

But they also learned a lot of things that they were not prepared for. Yes.

Which I'm sure we are also not going to be prepared for.

I'm going to do my best to prepare you, but even that will not be enough.

Yeah.

So after the death of his uncle Saul and his father, Serafín, little Serafín, and the remaining members of his family's organization, they ended up joining forces with another gang led by El Padrino. That might sound familiar.

Yes.

El Padrino was referenced in that wiretap call.

Yep.

So El Padrino happened to be Adolfo Constanzo, who we kind of touched on briefly in part 1, but we'll get more into who he is in this part. Okay. And this is the final part, just so you guys know. So it was Constanzo who forced them to adopt his religious practices, which were— it was like a bizarre perversion of Palo Mayombe, which was an Afro-Cuban religion. It honors the dead and engages in rituals that involve human bones and some other things.

Okay.

Now, Serafín told the agents, Adolfo's very powerful, very smart. He runs our business in Matamoros. He has connections all over Mexico. Movie stars go to him. Congressmen. So this is like a well-connected guy. I don't know if congressmen actually went to him. That was alleged by Noppy.

I mean, when you hear that, you're like, oh, okay. Period.

Got it. And just to be clear again, like I'm describing, I'm like naming specific religions. This, what we're talking about today, it's not these religions.

Yeah.

I don't know a lot about these religions.

And these are religions that they reference, not us.

Exactly. But like, this is what they're saying it is. I'm sure it's not that at all. Like I said, it's like a perversion, but just, I don't want anybody to think that I think that's what it is. Yeah, for sure. Or you either. So it was clear to, to, uh, Benitez and the others that Serafín had a lot of respect for Constanzo, but there was also a lot more to it. It seemed like he almost worshiped him and also was terrified of him all at the same time.

Yeah, does seem like that.

Yeah. He kept on telling investigators, we did whatever he asked. It's our religion. And if we didn't do as he said, he would kill us. Or worse.

That's so scary to hear. Like, it's our religion, so we did it without being— without question. It's like, that's not what religion is.

No, not at all.

It's not what it's supposed to be.

And I— for me, the scariest part of that is he would kill us or worse.

Yeah, it's like, what the fuck does that mean?

What's worse? Now, among the things Constanzo asked of his men was to procure sacrifices for Alegua, which is that trickster god that we referenced in part 1. That God would give powers and protections for in exchange for offerings.

Which I wonder, and again, I don't know anything about this, so this is me just wondering out loud. A trickster god to me seems like you can't trust that.

I would think.

Because a trickster god is usually like shady. Yeah, like they're tricky.

Yeah.

Like they're, you don't know if they're being for real or not. So it's just, it's an interesting thing here. Yeah. That they're relying so heavily on it.

I know. Well, and that's the thing. Adolfo Constanzo.

Yeah.

He he modeled his whole life over what he thought was appeasing this god.

Yeah, it's just interesting.

Now, one of those quote-unquote offerings ended up being Mark Kilroy.

Oh, that's awful.

According to Serafín, Constanzo had instructed him to go into Matamoros the night that Mark went missing, and he was to find somebody to sacrifice to the gods. This was not the first time they had done this. He said, Adolfo told us we had to go get a white male, a young white male, like a spring breaker.

Oh wow.

So they were like legitimately the hunt for shit Mark Kilroy. It was getting late, and Hernandez and another gang member, Melio Torres, still hadn't found anybody. And then the bars let out, like I talked about, and the streets were flooded with people. Serafín was standing on the street, and he actually saw Mark get separated from his friends, cuz when he had to like relieve himself.

Yep.

And they pounced on that. They pretended to sympathize with him. They offered, oh, we'll drive you back across the border. We'll get you back to your friends, no problem.

So sad.

And this is where things start to get really rough, but there's another part where they do too, so I'm going to warn you for both. So this is when they kidnapped Mark. They jumped him, they tied a blindfold around his eyes, they duct tape his mouth shut and just wrestled him into the Chevy Suburban. And as they stood there catching their breath, he actually managed to get out of the car and make a run for it.

Oh my God.

Which I think is one of the worst parts of this story. But they chased him down and dragged him back to the truck. So they brought Mark back to the ranch and as Bustamente, the caretaker, had indicated, they left him in the truck overnight and they promised him that as long as he complied with their demands, he was not going to be hurt, which was never the truth. No. He was kidnapped to be a sacrifice. Always a sacrifice.

Yeah.

This is where it's going to get really bad. Just so everybody knows, like trigger warning. The next day, Adolfo Constanzo arrived at the ranch with about 12 of his followers. And they assembled inside the shack that they used as kind of like a makeshift temple, like according to them. The outbuilding was actually so innocuous that agents who were involved in the raid and who had been to the property passed by it countless times when they'd gone to the ranch, and they had no idea what had taken place inside.

And if they'd only gone in there, they would have seen. He— they may have—

they would have found evidence of what had occurred.

That's what I mean. Like they would have seen that something happened in there.

Yeah. So once everybody was gathered in the shack, somebody brought Mark from the car. They threw him down onto a tarp that had been laid out and, uh, out on the inside. He stayed blindfolded with his mouth taped shut. But they stripped him nude and then Constanzo beat, raped, and tortured him before finally killing him with a brutal blow to the head using a machete.

Oh my God.

This is— it's— we're still not past the worst of it.

Holy shit.

When Mark was dead, Constanzo reached into the wound that the machete had made in his skull and pulled out pieces of his brain.

Oh my— this is what they mean when they say killed or worse.

Yes. So the pieces of his brain were then placed into a metal cauldron-like receptacle that Constanzo referred to as the niganga. According to Serafín, this was where the gods received their offerings. He told investigators he wanted to put his brains in because he was going to give the spirits more power.

Holy shit.

I'm sure that this religion is not this.

I don't know anything about it, but holy shit.

Now, when they had finished the quote-unquote ritual, Constanzo instructed the men to remove Mark's body and bury him on the property. They dismembered the body before the burial, and when Serafín was asked if that was part of the ritual, he was very blunt and told them no, it just made his body easier to bury.

Oh yeah, Jesus.

Uh, Mark's grave was marked by a wire sticking out of the ground, and the other end of that wire was tied to his spinal column. So that when his body had completely decomposed, quote, the cult could pull out the vertebrae to make a necklace.

Holy shit.

This is a human being.

How are you this devoid of humanity?

This is a human being who was going out for probably his last spring break with his best friends from high school, who got snatched off the streets, and this is what happened.

I just don't get how you get here. Like, I don't get how you get so devoid of anything that makes a human being a human being. I don't understand how that just seeps out of you or was never there to begin with.

It's so scary to me. Like, there's one person involved in this who will talk a little bit about who she was before she got involved in this, and she was just normal. Like, she was somebody that you might have hung out with after class or— wow— known, or like a friend of a friend.

Holy shit. And it's—

that's the thing. It's like, how do people become this deranged?

What did I get?

The time frame that It seems like overnight. Yeah, it's so incredible.

Like, how do you just start seeing your fellow human being as a sacrifice? Nothing. As something that's not you. Like, I don't, I don't understand that. I'll never understand that.

I think it's power, and I think in this case, drugs.

Holy shit.

So the next day, Benita sat down with Serafín again, and this time he recounted the details with, um, the details of his confession for a video camera. When the interview came to an end, he told the investigators, you won't be able to keep us here. You'll see.

Okay. Really? I don't know about that.

You really think that your God's just going to get you out of here for ripping somebody's brain matter out?

So chilling, though, how confident they are. Yeah. That this is real.

Yup.

And that they will not be punished for this.

Yup. So later that afternoon, the feds swarmed the ranch for a second time, arresting anybody who was found on the property, and they set up a perimeter to search for more bodies, because it turned out that while Mark was definitely the most high-profile victim of the cult, he was not the only person who had been killed by these deranged animals. By the time they finished searching the property, investigators would exhume 14 bodies.

Holy shit.

14 bodies of other men, all of various ages. So they stood back while Serafine worked at gunpoint, digging up one body after another from shallow graves. Like Mark Kilroy, a lot of the other men had been chosen mostly for their physical traits or characteristics that Constanzo believed would please the spirits, including one boy who was a member of the Hernandez family who had been sacrificed when he was mistaken for somebody else. Wow. One of their very own family members. And we'll get into that a little bit. Wow. According to the medical examiner, all of these 14 boys and men had been killed within the last 9 months. And in each case, the cause of death had been a blow from a sharp object, which was presumably that machete.

Holy shit.

Everybody showed signs of having been tortured and sexually assaulted, and all had similar wounds to the ones that Mark Kilroy had.

Jesus.

Now, while several agents guarded Serafín and Martínez as they worked to unearth the bodies, countless others combed over the property just collecting any evidence they could. When they came to the shed, apparently even the most hardened detectives who had spent years hunting down Mexico's most dangerous criminals, they were all shocked by what they described unanimously as a human slaughterhouse.

That is the scariest thing I've ever heard.

Yeah. Now, Benitez, I think I mentioned it in part one briefly, he had grown up in a traditional indigenous community, so he was aware of some of the characteristics of these different religions.

Yeah, and like folklore and stuff.

And folklore, yeah. So he had— he grew up hearing about all this, and that included all manner of spirits, magic, you name it. Yeah, a lot of times he was teased at the precinct for having such a strong belief in the supernatural, but this was the one time that most of the men who were working under him were incredibly grateful for his superstitious upbringing. When he learned of the potential cult-related activity in the murders, he actually called on a doctor, a professor of anthropology, Dr. Anthony Zavaleta, and he was an expert in Afro-Caribbean religions. So if anybody was going to help them navigate this whole unfamiliar world, it was going to be him.

Yeah.

Now, even with all of his experience, Zavaleta was horrified by what he saw on the ranch that day.

Oh, I can imagine.

He told a reporter, I've, I have 40 years studying brujería, or witchcraft, and I've been to places and seen things that ordinarily would make your hair stand on end. But I was not ready for what I encountered that day.

I don't think anybody could be. How—

I— that's how you ever prepare yourself for that.

Sounds completely out of the realm of anything you could conjure.

It really does. So like the agents on scene, Zavaletta was most disturbed by the shack where Constanzo and his cult members performed their— I hate to even call them rituals because, quote unquote, where they murdered people is what we should say.

They're murders.

Yeah. In the cauldron situated in the center of the shack, there what still appeared to be brain matter, along with, quote, other organs and a mixture of slop and blood, just still sitting there.

This is like shit you would hear about in a horror movie that you're like, that's too far.

Yup.

But this is real. Like, this really happened.

This is real. Now, later, when the contents were analyzed, they would be identified as a combination of human brains, animal parts, chicken bones, and other natural debris.

Wow.

Upon leaving the shack, Zavaleta approached Benitez and told him, 'This is palo mayombe. You need to look for a Cubano. This is a Cuban doing this. It's not a Mexican.' Oh, and that was actually valuable information.

Okay.

Now, like we know from part 1, the local authorities in Matamoros, they were familiar with the Hernandez family, and we went over that. So when they learned of the activity at the ranch that involved Serafín and the other members of the gang, most if not all of the names were known to them.

Yeah.

All except one that kept coming up over and over again, especially after Serafín gave his confession. Adolfo Constanzo.

El padrino.

El padrino, exactly. So Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo, he was born November 1st, 1962 in Miami, Florida to a 15-year-old single mother.

15.

15-year-old. Her name was Delia González and she was a Cuban immigrant. So obviously he too is Cuban.

Yeah.

So, so it's exactly what the doctor said.

Sorry, there might be a plane landing on my house.

I know.

Dang. That was low.

So like many single parents, Delia spent a lot of her life just struggling to support her family. Yeah, of course. Because she didn't just have Adolfo as a son, she had two other children too. She baptized and raised her kids as Catholics, but she also exposed them to voodoo and other Afro-Caribbean languages or religions that would eventually have, as we know, a very profound effect on Adolfo specifically. As a child, he was remembered as a very serious boy. People said he never laughed and that he was obsessively neat.

Eek.

Like kind of like OCD, it seems like he had. Author Jim Schuetz wrote, even as a very little boy, he was meticulous in ways that seemed strange to the adults around him.

So I'm sure he was not getting a lot of support for that.

No, I don't think so.

Yeah.

At an early age, he had a preoccupation with his clothing and his appearance specifically. And everybody from neighbors to strangers, though, they were constantly commenting on his looks. They thought he was beautiful.

Oh, wow.

Obviously he was not. As he grew older, the obsessive behaviors and his fixation on his appearance kind of became one of the things that he got teased for the older he got, which inevitably brought on the more spiteful and aggressive side of his personality. That's when it really started to come out. Uh, Jim Schutz wrote, on a few occasions when fellow students made the mistake of teasing Adolfo about his weird habits, The response was swift and unnerving. No one in Cuban Miami needed more than a few seconds to figure out the meaning of bloody animal heads and other signs that appeared the next day at the front door of the offending schoolmate's home.

Holy shit.

So if you were—

I know I'm saying that a lot, but that's really like— I'm just incredulous.

If you teased him, he left a bloody animal head staked outside your door.

And was anybody thinking that like Hey, these are red flags.

I guess it was the '60s, question mark.

Whoa.

I don't know. I don't know what the excuse is here for that.

I don't know what decade that would not be a red flag to me.

I don't know.

Holy shit.

I'm sure it was a red flag to others. It's like Middle-earth.

Like, that's the— Game of Thrones is really only where that would be acceptable, I think.

And even then it was kind of red flag.

And even then you're like, oh, something's wrong here.

Yeah, I feel like this is going to go awry.

Yeah.

And it sure does.

Holy shit.

Now, under normal circumstances, his strange behaviors, aside from his retaliation, just like the fact that he was very meticulous and that kind of thing.

Yeah.

May have just been written off as like a phase that kids go through. Yeah. But to his devoutly religious mother and the superstitious community that she was kind of specifically steeped in, it was something else. They saw his uncommon beauty and his ability to catch the attention of strangers and his organization and all of it. As some kind of divine gift. That's what they always said, he had a divine gift.

Okay.

But at the same time, Schutz noted most of the people in Cuban Miami who were around Adolfo and his mother for any length of time knew exactly what this little boy's demeanor meant, and it frightened them. So there weren't— there were people who saw these red flags.

Like, yeah, there are people who are like, this is not right.

It wasn't going unnoticed. But apparently they had a strong community around them that was willing to protect him.

Yeah.

And maybe was unwilling to believe that he was responsible for these kinds of things.

Yeah.

Also, neighbors had always thought that it was a little suspicious how Adolfo's father just disappeared one day about a year after they arrived in Miami.

Huh.

Yeah. His mother and his grandmother said that the father had just run away, but there were always whispers of Delia's practices of black magic, like how her new husband's business had gone from failing to prosperous seemingly overnight. And how that same husband seemed to be afraid of his eldest stepson Adolfo.

Ooh.

And the spiritual role that his mom almost seemed to be grooming him for. This was all talk in the town.

Yeah.

So when Delia's successful husband died from a sudden mysterious illness in 1960, uh, 1973, he left her and the children with a pretty decent inheritance that meant that they didn't really have to work anymore to support themselves. Now, that didn't mean that Adolfo was now free to just, like, focus on regular things like schoolwork or spending time with friends. His mother assured him that he was much too special to worry about those mundane things.

Yeah, we don't, we don't need to bother ourselves with things like friends. Yeah. No. Why would you do that? Other human things, you know?

No. Now here's the weird thing. Speaking like, I want to know what she considered mundane and like not mundane because she always loved movies, especially since she was like a kid in Cuba. She was very obsessed with like movie stars and going to the movies, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

And she loved how American movie stars in particular, like, commanded attention and wielded power with the public. She found that fascinating. And like, movies aren't mundane to you, but friends are? Like, what?

I know. That doesn't make sense. You know what? There was this era, though, that I feel like movie stars were otherworldly. Yes. I know what I mean? Like, it was a totally different kind of era thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, she was confident, though, that her son Adolfo could command that same power. She said movie star vibes just stop stop putting bloody animals.

I was gonna say, there is that one little thing though that he does.

She wasn't worried that it was like gonna be a hindrance though.

Yeah, she's not worried about that.

Yeah, don't worry about it. Don't worry about the mundane things, you know. Now by the time he was in his mid-teens, uh, Adolfo was providing spiritual services to the more superstitious believers in the Miami Cuban community, which if he wasn't who he was would be quite fascinating.

Yeah, for sure.

Like, I'm into spiritual services. Yeah, not these kind, for sure.

No.

Uh, Delia assured everybody that her son had great powers and he could see things others couldn't. He could communicate with the spirit world. At first, it was just like the occasional housewife who went by Delia's to sit with Adolfo and have her fortune told, which like, cool. But as months passed and word got out, the visitors became more frequent and they brought money. Mm-hmm. So he was really making money at doing this. Now, when he graduated high school in 1980 with all his supposed gifts, gifts, he saw no reason to go to college. He's gifted.

No, that's mundane.

Yeah, the college— instead, he worked occasional odd jobs to make a little extra money beyond what he got from the fortune telling, but he mostly spent his time hanging out with his growing group of followers and exploring his sexuality with men and women. Now, on a trip to Mexico City in 1981, he was actually arrested for shoplifting, which is wild because he had money.

You're making money.

Not only is he making money, he was left an inheritance where he really didn't have to work anymore.

Oh yeah, that's that's, that's like thrill.

He just liked money. Yeah, and thrill. And it also, it is the thrill of it because it became a regular habit throughout the '80s.

Because remember, he doesn't like mundane shit, and he's been told all his life, you are not on this earth for mundane shit, right? So he's looking for that extra thing.

Well, and you're gifted, you're talented, like you're not— you're, you're protected, I'm sure he thought, by these, these gods that you're speaking to. So even though he had this like shoplifting stint that he was actually arrested for, he still managed to find success in Mexico, especially when he was offered a modeling job. To Delia, the job was further confirmation that he had the power and influence she always thought, so she moved with him to Mexico City to— in hopes that he would fulfill his destiny and she could be there to watch.

Yeah, of course.

Now, he actually did find a lot of success as a model, but it was his supposed supernatural abilities that he really became known for in Mexico City. First before he became known for what he's known for now. Eventually, he started to offer his fortune-telling services to the wealthy and elite of Mexico City. So when little Serafín earlier was saying like movie stars and congressmen.

Yeah.

It could have been right here.

Yeah. There you go.

Now, his most popular services actually weren't his fortunes, but instead became his curses.

Oh.

He offered to put curses on people's enemies for a price.

That's such bad vibes.

It is.

It's bad vibes.

But this, this service became particularly popular, and it makes sense, among the local drug dealers and the cartels.

Yeah, I mean, that makes sense for sure.

It makes perfect sense. Now, it's unclear how he really eventually connected with these criminal gangs along the border, but it was probably the services that he was offering and his supposed gifts that drew everybody to him. And he found them to be easily manipulated through superstition.

Yeah.

So he saw his niche.

Yeah, of course.

It's a horrible niche, but he identified it.

He's jumping into it now.

In 1988, after Saul Hernandez and Serafín Sr. were killed and the Hernandez operation was in danger of falling apart, Elio Hernandez became the new de facto leader. He was pretty much as ruthless as his brother had been, his brother Saul, but he was still taking over an organization that was on the brink of collapse.

Yeah.

So he needed help and he figured what they really specifically needed was good protection. And there was no better protection than magic. So Ilio set out to find the one that could guarantee their safety. And it seems that he likely met Adolfo Constanzo through Sara Maria Adrete, who I mentioned was, um, Adolfo's high priestess.

Oh yes.

In part one, she was a friend of Ilio's who dabbled in black magic. And of course, as we know, she knew Adolfo. Now, at 22 years old, she was a college student just living in Brownsville, Texas, when an unexpected divorce had her move back to Matamoros to live with her parents. She always talked about wanting to become a teacher. Oh, so like I said, she was just a regular girly going to college, wanting to be a teacher, and then she met Adolfo Constanzo.

She's just gonna mold young minds.

She was going to mold young minds.

Whoa.

Adolfo and Sarah met one afternoon in the summer of '87 when he stopped his car in the middle of a crowded street, causing a traffic jam, just to meet her. Apparently this was like a thing in Matamoros. Like men would put these big displays of affection on for women that they wanted to end up being with.

Oh, okay. It's like a peacock situation.

Yeah, very much so. Exactly. So she was familiar with this and she always found it kind of like repulsive.

Yeah. She's like, no thanks.

But for some reason there was something about Adolfo that she liked. She saw that he was gifted and talented, I guess.

Interesting.

Now she didn't find him brash or overconfident. She said he was, or she felt like he was just magnetic. And it didn't take long before she was brought into the fold and familiarized with the ways of his religion, his quote unquote religion. But she probably didn't know that she wasn't the first woman to join his group. There had been actually two before her that served as high priestess.

Oh, yeah. Where'd they go?

They mysteriously vanished within a year of meeting Adolfo Constanzo.

You know what? It's not my business.

Isn't it weird how people just mysteriously vanish when they know him or his family?

Yeah, it's very— there's a lot of mysterious vanishing. Happening here, and it's making me very uncomfortable.

I mean, it's just magic.

I have anxiety listening to this. It's a lot, just because this world is like— everything about all of this, it's so dark, feels so scary to me. Like, I'm so anxious just thinking about it.

Yeah. Now, at first, what brought the Hernandezes and the Constanzo— and Constanzo's followers together were the drugs and the money, not the religion. But in time, that changed, because the deeper that they all got into Payomayombe the more the spiritual practices and beliefs took over their lives. Now, to Tony Zavaletta, the doctor who actually knew Sarah well— wow— her rapid transformation from a straight-A student in his class— so literally the, the doctor that was brought in as an expert on this religion ended up knowing one of these followers because she was in his class that he taught.

That's incredible in the worst way.

It really is. He found her transformation to be almost unbelievable. Yeah, he said She sat in my anthropology class all semester, an A student, always present, always friendly. I never saw her wear an emblem, an amulet, a talisman, any sign of black magic, and I am trained to watch out for such things. I never heard her ask a weird question, even when we talked about weird religions.

So it really was like night and day.

Light switch.

Yeah, light switch.

Now, there's no way of knowing exactly how many people unfortunately were murdered by the cult between '88 and '89, but according to Gary Cartwright, the earliest victims were, quote, selected from the ranks of enemies, rival drug dealers, or dirty cops who had gone back on an agreement. Yeah. Now, to Elio Hernandez, this made sense. He could appease Constanzo and also get rid of his enemies and rivals at the same time. Yeah, it was perfect for him.

Makes sense in that way, right?

But soon the murders became much more cruel, much more sadistic, and very reckless. This is horrific. And, uh, we lightly touched on this earlier.

Oh boy.

In one instance, when Elio was forced to shoot the man they planned to sacrifice before the ceremony began, so things went wrong. He sent out 3 of his henchmen to find a replacement, and any replacement would do. They said they just needed somebody, stat. So the followers did as they were told, and they grabbed a 14-year-old boy.

Oh my God.

He had gone out in the night to look for a lost goat. Oh, it was only later when the sacrifice, aka the murder, was finished that Elio realized he had murdered his own nephew.

Oh my God.

Because before that, they had a hood over his head, but once they lifted the hood, he realized they had sacrificed, quote unquote, his own nephew.

What are the fucking odds of that?

And also, how do you put your head on the pillow at night doing what you do anyway, but it's so reckless now that you've fucking accidentally murdered your own nephew? Accidentally murdered your own nephew.

You have to be so detached from—

because anything even slightly resembling humanity, they also just continued on doing the same thing.

Like, that didn't— that wasn't like a wake-up call? Like, shit's getting way too chaotic. Like, we need to take a step here.

It's insane. But now, by the time they killed Mark Kilroy, all of Adolfo Constanzo's followers had come to see him himself as some kind of god, like some kind of divine being. He commanded their respect. They were afraid of him, and as a result, they would do whatever he wanted, no matter how heinous, and especially if there was something they thought was to be gained from the brutality and the cruelty. Because that's the thing, the more cruel, the more brutal, the more horrific these things, these, these murders were, they thought they were getting more benefit from that, more protection. Oh, I don't know how you rationalize that in your brain?

That's the thing. I— you have to be— I keep going back to it. I'm like, how does this fucking happen?

You just have to—

how does this happen?

You have to lose total grip on reality.

Like, you don't have any empathy for another human being. Like, I just, like, I can't wrap my brain around that.

And just, like, to be that untethered— I think, like, that's the word, untethered from humanity and reality.

Because, like, there are people I can't fucking stand. Of course, absolutely. But if I saw something horrible happening to them and they like cried or were upset, something in me would feel empathy and intervene and have to like not be a part of that and like not let that happen. It's like people I hate, like, you know what I mean? Like, it's—

I can't, because that's humanity. Imagine, like, that's empathy, that's sympathy. But some people just aren't equipped with those emotions. And a stranger.

Yeah. Too. That's the other thing. It's like, you know nothing about this person's life or who loves them or who they love or what they're going through or what they had planned. And you're just—

And they just don't care.

Intervening and removing it.

And you feel entitled to do so. Yeah.

You feel entitled and you feel like you get something out of that.

It's like, that's so gross. I can't make sense of that.

Yeah.

Now, as soon as Commander Benitez saw the signs of witchcraft at the ranch and his suspicions were then confirmed by Dr. Zabaleta, He called the investigation actually to an immediate halt. The search would not continue, he said, until the black magic on the property had been neutralized.

Because he knows about this shit.

He knows about this shit, and it's— it is taken very seriously in the— in these particular cultures.

And you don't want to fuck around with that.

Honestly, I know it sounds a little out there, like, yeah, what are you talking about? Magic? You have to neutralize the scene before you investigate. And I do think there were some things that were done that probably weren't great as far as investigation goes, but yeah, it works out. But like this is a deeply ingrained thing in these cultures.

Well, you have to, that's the thing. And when a culture believes something to that extent and like the energy is put into it like that, you have to take it seriously and you have to do the correct steps to make sure you're doing everything right.

Right. Like you have to allow them to do what they need to do for sure at the end of the day.

Yeah.

So Benita's contacted, again, I hope I say this right. I know I'm just a little white girl, curandero, which is a white witch, to come to the property and cleanse the area. But they wanted to wait until Sunday, which is the Lord's Day, when the cleansing magic would be the most powerful.

Okay.

So in the meantime, Benitez and the American authorities pored over Constanzo's journals and other evidence that they were able to get from the scene. They managed to round up several members of his gang, but he himself, El Padrino, and his high priestess, Sara, were still unaccounted for. And presumably at this point on the run.

What the fuck?

The journals indicated that his activity was obviously not confined to the ranch. There were other altars, quote unquote, around Mexico where sacrifices had been performed. Uh, Agent Rafael Martinez said, another murder to appease the spirits and keep the fugitive free is not only a possibility, it's a probability.

Damn.

Now when Sunday finally arrived, the agents all gathered back at the ranch with with several of their irritable American counterparts, and they watched as the White Witch set about cleansing the property. The first step was to destroy the shack where the rituals had occurred. I could understand if you weren't familiar with this religion or this culture being like, why would you burn down crucial evidence? Well, that's the thing, that would be like, you're just like, I wouldn't quite understand that, but yeah, you're on their soil and you have to do what you have to What can you do here? Now, once the flames had died and the structure itself was just a pile of ash and rubble, the White Witch crept up to the cauldron with a 2x4 in one hand. Humes wrote, he approached the thing as if it was a wounded animal capable of attacking anybody who entered its den. And then to everybody's surprise, he rushed forward and smashed the cauldron with the club and then leapt back almost like he was waiting for a corresponding attack.

Yeah, like it was going to come at him.

Retaliation. When nothing happened, he seemed satisfied that the black magic had been neutralized. He spent a few more hours at the property cleansing with holy water and performing other rituals, and then gave Benitez the all clear that allowed them to continue on with the investigation. Now, as soon as the investigation really got back on track, the story hit the newspapers, and all the sensational and salacious details would continue to be front page news in the weeks that followed, obviously. In the days after the story broke, Brad Moore, who was Mark Kilroy's, one of his closest friends, told a reporter, I'm still really in shock about it. I know he's in a better place. I know that he was a very good person. Just breaks your heart.

Yeah, that's awful.

Now in the days that followed, investigators were able to identify 3 more bodies that were unearthed at the ranch. There was Valenta Del Fierro, a local man in his 30s who had been shot with a 9mm. There was Gilberto Garza-Sosa, a railroad security guard whose neck bones were all broken. From what the medical examiner believed was a hanging. And there was Cesar Sauceda, who was a former Matamoros police officer, and his body showed signs of torture.

Holy shit.

Uh, it was Sauceda actually— Sauceda— who Elio had shot prematurely, which required them to find a new victim. And that obviously resulted in the death of his own nephew, his 14-year-old nephew.

14 years old.

But unfortunately, many of the other victims would remain unidentified.

That's really sad. It is.

Now, while his family, Mark Kilroy's family, struggled to process the revelation that he was dead, that he wasn't coming home, and the press had a field day playing up all the shocking aspects of the story, authorities on both sides of the border got to work just trying to apprehend everybody who was responsible and obviously doing their best to hunt down Adolfo Constanzo. By the time the agents were searching the ranch, they had many of the members of the gang in custody. But like we said, as soon as he heard, Adolfo Constanzo, of the raid, he and Sara escaped to Brownsville along with cult members Martín Quintana Rodríguez, Omar Francisco Orea Ochoa, and Álvaro "El Dubí" de León Valdez, and they were all wanted for murder. Now, believing that Constanzo and the others might be hiding out at like a hotel or something like that in Brownsville, federal agents in the US assembled a team and they raided the hotel. But by the time they arrived, the group had already caught a flight out of Texas to Mexico City, and that's where Constanzo actually had an apartment.

Wow.

He had multiple places to stay on both sides of the border. It took several weeks, but Mexican authorities finally caught up with the fugitive cult members in Mexico City at the end of April. When they raided Constanzo's apartment, they found altars, they found candles and other occult objects inside. But they didn't find any evidence that a violent crime had been committed there.

In that location.

In that location. So that was a little tough.

Yeah.

Now a week later on May 6th, a resident of an apartment complex in Mexico City called the police to report a domestic disturbance. Now the police thought that might have been Constanzo and the others, so they brought reinforcements. And the report actually ended up being unrelated to Constanzo.

Oh wow.

But it did result in gunfire between the suspect and the police. And in a— in a bizarre coincidence, Constanzo was staying in an apartment complex nearby.

What?

And when he heard the gunfire between the police and the suspect in the domestic dispute, he assumed that the authorities had caught up with him.

What are the fucking odds?

One of his followers who was on the run at the same time said he went crazy, crazy. He grabbed a bundle of money and threw it and began shooting out the window.

Holy Holy shit.

Now, believing that he only had a matter of minutes before he was caught, he ordered one of the other cult members, Alvaro Valdez, to shoot him and his henchman Martin Rodriguez— Rodriguez, excuse me— who was also on the run.

Whoa.

The story was later confirmed by Sarah, who told police Adolfo had made the order, quote, because it was the end and he wanted to die with Martin.

This is wild.

It's Bonkers. So with Adolfo Constanzo and Martin Rodriguez now dead, police took Sara Aldrete, Omar Francisco Orea Ochoa, and Álvaro de León Valdez into custody, bringing the manhunt for Mark Kilroy's murderers to an end.

A bizarre, wild end.

One of the strangest ends I think that we actually had in Morbid History.

Holy shit.

So it took some time to sort everything out, but eventually everybody who played a role in the murders of those discovered buried at the ranch were punished for their crimes. Good. Not long after his arrest, Aria Okoa was hospitalized and diagnosed with AIDS. As a result of the advanced stage of his virus, he spent the rest of his life in a hospital and died in February of 1990. Alvaro Valdez was found guilty of the murders of Adolfo Constanzo and Martin Rodriguez and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Sarah Aldrete, Serafín Hernandez, Elio Hernandez, and Sergio Martinez were ultimately convicted of multiple crimes, including the murders of Mark Kilroy and the others found on the ranch, and they were sentenced to 67 years in prison.

Wow.

Um, I don't know exactly why, but in 1998, a judge did reduce their sentences to 50 years each. Why? I don't know if it was good behavior. Yeah, like, that seems crazy. Now, as of today, only Ovidio Hernandez and Mario Ponce Torres have managed to evade capture. Wow. Yeah. As for the Kilroy family, uh, they continue to support each other in the years that have followed since Mark's death. A few years after the tragedy, they established the Mark Kilroy Foundation, and that's an organization dedicated to the prevention of substance abuse among young people, which I think is really incredible that they were able to do something with it. Exactly. Since starting the organization, they provided countless teens and young adults with the education and opportunities to avoid falling into addiction. And even though Mark himself never struggled with drugs or alcohol, they obviously saw the connection to addiction and what happened here. In 2009, Mark's mother Helen said, a lot of people weren't even alive when this happened to Mark. So we do talk to people about Mark's story. They need to realize that they have to be aware of what is going on around them anywhere, not just in a foreign country.

Exactly, because that really is this kind of shit can happen anywhere.

And you just like, stories like this are so shocking, but yeah, it's such proof that you do not know what's lingering around the next corner.

And you don't know strangers are strangers. You don't know them.

You don't know what they're about.

You don't know if they have good intentions. You don't know anything.

Unfortunately, a lot of times people don't want to help you. No, they want to hurt you. And like, that's a horrible thing to have to believe, but But you have to at least have that in the front of your mind now. Yeah. And if they— Now we have the information.

Let them, let them prove to you that they're not that.

Exactly.

Before you fully trust them.

But honestly, like we were talking about this the other day with just a group of friends. Anytime I've ever been helped, like get it or offered help, like getting my groceries into my car or something like that, I'll, no thank you.

Yeah. No.

I'm all set. I got it.

I never want the help.

A ride? Nope. You don't need a ride anymore. No.

Definitely not.

Obviously not at this point, like when this story happened, but now Uber?

Nope.

I'm all set.

Don't need it. It's just, it's sad. What an awful, awful story.

It's just awful that human beings are capable of doing this to other human beings.

That's honestly the thing that my brain just never ever can even conceive of.

No. Truly. But I really do commend his family for like making something positive out of it. Something positive come out of such a tragic loss.

Because holy shit.

Yeah. It's a horrific story.

It really is.

Do you have a fun fact for us as a palate cleanser?

I think it's your fun fact.

Is it my fun fact?

I did fun fact last time.

I'll find a fun fact for us then.

Okay.

Sharks have been swimming in Earth's oceans for about 400 million years, making them roughly 50 million years older than the earliest trees.

That's so scary and incredible all at the same time. It really is. Like, that's sh— the ocean isn't my business. No. It's just not.

I also just find it so scary that we just stopped exploring the ocean.

Yeah, because I think we were like, we have, we have more business up in space than we have down here.

Yeah.

And I fully believe that.

Freaks me out. Space, scary.

Ocean, scarier. Unthinkable.

But also like, that's where our Wi-Fi comes from.

Yeah.

Make it make sense.

I know. Yeah.

Mikey's looking at me like, what the fuck? Comes from like tunnels and shit underwater. It's weird. Fall into a rabbit hole about that on TikTok.

You'll lose your mind. Let's do it.

Do that. That's how you palate cleanse.

Yeah, fall into that rabbit hole.

Fall into like a creepy rabbit hole. But like, that's like technological and chilling and will probably scare you as well. Yeah, but like in a fun way.

Yeah, in a fun way.

So with that being said, we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird. But also weird that you don't go down a rabbit hole.

One that makes you feel good.

Yeah, or a little bit scared.

Spooky.

Spooky rabbit hole.