Adolfo Constanzo

Biography and beginnings

Constanzo was born in Miami, Florida to Delia Aurora Gonzalez, a Cuban immigrant mother in 1962. She gave birth to Adolfo at the age of 15 and eventually had three children of different fathers. She moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico after her first husband died and remarried there. Constanzo was baptized Catholic and served as an altar boy, but also accompanied his mother on trips to Haiti to learn about Voodoo. The family returned to Miami in 1972 and his stepfather died soon after, leaving the family with some money. As a teenager, Constanzo became apprenticed to a local sorcerer and began to practice a religion called Palo Mayombe, which involves animal sacrifice. His mother remarried and his new stepfather was involved in the religion and drug dealing. 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. His mother believed he had psychic abilities for supposedly having foretold the attempted assassination of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

As an adult, Constanzo moved to Mexico City and met the men who were to become his followers: Martin Quintana, Jorge Montes, and Omar Orea. 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 rich drug dealers and hitmen who enjoyed the violence of Constanzo's "magical" displays. He also attracted other rich members of Mexican society, including several high-ranking corrupt policemen who introduced him to the city's powerful narcotics cartels.

Constanzo started to raid graveyards for human bones to put in his nganga, or cauldron, but before long he would need live human sacrifices instead of old bones. More than 20 victims, whose mutilated bodies were found in and around Mexico City, are thought to have met their end this way.

Murders

Constanzo 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. Constanzo 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.

In 1988, Constanzo moved to Rancho Santa Elena, a house in the desert. It is there that 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, Constanzo's henchmen abducted a pre-med student, Mark Kilroy, from outside a Mexican bar and took him back to the ranch. Kilroy was a U.S. 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 Constanzo's followers, including two of the Hernandez brothers. Police quickly discovered the cult and that Constanzo had been responsible for Kilroy's death; he sought a "good"/superior brain for one of his ritual spells. Officers raided the ranch and discovered Constanzo's cauldron, which contained various items such as a dead black cat and a human brain. Fifteen mutilated corpses were dug up at the ranch, one of them Kilroy's. Officials said Kilroy was killed by Constanzo 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 only served to soon getting him surrounded by the police. Determined not to go to prison, he handed the gun to follower Alvaro de Leon and ordered him to open fire on him and Martin Quintana. By the time police reached the apartment, both Constanzo and Quintana were dead. De Leon, known as "El Duby", and Sara Aldrete were immediately arrested.

A total of fourteen cult members were charged with a range of crimes, from murder and drug-running to obstructing the course of justice. Sara Aldrete, Elio Hernandez and Serafin Hernandez were convicted of multiple murders and were ordered to serve prison sentences of over sixty years each. De Leon was given a thirty-year term.

Possible accomplices

Documentaries

The Discovery Channel series Most Evil, by Dr. Michael Stone, profiled Constanzo in the last episode ("Cult Leaders") of the second season. Constanzo's "evil level" was 22, the highest.

Constanzo was also profiled in the documentary Instinto Asesino, which aired on Discovery en Español in 2010. The episode was entitled "El Padrino".

On July 13, 2013, the Investigation Discovery Channel profiled this crime in its Poisoned Passions series. The episode is titled "Sacrificial Evil." Constanzo was portrayed by actor Aldo Uribe.

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