Magdalena Solís

Life

She came from a poverty-stricken dysfunctional family, and entered into prostitution at a young age—a profession in which she worked until her marriage with the Santos and Cayetano Hernandez cult in 1963. Her brother, Eleazar Solís, acted as her pimp during this time.

Psychiatric profile

Solís was an organized murderer and sexual predator who killed in groups. She is one of the few documented cases of female serial killers who had clear sexual motivations.

She was responsible for at least eight murders, although the numbers have been speculated to be higher, committed in the small community of Yerba Buena, near the city of Monterrey in the Mexican state of Nuevo León. Solís represented herself as a goddess and ordered numerous sacrifices for blood rituals.

The Hernandez Brothers's sect

In late 1962 and early 1963, brothers Santos and Cayetano Hernandez, a pair of petty criminals, reached the small town of Yerba Buena, a marginalized community in northern Mexico with 50 impoverished and mostly illiterate inhabitants. As part of a scam, the brothers proclaimed themselves prophets and high priests of the "powerful and exiled Inca gods." The brothers demanded worship and tribute from the villagers in exchange for treasures hidden in the caves of the mountains surrounding the village.

Despite the fact that the Incas were historically not from Mexico, many of the inhabitants of Yerba Buena believed the Hernandez brothers' claims of being Inca prophets. Thus the brothers founded a relatively prosperous sect. In nearby caves, where Inca treasures were allegedly hidden, the brothers organized narcotics-fueled orgies and treated many villagers, both men and women, as sex slaves. However, the villagers began to grow impatient at not seeing their promised treasure.

Faced with possible exposure, the Hernandez brothers traveled to Monterrey in search of prostitutes who would take part in the farce. They eventually made contact with Solís and her brother, who traveled back to Yerba Buena with them. During one of the cave rituals, using a smoke screen, the Hernandez brothers introduced Solís as the reincarnation of an Inca goddess. Solís developed a severe theological psychosis and took over the sect. Under her leadership, their rituals became more grisly and perverse as Solís became enamored with consumption of blood and sadomasochism.

Crimes

Solís took over the sect shortly after joining. By then two members, tired of the sexual abuse, wanted to leave the group. The other believers were brought before the "high priests". Solís's condemnation was clear: the death penalty. The two sect members were lynched by the terrified adherents.

The blood ritual

After these first two murders, as is characteristic of serial murderers, their crimes evolved, becoming more violent. Bored with simple orgies, she began to demand human sacrifice. She devised a "blood ritual": the sacrificed (which was always a dissenting member) was brutally beaten, burned, cut and maimed by all the members of the cult. Thereafter, blood-letting was practiced. The blood was deposited in a cup mixed with chicken blood (the ritual also included animal sacrifices and the use of narcotics such as marijuana and peyote). The victim was made to bleed to death.

Solís drank from the chalice and then handed it to the priests (the Hernandez Brothers and Eleazar Solís), and finally the other members, each who had their turn to drink. The belief was that this gave them supernatural powers.

Some of the beliefs were based on elements from Aztec mythology, "the blood was the only decent food for the gods, through it they preserved their immortality." Solís, supposedly the reincarnation of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue, claimed that she needed to drink blood to stay young forever.

The butchering went on for six continuous weeks in 1963, a period in which four people died in this way. In the last sacrifices they reached the point of dissecting the heart of the victims alive.

Last victims

In May 1963 when a 14-year-old local resident, Sebastian Guerrero, wandered near the caves where the Solis sect was performing their rites. Attracted by the lights and noises coming out of one of the caves, he witnessed one of the rites in progress.

He ran over 25 km, from Yerba Buena to the town of Villa Gran, to the nearest police station. He failed to give any other description of the "group of murderers who prey on ecstasy and who were gluttonously drinking human blood."

The next morning, an officer, investigator Luis Martinez, escorted him home and in the process he was able to show him where he had seen the vampires. That was the last day that Sebastian Guerrero and Luis Martinez were seen alive.

Arrest and sentencing

Police, dismayed by the disappearance of Guerrero and Martinez, now took the case seriously. On May 31, 1963 police, in conjunction with the army, deployed an operation in Yerba Buena. Eleazar and Magdalena Solís were arrested on a farm in the town, in possession of a considerable amount of marijuana. Santos Hernandez was shot by police while resisting arrest. Cayetano Hernandez was assassinated by one of the members of the sect, called Jesus Rubio, who, before the crisis, wanted to be a part of the body of high priests for protection.

In subsequent investigations they found, first, the carved up bodies of Sebastian Guerrero and Luis Martinez, near a farm where the Solís siblings were arrested (they had removed the heart of the latter in the style of Aztec sacrifice). They then found the bodies, also dismembered, of the other six persons in the vicinity of the caves.

Magdalena and Eleazar Solís were sentenced to 50 years in prison for only two homicides (those of Guerrero and Martinez), they were not able to confirm their participation in the other six murders because all the cult members arrested refused to testify.

Many members of the sect were shot in the shootout with the police because, as they were armed, they barricaded themselves in the caves. Those who were arrested were sentenced to 30 years in prison for six counts of murder in the form of "group or gang murder, or lynching." Their illiterate and pauperised condition served as mitigating factors. It was not until years later that some ex-cult members spoke of the cult.