Cult of The Red-Haired Devil

By RICHARD WOODBURY MATAMOROS

On the bleak, brown plains of Mexico's Rio Grande valley, drug smuggling is nearly as common as a coyote's yowl. Thus Mexican police were not all that surprised last week when a search of a cattle ranch 20 miles outside the town of Matamoros turned up 75 lbs. of marijuana. But the investigation took a darker turn when the authorities showed the ranch's caretaker a photo of Mark Kilroy, 21, a University of Texas senior who had vanished a month ago.

Yes, the worker recalled, he had seen Kilroy, and pointed to a rust-colored wooden shed 400 yards away. There, under a gray, misty sky, the police made a ghastly discovery. In and around a corral, they found several makeshift graves; the overpowering stench of decaying flesh led to digging that eventually uncovered the corpses of 13 males, one as young as 14. Several of the victims had been slashed with knives, others bludgeoned on the head. One had been hanged, another apparently set afire and at least two pumped with bullets. Some had been tortured with razor blades or had their hearts ripped out. Nearly all had been severely mutilated: ears, nipples and testicles removed, the eyes gouged from one victim, the head missing from another.

When officers entered the darkness of the 15-by-25-ft. shack, they found a squat iron kettle whose contents suggested that more than just a band of ruthless killers had been at work. Inside the pot, resting in dried blood, were a charred human brain and a roasted turtle. Other containers held a witch's brew of human hair, a goat's head and chicken parts. After arresting and questioning four suspects, the Mexican police pieced together a horrific tale of a voodoo-practicing cult of drug smugglers who believed that orgies of human sacrifice would win satanic protection for its 2,000-lb.-a-week marijuana-running operation to the U.S. "They felt that all the killing would draw a protective shield around them," observed Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox. "It was religious craziness."

All but two of the victims were apparently plucked at random from the countryside surrounding Matamoros. They included Kilroy, a premed major who vanished March 14 after a night of spring-break revelry in the town's cantinas. At 2 a.m. he was lured toward a pickup truck by a thin, scar-faced man who offered a ride. Two toughs threw him into the back and sped off. Five blocks away, Kilroy attempted to escape, but was recaptured and driven to the ranch. There he was gagged and blindfolded with heavy gray tape and tossed into the darkened shed.

Kilroy's captors brought bread and water, assuring him there was no danger. But twelve hours later he was abruptly led outside and executed with a machete slash to the back of his neck. The man who wielded the weapon, according to Mexican police, was the cult's ringleader, Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, 26, a lanky, red-haired Cuban American who grew up in Miami. Constanzo, still being sought at week's end, inspired such fervent loyalty among his followers that he was known as El Padrino, the Godfather.

According to officials, Constanzo commissioned Kilroy's abduction by ordering his followers to "go out and bring in an Anglo male." Constanzo, who as a youth in South Florida reportedly practiced Santeria, the Caribbean voodoo, led the crazed rituals that accompanied the bloodletting. In the killing field, police found dozens of long candles as well as garlic, peppers and scores of half-burned cigars -- the accoutrements of an African offshoot of Santeria known as Palo Mayombe.

To ingratiate themselves with the devil, the killers boiled the brains and hearts of their victims, mixing the concoction with leg and arm bones and animal heads. So vicious were the devil worshipers that it took two pathologists laboring at a Matamoros mortuary almost four days to complete the autopsies. Several victims remained unidentified, but at least one other young male may have been an American kidnaped from neighboring Brownsville, Texas. Besides Constanzo, authorities sought three other suspects, including the Godfather's companion, Sara Maria Aldrete, 24, a Mexican honor student at Texas Southmost College in Brownsville. Searching Aldrete's home in Matamoros, police found a blood-spattered altar and candles.

Paraded before reporters in Matamoros, the four already under arrest acknowledged the grisly deeds but showed little remorse. The shirt of one suspect was pulled back to show a series of scars in the form of inverted crosses, an apparent sign that he was selected to kill. Later, police dispensed their own summary justice. Hauling one of the dopers back to the grave site, they forced him to dig in the blazing sun until he uncovered the 13th body.

Texas officials credited the discovery of El Padrino's cult in part to Mexico City's drug crackdown along the border, but that was small comfort to the families of Mark Kilroy and the other dead. As relatives of more than 100 missing people crowded Matamoros' funeral homes to learn if their loved ones were among the victims, whispers of other demonic bands and hideous deeds swept the Rio Grande valley. As preposterous as the rumors were, they would have sounded far more bizarre a week ago, before the tale of El Padrino and his followers became known.