Deadly Cults (2019–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Palo Mayombe - full transcript
Police are searching a ranch
for more clues in the death
of a 21-year-old
University of Texas student.
There's no words to describe
what we were finding,
what we were seeing.
This is Palo Mayombe,
a Afro-Cuban religious practice.
They were really looking
for help.
This is a religious sacrifice.
This was a cult,
there's no question about it.
Sara and Constanzo,
they were the leaders.
And they were able
to convince them
to do anything.
If anybody
did not believe in the Devil,
this is it, it's right here.
I remember being in my office
and a secretary came in
and told me
there was a couple of kids
that wanted to talk
to somebody
about one of their friends.
Billy, Brad and Brent--
they had gone over to Mexico
for spring break.
They say, "Look,
"our buddy Mark
didn't come back.
"We all came across
"the border
and he was behind us.
"He was gonna use the bathroom,
"so we got to the American
side, to Brownsville.
And we waited and waited,
and he just never came across."
That was peak week
for spring break,
so Mark and his friends,
they were ready to come
down here and just enjoy it
like the other 50,000 kids.
When you cross that border
in Mexico, you're free.
You drop the guard and you just
do whatever you want to do.
You didn't have to be
21 years old.
We would have kids there
that were 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20.
But, at the end of the day,
they would all make it back
to the U.S.
Except for Mark Kilroy.
I said, you know,
"Maybe he took off
with a girl, or...
What's the problem?" He says,
"Well, he's not that type
of a guy. He would just not
blow everybody off."
So, you know, I started
taking him seriously,
to say, "Okay,
well, let me see what I can do."
Mark was a junior in college
and lived in the Austin area.
I know he was thinking
about being a doctor.
And I remember,
he was very determined.
You know, Mark was not like
everyone else because he was
quiet, humble. I remember,
he would carry his Bible around
all the time.
And the words of God were
very important to him
because God and Jesus were
the center of his life.
Mark had wonderful parents;
he had a great, close family
back in Santa Fe, Texas.
They were just a humble,
nice family.
I got a call from Mr. Kilroy,
Mark's father.
He said he was gonna come down.
I said, "That's fine."
The next day,
he came to my office.
After him telling me, you know,
the same story
as the boys told me,
that, you know, Mark was going
to medical school,
you know, wasn't a big partier,
they didn't do drugs,
that's when we started thinking,
"Well, you know,
maybe something
happened to him."
By this time,
I think it'd been, like,
72 hours
that Mark Kilroy
had been missing.
It just made it
more realistic that, you know,
something might have happened
to him in Matamoros.
Mr. Kilroy was very determined.
He was gonna do
whatever he had to do
to find out
what happened to Mark.
There was a sense of urgency
because it was spring break.
People are just coming
and going,
they're only there for a week.
So, if we had any witnesses,
we need to move quick
because all these kids
were gonna come back.
All of us had been
watching this on the news.
And my dad saw Mr. Kilroy
at church,
and he approached him
and said, "You know,
"we've been watching your story,
and, you know,
I just want you to know
that we're praying for you."
And Dad wanted Mr. Kilroy
to know that, you know,
while he was here looking
for his son,
that he was gonna
have a family here.
Because everybody
was feeling for them.
The Kilroys stayed with us
for about three weeks.
And I remember the house became
kind of like a war room.
In the mornings,
everybody was there.
And there was gonna be
a plan for the day.
What areas in Matamoros
they were going to hit
to talk to people
to find out if they'd seen Mark
or heard about the situation.
But, um, nobody was
saying anything.
I got together
with some of my deputies
looking in Matamoros.
The jails, the hospitals.
You know, we went and talked
to the state police over there,
the local police.
It's been two weeks.
We weren't getting
any leads back at all.
Okay, you have a kidnapping.
No ransom call,
no signs of foul play,
except that he
did not come home.
There's just so much you can do
in an investigation,
and-and we were, we were there.
Mark's father,
he would tell me, "There's hope
that somebody has him,
because we haven't found him."
I said,
"I hope that we find him."
Comandante Juan Benitez Ayala
worked for the narcotic
division for Mexico.
One day, in Mexico,
outside of Matamoros,
the comandante had set up
some roadblocks
and they were checking people
coming through.
They were looking
for narcotics.
And one of the guys
broke through the roadblock,
he didn't stop.
They followed him
and he went into a ranch.
It was a ranch
of the Hernandez family.
They found, like, 200 pounds
of marijuana there.
So they arrested four
or five guys.
And Serafín Hernández.
And they put them all in jail.
At the same time,
they had also picked up
the caretaker of the ranch.
He lived out there
and took care of the goats,
and that was about it.
They brought him in
because he, you know,
he might know something.
The comandante had pictures
of Mark
around the office there.
The caretaker says,
"I know that boy."
What do you mean,
"You know that boy"?
He says, "Yeah.
I was giving him water
"and bread because
they had him tied up
in the back of a Suburban
there at the ranch."
Who had him tied up?
It's about 2:00 in the morning.
I get a call
from the comandante.
"We found Mark Kilroy."
So, we get
all our people
and we go to Mexico.
We start looking around.
Canvassing the whole area.
And one of the things we saw
was the shack.
And, you know,
it smelled real bad
and it had this big old
metal thing in the middle.
I remember it
having some sticks
and then you could see some...
some bones sticking out.
It was just full.
You could real--
you couldn't really tell
what was in it, because it was,
it was like a... a soup.
Federal police, they didn't
want to go in the shack.
They didn't want
to mess with it.
They didn't want to have
anything to do with it.
The comandante told us,
"Hey, something to do
withbrujería, which means
witchcraft.
But we still didn't know
where Mark was.
We knew they had gotten Mark.
But there's no signs of him.
I said, "Well, where did he go?"
At that time,
we really didn't know
if he was just kidnapped,
because I don't have a body,
I don't even know if he's dead.
And I walked over cautiously,
toward the open door,
and the hair on the back
of my neck stood up.
So, we get all our people
and we go to Mexico.
We start looking around
and we saw...
the shack.
Federal police didn't want to
mess with it. They didn't want
to have anything to do with it.
We still didn't know
where Mark was.
"Where did he go?"
I'm an anthropologist.
I'm a professor emeritus
and I studied the border,
including
folk religion,
fold medicine, cults.
And I consider myself an expert
onbrujería, which is Spanish
for witchcraft.
George Gavito called
and asked me,
"Can you come meet me
in Mexico?"
As I got to the ranch,
I could look over and see
a shack.
And I could not help but notice
there was an
overpowering stench...
...smell of death,
in that place
and around that place.
And I walked over cautiously--
I didn't approach quickly--
toward the open door
and the cauldron,
and I had this overwhelming
sense of fear.
And the hair on the back of my
neck stood up, and on my arms,
and I thought to myself,
"If anybody did not
believe in the Devil
or evil, this is it,
it's right here."
And I said,
"This is Palo Mayombe."
This is a Afro-Cuban
religious practice
of animals being sacrificed.
At that time, we were still
looking for Mark.
We really didn't know
if he was alive
because I don't have a body,
I don't even know if he's dead.
The central piece
of the Palo Mayombe religion
is a device called annganga.
Nganga, which is a cauldron,
a cast iron cauldron.
And they believe
that it comes alive.
It's supplied
with sacrificial animals
and blood and the palos,
the sticks to capture
a spirit or spirits.
They will send the spirit
to do whatever they need done.
It might be to make
their business successful
or to bring a lover
or to hurt somebody.
The comandante
had one of the guys that had
run the roadblock.
His name was Serafín Hernández.
Serafín Hernández
was 20 years old.
He went to school here
in-- at TSC.
He lived in Brownsville.
He spoke perfect English.
He was just a normal kid,
but he was also part
of the Hernández
narcotics organization
to bring more cocaine
or more grass into Brownsville.
We knew they had gotten Mark.
At that time,
we really didn't know why,
and it was just Serafín was
the only one that was talking.
And he-he said, "Yeah,
he's buried out there."
The guy just talked like
nobody was gonna arrest him
or harm him.
And the comandante,
"Where is he buried?"
They get Serafín
and he starts digging.
And I said, "That's Mark."
Now we're working a homicide.
But his brain was-was missing.
As we're digging, Serafín,
he was talking to us.
He said, "I don't know why
they're making such a big deal
"of this one here, you know.
"There's another guy
buried over there
and another guy buried..."
What do you mean?
"Yeah, we have other people
buried out here."
Wow.
The bodies of the 12 men
are being held
at this morgue during
the identification process.
There's still a chance
that other victims
of the bizarre cult could be
found at this ranch in Mexico.
We brought Serafín Hernández
to the station
and took a video statement
from him.
Adolfo Constanzo
was born in Miami.
Lived there with his mother.
She was a practitioner of the
Palo Mayombe religion.
At that time,
which was the late-'80s,
more people in
the supernatural underworld
were discovering Palo Mayombe
and based on-on demand,
he moved from South Florida,
Miami, to Mexico City.
He'd set his shop up using
his ability with the spirits
for a way up, more opportunity,
more money.
Provide those
religious services.
Thenganga is the central piece
of the Palo Mayombe religion
and of the palo mayombero.
And as part of his
ritual and prayer,
Constanzo would sacrifice
animals in order to bring
his ngangato life.
Adolfo Constanzo would go
into a trance, we know that.
He would channel a spirit
because they described
that he would
speak in an unfamiliar
language,
and his continence would change.
He acted wildly
and moved wildly.
When he was channeling
the spirit, Constanzo was not
in his right mind.
It was now the spirit that was
demanding the sacrifice.
Palo Mayombe was new,
it was exciting,
it appeared to work,
and overnight it was in demand
by all kinds of people,
famous people.
Through his cleansing,
he met different people
in the narcotic business.
Adolfo Constanzo
was looking for that huge
opportunity for money.
He was developing knowledge
about trafficking of drugs.
His move to the border
in Brownsville Matamoros
was opportunistic.
Adolfo met Serafín
and the Hernández
narcotics organization.
Adolfo started talking to him
about, you know, his religion
and that this could
help their business
and told them how
it could help their business
and told them how
they could keep the police
away from them and how they
could make more money.
Because at that time,
they were hurting,
they were running out of money,
and Mexico is very
superstitious, so they wanted
to believe what this guy
was saying.
Constanzo became their leader
because he was charismatic,
he had gold chains,
he had a pocket full of money,
he talked the talk
and he walked the walk.
And what he said
he was gonna do
to protect
the drug shipments worked.
Serafín was totally convinced
this ngangawas protecting him.
He said he believed that
he couldn't be seen,
that he was invisible,
he was told he was invisible.
And once they were involved
with the cult,
these guys started seeing
that they were
bringing loads in
without any problems.
They were making money.
So why not believe
what this guy was saying.
So they became believers,
complete believers,
without constraint
or hesitation.
There was a continuous
escalation of sacrifices:
a goat is better
than a chicken,
and a cow is better
than a goat,
and a human being is better yet.
Adolfo needed a woman
to attract males
into a situation where
they could be abducted.
She was doing good in school,
she was a real nice girl,
but as soon as she
crossed the border,
she became the witch.
The ngangawanted a
spring breaker-- un americano.
And Constanzo tells his people,
"Okay, go bring me one."
We know they became
believers, complete believers,
without constraint
or hesitation because
there was a continuous
escalation of sacrifices.
In other news, police are
searching a Mexican ranch
along the U.S.- Mexico border
this morning
for more clues in the death
of a 21-year-old
University of Texas student
who disappeared in Mexico
during spring break.
Of all the murders that
I've investigated in 44 years,
nothing can compare to
the Mark Kilroy investigation.
There's no words to describe
what we were finding,
what we were hearing,
what we were seeing.
Taking out human bodies,
human bodies without brains,
human bodies, you know,
without, muscles.
Earlier, one of
the accused killers,
digging under the supervision
of Mexican police,
uncovered the remains of
a 13th victim of the cult.
At the end of the day,
we wind up with
15 people that had been
either sacrificed or killed.
Adolfo Constanzo needed a woman
as an accomplice
to attract males
into a situation
where they could be abducted.
That spring of '89,
I was teaching
a large Introduction
to Sociology class,
and one of those students
was Sara Aldrete.
She was a very ambitious
young woman.
Very gregarious, smart.
That's Aldrete.
She was, very friendly.
She was tall,
and she liked sports.
Had beautiful eyes.
It was just beautiful eyes.
And even in a crowd,
she would just stand out.
In the United States,
she was doing good in school,
she was involved in sports.
A real nice girl
and the whole thing.
But as soon as she crossed
the border into Mexico,
she became the witch.
She was involved with narcotics,
and practicing black magic.
Witchcraft.
I think that Sara was
looking to be some kind of
a- a priest or something.
I had never seen anybody
that had a double life
like Sara.
It was a complete
different life.
This is when Sara met
Adolfo Constanzo.
One day, downtown Matamoros,
Sara was walking
down the street.
They ran into each other,
and they started talking.
They talked about Palo Mayombe,
and how he could cleanse people
in Mexico City and stuff.
So she really got excited
about what he did,
how he cleansed people.
So, of course,
she fell in love with the guy.
She became the witch
to feed their nganga.
Constanzo wanted to give
thenganga strength,
so he said to Sara,
"Go look for a guy that's
muscular and strong."
And sure enough, they got this
guy that was a bodybuilder,
and they killed him,
and they got his muscles,
and they put it in the nganga.
There was this guy
that lived in Brownsville,
and Sara invited him over
to the house.
And when he got there,
Serafín got him
and kidnapped him.
And they took him to the ranch,
and they killed him.
They got his heart,
and they put it in thenganga.
That's how Sara
and Adolfo operated.
They'd been sacrificing people
from around the area
that were disappearing,
some of whom were related
to the gang members.
But thenganga wanted
someone different.
Constanzo believed
it was thenganga
that was demanding
to bring him
a spring breaker.
He wants...
And Constanzo tells his people,
"Okay, go bring me one."
They'd been sacrificing people
from around the area,
that were disappearing.
But the ngangawanted
someone different.
In Mexico, members of a cult
believed responsible
for at least 15 murders
are in custody.
One of the victims was
college student Mark Kilroy.
The cult practiced
human sacrifice,
claiming that that would ensure
the success
of its drug trafficking
operations.
We took a confession
from Serafín
a couple of days after
we found Mark's body.
He sat there and just told
the story of what had happened,
and how they were out hunting.
And they were hunting,
basically,
for a brain.
The same weekend
that Mark Kilroy disappeared,
it was spring break.
And Sara Aldrete said, "Hey,
I have a party in Matamoros.
And tell you what..."
And I said, "No, I don't--
"I don't like to go
on spring break, not at all.
"Plus, I don't drink a lot,
so you know what?
Maybe next time."
She said, "Man,
you're missing something."
You know,
"You're missing it."
"Aw, maybe next time."
But we just left it at that.
And she left.
We said, "...
it could have been me...
sacrificed."
Sara lost that one.
So Serafín Hernández
went out there.
They yelled, "Freeze!"
And they told him, "You're
drunk. You're under arrest."
Mark, you know, great
bringing up from his parents,
when somebody says "freeze,"
and it's police, you stop.
So they got him,
they handcuffed him,
and they threw him in the car.
In the morning,
they parked at the ranch,
with Mark handcuffed
in the back,
and just left him there.
And the reason
they parked there is because
Adolfo Constanzo's
not in town.
And, of course,
Adolfo's got to be here
when they do
the-the worshipping.
In the morning,
the caretaker notices
there's this kid that's
in there.
He takes the tape off
his mouth, and he gives him
some bread and some eggs
and some water.
And, of course, Mark,
he's talking in English,
and the caretaker did not know
a word of English.
He basically
puts the tape back on and,
you know,
and just leaves him there.
Later that day,
Sara and Constanzo
came to the ranch,
because he knew that they have
the boy that he wanted
that went to medical school
and the whole thing.
They got Mark
and he's still alive.
They bring him inside the shed
to do the worship.
And then Constanzo...
he got a machete.
Sara was never let inside
to do the worship.
Constanzo felt
that it was bad vibes
to have a woman inside.
And two, he made everybody
take off their clothes.
At some point,
they got Mark
over to the altar.
And that's when Adolfo hit him
over the head with a machete.
But they were having trouble.
Because the machete
was not very sharp.
So Elio got the machete and
did it and got the brain out.
They put the brain
in the nganga.
You know, Mark was just like
every other
boy from Brownsville
or from Matamoros.
He was somebody's son
and he was somebody's brother
and somebody's student.
It just opened my eyes a bit.
You know, um,
it was completely disturbing
about what happened to him.
And at that time, we didn't
know who had taken him.
It was just devastating.
Today, a search is underway
for the cult leader
who's wanted
in the killings of a dozen
people in Matamoros, Mexico.
Police say the man
who's known as The Godfather
and Sara Aldrete, the so-called
witch of the group,
may have fled here
to the United States.
We had four cult members
locked up in Matamoros, but
the other ones were missing.
We didn't know where
Constanzo and Sara
and the rest of the group was.
The comandante called us
to tell us that Constanzo
and them were at
the Holiday Inn in Brownsville.
So we went over there looking.
By then,
they already had gone.
The search goes on for
the ringleader
of a drug smuggling ring
connected with
the ritual killing
of at least 12 men,
whose bodies were found
in a mass grave.
Of course,
the news broke that day
about Sara staying here
in Brownsville
and what she was doing.
But she wasn't there anymore.
Sara Aldrete...
she was just, you know,
a few years older than us.
And my brother's friend
would say,
"Yeah, I've had
a class with her."
And to know that she had
any involvement with this
was just completely disturbing.
It was a scary time
in Brownsville.
I mean, it was a scary time
anywhere.
Trying to figure out
where Constanzo
and Sara and the rest
of the group was.
Everybody was going crazy.
And people were picking up
their kids
and taking them out of school
because they said
that they were kidnapping kids.
People were scared.
I mean, you'd think
something like that would happen
in Cuba or Puerto Rico
or New York City.
But for it to happen
in my backyard,
I couldn't believe it.
That we could have a monster
that close to us.
At some point,
law enforcement in Mexico
found Constanzo's passport.
In the '80s, if a person
wanted to disappear,
you could disappear
and nobody would ever find you.
And Sara and Adolfo,
they disappeared...
from the face of the earth.
I mean, that was it.
Poof. Gone.
An international manhunt
is still underway
this morning for the ringleader
and another member
of a voodoo cult,
thought to have carried out
those killings.
Last night,
about 1,200 people
attended a memorial service
for one of the victims,
American Mark Kilroy.
And now, really, we're at peace.
Knowing that Mark is safe
and with our Lord.
And now it's just a matter of,
of all of us, um...
we're gonna miss him a lot.
As Serafín was trying
to tell us more,
he told us the alias
Constanzo was using.
And that's how we found out
that Constanzo and Sara
went to the airport here
in McAllen and they flew
to Mexico City.
The Mexican police
went looking for them.
But they couldn't find them,
so they put out
fliers everywhere.
All over Mexico City.
But...
they weren't getting
any leads back at all.
A month later,
the comandante called me,
he says,
"Hey, can you come to Mexico
in the morning?
"Because the witch doctor
told us
"the way we find Constanzo
"is kill his nganga.
"And maybe he'll react to it.
And maybe we can find him."
I said, "Well, let's try it."
And thisbrujo
was going around.
He poured gasoline
all over the place
and he got
a picture of Constanzo
and he went, he put it
in the nganga.
So, what Constanzo
had been doing
to protect him from the police,
thebrujo was doing to reverse
Constanzo's whole thing.
And the intention was
to remove his spells.
We also brought
a Mexican TV station.
He says,
"Shoot the whole thing."
And they're gonna share it
to everybody.
Of course, the whole thing
was burning
and thenganga was burning
and they kicked it over and...
took all the stuff out of it.
Constanzo was seeing this
in Mexico City on TV.
And he went berserk.
He went crazy.
He put a whole bunch
of money on the stove
and he turned it on to burn it.
He began saying,
"That's it, we're done.
My power's gone."
So he was no longer
invisible and invulnerable.
At some point, Sara had gone
to get stuff
at a grocery store.
And she was walking back
when somebody saw her.
And, of course,
they told the police.
They were starting
to surround the place.
And Constanzo had gotten
a machine gun, he was shooting
at the police.
The police in Mexico City,
they just wanted this to end.
So I think the order was...
to kill the guy.
And that's what they did.
When they went into
the apartment,
they found some money there
and some gold.
And they found Sara hidden
in the next room.
In Mexico, surviving members
of a cult
believed responsible
for at least 15 murders
are in custody this morning.
One of the victims was Texas
college student Mark Kilroy.
Sara Aldrete, the so-called
witch of the group
was captured alive.
I feel sorry.
I feel sorry because
when-when-when he disappeared,
I was, I was trying to help.
When I talked to Sara
in Mexico City,
she said,
"I handed out fliers, too.
I was helping."
You know, the same people
that kidnapped him
were giving out fliers.
Having to sit down
and tell Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy
that Mark was dead...
that-that was the hardest part
of this whole case.
Mrs. Kilroy wanted to know,
when I told her
that her son was dead,
"Did he have a chance to pray?"
And I said yes, he was in
the back of the Suburban
for... so many hours.
And she says, "Then he had
a chance to pray."
And she was happy.
They honestly really,
really felt like
everything happened...
for a reason.
That this really was,
genuinely, God's plan.
This happened to Mark because,
without them finding Mark,
who knows how long
it would have taken
to find all the other bodies.
Mark was the instrument
to show the evil
of what this cult can do.
for more clues in the death
of a 21-year-old
University of Texas student.
There's no words to describe
what we were finding,
what we were seeing.
This is Palo Mayombe,
a Afro-Cuban religious practice.
They were really looking
for help.
This is a religious sacrifice.
This was a cult,
there's no question about it.
Sara and Constanzo,
they were the leaders.
And they were able
to convince them
to do anything.
If anybody
did not believe in the Devil,
this is it, it's right here.
I remember being in my office
and a secretary came in
and told me
there was a couple of kids
that wanted to talk
to somebody
about one of their friends.
Billy, Brad and Brent--
they had gone over to Mexico
for spring break.
They say, "Look,
"our buddy Mark
didn't come back.
"We all came across
"the border
and he was behind us.
"He was gonna use the bathroom,
"so we got to the American
side, to Brownsville.
And we waited and waited,
and he just never came across."
That was peak week
for spring break,
so Mark and his friends,
they were ready to come
down here and just enjoy it
like the other 50,000 kids.
When you cross that border
in Mexico, you're free.
You drop the guard and you just
do whatever you want to do.
You didn't have to be
21 years old.
We would have kids there
that were 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20.
But, at the end of the day,
they would all make it back
to the U.S.
Except for Mark Kilroy.
I said, you know,
"Maybe he took off
with a girl, or...
What's the problem?" He says,
"Well, he's not that type
of a guy. He would just not
blow everybody off."
So, you know, I started
taking him seriously,
to say, "Okay,
well, let me see what I can do."
Mark was a junior in college
and lived in the Austin area.
I know he was thinking
about being a doctor.
And I remember,
he was very determined.
You know, Mark was not like
everyone else because he was
quiet, humble. I remember,
he would carry his Bible around
all the time.
And the words of God were
very important to him
because God and Jesus were
the center of his life.
Mark had wonderful parents;
he had a great, close family
back in Santa Fe, Texas.
They were just a humble,
nice family.
I got a call from Mr. Kilroy,
Mark's father.
He said he was gonna come down.
I said, "That's fine."
The next day,
he came to my office.
After him telling me, you know,
the same story
as the boys told me,
that, you know, Mark was going
to medical school,
you know, wasn't a big partier,
they didn't do drugs,
that's when we started thinking,
"Well, you know,
maybe something
happened to him."
By this time,
I think it'd been, like,
72 hours
that Mark Kilroy
had been missing.
It just made it
more realistic that, you know,
something might have happened
to him in Matamoros.
Mr. Kilroy was very determined.
He was gonna do
whatever he had to do
to find out
what happened to Mark.
There was a sense of urgency
because it was spring break.
People are just coming
and going,
they're only there for a week.
So, if we had any witnesses,
we need to move quick
because all these kids
were gonna come back.
All of us had been
watching this on the news.
And my dad saw Mr. Kilroy
at church,
and he approached him
and said, "You know,
"we've been watching your story,
and, you know,
I just want you to know
that we're praying for you."
And Dad wanted Mr. Kilroy
to know that, you know,
while he was here looking
for his son,
that he was gonna
have a family here.
Because everybody
was feeling for them.
The Kilroys stayed with us
for about three weeks.
And I remember the house became
kind of like a war room.
In the mornings,
everybody was there.
And there was gonna be
a plan for the day.
What areas in Matamoros
they were going to hit
to talk to people
to find out if they'd seen Mark
or heard about the situation.
But, um, nobody was
saying anything.
I got together
with some of my deputies
looking in Matamoros.
The jails, the hospitals.
You know, we went and talked
to the state police over there,
the local police.
It's been two weeks.
We weren't getting
any leads back at all.
Okay, you have a kidnapping.
No ransom call,
no signs of foul play,
except that he
did not come home.
There's just so much you can do
in an investigation,
and-and we were, we were there.
Mark's father,
he would tell me, "There's hope
that somebody has him,
because we haven't found him."
I said,
"I hope that we find him."
Comandante Juan Benitez Ayala
worked for the narcotic
division for Mexico.
One day, in Mexico,
outside of Matamoros,
the comandante had set up
some roadblocks
and they were checking people
coming through.
They were looking
for narcotics.
And one of the guys
broke through the roadblock,
he didn't stop.
They followed him
and he went into a ranch.
It was a ranch
of the Hernandez family.
They found, like, 200 pounds
of marijuana there.
So they arrested four
or five guys.
And Serafín Hernández.
And they put them all in jail.
At the same time,
they had also picked up
the caretaker of the ranch.
He lived out there
and took care of the goats,
and that was about it.
They brought him in
because he, you know,
he might know something.
The comandante had pictures
of Mark
around the office there.
The caretaker says,
"I know that boy."
What do you mean,
"You know that boy"?
He says, "Yeah.
I was giving him water
"and bread because
they had him tied up
in the back of a Suburban
there at the ranch."
Who had him tied up?
It's about 2:00 in the morning.
I get a call
from the comandante.
"We found Mark Kilroy."
So, we get
all our people
and we go to Mexico.
We start looking around.
Canvassing the whole area.
And one of the things we saw
was the shack.
And, you know,
it smelled real bad
and it had this big old
metal thing in the middle.
I remember it
having some sticks
and then you could see some...
some bones sticking out.
It was just full.
You could real--
you couldn't really tell
what was in it, because it was,
it was like a... a soup.
Federal police, they didn't
want to go in the shack.
They didn't want
to mess with it.
They didn't want to have
anything to do with it.
The comandante told us,
"Hey, something to do
withbrujería, which means
witchcraft.
But we still didn't know
where Mark was.
We knew they had gotten Mark.
But there's no signs of him.
I said, "Well, where did he go?"
At that time,
we really didn't know
if he was just kidnapped,
because I don't have a body,
I don't even know if he's dead.
And I walked over cautiously,
toward the open door,
and the hair on the back
of my neck stood up.
So, we get all our people
and we go to Mexico.
We start looking around
and we saw...
the shack.
Federal police didn't want to
mess with it. They didn't want
to have anything to do with it.
We still didn't know
where Mark was.
"Where did he go?"
I'm an anthropologist.
I'm a professor emeritus
and I studied the border,
including
folk religion,
fold medicine, cults.
And I consider myself an expert
onbrujería, which is Spanish
for witchcraft.
George Gavito called
and asked me,
"Can you come meet me
in Mexico?"
As I got to the ranch,
I could look over and see
a shack.
And I could not help but notice
there was an
overpowering stench...
...smell of death,
in that place
and around that place.
And I walked over cautiously--
I didn't approach quickly--
toward the open door
and the cauldron,
and I had this overwhelming
sense of fear.
And the hair on the back of my
neck stood up, and on my arms,
and I thought to myself,
"If anybody did not
believe in the Devil
or evil, this is it,
it's right here."
And I said,
"This is Palo Mayombe."
This is a Afro-Cuban
religious practice
of animals being sacrificed.
At that time, we were still
looking for Mark.
We really didn't know
if he was alive
because I don't have a body,
I don't even know if he's dead.
The central piece
of the Palo Mayombe religion
is a device called annganga.
Nganga, which is a cauldron,
a cast iron cauldron.
And they believe
that it comes alive.
It's supplied
with sacrificial animals
and blood and the palos,
the sticks to capture
a spirit or spirits.
They will send the spirit
to do whatever they need done.
It might be to make
their business successful
or to bring a lover
or to hurt somebody.
The comandante
had one of the guys that had
run the roadblock.
His name was Serafín Hernández.
Serafín Hernández
was 20 years old.
He went to school here
in-- at TSC.
He lived in Brownsville.
He spoke perfect English.
He was just a normal kid,
but he was also part
of the Hernández
narcotics organization
to bring more cocaine
or more grass into Brownsville.
We knew they had gotten Mark.
At that time,
we really didn't know why,
and it was just Serafín was
the only one that was talking.
And he-he said, "Yeah,
he's buried out there."
The guy just talked like
nobody was gonna arrest him
or harm him.
And the comandante,
"Where is he buried?"
They get Serafín
and he starts digging.
And I said, "That's Mark."
Now we're working a homicide.
But his brain was-was missing.
As we're digging, Serafín,
he was talking to us.
He said, "I don't know why
they're making such a big deal
"of this one here, you know.
"There's another guy
buried over there
and another guy buried..."
What do you mean?
"Yeah, we have other people
buried out here."
Wow.
The bodies of the 12 men
are being held
at this morgue during
the identification process.
There's still a chance
that other victims
of the bizarre cult could be
found at this ranch in Mexico.
We brought Serafín Hernández
to the station
and took a video statement
from him.
Adolfo Constanzo
was born in Miami.
Lived there with his mother.
She was a practitioner of the
Palo Mayombe religion.
At that time,
which was the late-'80s,
more people in
the supernatural underworld
were discovering Palo Mayombe
and based on-on demand,
he moved from South Florida,
Miami, to Mexico City.
He'd set his shop up using
his ability with the spirits
for a way up, more opportunity,
more money.
Provide those
religious services.
Thenganga is the central piece
of the Palo Mayombe religion
and of the palo mayombero.
And as part of his
ritual and prayer,
Constanzo would sacrifice
animals in order to bring
his ngangato life.
Adolfo Constanzo would go
into a trance, we know that.
He would channel a spirit
because they described
that he would
speak in an unfamiliar
language,
and his continence would change.
He acted wildly
and moved wildly.
When he was channeling
the spirit, Constanzo was not
in his right mind.
It was now the spirit that was
demanding the sacrifice.
Palo Mayombe was new,
it was exciting,
it appeared to work,
and overnight it was in demand
by all kinds of people,
famous people.
Through his cleansing,
he met different people
in the narcotic business.
Adolfo Constanzo
was looking for that huge
opportunity for money.
He was developing knowledge
about trafficking of drugs.
His move to the border
in Brownsville Matamoros
was opportunistic.
Adolfo met Serafín
and the Hernández
narcotics organization.
Adolfo started talking to him
about, you know, his religion
and that this could
help their business
and told them how
it could help their business
and told them how
they could keep the police
away from them and how they
could make more money.
Because at that time,
they were hurting,
they were running out of money,
and Mexico is very
superstitious, so they wanted
to believe what this guy
was saying.
Constanzo became their leader
because he was charismatic,
he had gold chains,
he had a pocket full of money,
he talked the talk
and he walked the walk.
And what he said
he was gonna do
to protect
the drug shipments worked.
Serafín was totally convinced
this ngangawas protecting him.
He said he believed that
he couldn't be seen,
that he was invisible,
he was told he was invisible.
And once they were involved
with the cult,
these guys started seeing
that they were
bringing loads in
without any problems.
They were making money.
So why not believe
what this guy was saying.
So they became believers,
complete believers,
without constraint
or hesitation.
There was a continuous
escalation of sacrifices:
a goat is better
than a chicken,
and a cow is better
than a goat,
and a human being is better yet.
Adolfo needed a woman
to attract males
into a situation where
they could be abducted.
She was doing good in school,
she was a real nice girl,
but as soon as she
crossed the border,
she became the witch.
The ngangawanted a
spring breaker-- un americano.
And Constanzo tells his people,
"Okay, go bring me one."
We know they became
believers, complete believers,
without constraint
or hesitation because
there was a continuous
escalation of sacrifices.
In other news, police are
searching a Mexican ranch
along the U.S.- Mexico border
this morning
for more clues in the death
of a 21-year-old
University of Texas student
who disappeared in Mexico
during spring break.
Of all the murders that
I've investigated in 44 years,
nothing can compare to
the Mark Kilroy investigation.
There's no words to describe
what we were finding,
what we were hearing,
what we were seeing.
Taking out human bodies,
human bodies without brains,
human bodies, you know,
without, muscles.
Earlier, one of
the accused killers,
digging under the supervision
of Mexican police,
uncovered the remains of
a 13th victim of the cult.
At the end of the day,
we wind up with
15 people that had been
either sacrificed or killed.
Adolfo Constanzo needed a woman
as an accomplice
to attract males
into a situation
where they could be abducted.
That spring of '89,
I was teaching
a large Introduction
to Sociology class,
and one of those students
was Sara Aldrete.
She was a very ambitious
young woman.
Very gregarious, smart.
That's Aldrete.
She was, very friendly.
She was tall,
and she liked sports.
Had beautiful eyes.
It was just beautiful eyes.
And even in a crowd,
she would just stand out.
In the United States,
she was doing good in school,
she was involved in sports.
A real nice girl
and the whole thing.
But as soon as she crossed
the border into Mexico,
she became the witch.
She was involved with narcotics,
and practicing black magic.
Witchcraft.
I think that Sara was
looking to be some kind of
a- a priest or something.
I had never seen anybody
that had a double life
like Sara.
It was a complete
different life.
This is when Sara met
Adolfo Constanzo.
One day, downtown Matamoros,
Sara was walking
down the street.
They ran into each other,
and they started talking.
They talked about Palo Mayombe,
and how he could cleanse people
in Mexico City and stuff.
So she really got excited
about what he did,
how he cleansed people.
So, of course,
she fell in love with the guy.
She became the witch
to feed their nganga.
Constanzo wanted to give
thenganga strength,
so he said to Sara,
"Go look for a guy that's
muscular and strong."
And sure enough, they got this
guy that was a bodybuilder,
and they killed him,
and they got his muscles,
and they put it in the nganga.
There was this guy
that lived in Brownsville,
and Sara invited him over
to the house.
And when he got there,
Serafín got him
and kidnapped him.
And they took him to the ranch,
and they killed him.
They got his heart,
and they put it in thenganga.
That's how Sara
and Adolfo operated.
They'd been sacrificing people
from around the area
that were disappearing,
some of whom were related
to the gang members.
But thenganga wanted
someone different.
Constanzo believed
it was thenganga
that was demanding
to bring him
a spring breaker.
He wants...
And Constanzo tells his people,
"Okay, go bring me one."
They'd been sacrificing people
from around the area,
that were disappearing.
But the ngangawanted
someone different.
In Mexico, members of a cult
believed responsible
for at least 15 murders
are in custody.
One of the victims was
college student Mark Kilroy.
The cult practiced
human sacrifice,
claiming that that would ensure
the success
of its drug trafficking
operations.
We took a confession
from Serafín
a couple of days after
we found Mark's body.
He sat there and just told
the story of what had happened,
and how they were out hunting.
And they were hunting,
basically,
for a brain.
The same weekend
that Mark Kilroy disappeared,
it was spring break.
And Sara Aldrete said, "Hey,
I have a party in Matamoros.
And tell you what..."
And I said, "No, I don't--
"I don't like to go
on spring break, not at all.
"Plus, I don't drink a lot,
so you know what?
Maybe next time."
She said, "Man,
you're missing something."
You know,
"You're missing it."
"Aw, maybe next time."
But we just left it at that.
And she left.
We said, "...
it could have been me...
sacrificed."
Sara lost that one.
So Serafín Hernández
went out there.
They yelled, "Freeze!"
And they told him, "You're
drunk. You're under arrest."
Mark, you know, great
bringing up from his parents,
when somebody says "freeze,"
and it's police, you stop.
So they got him,
they handcuffed him,
and they threw him in the car.
In the morning,
they parked at the ranch,
with Mark handcuffed
in the back,
and just left him there.
And the reason
they parked there is because
Adolfo Constanzo's
not in town.
And, of course,
Adolfo's got to be here
when they do
the-the worshipping.
In the morning,
the caretaker notices
there's this kid that's
in there.
He takes the tape off
his mouth, and he gives him
some bread and some eggs
and some water.
And, of course, Mark,
he's talking in English,
and the caretaker did not know
a word of English.
He basically
puts the tape back on and,
you know,
and just leaves him there.
Later that day,
Sara and Constanzo
came to the ranch,
because he knew that they have
the boy that he wanted
that went to medical school
and the whole thing.
They got Mark
and he's still alive.
They bring him inside the shed
to do the worship.
And then Constanzo...
he got a machete.
Sara was never let inside
to do the worship.
Constanzo felt
that it was bad vibes
to have a woman inside.
And two, he made everybody
take off their clothes.
At some point,
they got Mark
over to the altar.
And that's when Adolfo hit him
over the head with a machete.
But they were having trouble.
Because the machete
was not very sharp.
So Elio got the machete and
did it and got the brain out.
They put the brain
in the nganga.
You know, Mark was just like
every other
boy from Brownsville
or from Matamoros.
He was somebody's son
and he was somebody's brother
and somebody's student.
It just opened my eyes a bit.
You know, um,
it was completely disturbing
about what happened to him.
And at that time, we didn't
know who had taken him.
It was just devastating.
Today, a search is underway
for the cult leader
who's wanted
in the killings of a dozen
people in Matamoros, Mexico.
Police say the man
who's known as The Godfather
and Sara Aldrete, the so-called
witch of the group,
may have fled here
to the United States.
We had four cult members
locked up in Matamoros, but
the other ones were missing.
We didn't know where
Constanzo and Sara
and the rest of the group was.
The comandante called us
to tell us that Constanzo
and them were at
the Holiday Inn in Brownsville.
So we went over there looking.
By then,
they already had gone.
The search goes on for
the ringleader
of a drug smuggling ring
connected with
the ritual killing
of at least 12 men,
whose bodies were found
in a mass grave.
Of course,
the news broke that day
about Sara staying here
in Brownsville
and what she was doing.
But she wasn't there anymore.
Sara Aldrete...
she was just, you know,
a few years older than us.
And my brother's friend
would say,
"Yeah, I've had
a class with her."
And to know that she had
any involvement with this
was just completely disturbing.
It was a scary time
in Brownsville.
I mean, it was a scary time
anywhere.
Trying to figure out
where Constanzo
and Sara and the rest
of the group was.
Everybody was going crazy.
And people were picking up
their kids
and taking them out of school
because they said
that they were kidnapping kids.
People were scared.
I mean, you'd think
something like that would happen
in Cuba or Puerto Rico
or New York City.
But for it to happen
in my backyard,
I couldn't believe it.
That we could have a monster
that close to us.
At some point,
law enforcement in Mexico
found Constanzo's passport.
In the '80s, if a person
wanted to disappear,
you could disappear
and nobody would ever find you.
And Sara and Adolfo,
they disappeared...
from the face of the earth.
I mean, that was it.
Poof. Gone.
An international manhunt
is still underway
this morning for the ringleader
and another member
of a voodoo cult,
thought to have carried out
those killings.
Last night,
about 1,200 people
attended a memorial service
for one of the victims,
American Mark Kilroy.
And now, really, we're at peace.
Knowing that Mark is safe
and with our Lord.
And now it's just a matter of,
of all of us, um...
we're gonna miss him a lot.
As Serafín was trying
to tell us more,
he told us the alias
Constanzo was using.
And that's how we found out
that Constanzo and Sara
went to the airport here
in McAllen and they flew
to Mexico City.
The Mexican police
went looking for them.
But they couldn't find them,
so they put out
fliers everywhere.
All over Mexico City.
But...
they weren't getting
any leads back at all.
A month later,
the comandante called me,
he says,
"Hey, can you come to Mexico
in the morning?
"Because the witch doctor
told us
"the way we find Constanzo
"is kill his nganga.
"And maybe he'll react to it.
And maybe we can find him."
I said, "Well, let's try it."
And thisbrujo
was going around.
He poured gasoline
all over the place
and he got
a picture of Constanzo
and he went, he put it
in the nganga.
So, what Constanzo
had been doing
to protect him from the police,
thebrujo was doing to reverse
Constanzo's whole thing.
And the intention was
to remove his spells.
We also brought
a Mexican TV station.
He says,
"Shoot the whole thing."
And they're gonna share it
to everybody.
Of course, the whole thing
was burning
and thenganga was burning
and they kicked it over and...
took all the stuff out of it.
Constanzo was seeing this
in Mexico City on TV.
And he went berserk.
He went crazy.
He put a whole bunch
of money on the stove
and he turned it on to burn it.
He began saying,
"That's it, we're done.
My power's gone."
So he was no longer
invisible and invulnerable.
At some point, Sara had gone
to get stuff
at a grocery store.
And she was walking back
when somebody saw her.
And, of course,
they told the police.
They were starting
to surround the place.
And Constanzo had gotten
a machine gun, he was shooting
at the police.
The police in Mexico City,
they just wanted this to end.
So I think the order was...
to kill the guy.
And that's what they did.
When they went into
the apartment,
they found some money there
and some gold.
And they found Sara hidden
in the next room.
In Mexico, surviving members
of a cult
believed responsible
for at least 15 murders
are in custody this morning.
One of the victims was Texas
college student Mark Kilroy.
Sara Aldrete, the so-called
witch of the group
was captured alive.
I feel sorry.
I feel sorry because
when-when-when he disappeared,
I was, I was trying to help.
When I talked to Sara
in Mexico City,
she said,
"I handed out fliers, too.
I was helping."
You know, the same people
that kidnapped him
were giving out fliers.
Having to sit down
and tell Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy
that Mark was dead...
that-that was the hardest part
of this whole case.
Mrs. Kilroy wanted to know,
when I told her
that her son was dead,
"Did he have a chance to pray?"
And I said yes, he was in
the back of the Suburban
for... so many hours.
And she says, "Then he had
a chance to pray."
And she was happy.
They honestly really,
really felt like
everything happened...
for a reason.
That this really was,
genuinely, God's plan.
This happened to Mark because,
without them finding Mark,
who knows how long
it would have taken
to find all the other bodies.
Mark was the instrument
to show the evil
of what this cult can do.