World Famous Cults and Fanatics (20 page)

Yet Ramirez gained at least one devoted and genuine friend – his wife.
In October 1996 he married Doreen Lioy – a forty-one-year-old freelance magazine editor with a reported IQ of
152 – in a non-religious ceremony in the San Quentin prison.

Afterwards Doreen said: “The facts of his case ultimately will confirm that Richard is a wrongly convicted man, and I believe fervently that his innocence will be proven to the
world.”

***

***

The Matamoros Murders

It might seem impossible to imagine a cult leader more dangerous and inhuman than Charles Manson.
But the details of the Matamoros murders – which began to emerge in
mid-1989 – made it dear that Adolfo Constanzo was a serious contender for the title of America’s most sadistic serial killer.

Unlike most practitioners of black magic, Adolfo Constanzo was not just an eccentric who made up his ceremonies as he went along.
According to his followers, he often boasted that he had been
schooled in the dark religion of Palo Mayombe from his earliest childhood.
Brought up by his expatriate Cuban mother in Miami, Florida, he claimed that she was a fully trained priestess in the
blood cult, and that his earliest memory was of the sacrifice of a chicken.

Palo Mayombe is the dark sister of the Santeria religion.
Both originated on the west coast of Africa and were brought over by slaves sent to the Spanish plantations of Cuba.
The Spaniards had
insisted, on pain of death, that all slaves convert to Christianity.
They were gratified when their captives appeared to do so without fuss; in fact the slaves had retained all the essentials of
their old religion by associating their gods with the icons of Catholic saints.
(The Spanish overlords did not mind their slaves making blood sacrifices to the holy images – they attributed
it to simple, Old Testament primitivism.)

Santeria (meaning literally “the saints’ path”) has survived as a mixture of Christianity and the old, voodoo-like African religion.
Its “spells” can be used for
good as well as harmful purposes and in basic attitude it most resembles the European tradition of “white magic”.

Palo Mayombe, which originated in the Congo area, is less benevolent.
The religion centres around the
nganga
;
a
caldron filled with blood, a decomposing goat’s head, a
roasted turtle, sacred stirring sticks and, most importantly, a human skull – preferably belonging to a violent person who died a sudden death.
The confused soul of the dead person is trapped
in the
nganga
and will obey the orders of the Palo Mayombe priest if kept in a state of contentment with freshly spilled blood.
The “bound” spirit is said to be able to curse
enemies, foretell the future and provide both magical and physical protection (even from bullets).

The purpose of a Palo Mayombe priest is to gain ultimate power in life since he or she believes that tales of an afterlife are lies.
Dead spirits, they say, simply wander the material plane as
if in limbo.
At initiation, the new priest declares his soul to be dead and dedicates himself to the Congoese god of destruction,
Kadiempembe
“the Eater of Souls”.
Thus, without
an eternal spirit, he has nothing to lose and may do as he will with savage freedom.
Non-believers, especially Christians, are considered “animals” who should be exploited
mercilessly.

The skull for the
nganga
is traditionally obtained by graverobbing, but Adolfo Constanzo told his followers that his “Padrino”, or Godfather – the name given to high
priests of the cult – had “hunted” living donors in his youth on Haiti.
Constanzo intended to follow in his footsteps.

A dark handsome youth with piercing eyes, Constanzo always made a powerful impression.
When he moved to Mexico City in 1982, at the age of twenty-one, he quickly saw that, in the corrupt,
superstitious atmosphere of the capital’s underworld, a “padrino” could become a wealthy man .
.
.

He set up as a fortune teller and soon built a reputation for uncanny accuracy.
Many of the city’s drug barons relied on his forecasts to decide when to send shipments across the American
border.
Subsequent investigation has revealed that much of his “divined” information came from corrupt officials in the Mexican drug administration – at least two of whom were his
disciples.

He quickly built up a hard core of a dozen or so dedicated followers who would meet in the secret room in his luxury apartment that contained the stinking
nganga
, and enact blood
sacrifices – killing chickens, goats, dogs and cats – to ensure good luck and obtain protection from the police.

Observing the huge amount of money being made by the relatively simple, uneducated drug lords, Constanzo decided to break into the protection racket.
He told the head of one clan of drug
dealers, Guillermo Calzada, that for a large fee he would be willing to be his in-house fortune teller – magically protecting him and his drugs at all times.
Calzada, having experienced the
accuracy of Constanzo’s forecasts, accepted eagerly.

Not long afterwards, Constanzo visited him and explained that in view of the fact it was his magic that was really doing the work, he deserved half the profits .
.
.
Calzada refused, and
Constanzo left in a rage.
A few days later the padrino called Calzada and begged his forgiveness.
As a reconciliation he offered to place a specially powerful protection spell on Calzada and his
family.
Calzada agreed and on 30 April 1987, he, his wife, his ageing mother, his partner Jose Rolon, his secretary, his maid and his bodyguard met with Constanzo in a deserted factory.

All seven reappeared in the Rio Zumpango river, north of Mexico City, several days later.
They had been horribly mutilated before they were killed.
Their fingers, toes, ears and, in the case of
the men, genitals had been cut off.
The hearts were also missing from some of the bodies and, more significantly, the heads.

Constanzo fed the butchered remains to his
nganga
, thus gaining power over the anguished spirits of the owners, who would use ghostly toes to travel, fingers to manipulate, ears to hear,
and hearts and genitals to accumulate power.
These damned souls were to be his servants as he expanded his operations to the Mexico–Texas border and the town of Matamoros.

Mexico City, Constanzo had decided, was too far from the most lucrative market for drugs; the United States.
Matamoros, a tourist town on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, would be an ideal
base for his own drugs empire.
He told one of his most ardent followers, Federal Narcotics agent Salvador Garcia, to apply for a transfer to the border town and assess the situation.
Some weeks
later Garcia reported that the Hernandez family, well known locally to be drug smugglers, were having problems since the death of their leader in a gang shoot-out.
His brothers were unable to run
the business efficiently and were badly in need of magical assistance.
Constanzo made suitable blood sacrifices for luck and travelled to Matamoros.

His method of contacting the Hernandez brothers illustrates his subtlety.
He arranged a “chance” meeting with Sara Aldrete, an attractive honours student at the Brownsville College,
just across the border.
Sara had once dated Elio Hernandez, the boss of the family since the death of his brother, but had not seen him for years.
Constanzo, after impressing her with his prophetic
powers and luring her into bed, told her an old friend would soon contact her and tell her he was in trouble; she was to tell him that she had met a powerful magus, who might be the answer to all
his problems .
.
.

Sure enough, Sara bumped into Elio Hernandez in the street shortly afterwards and when he had related his woes she persuaded him to meet with Constanzo.
The padrino hooked Elio with his usual
skill, and soon most of the drug dealers in the family gang were attending Constanzo’s blood sacrifices (Sara Aldrete was made a high priestess and was, in theory, the controller of the
Matamoros branch of the cult when Constanzo was in Mexico City).

As promised, the Hernandez family business was soon flourishing under the prophetic guidance of Padrino Adolfo; the delivery runs went smoothly and the money flowed in.
Then in the spring of
1988, Constanzo told them that he had a better idea than buying drugs – stealing them from small-time drug runners.
Using information from one of the cult members, he located a large
marijuana stash, and the family helped themselves.
The original owner, and the farmer on whose land it had been hidden, were taken to an orchard and shot in cold blood.

It was the family’s first experience of Constanzo’s ruthlessness and they were shocked; nevertheless, they swallowed their revulsion.
Now they were implicated in murder, they could
be introduced into the darker secrets of Palo Mayombe.
They were soon convinced that every time they made an important drugs run or needed to avert misfortune they should make a ritual human
sacrifice.

Between May 1988 and March 1989, Constanzo and his followers tortured and murdered at least thirteen people at the deserted Hernandez ranch outside Matamoros.
Most of the victims were rival
drugs dealers or, occasionally, lapsed members of the cult.
But some victims were strangers who were kidnapped while walking along the local highway, and murdered without being asked their names.
Elio Hernandez was horrified to discover one day that the fourteen-year-old boy he had just decapitated without looking at his face was, in fact, his second cousin.

All the cult’s known victims at Matamoros were male – Constanzo was bisexual with a distinct homosexual bias.
The treatment meted out to them before they were allowed to die would
have horrified an Aztec priest.
The terrified victim would be beaten and kicked and then dragged into a shed that contained the sacred
nganga
.
Often his extremities (such as fingers,
genitals, nose and ears) would be cut off and Constanzo would partially flay him.
Then the others would be asked to leave while the padrino sodomized him.
Finally, the victim would be
“sacrificed” by either cutting out his heart or lopping off the top of his head – Constanzo would often leave the death blow to one of the others to increase their complicity.
The
victims’ severed parts, brains, heart and blood would be placed in the
nganga
.
Their corpses were buried in shallow graves nearby.

It was regarded as essential that the victim should scream as he died – the soul, Constanzo believed, must be confused and terrified when it left the body, to make it easier to subjugate.
Oddly enough it was this obsession that was to bring about his downfall.

In March 1989, his henchmen kidnapped a street cocaine dealer that none of them recognized – he has never been identified – and Constanzo went to work on him.
But despite all his
efforts he could not make the tough little Mexican cry out, even when he skinned his upper torso.
The victim died without screaming.
Constanzo was unnerved and declared the ceremony a failure.
What
they needed he decided was an American; someone soft, “someone who will scream”.

The next victim was easy to find.
At the beginning of March, Matamoros is generally packed with American “spring breakers” – mostly students from Texas attracted by cheap
alcohol, pot and cocaine.
The cultists simply waited until around two in the morning, found a drunk student heading back across the border, and offered him a lift.
His name was Mark Kilroy, a
twenty-one-year-old first-year medical student from the University of Texas.
Constanzo did a very thorough job on the youth and was deeply satisfied with the result.
He sliced the top from the
screaming American’s head with a machete and dropped his brains into the
nganga
.

Now, he told his excited followers, they were unstoppable.
Previously they had only had Mexican spirits to protect them on the south side of the border; now they had an American ghost to keep
them safe from the Texas police.
They were now, he said, effectively invisible.