CrimePsych

Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo was born in Miami on November 1, 1962. He was the younger of two sons to a teenage Cuban immigrant and was still an infant when his father died. Having been widowed, the family moved to Puerto Rico where Adolfo’s mother quickly found a new man and remarried. Shortly after he was baptised Roman Catholic and even served as an altar boy for a time, supposedly accepting the standards of the Roman Catholic faith. When he was 10 the family moved back to Miami and a year later he would lose his stepfather also; but to their advantage this left them well off financially.

Neighbours in Little Havana noticed the family were, to say the least, odd, and Adolfo’s mother is rumoured to be a practising Witch with those who cross her or upset her finding headless goats and chickens on their doorsteps of a morning. By the age of 9, she had introduced her son to Santeria, and had financed multiple trips to Puerto Rico for instruction in voodoo. In 1976 at the age of 14 Adolfo became an apprentice to a practitioner of Palo Mayombe – similar to Santeria in that it developed in Cuba but of an African rather than Caribbean history.

Adolfo’s occult God Father, having grown amazingly rich from influencing his drug dealer associates, imparted his philosophy on the boy: “Let the non believers kill themselves with drugs. We will profit from their foolishness”. While Adolfo’s older brother apparently displayed psychic abilities predicting events such as the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, Adolfo himself had no such skill-set, even though later in life he would claim to. In 1981 he was arrested twice for shoplifting offences including one offence that included a chainsaw. In addition to this he started to display overt bisexual tendencies with a preference for men.

While on a modelling assignment in Mexico City in 1983, Adolfo spent his spare time telling fortunes with tarot cards in the cities largely known and famous Zona Rosa (touristy district, entertainment hub) and it is here that he collected his first Mexican disciples including Martin Quintana, homosexual psychic Jorge Montes and Omar Orea. Orea had been obsessed with the occult since the age of 15 so it was an appropriate fit for him, but soon after this Adolfo returned to Miami.

By 1984 though, Adolfo decided to move to Mexico City on a permanent basis with his mother stating he was searching for ‘new horizons’. There he moved into a house with Quintana and Orea in a strange ménage a trios. As his reputation for magic grew throughout the city he collected additional followers and soon began claiming to be able to see the future. Further to this he started offering ‘limpias’ or ritual cleansings for those who had been cursed by their enemies. According to Adolfo’s own journals he had at least 31 regular customers who paid him up to $4500 for a single ceremony. He had also established a sacrificial menu of sorts; with roosters going for $6 a head, goats for $30, pythons for $450, zebras for $100 and African lion cubs for $3100. One hates to think what the price on a human sacrifice would have been, had he put it in writing…

As can be expected Adolfo lived up to his mentors wildest expectations as he efficiently began charming the wealthy drug dealers around Mexico. They trusted his opinions so much that they actually began to schedule their shipments and meetings around his nonsense predictions. Further again he offered to cast magic for them that would make them invisible to police and bulletproof to enemies. This might sound bizarre, and you may be wondering how someone could be tricked into this but if you take the background of most drug cartels/smugglers in Mexico at the time (Mexican peasant) and combine it with the influence of Brujeria (Spanish witchcraft) they are inclined to believe. As you can imagine, cult leaders are masters of manipulation and they generally have an amazing ability to read people, telling them what they want to hear. This worked a charm with Adolfo’s journals stating that one smuggler alone paid him upwards of $40,000 for magical services over a three year period.

With such exorbitant prices, the customers expected a show, and as usual Adolfo didn’t disappoint, probably more so out of fear than anything else– you’d have to be pretty stupid to disappoint men who carry automatic weapons everywhere and ride around in armour plated limousines. In mid 1985 he and 3 of his disciples raided a graveyard for human bones to start his very own ‘nganga’ – cauldron of blood employed by practitioners of Palo Mayombe. It appears there wasn’t anybody that Adolfo couldn’t charm into his beliefs through his rituals and air of mystery and he managed to recruit a sizeable cross section of Mexican society that included real estate agents, doctors, models and transvestite nightclub performers.

Curious as it may seem, Adolfo’s new career brought him attention from law enforcement but not for the reason you would think; they liked him. At a minimum, 4 Federal Judicial Police joined his cult including Salvador Garcia who was the head of narcotics investigations and Florentino Ventura who retired from the Federal police to lead the Mexican branch of Interpol. Although corruption has always been a significant problem in Mexico, with events such as Federal officers playing hitman to the highest bidding drug cartel devotion to Adolfo ran deeper than any amount of money. They worshipped him as a minor God ; a living conduit to the spirit world.

In 1986 Florentino Ventura introduced Adolfo to the Calzada family – a drug cartel – and he quickly won over the hardnosed smugglers with his charm and magical prowess. Over the next 12 months he profited immensely from this association and by 1987 was able to pay $60,000 for a condominium in Mexico city as well as purchase a small fleet of vehicles including an $80,000 Mercedes Benz. Also, while not practising his magic, he pulled scams of his own; once he posed as a DEA agent and ripped off a medium size cocaine dealer selling the stash through his police contacts for $100,000.

At some stage Adolfo started to offer human sacrifices to his nganga, and to this day no final tally of slayings has been able to be established. Although there are 23 well documented cases, police in Mexico believe it could be as high as 40 pointing to many unsolved slayings in which mutilation has taken place around Mexico City. With his willingness to torture and kill complete strangers, close friends, or anybody in between Adolfo quickly impressed the many ruthless drug cartels smuggling contraband into the United States. Adolfo quickly came to believe he was solely responsible for the Calzada families ongoing success and survival and in April 1987 he demanded a full partnership. Unfortunately for him, or so it may have seemed at the time, they promptly refused.

By April 30, 1987, Guillermo Calzada and 6 members of his household vanish under mysterious circumstances and they were reported as missing on 1st of May. When police investigated they noticed melted candles, as well as other strange evidence of a religious ceremony at the Calzada offices. Six days later they started recovering mutilated decomposing bodies from the Zumpango River. In total, 7 bodies were recovered, all of which had sadistic torture marks, fingers, toes and ears had been removed, hearts and sex organs had been excised, part of the spine had been ripped from one of the bodies and two of the bodies had their brains removed. All the missing parts Adolfo had taken to add to his cauldron of blood.

A few months later in July 1987, Salvador Garcia did Adolfo the favour of introducing him to yet another cartel he could con; Elio and Ovidio Hernandez were the leaders. Also in July he met 22 year old Sara Aldrete who was a Mexican national with resident alien status in the United States as she was studying in Brownsville, Texas. Having been charmed by Adolfo, who noted that her birthday was the same date as his mothers (September 6), she eventually ended up in his bed. At the time she had been dating Brownsville drug smuggler Gilbert Sosa, but Adolfo soon put an end to that relationship via an anonymous phone call reporting her infidelity to him. Sara, having nowhere else to turn plunged deeply into Adolfo’s world and became head Witch of his cult, adding her own twists and turns to torturing their sacrificial victims.

By this stage Adolfo’s torture and killings became more elaborate and sadistic as they moved to their new headquarters – a ranch known as Rancho Santa Elena, a plot of desert 32km from Matamoros. On May 28, 1988 Adolfo was gravely disappointed by his next double homicide when he executed Hector de la Fuente, a drug dealer, and Moises Castillo, a farmer, by shooting them. While back in Mexico City he directed cultists to dismember transvestite Ramon Esquivel and to dump his remains on a street corner.

In June 1988 he narrowly escaped being caught in a house raid in Houston, Texas where the authorities seized occult items and the largest ever cocaine shipment for the state.

As events continued to unfold, on August 12, 1988, Ovidio Hernandez and his 2 year old son were kidnapped by a rival drug cartel. The family sought Adolfo’s help and he conducted a human sacrifice at the Rancho Santa Elena, then on August 13, the hostages were released unharmed. As can be expected Adolfo claimed complete credit for this.

Later that same year, on September 17, long time confidant Florentino Ventura killed himself in a murder suicide in Mexico City, taking his wife and a friend with him by unloading a burst of ammunition from an automatic machine gun on them. Then in November 1988 Adolfo sacrificed one of his own cult members, Jorge Gomez, after accusing him of cocaine use – as this was in violation of El Padrino’s statements.
In December 1988 Ovidio Hernandez became a full member of the cult and this ceremony included bloodletting and prayers to the nganga. The following February 14, Valentine’s Day, competing drug smuggler Ezequil Luna was tortured to death on the ranch. Further to this, two other people became impromptu victims in this sacrifice when they inadvertently stumbled into the ceremony as it unfolded.

By this stage of play, Adolfo for no reason would randomly demand a sacrifice, and on February 25, 1989 he did just that. Ovidio Hernandez in the heat of the moment offered up his 14 year old cousin Jose Garcia. Then again on March 13, Adolfo was disappointed by another sacrifice conducted on the ranch when the victim did not scream or plead for his life as Adolfo expected his chosen subjects to. This brought about the beginning of the end for Adolfo and his cult as this dissatisfaction prompted him to demand a Caucasian person to be his next victim of choice. His followers then abducted 21 year old Mark Kilroy from outside a Matamoros saloon. Two weeks later again Sara’s old boyfriend and drug smuggler from Texas, Gilbert Sosa, became yet another victim of the group. By that stage, popular pre-med student at the University of Texas, Mark Kilroy, had been reported missing and family and politicians were desperately and forcefully pushing for a full blown international investigation; soon they received what they asked for when the situation spiralled into an international level incident.

In the same month of March Mexican police were again conducting one of their random anti-drug campaigns setting up roadblocks, conducting searches and patrolling the border district for smugglers. On April 1, Victor Sauceda, an ex police officer turned gangster was sacrificed at the ranch and the message Adolfo received from the spirit world was positive; giving the cultists the sign they needed to move half a tonne of marijuana across the border into the United States a week later. Then on April 9, Serafin Hernandez was returning from Brownsville, Texas, the location they had smuggled the drugs to, heading to a meet with Adolfo back on the Mexican side of the border. Seeing a roadblock ahead, and so strongly believing in Adolfo’s magical abilities, he drove straight through it and continued to ignore the cars that were pursuing him all the way to the meet location. Surprised, he jumped from his vehicle and became overly aggressive, threatening officers and daring them to shoot him as he also believed the bullets would simply bounce off. Unfortunately for him, they didn’t, and arrested him instead along with another cult member David Martinez.

Police then drove the duo to the ranch where a preliminary search was conducted that netted marijuana and firearms. While authorities were conducting their enquiries at the property two other followers inadvertently got caught up in the mess and were promptly arrested as well. The first two arrestees as well as the new ones, Elio Hernandez and Sergio Martinez, were taken back to the police station and interrogated. Upon being interviewed all four prisoners proudly told their tales of black magic, torture and human sacrifice.

The next morning police returned to the ranch to conduct a full scale search and to arrest any further cult members. In a shed they found Adolfo’s nganga – cauldron of blood – and in it they found not only blood but spiders, scorpions, a dead black cat, a turtle shell, human bones and a human brain. Cultists caught at the property pointed to where bodies were buried and by April 16 a total of 15 corpses had been recovered including two renegade Federal officers – Joaquin Manzo and Miguel Garcia – as well as 3 people that would never be identified.

With this, the hunt began for Adolfo; they raided his house in Atizapan on April 17, only to find stockpiles of gay pornography and a hidden ritual chamber. Unbeknownst to them, he was already hiding out in a small apartment in Mexico City with Sara Aldrete and three of his disciples. On May 2, in an attempt to save herself, Sara tossed a written note out the window of the apartment they were hiding out in hoping a passerby would raise the alarm: “Please call the judicial police and tell them that in this building are those that they are seeking. Give them the address, fourth floor. Tell them that a woman is being held hostage. I beg for this, because what I want most is to talk – or they’re going to kill the girl.” The note was found, and read by somebody walking down the street but unfortunately for her they thought it was nothing but a sick prank and didn’t give it a second thought until it was too late.

Then, a month later again on May 6, 1989, neighbours call the police after hearing a violent argument from inside Adolfo’s apartment where they believed they also heard gunshots. Police arrive at the scene and immediately take fire from Adolfo and colleagues who unleash with automatic weapons fire – a 45 minute fire fight ensues until Adolfo realises there is no hope of escape. Facing a life in prison he orders one of his followers, Alvaro da Leon Valdez, who is coincidently a professional hitman with the nickname El Duby, to kill him and Martin Quintana. Valdez recalls: “He told me to kill him and Martin. I told him I couldn’t do it, but he hit me in the face and threatened me that everything would go bad for me in hell. Then he hugged Martin, and I just stood in front of them and shot them with a machine gun.”

Having killed Adolfo and Martin, and not willing to put up any more resistance, the police storm the apartment and arrest Aldrete and Valdez.

In the aftermath of the raid fourteen cult members are indicted on a broad range of charges ranging from multiple murders, weapons and narcotic violations, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. In August 1990 El Duby was convicted of the murders of Adolfo and Martin and given a 30 year prison sentence. Cult members Juan Fragosa and Jorge Montes were both indicted and then later convicted of the murder of Ramon Esquivel and given 35 year sentences each while Omar Orea, having been convicted of the same murder died of AIDS before being sentenced. Sara Aldrete, while acquitted of the Adolfo and Martin murders was given a six year custodial sentence for criminal association. Subsequently, in 1994, when she was about to be paroled on those charges, Aldrete suffered an unavoidable and devastating blow; authorities were finally able to indict her on multiple murder charges of which she was convicted and was given a further 60 year sentence. The final body count, as stated, remains unknown and it seems the religion lives on, even if this particular cult doesn’t, as in June 1989, Martin Quintanas sister told police that Adolfo’s first Madrina is still practising her intense version of blood magic in Guadalajara. Before his death Orea stated from prison: “I don’t think that the religion will end with us, because it has a lot of people in it. They have found a temple in Monterrey that isn’t even related to us. It will continue.”