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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast, the podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Weyborg Thun.
As promised last week, tonight we venture to a more exotic location than bleak old London town. Tonight we will watch human sacrifice. We will listen to the chants of cultists as they worship our subject as a demigod. Maybe, if you pay attention, you might even smell the potent drugs and liquor he fed his followers and victims.
We are traveling south, down past the U.S. border wall, and into the land of great contrast and the land of enchantment, that is, Mexico. None other than the Godfather of Matamoros is our subject in this episode of the Serial Killer Podcast.
His real name was Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, and he tortured and murdered at least 16 fellow human beings before he was stopped. This podcast has in excess of 7 million downloads in total, but both my Patreon page and my Facebook page are only visited by a few thousand.
On my Facebook page at facebook.com slash the SK podcast, you will find bonus content, exclusive Facebook Live videos featuring me, and you can contact me, your humble host, directly, and I always reply in person.
Adolfo Constanzo was born in Miami, Florida, United States, on the 1st of November 1962. His mother, Delia Aurora Gonzalez del Valle, was a widowed Cuban immigrant. She gave birth to him when she was only 15 years old, and she would eventually have three children in total, each with a different father.
She moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, after her first husband died, and remarried while in San Juan. Constanzo was baptized Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy, but he was also influenced by his mother's participation in Palo Mayombe, which is a term to describe powerful black magic.
The family returned to Miami in 1972, and his stepfather died soon after, leaving the family with some money. His mother soon remarried, and his new stepfather was involved in the local drug trade and the occult.
Both Adolfo Constanzo and his mother were arrested several times for petty crimes, such as theft, vandalism and shoplifting. He graduated from high school, but he dropped out of junior college. His mother believed that he had psychic abilities, supposedly predicting the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981.
As a teenager, he befriended a Haitian Palo Mayombe priest who taught him the skills necessary to be a drug dealer and con artist, training him for a career profiting from evil. His occult godfather was already rich from working with local drug dealers, and he imparted a philosophy that would follow Adolfo Constanzo to his grave.
Let the non-believers kill themselves with drugs. We will profit from their foolishness. Around the same time, Constanzo's mother recalls that her oldest son began displaying psychic powers, scanning the future to predict such events as the 1981 shooting of President Ronald Reagan.
Be that as it may, Adolfo Constanzo had problems foretelling his own future, including two 1981 arrests for shoplifting, one involving the theft of a chainsaw. On the side, he had also begun to display bisexual inclinations with a strong preference for male lovers.
A modeling assignment took the handsome young sorcerer to Mexico City in 1983, and he spent his free time telling fortunes with tarot cards in the city's infamous Zona Rosa. This is a neighborhood in Mexico City which is known for its shopping, nightlife, and especially its gay community.
In the 1980s, the area was rife with men's clubs, prostitution, and it was heavily crime-ridden. Before returning to Miami, Adolfo collected his first Mexican disciples, including Martin Quintana, homosexual psychic Jorge Montes, and Omar Oria, obsessed with the occult from age 15.
In short order, Adolfo Constanzo seduced both a young Latino Rodriguez and Oria, claiming one as his man and the other as his woman, depending on Adolfo's romantic whim. In mid-1984, Adolfo Constanzo moved to Mexico City full-time, seeking what his mother called new horizons.
He shared quarters with Quintana and Oreya in a strange ménage à trois, collecting other followers as his magic reputation spread throughout the city. It was said that Constanzo could read the future, and he also offered limpias, ritual cleansings for those who felt they had been cursed by enemies. Of course, it all cost money.
and Constanzo's journals, recovered after his death, document 31 regular customers, some paying up to $4,500 for a single ceremony.
Adolfo Constanzo established a menu for sacrificial beasts, with roosters going for $6 a head, goats for $30, boa constrictors at $450, adult zebras for $1,100, and African lion cubs listed at $3,100 each.
True to the teachings of his Florida mentor, Constanzo went out of his way to charm wealthy drug dealers, helping them schedule shipments and meetings on the basis of his predictions. For a price, he offered magic that would make dealers and their hitmen invisible to police, bulletproof against their enemies.
It was all nonsense, of course, but smugglers drawn from Mexican peasant stock with a background in local witchcraft or brujería were strongly inclined to believe. According to Constanzo's ledgers, one dealer in Mexico City paid him $40,000 for magical services rendered over three years.
At those rates, the customers demanded a show, and Constanzo recognized the folly of disappointing men who carried Uzi submachine guns in their armor-plated limousines. Strong medicine required first-rate ingredients.
And Adolfo was rolling by mid-1985 when he and three of his disciples raided a Mexico City graveyard for human bones to start his own enganga, the traditional cauldron of blood, employed by practitioners of Palo Mayombe.
The rituals and air of mystery surrounding Adolfo Constanzo were powerful enough to lure a cross-section of Mexican society with his clique of disciples, including a physician, a real estate speculator, fashion models, and several transvestite nightclub performers. At first glance, the most peculiar aspect of Constanzo's new career
was the appeal he seemed to have for ranking law enforcement officers. At least four members of the federal judicial police joined Constanzo's cult in Mexico City. One of them, Salvador Garcia, was a commander in charge of narcotics investigations. Another, Florentino Ventura, retired from the federales to lead the Mexican branch of Interpol.
In a country where bribery, mordida, permeates all levels of law enforcement, and federal officers sometimes serve as triggermen for drug smugglers, corruption is not unusual. But a devotion of Constanzo's followers ran deeper than cash on the line.
In or out of uniform, they worshipped Adolfo as a minor god in his own right, their living conduit to the spirit world. In 1986, Florentino Ventura introduced Adolfo Constanzo to the drug-dealing Calzada family, then one of Mexico's dominant narcotics cartels.
Constanzo won the hard-nosed dealers over with his charm and mumbo-jumbo, profiting immensely from his contacts with the gang. By early 1987, he was able to pay $60,000 cash for a condominium in Mexico City, buying himself a fleet of luxury cars that included an $80,000 Mercedes-Benz.
When not working magic for the Calzadas or other clients, Adolfo staged scams of his own, once posing as a DEA agent to rip off a coke dealer in Guadalajara, selling the stash through his police contacts for a cool $100,000.
At some point in his odyssey from juvenile psychic to high society witch, Constanzo began to feed his nganga with the offering of human sacrifice. No final tally for his victims is available, but 23 ritual murders are well documented.
and Mexican authorities point to a rash of unsolved mutilation slayings around Mexico City and elsewhere, suggesting that Constanzo's known victims may only represent the tip of a malignant iceberg. In any case, his willingness to torture and kill total strangers, along with close friends,
duly impressed the ruthless drug dealers who remained his foremost clients. In the cause of a year's association, Constanzo came to believe that his magical powers alone were responsible for the Calzada family's continued success and survival. In April 1987, he demanded a full partnership in the syndicate and was curtly refused.
On the surface, Adolfo Constanzo seemed to take the rejection in stride, but his devious mind was working overtime, plotting revenge. On the 30th of April, Guillermo Calzada and six members of his household vanished under mysterious circumstances.
They were reported missing on the 1st of May, police noting melted candles and other evidence of a strange religious ceremony at Calzada's office. Six more days elapsed before officers began fishing mutilated remains from the Zumpango River. Seven corpses were recovered in the course of a week, all bearing marks of sadistic torture.
Fingers, toes, and ears removed. Hearts and sex organs excised. Part of the spine ripped from one body, two others missing their brains. The vanished parts, as it turned out, had gone to feed Constanzo's cauldron of blood, building up his strength for greater conquests yet to come.
In July of 1987, Salvador Garcia introduced Constanzo to another drug-running family, this one led by brothers Elio and Ovidio Hernandez.
At the end of that month, in Matamoros, Adolfo Constanzo had also met 22-year-old Sara Aldrete, a Mexican national with resident alien status in the United States, where she attended college in Brownsville, Texas.
Adolfo charmed Sara with his line of patter, noting with arch significance that her birthday, the 6th of September, was the same as his mother's. Sara was dating a Brownsville drug smuggler called Gilberto Sosa at the time, but she soon wound up in Constanzo's bed. Adolfo had no trouble scuttling the old relationship,
with an anonymous call to Sosa, revealing Sarah's infidelity. With nowhere else to turn, Sarah plunged full tilt into Constanzo's world, emerging as the Madrina, godmother or head witch of his cult, adding her own twists to the torture of Adolfo's sacrificial victims.
Constanzo's rituals became more elaborate and sadistic after he moved his headquarters to a plot of deserts called Rancho Santa Elena, twenty miles from Matamoros. It was comprised of forty acres, a house and outbuildings. Adolfo didn't really reside on the ranch, except for short periods of time.
It was his place of magic and sacrifice. And on a hot May night, Adolfo sacrificed two victims there. Drug dealer Hector de la Fuente and a nearby farmer named Moises Castillo. De la Fuente had rejected Adolfo's sexual advances and Castillo happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The ritual was supposed to be a solemn one,
But it didn't work out that way. The victims fought viciously, refusing the black and red sacrificial gowns. Reluctantly, in the end, Adolfo pulled out a pistol and shot them both in the head. His lust for screaming and blood had been spoiled. He needed release.
As his minions buried the bodies, Adolfo, angry and frustrated, drove back to Mexico City and issued orders. I quote, Find Ramon Esquivel and bring him to me. Esquivel was a transvestite Adolfo disliked, and he was dragged into Adolfo's office, the floor covered for the occasion in black plastic.
Black candles burned in devotion to Santa Muerte, and the air was rich with the smell of wax. Esquivel, now screaming hysterically, was nailed to a wooden cross on the floor, made by four-by-fours. Adolfo commenced, dismembering Esquivel with a butcher knife, first slicing his arms off, and then his legs.
Esquivel was given no anesthesia while Adolfo did this and screamed in extreme pain until he passed out from blood loss. The blood loss eventually caused his death, but Adolfo did not stop until the body was completely dismembered. When he was finished, he told his minions to collect the pieces, find a street corner and dump them there.
Again, I quote his orders. Make sure it's a busy street corner. I want everyone to behold and know my power. On the 12th of August, the same year, Ovidio Hernandez and his two-year-old son were kidnapped by rival narcotics dealers, the family turning to Adolfo Constanzo for help.
That night, another human sacrifice was staged at Rancho Santa Elena, and the hostages were released unharmed the next day. Adolfo claimed full credit for their safe return. Selling a little or a lot?
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In November of 1988, Constanzo sacrificed disciple Jorge Gomez, accused of snorting cocaine in direct violation of El Padrino's ban on any drug use.
A month later, Adolfo's ties with the Hernandez family were cemented with the initiation of Ovidio Hernandez as a full-fledged cultist, complete with ritual bloodletting and prayers to the Nganga. Human sacrifice can also have its practical side.
as when competing smuggler Ezequiel Luna was tortured to death at Rancho Santa Elena on the 14th of February 1989. Two other dealers, Ruben Garza and Ernesto Diaz, wandered into the ceremony uninvited and promptly wound up on the menu.
Conversely, Adolfo sometimes demanded a sacrifice on the spur of the moment, without rhyme or reason. When he called for fresh meat on the 25th of February, Ovidio Hernandez gladly joined the hunting party, killing his own 14-year-old cousin, José García, in the heat of the moment.
On the 13th of March, 1989, Adolfo Constanzo sacrificed yet another victim at the ranch, gravely disappointed when his prey, once again, did not scream and plead for mercy in the approved style. Disgruntled, he ordered an Anglo, a white man, for the next ritual, and his minions fanned out with their noses to the ground.
They ended up abducting 21-year-old Mark Kilroy outside a Matamoros saloon. The sacrifice went well enough, according to Adolfo's vicious. Marco was nailed down, as Esquivel had been. But Adolfo wanted his suffering to be even worse.
He took out a sharp hunting knife and started to, again without any painkillers, to skin Mark Kilroy alive. Now, most of my dear listeners will probably know what is meant by skinning someone, but I think it's important to understand just how horrifying and agonizing way to die this really is.
The torture begins with some very specific and calculated cuts. In general, the first skin to be peeled off is that of the face. After that, the body has to be scored in various places to allow the skin to remove easily in one piece, or at least in as few pieces as possible.
This involves relief cutting around the arms and wrists, the chest and neck, and sometimes the feet. These cuts will not be incredibly deep, but they will extend through all the individual layers of skin, so as to reach the area between your skin and the muscle itself. This means the victim can expect horrifying amounts of pain.
Your nerve endings extend into the deep layers of your skin, enabling your sense of touch. It's why our fingertips are so sensitive. And it also means that our skin getting damaged causes a strong pain response. This response is caused by nociceptors, sensory nerve cells that respond to pain. When Kilroy was flayed, his skin was literally ripped off.
not cut little by little. This ripping motion meant that his nerve endings were not severed cleanly. Instead, they were torn to shreds, one by one, in a long train of agony. He felt his skin being pulled off his muscles, and he felt his nerve endings dying. In other words,
He felt all of it, and it was the worst pain a human can experience. After his skin was flayed off his body, he may have been lucky enough to pass out from shock and blood loss.
However, the blood loss from having the skin flayed is not as rapid as having major arteries cut, and he might very well have been conscious as Adolfo started to slice off his limbs too, one by one, until they were all laying in a pile on the floor. A popular pre-med student from Texas,
Mark Kilroy was not some peasant, transvestite or small-time pusher who would disappear without a trace or an investigation into his fate. With family members and Texas politicians turning up the heat, the search for Kilroy rapidly assumed the trappings of an international incident. Apparently unaware of the storm clouds brewing on the horizon,
Two weeks later, the godfather of Matamoros, at a hunger for more blood, Sara Aldrete's old boyfriend, Gilberto Sousa, was taken, tortured and butchered as well.
By late March 1989, Mexican authorities were busy with one of their periodic anti-drug campaigns, erecting roadblocks on a whim and sweeping the border districts for unwary smugglers.
On the 1st of April, Victor Sosida, an ex-cop turned gangster, was sacrificed at a ranch. And the spirit message Constanza received was optimistic enough for his troops to move a half ton of marijuana across the border seven nights later. But then, the magic started to unravel.
And so it was that on the 9th of April, returning from Brownsville, Texas, meeting with Adolfo Constanzo, cultist Serafin Hernandez drove past a police roadblock without stopping, ignoring the cars that set off in hot pursuit.
Hernandez believed El Padrino's line about invisibility, and he seemed surprised when officers trailed him to his destination in Matamoros. Even so, the smuggler was arrogant, inviting police to shoot him, since the bullets would merely bounce off. They arrested him instead, along with cult member David Martinez.
and drove the pair back to Rancho Santa Elena, where a preliminary search turned up marijuana and firearms.
Disciples Elio Hernandez and Sergio Martinez stumbled into the net while police were on hand and all four prisoners were interrogated through the evening, revealing their tales of black magic, torture and human sacrifice with a perverse kind of pride.
Next morning, police returned to the ranch in force, discovering the Malodros shed, where Adolfo Constanzo kept his nganga, brimming with blood, spiders, scorpions, a dead black cat, a turtle shell, bones, deer antlers, and a human brain.
Captive cult members directed searchers to Constanzo's private cemetery. An excavation began, revealing 15 mutilated corpses by the 16th of April. In addition to Mark Kilroy and other victims already named, the body count included two renegade federal narcotics officers, Joaquin Manzo and Miguel Garcia.
along with three men who were never identified. The hunt for Adolfo Constanzo was on, and police raided his luxury home at Atizaban, outside Mexico City, on the 17th of April, discovering stockpiles of gay pornography and a hidden ritual chamber.
The discoveries at Rancho Santa Elena made international headlines, and sightings of Constanzo were reported as far away as Chicago. But in fact, he had already returned to Mexico City, hiding out in a small apartment with Sara Aldrete and three other disciples. On the 2nd of May, thinking to save herself, Sara tossed a note out the window. It read,
End quote. A passerby found the note and kept it to himself, believing it to be someone's lame attempt at humor.
On the 6th of May, neighbors called police to complain of a loud, vulgar argument in Constanzo's apartment, some say accompanied by gunshots. As patrolmen arrived on the scene, Adolfo Constanzo opened fire with an Uzi, touching off a 45-minute battle in which, miraculously, only one policeman was wounded.
When Adolfo Constanzo realized that escape was impossible, he handed his weapon to cultist Alvaro de Leon Valdez, a professional hitman nicknamed El Duby, with bizarre new orders. As El Duby recalls the scene, and I quote, 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. Adolfo Constanzo and Quintana were dead when police stormed the apartment, arresting El Duby and Sara Aldrete. In the aftermath of the raid, 14 cultists were indicted on various charges, including multiple murder,
weapons and narcotics violations, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. In August of 1990, El Duby was convicted of killing Constanzo and Quintana, drawing a 30-year prison term. Cultists Juan Fragosa and Jorge Montes were both convicted in the Ramon Esquivel murder and sentenced to 35 years each.
Omar Oreya, convicted in the same case, died of AIDS before he could be sentenced. Sara Aldrete was acquitted of Constanzo's murder, but sentenced to a six-year term on conviction of criminal association. She was nearing the end of that sentence in 1994.
when her long-delayed trial on multiple murder charges brought another conviction and a 60-year prison term. Police in Mexico are still uncertain of Adolfo Constanzo's final body count, some officers trying to clear every ritualistic murder on the books by posthumously blaming Constanzo. On the other hand, in June 1989,
Martin Quintana's sister told police that Adolfo's first madrina was still at large, practicing her blood magic in Guadalajara. And from jail, before he died, Omar Orea said, I don't think the religion will end with us, because it has a lot of people in it. They have found a temple in Monterey that isn't even related to us. It will continue.
I don't know.
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And so ends the tale of the godfather of Matamoros. Next week, we return to old Jack for his final canonical victim. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. This podcast had not been possible if it hadn't been for my dear patrons that invest in this show via Patreon.
My special thanks go out to those of you that have stayed loyal for a long time. Those of you I would like to give an extra heartfelt thank you to are...
Your monthly contributions really helps keep this podcast thriving. You have my deepest gratitude. As always, thank you, dear listener, for listening. And feel free to leave a review on your favorite podcast app, Facebook, or website. And please, do subscribe to the show if you enjoy it. Thank you. Good night, and good luck.
