Black Magic and Murder at Rancho Santa Elena

Mark Kilroy

Sara Aldrete and Adolfo Constanzo

In the early hours of March 14, 1989, American college student Mark Kilroy was kidnapped while celebrating Spring Break at a bar in Matamoros, Mexico. Kilroy, who grew up in the town of Santa Fe, Texas, was a pre-med student at the University of Texas at Austin. He had crossed over the U.S.-Mexican border by foot with Bradley Moore, Bill Huddleston, and Brent Martin. He and his friends were among the 15,000 spring tourists crowding Álvaro Obregón, the main street of Matamoros. One of the group's stops was the London Pub, a bar popular with spring breakers. It was two in the morning when Bill suggested the group head back to their hotel on South Padre Island, Texas. As the group left the London Pub, they spotted Mark Kilroy leaning against a car while talking to a girl. Bradley and Brent separated from the group and ended up at a restaurant while Mark stopped by a house on Álvaro Obregón to say goodnight to the girl he had been talking to. Bill met up with Mark and the two headed to the restaurant to find Bradley and Brent, but Bill had to stop in an alley to urinate. When Bill came out Mark was nowhere to be seen. Thinking he had gone on to the restaurant, Bill headed that way too. Bradley and Brent were still at the restaurant but Mark had not shown up. The group searched for him for hours, even though by this time in the morning the streets were empty and businesses had closed. The friends then crossed the border back into Brownsville, Texas, where they had parked their car, and when they saw that Mark was not there, they concluded that he had gone to a hotel with someone else. When they woke up the next day and still had not heard from Mark, they contacted the police. Little did they know that their friend's disappearance would lead to the downfall of a murderous cult and the cult's leader Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo.

Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo was born in Miami, Florida, on November 1, 1962. His mother was a Cuban immigrant who moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico after Adolfo's father died. While in San Juan, she remarried and had Adolfo baptized as Catholic. However, she also took her son on trips to Haiti to learn about Voudou. The family returned to Miami in 1972 and Adolfo's stepfather passed away shortly after, leaving the family a good sum of money. As a teenager, Adolfo served as an apprentice to a sorcerer who practiced Palo Mayombe, a religion involving animal sacrifice. One of Adolfo's fellow practitioners was his new stepfather, his mother's third husband who was also a drug dealer. Throughout his teenage years, Adolfo and his mother were arrested for theft, vandalism, and shoplifting.

Constanzo moved to Mexico City as an adult and it was there that he met Martin Quintana, Jorge Montes, and Omar Orea. The men started a profitable business casting good luck spells. For the spells to work, Constanzo and his associates sacrificed chickens, goats, snakes, zebras, and even lion cubs. The group's clients included rich drug dealers and hitmen who had been introduced to Constanzo by his other clients, several high-ranking corrupt policemen. His rich and violent clients enjoyed the gruesome animal sacrifices that Constanzo and his group would perform, but for Constanzo that wasn't enough. He soon began raiding cemeteries for human remains to put in his nganga, the cauldron he used for rituals, but then decided that remains weren't powerful enough. Soon mutilated bodies were being found in and around Mexico City, the victims of Constanzo's live sacrifices. The torture and murder escalated until Constanzo declared that his nganga needed the power that only the brain of an American student could provide.

By this time, around 1988, Constanzo believed that he and his dark magic were responsible for the success of some of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels and he demanded that the Calzada cartel make him a full business party. After his demands were rejected, seven members of the Calzada family went missing. When their bodies were found, they were without fingers, toes, ears, and brains. One body was even missing a spine. Constanzo joined forces with another cartel, the Hernandez brothers, and a young woman named Sara Aldrete. Aldrete, born in Matamoros, had been attending Texas Southernmost University in Brownsville, Texas when she met Constanzo. Her plans to become a physical education teacher were set aside when she became the high priestess of Constanzo's cult, which was now headquartered at Rancho Santa Elena, a compound in the Mexican desert. In addition to performing ritual murders there, Constanzo also stored cocaine and marijuana shipments at the ranch.

Throughout his dealings with the cartel, meeting Aldrete, and moving to Rancho Santa Elena, Constanzo never relented on his desire to place an American student's brain in his nganga. On the evening of March 13, 1989, he sent his henchmen out to find the perfect victim. As night turned to morning, the gang came across Mark Kilroy as he was standing in the street waiting for Bill Huddleston. They asked him if he needed a ride and as he was approaching their truck, he was grabbed by Serafín Hernández García and Malio Fabio Ponce Torres. Kilroy was able to escape the first group of men but was intercepted by another vehicle as he was running down the street. When the henchmen returned to Rancho Santa Elena, they left Kilroy handcuffed in the back of the car. The next morning, the ranch caretaker fed him bread and water. Twelve hours later, Constanzo and his men retrieved him from the car. They tortured and sexually assaulted him throughout the night, finally killing him and dismembering him with a machete.

Immediately after Mark Kilroy's disappearance, authorities assumed that he was just another spring breaker recovering from a bender and that he would soon turn up. However, Ken Kilroy, Mark's uncle, just happened to be a U.S. Customs agent in Los Angeles. Upon learning of his nephew's disappearance, he was able to use his influence to establish a police task force in Brownsville. Matamoros police, not wanting to harm the local tourism industry with bad publicity, suggested that Kilroy had actually gone missing in Brownsville, but his friends insisted that wasn't the case. On March 26 the Kilroy case was featured on America's Most Wanted and Kilroy's parents offered a $15,000 reward for help locating their son. Despite receiving hundreds of tips, none of them were solid enough to pursue.

On April 1, 1989, a car drove through a routine checkpoint near Rancho Santa Elena without stopping. Authorities decided to follow the car instead of pulling over the driver, who just happened to be one of Mark Kilroy's kidnappers, Serafín Hernández García. They followed him all the way back to the ranch, where a quick search led them to cult paraphernalia and traces of marijuana. Upon returning to Matamoros, the police spoke with several informants about the cult's activities. They returned to the ranch on April 9 and arrested Serafín Hernández García, his uncle Elio, cult members David Serna Valdez and Sergio Martínez Salinas, and Domingo Reyes Bustamante, the ranch's caretaker. The caretaker identified Kilroy through a photograph and García confessed to his part in the murder and kidnapping, as well as several other murders. On April 11 he led police to the remains of Mark Kilroy, which had been buried on the grounds of Rancho Santa Elena. 15 additional bodies were also unearthed. Authorities believed that these weren't just random sacrifices, but were Constanzo's rival drug dealers. Police seized weapons and drugs from Rancho Santa Elena and they burned down the shack where Mark Kilroy had been tortured.

During the arrests and search of Rancho Santa Elena, Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo had managed to flee to Mexico City. García had identified him and Sara Aldrete as the leaders of the cult and authorities had tied him to the mutilated bodies found around Mexico City in 1987 and 1988. They also believed that he had murdered Aldrete because she knew too much. However, they received a tip about a woman matching Aldrete's description and while searching for her, spotted one of the cult members, Álvaro de León Valdés, buying groceries. They followed him to an apartment building, and on May 6, 1989, they surrounded the building with the intent of raiding it. Constanzo happened to spot them out of a window and started firing shots. After 45 minutes spent exchanging gunfire with the police, Constanzo ran out of ammunition and ordered Álvaro de León Valdés to kill him. Sara Aldrete ran out of the building screaming that Constanzo was dead. Upon her arrest, she denied participation in the murders and stated she just an initiate of the cult, not a leader. She also said that she had been held a prisoner in the Mexico City apartment.

While several cult members confessed to their part in the murder of Mark Kilroy and several other murders, Aldrete continues to insist upon her innocence, even though she was convicted and sentenced to thirty years in prison. In 2003 she spoke to the press and said that authorities would never know what had actually happened at the ranch because the only person who really knew, Constanzo, was dead. She proclaimed her belief in God and said she would not ask for forgiveness because she was innocent. In another interview, she claimed that police had tortured her into confessing to crimes she did not commit. She also published an autobiography, detailing how she was allegedly kidnapped by Constanzo, was denied a fair trial, and raped and beaten in prison. She also claimed that it was the police who actually killed Constanzo.

Two months after they learned of their son's death, Mark Kilroy's parents founded the Mark Kilroy Foundation to promote drug awareness, education, and prevention through the "Just Say No" campaign. The foundation also provides scholarships to students pursuing medical careers, a future that their son was denied, and counselors from the foundation visit schools and hold free outdoor activities during the summer. In 1990, James Kilroy wrote a book about his son's ordeal called Sacrifice. On the 20th anniversary of their son's murder, James and his wife Helen visited the city Matamoros to thank everyone who had helped search for Mark and bring his killers to justice.

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