Transcript
The prosecutors podcast is brought to you by progressive Web drivers who saved by switching save over $700 on average quote now at progressive.com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliate national annual average insurance savings by new customers surveyed who saved with progressive between June 2020 and May 2021. Potential savings will vary. I'm Edward Conlon, host of Talk To Me, the new podcast about the origin of hostage negotiations through the firsthand accounts of the NYPD's hostage negotiation team founders. We delve into real cases big and small to hear how the team pioneered the use of psychology to save lives. Their motto was Talk to me. It changed policing forever. Listen to follow rate and review. Talk to me now at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Beginning October 19th. And and and and I'm Bret and I'm Alice, and we are the prosecutors. Today on the prosecutors magic spells, black cauldrons, human sacrifices and drug trafficking. Welcome to the world of narco satanism. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the prosecutors, I'm Bret, and in a Halloween twist, I am not joined today by Alice. We have a special surprise and a special guest. Alison Dixon, author extraordinaire, podcaster extraordinaire, has agreed to join us today to talk about something that she is an expert in, which is cults. And we're going to be talking about a call today and how it relates to a Hollywood movie called Borderland. So let's all welcome Alison to the show. Hello, Alison. Hello, Bret, is this thing on? I'm still processing the fact you're even having me here on your show. In fact, what I've been comparing it to is, let's say you're like leaving your house to go run some errands, right? And you're getting into your really perfunctory, functional Honda to go get some groceries and then your buddy pulls up in a Bentley and he's like, You want to take this thing for a spin and then tosses me the keys, and I'm like, standing there. Like what? That's that's pretty much what happened in my head when you invited me on your show. Well, as those of you out there who know who listen to Ding Dong Darkness Time, which is Alison's show, you know that she's being very kind. She has an awesome show. If you guys are into things like cults or anything, the sort of the McJob interesting. I mean that she's said she's done so many interesting things, from cannibalism to the occult in art. And it's one of my favorite shows and you guys to check it out if you like that and we are very lucky to have her because I dabble in this stuff. But she's the expert, so she's going to bring a lot of expertise today in what we are talking about. And I think before we get into the story itself, let's talk about the movie that we are going to be watching tonight and hopefully Alison can join us. You never know if she can't, she can. And not o'clock central time on Twitter. I'll be watching this movie. I've actually never seen it, so I'm excited to see it. But Alison is an expert, so tell us a little bit about Borderland. OK, so I feel like I need to prep your expectations just a tad because this film is, well, the budget is kind of minimal. I don't think that they hired a sound editor per say, however. Well, this is an independent movie, right? It is. However, however, its most famous actor is one of the most beloved, probably of all time. Sean Astin of Lord of the Rings of Rudy of Stranger Things. He's in it, and he's he's not a very nice guy. So if you want a chance to see him play against type? Definitely. Check out Borderland. It was released in 2007 as part of the After Dark Horror Film Festival, which is sort of an irregularly running kind of situation, like it's not like something that happens every single year. In fact, when I looked up on Wikipedia, I think the last thing they did was in 2011. So it's been a while since there was an after dark horror film lineup, but this was one of, I think, eight films that was released in 2007. As part of that festival and its stars Sean Astin and a bunch of other actors you've never seen. I guarantee you I tried to kill myself, but it is a well-crafted, overall independent horror film about a group of college kids that head down to Mexico for spring break, and they cross paths with some very wrong people that are involved in some very wrong ritualistic murder type behavior. And it is all based, of course, on the true story of the murder of Mark Kilroy by the narco Satanist cult led by Adolfo Costanzo. And if you're out there wondering, yes, narcos satanism is apparently a real thing. This is something we're going to talk about as we go on. You know, you hear a lot about the satanic panic, and there's a sort of notion that it's entirely fictional and that there there really wasn't nothing behind it. But there are some weird little stories. We talked about one last Halloween and we talked about a vampire cult that had some of these aspects, and this is so far beyond that. I mean, that was a couple of teenagers who got mixed up in fantasy and just went off the deep end. These are adults, hard core people, business people, drug cartels who truly believed in this stuff. And it's crazy to think that a movie like Borderlands could be based in reality. But it was. I do want to say one thing about the after dark horror film festival. It really was great. If you like horror movies, a lot of independent movies, some lake dead terrible. Grave dancers, great grave dancers, one of the best independent horror movies ever made, you should check that out. I'm really excited to see this one. So that's our our pitch for horror, but I think we should go ahead and dive into this insane story that Alison has already kind of set up for us. A Made for Hollywood. So crazy that when you see it in a horror movie, you're like, Well, that's completely unrealistic. It might be scary, but it's completely unrealistic. But the most horrific thing about Borderlands is that it is based in one of the most horrific murders, and we're going to do our best not to just overwhelm you with how horrific all of this stuff was. But just know going into this, this is far worse than anything you're going to see. You nailed that right on the head. Brett, I, as I was watching Borderlands, I genuinely thought, Wow, this is so much tamer because I saw the film actually many years ago. I can't even remember when, but it was a long time ago. It's kind of how I got the seed of it in my head to even research this cult. And I've listened to a lot of podcasts and things, and I read a book called Buried Secrets about It a few years back. So it's already been in my head for a number of years, but I will say the film is tamer and it's pretty. It's pretty intense, all on its own. But I don't know that a film could capture what happens here and maintain even an R rating. It would go beyond it. So and I'm aware of the audience of your show and how you try to keep things not too crazy. But I will say what we're going to tell you about today is also not. It's also going to be a kind of tamed down so as not to. So any of you eating right now would be able to continue doing so. And let me just say the other thing about this. This is a case that it's not not well-known player. People know this story. It's not as covered as I think it probably should be. And honestly, it deserves an entire series. Yes, this is the kind of thing you could do an entire show on because there's so much depth to it, and we are only going to scratch the surface, particularly when we get into things like, and you forgive me if I mispronounce this. But Santeria, which I only know from that song, I don't practice Santeria. That is literally my knowledge of Santeria. I tried to learn about it. And man, you're talking about going down a rabbit hole. We're trying to figure out Santeria. And the other thing Paolo, Mayumi, Mayumi, and that's all we have, Alison, because she's going to tell us about this. But as usual, we're going to start with a timeline and sort of get into this. Alison, if you want to take us away, feel free. Adolfo de Jesus Consenso was born in 1962 in Miami, Florida, to a mother who was only 15 years of age, and his father died not long after his mother ended up picking up the family and moving to Puerto Rico for a number of years. Initially, Adolfo was raised Catholic and was actually an altar boy as a child. However, his mother became further and further embroiled in a number of the Afro-Cuban religions that are common in the areas of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Florida and whatnot. And let me ask you this, so that might seem contradictory that he's an altar boy. They're very Catholic, and yet they're involved in this. But in reality, don't a lot of these religions sort of have parts of Catholicism sort of taken into them and there's some overlap? Oh, absolutely. I mean, Catholicism is probably the most ritualistic of the Judeo-Christian religions, if you will. You know, when you think of the the holy sacraments, the communion and whatnot, transubstantiation and yeah, that's a whole other rabbit hole. But his mother, she hooked up to say the least with a few different people throughout Adolphus childhood. And a lot of these guys were either involved in the drug trade or involved in some of these religions. She eventually settled with a person who did practice Palo Miami, and I just want to get this out of the way really quick that I am not an expert in this. It is impossible to be an expert in this if you are not a practitioner of it and you're not invited into sort of the secret world of it. So the things that we're going to talk about here are things that I've been able to glean from my research, but they are going to be incomplete. So if you want to come at me, please feel free. But I am just throwing a disclaimer out there. What I gather is that Paloma Ameobi is like a pro auto version of Santeria. There are three main Afro-Cuban religions that are practiced in Cuba. These are religions that were brought over from slaves that were transported over to Cuba. Many. Many years ago, many centuries ago, and they've sort of spread around down in that part of the world and into the United States. So a lot of people that I have researched say that if you want to learn Santeria usually start with Paloma Babe. These are very naturalistic kind of religions. They are not. They don't have a moral code like Christianity, for instance, would have, right? There is no good or evil. It is. The practitioner chooses their own path. It's not concerned with an afterlife per say. It is elemental, I guess, is the word that I would pick. So his mother got really involved in these because of the men that she was involved in. She probably had some other issues going on mentally and emotionally. She started sacrificing animals in their home, and their home was littered with all sorts of sacrificed animals. The neighbors were not a fan, you know, for instance, she she got very involved in this. This is the environment that Adolfo grew up in. I want to backtrack really quick. And by the way, if you listen to my show, you'll be used to me doing this. Think of this cult as sort of a Charles Manson meets Jim Jones in the Mexican desert border town area, but then add in a bunch of the occult with it and ritualistic murder, and also the fact that the Charles Manson murders sort of mimicked satanic ritual. Whereas this stuff these guys believed what they were doing was real magic. And so at some point, his mom has all these views and she's getting deeper and deeper into this religion, and she's bringing people into the family who are involved in this kind of stuff. But then it's not just they're involved in religion, they're also involved in the drug trade. Yes. And how do those things kind of come together? Adolfo Costanzo is such an interesting combination of all the different aspects of his life, and his mother is very much present in everything he's going to do. But so are the men in his life who show up and are part of the drug trade. Absolutely. And also his mother was feeding into his head from a very early age that he was destined for greatness. She fed this to him that he was going to become this great and powerful sorcerer and end this religion. She trained him up in it. He and along with the people that she became involved with. It is, I don't know. I don't know if I want to say common, but to see Paloma and be used in conjunction with the drug trade. It often meant that the drug dealers were using a lot of superstition in order to protect their smuggling operations, and they wanted to throw everything they could at the universe and, you know, protected. The drug dealers are very superstitious by nature, and you kind of have to be if your whole entire livelihood is depending on a very illegal activity, illegal trade. So I like the sailors of our there. I mean, you're kind of, yeah, honestly, you're not wrong. They're going to resist the urge to throw in a sea change. Oh my God. That would be great. Well, in fact, his mother thought he was going to be a big sorcerer and eventually he becomes one. Yes, right? And he rises up in the face. Get this, though he actually sort of kind of predicted the shooting of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley. OK, well, there you go. Yeah, yeah. He predicted that somebody would attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan, and this was when he was a child. And mind you, this is all taking place in the 80s. I don't think we need to really over specify that, but this is all very 1980s. So and Reagan was shot in, what, 81? I think it was. So we're still in the 70s here. He's still a child. Well, not quite into the 70s, but it was something like he did predicted that that empowered him when Reagan was actually shot, that empowered him greatly, even though it was the typical fortune tellers intuition, which is to say any good con artist can pick up and say things the right way to make it sound like you are making a prediction. And Consenso actually makes a habit of this later on when he meets his godmother. But we'll get to her shortly. Yeah, so let's go ahead and fast forward, I guess, to 1984. As we said, we're in the 80s. This is the cocaine cowboys days and Costanzo is going to be involved in the drug trade as well. Up to this point, his family has been moving sort of back and forth from Puerto Rico to Miami. Various men have come in and out of his life. Some of them introduced him to the drug trade they've introduced him to. Ideas like drugs aren't bad because they're killing the non-believers. You know, the people who are not part of our faith or whatnot. And so he sort of by the 1984, is 22 years old. He's come into his own, and at this point, he moves to Mexico. City, he's a good looking guy. We're going to put a picture of him. You know, he's got like a nice little mullet fur coat. Yeah, he does some modeling work. In fact. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He's doing some modeling to make money, but he's also using his good looks and his psychic abilities, and he's telling fortunes and all and reading people's charts and doing astrology. And he's ingratiating himself with the rich and the famous and the powerful people in Mexico City. He's doing these ritual cleansings, which I don't know a lot about, but he's doing them limpia. Yeah, it is based on the Spanish word limpia Olympios. It is literally to clean in Spanish. Yeah. So he's he's doing that. And you can just imagine this young, attractive man in Mexico City cleansing the wealthy women of the city. I'm sure you know he's and this whole time he's he's recording all this is keeping journals and these will all be recovered later, which give us a real sort of insight into what he's doing at the time. And as Alison said earlier, one of the things his mom did was she sacrificed a lot of animals and their sort of power in that, and that is something he's doing as well. He's sacrificing animals in this ritual that he's doing snakes, chickens, lion cubs. It's rare to even get lion cubs. He would raise the price right on all these. He had prices written for every animal. You could have a chicken sacrifice for you or for, you know, 20 bucks, five to 20 bucks and then you go up. I think it was the lion cub that was like $40000 and there were boa constrictors. That was another one. He would get tens of thousands of dollars if he sacrificed a boa constrictor. He had a lot of faithful customers in his journals. They found that he had probably about 30 to 35. I think it was very faithful customers that regularly sought him out. He was a spiritual consultant for the rich and famous of Mexico City, and it's kind of hard to, I guess, encapsulate that because I think I try to think of an American version of this something in our culture. And it doesn't quite I mean, you just think of these kind of charlatans like these fake psychics or something like that that you, you know, might see in the in the popular culture here. But nothing like this. This is completely different. Let me ask you this sort of an interesting thing, particularly given the time if you read about Constanza, you often see people say that he's gay and there is a point where the Mexican police are really causing problems in the homosexual community because they learn that. And so they think this is all some sort of like gay satanic cult. You can imagine how that played in 1984. So what is sort of that fact? Was that a problem for him in the religion that he was in? Or was it sort of more accepted in that? Was it something he kept secret? How did that work? That's a very good question, Bret there in Palo Miami. There is no LGBT at all. In fact, they don't even really like women. You can have your godmothers and whatnot. But when you're in the sort of room where you're doing the practice, they don't even like that. It's very it's very traditional in terms of its gender roles, its sex roles and whatnot. So Costanzo, when he got to Mexico City, he met a couple of gentlemen and that he there were disciples, essentially, but they were also his lovers. Martin Rodriguez and Omar Ochoa were the two men, but he branded himself as a bisexual and that'll feed into later when he hooks up with, again, the godmother, Sarah Allready. We'll get to her later. But no, this also contributes to the fact that Adolfo, what he's doing here is not real. Pablo, my own baby, it's not real. Santeria, it isn't authentic in the sense. What we're seeing here is a man who is becoming consumed with his own power and what he can do with the influence that he can gain. And he is bastardizing this religion to suit his ends. And so if he happens to have gay lovers, even though that is frowned upon, so be it. It doesn't matter. After a certain point, in fact, what he even does is he designates one of his lovers as a woman and the other lover as the man. So he he's creating loopholes, but no concerns. So it's largely believed that he was actually gay, and everything else that he did was a way to sort of work around that or make it work into the religion that he was practicing. Let me ask you this. During this period, he is cultivating relationships of politicians with police. And, you know, typically when you think of someone who's in the drug trade, they're doing that through bribes. But that's not really what he's doing. There may be some of that. But a lot of it is this magic and sort of he's offering his powers to them. And you mentioned earlier the John Hinckley thing, and he used that as sort of an example of his power. Are there any stories you know of of him doing things that would have convinced these people that he actually does have this ability? Like what is it? What is it that got powerful people to believe that this random guy who shows up in Mexico City actually can do this? He knew how to play the game. The drug game very, very well. First and foremost, Adolfo had great knowledge and great charisma. And let me stop myself here whenever I am saying things like this, I am not admiring this man. He is a monster. First and foremost, but his charisma got him a long way with the right kind of people to get him to where he was. So he would do things like he was really good at robbing other drug dealers. He was really good at robbing the DEA or fooling the DEA. He got involved in a lot of different drug heists and drug operations, and he wasn't afraid to kill people. That was the other thing he. He had no compunction whatsoever about killing his enemies to get what he wanted and cheating to get ahead. And it fed into this image that he was this very powerful individual. And when you add that into that charisma and his willingness to sacrifice animals and the self-possession that he had, you could see that, yes, there were definitely some bribes involved. But all of these people were very superstitious in and of themselves, and they could just see the power that he had just as a whole and they bought into it. I mean, yeah, lots of levels of law enforcement, lots of levels of rich and famous and politicians were just all into this guy, which just makes you want to imagine what it must have been like to be in 1980s Mexico City with this guy with a mullet and a fur coat, cutting heads off the chickens and saying, you know you're a drug operation is going to succeed. But here's the thing. He was making it succeed on the power of his ability to play the game, as well as he did if he had just been a straight up drug dealer without all the magic mumbo jumbo. He probably would have risen to the level of like a I don't want to say Escobar, but he probably could have been if he hadn't been so consumed by his own B.S. for lack of a better word. So in 1984, he moved to Mexico City. By 1986, he's ready to make one of the biggest I mean, a move that if you put it in The Godfather, part four would be amazing. I mean, look at this and say, we don't admire this guy. He is as evil as they come. But man, as we said before, you could not write this story and some of the stuff he did. Have you made a movie about it? I mean, leave, leave aside the murder we're going to get to in a second. I mean, this episode in 1986 is insane. So he's in Mexico City. It could be a movie. It totally could be a movie. It totally could be a movie. Somebody out there make this movie. You know, you have these powerful drug cartels. One of them was the causada family. There's a family of seven people who are who are running this massive drug operation. They're very powerful. And Costanzo, he's doing magical work for them like he does with everybody, and he starts to see himself as responsible for their success, completely responsible. He's the guy. So the reason they are making so much money is because of him. And so he comes to them and he says, Look, I want to be a full member of your cartel. Simple request, given the fact that he's responsible for all their success. They're like, you know, the magic is nice, but we have this operation going on that's actually making us successful. So thanks, but no thanks. We're going to go ahead and move on. And this is like the moment in The Godfather when the movie director does the whole like the thing with Tom where he does the like. You know you, Diego Guinea, Greaseball Goomba and Tom's like, I'm Scotch Irish and he's like, Well, listen here, my kraut MC friend. Nobody talks to me this way, and the next day, spoiler, he wakes up with the horse and his his bad right. So the same thing here. Yeah. So, oh, he does this. But it's so much worse than a horse head. Oh my god, he almost wish the worst that is so quaint. I know a horse that is so great. Do remember when the horse had used to be shocking? That's no longer the case. Now it's almost like, Oh, a cute little horse he had. So yeah, you. You nailed it, Bret. This is the equivalent, though say, say you are a member of the KALSADA family or any. Just say you yourself. Put yourself in your own shoes and say you went to church and you put five bucks in the in the offering plate or whatever, and you're going about your business. And then, you know, all of a sudden the preacher walks up to you. And he's like, Bret, I feel like because I've done all this work for you, the spiritual work for you on your behalf that I should actually get to come work in your job for, you know, whatever, and you're just like, Well, you're just my spiritual guide. You're not my you like, you're not qualified to be a prosecutor, you know, and all of us, this is kind of probably how the Zetas looked at this. Like, Listen, we give you some money. You give us this little spiritual like, you know, you make us feel good. You kind of lubricate the gears in a certain way and you know, you're just an expense right off. You're not like the guy. And so that's probably how they viewed it, like, Oh, that's adorable. He thinks he can come and do our jobs. He thinks it could be part of this gang. Well, unfortunately for them all, Dafoe didn't see it that way. He apparently acted very nonchalant about the rejection, but he gathers together his crew, which is kind of amassing at that point. He's got a good handful of people with him. He's got his two, his two guys that I mentioned earlier. But he's gathered a couple other disciples with them and they go back to the calls out of place and they have themselves a bit of a massacre. And the way it's initially presented to the media and the law enforcement is that this whole family is just gone missing. They're not there, but they find these other ritualistic things like candles and evidence that something ritualistic and weird went down at the kalsada in a home or a state. And then they found the bodies. And I don't know how much you want to share about them, friends. Oh, it's just just lay it out for God. Earmuffs for your children in the car. OK, I'm pulling this from an article. This is in my outline. I am quoting from Murder PDEA, but this is also corroborated by other things that I've read and listen to on this case. So Guillermo Calzada and six members of his household vanished. They were reported missing on May 1st. Police came notice melted candles, other evidence of a strange religious ceremony at the office. Six more days elapse before officers began fishing. Mutilated remains from the Panga River. Seven corpses were recovered in the course of a week, all bearing marks of sadistic torture. Fingers, toes, ears removed hearts. Sex organs excised. Part of the spine ripped from one body to others missing their brains. The vanished parts, as it turns out, a gone to feed constanze, those cauldron of blood. We're going to get to that in a moment. I really want to spend a second on that cauldron. The man has a cauldron. I mean, just like just just stop for a minute. Yeah, you know, and think about that double double toll and travel called her or Firebird and cauldron bubble. This guy actually had that. Oh, oh, he very much did. He killed the calls us, so he needs another family to get in with, essentially. And that's when he finds the Hernandez's and they are going to bring him into contact with him. One of the most important people in this entire story. Sara Al Diretta So this is not 1886 when he wipes out the as it, which is just amazing that he could do that. 1987 he is going to meet Sarah Aldrete. She is actually the girlfriend of a drug dealer named Gilberto Sosa. She is a Mexican national. And she's, you know, this is crazy. But she's currently in college where she is an honor student and a cheerleader at Texas Southern Merced College. So not the person you would expect would eventually become the co-leader of a murderous cult. But that's exactly who she is going to end up being. Yeah, Sara is. Oh, wow. She is an interesting character in all of this because, yes, she is the sort of model student. Nobody ever had anything to say about Sarah that wasn't a fuss of with praise, but she was involved with some of the wrong elements. Costanzo. Now we roll back for a minute to remember the fact that he he has a sexuality incongruity with his religion. So he's also using these deaths to feed his magic ritual, which we'll get to in a moment and explain how he goes about all that. But he also knows that he needs a female component to increase the power of his magic. And he already knew who Sosa was. He knew that he was involved with this woman. Sarah Sarah, by the way, is a very striking young woman. She was very athletic. She was six foot one. She's taller than me. I am a very tall woman. She's taller than me, so I just imagine the statuesque lady. She's beautiful. I mean, in the same way that he's very attractive. He picked a beautiful woman to be his second. He sees her, and he knows that this is the one. This is his petrina, because at this point, he's the Padrino El Padrino The Godfather. Is what he calls himself, he needs his godmother, the Petrina, and she lop adrina, and she is it. Now here is how he courts her. So he finally like makes his introduction by basically chasing her down in traffic, like chasing her car down and cornering her, essentially forcing them to get out of their cars and talk to one another. He is just lean in there on the hood of the car and he is just like you. You are the one and just wailing her with all these charms. Could you imagine driving down the road having the seven? I'll do it all the time. You're talking about this is like, right, this is this how you think I met my wife. I was going to say, this is how you met your wife. That makes complete sense. But she she was beguiled by him because again, when you encounter somebody who is so self-possessed, who is so sure of himself. Yeah, you kind of start to believe what he's believe in. I mean, I can almost see it how she ends up taken in by this guy. Let me ask you this. Did she have any history in this kind of religion or call before she? Not at all. No, no, she did not. But here's how he got her to start believing is he made basically like three predictions and I don't have them exactly written down. But I will say he predicted parts of her future, and one of them was somebody you haven't spoken to in a while will contact you. That happens. And then it was something about like an offer was three predictions he made. Two of them came true. The other one was like an offer of money. It was your typical psychic hotline, again B.S. But it was just close enough, just like when you read your horoscope for the day and it feels like it fits. She was taken in by it. So here's the thing, though, is she fell into this magic. She fell into his charisma. The only problem was he didn't want anything to do with her on a romantic level at all. She was more like a sisterly kind of person. Now he did involve himself with her physically. Well, you know, a little bit here and there just to like, prove a point or try to maybe prove a point to himself. But their relationship was largely platonic because he he had no interest in women, but she served a purpose. She served a means to an end just by being there, by being his female half, he thought that was enough to satisfy the magical demands. And so she fell into it, and she started practicing Paloma B rituals and thinking that it was helping her succeed in school, like she started attributing this to her life like it mattered. And at some point, she began to believe that she was capable of doing these same sort of magical things, right? Like, she's casting spells, and I think they ended up calling her the flirt because a lot of these people had, you know, kind of nicknames and she was one of them. She had a great charisma. Eventually, she just started recruiting people into their group, and that ended up becoming one of her main jobs. Within the cult was recruitment, which is anybody knows anything about a cult. You need to get their numbers up if you're going to be a cult. So she was apparently quite good for that. So she was living a very much a double life. She was in Mexico doing this black magic and being part of this cult recruiting people into it. And then she would go to school in Texas and be this great school girl. And for a while there, it seemed to be working, but it definitely seemed like it was destined to not hold up after a while. And so there's this whole border thing, this borderland thing going on here where you have her in school right across the border in Brownsville. Is that right? Yes. And then in Matamoros, Mexico, is where the cult is based at this point. Mm hmm. So I guess he is now moved from Mexico City up to Matamoros? Yes. And at this point, he not only heads a cult, but it's also a thoroughgoing drug smuggling out. Yes. Right? Yes. He he really was quite successful at being a drug dealer. He ended up being quite wealthy. With all of this, he was able to buy condominiums all over like he maintained homes in Mexico City. He had very expensive cars. And not just with his magic. The guy was a player. It would be one thing, I guess. Maybe it's not fair to compare him to Manson because Charles Manson, you know, he had arms, but he was at best, a very mediocre musician. He was never going to be a beach boy or whatever he was aiming to be when he was trying to hook up with them. Whereas Costanzo the game he was playing, he was actually quite good at. And so that rose him in status. But it was largely the more he practiced this magic that he was. Doing the more, the more confident he became that he really was a frickin wizard. I mean, he was really believing it. And these people who are part of his cartel, it's like a cult and a cartel at the same time. They believe that all of this magic was helping them to succeed in the drug trade. And like you said, drug dealers then and now are very superstitious. Every time you go out on a drug run, it's dangerous. You're liable to get caught. You need a lot of luck. Here's a patron saint of drug dealers. Anybody who's seen Breaking Bad will know what I'm talking about, but yeah, there is that whole aspect of it, too. And like so many things, this this sort of escalates. So they start out with animal sacrifices. We've talked about that a lot. Then they sort of move on to, well, let's dig up some old bodies, get some human bones and we'll use those. And then at some point, the natural progression is well, if animal sacrifices are good and old human bones are better, human sacrifices are going to be awesome. So let's do that. And at that point, they start to sacrifice. Yes. And that is I want to say again, this is very unique to them. This is not Paloma. Bombay does not involve itself in human sacrifice, life, human sacrifice. Let me ask you something about that. And you may not know the answer to this, and maybe only he knows the answer to this. How much of this was? This is really helpful to get rid of my enemies because we're going to sacrifice them. And how much of it was he actually believed that the sacrifices were going to give him power? I honestly do think that for the most part, Costanzo was convinced of what he was capable of. And I do think that he did believe that his rituals were helping. However, he knows better than anybody as well, or knew rather that human sacrifice was not part of the religion. That was a conscious choice that he made to further empower the magic that he was working with. Paolo Bambi typically works with animal sacrifice or recovered bones. Right? It is not live human killing. There have been some incidents of grave robbing associated with it. So that's, you know, and that happens from time to time. So I don't want to absolve them completely of that because you'll find human skulls sometimes involved in some of these rituals. However, most of it is centered around finding like, say, bones in a forest of a dead animal or using dirt from a human grave. If you can't get a hold of the bone, a little dirt from the grave will do. This is what what he was doing because Constanza was already killing people as part of the drug trade. As part of being a violent drug dealer, he was killing his rivals. No compunction about doing that whatsoever. I really think that Constanza was developing himself into being a serial killer because he enjoyed killing people. I really believe that that was a big part of his motivation. At some point, he started shoehorning the religion and to justify his desire to kill people because he liked killing people. So we mentioned this earlier. I feel like now is the time to talk about it the the cauldron, the black cauldron, as Disney would say yes. Tell us about in Ganga and how it works. Oh boy, I'm going to do the very best that I can. And please take this all with a grain of salt. And you know, again, if I get this wrong, come at me. Don't send your and gang spirit after me, though, however, I ask so in an Ganga as an iron cauldron, which is layered with mostly dead stuff. Pablo in Spanish is stick. And that's because sticks like sticks you find in the woods from tree branches or whatever are a vital part of the ritual. You need to have 28 of them. I believe it's the number sticking out of it, but you build your cauldron the way you build a parfait. It's a parfait of death, so you could put anything in this. Like, for instance, blood animal bones, different types of dirt from different places, coins, booze. You could put all kinds of different gifts and things to your in Ganga spirits because what the purpose of the young Ganga is, is it is. It binds itself to a spirit and makes it the slave of the person building the end Ganga. You are essentially enslaving a spirit to do your bidding. Now, in typical practice, that spirit could be a healer. That spirit could be doing good things for people or for you. However, yes, because like I said. Before there is no moral code here, you could use that in Congo to empower spirit to do bad things. So obviously we know Adolfo is doing here, but traditionally you need a lot of these elements and you build them in layers again. And it can take months like a traditional practitioner spends a lot of time building there in Ghana. It is a very, very sacred thing. And you take someone like Adolfo, who he understands the nuts and bolts of what he's doing, but he's gotten to a point with his ego and his murderous desires that he is going to make it fit what he wants. And that is why what ended up being in his in Congo was a lot of human remains from people that he actually murdered or his cult members actually murdered. And the other thing about the in Ghana is that it's typically is full of decay. Its stakes, things spill out of it. It attracts insects. There are maggots in this thing. It is not a clean, good smelling. I will say I was once a practicing Buddhist. I had a shrine with some incense that was very inoffensive holder and full of dead stuff. Just probably wouldn't have flown in my house. I probably would have been kicked out. So in order to do this, usually people have whole rooms dedicated to it. By the times, Costanzo starts his human sacrifice ritual. He has a ranch outside Matamoros with a shed that is dedicated to receiving his human sacrifices, and the shed becomes sacred to him. At some point, the police is going to use this against him, but the shed, the sort of that sacred space that he has, and I know some of you guys out there, we have such an interesting group of people who listen to this podcast, and I know a lot of you guys, some of you are into sort of ritual religions and we got some people who are into Wicca. And, you know, they're sort of working. A spell takes a long time, and it does take very specific things to make it work. And at some point, Costanzo decides that the one of the things that gives him power is pain. And this notion that his sacrifices not only need to die, they not only need to bleed, they need to die screaming, which is just, you know, crazy something he invented, by the way. It's totally his thing. And let's just go ahead and say, and Alison said this a couple of times, and we don't normally do these kind of things. But I do want to just point out here that we are not casting aspersions on this faith in general. This is very much this person, like so many cases. I mean, whenever somebody takes a religion and uses it to murder other people, it is they are bastardizing the religion, and that's what he is doing. He is taking this faith and he is corrupting it to his own ends. And you see that again and again and you see that here. And he's he's got this all. You got a screaming thing. And in some point he decides that. I guess, I guess Mexicans are just too tough. They don't scream enough. And so he needs he needs a weak American to really make his bail work. And that's kinda what brings us to the case that we want to talk about today. That is both one of the the worst things he does, but also the thing that eventually brings him down. Yes. And now you nailed that so perfectly. I want to say, by the way, that is exactly why they went after the American student, Mark Kilroy is again our rating happening moment right now. They didn't just kill these people easily. Like we said, do you like to hear them scream? This often involves being skinned alive. This involved being mutilated while still alive. So to imagine that they had captured a lot of their main victims were cartel members, drug dealers, gang members and you know, some of them are so hardened by it. So the people that they were capturing, as Brett said, were hip to the game aware of this kind of sadism and they just weren't giving in to it. They needed that. And yes, so they knew that a American would do it. There was also this belief, too, that if it was an American college student, it would be a good brain. Mark Kilroy there. Their chosen victim was a med student from the University of Texas, and he came from a very upstanding, connected family. They I don't think they knew any of this when they picked him. But again, yes, it was part of their ultimate undoing. And this was Constance. Those associates, by the way, because he was so active with the Hernandez gang members. He. He had completely incorporated this other cartel, the Hernandez Brothers, into this cult, such to the fact that one of them, as they were kidnapping and murdering multiple drug cartel members and people in Mexico, they nabbed this kid off the street. A 14 year old kid put a hood on and brought him to the shed, did their thing with him before one of them. One of the Hernandez brothers, realized that that was his nephew didn't realize it at the time until right after they killed him. He realized, Oh, that was my nephew. And at that point? He there was a split in that guy's brain when he realized, well, I guess I'm really in it now. This is the enough demonstration of the way the Costanzo managed to warp and sort of bring people into his influence. And I think broke the minds of a lot of people. I think if you make that leap into unwittingly until it's too late killing one of your own family members, you have to buy into it in order to make it OK in your brain in some way, right? Terrible. We've got a very different kind of sponsor for this episode. The Jordan Harbinger Show, which is a podcast you really should be listening to, and I know that every day somebody tells you that you just have to listen to some podcast and you nod and say, sure, and then you never listen to it. Don't let that happen here. 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That's HelloFresh.com/ TP 65 and use code TP 65 for 65 percent off plus free shipping and find out why HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit. You know what's so interesting about this? We've been talking about this for a while. A lot of people have been murdered up to this point. Really, an unknown number of people have been murdered up to this point, and nothing has happened. Nothing. You know, it's just it's crazy to think about it. They are killing indiscriminately without any consequence whatsoever. Shocking that they're able to do that. I agree, and I think that's honestly if they investigated a lot of the murders and the missing persons cases down there, to the extent that we try to hear, maybe they wouldn't have gotten this far. But it also shows the fact that they chose to go after an American, that they had become very blind to the risks of doing so, and they'd become very empowered. And they really did think. I mean, Constancio had people convinced his cult members convinced that they were invisible and impervious to police and bullets. Let's just get out of the way. Literally invisible. OK. This is what they were thinking. One might almost call it delusional, but I don't think it quite crosses that line. Or maybe it does. I'm not a shrink. I think it's delusional. I think we can say it's delusional, and that's OK. It seems delusional in the same way that I think a lot of people say, Oh, all murderers are mentally ill, OK, let's not go there. So most, most murderers don't think they're invincible. No. And it's a testament in. And you guys may not know this, but actually, if you're an American in Mexico, you are relatively safe because even the cartels do not want to touch you because they know unfortunately. And this is this is not a good thing, but it is true. The lives of the people in Mexico are essentially worthless and a lot of ways to the authorities. Whereas if an American dies, you know a hundred people in Mexico die, it doesn't mean anything. One American dies. It's an international incident, and all of a sudden all sorts of things are going to come down on you. And you can read stories, just crazy stories about some of these cartels stopping a bus and taking all the Americans off. And then they get back on the bus and they drive off, and nobody ever sees the bus again because they kill everybody in the bus. Right? And it is. It is really a remarkable thing that this guy was so sure in his power and his magic that not only is he willing to kill an American, he is going to target an American to kill. It's like it is really difficult to even imagine him deciding to do that. And it really is a testament to just how far down this road he's gone. Yeah. And it it also shows, too. I think again, they yeah, they were giving themselves invisibility terms, but really, I think it became less about cartel work at this point and more about feeding that cauldron and building their magical status unless, you know, they were just building themselves up on that. So I think they really wanted to see what the what the cauldron would do for them, what the spirit would do for them. And so Mark Kilroy, this is in March 10th of 1989. He was a pre-med student. As I mentioned from UTI meets up with friends from Texas A&M down in South Padre Island for spring break. And there is a bunch of people down there, and that's why I say this is the second time this podcast has gone to South Padre Island. You may remember our worm farmer OK? Yes. And that case ended in South Padre Island. So we are back in South Padre. Yeah. And and I think I've heard of Matamoros Tuna from you specifically, but I know this is kind of these border towns and a lot of these sort of you just cross on over from Texas into Mexico, have yourself a great weekend, get wasted, go home. And that's what these guys were doing. And, you know, back in those days pre-9 11, it was very easy to just go over the border. You can walk across the border. You could, you know, get in and out pretty, pretty easily for a good time. And that's what they did. They were drinking. They were, you know, walking the streets of Matamoros had a lot of bars and the streets would flood with people, mostly foreign tourists, during spring break. To the point that, like one of these bars, the one that mark was actually kidnapped from or spent time in before he was kidnapped called itself what was London pub normally but during spring break. They changed their name to Hard Rock Cafe, but it was not an actual hard rock cafe, but they knew that if they called themselves that, they would attract American tourists who recognized that name very well. And you go in, you get yourself some cheap margaritas and beer and, you know, have a great time, and then you stumble back over the border and, you know, recover the next day. And that's pretty much what these guys were doing on the night of March 13th in the March 14th of 1989. Yeah. And they I mean, look, they're doing the typical thing you expect in. Spring break town, and they're having the Miss Tan line competition. I mean, that's the kind of thing they're doing, right? I mean, this is as debauched as you could imagine. And after a few days of doing that, they decide they want to go to Mexico. They have a great time and then they decide, Hey, we had such a good time the night before. Let's go back. And like Alison said, they're going to the London pub, which is called the Hard Rock Cafe, because we have to get the Americans in and they're really just going from one to the other. I mean, it is packed me. Morris is filled to the brim with American tourists, and so they're going to all these different bars and they have a great time and it's two a.m. It's two o'clock in the morning and they decide, you know what? We've had enough, which I can't even imagine making it two a.m. But it's been a long time since I was twenty two. Same. So at this point, do you have this big group of tourists and you have them and they're trying to leave and they get separated? And Mark Kilroy at some point, he sees a girl that he actually recognizes from the Miss Tan Line contest, and he decides being a attractive young 22 year old guy. He's going to go talk to this girl at the same time, his buddy Bill Huddleston, who he's with, you know, he's had too much to drink, so he runs off into an alley to relieve himself. And when he comes out, he expects to see Mark exactly where he saw him before with the girl. But when he comes out, he doesn't see him at all and he runs. They catch up with his friends and he's not with his friends and he just thinks, Hey, lucky. Yeah. You know, talking to Mr. Hanlon, who knows we'll see him later. It's going to be a great story. And they continue on their way and in the back at their their, you know, condo or whatever in Texas expecting the next day, Mark's going to show up. But Mark doesn't show up. Yeah, he was effectively kidnapped by the Hernandez brothers and some of their associates of Costanzo. I don't believe Adolfo was actually there for the kidnapping at that point. He is, you know, he's more the manager hanging out at home when he's got his little foot soldiers out there doing his bidding. And, you know, Marc actually put up a fight. That is the thing he he was not. He wasn't giving in easily. He was actually a pretty athletic guy. He made a run for it to try to get over the border, to get to the bridge, to go over the border and didn't make it. They got him into their truck, got him out to the ranch and Costanzo and then he, you know, drag him into the shed, essentially. And what they did to him at that point was unimaginable the kind of torture that they subjected him to because again, the in Ganga in their minds demanded pain. It really ignited their sadistic urges. Another thing pointing to the fact that Costanzo again, was not only a serial killer, had a serial killer instinct and was also a gay serial killer. He never killed women in the traditional serial killer form. He stuck to his type. A lot of serial killers go after victims that they, you know, have the elections toward, let's say. And this fit the case very much so, as is so his M.O.. I just want to bring that up because I think I want to really bring home the fact that Costanzo and his cult were a serial killer cult and not merely just people practicing magic and hanging out. These are people that were killing people. Not only were they killing people, this was and buried secrets, by the way the book and I forgot to put in our in our notes, but it's something that stuck with me over and over again. Every time they killed someone. You know, what they did was they went out for What a burger. Wow. Yeah. Every time they killed someone in their shed, they went out for burgers and fries at what a burger. Yeah. So I don't think that's something that what a burger would want to have in their literature. Yeah, yeah. So as a burger, the favorite burger of serial? Yeah. So they were just immediately kill someone and think burgers and fries. That's how programmed they were into what they were doing. And I just want to say, if Walter Burger wants to sponsor this episode, we are available. We have slots available for whatever. Please go for the forces of good. And yeah, and I had Whataburger ones are pretty good. But anyway, they spent the night torturing inside amazing mark and eventually what they ended up doing was taking a machete and, you know, whacking his head off while the top of his head because, you know, they needed his brain. And so they got hold of that brain and they more or less dismembered the rest of his body. And they didn't merely bury it, though, did they? No, they didn't. And this is and this is just a wild I mean, once again, this is a true story. Everything we're telling. You actually have people the way they buried him, you're looking at the date and making sure it isn't April 1st. I know this. It's like crazy. Yeah. The way they buried him was the way they buried many of the people that they sacrificed. You know, as Alison said, they would more or less dismember them to make burying more easy. But one thing they would do is they would run a wire down through the spinal column so that you could actually find if you walked into this field where all these people were buried, there were all these wires sticking out of the ground. And the idea was that the cult members believed that if they pulled up the bones, they pulled the wire up and they pulled up that, you know, that spinal column likened a predator or something that they could wear that as a necklace and it would give them protection from danger and would enable them to more successfully carry out their sort of drug dealing operations. I mean, it's just madness on a scale that is hard to imagine, but it was real and it was happening. And we're talking about Mark, but there are unknown numbers of people who suffer the same fate as what Mark suffered because these guys thought this was going to give them power, or at least some of them did. And I go back and forth and costanzo, I kind of agree with Allison. I think this was a guy who was a serial killer and wanted to murder people, and this was just a good way to do it. He found a pathway where he could murder people and get away with it and have support for it. Yeah, and it just fit perfectly for what he wanted. And, you know, his cult members, I think, were varying levels of buying in and forced in and numbed to it after a while. I really think if you study, I think this is where the Manson family comparisons really come in for me is if you study their way of seeing things versus like the Manson family, there were definitely some members of the Mansour family that very much enjoyed what they were doing. They got into it that that, you know, of course, if anybody watched the Manson family trials and all that, there were very much still very much in support of Charles. And it was very similar here. They were very much beholden to him as their leader, as their padrino and the the bones that they were pulling up from the ground were. A lot of people were wearing those bones. They they were almost like protection charms or invisibility charms or whatever he bless them with because again, he believed or he had them believing that they were invisible and impervious to police and bullets. And that's going to play in in a very big way. And oh, and by the way, after Kilroy, they continued to murder their work done murdering. Because when Mark Kilroy was reported, missing by his family created a huge skirmish in big international event. His parents were people you didn't want to mess with. They were very mobilized, very influential people, and this stuff was going straight to the president. I mean, this was a big frickin deal. They killed the wrong guy, and they didn't quite realize that, though, so they were continuing their killing spree as this was going on. It's really interesting because this was so dumb in so many ways. You know, the war on drugs really kind of started in Nixon, but ramped up under Reagan. And then you have George H.W. Bush who was pushing it to another level altogether. And you got to imagine that no one American presidents never like it when their citizens are murdered in foreign countries. But this and I don't want to be a cynic here, but wow, I mean, this is like, this is gold, right? I mean, this is gold for everything you're trying to do. You have a satanic in the middle of this is 1989. So you have a satanic drug cartel who murdered an American as part of their ritual. I mean, wow, that is insane. And it's crazy that they thought they could do this and get away with it. I do want to say one thing here. Comparing it to the Manson family, I think is a great comparison. I want to violate all the rules and talk about Nazis for a second. I've always thought the the craziest thing about the Nazis is you had all these sadistic evil people who managed to all sort of like group together at the perfect time to be completely evil together. And sort of, you know, like people like Himmler, Himmler was naturally a serial killer. Right? I mean, that's what he wanted to do, and he managed to reach a position where he could do it. And I feel like you have that here where you have all these people. And maybe, you know, maybe it's not all these people, but Costanzo in particular, who finds this outlet for his natural desire to murder people. Or, you know, if you don't talk about Nazis, the Russians love entry barrier, who was the founder of the KGB. So. Artistic, awful, horrible person, one of the most evil men to ever live because he's in charge of the KGB. He's able to sort of live out his sadistic tendencies. Look at the witch trials in the late Middle Ages. People who are which minders general were actually just misogynist serial killers who wanted to torture women, and they used witchcraft as their pathway to do it. This is a story as old as time, and this is Costanza sort of finding their path, but he has made a huge mistake. Now, as Alison said the next day, his friends report him missing. It's not long before this is an international story. March 14th, they reported missing by March 26th. This is on America's most wanted, and the president of the United States is interested. Now, there is huge pressure on the Mexican authorities to figure out what happened to this American. Yeah, they don't do a great job investigating. No, but but on April 1st, the magic. Becomes a problem for the group because a drug smuggler who is part of the call comes to a drug checkpoint and because he's invisible. He's like no reason to stop at the checkpoint. I'm just going to go straight through. So he goes straight through expecting the magic has made him invisible and the police can't see him. The police do see him and in a very intelligent move, they decide we're not going to go all lights and sirens after crazy guy who just ran right through the stop. I will never not laugh about this. I will think about this randomly when I'm doing the dishes. I think about this moment and I just this is like the hoisted by your own petard, right? I mean, this is like an example of that. You've been telling your guys, we're going to make you invisible through all this magic. And then the fact that they believe they're invisible is what ends up sinking you. The police follow this guy in an unmarked car. And where does he take them straight back to the ranch, where they find a bunch of coal paraphernalia? They find a bunch of marijuana. They know who this guy is. And over the next week or so, they are conducting an investigation, which eventually will result in some arrests that are going to uncover all of this and everything that's going on. It's a amazing discovery because I often wonder that if somebody from that cult that hadn't been so convinced of their invisibility, if he hadn't done that, would they have found this ranch? Would they have found what they found there? I mean, it's it's it's poetic in a way, in a really dumb slapstick way, but very poetic. And here's the other thing, too, is this cult was not concerned about even its own members like to the point where, you know, Costanzo didn't even try the whole, you know, I'm being metaphorical here, you know, you didn't. He didn't inform the the people like invisibility is like a metaphor, man. It's not like literal, you know, sort of like people might try to say about, I don't know, Adam and Eve or the Noah Noah's Ark Story. They might even say, Oh, it's a metaphor. No, he didn't do that at all. It was like, I am. You were literally invisible. But it tracks because they've murdered their own members. I mean, they murdered one of their own members, George Garcia. I think his name was he used some of the drugs that they were trafficking. The caller had a very strict non drug policy. Once they found out that he was getting high on their own supply, they they sacrificed him to the in Ganga. So they had no compunction whatsoever about their own. People like Costanzo just didn't think about it that way. So. So yeah, they they go and they inspect the site. They don't find the bodies right away. I think they round up a few of the people. And what are the federal A's and the cops do down there as they start torturing these people for answers? And the technique that they used was they would put Tabasco sauce and stuff like seltzer water, and they would shake the bottle up and then they would hold it under the nose of the person and they would let it squirt up their nose. So imagine hot sparkling water being injected up your nasal cavities. It's like waterboarding with hot sauce. And that apparently got them to talk. I'm not endorsing torture, but I'm just saying that particular techniques seemed to do the job because they ended up going back there and finding a lot of the bodies. And they found, of course, the shed with the Ganga inside it, the human brain. The goats had tons of dead chickens, the coins, the cheap rum, all the stuff that was in that shed. They found it. And then eventually one of them confessed to where Mark Kilroy was buried, which was of course marked by the wire in the ground used to bind his spinal column. Now, one thing that I found was interesting, and I don't know if you can speak more to this. It seems like the person who both showed kindness to mark when he was initially kidnapped and eventually gave a lot of secrets of the cold away was the caretaker of the ranch. Yes. And I don't know if it's just he wasn't really a part of this colt or what, but I found that to be interesting. That's another kind of interesting, weird parallel with Manson family, because I think it was the George Spahn. It was the Spahn Ranch. It was similar kind of thing. I mean, it was like not really part of it. But he let these weirdos hang out at his ranch and probably not quite realizing what all that they were getting into right. But they start digging up the bodies. Given all the information that they were given. They find Mark Hillary's body, they keep digging, they find 15 bodies at that site. It is not known really the true number of victims that they had. They didn't make much of an effort to find out. No, they knew that there were. Dozens of ritualistic murders happening at the time in this area during the time of Cassandra's reign. But once they had a fall guy, they kind of used him to close. A lot of these cases, even though didn't fit the M.O. of concerns. It was kind of like the Wayne Williams case. Oh, Atlanta. Oh yeah. And you know, not to get all into that, but let me go and tell you, Wayne Williams is a murderer, and he killed a lot of people. But he probably did not kill everyone that he is sort of attributed to in Atlanta. But the police essentially used him to close every murder of a young black person in Atlanta during the time. Right? They just said he did it, which was not accurate and not fair to those victims, but kind of irritated that there are people who are trying to say he's innocent now. Based on that, he is not innocent. He is exactly where he needs to be. But it's a similar thing. You find the monster, and it makes it really easy to just close all your cases, and I have to look into them anymore. And I think that's what happened here, much like happened in that case. Yeah, that's a I'm really glad you brought that up. That's a very good point. And, you know, Constanza wasn't there at the time when this was all going down. He and Sarah Eldredge, he and his his lovers and I think his other associate who went by El Duby, which again, that's another one that just kind of makes me start. When I think about it, they ran away. They fled. Well, I think Sarah actually fled the main group, if I remember correctly, because according to her and Sarah is an interesting case, here is to this day. She maintains her innocence. She she's still alive and, you know, survived a lavish still in prison. As far as I know, she was, you know, sentenced to a pretty long stands. And she claims that she wasn't aware of the ritualistic murders and everything that was going on in the shed. But the thing is, is that she actually helped bring people in for sacrifice, like there were very documented moment like people that she brought specifically to the cult people who, for instance, like one guy, insulted her and she brought him back to the ranch and she knew what was going on. But of course, she's she's claiming now she's walked it all back. She's like, I didn't know it was that bad. She's playing that whole game. But anyway, she she fled them. They caught up with her eventually, and Costanzo found her convinced her like, Please help me all this and they're hiding out in Mexico City, and it's honestly been a bit like they don't find him right away. He's on the run for a bit with his his group. They're even doing disguises. They have hair dye, they've cut their hair. What one thing I read said that a couple of these guys had their hair cut and dyed to look like He-Man again just makes me laugh. The 80s man, oh, I got to love it by the power grey skull. So, you know, it's interesting because there are so many interesting things about this. The police and the Mexican authorities understood, at least at some level, what this whole sort of ritualistic thing, because at some point a week or so after they found these bodies in the middle of the night, they go and they burn the shed. They like, commit arson. They even brought they even brought in, I believe. I think they brought in like a shaman or like a white magician to cleanse it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they knew. Which, of course, drove Constanza crazy. But it's really interesting that they use that sort of a psychological warfare against him to do that. And and like you said, it took a while. I mean, they did that. That did not immediately flush. The police eventually find him. Apparently, it was kind of an accident. The police show up for another reason, but Costanzo thinks they're there for him. So he starts shooting at them, at which point the police realize there's somebody here that obviously we need to to deal with. They kind of surround the building and there's a firefight. And at some point, Costanzo tells L do B. So there there was one of the people there who was one of his earliest followers, one of his lovers, and they decide to die together. Costanzo and him and they'll do these shoots them both. I think is the way it went down and then the police break in. They arrest everybody else. They arrest Sara Al Diretta. As you said, she ends up getting 50 years in prison. She's still in prison to this day. She's looking to get out. And twenty thirty nine, there is a sort of interesting legal thing about here. She was indicted back in 1989, and there's an indictment in the United States waiting on her for the death of Mark Kilroy. And if she is ever released from Mexican prison, she will be taken into custody in the United States so she's never getting out, despite the fact that she denies her involvement. She will. She will die in prison for her involvement in all this. Insanity, yeah, there was hurt her and one other cult member who greeted the police essentially with a surrender because the what's interesting is he tried a couple of times actually to pull a bit of a Jim Jones like suicide pact. This whole thing, let's get out. He had them believing that if we all die, that I can come back and we'll redo this all the right way. This was what he was telling them, and in fact, he even had the living associates, you know, who were still surviving and talking to the cops. They were so blasé about the whole thing. They were sheepish about it, like in the sense of like you could do and say whatever you want. I'll say whatever I want, but my God's going to come and get me out of this mess. So whatever, do whatever you want, right? And once they got cornered, Costanzo convinced Lay was all dooby to, you know, they got into the closet with one of his lovers. And then, yeah, take the Uzi because they were oozes that they were armed with and start shooting into the closet like just pumped him full of bullets, right? Well, the whole idea was that they were then going to turn it on themselves, and they did not do so. They did not fulfill their end of the suicide pact that they apparently made. So that's why they live to face the music. So I guess he ended up being less successful than Jim Jones had been in his endeavor in terms of convincing his closest followers to kill themselves for him. So one question I have that I would be interested in your take. You know, we've been talking about narco satanism, which is such a great term that you can't not use it, and that's how this is often described. Is it a real thing or is that just something we've made up? Hmm. Wow. That's a that's a good question. Well, first of all, that term was invented by the Mexican media during the investigation of Mark Kilroy. It was a great, great thing to put in the newspapers to really freak people out. Narco Satanists are, you know, it's just it's a great word, right? Whoever came up with that, I hope they came up with like a great marketing campaign for some product that we use today. But I think it's important to, I guess, separate in some ways because on the one hand, if you look at Paloma as itself, like not perverted by the evil that Adolfo Constanza brought into it, there is no satan in Paloma and there's no devil there. It isn't concerned with that. It's a completely different thing. However, what they brought to it, what they did, the the deeds and the perversions that they brought to it. Yeah, I think it's I think they made that a valid term because it was it was pure evil. The show, most evil. I think it's called on investigation discovery. I don't watch a lot of those shows, but that's one that I'll tune in for on occasion. Adolfo Constanze are rated at the top of that show scale. Like most evil, like he rated the full on this guy was truly an evil man. And in the context that we think of the devil and Satan, secular or not. I think that it works. It works as a way to describe to people the level of evil that they were dealing with. Like, we hear that word and we know what they're talking about. So yes, yes and no, that's the answer to your question, in my opinion. Do you think that there are heirs to Adolfo Constanza or do you think his sort of ideology died with him? They they, his followers are convinced that there are other practitioners out there that are following in his tradition that are, you know, that it's carrying on in his absence. There was even a brief conspiracy theory that it wasn't him that was shot in that closet because he was the bodies were so deformed by bullets that they weren't easily identifiable, apparently, and they had to go through some additional forensic testing in order to, I guess, verify that it was in fact him. So there was this idea that he was still alive and that was fueling some of this continuation of what they were doing. But I haven't heard. But that doesn't mean it's not happening because to be frank, I mean, how much news comes out of there that we get? I am quite sure there are people still. Possibly doing what he's doing and given that there isn't a lot of investigation going on actively into so many people who are missing down there at the behest of a lot of cartel business. I'm not going to put it past him and that kind of runs in the last thing I wanted to ask. So he had his thing going on, and maybe people are sort of continuing in his footsteps. But as we sort of alluded to, he was not the only person engaged in this sort of ritualistic murder. Is that something that, you know, you think is continuing either in Mexico, in other places under the guise of some sort of bastardized religion? Well, at that time there were I think it was like it was dozens of these murders, a lot of them involving infants. And I don't believe that that was part of this group's M.O.. Do I believe that there are people doing ritualistic sacrifices to protect drug trades and other, you know, elements of corruption that are going on? Yeah, I do. Just based on the number of missing people, key person cases, the number of like mass graves that they find, it's a scary and dirty business that's going on. A lot of people are dying, a lot of people have died in the service of it. So yeah, I don't think Constanza is the only one who was doing it, who was responsible for it. I think it's it continued after him. I don't know that it necessarily continued in his name. I think that Costanzo was the biggest face for it. He was the big brand name. He was the star of it. But he's not the only one. There are knockoffs. I would. I would bet everything that I have on it, even if they're not practicing necessarily Paolo, it could be any number of rituals that they're doing. But yeah, you and I have talked a bit about like, yes, this was during the 80s during Satanic Panic and all this. There were ritualistic murders happening during this period, and my thought was that was the culture feeding into what was happening, the panic in the media feeding into what the killers were doing, the sort of like, Oh, I'm hearing about this, I'm going to like, dial up this satanic thing while I'm doing my murder thing and it's going to get me more attention. Or, you know, because they wanted it for effect or were they true believers? You know, I mentioned Richard Ramirez, I think in one of our discussions that he was one who seemed to be very much a true believer in his satanic angle. And then there were other people in other groups that were just kind of, you know, using that metal and, you know, metal culture and sort of like counterculture to kind of dial it up. So I feel like it was just this cultural miasma all coming together. And that's just humanity. The filthy end of humanity at work. Yeah, I'm just a big believer that there are. There's obviously people who, you know, serial killers or whatnot who do their thing and they're going to do their thing whenever. But I'm also a big believer that there are certain people who want to do evil for lack of a better word who tap into whatever the sort of the zeitgeist of the time is. So you have a satanic panic that's going on. And I think what you had was people are tapping into that. So they're seeing that. It's not that Dungeons and Dragons is is turning good Christian children into murderers. I'm glad you. I'm glad you clarified that. It's that it's that people who want to be murderers are tapping into Dungeons and Dragons, right? And that's what they're sort of cloaking themselves in. And I felt the same thing here. You had Constanza who was around this religious faith. He tapped into that and he used there to justify what he wanted to do. And like I said earlier, you know, if if the witch hunts are going on, you tap into that to do what you want to do. If if Nazi ism is ascendant, you tap into that and you just use whatever it is that's going on at the time to justify the evil things you want to do. And so I think it's a really interesting thing and it's sort of a chicken and egg question, right? Like, did the killer start the satanic panic or was a satanic panic a cover for the killers? You know, there were no there. There were no preschools, right? That didn't happen. That is crazy. You know, there weren't any satanic rituals going on underneath preschools where children were sacrificed to Satan. That didn't happen. But where there are people who kind of like thought that was a cool idea and used it and tapped into it. One hundred percent there were, of course, there were. There always are people who are going to do that. So it's it's a fascinating question very, very much. It's something it's something we will continue to look at. I've always thought we need a satanic panic documentary. I can't believe we don't have one. They run some good podcast on it, but just sort of an overarching because I remember. I don't know. Alison Weir, I'm a little older than, you know, you're a little older. I'm a little older than me. I never could remember. But we're basically the same generation. Yes. You know, and we grew up at the same time, and I can remember the whole Dungeons and Dragons thing is going to turn you into a Satanist if you deal with it. I mean, I'm from Alabama. Bible Belt, Alabama. And I remember this so well. This just I remember there were cults in the woods worshipping Satan. I mean, that just happened. Everybody knew that if you went into the woods at night, you were liable to get sacrificed to the devil. I mean, no slug liable to happen. And I just think it's so hard for people to believe that now that that was the way it was, but that's the way we looked at things. You're absolutely right, and that reminds me of a story. My dad actually told me he used to work in various cities for his job. He he built cable TV systems and, you know, had a company that did that. So if you have aerial cable in your area, who knows, maybe he put it up there. But he did a stint in Baltimore and it was one of the worst stunts of his life, he said. And I am not casting aspersions on Baltimore, but he encountered a ritualistic set up and a dark alleyway in the city with the candles around, you know, a dead animal. It was just it was just there. He said. It was just there. And yeah, I grew up in the 80s where, you know, my mother was going through a kind of a bit of a biblical phase at the time, and she was very concerned about the lyrics of some of the music that my brother was listening to, like Metallica and and all this. And I remember her with the cassette notes, you know, pulling it out and reading lyrics to the songs on Master of Puppets and pointing out all the reasons why this is, you know, satanic or devilish. And my brother and I just kind of, yeah, whatever, mom and rolling our eyes because, you know, we're not serial killers and we don't want to kill people. We're not violent people. But again, it's sort of like the tendency to want to blame a video game for a mass shooting. I play video games all the time. I play very violent video games all the time. I don't want to murder real people. However, the people that might want to murder real people might see this thing and go, Ha, you know, find a kinship with it. And then it kind of melds into your overarching, you know, mythology you're building about yourself. No, it's it's such an interesting thing. And you know, as a parent, I understand why my parents were so concerned about this at the time. I mean, if if Phil Donahue is telling you that people are trying to turn your kids into devil worshippers through this, you're going to not want your kids to be involved in it. And it's so easy to mock people for that now. Right? But you weren't there and you weren't in it and you didn't know the things that people were telling you. And let me just go ahead and tell you guys, if you don't think we're in the midst of a moral panic right now, about 15 different things, or we are so like, you'll see this in your in your own life. And it's funny because, you know, just various things and I don't want to. We're never political on the show, but you know, whether it's people laugh about things, right? So like, most people can laugh about stupid stuff on 4chan, you know, or like Pepe the Frog or, like, you know, the the crazy QAnon conspiracies. Most people just laugh about that stuff and they're like, That's hilarious, right? And they see, like, you know, a meme, they're like, Yeah, whatever. But there are people who take it seriously. And and when that's the problem is with all of these things, you can roll your eyes and laugh, but they're always going to be people who take it seriously. And sometimes those people end up doing things like what we see here. Adolfo Constanza was a serial killer. Sarah Eldredge was just a normal girl, and she got wrapped up in this. And in a lot of ways, she's anybody. I mean, there was nothing special about her. When I asked earlier, Did she have a background in this? And the answer is no, she didn't. She was wrapped up in this and was somebody who, if you knew her in college, you would have been shocked because in college she was a normal girl, a cheerleader, an honor student. You know, you think she's going places. She's got it all together. And then at night she's doing black mass rituals in front of a cauldron with human brains. What more can you say, right? And and just to add to that, you know, the the satanic panic of the 80s is something we can kind of, you know, just, yeah, we kind of roll our eyes and laugh at. Sure. But back in the 80s, they didn't have social media. They didn't have 4chan or the internet or Reddit places where ideas are on an expressway across the planet in a matter of seconds. And. The satanic panic hasn't really left us, and I don't want to call it just the satanic panic, I want to call it that that sort of idea machine is what it really is and the way that we can spread those ideas using the examples that you mentioned and how they can spread so quickly and becomes so hard to defeat. So if anything, I would say our challenges today are much greater. You've also highlighted very much why I am interested in studying cults, why I'm doing a season of it on my show and why I have involved myself so deeply in it is because we all exist in a society. We all exist together. We are not, you know, a man is not an island, as John Donne said, You know what? It is not something that you can just completely isolate yourself from people. You know, people you love get subsumed by this stuff very easily, and you can watch it happen in real time. And I want to get to the bottom of like how we are so susceptible. When you look at someone like this narco Satanist cult, how much they were dragged into it, they didn't have the things that we have. What if Adolfo had had the frickin internet? You know, those are the kind of things that keep you up at night. As some of these people, if they had greater methods of influence? Who knows? And I think one of the most important things when you think about cults and think about this kind of stuff and we've talked about this before, is recognize in yourself the same weakness that leads people to join these things because I am convinced that every single one of us has an angle. There is something that if the right person pushed on the right spot the right button, you would be susceptible to a call. I'm 100 percent convinced of that. And it's it's scary and it's frightening. But if you just look, if you just look at courts and not just the Jim Jones one, but you know, I mean, go through them, whether it's heaven's gate, children of God, Heaven's Gate, Children of God, the one, the sex cult, the recent one with Reno, Nexium, Nexium. I mean, Nexium is such a great example, right? I mean, because all these rich, wealthy people looking for some sort of angle to make their lives a little bit better end up in a sex cult, you know, and it's like when you look into that, it's just crazy that it happened, but it did. You had people getting branded who were who were just who were actresses. I mean, it's crazy, right? But that's just an example of how if every person has their weakness, you can go into it with the best of intentions. Sarah Eldredge, you probably just wanted to get A's on her classes. You know, she's just one of those things where when she fell in with Constanza, do you think she was thinking, I want to sacrifice some people and stuff them in a college or no, she was not? Or maybe she just, you know, didn't quite find fulfillment in being a cheerleader and a student, and there was something missing. And he came in and said, I can fill that void in your life. Yeah. And what I want to do is my in my tiny little island of of whatever I just try to express to people that, you know, none of us are immune to this kind of thing. We can talk about this stuff from a distance to go, Ha ha ha, those people are crazy. No, we you said it so beautifully, Brad. We are all susceptible in our own ways. It all depends on what con artist has tapped, what trigger what button inside of us. And being aware of the language, the signs, the cognitive dissonance, the the tricks that we play on ourselves to deny we've become part of something dangerous and something destructive is something that I really want to bring to people. And you know, that I hope will be educational. And I hope that people realize that, yes, we're talking about the super crazy, bigger than life Mexican drug cartel cults. But at the heart of it, it it really was just about a serial killer who gathered people around him to help him fulfill his murderous urges ultimately. Well, I hope if you guys have enjoyed this conversation, you will immediately go and subscribe to Alison's podcast Ding Dong Darkness Term, which in this next series, we'll be discussing cults. So she will be talking about this and other things in depth. Check out her prior seasons, which are fantastic. I mean, just great stuff. Really intellectual conversation. You can't get it anywhere else, so definitely check that out. I want to thank Alison for joining us. Thank you so much for doing this. This is so great. We would have talked about this case, but we would not have been able to do it in anywhere near as much depth as Alison has done it. And for all of you who missed Alice. She will be back next week, so don't worry. Yes, we all miss her and we all miss it by vacating the seat right away. I forbid you to to, you know, do one star reviews saying, We miss Alice. They'll do that. But I miss Alice has been amazing. We all miss it. Alice has been amazing. We're not replacing Alice. This is just this. Alison is awesome and you know so much about this stuff. And we wanted to to get that to you guys. Well, look, we really are interested in your thoughts. Shoot us an email. Prosecutors pod at gmail.com at Prosecutors' Pod on all your social media. Hello to those of you who are getting this early and ad free on Patreon. And if you are on YouTube watching this not video, we're actually doing this on Zoom. You will not see a video of us doing this. Sorry if you're watching on YouTube. Thank you so much for supporting us, and thank you for all the five star reviews for telling your friends all the things you do to support our podcast. I hope you will take that same enthusiasm and use it on dingdong darkness, which is a fantastic podcast that not enough people listen to. Well, before we sign off for today, and I don't even know how we're going to do it because they don't have Alice. But before we sign off today, Alison, is there anything else you want to say? I imagine everybody listening right now, if you had been given a backstage pass to a concert put on by your favorite band of all time. I am living that moment right now. I'm telling you it is amazing as you imagine it is. I am beyond honored. I've made no secret to Bret analysts that their podcast has been a huge influence on the directions that I've taken, and I wouldn't be here. Well, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them, obviously on this show, but I feel incredibly privileged and your show is doing so much good and you a unique, very unique and very valuable part of that. Your crime community and I am honored to be here. So thank you so much for this opportunity. Well, you're welcome and it's been so great to have you. Thank you for taking what is now two hours or so to discuss this with our listeners. So I'm gonna need your help on this. Allison, so just just go along with it. But that's all we have for today. Until next time, I'm Bret, I'm Alison. And this is the prosecutors. So I'll start us off like I always do. And typically, you know, we just go straight through, but if at any point something you want to stop, tell Jason to delete that last 30 seconds, we can do that. That's not a problem. Just whatever you want to do. Harrison Editor Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there is. Because that's the thing. I'm so used to me being the editor. So I'm like, Oh, I am always logging in my head like, I have to cut that, that sense. He's going to bill you double for this episode. Yeah, he probably will. That's fine. We like it. Let's get this Kate Spade. You know, that's. Just again, I'm interjecting as a fan of your show and saying, Oh my God, right now in my head over and over. All right. The timeline as it were. All right. Huh. And by the way, Jason, you can cut my freaking out. All right. Well, you got this. You got this. All this month, celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with Pluto TV watch movies like Compadres and the Spy Kids trilogy or your favorite stars like Luis Gerardo Méndez in Camino Martha. Plus, Pluto TV has thousands more movies and TV shows and over 45 channels in Spanish, all for free. So download the Pluto TV app on all your favorite devices and start streaming today. Pluto TV drop in. Watch Free.
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