Adolfo Constanzo

Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo (November 1, 1962 - May 6, 1989) was a serial killer and cult leader in Mexico. His nickname was The Godfather of Matamoros.

Early life

Constanzo was born in Miami, Florida, United States. His mother, Delia Aurora González del Valle, was a widowed Cuban immigrant. She gave birth to him when she was 15 years old, and she would eventually have three children in total, each with a different father. She moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, after her first husband died, and re-married. While in San Juan, Constanzo was baptized Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy, but he was also influenced by his mother's participation in Palo mayombe. The family returned to Miami in 1972, and his stepfather died soon after, leaving the family with some money. His mother soon re-married, and his new stepfather was involved in the local drug trade and the occult.

Both Costanzo and his mother were arrested several times for petty crimes, such as theft, vandalism, and shoplifting. He graduated from high school, but he dropped out of junior college. His mother believed that he had psychic abilities for supposedly predicting the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981. As a teenager, he befriended a Haitian Palo mayombe priest who taught him the skills necessary to be a drug dealer and con artist, training him for a career "profiting from evil."

Adulthood

Costanzo visited Mexico City in 1983, supporting himself as a tarot card reader. There, he recruited two younger men; Martín Quintana Rodríguez and Omar Orea Ochoa to be his servants, lovers and disciples. Constanzo returned to Miami shortly thereafter, but he moved to Mexico City in mid-1984. Over the next few years he was the leader of a full-fledged cult with drug dealers, musicians and even police officers under his command. The cult, based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, sold drugs, held high-priced occult ceremonies and by at least 1987 murdered people for use in human sacrifices. These victims fell along with the cult's rivals in dealing drugs.

When an American tourist, 21-year-old Mark Kilroy, disappeared in Matamoros during Spring Break 1989, local police, facing pressures from Texas authorities, began to search in earnest for him. They discovered Costanzo's cult quite by accident (in an unrelated drug investigation) and, after arresting some of the members, quickly discovered that they were responsible for Kilroy's murder. More and more of the cult's members were arrested until, on May 6, they had cornered Costanzo and four of his followers, two of whom were his male lovers, in a dilapidated Mexico City apartment. Determined not to go to prison, Costanzo ordered one of the disciples to shoot him and Quintana Rodríguez. They were both dead when the police finally broke in.

One of Constanzo's most trusted leaders within his cult, Sara María Aldrete, was arrested not long after his death. She was sentenced to a total of 687 years in prison for her involvement in the cult and the murders.

External links

• Crime Library Court TV article on Constanzo
• Crime Library 2 another Court TV article on the "Death Priests"
• "The Mexican Voodoo Massacre" Bizarre Magazine
• The Godfather of Matamoros

See also

• Perdita Durango, a movie that coincidentially seems to resemble the Matamoros murders.
• Borderland, a 2007 film based on Constanzo and his cult.