Content below is from #181 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast
RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT
- I recommend you watch the movie directly inspired by this week’s main topic. The movie is Borderland (2007) and it is about the life of Adolfo Constanzo.
- The movie has a 100% score on rotten tomatoes… but only a 43% audience score
NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT
- The movie Borderland’s plot is described as:
- Ed (Brian Presley), Henry (Jake Muxworthy) and Phil (Rider Strong) are three American college graduates in search of wild times in Mexico. After a night of partying with two local women, Ed and Henry realize that Phil is missing. Joining forces with an ex-cop, their search for their friend leads them to a horrifying encounter with cultists who practice human sacrifice.
- The movie is loosley based on the real life story of Adolfo Constanzo. He was an American serial killer that went down to Mexico City where he met a bunch of friends who became his cult followers.
- Adolfo was born in Miami back in 1962.
- His mom was a widow immigrant from Cuba.
- Growing up he was exposed to Catholicism and Voodoo practices… a potent mix.
- He was baptized catholic in Little Havana.
- The rumor was that his mom and grandma were priestesses in Santeria religion.
- Santeria is a mix of African and Cuban religions with a pinch of Catholicism. Santeria is popular throughout the Caribbean.
- When he was 14 he started to learn from a local sorcerer.
- Adolfo and his master made money off superstitious people and by dealing drugs.
- It was his sorcerer master who showed Adolfo all about palo mayombe which is like a dark side of the Santeria religion. … that’s when the small dead animals started piling up around Adolfo’s house.
- The nganga, or blood cauldron, is an important part of palo mayombe: worshipers believe that by placing bones and blood in an iron cauldron, they can summon spirits to do their bidding.
- The rest of his youth was spent getting arrested, learning black magic, and shoplifting.
- Then he moved to Mexico City as a model, apparently this dude was kind of hot.
- In Mexico City Adolfo met Martin Quintana and Jorge Montes. The three started a romantic relationship as well as a cult…
- That’s how Adolfo amassed his following. He went to Mexico City’s gay clubs, seduced a bunch of dudes, and then gradually brought them into his cult.
- He would also read tarot cards in Zona Rosa (Mexico City’s gay area).
- AllThatsInteresting.com writes:
Adolfo Constanzo set up shop in Mexico City permanently in 1984 and worked on establishing his reputation as a powerful padrino in the city. Mexican drug dealers presented the perfect combination of superstition and blood-lust upon which Constanzo could prey: for sums of up to $4,500 he would perform ceremonies that involved the sacrifices of animals that he guaranteed would protect the dealers during their illicit activities.
Constanzo’s diary later outlined the exact prices customers paid per animal: from $6 for a simple rooster, all the way up to $3,100 for lion cubs; one prominent dealer racked up a $40,000 bill with Constanzo over a three-year period.
As the sorcerer lured in more and more impressive clientele (including not just powerful cartel leaders, but fashion models, nightclub performers, and a few federal policemen), he needed to put on more impressive spectacles to satisfy them. Constanzo and his followers had been raiding cemeteries for actual human bones for some time, but in time even they would not be enough.
- When 1987 rolled around Adolfo had graduated far beyond just reading tarot cards in Mexico City’s gay area.
- He now had lots of rich clients and was able to afford a higher quality of living. Nicer crib with garage and expensive cars were the staples of his life now. He wasn’t the poor kid from Cuba anymore.
- He was also using all the connections he had made through law enforcement and cartels to start dealing drugs big-time.
- He started casting protection spells for the Calzada family (a big cartel)… and charging a lot for each spell.
- The Calzadas success was soaring and they became extremely powerful in the region. Adolfo insisted he was the one responsible for their success and demanded a higher position in the cartel.
- The high-ranking Calzada that denied Adolfo (and 6 of his close family members) went missing not long after.
- The Mexican Police did find the missing members of the Calzada family. They had been mutilated. Their corpses were missing more than a few parts. Constanzo had taken the fingers, toes, hearts, testicles, spines, and brains from his former partners and added them all to his own nganga (blood cauldron) in hopes of strengthening his dark powers.
- How many people did Adolfo and his cult kill? We have no idea the full amount, but 23 have been confirmed and documented.
- The local cops have many mutilated bodies that were found in the area during that time that they believe were connected to Adolfo Constanzo’s Padrino cult. But they aren’t able to prove the connection.
- The people Adolfo typically preyed upon were usually small-time crooks, frequent members of the Zona Rosa, or even his own cult followers that disobeyed him.
- What all his victims had in common were that they were from the dark side of society. The outcasts. So most murders weren’t reported and many of the homicides were found by happenstance.
- Most who followed him had unrelenting loyalty to Adolfo. He was a god to them.
- They had no problem offering human sacrifices to Adolfo.
- And here is where the movie Borderland picks up:
When the “Pied Piper of Death” demanded the sacrifice of an “anglo” one night in 1989, they did not hesitate to grab one of the many American college students who had crossed the border from Texas during his spring break.
This time, the padrino had overreached himself. The student they had snatched, Mark Kilroy, was not a lone drifter whose disappearance would go unnoticed. His friends and family alerted both American and Mexican authorities, triggering a massive manhunt that would eventually bring about Constanzo’s downfall.
When the Mexican police busted a small-time marijuana dealer that April, he led them to a small ranch where, as the police had expected, they found a cache of drugs. What the police did not expect was the small windowless shack on the ranch property that one would later describe as “a human slaughterhouse.”
- The police had been led to Adolfo Constanzo’s nganga (blood cauldron). Adolfo himself wasn’t there.
- When the cops arrived it was filled with a stew of human remains. Kilroy was horribly mutilated and the other victims were buried in shallow graves out back.
- The cops decided to demolish the shack… by burning it down. They even had a priest bless the place with a purification rite.
- It didn’t take long after that for the cops to find the actual Adolfo. They surrounded him in an apartment in Mexico city.
- Instead of giving in to custody of Mexico City’s law enforcement… he had one of his followers shoot him in the face.
CREDIT:
The Journal of A_C_Unit 