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According to officials, Constanzo commissioned Kilroy's abduction by ordering his followers to "go out and bring in an Anglo male." Constanzo, who as a youth in South Florida reportedly practiced Santeria, the Caribbean voodoo, led the crazed rituals that accompanied the bloodletting. In the killing field, police found dozens of long candles as well as garlic, peppers and scores of half-burned cigars -- the accoutrements of an African offshoot of Santeria known as Palo Mayombe.
To ingratiate themselves with the devil, the killers boiled the brains and hearts of their victims, mixing the concoction with leg and arm bones and animal heads. So vicious were the devil worshipers that it took two pathologists laboring at a Matamoros mortuary almost four days to complete the autopsies. Several victims remained unidentified, but at least one other young male may have been an American kidnaped from neighboring Brownsville, Texas. Besides Constanzo, authorities sought three other suspects, including the Godfather's companion, Sara Maria Aldrete, 24, a Mexican honor student at Texas Southmost College in Brownsville. Searching Aldrete's home in Matamoros, police found a blood-spattered altar and candles.
Paraded before reporters in Matamoros, the four already under arrest acknowledged the grisly deeds but showed little remorse. The shirt of one suspect was pulled back to show a series of scars in the form of inverted crosses, an apparent sign that he was selected to kill. Later, police dispensed their own summary justice. Hauling one of the dopers back to the grave site, they forced him to dig in the blazing sun until he uncovered the 13th body.
Texas officials credited the discovery of El Padrino's cult in part to Mexico City's drug crackdown along the border, but that was small comfort to the families of Mark Kilroy and the other dead. As relatives of more than 100 missing people crowded Matamoros' funeral homes to learn if their loved ones were among the victims, whispers of other demonic bands and hideous deeds swept the Rio Grande valley. As preposterous as the rumors were, they would have sounded far more bizarre a week ago, before the tale of El Padrino and his followers became known.