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The Narco Cult That Boiled Human Brains · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want you to close your eyes for a second.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: We're going back to April nineteen eighty nine. You're in Matamors, Mexico,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: right on the border with Texas, and it is hot.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I mean not just warm, it's that oppressive, sticky heat
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: that just clings to.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: You, the dusty, heavy air exactly.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: And you're standing outside this remote ranch Santa Elena. The
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Mexican Federal police are everywhere, guns drawn. They're doing a raid.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: They think they're looking for, you know, drugs, maybe some hostages.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: But as they get closer to this little tin shed
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: on the property, the heat is suddenly not the worst
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: thing they're dealing with.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: It's the smell. The reports from that day are incredibly
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: specific about it. It wasn't just blood or you know, decay,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: the kind of thing homicide detect does, unfortunately get used to. Yeah,
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: this was described as a physical thing, like a wall.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Of rock, a wall. Yeah, a mix of unwashed bodies,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: decaying flesh and something cooking. And that's the detail that
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: sets up everything. The kick in the door to the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: shed and they're expecting what bales of cocaine. Instead, it's
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: like a temple, candles, cigars, rum, bottles everywhere. But in
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the center of the room is this massive iron cauldron Nenga,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: right the younga, and it's filled with this thick, foul stew.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: And when they look closer at what's floating in it,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: that's when the reality just hits them. We're talking animal parts, blood,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: and human remains.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: And this wasn't just a partel hideout or some serial
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: killer's trophy room. What the police had found was a
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: religious altar. It was a temple for a belief system
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: that had convinced hardened drug traffickers that they were literally bulletproof.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: So today we're unpacking one of the darkest and frankly,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: one of the most baffling chapters in true crime. We
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: were doing a deep dive into the Matamoros cult. We
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: need to figure out how Adolpho Constanzo, a guy born
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: in Miami and not some ancient village, built this this
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: following that blended drug smuggling with ritual human sacrifice.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: And the mission here isn't just to talk about the gore,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: is to understand the psychology. How do you go from
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: being a kid in Florida to a so called godfather
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: of Mexico who genuinely believed that boiling human brains gives
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: him magical protection. The path there is just a descent
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: into absolute madness.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's rewind. To understand this, we have to
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: go back to the beginning, before the ranch, before the cauldron.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Just Adolfo Constanzo born in Miami, nineteen sixty two, and.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: The family dynamic is really the first piece of the puzzle.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: His mother was only fifteen when she had him. She'd
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: already been widowed twice.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Wow, so young.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: But here's the twist. She wasn't poor. One of her
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: husbands left her a pretty big inheritance, so they had money.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: They lived comfortably, but there was no formal structure.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: And the sources really emphasize this contrast to the outside world.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: They seemed, you know, normal church going Catholic family, but
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the neighbors, the neighbors in Miami, told a very different story.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that creates this really eerie picture, you know, the
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: manicured lawn, the nice house. But then there's that smell again.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: The neighbors were constantly complaining about these foul odors coming
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: from the Donzo house.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just bad cooking, it was it was
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: psychological warfare. The research shows that if a neighbor had
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: an argument with the Dolpho's mom, they'd wake up the
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: next morning and find a headless chicken on their porch,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: or a goat head or a goat heads. That's not
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: just a feud, that is a calculated message.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: It was absolutely tied to her beliefs. She practiced Santoria.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Now we should be clear. Santoria is a syncretic religion.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: It blends Catholic Saints with West African beliefs. For most
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: people who practice it, it's about community and honoring spirits.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: It's not inherently violent.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: But she was also involved in voodoo. And this was
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: basically Adolpho school from age five. He wasn't learning his ABC's,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: he was learning rituals exactly.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: He's being raised in a world where magic is a
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: practical tool. You have a problem, you don't call a lawyer,
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: You do a ritual. But when he hits fourteen, things
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: take a darker turn Santuria isn't enough for him anymore.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: He starts getting drawn to something else, something called palomaombi.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: And this is a really crucial distinction. Aoma is separate
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: from Santraria. It's generally seen as darker, more aggressive. It's
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: all about communicating with the dead, often using bones or remains.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: And for Adolpho, this wasn't just a religion. It became
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: his business model.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: That's the part that's so chilling. He finds this mentor,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: a godfather who's basically a drug dealer, and this guy
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: gives Adolpho a philosophy that just shapes his entire life.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: He tells them non believers are tools.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Non believers are tools.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this worldview where anyone who doesn't believe in
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: their power, drug users, other criminals, anyone, they're just resources
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: to be used up. He taught Adolpho to let them
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: kill themselves with drugs so the believers could get rich.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: It just strips the humanity away from everyone.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: They're just prey and Adolpho completely internalizes this. He gets
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: arrested a couple of times in the US for a theft,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: and by nineteen eighty three he decides to leave. He
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: packs up and moves to Mexico, and this is where
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: the Magician is really born.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Mexico City in the eighties was the perfect environment for him.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Pretty high crime, the cartels, were on the rise of
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: his chaos, and in chaos, people crave control.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: And Adolpho offered them control.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: He started small, he got a small gang of thugs,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: but he won them over with mystique, not muscle. He
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: was doing tarot readings, these spiritual cleansings called Limpia.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: He was building a brand, a.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Very effective one. He started with poor farmers, but word
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: travels fast, and eventually it reached the people with the
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: real money and the real problems, the drug traffickers.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: And his sales pitch is just fascinating. I mean, imagine
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: you're a trafficker, You're constantly afraid of the police, of
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: rival gangs, and this guy comes along and says, I
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: can make you invisible. I can make you bulletproof.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: And they bought it. Literally. There's a record of one
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: mafia guy paying Adolpho forty thousand dollars upfront.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Forty thousand dollars in the mid eighties. That's that's the
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: price of a house.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: It is, and that was just for a protection spell
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: that he guaranteed would last for three years.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: It sounds completely insane to us, but it just shows
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: you how desperate these guys were. It's like he was
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: selling a supernatural insurance policy.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: He was selling peace of mind. But as his fame grew,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: so did his ego. The money wasn't enough. He wanted
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: to be a player himself, and his rituals well, they
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: started to demand a lot more than chickens. The Nganga
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: was getting.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Hungry, which brings us to the escalation. It's nineteen eighty six.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Adolpho's working with this big crime family, the Calzadas, and
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: he is convinced, truly believes that all their success is
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: because of his magic right.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: So he goes to them and demands a cut, not
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: a fee, a percentage of the entire operation, which is
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: a bold move, a very bold move, and the Calzadas,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: of course, they basically laugh him out of the room.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: They cut him off, and this just triggers this narcissistic
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: rage in Nudolpho. He decides he's going to get revenge.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: But it's not just a hit, it's a ritual.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Seven members of the Kalzada family just vanish. Their bodies
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: are found later in a river, and they aren't just murdered,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: they're mutilated.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: This is the turning point. This is where the in
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Ganga starts to feed on humans. Dolpho and his cult
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: harvested specific parts from the Kelzada family brains, eyes.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, why, I know it's gruesome, but is there a
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: logic to it? In his mind?
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: There is a twisted logic. Yes. In his version of Palamaombe,
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: the ingunga is a living thing that needs to be
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: fed to maintain its power. If you feed at the
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: brains of your enemy, the cauldron absorbs their intelligence. You
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: feed it their eyes, it gains their sight so he
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: can watch out for police. He believed he was literally
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: absorbing their power.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: That's horrifyingly logical in a completely insane way. And because
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: he got away with it, he felt untouchable. And then
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven, someone completely new enters the story,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Sarah Aldrede.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Sarah's one of the most puzzling parts of this whole thing.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: She was not a criminal. She was a college student,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: an honor student in fact, beautiful, popular, charismatic.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: The classic girl next door exactly.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: But she meets Adolpho and she is just completely mesmerized.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: She falls under his spell and rises through the ranks
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: to become La Madrine at the Godmother.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: But how does that happen? How does an honor student
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: go from, you know, studying for finals to overseeing human sacrifice.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: It seems to have been a very rapid radicalization despite
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: her education. She just doed headfirst into the violence. There's
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: one incident that really highlights her descent. She had an
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: ex lover.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Right the notes say that in a moment of quote madness,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: she killed her own ex lover just to satisfy the
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: cult's bloodlust.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: That moment shows she wasn't just a passive victim of brainwashing.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: She was an active, willing participant. She bought into a
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: whole system.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: And by this point the cult has moved to that
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: remote ranch Santa Elena, and this place it becomes a slaughterhouse.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Adolpho is demanding constant sacrifices.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Being Ganga had to be fed. It was an addiction
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: for him. He would scream at his followers to bring
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: him victims. They'd just go into town and snatch random
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: people off the street. They couldn't find a stranger. He
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: would sacrifice his own followers.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: So sources say he couldn't sleep without the sound of screaming,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: that he needed the terror to feel at peace. That
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: is that's pure evil.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: It's classic cult leader pathology. But there's a pattern with
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: these guys. They always overreach. They start believing their own
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: hype so much that they think they're invincible to everything,
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: and that leads us to the mistake.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: It's nineteen eighty nine. Adolpho has a huge drubshipment he
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: needs to get across the border. He decides he needs
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: a super spell to make sure it gets through safely.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: But a regular sacrifice isn't going to cut it.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: No, he had a very specific requirement for this one.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: He believed that the brain of an American student, a
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: white Anglo, would provide superior magical protection.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Wait, break that down. Why an American student.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: His logic was that the American essence in the cauldron
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: would confuse the American border agents. It's like magical camouflage.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: If the cauldron had an American brain, the American police
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: wouldn't be able to see the drugs.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: It's magical thinking crashing head on into reality. So the
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: gang goes hunting and they find Mark Kilroy.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Mark Kilroy was just a college student on spring break
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: in the wrong plays at the absolute worst time. They
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: snatched him right off.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: The street, and this is where Adolpho's magic completely failed him.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: He totally underestimated what happens when an American tourist goes
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: missing in Mexico.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Totally. When a local farmer disappears, the police might look
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: the other way, but a handsome American pre med student
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: that brings the heat. It became an international incident. The
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: US government put massive pressure on Mexico. The search was relentless.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: And that heat is actually what led them to the ranch.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: They were setting up roadblocks and they caught one of
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Adolpho's men and the whole thing just started to unravel,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: which brings us right back to that opening scene, the raid.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: When the police finally stormed Santa Lena, the full scale
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: of the horror became clear. We talked about the smell,
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: but the inventory of what they found is it's just
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: mind boggling.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Let's just list it out. Inside that cauldron that in
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: gunga cooked human brains, human bones, but also black cats, turtleshells, spiders.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Scorpin, literal witches brew But the real horror was outside
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: in the mass.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Grave sixteen bodies, sixteen, and that included Mark Kilroy, but
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: it also included police officers who had investigated them earlier
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: and just never came back.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: It was a graveyard for anyone who crossed a Dolpho
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: or was just unlucky. But Adolpho wasn't there. He, Sarah
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: and the Inner Circle had already fled to Mexico City,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: but the.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Police were on them. They tracked them to an apartment building,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: and this is where it all ends.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: A massive shootout. Adolpho is firing out the window, but
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: he's running out of AMMO, and he knows. He knows
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: the magic is gone, the spell is broken. He knows
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: what'll happen if he's taken alive.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: So in one last act of control, he doesn't let
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: the police take him.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: No, he orders one of his own men to shoot him.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: He commanded his own execution. By the time the police
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: stormed the room, Adolpho Constanzo.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Was already dead, but Sarah Algi was alive. She was
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: captured and what happened to her.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: According to the records we have, she was sentenced to
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: sixty two years in prison, a life sentence basically, but
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: the source indicates she didn't serve all of it right.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: The source mentions a very very specific tragic end.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Yes. It states that after serving only ten years Sarah
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: committed suicide in her cell. A very grim end to
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: a very grim story, and.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: The final body count we know sixteen at the ranch.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: The confirmed number is usually put at twenty three, but
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: investigators and the sources all agree the true number is
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: probably in the dozens. Adolpho had been feeding that cauldron
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: for years. Many of those victims were people whose disappearances
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: would have never been investigated, like Mark Kilroy's was.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: It's just it's overwhelming. So when you step back from
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: all of this, what does it all mean. This wasn't
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: just a guy killing for money.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: No, and that's the crucial point. A hit man kills
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: for money, a cartel boss kills for territory. Adolpho Constanzo
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: killed because he truly believed it made him a god.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: It was this perfect dangerous dorm of charismatic leadership, deep
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: seated superstition, and the total impunity of the drug trade.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: And the tragedy is just the randomness of it. The
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: victims were just fuel for his delusion.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: It's a terrifying reminder of how dangerous any belief system
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: can be when it dehumanizes other people. Remember his godfather's
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: lesson non believers are tools once you believe that any
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: atrocity is possible.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: That phrase really sticks with me. Non believers are tools.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: It's the ultimate permission slip for evil.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: It really is. It turns people into objects.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Before we go, I want to leave everyone with one
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: last thought. Go back to Miami, back to the seventies.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Think about those neighbors. They saw the headless chickens, they
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: smelled the rot, they knew something was wrong, but they
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: mostly just complained and moved on.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: It does raise the question, right, at what point do
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: someone's weird behavior stop being in eccentricity and start being
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: a warning sign?
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Exactly? How many red flags do we ignore because it's
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: easier not to get involved. It's something to think about.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Indeed, sometimes the monster really is right next door.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: That's it for this deep dive into the Sorcerer of
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: matam Moros. It's a dark one, but sometimes you have
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: to look into the dark to really understand the light.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Stay safe out there.