The Matamoros Cult: The Dark Rise of El Padrino

Welcome to PIC True Crime Podcast with your hosts Heather, Mike, and Bree! In this chilling two-part series, we dive into the horrifying story of the Matamoros Cult, a dark chapter in Mexico's history led by the enigmatic and ruthless Adolfo Costanzo, known as "El Padrino."

In Part One, we explore Adolfo’s twisted journey from a chaotic childhood steeped in Santeria and Palo Mayombe to his rise as a feared cult leader who captivated drug lords, politicians, and followers alike with his dark rituals and chilling charm. Growing up under the influence of black magic, Adolfo’s life was surrounded by death, animal sacrifices, and brutal practices that blurred the line between reality and the supernatural.

But this was only the beginning. From grisly animal rituals to grave robberies and more, his cult's dark practices took a sinister turn that would soon lead to unimaginable acts of violence. This episode contains graphic content, including discussions of animal cruelty, human sacrifice, and occult practices. Listener discretion is strongly advised.

Tune in to hear the terrifying tale of how one man’s twisted beliefs captivated and corrupted the minds of his followers, leading to one of the most gruesome cults in history. Subscribe now so you won’t miss the shocking conclusion in Part Two.

Transcript

Matamoros Cult Part One (00:00)
The Manson family, the Jamestown murders, Heaven's Gate, and more recently, the NXIVM operating right inside the heart of the Hollywood elite. If you guessed that we were covering a cult today, you'd be right.

But this one isn't as well known as the aforementioned disturbing cults that are particularly famous.

yet none of them compared to the Matamoros cult in brutality. Offensive and absolutely stomach-churning monstrous crimes were committed by a man named Adolfo Costanzo and his band of occultists that were willing to do the most heinous things to please their young, handsome, enigmatic, and utterly sick leader. For the first time, we begin an episode with a disclaimer right out of the gate.

If you are sensitive to animal cruelty, violence against children, and particularly gruesome events, well, this one is not going to be for you. We will be going deep into the world of spirits, demons, animal and human sacrifices, and the depravities that can only come from dealing with, I dare say, Satan himself. And we're not referring to Adolfo I'm talking about the fallen angel himself. Only something completely in

utterly evil could have done the things that transpired in the 80s in the town of Matamoros, you have been warned. And with that said, I'm Heather and my partners in crime are Mike.

And Bree

You guys ready for this one? I'm not gonna lie, it's given me a few sleepless nights doing the research for this episode.

I happened to skim over some of your papers real quick mom and I've got to tell you it's a one.

Yeah, it's the kind of thing that shock horror movies are made of. Like, it was written to get as much of a reaction out of the audience as possible.

I know what you mean. It's like the first time I heard of Jeffrey Dahmer, where it's so outrageous that you can't believe it's real. Only, Matamoros is worse than Dahmer. I never thought I'd see the day where I could say that. Well, let's not keep our listeners hanging. The best way to get into it is to start from the top. Take it away, Bree.

Adolfo de Jesus Castanzo was born in 1962 to a 15-year-old mother in sunny Miami.

Delia was a Cuban immigrant with a religious streak, and we don't mean the usual church-going kind.

Though they did attend the Catholic Church regularly, where Adolfo even served as an altar boy for a while, Delia's interests extended well beyond the traditional church.

She practiced Santeria on the side.

Santeria is a blend between Catholicism and a religion brought to Cuba from Yoruba back during the Atlantic slave trade in the 1600s.

They have no governing body like the Pope or hierarchies of priests to keep things in order, so there's a lot of variation between groups and how they practice Santeria. But in a nutshell, the belief is that there are spirits that encapsulate certain character traits like bravery or fear, or ideals like wealth and poverty.

These spirits are entwined with figures of Catholic saints. Back in the day, slaves hid their beliefs from their slave masters by sending their spirits into the religious figurines so that they could hide luck and wealth in plain sight without being killed for their beliefs.

These spirits are invoked through rituals that involve dancing, drumming, and ritual sacrifice. The best way I can describe it is dramatic and elaborate. In the same way that voodoo is very colorful, the drums and the dancing and possession states can be a bit alarming for someone who's used to sitting in church pews gently singing hymns.

There's nothing gentle about Santeria because they do ritual animal sacrifice to the spirits that they revue. And as you can imagine, the sacrifice element has caused Santeria to face a lot of outside criticism.

Mostly it's chickens and other farm animals, and understandably people outside of the religion find the practices disturbing and grotesque.

and the majority of its followers do seek to do as much good in the world as they can fit into a lifetime. It might look a little outrageous to us, but really most of the rituals and prayers are directed to good fortune and health, both for the individual and the people around them.

There is also a very conservative side to Santa Lea. Homosexuality is forbidden, often leading to the shunning of community members who are gay. The family unit is very highly regarded and it's encouraged that families remain intact.

Keeping the community together and being there for your fellow Santarians during hard times isn't negotiable, it's a duty.

People from the religion stick together and they'll protect each other no matter how hard things get. There's definitely a strong sense of tradition and children especially are adored and raised as much by their parents as they are the rest of the community. There will always be a small minority in every single belief system on earth that will be drawn to the dark side, the side that wants to destroy and not create.

The people who use the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, or any set of religious beliefs and twist it into something that's directed to defile that which is supposed to be good.

Regardless of the backlash, Santorias remains strong for over 400 years, and today there over 4 million people who practice it.

Most believers reside in Cuba, with plenty others all over Puerto Rico, the United States, and a few others in South American countries. We're going to get more into the specifics of spirits, sacrifices, and rituals as we get into the meat of this twisted cult, but for now, think Catholicism meets voodoo and sprinkle some African drums and nature spirits that possess you in there too.

That should give you pretty good idea of what Santeria would look like.

Back to Delia and her young son. Delia believed that Adolfo had psychic powers since the first time she laid eyes on him. She was so sure that spirits were attracted to him that she had her six-month-old son blessed by a Haitian priest to keep him safe from bad spirits.

Delia did get married when... It's alright, you just skipped a line.

Delia did get married during Adolfo's early years and had another child with Adolfo's stepfather. But when Adolfo was 11, his stepfather died and the 26-year-old took her children and moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

But she didn't move to start over. She moved because she was starting to rack up quite an unsettling record with authorities.

Besides the trail of accusations of many petty crimes that followed Delia, there were also several complaints from neighbors who came to the police with tales of dead animals posed in ritualistic ways in front of their doors. These grisly displays always came after they had a confrontation with the Costanzo family.

Every time the police got enough complaints to make a house call, Delia and her children would be gone, to terrorize another apartment complex or neighborhood.

The only reason she got away with it for so long was because Delia used many, many aliases. The last reports that finally made her leave the country came to police when neighbors complained that there were many animals in the small two-bedroom apartment, and judging by the smell and the amount of animal noises that were coming from the apartment, the conditions could not possibly be good for the sheer

amount of chickens and cats that were crammed inside the tiny space, and most certainly not for the children who shared the home with the creatures.

When police finally came by, they found 27 live animals inside cages that were far too small for them. Worse was the condition of the rest of the house.

There were blood stains on the walls and the heads of goats and chickens were displayed on coffee tables and counters where they stood rotting out in the open. If Delia didn't take her son and her baby out of Miami, then CPS was sure to do it soon.

After the death of her first husband, Delia's fascination with Santhria became an obsession. She and Adolfo took several trips to Haiti together to learn and observe the rituals and practices firsthand.

Delia's second husband was the final nail in the coffin for the Costanzo's exposure to black magic and alternative religions. Adolfo's new stepfather was just as involved in Santeria as Delia was, and he had a pretty extensive criminal background, mostly surrounding the drug trade. In this house, there were no authorities or concerned neighbors to keep Delia's disturbing beliefs in check anymore.

As a preteen boy, Adolfo was the perfect age to become a protege of sorts to his new stepfather and the various criminals that he brought Adolfo into contact with.

Through a drug dealer, he was introduced to another religion, Palo Mayombe, and the world of superstitious criminals. Palo Mayombe is similar to Santeria in the sense that it takes from African beliefs and religions and hides their spirits in figurines of Catholic saints. They also use animal sacrifice to, let me use their words, feed the spirits and to keep the connection between those spirits strong.

It's even more grisly and bloody than Santeria is and not nearly as popular. Though that's not to say it doesn't have a staunch following. It's still got a good few hundred thousand believers across the world.

Paolo Mayombe goes much further with its rules and beliefs though. Gay men and women aren't just shunned, they face curses and spiritual damnation from their people. They can't practice the beliefs they grew up with at all and are barred from rituals and festivals. It's equally unregulated, so there's a lot of room for people to go off the rails with their beliefs and take things to the extreme. Which, let's face it, for a belief system that already borders on the extreme,

doesn't take that much.

The gangs in Puerto Rico, with all their guns and physical violence, are surprisingly susceptible to superstitions, especially when those beliefs involve dark magic. So Delia and her three children practiced their combined religions with the encouragement of Delia's new husband. through his involvement in the criminal underbelly of Puerto Rico, they also got deeper into crime.

In 1972, with a new baby added to the family, Delia now had three children from three different fathers.

They moved back to Miami and Delia's behavior towards her neighbors kicked right back off from where she had left when she lived in Miami back in the 60s. She left many properties vandalized and filled with rotting animal carcasses when the neighbors complaints started attracting police or CPS suspicions, forcing her to use her old tricks to avoid detection. They hopped from place to place and managed to steer clear of any major arrests.

They did get caught for smaller charges though. Both Delia and Adolfo were arrested multiple times for shoplifting, theft, and vandalism throughout Adolfo's teenage years. All in all, Delia was arrested no less than 30 times for minor crimes. The only serious offense was child neglect, but none of them ever stuck. Delia claimed that her sacrifices in spirit protected her from prosecution.

that she was invincible because of her practices. And quite frankly, the neighbors believed her. They got a front row seat to the conditions and beliefs that she was raising her children in. It was a regular occurrence to find gutted inflated animal corpses in the trash or in front of their doors if they displeased Delia for some reason. And they heard the barking and meowing through the thin walls.

To say that she was an unhinged and frightening woman is a bit of an understatement.

Can you imagine what growing up like that would do to a kid? Moving around all the time, dead animal heads just hanging out like furniture in the living room and everyone you meet is afraid of you, your family, and your house?

You need to remember that Delia was convinced that Adolfo was destined for greatness. That he was the chosen one. Chosen for what exactly? Well, who the hell knows what she was telling him. Adolfo believed he was special. That the fear and respect that the family got was proof of his superiority over us regular, insignificant people. He had a

God complex long before he became what he became. Don't get things mixed up. His life was chaotic, sure, but he was not the object of physical or emotional abuse from his mother.

She definitely raised her kids with as much gore and instability as a person possibly could fit into four walls, and her treatment of them was harsh at times, but she wasn't abusive in the way you might expect from such a demented woman. If anything, it was the opposite. Delia spoiled and praised him, especially when they were doing rituals together.

He even became an apprentice for a Palo Mayombe priest as a teenager, much to his mother's pleasure. She believed all three of her children were special in some way, but none more so than Adolfo.

So it seems that his siblings got the least attention, possibly outright abuse, huh? The siblings and their backgrounds have been kept intentionally hidden. If they ever got into criminal activity, then their identities would have gotten out, I'm sure of it.

So there's no evidence or reports of what they went through, but there are hints that they were neglected at the very least. But then again, just living in those disgusting and insane conditions is enough to warrant charges of abuse and neglect.

I don't for a second believe that any child can grow up with sacrificial rituals, chanting, and then wake up to see a goat head staring at them and come out of their psychologically intact.

Adolfo was enthralled by the spiritual world. And if he spent even half the amount of time on schoolwork that he did in the presence of drums and chanting and rituals, he probably would have made a decent student.

What happened during these tutelages from the priest wasn't officially disclosed, but there are some hints that Adolfo was active in sexual aspects of the rituals. How much of it was voluntary isn't clear, but he was just a boy, so I'd argue that none of it could have been consensual, no matter how willing he seemed. We also don't know if the priest abused him or if others were brought in for these, shall we say, activities.

Either way, by the time he was 16, Adolfo identified himself as bisexual and was very open about his sexual preferences. It was a very unusual thing to admit to in the culture that he grew up in. Homosexuality was seen as an inexcusable sin, something that could get you killed. But the priest and even Adolfo himself were so feared by those around them that he could say and do...

anything he wanted in the community and no one would question it.

Despite the fact that he was at the priest's house more than he was at school, Adolfo managed to graduate high school and even signed up to go to prep school so that he could eventually enroll in college. The prep school administrators were very disturbed by his cult activities and the students were afraid of him too. Adolfo had an aura about him, a dark one, and everyone in his vicinity couldn't help but pick up on it.

They got him expelled for being arrested for vandalism and theft, but in reality, they just wanted to get rid of him and the fearful energy that surrounded him.

Even though he scared most of the students, there'll always be those who gravitate toward that kind of danger, that mysterious energy that radiates from people like Adolfo. And he enjoyed the reverence and the fear that his admirers had for him. Those close to him really believed that he was psychic. And since his mother had been telling him he had supernatural powers since the day he was born, Adolfo completely believed that he had powers of premonition,

and control over spirits.

Adolfo spent a few years frequenting gay bars to party up a storm and robbing graves for the Palo Mayombe priest that he worked for. Oddly enough, Adolfo never drank or did drugs. He sure sold a lot of it, but he never took any himself. Though I'd imagine that someone who got off on stealing body parts from rotting corpses, drugs were probably too tame for him. Together they used the bones

organs and teeth of the deceased victims they stole from to make brews and potions for various customers.

This concoction made in a cauldron filled with coins, bones, and body parts is called Nganga And it's a common sight when the priests of Palo Mayombe prepare concoctions for their customers.

Though they normally use animal bones, Adolfo and his mentor weren't going to settle for lesser magic. However, they wanted the organs and bones of the non-believers. In other words, they went into graveyards and desecrated the graves of the freshest corpses they could find. Good grief, it sounds like something out of the Dark Ages,

Witches cackling over the cauldrons of stewing human teeth and drinking from skulls. And you can just imagine what kind of effect this would have on a kid. Every single moment of Adolfo's life was surrounded by this.

From the moment he was born, this was his normal, reading fortunes with the entrails of stray cats and dogs and believing that spirits, called by death and blood, would do your bidding.

The crime he was surrounded by warped his sense of right and wrong. And by the time he was a teenager, moving over to handling corpses stolen from their graves probably didn't even faze him anymore. Morality, faith, and adhering to normal social structures and rules, everything would have been upside down and inside out for him. He truly believed in all of this. And what else would you expect? It was all he ever knew. This sick

world of death and demons and curses and blood.

In 82, Adolfo went through a transformation. He performed a weeks long ritual to prepare himself for it, believing that by the end of this preparation he'd be able to control living people's minds and actions. He buried his clothes underground and slept under a tree for seven nights. After those seven nights, he dug up the clothes and wore them for another week.

Throughout all of this, he gave sacrifices to his personal spirit guide that he called Kadiempembe

In Palo Mayombe Kadiempembe is the name for the devil, as in Satan, the highest of all demons and spirits. He bathed in the blood of sacrificed animals and his mentor carved his signature into Adolfo's skin to mark the end of his training.

Adolfo was now a padrino, a priest of the highest order in Palo Mayombe.

This is all very disturbing and all, but I can't help but wonder what he must have smelled like. Two weeks of wearing muddy clothes and having chicken blood baths? He must have smelled like death. Well, I mean, it is only fitting Adolfo was surrounded by death since the day he was born.

I'm honestly surprised it took him to his late teens before he completely immersed himself into it.

He certainly cleaned himself up after that. Adolfo liked to wear white, and as much of it as possible.

And when you look at his pictures from that time, he's actually quite handsome. Very clean cut, good features, and with his shiny jewelry and fresh pressed shirts, he looked very dapper indeed. In 1984, Adolfo was now 21, about to turn 22. And like I said, he was very handsome, fair skinned, and he quickly found a new future outside of his failed education in Mexico.

There he worked as a model for a year, and this is where things begin to move fast for the disturbed young man.

If he wasn't posing for photo shoots, Adolfo was trafficking drugs around the country. This put him into contact with a strange collection of people.

celebrities and authors that he got acquainted with in the modeling industry, drug lords in the underworld, and somehow even politicians became aware of the handsome stranger from Miami who could call up spirits to aid them in their various ventures. The drug world was ablaze with the gossip about Adolfo and his rituals involving slaughtered goats and drums and smoke.

higher-ups in all industries came to see him from all over Mexico.

Adolfo had a knack for pulling out details and facts about people's lives that he couldn't possibly have known about, and his predictions were so scarily accurate that no one left his apartment doubting that this man was magical.

Adolfo was a frightening man, but he was completely in control of the spirits he summoned and worth every penny of the boatloads of money that was being thrown at his feet so that he could bind spirits of good fortune to politicians heading for election season

or drug traffickers who needed to be made invisible to authorities during their big shipments. When you hear the accounts of some of the people that paid for his services, you can tell if they had any doubts about the supernatural before, they didn't have any more doubts after they left Adolfo's apartment. And many still believe that he was really calling up spirits or demons or satan or whatever.

And maybe he did. He certainly grew up closer than anyone we've ever looked into. If there really is a heaven and a hell, then Adolfo was the perfect vessel for hell to come through. Of that, there's no doubt. And I can tell you that kid from the Omens got nothing on Adolfo. Damien pales in comparison.

Adolfo had many lovers throughout the years, South America isn't exactly tolerant about homosexuality of the thing either, and much less so back in the 80s,

But when did Adolfo ever adhere to societal rules anyway?

Besides, he was an enigma, half in the real world and half way in the ether. Adolfo and his spirits were above the rules, both for the law and for society. He'd never heeded or respected anyone in his life, except maybe his mother and the padrino that trained him.

When he moved to Mexico he still kept in touch with Delia, often sending her fur coats and other expensive gifts.

And when he spoke to her over the phone, he spoke in a childlike baby voice like he did when he was a boy.

Freud would have a field day with that information.

She was the only one he was ever soft with, that he didn't want to control. But one thing about his mother that he didn't bring with him when he lived alone was the mess and the stench that he grew up with. His home was far removed from his despicable and disgusting childhood parchment says you could get. The place always kept immaculately clean and orderly.

There was no clutter at all, everything had its place and the surfaces were clean and even devoid of the most mundane messes like car keys or loose change.

But juggling a drug trafficking ring, a charlatan shop for the elite, and all of his many, lovers was too much for one man to handle. He was so well known that he hired a bodyguard to protect him from the numerous gangs that he'd cursed when he left his apartment.

The bodyguard, Martin Rodriguez, was also one of his many flings. But don't make the mistake of thinking they officially dated. Adolfo never settled on anyone for longer than a few weeks at a time. Rodriguez was just a handsome convenience in between lovers.

With so much to keep him occupied and no time for fun anymore, Adolfo shopped out the day-to-day business out to his earliest followers.

Martin Quintana, Jorje Montes, Elio Hernandez Garcia, and Omar Orea were utterly entranced by this enigmatic psychic.

Montez believed that he was a psychic himself and he too was gay, so when he heard about the openly bisexual Adolfo, with all of his many lovers and his brilliant magic, he took his friend Orea along for a reading. Orea had his own motivations for coming to see Adolfo. When Orea was a young boy, he was told by a psychic that he'd meet a powerful man that would change his life.

So he went there, wondering if this was the man that the psychic told him about.

They were his first and most loyal followers and the start of the Matamoros cult. For two years the cult grew from those first five men to twenty core members with dozens more who were involved in some ritualistic capacity from time to time. But Montez was probably the most enamored by Adolfo of all of the followers.

because he was helplessly in love with his leader from the moment they first came in for reading.

Here is where we begin to see Adolfo's enjoyment at others' suffering and debrogation come into play. He made Montes and his bodyguard Rodriguez dress as women and walk around the house serving him from trays. If they showed any signs of resistance, he'd beat them mercilessly with anything he could find. Sticks, his fists, chairs.

Nothing was off limits when Padrino Adolfo went into age. Eventually, Adolfo and his four stooges landed in Matamoros.

This little town rests right on the United States Mexican border and the place is very well known for its drug smuggling operations and the heavy presence of gangs in the area.

There were more drugs to push and many, many more customers for his occult shop. He had no trouble setting up shop again. The padrino's reputation preceded him and everyone was aware of his rival.

Now I have to ask mom, with all of the hocus pocus shows he was putting up, was there any reason for people to believe he was the real deal other than him just being dramatically convincing and charming?

I hate to say it, but the stuff that happened after rituals that came true is scary. Like legit enough that I'm questioning whether or not the devil was helping him. Seriously spooky stuff. He did a reading for a real estate agent and advised him to buy a cheap, underdeveloped piece of land. He said that in a few months, that property was going to double in value. After performing some incantations, the real estate agent left and bought the land. Sure enough,

An earthquake hit the area just a few months later and the government bought up all of the damaged properties, including that patch of land, for twice what they were worth.

Drug dealers sought him out to make them invisible to authorities during smuggling operations. And there are dozens of accounts of them claiming that the police's eyes would go blind to them and their illegal products. Or if a rival gang was cursed, several members of the gang would die in the next few weeks, just dropping like flies from accidents, shootouts, illnesses.

And then there was a transvestite exotic dancer that came to see him about a dispute over money that her boss had stole from her. And when she confronted the man about her salary, he beat her nearly to death. The dancer's name was Adolfo Zepeda, but everyone called her by her stage name, El Duby.

El Duby asked the padrino to curse the man who wronged her, wanting him to suffer more than she did. A week later, her boss died from a heart attack and El Duby became a member of the cult as well as another one of Adolfo's many lovers.

were a few policemen that he did readings and rituals for who paid him with information about the criminal world. And here's the only place that we can say for sure that he used deceptive methods for his predictions. On their information, he made many predictions of arrests and sting operations that were about to happen. And he was able to advise smugglers to use routes that were not as heavily policed to tilt the odds

of his predictions in his favor.

And these cops also turned a blind eye to Adolfo's cult members' drug dealings.

But his biggest boost in high value clientele came from a reading he did for a washed up singer named Oscar Athie Athie wanted a career revival, but he was too broke to pay Adolfo steep prices. But Adolfo saw an opportunity. He offered to cast enchantments on Athie and in return, Athie would bring him more celebrity clients. Again, the corpses of chickens and cats were

Athie had a sudden boom in sales in several singles that charted in Mexico. Between the money from selling the drugs and charging thousands of dollars for a session or a reading in his rooms, Padrino Adolfo was rolling in dough by the time he turned 23. His followers started calling him El Padrino, which means the Godfather.

Man, 23, that's so young to have so much power and money at your disposal. I can't believe he managed to build an empire that big in just three years after moving away from his home.

Well, he's got Satan and spirits to keep the ball rolling. He had lots of help. But I have a question. I thought he was bisexual, but all of his flings seem to be men.

That's because he preferred their company more than women. He had girls over too, but they were only around long enough to be considered one-night stands.

Many people suspect that Adolfo was gay, but the truth is he had too many women in his bed to say that he preferred only one gender. The men just stuck around longer and he tolerated their company for longer periods of time. I don't think it matters what he was really.

Adolfo only wanted people around him who could satisfy him sexually and who he could dominate or control.

There was never any love in this man's life, except for his mother's. And certainly no friends. He had fans and followers, and he definitely basked in the adoration and complete obedience that he got from them. His motley gang of followers were an eclectic bunch.

There were models in minor celebrities, corrupt politicians, drug dealers, exotic dancers, and even just regular folk with blue collar jobs.

And the rest of the drug lords and policemen in Matamoros were all aware of the padrino who could do real life magic.

He was a scary figure, and the wiser ones steered clear of him, just the way he liked.

He developed a running list of services and their prices, a price list of the kinds of magic he could perform,

starting at simple fortune telling and cleansings, all the way up to curses and enchantments. The more powerful the magic was, the more expensive the session got. And the animals came with their own price tag. He didn't stop with just cats and chickens. He managed to get his hands on snakes, iguanas, zebras, even lion cubs.

And I just have to know, how the hell did he manage to get his hands on a lion in South America? Don't those come from Africa? Never mind how he got them. He killed baby lions? No idea how and where he got them, but killing exotic baby animals should be an indication of where his sacrifices were heading. Human babies? Wait and see.

Let's just say his flair for the dramatic was becoming more and more outrageous. Now I'm afraid to go on. At the end of 85, Adolfo called his members together. He was going to make a fresh batch of Nganga that blew the required sacrificed animals, but he needed more human remains to perform a spell more powerful than ever before.

In a cauldron, they layered the body parts, stolen by the cult members from a graveyard, specifically from a victim who died a very violent death. Adolfo was very clear that the remains needed to be taken from a person that suffered greatly. Added to the mix was a boiled black cat, coins, railroad nails, a scorpion, and chicken blood.

Alright, just stop. I guess we get the picture. It was pretty disgusting. Yep, and just disgusting enough to call on a demon to possess Adolfo. The members who were present later said that his face turned beet red. He started convulsing, and then he clenched his fists so tightly that the palms of his hands and his fingers started bleeding.

The demon answered their questions through Adolfo's mouth, promising them riches, more followers, and protection from authorities.

That isn't saying much. If the police weren't paying customers, then they were informants for Al Padrina. Doesn't sound like they need all that much protection from the cops. Either way, by the time Adolfo turned 24, he owned a condo in the swankiest part of town and had more followers than ever. The spirit he'd called up certainly kept its promise. Things were going better than ever for Adolfo.

Word began to spread much further than Matamoros though, and Palo Mayombe and Santeria got a bit of resurgence in popularity

Since so many people were spurred on by the success and respect that this new El Padrino was garnering around him.

And here is where we need to wrap it up for today.

The next two years are gonna move fast. Adolfo is about to meet a woman named Sara Villareal and together they'll become El Padrino and La Madrina, the godfather and godmother of the Matamoros cult.

And keep in mind, they've been upping the ante every few years.

Now they're slaughtering exotic animals, selling enough drugs to compete with the biggest guns in Mexico, and they're robbing graves. Adolfo's life has been a whirlwind of rituals and demons and lovers. It was only a matter of time before he committed the ultimate evil, the taking of human life. And with a person like Sarah Villareal to fuel the fire and scores of devoted members, well, there's going to be no stopping the snowball.

Beating and degrading his most loyal followers and the reverence and the fear that the rest of the world regard him with is no longer enough to satisfy the chosen one. Adolfo Costanzo is about to plunge Mexico into one of the most hideous and disturbing crime sprees that the country has ever seen in all of its history.

If this episode was disturbing for you, just know, next week's gonna be even worse.

I can't wait, I just hope that the lion baby killer gets what's coming to him.

But not before he brings the end to many, many more undeserving creatures and people. So we'll leave the discussion part until the end of part two because there's still a lot that happens.

Let's keep the Adolfo spirits bottled up for the time being and release them again when our stomachs have stopped turning.

Hear hear, see you guys next week for the high speed fiery conclusion on the Matamores cult. Thank you for joining me and my PICs, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and we will see you next time with more True Crime.