Murder of Mark Kilroy

Kilroy's murderer, Adolfo Constanzo, was a Cuban American who was born in Miami, Florida, in 1962.

His father died when he was an infant, so his mother relocated to Puerto Rico with him, where she remarried.

Mark James Kilroy was born on 5 March 1968, in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. His parents were James William "Jim" Kilroy, a chemical engineer, and Helen Josephine Kilroy, a volunteer paramedic.

They moved to Texas from the Midwest after their son was born.

Kilroy grew up in Santa Fe, Texas, a small town outside of Houston, for over 15 years along with his brother Keith Richard Kilroy.

He was raised as a Catholic and his parents were frequent attendees at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in the adjacent town of Hitchcock, Texas.

Kilroy excelled both in academics and athletics as a teenager, and played baseball, basketball, and golf with his friends at school.

They returned to Florida in 1972 and his stepfather died soon afterwards, leaving a large inheritance behind.

His mother married again, this time with a man who was involved in drug trafficking and the occult.

His stepfather taught him a philosophy that Constanzo carried for the rest of his life: he told him that he should let nonbelievers "kill themselves with drugs" while he could profit from their foolishness.

Around the same time, Constanzo's mother believed that her son had psychic abilities.

She introduced him to Palo Mayombe, an Afro-Caribbean religion that involves animal sacrifice.

He also was introduced to Santería when he was younger.

He started as a "palero", someone who practices Palo Mayombe, and eventually reached the status of high-priest, "padrino".

In 1984, he moved to Mexico City to start his life as a tarot card reader and eventually developed a cult following.

His charisma, physical attractiveness (he previously worked as a male model), and claimed psychic talent granted him the opportunity to mingle with Mexico City's upper class.

His reputation for predicting the future and offering ritual cleansing became popular with some drug dealers, musicians, and police officers.

The other cult leader was Sara Aldrete, a Matamoros native and an honors student and cheerleader at Texas Southmost College.

She was the girlfriend of Gilberto Sosa, a drug dealer linked to the Hernández clan to which Constanzo wanted an introduction.

Upon graduation in 1986, he attended Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, before transferring to Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, on a basketball scholarship.

At Tarleton he became a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.

He then decided to give up his athletics and transferred to the University of Texas at Austin to become a pre-med student and prepare for his Medical College Admission Test (MCAT).

In 1987, she met Constanzo and eventually became the cult's main recruiter.

Investigators believed that Aldrete's physical attractiveness and charm helped her lure men to join the cult or to set them up to be abducted and killed.

She recruited people by first showing them the 1987 thriller film The Believers, which was about a New York City-based cult that practiced human sacrifice for money and influence.

Constanzo's members were forced to see the film again and again in order to indoctrinate them to the necessity of human sacrifice.

Students and teachers at her college in Brownsville recalled her as a friendly and studious physical education student who showed no signs of abnormal behavior or involvement with a religious cult.

On 14 March 1989, University of Texas at Austin student Mark James Kilroy was kidnapped in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, while vacationing during spring break.

He was taken by his abductors to a ranch where he was tortured and sodomized for hours before being murdered in a human sacrifice ritual.

Kilroy was killed with a machete blow and then had his brain removed and boiled in a pot.

His killers then inserted a wire through his spinal column, amputated his legs at the knees, and buried him at the ranch along with 14 other people who had been killed there before him.

Adolfo Constanzo, the leader of the cult, told his followers that human sacrifice granted them immunity from law enforcement for their drug smuggling operations.

The killing drew worldwide media attention and initiated an international police manhunt because of the unusual circumstances of the crime.

After the bodies were discovered on 11 April 1989, Constanzo fled to Mexico City but was eventually tracked down.

As the police surrounded his apartment complex, Constanzo died after ordering one of the cult members to kill him with a machine gun.

Sara Aldrete, another high-ranking member of the cult, was arrested at the scene along with several others.

In 1993, the cult members were found guilty of a number of charges, including capital murder and drug trafficking.

Several of them, however, claimed they were not guilty of Kilroy's murder and told the press they were tortured to confess.

Only two suspects remain at large.

He was in the Boy Scouts of America and an honors student at Santa Fe High School, where he was a member of the student council, and was ranked 14th in a class of 210 students.