EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Man in the Cauldron: The Matamoros Killings, Pt. I

El Padrino's nganga [image source]

MATAMOROS, MEXICO - On March 13, 1989, 21-year old med student Mark Kilroy disappeared while vacationing across the Texas border on Spring Break. On April 11, 1989 his body (along with 14 others) was discovered buried on a ranch belonging to Adolfo de Jesus Costanzo, known to his underlings as El Padrino. Mark had been the victim of a horrific Palo Mayombe ritual, of which El Padrino was an avid practitioner.

In Palo, the adept has a sacred urn or cauldron called an nganga. The nganga is the source of the Palo practitioner’s power and what is put into it, is said to come back. For example, if the practitioner wants physical strength, he or she may put animal muscles into the nganga, if they want youth, they will put in the blood of a young chicken. El Padrino got the idea to use human sacrifices, in lieu of animals, because he thought it would work better.

Mark Kilroy

During spring break 1989, Costanzo wanted more intelligence. He dispatched his underlings into the city of Matamoros, knowing that the border-town would be full of American students. These goons, were totally brainwashed and believed implicitly in El Padrino’s power, making them incredibly daring. They kept their ears open and waited for a young Americano to brag about his med school grades. When they had found their mark, they made their move.

They found Mark on a back street about a block away from the heavily populated main drag. They had stopped him while impersonating police officers. They became momentarily distracted and Mark ran for it. The goons shouted “Freeze,” and mark stopped dead in his tracks. He was just around the corner from disappearing into the throng of college age partygoers.

Instead he was taken back to the farm where he was tied up, blindfolded and held prisoner for an indeterminate period.

After he was killed, El Padrino added Mark’s brain to the cauldron, which when it was finally uncovered by police, was found to contain various other human remains, as well as snakes and spiders in a soup of blood.

When Mark’s friends realized that he hadn’t returned the next morning, they immediately contacted authorities on the Texas side of the border in Brownsville. This led to his eventual downfall. Costanzo might have continued his occult practices indefinitely if he hadn’t abducted a middle class white kid from the States.

Conservatively, roughly 1,000 murders take place every day around the world. However, few fates are as frightening or strange as what happened to Mark Kilroy on this day 26 years ago.

Sources:

Cauldron of Blood: The Matamoros Cult Killings by Jim Schultze (Avon Books, September 1989)

I’m listing the videos below as my sources on this story, but the true primary sources are long forgotten. I’ve been researching this case for years.