Oct 24, 2026 · 50 min · 19 segments
In 1989, University of Texas student Mark Kilroy traveled to Matamoros, Mexico for a spring break trip that would end in one of the most disturbing cult crimes in modern history. When Kilroy vanished…
Vanessa RichardsonHostHe never knew his biological father, but his mother, Delia Gonzalez, had a major impact on Constanzo's early life.
Delia was a refugee who fled Cuba during the revolution a few years earlier.
Now, at just 15 years old, she was a single mother struggling to raise her son on the streets of Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.
Whenever times got tough, Delia relied on her faith for guidance and encouraged her son to do the same.
But those religious beliefs were definitely outside the mainstream, at least in America.
These folk religions developed in Cuba and Haiti during the 19th century, when enslaved people from West Africa combined their traditional beliefs with the Roman Catholicism being practiced on the islands.
People who practice these religions believe that spirits, sometimes called orishas, control different earthly events.
They offer food, drinks, flowers, and sometimes animal sacrifices to appease these spirits and get their help.
But from an early age, his mother used her interpretation of those religions to manipulate him.
The palero said her infant son had been chosen by the spirits to achieve greatness and power.
Throughout Constanzo's childhood, she raised him to believe that he was a star who was better than anyone else around him.
And she told him that other people who didn't adhere to their religion were animals whose lives didn't matter.
Every house they lived in had blood-stained walls and dried entrails and feathers stuck to the floors.
And as soon as Constanzo was old enough to hold a knife, she taught him how to kill as well.
This came in handy whenever she got into arguments with her neighbors, which was often.
He never knew his biological father, but his mother, Delia Gonzalez, had a major impact on Constanzo's early life.
Delia was a refugee who fled Cuba during the revolution a few years earlier.
Now, at just 15 years old, she was a single mother struggling to raise her son on the streets of Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.
Whenever times got tough, Delia relied on her faith for guidance and encouraged her son to do the same.
But those religious beliefs were definitely outside the mainstream, at least in America.
These folk religions developed in Cuba and Haiti during the 19th century, when enslaved people from West Africa combined their traditional beliefs with the Roman Catholicism being practiced on the islands.
People who practice these religions believe that spirits, sometimes called orishas, control different earthly events.
They offer food, drinks, flowers, and sometimes animal sacrifices to appease these spirits and get their help.
But from an early age, his mother used her interpretation of those religions to manipulate him.
The palero said her infant son had been chosen by the spirits to achieve greatness and power.
Throughout Constanzo's childhood, she raised him to believe that he was a star who was better than anyone else around him.
And she told him that other people who didn't adhere to their religion were animals whose lives didn't matter.
Every house they lived in had blood-stained walls and dried entrails and feathers stuck to the floors.
And as soon as Constanzo was old enough to hold a knife, she taught him how to kill as well.
This came in handy whenever she got into arguments with her neighbors, which was often.
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