The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (19 page)

father’s absence, using torture to extract a pledge of The grim relationship was doomed to failure, filled silence, making him a bruised accomplice to her own with screaming battles, beatings, and the occasional adultery. As he grew older, Cole was forced to dress in resort to weapons. Finally, in 1965, persuaded that his frilly skirts and petticoats for the amusement of his wife was servicing the tenants of a motel where they mother’s friends, dispensing tea and coffee at sadistic lived, Cole torched the place and was imprisoned on an

“parties” where the women gathered to make sport of arson charge. Upon release, he drifted northward,

“Mama’s little girl.” Enrolled in elementary school two through Missouri and was jailed again for the attempted years behind his peers, Cole grew up fearing for his murder of Virginia Rowden, age 11. Cole had chosen masculinity, intensely sensitive to jokes about his her at random, crept into her room while she was sleep-

“sissy” given name. At nine, he drowned a playmate ing, and had tried to strangle her in bed. Her screams who made fun of him, avoiding punishment when care-had driven him away, and he was readily identified by witnesses as her assailant when police arrived.

Missouri offered Cole more psychiatric treatment through assorted inmate programs, but it didn’t take. In 1970, he once again surrendered to authorities—this time in Reno, Nevada—confessing his desire to rape and strangle women. Learned doctors wrote him off as a malingerer and set him free on the condition that he leave the state. Cole’s file contains the telling evidence of psychiatric failure: “Prognosis: Poor. Condition on release: Same as on admittance. Treatment: Express bus ticket to San Diego, California.”

The problem was exported, but it would not go

away. Within six months of his return to San Diego, Cole would kill at least three women. (On the day before his execution in Nevada, he suggested that there might have been two others in this period, the details of Carroll Edward Cole (Author’s collection)

their murders blurred by massive quantities of alcohol.)
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CONSTANZO, Adolfo de Jesus

His victims, then and later, shared the common trait of harmless fake, “no danger to society.” On two occa-infidelity to husbands, fiancés, or boyfriends; each sions, officers in San Diego literally caught Cole in the approached Cole in a bar, accompanied him to lonely act of an attempted murder—and on each occasion, roads for sex, and laughed about the skill with which they accepted his ridiculous assertion of a lover’s quar-she “put one over” on her regular companion.

rel, offering the would-be killer transportation to his Moving eastward, Cole picked off another victim in home. When violent fantasies became reality, investiga-Casper, Wyoming, in August 1975. Assorted jail terms tors with the same department stubbornly ignored per-often interfered with hunting, but he surfaced in Las suasive evidence, rejecting even Cole’s confession, Vegas during 1977, staying long enough to kill a prosti-passing off two homicides as drunken accidents, and tute and get himself arrested on a charge of auto theft, dismissing others as the work of angry pimps. In Texas, which was dismissed. A few weeks later, after days of Cole might very well have slipped the net again if he drinking, Cole awoke in Oklahoma City to discover the had not elected to confess in cases where detectives remains of yet another woman in his bathtub; bloody were inclined to view his homicides as “accidental slices of her buttocks rested in a skillet on the stove.

deaths.” In such a case, the system fails not only Carroll Returning once again to San Diego, Cole remar-Edward Cole; it fails us all.

ried—to another “drunken tramp”—and sought the help of local counselors to curb his drinking. Given the conditions of his home life, it was hopeless, and the
CONSTANZO, Adolfo de Jesus

urge to murder was consuming him, inevitably fueled Born in Miami on November 1, 1962, Adolfo Con-by alcohol, a ravenous obsession. During August 1979, stanzo was the son of a teenage Cuban immigrant. He he strangled Bonnie Stewart on the premises of his was still an infant when his widowed mother moved to employer, dumping her nude body in an alleyway adja-Puerto Rico and married her second husband. There, cent to the store. For weeks he had been threatening to Adolfo was baptized a Catholic and served the church kill his wife—the threats reported to an officer in charge as an altar boy, appearing to accept the standard tenets of supervising his parole—but when he finally suc-of the Roman faith. He was 10 years old when the fam-ceeded in September, the authorities refused to rule her ily moved back to Miami. His stepfather died a year death a homicide. Despite discovery of her body, swad-later, leaving Adolfo and his mother financially well-off.

dled in a blanket and reposing in a closet of Cole’s By that time, neighbors in Little Havana had begun home, despite Cole’s own arrest while drunkenly to notice something odd about Aurora Constanzo and attempting to prepare a grave beneath a neighbor’s her son. Some said the woman was a witch, and those house, detectives viewed the death of Diana Cole as who angered her were likely to discover headless goats

“natural,” related to her own abuse of drink.

or chickens on their doorsteps in the morning. Adolfo’s Taking no chances, Cole hit the road. He claimed mother had introduced him to the Santería religion another victim in Las Vegas, gravitating back to Dallas around age nine, with side trips to Haiti for instruction where, within 11 days in 1980, he would strangle three in Vodun, but there were still more secrets to be more victims. Though discovered at the final murder learned, and in 1976 he was apprenticed to a practi-scene, the victim stretched out at his feet, he was again tioner of
palo mayombe.
His occult “godfather” was regarded merely as a “casual suspect” by detectives.

already rich from working with local drug dealers, and Weary of the game at last, Cole startled them with his he imparted a philosophy that would follow Adolfo to confession to a string of unsolved homicides; at trial, in his grave: “Let the nonbelievers kill themselves with 1981, his guilty plea insured a term of life with possible drugs. We will profit from their foolishness.”

parole, and he was counting down the days to freedom Constanzo’s mother recalls that her son began dis-when reports of a potential extradition to Nevada playing psychic powers about the same time, scanning changed his mind.

the future to predict such events as the 1981 shooting of The case of Carroll Edward Cole deserves a place President Ronald Reagan. Be that as it may, Adolfo had among the classics as a showcase of “The System’s”

problems foretelling his own future, including two abject failure. As a child, young Eddie Cole was failed arrests for shoplifting—one involving the theft of a by educators who ignored his late enrollment, failed to chainsaw. On the side, he had also begun to display recognize the signs of chronic child abuse, and dealt bisexual inclinations, with a strong preference for male with adolescent violence as a problem to be swept away lovers.

by referral to other agencies. As a potential murderer A modeling assignment took the handsome young

who sought the help of mental institutions, he was sorcerer to Mexico City in 1983, and he spent his free failed by the psychologists and psychoanalysts of half a time telling fortunes with tarot cards in the city’s infa-dozen states, repeatedly discharged as a malingerer, a mous Zona Rosa. Before returning to Miami, Adolfo
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CONSTANZO, Adolfo de Jesus

collected his first Mexican disciples, including Martín
federales
to lead the Mexican branch of Interpol. In a Quintana, homosexual “psychic” Jorge Montes, and country where
mordida
(bribery) permeates all levels of Omar Orea, who had been obsessed with the occult law enforcement and federal officers sometimes serve as from age 15. In short order, Constanzo seduced both triggermen for drug smugglers, corruption is not Quintana and Orea, claiming one as his “man” and the unusual, but the devotion of Constanzo’s disciples ran other as his “woman,” depending on Adolfo’s romantic deeper than cash on the line. In or out of uniform, they whim.

worshiped Adolfo as a minor god, their living conduit In mid-1984, Constanzo moved to Mexico City full to the spirit world.

time, seeking what his mother called “new horizons.”

In 1986, Ventura introduced Constanzo to the drug-He shared quarters with Quintana and Orea, in a dealing Calzada family, then one of Mexico’s dominant strange ménage à trois, collecting other followers as his narcotics cartels. Constanzo won the hard-nosed deal-

“magic” reputation spread throughout the city. It was ers over with his charm and mumbo-jumbo, profiting said that Constanzo could read the future, and he also immensely from his contacts with the gang. By early offered
limpias
—ritual “cleansings”—for those who 1987, he was able to pay $60,000 cash for a condo-felt they had been cursed by enemies. Of course, it all minium in Mexico City and buy himself a fleet of lux-cost money, and Constanzo’s journals—recovered after ury cars that included an $80,000 Mercedes Benz.

his death—document 31 regular customers, some pay-When not working magic for the Calzadas or other ing up to $4,500 for a single ceremony. Adolfo estab-clients, Adolfo staged scams of his own, once posing as lished a menu for sacrificial beasts, with roosters going a DEA agent to rip off a coke dealer in Guadalajara and for $6 a head, goats for $30, boa constrictors at $450, selling the stash through his police contacts for a cool adult zebras for $1,100, and African lion cubs listed at $100,000.

$3,100 each.

At some point in his odyssey from juvenile psychic to True to the teachings of his Florida mentor, Con-high-society wizard, Constanzo began to feed his stanzo charmed wealthy drug dealers, helping them
nganga
with the offerings of human sacrifice. No final schedule shipments and meetings on the basis of his tally for his victims is available, but 23 ritual murders predictions. For a price, he also offered magic that are well documented, and Mexican authorities point to would make dealers and their hit men invisible to police a rash of unsolved mutilation-slayings around Mexico and bulletproof against their enemies. It was all nonCity and elsewhere during the time period, suggesting sense, of course, but smugglers drawn from Mexican that Constanzo’s known victims may be only the tip of peasant stock, with a background in
brujería
(witch-a malignant iceberg. In any case, his willingness to tor-craft), were strongly inclined to believe. According to ture and kill total strangers—or even close friends—

Constanzo’s ledgers, one dealer in Mexico City paid duly impressed the ruthless drug dealers who remained him $40,000 for magical services rendered over three his foremost clients.

years’ time.

In the course of a year’s association, Constanzo came At those rates, the customers demanded a show, and to believe that his magical powers alone were responsi-Constanzo recognized the folly of disappointing men who ble for the Calzada family’s continued success and sur-carried Uzi submachine guns in their armor-plated limou-vival. In April 1987, he demanded a full partnership in sines. Strong medicine required first-rate ingredients, and the syndicate and was curtly refused. On the surface, Adolfo was well established by mid-1985, when he and Constanzo seemed to take the rejection in stride, but his three of his disciples raided a Mexico City graveyard for devious mind was plotting revenge.

human bones to start his own
nganga
—the traditional On April 30, Guillermo Calzada and six members of cauldron of blood employed by practitioners of
palo
his household vanished under mysterious circum-mayombe. The rituals and air of mystery surrounding stances. They were reported missing on May 1, and Constanzo were powerful enough to lure a cross section police noted melted candles and other evidence of a of Mexican society, with his clique of followers including strange religious ceremony at Calzada’s office. Six more a physician, a real estate speculator, fashion models, and days elapsed before officers began fishing mutilated several transvestite nightclub performers.

remains from the Zumpango River. Seven corpses were At first glance, the most peculiar aspect of Con-recovered in the course of a week, all bearing signs of stanzo’s new career was the appeal he seemed to have sadistic torture—fingers, toes and ears removed, hearts for ranking law enforcement officers. At least four and sex organs excised, part of the spine ripped from members of the Federal Judicial Police joined Con-one body, and two other bodies missing their brains.

stanzo’s cult in Mexico City: one of them, Salvador The vanished parts, as it turned out, had gone to feed Garcia, was a commander in charge of narcotics investi-Constanzo’s cauldron of blood, building up his strength gations; another, Florentino Ventura, retired from the for greater conquests yet to come.

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CONSTANZO, Adolfo de Jesus

In July 1987, Salvador Garcia introduced Constanzo he called for fresh meat on February 25, Ovidio Herto another drug-running family, this one led by brothers nandez gladly joined the hunting party, picking off his Elio and Ovidio Hernandez. At the end of that month, own 14-year-old cousin, Jose Garcia, in the heat of the in Matamoros, Constanzo also met 22-year-old Sara moment.

Aldrete, a Mexican national with resident alien status in On March 13, 1989, Constanzo sacrificed yet

the United States, where she attended college in another victim at the ranch, but he was gravely disap-Brownsville, Texas. Adolfo charmed Sara with his line pointed when his prey did not scream and plead for of patter, noting with arch significance that her birth-mercy in the approved style. Disgruntled, he ordered an day—September 6—was the same as his mother’s. Sara Anglo for the next ritual, and his minions went on the was dating Brownsville drug smuggler Gilberto Sosa at hunt, abducting 21-year-old Mark Kilroy outside a the time, but she soon wound up in Constanzo’s bed, Matamoros saloon. The sacrifice went well enough, fol-Adolfo scuttling the old relationship with an anony-lowed two weeks later by the butchery of Sara Aldrete’s mous call to Sosa, revealing Sara’s infidelity. With old boyfriend, Gilberto Sosa, but Kilroy’s disappear-nowhere else to turn, Sara plunged full-time into Con-ance marked the beginning of the end for Constanzo’s stanzo’s world, emerging as the
madrina
—godmother homicidal cult.