What’s more terrifying than murder with demented motivation?
Only a single moment could change your life forever. This is what so many unfortunate people have learned after falling into the crosshairs of an evil, murderous cult.
In most cases, there was no reason for such a heinous act. It was only bad luck — being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And for that, rivers of blood flowed.
How could seemingly ordinary people come together to carry out such carnage?
It typically begins with a charismatic leader who understands how to find and exploit common vulnerabilities in people. The scary part is that all of us have these weaknesses and are susceptible to influence and persuasion.
Oddly enough, those people who claim they would never succumb are often the easiest to persuade. Otherwise, why would they need to make such a statement?
Awareness is the best defense against evil influence. We must be aware of our vulnerabilities and the power that charismatic people could have over us. Let us examine some evil cults that did the unthinkable.
Matamoros cult
The Matamoros cult was led by Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, who sacrificed humans at their remote Mexican desert compound known as Rancho Santa Elena. Unfortunately, murder was an act of kindness after many hours of torture they had to endure beforehand.
The cult had successfully sacrificed over two dozen victims that drew no attention from the authorities. But this all changed when they abducted Mark Kilroy in 1989, an American college student outside of a bar in Matamoros, Mexico. Little did they know that this abduction would lead to their downfall.
While only 27 bodies were found on the compound, it was believed that Constanzo’s cult had ritually killed as many as 100 people. He had eluded detection because most of his victims were homeless people, prostitutes, and drug dealers — who would not be missed. But Mark Kilroy was indeed missed, and his disappearance grew into an international incident that placed an intense focus on Mexican law enforcement authorities.
As cult disciples started getting arrested, they told police about all the human sacrifices at Rancho Santa Elena. A week later, they discovered the 27 mutilated bodies, which included Mark Kilroy. When police raided Constanzo’s home in Mexico City, they found a hidden torture chamber along with a massive amount of homosexual pornography, but Constanzo himself was nowhere to be found.
Finally, when Constanzo was located, gunfire was exchanged with the police. As authorities closed in on him, he ordered one of his assistants to shoot him. As a result, he was already dead when the police found him. All of his surviving cohorts were convicted of the murders that took place at Rancho Santa Elena.
The Fall River Cult
First, there was the body of Doreen Levesque, who was a 17-year-old prostitute that was discovered near a high school in Massachusetts. Fishing lines were bound around her wrists, and she’d been sexually assaulted and badly beaten. Police believed that one of her johns was responsible, but a year later, the body of another prostitute was discovered on a makeshift altar.
Shortly after that, a prostitute named Karen Marsden, who feared for her own life, came forward with the claim that a pimp named Carl Drew and his girlfriend named Robin Murphy, had committed the murders.
She further claimed that Drew and Murphy belonged to a devil-worshipping prostitution ring, and they were performing human sacrifices deep in local forests. Furthermore, she was worried that she would be their next victim for cooperating with authorities.
Sadly, the authorities didn’t take her claims very seriously. And as predicted, some six months later, Marsden’s toothless skull was discovered.
Drew was finally arrested and charged with Marsden’s death in April of 1980. A second man named Andrew Maltais was also charged in connection with another murder associated with the cult. Murphy pled guilty to second-degree murder and received a lighter sentence for a testimony against the others.
Several claims that Murphy, who was an aspiring pimp herself that had ties to the occult, was the mastermind behind these killings.
Maltais died in prison, while Drew continues to maintain his innocence — claiming that Murphy was responsible. Murphy was recently denied parole in March 2017 as the parole board deemed her untrustworthy.
The Carny Cult
In 1991, there was a traveling carny named William Ault who discovered that some of his co-workers were members of a cult known as the Satan’s Disciples. Ault decided that he would like to become a member.
However, Jimmie Penick, Mark Goodwin, and brothers David and Keith Lawrence did not want him to be in their club. Ault then decided to blackmail them into letting him in the cult by using his knowledge about one of their murders. He knew about the killing of an 18-year-old boy that was conducted by Keith Lawrence and Penick earlier in the year.
The big problem with Ault’s plan is that it didn’t work on the group. These five members of the Satan’s Disciples drove Auld to a secluded area, instructed him to lay on a makeshift altar, and then began torturing and mutilating him.
After they tied and gagged Auld, they invoked Satan and cut an inverted cross on his body and then killed him. They cut off his hands and head and tried to burn him. When that didn’t work, they threw his body into a field. Goodwin’s father told the police after discovering the body, and the cult members were arrested. They are now serving prison sentences.
Superior Universal Alignment
Valentina de Andrade led a 1980s UFO cult known as the Superior Universal Alignment in a remote region of Brazil. She claimed to receive extraterrestrial messages saying that God does not exist. However, Jesus was an alien who planned to send a spacecraft for saving true believers from the End Times. But there was an alarming element of her prophetic beliefs — boys born after 1981 were evil and must be purged from the world.
Initially, de Andrade insisted that couples turn these boys over to family, other couples, or guardians to qualify for her spaceship. Over time, this was not enough for her, and everything became incredibly violent. From 1989 through 1993, Superior Universal Alignment members allegedly sexually assaulted, mutilated, or killed as many as 19 boys of ages from 8 to 13 years old.
It took the Brazilian police some 11 years to get enough evidence against de Andrade to bring her to trial, along with four cult members. Many members of her cult were prominent citizens within their remote community. While the four cult members were convicted and sentenced to many decades in prison, de Andrade was found innocent on all charges — as she wasn’t in the vicinity of the crimes as they were committed.
