The Work of The Devil
After Mark Kilroy disappeared in Matamoros during spring break, authorities feared the worst. But they had no idea how bad the worst could be.
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Mexican journalists instinctively played to the morbid. From their point of view, death was far more fascinating than life. This wasn’t a story about drugs, it was a story about magic. They described in grisly detail how the Satanists cut the hearts out of victims much as the ancient Aztecs had done. Editors of even the more traditional newspapers saw nothing distasteful in running photographs of the corpses — “sin genitales,” read one caption.
Forty-eight hours after the story hit the wires, journalists were still flocking to the Valley. There wasn’t a vacant hotel room or a rent car to be had. A crew representing the Fuji network of Tokyo arrived two days late, just in time to film the most dramatic event of all — the discovery of the thirteenth body. No sooner had the Fuji crew set up its camera at Rancho Santa Elena than a truckload of federales appeared with one of the prisoners, Sergio Martinez, known within the cult as La Mariposa (the Butterfly), a pejorative term usually reserved for homosexuals.
The handcuffed Martinez led a squad of federales armed with automatic weapons to a spot just outside the corral fence. There he stopped and pointed to the ground. One of the federales handed him a shovel and a pick, and Martinez began to dig. The sun was high, and the humidity from a morning rain mixed with the unflagging stench of rotting hay and decomposed flesh that had permeated the site since the first bodies were uncovered.
Cameramen wearing surgical masks and kerchiefs over their mouths and noses moved in close, and a sound man dangled a boom mike over Martinez’s head as reporters fired questions. Martinez kept saying he didn’t kill anyone, he just kidnapped and buried them. After 45 minutes a knee and part of a foot protruded from the ground where Martinez was digging. There was a blast of putrid wind, and everyone backed away, even Martinez, who ignored the machine guns as he gagged and gasped for air. A cameraman removed his surgical mask and offered it to Martinez, who crawled back into the hole and continued digging. The body was that of a man in his thirties, blindfolded and gagged, his chest ripped open and his heart gouged out. Sin genitales.
The comandante warned the media to stay away from Martinez — which everyone took to mean “Don’t get between him and our machine guns”- but the Butterfly seemed incongruously docile and harmless. As federales removed the thirteenth body, Martinez leaned against the fence, answering questions put to him by the Spanish speaking assistant of a New York Times reporter. It was a lengthy interview, and from the emotion in the Butterfly’s voice, he might have been describing the Mexican Revolution. But the translator returned, shaking her head.
“What was that all about?” asked the Times Reporter.
“Not much,” she replied. “He just said he didn’t know why he did it.”
The comandante pandered irresistibly to the media. For example, he made no attempt to seal off the crime scene. During almost any hour of the day journalists could be found stomping about the ranch, poking in mounds of dirt and in haystacks, looking for something — anything — that no one else had found. American camera crews intentionally overlooked two tiny tennis shoes discarded near a trash pile; they suggested something too horrible for the six o’clock news. A Mexican radio station, however, broadcast a rumor that cultists were still on the prowl and looking for children to kidnap and murder, causing a number of Valley parents to take their children out of school.
Reporters tied handkerchiefs across their faces as they stepped inside the devil’s cathedral, a small shed with a tin roof and red tar-paper walls. The air was foul and thick. On the concrete floor were the remains of an altar and the accoutrements of black magic: black candles, cigar butts, bottles of a cheap cane liquor known as aguardiente. There were also white candles, peppers, and pods of garlic used by the white magician brought in by the comandante to purify the site.
Just outside the door — apparently arranged by the federales so that the media could not miss their significance — were the vessels and instruments of the sacrificial ceremony: four caldrons and a machete. Three of the pots were small and contained chicken and goat heads, thousands of pennies, some bones, and some gold beads. The other vessel was a large iron kettle with a cluster of wooden stakes immersed in a thick, evil-smelling goo of blood and body parts, both human and animal. The iron kettle was surprisingly similar to the object described two weeks earlier by the psychic.
As the comandante related it, the ceremony went like this: First, the high priest offered up the sacrifice, cutting the victim’s throat or, as in Kilroy’s case, taking off the top of his head with a machete. The victims were usually killed first, then mutilated, though not always. Then the brains, hearts, lungs, and testicles were boiled in the iron kettle, and the resulting brew was passed among members so that they could drink and be sanctified. After that, laymen of the cult buried the remains in and around the corral behind the shed. The ultimate piety and conceit of the cult — its unforgivable stupidity — was the abiding belief that this act of unholy communion would make its members invincible.
Nothing during that whole incredible week since the bodies had been discovered was more remarkable than the show of faith demonstrated by the family of Mark Kilroy. At a press conference and later after a mass at St. Luke Catholic Church in Brownsville, the Kilroy’s spoke calmly and with deep conviction. “I don’t feel any anger at all, to be honest with you,” said James Kilroy, adding that he hoped that if and when the killers got to heaven, they would find his son and apologize. Helen Kilroy asked people to pray for her son’s murderers. Maybe the Kilroy’s would fall apart later. Maybe when they got home and started putting Mark’s things away for the last time and knew that a part of their lives was gone forever, maybe then they would cry out and surrender to the agony of their loss. But there in the Valley, in the presence of an insatiable media feeding on the details of butchery and cannibalism, the Kilroy’s demonstrated a grace under pressure that few journalists had ever witnessed.
Mark Kilroy and Bradley Moore had been talking about spring break since the start of the fall semester. At least twice a week Bradley called Mark in Austin or Mark called Bradley in Bryan, and they talked about the deeper meanings of life — beer, girls, the beach, the Miss Tanline contest, and nights across the border, in Matamoros. Mark was a junior pre-med major at the University of Texas, and Bradley was a sophomore electrical engineering major at Texas A&M. Before college, they had been basketball teammates and good buddies at Sante Fe High. Both had made the spring break scene at South Padre Island the previous year but not together.
For Bradley Moore, who had finished his exams the previous day, spring break started Friday, March 10, at noon. That was when he left his mobile home in Bryan and drove his Mustang to Austin to pick up Mark. Then they headed for Santa Fe, where they would rendezvous with two other old pals, Bill Huddleston and Brent Martin. On the way, they talked about cars and school and what they planned to do this summer. “We talked about how it would probably be our last summer at home together,” Bradley recalled.
Santa Fe is on Texas Highway 6 between Houston and Galveston. It is a small, middle-class town with wholesome, middle-class values and a large interest in high school sports. Mark, Bradley, and Brent had played basketball, and Mark and Bill had played baseball. All four boys — young men, actually — were tall, athletic, and clean-cut. None of them used drugs. All were serious students. They were the kind of boys you would like your daughter to date and maybe marry, and Santa Fe was the sort of place where you’d like your grandchildren to grow up.
Shortly after midnight that Friday, the four boys started for South Padre Island in Brent’s Cutlass, following the long Texas coastline to its end. There was heavy fog that night, and the going was slow. Counting the two times the boys stopped to eat, the journey took nine hours. It was mid-morning by the time they checked into the Sheraton on South Padre. The hotel had been fortified for spring break. All of the furniture had been removed from the lobby. The four boys from Santa Fe showered, ate, and hit the beach.
The big crowds hadn’t arrived yet. This was the opening weekend of South Padre’s five-week spring break season, and students from all over the country were beginning to pour over the bridge from Port Isabel. The island was about to become a gigantic stage on which competing forces struggled for the souls of a quarter of a million students. Beer companies were sponsoring an unprecedented variety of entertainment, including free movies, free concerts, free calls home, and surf-simulator rides. Religious organizations from as far away as Madison, Wisconsin, were handing out pamphlets and free suntan lotion and urging students to pray rather than party. A beer company offered the free use of a swimming pool to students who didn’t mind being part of a filmed commercial, and the boys took advantage of it. Mark and Bradley used a free phone line to call their parents. That night they met some girls from Purdue who were sharing an adjoining room and partied until dawn.
By Sunday the boys had more or less established a daily routine. They would hit the beach early and spend the morning soaking up rays. After lunch they would wander back to the part of the beach behind the Sheraton where the daily Miss Tanline contest was held. The cops had warned the contest sponsors about nudity, but when the emcee tried to prevent the contestants from removing their tops, the crowd went berserk. Later in the afternoon the boys would return to their room and try to take short naps, usually without success. Then they would plan their evening’s entertainment.
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