"Memory of student slain in human sacrifice lives on"


Their Palo Mayombé - nganga -- a witch's cauldron

vs.

St. Mary Magdalene's Palo Mayombé - nganga -- an outdoor bar - b - que grill??!!


While in the Kilroy homicide case, the Palo Mayombé nganga was a witch's cauldron, here at St. Mary Magdalene's Night of the Big Mitote, the nganga - of - choice of our Liturgical Committee was an outdoor bar - b - que grill.

Adapted from Ms. Lynn Brezosky's article cited in the first entry above in The San Antonio EXPRESS - NEWS, Sunday, March 8, 2009.


"BROWNSVILLE -- It's been 20 years since pre - med student Mark Kilroy vanished during a Spring Break jaunt across the border in Matamoros, Mexico.

"What followed was one of the most harrowing investigations in memory along the Texas border, ending with the discovery of 13 shallow graves and a cauldron of human sacrifice aimed at winning protection from the gods for drug dealers.

"Kilroy had been murdered and dismembered to please those gods.

"Members of a Matamoros drug band were looking for an Anglo college student to sacrifice.

"Their ringleader, Cuban - American Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, said a student's brains would bring new powers of protection as they moved their latest loads of marijuana across the border.

"They pulled Kilroy from the crowd into a truck and took him about 20 miles west to the Santa Elena ranch, later dubbed by the media the Devil Ranch.

"There they murdered Kilroy, stewed his brains in the cauldron and prepared his spinal cord to be worn as a necklace during future rituals."

Note:

In regards to the classic pagan sorcerers' rituals employed in the St. Mary Magdalene's Night of the Big Indoor Mitote we might say, o.k.?

As a sort of fly - by - the - seat - your - pants "applied field exercise in religious anthropology" that when the Rev. Mr. James Bader, Deacon and the Rev. Father Pius Ezeigbo were openly observed by 70 - 90 witnesses stirring up the burning paper trash right smack in front of the altar in their very own Palo Mayombé - nganga perhaps they were both engrossed in doing so the better to symbolically unleash / liberate the spirits of the dead previously captured in a sort of runic magic invoked by writing the names down on scraps of paper and hanging them on an artificial tree.

Note Two:

Since Father Ezeigbo's very name indicates he is of the Igbo Nation I find it a bit of a puzzle that he'd be so willing to engage in what must surely be in part at least, Yoruban sorcerers' beliefs and occult spiritual practices, all the more so as what yours truly thinks at least is the issue here!

Which is that I've read in at least one professional - level anthropology journal that Afro - Brazilian, Afro - Cuban, etc. religions like the Palo Mayombé, etc. owe much of their African origins to the latter.

Back to our story, 'cause when the law - enforcement people arrived at Rancho Santa Elena..

"The stench of death hung in the air.

"Inside a locked shack, they found the cauldron full of blood and body parts along with flickering candles and objects of pagan worship.

"Anthropologist Antonio Zavaleta, now vice president for external affairs at the University of Texas at Brownsville / Texas Southmost College, was called to the scene."


And here's what this real deal Anthropologist had to say about this particular mitote:


"I went there with them and stepped out of the vehicle and immediately sensed this incredible sense of evil and foreboding.

"I walked over to the shack, in Spanish you would call it a jacal, and saw the cauldron, (or) the nganga ... I told them That's Palo Mayombé. They said, What' s that? And I told them, You're looking for a Cuban..."


As indeed he was, along with a couple of his local helpers "two students in Zavaleta's sociology class in Brownsville."

A fine, good read!