Murder of Mark Kilroy
| Mark Kilroy | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Mark James Kilroy March 5, 1968 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | March 14, 1989 (aged 21) Santa Elena, Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico |
| Cause of death | Machete blow |
| Alma mater |
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| Home town | Santa Fe, Texas, U.S. |
| Parent(s) |
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On March 14, 1989, University of Texas at Austin student Mark Kilroy was kidnapped in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico while vacationing during spring break. He was taken by his abductors to a ranch where he was murdered in a human sacrifice ritual. Kilroy was killed with a machete blow and then had his brain removed and boiled in a pot. His killers then inserted a wire through his backbone, chopped off his legs, and buried him at the ranch along with 14 other people who had been killed there before him. Adolfo Constanzo, the leader of the cult, told his followers that human sacrifice granted them immunity from law enforcement for their drug smuggling operations. The killing drew worldwide media attention and an international police manhunt because of the unusual circumstances of the crime.
After the bodies were discovered on April 11, 1989, Constanzo fled to Mexico City but was eventually tracked down. As the police surrounded his apartment complex, Constanzo died after ordering one of the cult members to kill him with a machine gun. Sara Aldrete, another high-ranking member of the cult, was arrested at the scene along with several others. In 1993, the cult members were found guilty of a number of charges, including capital murder and drug trafficking. Several of them, however, claimed they were not guilty of Kilroy's murder and told the press they were tortured to confess. Only two suspects remain at large.
Mark James Kilroy was born on March 5, 1968 in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. His parents were James "Jim" William (father), a chemical engineer, and Helen Josephine (mother), a volunteer paramedic. They moved to Texas from the Midwest after their son was born. Kilroy grew up in Santa Fe, Texas, a small town outside of Houston, for over 15 years along with his brother Keith Richard. He was raised Catholic and his parents were frequent attendees at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in the adjacent town of Hitchcock, Texas. Kilroy excelled both in academics and athletics as a teenager, and played baseball, basketball, and golf with his friends at school. He was in the Boy Scouts of America and an honors student at Santa Fe High School, where he was member of the student council, and was ranked 14th in a class of 210 students. Upon graduation in 1986, he attended Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas before transferring to Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas on a basketball scholarship. At Tarleton he became a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. He then decided to give up his athletics and transferred to the University of Texas at Austin to become a pre-med student and prepare for his Medical College Admission Test (MCAT).
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