Hell Ranch: The Nightmare Tale of Voodoo, Drugs and Death in Matamoros

I found this book extremely well researched and written. Its author went to a great deal of work! I was disappointed with the two other reviewers' assessments. Hell Ranch is a brilliantly-descriptive book title. The book's cover is embarrassingly garish/nightmarish/black. Embarrassing for anyone else to see out in public. I'm not sure what one should conclude from such a grisly history. Be careful? Mother Theresa only "attends to" the postive in anything: the victims went to be with God, etc. Religions that sanctify and demonize--extremes--attract such situations and people. 500,000 Italians right now want exorcisms. At times I had trouble picking up this book to continue reading it. Its content settles into your bones like powdered arsenic. The picture of the author on the book jacket is one curious image: like that of a rattlesnake. This book is a study in negative character, like Joseph Wambaugh's The Onion Field. A cautionary tale. I bought this book because I expected a discussion of Henry Lee Lucas' 1984 cult activities in the Brownsville area and.... I'll let you check that one out for yourself! That story is as big as the world. There was no mention of Lucas, a story from just four years before Linedecker's Adolpho Constanza and Sara Villareal. What were those college kids doing down there anyway? Anyone who hangs around bars, drinks, and carouses is cruisin' for trouble. Where was any core of values (other than ambition) in the four college kids in the story? I felt less than 100% sympathetic.

Another book about the 1989 Matamoros cult killings but this one gives you an insight into the origins of this cult and how they operated and recruited. I'm surprised that there hasn't been a slew of movies about this and hopefully Borderland will be good but with in the whole 18 years after this event you would have figured there would have been at least one or two made for TV or direct to cable movies but up until now none must have not been interesting enough for hollywood although I did see a few horror movies that were inspired by it.

I have to say that I read Gary Provost's book about this case but I prefer Linedecker because his writing has a lot of important background information to help understand Mexico-American relations as well as the drug trade, immigration, the border issues between our two countries, Santeria, the occult, witchcraft, and more. The case started off as a single attractive American college student, Mark Kilroy, goes missing. His parents, friends, relatives, Americans, Mexicans, and the authorities in both countries initiate a search that results in horrifying discovery about a cult of satanism where human sacrifices were going on. The background information in Linedecker's book is very useful to understanding the occult, satanism, and witchcraft that exists in society whether in America or Mexico. There are no winners in this case because the key figure Adolfo commits suicide with his lover a la Hitler-Braun style in the closet. Adolfo was a flamboyant homosexual cult figure who ruined lives of the men and women that he came in contact with over his short life. Sara is the high priestess who claims not to be aware of the human sacrifices but I doubt that. Black magic always results in casting evil upon those who spread their evil upon the unsuspecting public.