Magdalena Solís

Magdalena Solis
Born	1930/1940 Monterey, Mexico
Criminal penalty	50 years in prison
Details
Victims	8
Span of crimes	1963–1963

Magdalena Solis, also known as the High Priestess of Blood, was a serial killer and member of a Mexican cult responsible for orchestrating several murders which involved the drinking of the victims' blood. She was convicted of two of the murders and sentenced to fifty years in prison.

Life

She came from a poverty-stricken dysfunctional family, and entered into prostitution at a young age- a profession in which she worked until her marriage with the Santos and Cayetano Hernandez cult in 1963. Her brother, Eleazar Solis, acted as her pimp during this time.

Upon admission to the sect, Magdalena Solis developed a severe theological psychosis. She was a religious fanatic, who suffered from religious delusions and delusions of grandeur, as well as a marked sexual perversion that was expressed in the consumption of the blood (vampirism) of her victims and sadism with which she committed her crimes (see: sadomasochism), and also the practice of incest, fetishism and pedophilia.

Psychiatric profile

Magdalena Solis was an organized murderer and sexual predator who killed in groups. She is one of the few documented cases of female serial killers who had clear sexual motivations.

She was responsible for at least eight murders, although the numbers have been speculated to be higher, committed in the small community of "Yerba Buena", near the city of Monterrey in the Mexican state of Nuevo León. Magdalena represented herself as a goddess and ordered numerous sacrifices for blood rituals.

The Hernandez Brothers's sect

In late 1962 and early 1963, brothers Santos and Cayetano Hernandez, a pair of petty criminals, devised a scam which they thought was brilliant and would solve all their monetary problems. They reached the small town of Yerba Buena, (a marginalized community in northern Mexico, with a little more than 50 people, all of them mired in extreme poverty and mostly illiterate) and proclaimed themselves prophets and high priests of the "powerful and exiled Inca gods."

They were told that the Inca gods, in return for worship and tribute, would give them treasures hidden in the caves of the mountains surrounding the village, (where they also performed their rites), and would soon come to claim authority over their former kingdom and punish the unbelievers.

The Hernandezes were completely ignorant, because the "Inca gods" belong to the mythology of pre-Hispanic Peru. But many of the inhabitants of Yerba Buena believed them. Thus the Hernandez founded a relatively prosperous sect; adherents demanded economic and sexual taxes (both women and men). The Hernandezes went from being thieves to cheats and sexual slaveholders, organizing orgies in which they used narcotics.

The cult continued running seamlessly for a while, after which the believers began to grow impatient at not seeing the promises fulfilled. Tbe Hernandez brothers devised a plan: they went to Monterrey in search of prostitutes who wanted to be part of the farce, and made contact with Magdalena and her brother, who agreed.

During a ritual, they presented, (using a smoke screen), Magdalena Solis as the reincarnation of a goddess.

Crimes

Shortly after joining the sect, Magdalena took over. By then two fans, tired of the sexual abuse, wanted to leave the sect, the other believers, ere charged before the "high priests". Solis' condemnation was clear: the death penalty. The two sect members were lynched by the terrified adherents.

The blood ritual

After these first two murders, as is characteristic of serial murderers, their crimes evolved, becoming more violent. Bored with simple orgies, she began to demand human sacrifice. She devised a "blood ritual": The sacrificed (which was always a dissenting member) was brutally beaten, burned, cut and maimed by all the members of the cult. Thereafter, blood-letting was practiced: The blood was deposited in a cup mixed with chicken blood (the ritual also included animal sacrifices and the use of narcotics such as marijuana and peyote).The victim was made to bleed to death.

Solis drank from the chalice and then handed it to the priests (the Hernandez Brothers and Eleazar Solis), and finally the other members, each who had their turn to drink. The belief was that this gave them extra-natural powers.

Now based on elements from Aztec mythology, "the blood was the only decent food for the gods, through it they preserved their immortality." The goddess needed to drink blood to stay young forever. Magdalene was supposedly the reincarnation of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue.

The butchering went on for six continuous weeks in 1963, a period in which 4 people died in this way. In the last sacrifices they reached the point of dissecting the heart of the victims alive.

Last victims

In May 1963 when a 14 year old local resident, Sebastian Guerrero, wandered near the caves where the Solis sect was performing their rites. Attracted by the lights and noises coming out of one of the caves, he witnessed one of the rites in progress.

He ran over 25 km, from Yerba Buena to the town of Villa Gran, to the nearest police station. He failed to give any other description of the "group of murderers who prey on ecstasy and who were gluttonously drinking human blood."

The next morning, an officer, (Investigator Luis Martinez) escorted him home and in the process he was able to show him where he had seen the vampires. That was the last day that Sebastian Guerrero and Luis Martinez were seen alive.

Arrest and sentencing

Police, dismayed by the disappearance of Guerrero and Martinez, now took the case seriously. On May 31, 1963 police, in conjunction with the army, deployed an operation in Yerba Buena. Eleazar and Magdalena Solis were arrested on a farm in the town, in possession of a considerable amount of marijuana. Santos Hernandez was shot by police bullets while resisting arrest. Cayetano Hernandez was assassinated by one of the members of the sect, called Jesus Rubio, who, before the crisis, wanted to be a part of the body of high priests for protection.

In subsequent investigations they found, first, the carved up bodies of Sebastian Guerrero and Luis Martinez, near a farm where the Solis siblings were arrested (they had removed the heart of the latter in the style of Aztec sacrifice). They then found the bodies, also dismembered, of the other six persons in the vicinity of the caves.

Magdalena and Eleazar Solis were sentenced to 50 years in prison for only two homicides (those of Guerrero and Martinez), they were not able to confirm their participation in the other six murders because all the cult members arrested refused to testify.

Many members of the sect were shot in the shootout with the police because, as they were armed, they barricaded themselves in the caves. Those who were arrested were sentenced to 30 years in prison for six counts of murder in the form of "group or gang murder, or lynching." Their illiterate and pauperised condition served as mitigating factors. It was not until years later that some ex-cult members spoke of the cult.

Sources

• Lane, Brian and Gregg, Wilfred: The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (1992)
• Hendricks, George: Western Folklore, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Apr., 1964), pp. 124-124 (Published by: Western States Folklore Society)