Blood Priestess of Yerba Buena

In 1963 Mexico, what began as a simple con by two brothers spiraled into a reign of terror when their accomplice – a former child prostitute – convinced herself and others that she was an ancient goddess who required human sacrifice.

In the spring of 1963, a terrifying discovery rattled the southern Mexican village of Yerba Buena. What started out as a small time scam by two grifters turned into something sinister and darker — a cult run by a woman who called herself a goddess and insisted on human sacrifice. This is the story of Magdalena Solis, known as the High Priestess of Blood, and the reign of terror she brought to an isolated farming community.

Yerba Buena was hardly even a village. It was nestled in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, at the base of the Sierra Madre mountains, and had only around 20 farming families. The population were all very poor and the majority were illiterate. They had subsisted by growing corn and beans, selling what few they could afford to spare in surrounding towns. There was no school, no police station, no church in the village. The farmers led plain lives, in most ways disconnected from the outside world.

Yerba Buena had caves in the surrounding mountains. Village audioguides spoke of ancient treasures hidden in the caves, legends that would soon be pivotal to the village’s grisly future.

In late 1962, two brothers named Santos and Cayetano Hernández settled in Yerba Buena. They were professional criminals who drifted around Mexico pulling various scams. Upon noticing how cut off and unlearned the villagers were, they shamelessly devised a scam to entrap them.

The brothers told the villagers they were holy men who could converse with ancient Incan gods. They said these gods had marked Yerba Buena as a sacred place and would reward them with the legendary treasure from the caves in the mountains – but only if the villagers demonstrated faith through total obedience.

As usual, the brothers were lying. They didn’t even know basic history — the Incas, for instance, had inhabited Peru, thousands of miles away, not Mexico. But the villagers could not know that. Desperate to escape their hard lives, they believed the brothers’ tales.

The Hernández brothers started conducting ceremonies in the mountain caves. They performed simple magic tricks using smoke and mirrors to fool the villagers into believing in their supernatural powers. They demanded villagers they come across surrender whatever money and little possessions they had as “offerings” to the gods. They also allegedly insisted that young women and girls be offered to them for “sacred” sexual rites. In reality, the brothers were selling these girls to human traffickers, who forced them into prostitution in border towns.

As months passed with no sign of treasure, some villagers began to doubt the brothers. The brothers figured they had to do something drastic to retain control. They indicated to the villagers that they were going to embark on a holy pilgrimage to visit the gods and would return with a divine being.

In fact, they traveled to the city of Monterrey in search of assistance in perpetrating their scam. There they encountered Magdalena Solis, a prostitute and something of a fortune teller who said that she could communicate with the spirits. At age 12, Magdalena had been coerced into prostitution by her brother Eleazar, who served as her pimp. Magdalena jumped at the chance to help when the Hernández brothers described their scheme. Eleazar and she returned with the brothers to Yerba Buena.

The brothers put on an elaborate ceremony in the caves. They created smoke effects to make it look like she had materialized out of thin air, before the awed villagers. They hailed her as a reincarnated Aztec goddess named Coatlicue, the mother of the sun and moon.

What began as just another con soon morphed into much darker territory. Magdalena had access to all the drugs she wanted — above all, marijuana and peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus. Under their influence, she actually started to believe she was a goddess. She assumed full control of the cult and the Hernández brothers.

All the rituals in the cave grew more disturbing. Magdalena pumped the villagers with peyote and other drugs that made them easily controllable. She forced sex acts between family members. She informed her followers that they need to consume animal blood in order to obtain eternal life.

When two men attempted to leave the cult, Magdalena called them “unbelievers.”“She ordered the other villagers to beat them to death as a lesson. This initial taste of murder appeared to spark something awful within her. She started to demand for human sacrifice in these rituals.

Those who did not show enough devotion to Magdalena, or ever questioned her authority, were chosen to be sacrificed next. They did so by beating, burning and cutting their own neighbors to pieces, often while they were still alive. Their blood was drawn into ceremonial cups and blended with drugs. Magdalena would drink first, and then she would force her followers to drink as well, claiming it would grant them supernatural powers.

In the spring of 1963, the killing became even more grotesque. Magdalena started mimicking what she’d read about the ancient Aztec sacrifice rituals, the way she would tear out victims’ still-beating red hearts, an offering to the gods. At least eight people were killed in these gruesome ceremonies, but some believe the real number of victims could be as high as 15.

The cult’s activities would probably have continued even longer had it not been for 14-year-old Sebastian Guerrero. One evening in May 1963, the boy was wandering around near the caves when he noticed flickering lights and heard weird sounds coming from within. As he crept closer to look, he observed one of Magdalena’s gruesome sacrificial rituals.

Screaming, Guerrero ran more than 15 miles to the police station in the town of Villa Gran. The cops did not buy his story of blood-drinking vampires in mountain caves. But one officer, Luis Martinez, volunteered to return with the boy to investigate.

Guerrero and Martinez were never seen alive again. It took state police six days to act after they didn’t return. On May 31, 1963, police and army troops stormed Yerba Buena.

They tracked down Magdalena and Eleazar Solis at a farmhouse, where they were high on marijuana. Santos Hernández was also present but attempted to flee and was shot dead by police. His brother Cayetano was dead already — killed a few hours earlier by a villager named Jesus Rubio who had heard about the scam and wanted in.

Other cult members barricaded themselves in the caves and engaged in a shootout with law enforcement. But they were heavily outnumbered and outgunned. The survivors were arrested.

Police searched the area where they found the mutilated bodies of Guerrero and Martinez at the farmhouse where the Solises had been living. The hearts of both victims had been removed. Six additional dismembered corpses were found inside and outside the caves.

The surviving cult members and the Solis siblings were tried together. But the villagers were still so afraid of Magdalena that not a single person would testify against her. She and Eleazar were not convicted of killing Guerrero and Martinez and were sentenced to 50 years in prison.

The other cult members were found guilty of “group murder” for the six other victims. They were sentenced to lighter, 30-year terms because they were poor and uneducated.

Yet the scars left on Yerba Buena ran far deeper than the visible scars of the murders. The survivors were plagued with guilt, nightmares and trauma. Many used alcohol and drugs to quell their memories.

Even alongside other cult leaders and killers, the case of Magdalena Solis is exceptional. She was one of only a handful of known female serial killers with a sexual sadism motive. Unlike countless cult leaders who merely use their devotees as pawns for plundering cash and power, Magdalena believed she truly was a goddess who required human sacrifices and blood.

It is uncertain what ultimately happened to Magdalena Solis. If she had completed her full sentence, she would have been released in 2013. Others report that she died in prison. Whether described as one made to fight for the oppressed or a monster that exploited the weaknesses of weak men, the terror she unleashed on a small farming village is a chilling reminder that humanity is capable of both deception and cruelty.

The caves in which she once held her bloody rituals are still scattered in the mountains above the wreckage of Yerba Buena. But few are willing to go near them now.