By Jerald and Sandra Tanner
Shortly after finishing the printing of our new book, Satanic Ritual Abuse and Mormonism, some new information with regard to Satanism came to light. The first development was the confession of a satanic human sacrifice by two women in Brazil. The following appeared in a newspaper published in Arizona on July 11, 1992:
RIO DE JANEIRO—A Brazilian woman and her daughter have confessed to killing a 7-year-old boy as a sacrifice to the devil in a bloody ritual to help save their family’s fortunes, police said Friday. The women and five other alleged devil worshipers strangled Evandro Ramos Caetano, mutilated his body and drained his blood to offer on an altar to Satan, said Jose Maria Correa, civil police head in Parana state, where the killing occurred.
Police found the boy’s rotting body in a forest near Guaratuba . . . “It was a black-magic ritual involving the number 7,” Correa said. . . .” He was found with his chest slit open. . . . It was terrible, indescribable.
In a taped confession to military police, Celina and Beatriz Abage, wife and daughter of Guaratuba Mayor Aldo Abage, said they kidnapped the boy by luring him with candy. In the tape, a transcript of which was printed in the Jornal do Brasil . . . Beatriz Abage said the boy was sacrificed “to bring more fortune, justice to my family.” Seven alleged participants in the ritual are under arrest, including Celina and Beatriz Abage, and a man police believe was the leader, Osvaldo Marceneiro, known as The Warlock.
The mayor, who has not been directly implicated in the case, has fled, leaving municipal offices in chaos. Angry residents of Guaratuba stoned his house. Correa said police were investigating the disappearance of another child, named Leandro . . . (The Arizona Republic, July 11, 1992)
In our book, Satanic Ritual Abuse and Mormonism, we reported that Glenn Pace, the Mormon General Authority who wrote the memo which exposed satanic ritual abuse in the church, interviewed some people in the city of Rupert, Idaho, a city which is located about forty miles from the Utah border. In November, 1989, the remains of a baby were found in a metal drum at a landfill near the city. On October 23, 1990, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that “No deed was fouler than that perpetrated on Baby X . . . Before she was burned, Baby X . . . had been disemboweled and mutilated.” Sometime later a boy who had lived near the landfill where Baby X was found, told authorities that he had witnessed satanic ceremonies in which babies were mutilated and burned. The boy also maintained that his own family was involved with a group of Satanists who participated in the sacrifices and that he also had been ritually abused (see his drawings in Satanic Ritual Abuse and Mormonism).
People who live in the area believe that there is a satanic cult that functions in both southern Idaho and northern Utah. It is reported that this group has two High Priests. One, it is claimed, lives in a rural area of Bannock County, Idaho, and goes by the cult name “Rosheeba-Son of Oliver.” The other leader lives in Logan, Utah, and is known as “The Raven.”
In June, 1992, an inconceivably gruesome murder occurred in Burley, Idaho, a city about seven miles from Rupert. Christopher Clark stated that the body of Benito Ruiz Carabeo “was found June 24, carefully dismembered and placed in five triple-strength garbage bags . . .” (South Idaho Press, July 28, 1992). An investigation showed that the body had been cut into fourteen pieces. Two brothers, Luis and Anastacio Rodriguez, are wanted for questioning, but it is feared that they have fled to Mexico. While some feel that this is just another brutal murder, others believe that it is related to the occult. On July 28, 1992, Christopher Clark reported: “From the condition of the body and the death’s correlation to an occult calendar date, authorities have not ruled out a cult motive for the murder” (Ibid.).
Sometime before the murder, a woman from Burley came forth seeking protection. She claimed that she had been a member of a satanic cult which mutilated and killed victims. She had come to fear, however, that she might become the next victim of the cult and allowed a video tape to be made of her confession. The video tape was made in the presence of Christopher Clark, Noel Croft and Ralph Barranger. Paul Murphy, of KTVX (Channel 4) in Salt Lake City, was able to gain access to the video and show portions on the evening news on August 14, 1992. The woman maintained that cult members had conspired to commit the murder two years before the crime actually took place:
. . . it was a contract that we’d written in our own blood and we’d signed in our own blood that in two years . . . we would do . . . this big sacrifice.” Paul Murphy commented: “Weeks before the murder, an alleged former cult member did leave a message on video tape. She predicted the date and place of a satanic human sacrifice.
As noted above, the man was killed either on or very close to “an occultic calendar date,” the Summer Solstice, which occurs on June 21 or 22. Satanists consider the Summer Solstice as a very important Sabbat. It would be an ideal time for a sacrifice. When he was interviewed by Paul Murphy, Rupert’s coroner and mortician, Arvin Hansen, pointed out that the body “was cut into different sections . . . it was cut into different types of cuts like a meat cutter would cut them.” It was also revealed that part of Carabeo’s body had been skinned. In this regard, it is interesting to note that there have been charges that Satanists who perform human sacrifices sometimes skin their victims. There was, in fact, speculation that Baby X “may have been skinned before she was burned” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 23, 1990). The woman who predicted that someone would be sacrificed in the area of Burley seemed to be familiar with the practice of skinning the victims. In addition, we have been informed she told of drinking the blood of sacrificial victims. According to Christopher Clark, the same woman told of many human sacrifices being performed by this satanic cult—possibly as many as thirty. She also reported that many of the victims came from the transient population in the Salt Lake City area.
We, of course, do not know for certain that her story is true, but even the Cassia County Sheriff Billy Crystal had to admit that her prediction of a ritual murder at the time of the Summer Solstice was rather remarkable. Sheriff Crystal also acknowledged to Paul Murphy that the Burley case has some resemblance to the ritual sacrifice of fifteen people near Matamoros, Mexico. Murphy noted that Carabeo’s spine had been cut out. This seemed to be a common practice at Matamoros. In Sacrifice: A Father’s Determination to Turn Evil into Good, 1990, page 119, we find that “After death, Mark’s body was mutilated. The spine was cut free so the sect could use it as a necklace. Before the men buried the victim, Constanzo ordered El Dubi to cut the legs off at the knee.”
The cult believed that necklaces made from the spine would bring good luck and therefore used them in their occultic ceremonies. On page 177 of the same book, we read that the removal of the spine was “a trademark found on bodies.” The sheriff’s statement regarding Matamoros was very interesting to us because we had previously written of a possible connection on pages 67-69 of our book on ritual abuse: “Some people in the Rupert area believe that there is a relationship between the Baby X case and what went on in the city of Matamoros, Mexico, in 1989. They claim, for example, that people from the area have been in Idaho’s Minidoka county and suspect that they may be involved in smuggling drugs.” It has even been suggested that there may have been a synthesis of Satanism and the bizarre practices of the Matamoros cult.
Originally appeared in:
Jerald and Sandra Tanner, “Satanic Murders,” Salt Lake City Messenger, no. 82, September 1992, 15.