Texas Massacre Fugitive Had Death Cult Shrine, Suggesting Criminal Underworld Involvement
‘Santa Muerte’ candles in master bedroom still burning on Monday
By Todd Bensman on May 2, 2023
AUSTIN, Texas — The repeatedly deported Mexican fugitive sought in an wide-ranging manhunt for massacring a family of five Hondurans next door, in the nation’s largest illegal immigrant community, maintained an elaborate “Santa Muerte death cult” shrine in the master bedroom whose candles were still burning Monday, according to a law enforcement officer who saw it.
The shrine of multiple statues reflecting various patron saints, one of them four feet tall and a half dozen smaller ones was replete with a stack of $2 bills, freshly cut flowers, and tinfoil filled with what appeared to be a drug as offerings to ostensibly protect Francisco Oropesa (sometimes spelled Oropeza), the suspected murderer. Two tall candles depicting various muerte cult “saints” were still burning two days after the killings, the law enforcement officer said. The shrine was arrayed in the bedroom around a double-stack glass shelving piece, the source said.
Oropesa is believed to have gunned down five of his Honduran neighbors in San Jacinto County, Texas, including a mother and her 8-year-old child, when she complained that his firing of an AR-15 rifle in his back yard after 11 p.m. was keeping her baby awake.
https://cis.org/Bensman/Texas-Massacre-Fugitive-Had-Death-Cult-Shrine-Suggesting-Criminal-Underworld-Involvement
