Aldrete Said to Confess Role in Ritual Slayings

Alleged satanic cult “witch” Sara Aldrete Villarreal has confessed to involvement in some of the ritual slaying of 15 people near the U.S. border and also exhibits signs of having a split personality, U.S. law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

In private, Aldrete loses that “charming aspect” she exhibits when she faces television cameras and seems to revert to another self, talking in detail about the cult’s rituals, officials said.

“I would say she has three personalities,” a source at the Mexico City attorney general’s office, who insisted on anonymity, said in an interview. One personality comes out when she faces the cameras and denies any involvement in the human slayings, another emerges when she talks to police and “the third one comes out when she talks to herself,” the source said.

The Houston Chronicle quoted U.S. Customs agent Oran Neck as saying that Aldrete has “confessed to conspiracy and involvement” in the killings.

Neck, who spent several days in Mexico City assisting investigators, told the paper that “Sara has kind of lost touch with reality. . . . Her dual personality is coming up pretty strong right now. When you talk to her without the TV cameras there, she’s pretty truthful.

“She’s giving a lot of data with great detail to investigators. . . . It seems like when the cameras come on, she kind of reverts back to this nice, young, clean-cut kid from Texas Southmost College,” Neck said.

“When the cameras were there, she was real nice. When she was with us, she was the same ol’ witch,” Lt. George Gavito, a U.S. investigator who accompanied Neck to Mexico City, said.

Aldrete, 24, and five other cult members were arrested in a Mexico City apartment hide-out Saturday afternoon after a shoot-out with police.