By Robert A. Waters
Underneath a full moon, two men stood over a grave. One, Juan Burgos Lopez, 39, took a swig of gin, gargled it, and spat it on the ground. Then he lit a cigar and handed it to forty-three-year-old Brian Montalvo Tolentino. Swirls of smoke billowed above the men, lingering a moment before fading into the night. After flipping the used cigars to the ground, Lopez and Tolentino chanted a ritualistic prayer.
Spirits awaited them, spirits of heroes, and the two men worked the rest of the night removing skulls from the coffins of strangers.
The crimes occurred on December 5, 2020, at the Edgewood Cemetery in Mount Dora, Florida, in Lake County. Tolentino, according to his own confession, used a crowbar to open the tombs of military veterans because they needed the “skulls of heroes” for their religious practices. Lopez and Tolentino specifically chose interred individuals who had American flags on their graves, thinking their spirits would be more powerful than others.
Edgewood is predominately an African-American cemetery. When visitors noticed the chaotic scene of dug-up graves, they called the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. Cops collected cigars from the ground around each burial site and obtained DNA, leading them to Brian Montalvo Tolentino, who had a previous arrest record.
Tolentino and Lopez quickly confessed. After obtaining a search warrant, deputies entered Lopez’s home in Lake Wales and found a Palo Mayombe shrine. Buckets contained the remains of animal bones, the skull of a baby alligator, heads of goats, turtle shells, feathers, sticks, blood residue and seven human skulls. Five were real, two were made of plaster. Four of the skulls were eventually identified, but the identity of the last skull has not been detected.
Henry Brittain (1929 – 1983). A Korean war veteran, Brittain had been a private in the United States Army.
Elbert Carr (1896 – 1988). A World War I veteran, Carr served his country as a Sergeant in the Unites States Army.
Calvin McNair (1935 – 1992). McNair served in the United States Marine Corps and was buried in his dress blues. He had also served as a police officer in Connecticut.
Annie Faniel (1935 – 1988). Faniel was not a military veteran. She worked as a caretaker and was known as “good Samaritan.”
Laura Italiano of the New York Post reported that “Payo Mayombe is a solitary religion, practiced secretly, with no houses of worship and no way of counting worshippers. Born of the ancient spirit worship of the Congo, it was brought first to Cuba through the slave trade, then later to the United States. ‘Paleros’… as practitioners of this black-magic art are called, need body parts to worship—preferably human skulls.” Proponents believe these skulls can be used to summon and enslave that dead person’s spirit. In the Payo Mayombe religion, paleros use rituals and enchantments to capture the spirits. Once a spirit is captured, it can be transferred to practitioners of the religion.
