Officials in Baton Rouge are investigating a fatal shooting at a Sleep Inn on Wednesday morning where a man is accused of shooting his coworker because of a ritual tied to the worship of the folk saint Santa Muerte.
The Baton Rouge Police Department identified the shooter as 45-year-old David Mendez of San Bernardino, California, who was taken into custody at around 4 a.m. Officers found the body of 26-year-old Juan Reyes Lugos at the hotel with multiple gunshot wounds.
Mendez told officers, according to arrest records, that "he is gone, I shot him and the gun is in the hamper." He was charged with second-degree murder and illegal use of a weapon.
The two men were reportedly sharing a hotel room and had worked for the same construction company.
While in custody, Mendez told officers that he was influenced by Santa Muerte to commit the crime.
"It is due to some type of spiritual reason as to why he felt that he needed to kill the individual that he was in the room with," Baton Rouge Police Department spokesperson L'Jean McKneely said. "They met while working on a project here in Baton Rouge, and they were all hanging out last night. And this morning, he received a message—a spiritual message—that encouraged him to kill a victim."
Virginia Commonwealth University religion professor Andrew Chestnut has heard similar cases to this story. He wrote the book Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint, and explained the background of the folk saint.
"I know of murder cases in Mexico where the perp also said that, 'Yeah. Santa Muerte told me that I needed to kill this person. Came to me in a dream or appeared to me in my living room,'" Chestnut said. "So yeah, that's kind of standard operating fare."
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The name Santa Muerte translates to "Holy Death," according to a 2013 report by the FBI. She is represented by an image that resembles a Grim Reaper, a skeleton figure in a hooded robe and holding a scythe. Santa Muerte is known as a "saint of last resort" and is referred to as a folk saint because she is not recognized by the Catholic Church.
The following of Santa Muerte became popular in Mexico in the late '80s and early '90s, especially among those in poor communities. Priests, shrines, temples, and rituals such as the offering of food, alcohol, and certain drugs are all involved in the faith.
The FBI described these practices as "unsanctioned saint worship mixed with varying elements of folk Catholicism."
Chestnut added that most people pray to Santa Muerte for health, wealth, and love, but because she is not a Christian saint, he says her requests could be "darker in nature."
"But again, because she is not a Catholic saint and because she is kind of amoral that means she does have a pretty good following among organized crime," Chestnut said. "Particularly in Mexico. More specifically some of the drug cartels."
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