The Aurelias held out until Madelina turned four, then joined a group of crop pickers bound for the United States. For the next two years, the illegal aliens would migrate from Florida to Texas, following the growing seasons.

For the Aurelias, life in the States seemed just as bewitched as it had been in Morelos. Cecilia lost sight in her right eye because of a bee sting, and Miguel suffered a second stroke. When the Aurelias’ shanty burned to the ground, the superstitious couple departed Belle Glade, abandoning their daughter on the doorstep of the town’s Family Services office.

A month later, six-year-old Madelina was placed in the foster home of the Reverend Quenton Morehead and his wife, Rachel.

It soon became apparent that something was seriously wrong with the young Mexican immigrant. Bizarre infantile behavior, including public masturbation and finger painting with her feces led the God-fearing Quenton to declare the girl possessed. His wife, being more grounded, suspected a chemical imbalance and made an appointment with a child psychiatrist.

After two visits and a battery of tests, doctors diagnosed Madelina’s problem as a form of disorganized schizophrenia, probably inherited from one of the girl’s biological parents. Drugs were prescribed, therapy recommended.

Two weeks later, Rachel Morehead found a lump on her left breast. She would not last the year.

Deeply depressed over his wife’s death, Quenton was forced to endure the additional burden of Madelina’s illness alone. Unable to accept the doctor’s psychiatric ‘mumbo jumbo,’ the minister decided the best course of action was simply to exorcise the girl’s demons himself.

Prayer, empowered by Quenton’s fire-and-brimstone delivery, would cleanse Madelina’s soul. Daily Bible readings and nightly services would fill her idle time after school, preventing her mind from wandering back toward Satan. Jesus would shine His guiding light into the girl’s valley of darkness.

It was a long, exhausting ‘road to salvation,’ complicated by Quenton’s own disease: alcoholism.

After staggering home drunk, the ordained minister would often strip naked and crawl into bed with his frightened nine-year-old foster child. On good nights, Quenton simply passed out.

On a few terrible nights … he stayed awake.

Weeks after the first episode, the girl began carrying on conversations with imaginary friends. The voices ‘stopped’ with Quenton’s beatings.

By the time she turned sixteen, Madelina had been molested by her foster parent dozens of times. Meanwhile, the adolescent’s girl’s schizophrenia had grown worse, and the minister feared he might be stuck caring for his foster daughter the rest of his days.

What he needed was a son-in-law to relieve him of his burden.