The Chupacabra: Puerto Rico’s Vampire Cryptid

The chupacabra is considered the third most widely known cryptid in the world, behind Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster – kind of mind-blowing, considering the fact that this mythical creature’s origins are relatively recent. Reports of el chupacabras began in Puerto Rico in 1995… where one theory holds that the creature is the result of a U. S. military experiment gone horribly wrong. Help us reach 10k followers on Instagram! @⁠theconspiracypod⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:06Speaker 00

  It's October 1973, and Hector Jussino is 16 years old. He and his friends have access to something any high school kid in the 70s wants: a car. Freedom! They decide to spend the day driving all around Puerto Rico, where they live, then camp overnight at El Yunque. The tropical rainforest covers about 29,000 acres near San Juan, on the island's northeast side. Hector claims that as he and his friends make camp, they realize they're being watched. From just beyond the foliage, Hector can barely make out some kind of shadowy figure or creature. As it moves,

• 0:48Speaker 00

  he thinks he sees a tail, then hooves, whatever it is. It's walking upright on sinewy legs. He gets the uncanny feeling that it's somewhere between human and animal. According to Hector, it then rushes his group and disappears into the dense cover of El Yunque. The friends take that as a sign they've overstayed their welcome. They waste no time packing up and leaving. Before they make it safely back to the city, Hector thinks he sees the creature once more, and this time, it's not alone. Three pairs of glowing eyes watch the teenagers drive off into the night. It's the one and only time Hector will catch sight of the mysterious animal.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  But some believe his encounter is a precursor for a string of attacks that plagues Puerto Rico in the mid-1990s. Something keeps killing livestock, and apparently sucking the animals' blood dry, like a vampire. Eyewitness reports will vary, but the most famous incidents describe a humanoid, muscular figure that walks upright, just like Hector Jussino saw two decades earlier. The creature comes to be known as El Chupacabra, the goat sucker, named after its favorite meal, an unnatural entity that some believe comes from deep within El Yunque National Forest. But if that's true,

• 2:17Speaker 00

  no one knows for sure how it got there. Some speculate that it arrived, fully formed, from another planet, while others think the terror is homegrown, in a lab, where horrible experiments are carried out by the US government. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. We would love to hear from you, so if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts, or check us out on Instagram at TheConspiracyPod. This episode includes discussions of animal deaths. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. Stay with us.

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• 4:58Speaker 00

  Today, the Chupacabra is known around the world. In fact, it's estimated to be the third best-known cryptid behind Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. What makes that fact truly incredible is that the Chupacabra is a relatively new mythical monster. Unlike its beastly brethren, the goat sucker's origin story can be traced to one specific time and place. In March of 1995, a rancher in central Puerto Rico enters the animal pen on his property and finds eight of his sheep dead. It was devastating, and as he kneels to inspect his animals, he's struck by something odd. Each of the sheep has three puncture marks on its chest.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  Clearly, the animals have been attacked by some type of predator and died from their injuries, which does happen from time to time. It's a sad fact of farm life. But this scene looks strange. And the rancher wonders, "Where's the blood?" In a violent attack like this, with an animal vicious enough to catch eight of his sheep, well, surely there would be blood on the ground, but there's hardly any to be found. The rancher figures whatever killed them must have sucked the blood out of those three chest wounds the puncture marks see notes earlier. That must be how they died. Exsanguination. Later, he tells the harrowing details to his neighbors, warning them.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  And before long, they find their own livestock dead as well. The predator hits their farms one by one, killing their goats, sheep, and other livestock, leaving wounds near their necks, and seemingly draining their blood. No one sees the mystery killer in action, but the ranchers do learn a few things about it. They notice that wherever it strikes, it leaves behind a foul, rotten stench, almost like sulfur, and goats seem to be its favorite prey. Now, many of these rural communities depend on their livestock. Animals are an integral part of the farming economy, so as more are killed in the night, farmers start to panic. The problem becomes so dire, the press begins to report on these attacks.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  And that's around the time that comedian and radio personality Silvairio Perez calls the predator "El Chupacabras." The name catches on and eventually gets anglicized to El Chupacabra, which loosely translates to "The Goat Sucker." It's kind of supposed to be a joke, but the devastation left behind in the wake of the Chupacabra is real. And to make matters worse, no one has any idea what the culprit really is. Until finally, someone claims to spot the beast in action. In the second week of August 1995, Madeline Tolentino is visiting her mother.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  She lives in Conabanas, about 35 miles from the original Chupacabra attacks. According to Madeline, she's napping in the guest bedroom when she's startled awake by a shout. It's her mother. She's staring out the window and frantically beckoning Madeline to have a look. So Madeline takes her place next to her mom and peers outside. Just a few feet beyond the house, a bizarre creature is standing in the street. It stands upright on two long, skinny legs that look similar to a human's. Its body is covered in short hair with patches of raw, pink flesh, almost like burn marks. Madeline also notices large, black eyes situated on the side of its head.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  Instead of a nose, it has two flat reptilian air holes, and each foot has three long, webbed toes with sharp talons. As she'll later tell author and investigator Benjamin Radford, Madeline thinks the creature also has some kind of appendages on its back. They look like feathers connected by a reddish membrane. As she watches, they stand up straight, almost like when we get goosebumps and our arm hairs stand on end. At the time, she says the creature moves with slow, robotic motions, just like a monster from a B-movie. She and her mother have never seen anything like this before. Right away, Madeline assumes the animal has to be the same one

• 9:19Speaker 00

  attacking livestock in central Puerto Rico, the elusive Chupacabra. According to Madeline, her mother suddenly springs up and runs out of the house as if she's trying to catch the creature, but it's too fast. It springs away so quickly into the woods that Madeline thinks it may even be hovering through the air. But it doesn't get away yet. A young laborer who works on the property follows the creature. If Madeline is to be believed, he actually manages to grab hold of it. With the bizarre animal thrashing in his arms, he pries its mouth open to reveal long fangs. As if agitated, the creature's back feathers rise up like long, fluttering spines, and one swift move,

• 10:04Speaker 00

  it wrenches itself from the boy's grasp and bolts into the forest even faster than before. The entire encounter lasts less than five minutes. By the time Madeline steps out of the house, the thing is gone. It did leave something behind, though. A sulfuric stench. The telltale sign of El Chupacabras. The creature had already been a hot topic of discussion. Now, Madeline's claims of seeing it up close kick off a fury of new sightings in northeastern Puerto Rico. Meanwhile, more and more farm animals turn up dead. Apparent victims of Chupacabra attacks.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Townspeople grow too scared to go out at night alone. That's when the mayor of Cana Banas gets involved. Fifty-one-year-old Mayor Jose Soto is a sportsman and a gun collector with a powerful jaw, narrow eyes, and a handsome mustache. And he's not just running a town hall to talk about the monster. Mayor Soto is ready to hunt down the Chupacabra himself if he has to. On October 29th, 1995, the mayor summons every able-bodied policeman, city worker, prison guard, and hunter to the town square. About 200 residents join in wielding guns, machetes, nets, and tranquilizers.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  Like many of his constituents, Mayor Soto believes the Chupacabra hides within El Yunque, about 12 miles away. With the moon high above and a cold wind blowing, he dons his fedora, straps a large hunting knife under his jacket, and leads his hunting party into the rainforest. Once they've reached a good spot, Soto orders a trap to be set. They've brought along a live goat as bait, which they set out in a cage. Then they fan out and take their positions and wait. At one point, gunshots ring out. A few of the hunters believe they spotted the Chupacabra, but if they did, their guns scared it away.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Soto makes it clear he wants to catch the creature, ideally alive, not just frighten it. His people are bordering on mass hysteria here. But the rest of the night passes quietly. There are no further sightings. The good news is, for the goat, it gets to return home. The bad news: Mayor Soto has nothing to show for his hunting trip. And something keeps attacking animals all around Cana Banas. Soto doesn't give up just yet. In fact, he continues to launch more expeditions over the next few years, vowing to one day capture the Chupacabra and bring peace to his city. But he never does. There is a silver lining, though.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  The hunts bolster his political ambitions. Voters reelect their adventurous mayor all the way through 2014. In the mid-'90s, Soto is the only public figure who seems to be taking the Chupacabra issue seriously. But that all changes when the story spreads beyond Puerto Rico. And soon, the creature is being spotted in other parts of the world, too. In early 1996, a Miami-based program, El Show de Cristina, airs an episode on the Chupacabra. Host Christina Sarah Legi interviews a few experts, including Mayor Jose Soto, a veterinarian known as Dr. Chupacabras,

• 13:38Speaker 00

  and a UFO researcher Jorge Martín, who's been following the case closely. Jorge is responsible for the first widely circulated sketch of the Chupacabra, which is based on the story told by Madeline Tolentino. Christina approaches their discussion as a skeptic. She believes El Chupacabras is nothing more than a joke, or at least the work of overactive imaginations. But as the experts break down the various encounters and bizarre animal mutilations, she seems to change her mind. Soon after the episode airs, the Chupacabra strikes again, this time in Miami,

• 14:21Speaker 00

  which, again, is where Christina's show is taped. A Florida woman claims to see a dog-like creature, which she believes could be the Chupacabra. And, wouldn't you know it, she just heard about the creature on TV. Ah, yes, does sound like suspicious timing, but the thing is, her claims are not completely unfounded. There are reports of 40 animals killed in a rural area northwest of Miami. Then, about two months after the Christina episode, an epidemic of strange attacks breaks out in another part of the mainland U.S. Along the Mexican border, people find dead animals with puncture wounds.

• 15:04Speaker 00

  The blood has seemingly been drained from their bodies. The sightings continue. In Juarez, Mexico, people report a kangaroo-shaped monster that preys on wildlife and pets. It sprints on all four legs like a dog. In Sinaloa, a bat-like creature is supposedly draining the blood from local goats. Before long, Chupacabra reports roll in from as far north as Maine and as far away as China. The stories are picked up by major news outlets: The Boston Globe, The New York Times, National Geographic. Unsolved Mysteries covers the case, interviewing Madeline Tolentino, Jorge Martín, and others who claim they've had run-ins with the cryptid.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  In a 1997 X-Files episode, the world's most famous fictional FBI duo pursues the creature. In a short span of time, the Chupacabra becomes, well, famous. A living urban legend. It's still feared, but also celebrated. Part of the allure, of course, is its elusiveness. While many claim to be eyewitnesses, no one has ever captured it on film or trapped a Chupacabra, dead or alive. Not until the following decade. Phyllis Canyon lives on a ranch outside the small Texas town of Cuero.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  She's plenty familiar with the coyotes and other wild beasts that like to carry off her animals. But around 2007, a different sort of predator turns up. Now and again, she catches a quick glimpse of a medium-sized, dog-like creature with bluish-gray skin like an elephant. And it seems to enjoy the taste of Phyllis's chickens, or more specifically, their blood. For months, Phyllis tries to put a stop to the killing spree. She trains cameras on her chicken coop, but she never manages to catch the predator on tape. She rallies her neighbors for help, asking them to keep an eye out.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Then, on July 14th, 2007, she receives a call from a rancher down the road. There's a dead animal on his property, and he has no clue what it is. But he believes it could be the thing that's been killing her chickens. Phyllis drives over and comes face to face with the same creature she spotted at a distance all those months ago. It's dog-like, but with gray skin, three-toed feet, and large, fanged teeth. As if this moment isn't bizarre enough, it's interrupted by another call. A second creature's been found, and this one is right in front of Phyllis's home.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  And once she races back to her house, she finds the exact same bluish-gray animal lying dead in the road. Okay, at this point, you might be wondering, why doesn't this so-called Chupacabra look anything like the one Madeline Tolentino says she saw in Puerto Rico? We'll get to that. For now, that discrepancy doesn't seem to bother Phyllis. She thinks she has caught a dead Chupacabra. She considers that perhaps the reptilian alien story is just a legend, and the creature she now has in her possession, an animal she's never seen before, is the truth behind the legend. Maybe the Chupacabra isn't a monster, she thinks,

• 18:33Speaker 00

  but it could still be some kind of undiscovered, blood-sucking canine. Phyllis lays the corpse on a flour sack and takes photographs. Then she preserves the animal's severed, grimacing head in her freezer. Because, yeah, you've got Ben & Jerry's ice cubes, severed head of animal I don't know. That's what a freezer's for. Reporters from all over the world cover the incredible find. And for the first time, the public can see an apparent, real Chupacabra for themselves. The creature becomes a worldwide sensation, and so does Phyllis. An overnight celebrity, she receives thousands of fan letters.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  So she begins offering tours of her property in Cuero and selling T-shirts that read, "2007: Summer of the Chupacabra." Believers feel vindicated, but there are plenty of skeptics, too. They want proof that this isn't just some unusual wild dog. Later that year, a San Antonio television studio offers to pay for a DNA test and air the results live on the air. And Phyllis agrees. She feels certain that she has a real cryptid on her hands. Samples are taken from the creature's skin and muscle tissue and then sent off to the Texas State University lab.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  On Halloween 2007, Phyllis stands onstage, ready to hear the truth, along with the rest of the world on live TV. Finally, everyone will know what sort of creature the Cuero Chupacabra really is.

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• 21:22Speaker 00

  Halloween 2007. Phyllis Canyon stands onstage at KENS Studios awaiting the DNA test results from the animal she believes to be a bona fide chupacabra. And before the cameras start rolling, a professor from the Department of Biology at Texas State University joins her. His name is Michael Forstner, and he's the one who actually performed the DNA test. Phyllis and Michael exchange a pleasant hello, then they're live. The host welcomes the audience and holds up a closed envelope with the lab results inside. Like an Academy Award presenter, he slowly opens the envelope, holding for suspense.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  The strange animal Phyllis found was, in fact, a coyote. Michael explains his analysis, saying the DNA was “a virtually identical match.” He'd originally believed the animal would be a pet dog, but the test was 97% certain. Phyllis pushes back, “How can this be a coyote when, in her estimation, it looks nothing like a coyote?” Michael suggests perhaps it suffered from mange. Now, mange is a skin disease that can afflict just about any animal. It happens when parasitic mites burrow under the carrier's skin, producing eggs and organic waste.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  In humans, we call the itchy rash that it produces scabies. It's basically an allergic reaction. And while it sounds like a complete nightmare or something kids try to give each other on the playground, scabies aren't actually all that harmful to us. Scientists believe that humans have been dealing with these mites for so long that our immune systems have evolved to handle them. You know, not to brag or anything, but I can handle scabies. But for wild animals like coyotes, that allergic reaction can cause fur to shed. It's replaced by painful sores and thick, rough patches. The inflamed skin can get so itchy, a diseased dog will rub itself against trees and rocks

• 23:31Speaker 00

  for relief, and that can cause bigger problems. Long term, it could even be fatal. So it sounds like what Michael's suggesting is this coyote's mange was so advanced, it no longer looked like a regular coyote. Back at the TV studio, the results have not changed Phyllis's mind. She's familiar with coyotes, and whatever this animal is, she insists, it had abnormally long fangs. Like a vampire. She also points out that coyotes tend to drag their prey off when they attack. This creature left her chickens right where it found them, after draining their blood. Later, Phyllis and her supporters develop a new theory.

• 24:15Speaker 00

  She learns that the DNA test performed on her chupacabra had examined its mitochondrial DNA, which only reveals the maternal lineage. It said nothing about the mysterious creature's father. Perhaps the beasts are only part coyote, and the real chupacabra has been out there breeding. Maybe Phyllis found its offspring. Two years later, in about 100 miles from Cuero, a man in Rosenberg, Texas hears something attacking his family's chickens. Lynn Butler sets a trap with poison, thinking he'll catch a raccoon. The trap works, but the dead creature he finds is nothing like the usual South Texas predators he's used to seeing.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  In place of fur, it has leathery gray skin. Curled up in the fetal position, the creature looks nearly identical to the Cuero chupacabra Lynn had read about in the papers. Right away, Lynn thinks of Jerry Ayer. Jerry owns a taxidermy business and has stuffed just about every animal known to Texas. I mean, he knows them inside and out. So Lynn sends the creature to Jerry, the expert. When Jerry gets a look at it, he's a little mystified himself. So he does what he does best. He prepares and mounts the creature, posing it on all fours with its back high and its head low in a menacing stance.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  Some say Jerry's taxidermied chupacabra may be the strongest piece of evidence of the cryptid's existence. The hairless, dog-like predator is probably the most popular image of the mythical monster today, even superseding the original version, which is more alien-like. As for Jerry, well, he's a little more grounded than other chupacabra fans. After 20-plus years as a taxidermist, he knew exactly what to look for when he was stuffing the creature. And inside this particular chupacabra, he found typical coyote bones. He later explains that it could be a crossbreed, part coyote, part wolf.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  This one, he thinks, might have had some kind of genetic defect. Either that, or a debilitating case of mange. If the dog-like chupacabra found in Texas really is just a coyote, then that squares with the findings of zoologist Ron McGill. Back in the 90s, after sightings of the monster made their way to Miami, he was called upon to examine the attacked animals. And what he found, he said, “looked like an ordinary canine encounter.” The puncture wounds on the animals' necks looked like dog bites. Contrary to what everyone had assumed, the attacker did not suck the blood of these victims.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  Ron showed that they still contained a normal amount of coagulated blood. To top it all off, he found dog tracks throughout the grounds. Despite the hype, Ron believed the attacker wasn't a mythical monster. It was a pack of feral dogs. Among skeptics, the consensus is that these coyote-like specimens in the States weren't real chupacabras, and the beast likely never appeared on the mainland. However, that doesn't explain the original sightings in Puerto Rico. When Madeleine Tolentino first spotted the chupacabra in 1995, it had large, black eyes,

• 27:46Speaker 00

  spines on its back, three-toed feet, and walked on two legs like a humanoid. Believers think there is no way Madeleine could have mistaken it for an ordinary animal. In fact, coyotes don't even live in Puerto Rico. Neither do wolves. They do have wild dogs, of course, but most of the island's natural predators consist of the mongoose, birds of prey, snakes, wild boar, and an alligator-like reptile called a caiman. None of those options sound much like what Madeleine and other witnesses on the island described in the mid-'90s, which is why some people believe the Puerto Rican chupacabra is not of this earth.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Okay, let's go back to the 1970s for a moment. During that decade, Puerto Rico reportedly experiences a UFO flap, a surge in sightings. So one night in 1973, a group of kids decides they're going camping to see if they can spot a UFO for themselves. They pack up and head to El Yunkay National Forest. It's gorgeous, lush, extremely biodiverse, a sacred place to many, starting with the indigenous Taínó, the first humans to live on the island. And now El Yunkay has also become a hotspot for recent paranormal claims. That night, the campers report they get their wish.

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Once darkness falls, they find themselves in the middle of the rainforest, surrounded by a pack of creatures. They appear to be part human, part monster, and they're circling the children at incredible speeds, trapping them. The kids are terrified. They can't get away. The moment is only broken when, according to the campers, a UFO flies overhead. It's a story that's been shared around Puerto Rico for decades. Perhaps it's just an urban legend, a parable. Be careful what you wish for. Don't go out looking for danger. But if you ask Hector Giusino, the man who claims he and his friends were stalked by

• 29:55Speaker 00

  a humanoid figure in El Yunkay that same year, the creatures are real. It's worth noting that around the time of these early sightings in El Yunkay, back in the 70s, another mysterious predator was attacking animals. In 1975, a farmer in the small town of Moca in western Puerto Rico woke early one morning to a scene of heartbreaking carnage. Something had broken into his barn and killed his precious pair of white geese. What really struck him was how clean their feathers appeared, even after being viciously attacked. Reportedly, that's when he discovered the geese had puncture wounds on their necks and had been drained of blood.

• 30:39Speaker 00

  When he traded stories with his neighbors, the man learned that his was not the only farm that was struck that night. While no one saw the attacker, a few reported they'd heard it, like a monster flapping its leathery wings, howling and screeching. Sounds a lot like the chupacabra claims, right? Only this happens 20 years before the rash of chupacabra sightings begins on the island. And back in the 70s, the creature gets a different name: the Moca Vampire. Police even inspected these incidents in the 70s. They shrugged off the idea of a vampire at work, but they also couldn't offer proof of a more rational explanation.

• 31:21Speaker 00

  So to recap, the Moca Vampire shows up in Puerto Rico in the mid-'70s, around the same time there's a rise in UFO reports. Some of these flying saucer sightings allegedly happen around El Yunkay and line up with claims of humanoid creatures running around the rainforest. Then, the mystery monster all but disappears for two decades, only to reappear in 1995, around the same time there are more UFO reports. A radio personality claims he sees one over El Yunkay that January. More accounts follow over the next few months, all at the same time that chupacabra hysteria begins to spread.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  That's why some can't help but wonder if the chupacabra's presence is connected to those UFO sightings. If it lives within El Yunkay, and if the US government knows about it—because in 1995, as the chupacabra craze spreads, the Fed shut down portions of the rainforest.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  The official reasons? Well, according to the USDA website, the Forest Service is performing work on federal facilities within El Yunque. This falls under something called the El Yunque Peak Electronic Site Consolidation Plan. But some locals have a hard time looking beyond the suspicious timing of that closure. And frankly, who can blame them? For nearly 130 years, relations have been complicated between the US government and its unincorporated territory, Puerto Rico, to say the least. El Yunque is a national rainforest. The US government has been studying it for decades.

• 33:12Speaker 00

  With nearly 29,000 acres of dense vegetation to hide in, it would make an excellent place to carry out top-secret experiments. And that idea has given rise to another theory about the chupacabra. Maybe it isn't fully animal or alien. Maybe it was created in a lab.

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• 34:37Speaker 00

  The chupacabra legend began in Puerto Rico in 1995. And ever since, one theory about the creature's origins has made its way to the forefront. If the chupacabra really does exist, if it's not just some mangy cross-bred mammal, then one possible culprit could be the US government. In 1898, the US invaded and colonized Puerto Rico, turning it into a territory. From then on, the States had immense power over the island. Scientists and doctors have exploited the people and land for research, like when they tested Agent Orange and Napalm at a Navy facility on VA case.

• 35:18Speaker 00

  Or when they allow corporations to test genetically modified plants along Puerto Rico's coast. Agents working for the US have experimented on everything from wild monkeys to pet dogs to humans. In the 1930s, Dr. Clarence Gamble began opening clinics across the island, offering free sterilization for women. The procedure, which leaves patients unable to conceive children, was promoted as a method of family planning. However, we now know that many women who were sterilized had no idea what they were getting into. They were either coerced into doing it or weren't given an option at all.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  And those who did agree to the procedure were often misled about the long-term effects. As a result, by the 1950s, Puerto Rico reportedly had the highest rate of sterilization in the world. Then along came the contraceptive pill, still in clinical trials in the mid 50s. Rules and regulations in the States often made testing difficult, so scientists eyed Puerto Rican women as the perfect guinea pigs. And while the pill we know today offers a host of benefits in its early stages, it could cause more significant side effects. Test subjects were taking an experimental version,

• 36:43Speaker 00

  which had four times the amount of hormones found in the version that got approved. Some say the researchers saw Puerto Rico as a geographical goldmine. Controls are easier on an island in the Caribbean. But others suggest that racism and even eugenics underlies many of the questionable studies that have taken place there. Puerto Rican activists have accused certain doctors of seeing their people, US citizens, as expendable. Take, for example, the case of Dr. Cornelius Packard Rhodes. A Harvard-trained pathologist, Rhodes was sent to Puerto Rico in 1931.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  As a representative for the Rockefeller Institute, his plan was to study anemia caused by hookworm infections, an ongoing public health crisis at the time. As the story goes, Rhodes apparently rubbed some people the wrong way. Not everyone, but a lot of people. In late 1931, shortly after someone vandalized his car, Rhodes sat down and wrote a scathing letter. He addressed it to a friend of his, but he never sent it. Rhodes packed up and headed home for the day, leaving the letter out on his desk, which is how a hospital worker happened upon it and read it. Rhodes explained in writing that while he saw his appointment on the island as a great opportunity,

• 38:09Speaker 00

  he wasn't sure he wanted to stick with it because, well, to put it bluntly, he's racist against Puerto Ricans. As in, the patients he took an oath to protect. He called them awful names, and that's not even the most horrifying part of the letter. Rhodes wrote to his friend, quote, "What the island needs is not public health work, but a tidal wave or something to totally exterminate the population. I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more."

• 38:50Speaker 00

  The hospital worker passed the letter on to the leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. Scandalized, he got the letter published in Time Magazine in February 1932. Rhodes responded that it was all a joke, quote, "written entirely for my own diversion." He said he didn't mean any of it. Authorities did not simply take him at his word, however. Official investigations were ordered by the governor and by the Rockefeller Institute. Neither found any evidence that Rhodes actually killed any of his patients or transplanted cancer, though they did uncover some unethical practices, like calling his patients terrible things to his colleagues.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  He'd also turned people away when they came to him for treatment for no good reason. Rhodes ran back to the States, never to return to Puerto Rico. It was a big enough scandal reported on by national outlets. You might think the fallout would have had some lasting effect on his career, but it didn't. By the next decade, his letter was seemingly forgotten. In 1940, Rhodes became director of Memorial Hospital in New York, then the biggest cancer center in the world. He was also the first person to head up the Sloan-Kettering Institute in 1945. In 1949, Time Magazine, the very same publication that reported on his letter,

• 40:12Speaker 00

  put Rhodes on the cover, over the banner, "Cancer Fighter Cornelius P. Rhodes." Rhodes might not be a household name anymore, at least not in the States, but plenty of Puerto Ricans still remember his story there. He's a symbol of what colonialism brought upon their island. To this day, some even consider his letter a murder confession. This fraught relationship between the US and Puerto Rico is at the heart of the chupacabra conspiracy theory. Throughout history, the federal government has proven they use the island as a haven for questionable experiments.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  So if American scientists were capable of so much destruction in the past, could they also be responsible for engineering the chupacabra? According to the theory, the military could have created some gruesome hybrid creature that escaped. Now, there's no proof the chupacabra is a Frankenstein-like experiment, but it's not surprising that Puerto Ricans blame the same institution that has wronged them before. Especially when the chupacabra they hear about sounds nothing like the Texas-based coyote specimens. It sounds like a lab experiment gone wrong, or like an alien.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  And for a long time, nobody offers a solid explanation for why the original chupacabra looks the way Madeleine Tolentino described it in 1995. But that all changes around 2011. That's the year Benjamin Radford publishes his in-depth book, "Tracking the Chupacabra," the result of five years spent researching various sightings. He even interviews Madeleine Tolentino and walks the street where she says her encounter happened years ago. But then Benjamin compares what she tells him with what she told another author back in 1996, and he realizes that her story is full of inconsistencies.

• 42:21Speaker 00

  For example, in the version Benjamin hears, Madeline's mother does not run after the chupacabra, nor does the boy working on the property, the one who she originally claimed caught and wrestled it. It's only natural for memory to fade over time, but these seem like major points in the story Benjamin knew, that Madeline is now refuting. So he starts to question something else. There are aspects of Madeline's chupacabra description that are totally unique to her story. While the creature has been likened to everything from a dog to a kangaroo to a bat, Madeline's version sounded distinctly alien.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  It had large eyes on the side of its head and flat reptilian nostrils. At some point, Benjamin comes across a remark Madeline made back in 1996. She compares the cryptid she saw to the monster in the 1995 sci-fi horror film Species. And Benjamin realizes that movie, which Madeline had seen, was released in Puerto Rico mere weeks before her sighting. In the film, Natasha Henstridge plays a human-alien hybrid. The Species alien and Madeline's chupacabra are both spiny humanoid monsters with claws. They are incredibly similar.

• 43:50Speaker 00

  And Benjamin thinks that can't just be a coincidence. It's possible Madeline only thought she saw a spiny alien when really, it was just her imagination. Her story doesn't sound all that believable at first, but over time, more news outlets were covering the chupacabra story, reliable journalists were giving page space to the sightings, that lent the chupacabra legend some believability. And it's no surprise, really, that eyewitness reports cropped up wherever the story spread. Mexico, Texas, Florida. But there could be another reason why the chupacabra, a vampire cryptid, was so easy

• 44:34Speaker 00

  for people to buy into. Vampire legends have been told across cultures for hundreds of years at least. Some say the idea of mythical monsters who feed off blood or life forces goes back to ancient Greece. Traditionally, vampires in folklore are symbolic. They're stand-ins for our fears of death, disease, and the unknown. When a misunderstood plague wipes out a town, vampires. Or when a string of animal attacks threatens an island's economy, vampires. Benjamin Radford takes this one step further in tracing the chupacabra.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  He suggests Puerto Rico's vampire could be the United States. Perhaps the chupacabra was a byproduct of colonialism. But as the old saying goes, seeing is believing. And in the past 30-plus years, hundreds of people have been convinced they saw something they can't explain. National Geographic counts as many as 200 witness reports just from Puerto Rico in 1995. To that point, I've got a few more numbers to leave you with. Every year, we discover thousands of new living species.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  A 2025 study published in the Journal of Mamalogy reports over 1,500 new mammal species recorded in just the last 20 years. And by some estimates, up to 86% of all living entities on land right now have yet to be found. Well, if you really think about it, is a muscular, hairy, blood-sucking animal all that hard to believe? Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at the Conspiracy Pod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  Our sources for today's episode include Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction and Folklore by Benjamin Radford, NPR's Throughline Podcast, and the National Park Secrets and Legends episode, El Yunque National Forest. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth. This episode was written and researched by Daniel William Gonzalez, edited by Mickey Taylor, Ben Caro, and Angela Jorgensen, fact-checked by Sophie Kemp and Cara McElain, and engineered,

• 47:20Speaker 00

  video-edited, and sound-designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy.

• 47:36Speaker 04

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