Naman Shrestha
Claiming to be an angel with magical abilities to heal and predict the future, Lou Castro gained popularity among a small group of people and formed a cult. In Hulu’s ‘How I Escaped My Cult: Angel’s Landing,’ the main focus is on him and his cult, through which he managed to lead a rather lavish lifestyle without having to work. However, little did his followers realize that behind his charismatic facade was a deceitful person responsible for multiple crimes within the community.
Lou Castro Orchestrated the Deaths of Several of His Followers For Money
Born on November 26, 1959, in Aransas Pass, Texas, Daniel “Danny” Urive Perez, also known as Lou Castro, claimed to have the supernatural power of looking into the future and even healing people’s bodies and souls. The self-proclaimed angel managed to convince many people to believe in him as he traveled across the nation throughout the 2000s. Eventually, he based his cult on a 20-acre compound called Angel’s Landing, which is located in the 9500 block of North Oliver in a rural area north of Wichita, Kansas. As his legend grew in the community, he used his charisma to make people believe that he was a centuries-old angel who needed to have sexual relations with young girls in order to keep living.
By 2003, Daniel owned not only the main Angel’s Landing property, where he resided with several people from different backgrounds, but also multiple luxury cars, a swimming pool, and several other houses on the 20-acre property. What made the authorities suspicious of him was the fact that he seemed to be unemployed, and they couldn’t find a paper trail on him. In the same year, things got shadier as one of the women — 26-year-old Patricia Hughes — living with him at Angel’s Landing as part of his cult was found drowned in the swimming pool. What appeared to be an accidental death turned out to be something more sinister. As the detectives dug deeper into the life and finances of Daniel Perez, they learned about six accidental deaths that had taken place within his cult in the course of seven years or so.
These demises allowed him to gain millions of dollars from the life insurance policies of the victims. The authorities got a big break in the case when a young woman admitted to lying about Patricia Hughes’ death. She claimed that the cult leader had instructed her to report her death as accidental. In actuality, Daniel had drowned her to death for insurance money, and when she became a witness to the crime, he convinced her to cover up his crime. Moreover, the investigators discovered that he had been having sexual relations with minors between the ages of 8 and 16. According to them, his motive was to keep earning life insurance proceeds from his followers’ deaths and living a luxurious life.
Lou Castro is Incarcerated at a Kansas Prison Facility
Finally, after several years of investigation, in 2010, Daniel Perez was officially implicated with 28 charges, including fraud, first-degree murder, and rape. By then, he had left his Angel’s Landing property behind and was living in Tennessee under the alias of Joe Venegas. On April 21 of the same year, the investigators managed to track him down and arrest him at his Tennessee property. After nearly five years, in February 2015, the 55-year-old cult leader was found guilty of all 28 charges against him in Sedgwick County District Court, including first-degree murder, eight counts of rape, eight other sex crimes, eight counts of making false writing, and three counts of aggravated assault. During the sentencing hearing of the convict on March 24, 2015, several of his former cult members and victims came forward as witnesses.
One of them took the stand and stated, “I was 10 when my childhood was over. While other 10-year-olds were riding bikes or playing with dolls, I was laying naked in a bed with a pillow over my head, just waiting for it to be over. While other 13-year-olds were getting boyfriends and holding hands, I was holding onto my secret and losing the people I loved one by one. When other 16-year-olds were experiencing the freedom of learning how to drive and planning parties with their friends, I was planning my own death every day when I drove to school.” Justice was served to all his victims when Daniel was sentenced to 80 years in prison with the possibility of parole. As of today, the former cult leader is serving his sentence at the Lansing Correctional Facility in Lansing, Kansas.
Read More: Sheryl Ruthven: What Happened to the Cult Leader?
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