In 1962 two brothers, Santos and Cayetano Hernandez, arrived at Yerba Buena, a poor village in the mountains of Nuevo Leon in northern Mexico, and told the inhabitants that they were prophets of the Inca gods, who would reveal treasure in the hills in exchange for tribute and sexual service. When the promised apparitions failed to materialise, they hired Magdalena Solis, a prostitute from Monterrey, and her brother Eleazar, to supply one. She appeared out of a cave in smoke and was presented as the reincarnation of an Inca goddess.
She took over the cult. Villagers who lost faith or tried to leave were denounced as unbelievers and killed in ceremonies in the cave: they were beaten, burned, cut, and their blood was collected and drunk, mixed with chicken blood. Six deaths are recorded in that phase, though the number is not established. Mexican reporting called her the High Priestess of Blood.
The cult was exposed in May 1963 when a fourteen-year-old boy, Sebastian Guerrero, ran fourteen kilometres to the police at Villa Gran and reported that he had seen people killed. A policeman, Luis Martinez, went with him to Yerba Buena; both were killed there. When the army arrived days later, Santos Hernandez was shot resisting, and Solis, her brother and a number of villagers were arrested.
Magdalena and Eleazar Solis were convicted of the murders of Guerrero and Martinez, the two that could be proved, and each sentenced to fifty years in June 1963. The earlier ritual deaths were not individually charged, which is why the range runs from two to eight or more. Nothing is reliably documented about her afterwards.
The case is retold constantly and almost always with details that cannot be sourced. What is supported is the two convictions, the cult, the drinking of blood attested by villagers at trial, and the boy's walk to the police station.
The fifty-year figure should also be treated with care. Mexican sentences of the period were subject to statutory caps and to remission, and nothing reliable records how much of it she served or when she left prison; accounts that give a release date do not cite a source.