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FIRST ON FOX: A pro-life pregnancy center in Orlando, Florida was hit by an attack from vandals who appeared to leave behind a beheaded chicken, another bird, and a young lamb. JMJ Pregnancy Center in Orlando was hit by a vandal attack on Wednesday afternoon between 3:30 and 5 p.m., leaving a wake of mutilated animal bodies in front of the clinic. Fox News Digital exclusively obtained photos of the attack that showed a bloodless, decapitated chicken, a lamb, and what appears to be a pheasant on the lawn of the pregnancy center near the entrance in what the center's...

First, they defied the male dominion over the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion by being secretly ordained. Then, they shocked the patriarchy by performing a ritual long considered the exclusive preserve of men. Twenty years after first breaking the glass ceiling, Cuba's Santeria priestesses are still battling to claim their place. The Santeria religion is hundreds of years old -- a mix of beliefs brought to Cuba by Yoruba slaves from West Africa, and Catholicism. Experts say about 70 percent of Cubans are followers of Santeria.

ATLANTA — Channel 2 Action News is investigating headless goats found floating in the Chattahoochee River. Someone has dumped hundreds of decapitated goats over the past few years. Channel 2′s Dave Huddleston cruised up the Chattahoochee River with Jason Ulseth, who works for the environmental group the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. As they approached the Interstate 20 bridge near the Fulton County and Cobb County border, “There’s a goat,” Ulselth said. Lately it’s become a lot more frequent, and on Friday we were out here and saw 30 of them floating down the river,” Ulseth said. A witness recorded cellphone video of...

A doctor has been accused of sacrificing livestock for Santeria witchcraft in his flat after investigators discovered 22 farm animals being kept in his New Jersey home on Thursday. When authorities arrived at Emilio Otero's property on Van Horne Street they were met with "seven to nine" goats, several chickens and even a dead pigeon nailed above a door. The investigators from the Division of Environmental Health for Jersey City visited the apartment after a tip off from Emilio's neighbours. Animal service agents were called to the flat and they removed at least 22 farm animals that had been kept...

WARNING: Some pictures in the following story may be disturbing for some viewers. The remains of a mutilated animal left rotting in the street can be both disturbing to see and in some cases, illegal. But law enforcement rarely pursues charges in these cases which are more common than you might think. CASE IN THE ACREAGE Dorcas “DJ” Web has lived in the acreage for nearly 30 years. It’s an area she considered peaceful and quiet until she made a gruesome discovery down her street. She saw four cardboard boxes; one placed on each corner of the intersection. At first...

A Sterling woman accused of sacrificing up to 15 chickens a week for religious purposes will still be legally allowed to own live poultry-- as long as she completes a course in how to humanely sacrifice animals. .... Gro Mambo Danthoula Novanyon Idizol, a high priestess and the executive board secretary of the National African Religion Congress (NARC), testified Carrion is a member of her organization. She said Carrion underwent an extensive initiation process to become a high priestess in Santeria, a pantheistic Afro-Hispanic religion that incorporates elements of Catholicism.

Pablo Lucio Vasquez, 38, told police he was drunk and high when voices convinced him 18 years ago to kill David Cardenas by beating the seventh-grader with a pipe and then cutting his throat. He also told detectives in a videotaped statement that he lifted the boy's body, allowing the blood to drip on his face, and drank it. Vasquez's lethal injection on Wednesday evening would be the 11th execution this year nationally and the sixth in Texas. Vasquez's lawyer, James Keegan, appealed to the Supreme Court for a reprieve so the justices can review whether several potential jurors improperly...

Investigators removed human remains and animal parts from the scene, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department told KTLA. The deputy said that people at the store, near where the remains were discovered, practiced Santeria. The religion's customs include animal sacrifice, according to the BBC. A sign in front of the store described it as a spiritual school and said "Santeria products" were sold there.

HARTFORD, Conn. -- A Connecticut man is accused of storing human remains that were stolen from a cemetery in Worcester. Police were called to an apartment inside a multi-family home where there was a report human remains being stored. Police said the homeowner, Amador Medina, admitted to having bodies in the house and invited police inside to show them. Police then found remains of three adults and two children. Investigators were able to link the remains to five graves that had been robbed at a cemetery in Worcester, Mass. Worcester Police said on Oct. 9, it was discovered a mausoleum...

The federal government passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993. It was authored by Chuck Schumer, passed with nearly unanimous support from both parties, and signed by President Bill Clinton. The legislation was needed after a bad Supreme Court ruling delivered by Antonin Scalia that limited religious freedom for Native Americans who smoke peyote as part of their religion. A later Supreme Court ruling ruled that the RFRA didn’t apply to state or local governments. Twenty states passed RFRAs and another 13 have protections like the ones in RFRA. And yet when Indiana passed the legislation last week,...

MIAMI, - Authorities in Florida said they are investigating the alleged illegal importing of giant African snails for use in a religious healing ritual. A search warrant filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court said state and federal investigators raided the home of Charles Stewart, 48, in January after receiving information that he was keeping a large box full of the snails, which are only allowed in the United States with special permits for scientific research, the Miami Herald reported Thursday. Federal authorities said they began investigating Stewart in November after receiving complaints that he was feeding the juices from the snails...

Father Jose Antonio Fortea, author of a famous treaty on demonology, spent about an hour with the press at Miami's Archdiocese on Friday. He framed the conversation around the idea that people are turning toward secular solutions or other faiths to overcome spiritual obstacles. Fortea, who is from Spain, said that although exorcisms are uncommon last-ditch resorts, the Vatican has emphasized the rite in recent years out of necessity. The Catholic Church does not advertise the number of exorcisms it approves annually, but some statistics do exist: Between 1991 and 2001, the number of Catholic demon-expellers in the United States...

Manuel Pardo was a decorated Florida highway patrolman and police officer who went horribly bad, slaying nine people during a three-month crime spree after he had been fired for lying. Now, almost 27 years later, Pardo, 56, is scheduled to be executed Tuesday night at Florida State Prison in Starke barring a last-minute stay, fulfilling a request he made to jurors at his 1988 trial.

Leave it to Miami to shock even a reality-TV film crew. The crew was shooting footage at Miami International Airport for an upcoming episode when customs agents found a pair of human fetuses in the luggage of two women returning from Havana. The fetuses were to be delivered to someone in Miami and used in a Santeria-like religious ritual, according to two people knowledgeable about the case. “I’ve never heard of anything like this,” said Pat Diaz, who retired two years ago after 25 years on the homicide squad of the Miami-Dade Police Department. The incident, filmed by a crew...

The NBA doesn’t condone fans cursing at opposing players during games. But apparently, there’s nothing to prevent a fan from trying to place a curse on the opponents. Scores of Heat fans have been buying vodou- or santeria-type dolls at a store in West Miami-Dade that specializes in religious statues, powders, incense and small animals. (snip) “It is only for positive things,” he stressed — although, truth be told, if a purchaser thought they could use the dolls to bring misfortune to bear on the Mavs, Hernandez would be in no position to stop it.

It’s been five months since Enzo Vincenzi of Estero won a $136,500 jury award against a “Santeria Africana” spiritual adviser, but she still owns the Fort Myers motel he says she duped him out of through voodoo trickery. Vincenzi’s lawyer backed out of the case involving the Sabal Park Inn after a falling out, so a rescission of deed, which could have transferred ownership back to the 43-year-old Vincenzi, never proceeded in court. Meanwhile, Vincenzi has hired a private investigator who is trying to build a case in the hopes that spiritual adviser Miriam Pacheco, her partner, Maria Teresa Torres,...

"It means all the world to us to know that there are prayer circles out there and people who are keeping the spirits clean around us," First Lady Michelle Obama said on the "Tom Joyner Morning Show" today.

(CNN) -- Investigators recovered the remains of more than 500 animals after executing a search warrant Wednesday at a home in the Feltonville section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, according to the city's chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The animals included "dozens of sheep, goats ... every type of farm animal you can think of," the Philadelphia SPCA's law enforcement director, George Bengal, said. The SPCA believes two sets of remains are those of small primates, possibly monkeys.

The Obama White House is abuzz with talk of witchcraft by first grandmother, 72-year-old Marian Robinson, who lives in the White House residence. A close friend of Michelle Obama says the president is furious at his mother-in-law after learning that she was practicing Santeria, an African spirit cult, in the White House. "The president is quite upset about this on two different levels. First, he is a committed Christian, no matter what his critics say about Reverend Wright. He is adamant that Sasha and Malia be raised with Christian influences. He does not want them to be involved with African...

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, told the State of New York in 1994 that it must allow prison inmates who practice Santeria to wear multi-colored beads. Santeria is a sect that combines African religious traditions with elements drawn from Roman Catholicism. In the case of Campos v. Coughlin , Sotomayor told state prison officials that their fear of a growing gang movement within the prison was less important than the right of Santeria faithful to wear religious beads. Then a Southern District of New York federal judge, Sotomayor claimed in Campos v. Coughlin that the...