Ex-priest faces charges in teacher’s 1960 slaying
Cleric, now 83, spent decades as a prime suspect
For more than half a century, the unsolved killing of a young schoolteacher and beauty queen who was last seen at church haunted the city of McAllen.
But now, nearly 56 years after the bludgeoned body of 25-year-old Irene Garza was pulled from an irrigation canal, police have arrested the man long suspected in her slaying: the former priest who apparently heard her final confession.
Using a walker, a fraillooking John Bernard Feit, now 83, appeared in court Wednesday in Phoenix after being arrested on murder charges a day earlier at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was jailed on $750,000 cash bail while he awaits transfer back to Texas.
“This whole thing makes no sense to me because the crime in question took place in 1960,” he said.
Feit’s arrest followed other investigations over the years, including a grand jury probe in 2004 that concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge him.
McAllen police would not comment Wednesday on what evidence was gathered or presented to the grand jury that finally brought the charges. Hidalgo County District Attorney Ricardo Rodriguez did not immediately return a call for comment.
Authorities said Garza visited Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen, where Feit was a priest, on April 16, 1960. Garza, who was Miss All South Texas Sweetheart 1958, had planned to go to confession that evening.
She never returned home.
Her body was found days later. An autopsy found that she had been raped while unconscious and had been beaten and suffocated.
Feit came under suspicion early on, telling police that he heard Garza’s confession — in the church rectory, not in the confessional — but denying he killed her.
He left the priesthood in 1972, married and went on to workfor a Catholic charity in Phoenix.
Among the evidence that pointed to Feit as a suspect over the years: His portable photographic slide viewer was found near Garza’s body.
Two fellow priests told authorities Feit confessed to them. And one of them said he saw scratches on Feit soon after Garza’s disappearance.
Also, Feit had been accused of attacking another young woman in a church in a nearby town just weeks before Garza’s death. He eventually pleadedno contest andwas fined $500.
Garza’s family members and friends had long pushed authorities to reopen the case, and it became an issue in the 2014 district attorney’s race. Rodriguez had promised that if elected, hewould reexamine the case.