Ex-priest arrested in 1960 killing of Texas schoolteacher

John Feit, an 83-year-old former priest, is arrested in Arizona in connection with the 1960 slaying of 25-year-old Texas schoolteacher Irene Garza.

Feit’s court appearance in Arizona came as local judge Mario Ramirez unsealed the Hidalgo County grand jury indictment charging Feit with Garza’s murder.

He faces a murder charge in connection with the death of 25-year-old Irene Garza, of McAllen, Texas. At a Sacred Heart Church in a neighboring town, a college student named Maria America Guerra reported that she had been attacked three weeks before Garza disappeared.

He said the last time he saw Garza was in the church’s rectory after he heard her confession, but all the evidence pointed to him. The day after she vanished, her belongings – a high-heeled shoe, a purse, a piece of white lace – were found along the road near the church. An autopsy showed that Garza had been raped and bludgeoned to death. She bit his finger, he fled, and then she identified Feit in a line up as her attacker. The Rev. Joseph O’Brien, an assistant pastor who also worked at Sacred Heart, said the same. The church moved Feit into a monastery, according to old press reports on the case. As Irene’s aunt, Herlinda de la Viña, told me in 2005, “Who were we to question a priest?”

© Corbis Deputy sheriffs and volunteer workers remove the burlap wrapped body Irene Garza.

UPDATE 11:45 a.m.: Presiding Judge Mario Ramirez did not set a bond after unsealing the John Feit indictment Wednesday morning. “And I am telling you this evening that I am not the man who killed Irene Garza”. Feit was a suspect in the killing but was never charged in the case. Ricardo said: “We felt that we had sufficient evidence to present to a grand jury”.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office arrested Feit in Arizona. Then-Hidalgo County DA Rene Guerra said in 2003, that he did not find any evidence to warrant prosecuting Feit, despite the witnesses’ claims. He was apprehended in Phoenix, where he now resides with his family, and authorities are waiting to see whether he will contest extradition to Texas. He heard confessions and participated in midnight mass on the night of Garza’s disappearance, the newspaper reported.

“We were accusing a priest that – in those days priests were infallible”, recalled Garza’s cousin Lynda De La Vina.

Another cousin, Noemi Sigler, agreed: “It was impossible for a priest to do such a deed”.

“I’m a Catholic. That doesn’t mean I’m going to dishonor my oath of office”, Mr. Guerra said.

Feit was a suspect in the killing.

Tacheny told CNN in 2013 that Feit said: “The church protected me, the people in my church, my superiors, protected me”. “Because nothing else was being done”.

The last person to see her?

“This was an atrocious case”, Sigler told CBS News. “I haven’t gotten it. That’s my concern”.