Former Priest Arrested in 1960 Slaying of Mcallen Schoolteacher

By Claire Z. Cardona
Dallas Morning News
February 9, 2016

http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2016/02/reports-former-priest-arrested-in-schoolteachers-1960-slaying-in-mcallen.html/

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department arrested former priest John Feit on Tuesday in the 1960 murder of a 25-year-old McAllen schoolteacher, officials said.

Feit, 83, was taken into custody on Tuesday afternoon outside his apartment in Scottsdale, Ariz., KRGV-TV reported.

The sheriff’s department arrested Feit on a murder charge from the Hidalgo County Prosecutor’s Office and the Texas Rangers, said Maricopa sheriff’s Deputy Joaquin Enriquez.

Feit will be charged after his initial appearance in front of a Texas judge. He is being held without bail until he can be extradited to Texas.

John Feit (Courtesy/Maricopa County Sheriff's Office)

“Right now, he’s not going anywhere,” Enriquez said.

Irene Garza’s parents said their daughter planned to go to Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen for a confession on April 16, 1960. Her body was found several days later in an irrigation ditch about a mile from the church where Feit was a priest.

An autopsy determined she had been raped and bludgeoned.

Feit was allegedly the last person to see her alive after hearing her confession the night before Easter Sunday.

Herlinda de la Vina holds a portrait of her niece, Irene Garza, whose body was found in April 1960 in an irrigation ditch near the McAllen, Texas, church where she had gone several days before for confession. (2002 File Photo)

Suspicion quickly turned to Feit after authorities determined he was in Edinburg in March when another woman there reported that a man, whom she later identified as Feit, had grabbed her from behind as she prayed alone in a church. The woman said he put a cloth over her mouth and threw her on the ground. When she bit his finger and screamed, he fled.

On April 27, Feit acknowledged to police that a film-slide viewer found where Garza’s body was dumped was his. Texas Rangers questioned Feit extensively a couple of months after Garza’s slaying.

When authorities went to arrested Feit on the March charge of assault with intent to rape, they found he had left Texas.

He surrendered a week later, claiming he was in a hospital recuperating from the interrogation process. Feit’s prosecution ended in a mistrial and he later pleaded no contest to aggravated assault.

In 1963, Feit entered Assumption Abbey, a Trappist monastery in southwestern Missouri. In the ’70s, he left the priesthood, married and had children.

Father John Feit in 1960. (File)

He remained a person of interest in the case, but no one was ever convicted of the crime.

New witnesses turned up when the case was reopened in 2002. Chief among them were Rev. Joseph O’Brien, whom Feit had worked with temporarily in 1960; and Dale Tacheny, a priest at the Missouri monastery.

Both men said Feit made incriminating statements that they had kept secret for many years.

Then-Hidalgo County DA Rene Guerra said he concluded that Father O’Bien and Tacheny were unreliable based on information from police and other sources, but acknowledged that he and his staff never sought to interview the witnesses.

In 2003, Guerra said he was not going to prosecute Feit in the case, saying then that he “did not find any new conclusive evidence that would warrant a prosecution.”

A group of men stands at the site where Irene Garza’s body was found in April 1960 in an irrigation ditch about a mile from her church. (1960 File Photo/McAllen Police)