TEXAS
The Monitor
Posted: Monday, March 10, 2014
Jacob Fischler | The Monitor
EDINBURG — District Attorney-elect Ricardo Rodriguez today declined an appointment by the current occupant of the office to act as special prosecutor on the 54-year-old Irene Garza murder case.
In a three-paragraph letter he delivered personally to Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra’s office just before 2:30 p.m., Rodriguez rebuffed the appointment Guerra sent him Friday. In the letter, Rodriguez took issue with Guerra’s public and private conduct since election night and questioned his motives and authority to make the appointment.
“If however you are offering to hire me under your administration, I decline. I do not wish to work for you,” he wrote.
The unsolved case of the 1960 murder of Garza — a 25-year-old McAllen beauty queen — murder resurfaced during the campaign between Rodriguez and Guerra, which ended with Rodriguez winning 64 percent of the countywide vote to 36 percent for Guerra.
The case garnered more attention in the campaign’s closing weeks when Garza’s relatives and others at campaign events publicly questioned Guerra’s handling of the 2004 reopening of the case. CBS ran an hour-long 48 Hours episode profiling the case — that Guerra said portrayed him unfavorably — two days before Election Day. CNN also ran an hour-long show about the case in May.
But it is unclear how much the case affected the race’s outcome, as the early voting — that concluded before the 48 Hours episode ran — broke heavily for Rodriguez.
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