EDINBURG (TX)
Albuquerque Journal
December 7, 2017
[Note: See also a PDF of the original Pawlicki letter and See also South Texas DA Refuses to Pursue Ex-Priest, by Brooks Egerton, Dallas Morning News, November 21, 2004.]
An ex-priest who once headed the Servants of the Paraclete retreat house in Jemez Springs was convicted of murdering a 25-year-old Texas schoolteacher and beauty queen on Thursday in Edinburg, Texas, more than 57 years after Irene Garza went to Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen intending to go to confession.
Garza’s bludgeoned body was found days after her April 16, 1960, disappearance. An autopsy revealed that she had been raped while unconscious and had been beaten and suffocated.
A Hidalgo County jury deliberated 6½ hours before returning its verdict in the murder trial of John Bernard Feit, an 85-year-old former priest, after hearing five days of testimony.
Feit, who was 28 at the time of her death, 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.
This week, prosecutors presented evidence that elected and church officials suspected Feit killed her but wanted to avoid prosecuting him because it might harm the church’s reputation and elected officials politically. Most elected officials at the time in Hidalgo County were Catholic, and Sen. John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, was running for president that year.
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