EDINBURG (TX)
Courthouse News
December 8, 2017
By Erik De La Garza
[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.]
EDINBURG, Texas (CN) — A Texas jury convicted former Catholic priest John Feit of murder Thursday evening for the Easter weekend 1960 killing of schoolteacher Irene Garza, closing a case that took 57 years to bring to trial and featured allegations of a church cover-up.
The seven-woman, five-man jury deliberated for just over six hours before rejecting Feit’s decades-old claim that he had nothing to do with the disappearance and suffocation of the 25-year-old McAllen schoolteacher and former Miss South Texas.
Feit, 85, sat emotionless as the verdict was read at 8:17 p.m. in the same courtroom where he pleaded no-contest in 1962 for attacking another South Texas woman, 20-year-old college student Maria America Guerra. Feit was fined $500, but served no jail time in that case.
He will be sentenced by a jury Friday morning for first-degree murder, followed by a victim impact statement expected from her nephew.
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