TEXAS
The Dallas Morning News
McALLEN — For more than half a century, the unsolved killing of a young schoolteacher and beauty queen who was last seen at church haunted this South Texas city.
But now, nearly 56 years after the bludgeoned body of 25-year-old Irene Garza was pulled from an irrigation canal, police have arrested the man long suspected in her slaying: the priest who apparently heard her final confession.
Using a walker, a frail-looking John Bernard Feit, 83, appeared in court Wednesday in Phoenix after being arrested a day earlier at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., on a murder charge. He was jailed on $750,000 bail while he awaits transfer back to Texas.
“This whole thing makes no sense to me because the crime in question took place in 1960,” Feit said, adding that he plans to fight extradition to Texas.
Feit’s arrest followed other investigations over the years, including a grand jury probe in 2004 that concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge him.
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