Ex-priest arrested in 1960 slaying of Texas beauty queen

HOUSTON: For more than half a century, the unsolved killing of a young schoolteacher and beauty queen who was last seen at church haunted the Texas city of McAllen.
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 former priest who apparently heard her final confession.
Using a walker, a frail-looking John Bernard Feit, now 83, appeared in court in Phoenix after being arrested a day earlier at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, on a murder charge. He was jailed on $750,000 cash 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.
McAllen police would not comment on what evidence was gathered or presented to the grand jury that finally brought the charge.
“The arrest of John Feit Tuesday night is the first step in providing justice for the murder of Ms. Irene Garza. After nearly 56 years, Ms. Garza’s family and our community will finally see that justice is served,” Hidalgo County District Attorney Ricardo Rodriguez said in a statement.
Authorities said Garza visited Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen, where Feit was a priest, on April 16, 1960. Garza, who was Miss All South Texas Sweetheart 1958, had planned to go to confession that evening. She never returned home.
Her body was found days later. An autopsy found that she had been raped while unconscious and had been beaten and suffocated.
Feit 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.
Feit later spent time at a treatment center in New Mexico for troubled priests and after that became a supervisor and had a part in clearing priests for assignments to parishes. Among the men Feit helped keep in ministry: child molester James Porter, who assaulted more than 100 victims before he was ultimately defrocked and sent to prison.
Feit left the priesthood in 1972, married and went on to work at the Catholic charity St. Vincent de Paul in Phoenix for a number of years, training and recruiting volunteers and helping oversee the charity’s network of food pantries, said executive director Steve Zabilski.
He said the charity knew about the suspicion that followed Feit surrounding the killing but he remained an employee and Feit always denied any involvement.