The Irene Garza Case: Priest, Confessions, and 2017 Trial

The Irene Garza murder case is the 1960 killing of a 25-year-old McAllen, Texas schoolteacher and former beauty queen by John Feit, a visiting Catholic priest who heard her confession on the night she disappeared. Feit was not convicted until December 2017, when he was 85, after a plea deal on a related assault, a Catholic Church transfer to out-of-state monasteries, and decades of prosecutorial inaction kept him out of a courtroom for the murder for 57 years. He died in prison in February 2020 while his appeal was pending.

What Happened on Easter Weekend 1960

On Saturday, April 16, 1960, Irene Garza left her home to attend confession at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen. She never came home. Five days later, her body was pulled from an irrigation canal.¹ An autopsy found she had been beaten with a hard object, sexually assaulted, and suffocated.² She was fully dressed except for her shoes and underwear, and her lavender blouse was unbuttoned.

Officers recovered one of her high-heeled shoes near an empty road and her patent leather purse in a nearby field. When the canal was drained later that month, they also pulled out a green Kodak slide viewer.¹ That slide viewer became one of the most important pieces of physical evidence in the case.

Why Suspicion Fell on Father John Feit

John Feit, a 27-year-old priest at Sacred Heart, drew attention almost immediately. He admitted he had heard Garza’s confession in the rectory that night rather than in the sanctuary. Other priests at the parish said that arrangement was highly unusual.³

Feit then sent police a handwritten note acknowledging that the green slide viewer found near the canal was his.⁴ Officers noticed visible scratches on the backs of his hands. Feit said he had gotten them climbing through a second-story window after being locked out of his residence.¹

Investigators also learned of an earlier attack. On March 23, 1960, three weeks before Garza’s death, a 20-year-old woman named Maria America Guerra had been praying at the altar rail inside a church in Edinburg, Texas, when a man grabbed her from behind and pressed a cloth over her mouth. She bit his finger hard enough to taste blood before he fled. In May 1960, both Guerra and a witness who had seen a man leave the church identified Feit in a lineup. Feit had a visibly injured finger in the days after the attack, which others said bore teeth marks; Feit blamed a mimeograph machine.⁵

How Feit Avoided Prosecution for the Murder

Feit was tried in 1961 for the assault on Maria America Guerra, and the jury deadlocked. Rather than face retrial, he pleaded no contest on March 28, 1962, to a reduced charge of aggravated assault. He paid a $500 fine and served no jail time.⁶

Decades later, at Feit’s murder trial, reporter Darrell Davis testified that the plea had been part of a broader arrangement. According to Davis, District Attorney Robert Lattimore said in an off-the-record meeting that both prosecutors and Church officials knew Feit had murdered Garza, and that the plea deal on the Guerra assault was negotiated in exchange for the Church transferring Feit to a monastery.⁶

An August 1, 1960 letter from Father J.F. Pawlicki to his superior described a plan to move Feit out of Texas “to get him out of the area of suspicion” and to protect the Church from scandal, adding the sheriff’s view that “the longer time we have, the weaker the case gets.”⁶

Feit was sent to a Trappist monastery in Ava, Missouri, and later to the Servants of the Paraclete, a facility for troubled priests. Father Joseph O’Brien told the Garza family that the Church’s internal discipline was “greater than any sentence handed down by the courts.” At mass following Garza’s funeral, a priest at Our Lady of Sorrows told parishioners: “It is impossible that a priest would commit a crime like this. Don’t speak of it. Don’t even let yourselves think it.”³ When Feit was indicted for the Guerra assault in August 1960, Church officials at the Oblates of Mary Immaculate headquarters in San Antonio told police he had “left the state.”

Feit eventually left the priesthood, married, and raised three children.⁷ At the Servants of the Paraclete, he rose to superior and reportedly approved the reassignments and furloughs of serial child molester James Porter.³

The Confessions That Reopened the Case

The investigation sat idle for decades. In 2002, McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez asked the Texas Rangers’ cold case unit to take a fresh look, with Lieutenant Rudy Jaramillo leading the effort.⁸

Two witnesses came forward describing what they said were Feit’s admissions. Dale Tacheny, a former Trappist monk, testified that in 1963 at Assumption Abbey in Missouri his superiors told him Feit had killed someone and asked him to evaluate Feit’s fitness for monastic life.⁹ According to Tacheny, Feit described attacking Garza in the rectory, fondling her, hiding her in the basement while he returned to hear more confessions, then moving her to a pastoral house in San Juan, where he left her in a bathtub with a cellophane bag over her head. Feit said Garza told him, “I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe,” as he was leaving, and she was dead when he returned the next day.¹⁰

Asked at trial whether Feit had expressed remorse, Tacheny said no. Feit told him instead that he became “anxious” when he heard the sound of women’s heels on concrete. Tacheny also testified that Feit credited three things with keeping him free: “the Catholic Church, law enforcement, and the rules of sealed confession.”⁹

The second witness was Father Joseph O’Brien, who had served at Sacred Heart in 1960. He told a reporter that he had confronted Feit and that Feit “finally confessed to the killing.”¹¹ O’Brien died before Feit’s trial, so his account came in through the testimony of Dallas Morning News reporter Brooks Egerton.

Asked why he had waited so long to come forward, Tacheny replied simply: “She had parents.”¹⁰

Why It Still Took Another Decade

Even with the Rangers’ 2003 case file in hand, the case went to Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra, who had held office for 32 years and was openly dismissive. In 2002 he told reporters, “Can it be solved? Well, I guess if you believe that pigs can fly, anything is possible.”¹²

Guerra presented the case to a grand jury in 2004, but neither Tacheny, O’Brien, nor Feit was subpoenaed. The grand jury declined to indict.⁸ Garza’s cousin Lynda de la Viña later recalled Guerra telling her she “would never get an indictment in the case.”¹

The case became an issue in the 2014 Hidalgo County DA race. Former district judge Ricardo Rodriguez challenged Guerra, argued that “something wasn’t done right,” and won with 64 percent of the vote.¹²¹³ After taking office in January 2015, Rodriguez reopened the investigation. In February 2016, a grand jury indicted John Feit for murder. He was arrested in Arizona at age 83.¹⁴

Throughout, Garza’s family kept pushing. Noemi Sigler, a cousin whose father had been one of the original investigators, spent 32 years advocating for the case. After Feit’s arrest, she said at Garza’s grave: “You can’t even imagine. I had so many doors closed in my face, and I would often get so discouraged… Many times I would try to stop and I’d try to leave it alone, but Irene would always bring me back.”¹⁵

The 2017 Trial and Verdict

Feit’s murder trial began in late November 2017 in Edinburg before Judge Luis Singleterry. Assistant District Attorney Michael Garza told jurors Feit had a “depraved heart bent on mischief” and presented the killing as predatory behavior shielded by institutional power.⁴

Prosecutors put on Tacheny, Egerton, and several women who described disturbing encounters with Feit in 1960, including one who said Garza had confided that a new priest “thinks he’s handsome” and would not let her complete her confession.⁴¹⁶¹⁷

On December 7, 2017, after roughly six hours of deliberation, a jury of seven women and five men found John Bernard Feit guilty of first-degree murder. The verdict came at 8:17 p.m. The next morning the jury sentenced him to life in prison.¹⁶

Appeal and Death in Prison

Feit appealed to the Thirteenth Court of Appeals in Corpus Christi. His December 2019 brief raised eleven points of error, including an argument that the trial court should have enforced an alleged 1960s agreement not to prosecute him for the murder, and a claim that Tacheny’s testimony was protected under the penitent privilege doctrine.¹¹

The appeal was never decided. Feit was found unresponsive in his prison cell in February 2020 and pronounced dead at Huntsville Hospital at 87. The preliminary cause of death was cardiac arrest.⁷¹⁸ District Attorney Ricardo Rodriguez said Feit’s death had no effect on the conviction, and that the pending appeal would be abated.¹⁹

1
CBS News. Evidence Photos in the Irene Garza Murder Case
2
CBS News. Trial Begins in Case of Former Priest Accused of Killing Texas Beauty Queen
3
Texas Monthly. Unholy Act
4
Courthouse News Service. Disturbing Evidence Piles Up Against Accused Murderer Feit
5
Podles.org. Irene Garza Case Study
6
CBS News. Church Officials Shielded Priest Suspected of Murder for Decades
7
CBS News. Former Priest John Feit Dies in Prison
8
CNN. Garza Cold Case Timeline
9
Courthouse News Service. John Feit Confessed to Murder, Former Priest Says
10
San Antonio Express-News. Feit’s Conflicting 1960 Statements Reviewed
11
Courthouse News Service. Feit Appeal, Appellant’s Brief
12
Texas Monthly. How a 53-Year-Old Murder Case Became an Issue in the Hidalgo County DA Race
13
BishopAccountability.org. Rodriguez To Re-Examine Evidence in 1960 Murder
14
KRGV. A Look Through the 57-Year-Old Murder Case of Irene Garza
15
MyRGV. A Long Search for Justice
16
Courthouse News Service. Wolf in Priest’s Clothing: John Feit Convicted of Murder
17
KRGV. Closing Arguments Underway in John Feit Murder Trial
18
NBC DFW. Former Priest Convicted in 1960 Texas Slaying Dies at 87
19
KRGV. Convicted Former Valley Priest John Feit Dies in Prison