Janitor Accused of Killing Chatham Priest Details Alleged 4-Year Sexual Relationship, by Ben Horowitz, The Star-Ledger, February 9, 2011

Janitor Accused of Killing Chatham Priest Details Alleged 4-Year Sexual Relationship

By Ben Horowitz
The Star-Ledger
February 9, 2011

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/02/janitor_accused_of_killing_cha_1.html

Jose Feliciano, seated, of Easton, Pa., former Custodian of St. Patrick Church in Chatham, appears in Superior Court, Morristown, for a status conference hearing on charges that he murdered Rev. Edward Hinds in the church rectory in October.

CHATHAM — Jose Feliciano told an investigator he turned away from the Rev. Edward Hinds after the priest threatened to fire him for ending their alleged affair. According to an interview transcript, the former church custodian said Hinds grabbed him and Feliciano reached for a knife in the scuffle that followed.

Then, Feliciano said, he stabbed the priest repeatedly.

"I couldn't have a relationship with him anymore," Feliciano said tearfully in an audiotape played publicly for the first time Tuesday in Superior Court in Morristown. "I'm not gay."

Saying he stabbed Hinds "a lot," Feliciano added, "I felt so sorry for him."

The accused killer then broke into sobs.

"My poor wife, my poor wife," he said.

In an interview with Capt. Jeffrey Paul of the Morris County Prosecutor's Office on Oct. 24, 2009 — two days after Hinds was slain — Feliciano detailed his account of his relationship with the 61-year-old Chatham priest and told why he wound up killing him.

Feliciano, who had been the janitor at St. Patrick Church, said Hinds, the pastor, had initiated a sexual relationship with him four years earlier and he was trying to end it.

Hinds said he would fire him if he stopped the relationship and Feliciano, 65, of Easton, Pa., said he stabbed him as a result.

The prosecution contends Feliciano stabbed Hinds because the priest was preparing to fire him after learning of his prior criminal record. Feliciano was a fugitive from a 1988 Pennsylvania charge of indecent assault on a 7-year-old girl. Judge Thomas Manahan on Monday ruled the prosecution may use that evidence, providing it first establishes relevance.

Paul conducted a daylong interview with Feliciano at Morristown Memorial Hospital. Most of an audio portion of the interview was played Tuesday as part of a pretrial motion hearing in which the prosecution is seeking permission to use Feliciano's statements. Feliciano sat with his head bowed as the recording was played.

The rest of the audiotape, and a video-recorded interview Paul conducted later that day, is to be played when the hearing resumes Thursday.

Feliciano initially talked about how he tried to administer CPR to Hinds after the priest was found lying dead in a pool of blood in the church rectory on the morning of Oct. 23. But as Paul pressed him to tell what had happened to Hinds, Feliciano described the relationship and the stabbing.

Feliciano said he had been sexually abused "a lot" by a priest in Brooklyn when he was a boy. Feliciano said he had told Hinds about that five years earlier and the priest was "defensive" but also "did some counseling with me."

Then, about a year after that, Hinds "came back to me and he started talking to me about a possibility of letting me go ... and he started touching me all over, he started touching my privacy," Feliciano said, according to a transcript of the video portion of the interview.

Feliciano said he "didn't like" being touched there, "but he reminded me about my employment."

"Then before you know it, he was having a relationship with me," Feliciano said.

The investigator continued the questioning, and Feliciano told him Hinds performed oral sex on him and "this went on for four years until on Thursday (Oct. 22)."

Feliciano said he told Hinds he wanted to "finish the relationship," but Hinds said if that happened, "he would have to let me go," according to Feliciano.

Feliciano said he tried to leave the rectory, but he "started to grab me and I pushed him and we started pushing each other, and that's when I grabbed a knife."

"I had no right to do what I did," Feliciano said. "I'm willing to go to jail for many years if you want me to."