Irene Garza’s Family Hopes Rodriguez Would Pursue Case, but He Says There's No Promise of Justice

By Jared Taylor
The Monitor
February 28, 2014

http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/article_d2989750-a0f9-11e3-a667-0017a43b2370.html

Joel Martnez

EDINBURG — Relatives and others advocating the Irene Garza cold case murder be re-examined and go to trial trumpeted Friday another cause to support: Ricardo Rodriguez for Hidalgo County District Attorney.

Rodriguez has enjoyed the family’s support during his bid for district attorney, saying he’d re-examine the 1960 murder case to see whether it should again be taken before a grand jury. But he’s stopped short of making any promises to Garza’s relatives and advocates.

That didn’t stop them from hosting a news conference Friday morning at the Echo Hotel and Conference Center in Edinburg, urging voters to not re-elect incumbent Rene Guerra, who’s been in office more than three decades.

Besides the endorsement, no new information emerged from Friday’s news conference or when The Monitor interviewed Guerra afterward.

Dale Tacheny, an Oklahoma tax attorney who left the priesthood decades ago, told reporters that former McAllen priest John Feit admitted to killing the 25-year-old Garza. He said the admissions came when they both lived at a monastery in Missouri.

In an interview Friday afternoon, Guerra continued to emphasize that he does not believe Tacheny’s testimony would hold up in court, were he asked to testify.

“We presented the whole investigation to a grand jury,” he said. “And the grand jury no-billed — they didn’t return anything. A grand jury looked at the whole investigation, including Tacheny’s audiotaped interview with a Ranger, where the Ranger gave him all the information that he did not have.”

“Now Tacheny claims that Feit confessed to him and he has no documentation backing that up. I asked him why he left the priesthood and he wanted to give me a long sob story about why he left the priesthood. Anybody that’s a former priest who left the priesthood has broken the vows of the church and now he says he’s the biggest truth-teller in the world. I don’t believe that.”

Tacheny, 84, was never called to testify during a grand jury that heard Garza’s case in 2004.

Guerra has said jurors heard the recording of his interview with the Texas Rangers that detailed what he said Feit told him about his apparent role in the case.

That, and Guerra has argued that any confession Feit gave to Tacheny while he was a priest would not be admissible in court, given that anything told to priests during confession is inadmissible evidence. The district attorney has also argued that any confession with no record taken more than 50 years after the fact would not hold up before jurors.

Tacheny and Garza’s family say they still hold out hope for justice. Or, at least, for Guerra to not win another term.

The former priest and monk spent more than 40 minutes before local reporters recounting his story of Feit’s confession — which he maintains was not given during a sacramental confession, but in bits and pieces over the course of several months in 1963 at the monastery.

“I want to assure you that while some people feel that because he talked about it — he disclosed the murder situation — some people are taking that as he confessed, Tacheny said. “In lay terms, yes, you could say he confessed. But I as a priest could not take that as he confessed to me because that would be taken wrongly that he went to confession to me as a Roman Catholic priest to another Roman Catholic priest.

“That line of thinking would be that a priest could never tell anybody what was said in confession — that is privileged information. The type of conversation that Father Feit and I had was not privileged information.”

Tacheny argued that Garza’s murder was a cover-up by Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputies and the local Catholic diocese.

He recalled Father Joseph O’Brien, a fellow priest at Sacred Heart Church in McAllen, claimed an arrangement had been made with Hidalgo County sheriff’s investigators and the Catholic diocese, which agreed to move Feit from the Rio Grande Valley and handle the case internally. O’Brien never was called to testify before the grand jury in 2004. He died in 2005.

Feit has denied any involvement in Garza’s slaying. In a video posted online of a CBS reporter’s confrontation with Feit, he reiterated that denial.

“They should find the person who killed Irene Garza,” he told a reporter with 48 Hours, which is set to debut an episode on the case at tonight.

“Well, Dale Tacheny said that you told him that you did kill her,” the reporter replied.

“Well, Dale Tacheny is full of (expletive),” Feit said.

Garza’s relatives, Noemi Sigler and Lynda de la Vina, both spoke and threw their support behind Rodriguez over Guerra, who they confronted at a McAllen Citizens League forum on Thursday, demanding answers on how evidence was presented before the grand jury — nearly 10 years ago.

“This was a time when the priest was seen as infallible as the incarnation of god and in fact today, we know better.” de la Vina said. “We know better. Rene Guerra knows better. He knows the circumstances. He knows the evidence and… he shirked in my opinion the responsibility of being sure that all evidence was presented so that the grand jury, so the citizens of Hidalgo County, so that the family could bring justice for Irene.”

Guerra said the motive of Garza’s family supporting Rodriguez is “to have him elected so he can prosecute a case that he can’t win.”

“First of all, he’s not knowledgeable enough,” Guerra said of his opponent. “He’s a cowardly individual for not showing up to a debate the other day and using somebody’s death as a reason to not be there to be held accountable.”

Rodriguez was a no-show at Thursday’s forum so he could attend his “mother’s brother’s mother-in-law’s” funeral. Rodriguez said Guerra using that as a point of attack “tells me a lot” about him.

Rodriguez said he has “made no promises to anyone, not even the family” that he’d pursue the Garza case, if elected. Garza’s family denied they were paid for Rodriguez’s endorsement, something the candidate did not dispute.

“The only thing I've told them is when I’m elected, I will go back and look at the case and make sure everything was done correctly,” Rodriguez said. “It's just sad, because again we don't know what can be done or what wasn't done, but just the way the family has been treated, it's so bad.”

Contact: jtaylor@themonitor.com