UNITED STATES
Broadway World
More than five decades after the brutal murder of a church-going young woman, police in Texas have arrested a former priest suspected of killing her. DID HE DO IT? Richard Schlesinger and 48 HOURS report on the case against Father John Feit, the last man believed to have seen Irene Garza alive, in an updated edition of “The Last Confession” to be broadcast April 16, 2016 (10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
The broadcast will air 56 years from the day that Garza disappeared.
“He thought he got away with it. He thought he got away with murder,” Garza’s distant relative, Noemi Ponce Sigler, tells 48 HOURS of Feit, who was arrested on Feb. 9, 2016, in Scottsdale, Arizona and charged with murder.
It’s a case that 48 HOURS has been covering for years and involves allegations of a cover-up, secrets hidden for years by people who say they know what happened, and is one that has again become a hot topic far beyond Hidalgo County.
The story starts in 1960 in McAllen, Texas, when Garza, 25, told her family she was going to church for confession. But Irene never came home. Five days after she disappeared she was found dead in a canal. Police say she was beaten, sexually assaulted and was suffocated. Police questioned hundreds of people but locked on one suspect, Father Feit, who admitted hearing Garza’s confession. Feit steadfastly denied any involvement in her murder. But Sigler, whose father was one of the original investigators, recalls her father saying early on, “It was the priest.” Eventually, Sigler says, her father was told by his superiors to hand in his records and step away from the case, that they would take care of it.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.