Irene Garza was an American schoolteacher and beauty queen whose death remained under investigation for several decades. She was last seen alive on April 16, 1960, when she went to confession at a church in McAllen, Texas. She was reported missing the following morning. After the largest volunteer search to that date in the Rio Grande Valley, Garza’s body was discovered in a canal on April 21. An autopsy revealed she had been sexually assaulted before being suffocated.
Father John Bernard Feit, the Catholic priest who heard Garza’s last confession, was the sole suspect in her death. In 2002, two clergymen, Fr. Dale Tacheny and Fr. Joseph O'Brien, informed authorities that Feit had confessed to Garza's murder shortly after the crime. Feit had left the priesthood in the 1970s, married, and had a family. Despite this, the district attorney in Hidalgo County long considered the evidence against Feit too weak for a conviction. The case was brought before a grand jury in 2004, but Feit, Tacheny, and O'Brien were not subpoenaed, and the jury did not indict Feit.
The investigation into Garza's death was revived in 2015 after a new district attorney took office in Hidalgo County. In February 2016, the 83-year-old Feit was arrested in Arizona in connection with Garza's death and later extradited to Texas. His murder trial began in late November 2017, and on December 7, 2017, Feit was found guilty of murder. The next day, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Feit died in February 2020.
Background
Irene Garza was born in 1934 to Nicolas and Josefina, who owned a dry cleaning business in McAllen, Texas, a city in the South Texas border region known as the Rio Grande Valley. By the time Garza was a teenager, her parents' business had become successful, allowing the family to move from the south side of McAllen to a more affluent area on the north side. She graduated from McAllen High School, where she became the first Latina to perform as a twirler or head drum majorette. Garza was crowned the 1958 Miss All South Texas Sweetheart and was a homecoming queen at Pan American College.
At the time of her death, Garza was a second-grade schoolteacher, teaching indigent students at an elementary school on the south side of McAllen. In a letter to a friend before her disappearance, she described herself as extremely shy but found fulfillment in her work. She mentioned recently becoming the secretary of her parent-teacher association, which was helping her gain confidence. A devout Catholic and member of the Legion of Mary, she found comfort in attending daily Mass and Communion.
On Saturday, April 16, 1960, Garza, who lived with her parents, told them she was going to confession at Sacred Heart Church in McAllen. Known for her striking appearance, several parishioners remembered seeing Garza at the church that night. When her parents did not hear from her that evening, they initially thought she had stayed at the church for the Easter Vigil mass. However, when Garza had not returned home by 3:00 a.m., they went to the McAllen Police Department to report her missing.
Investigation
On April 18, a trail of evidence stretching several hundred yards along a McAllen road was discovered by passersby, including Garza's purse, left shoe, and lace veil. Authorities and volunteers launched the largest search in Rio Grande Valley history at that time. A woman claiming to be Garza called her home, saying she had been kidnapped and taken to a hotel in nearby Hidalgo, but this call was found to be false. Another person told an Edinburg waitress that he had killed Garza, but this was later determined to be a joke made while the man was heavily intoxicated.
Garza's body was found in a canal on April 21, several miles from the other evidence. The postmortem examination revealed that she had died of suffocation, had been raped while unconscious, and beaten. She had bruises over both eyes and on the right side of her face. Any physical evidence that might have identified an attacker, such as hair, blood, or semen, appeared to have been washed away during the time her body spent in the canal.
Law enforcement officials questioned about 500 people across several Texas cities, including known sex offenders and Garza's family members, co-workers, and ex-boyfriends. They conducted almost fifty polygraph examinations and offered a $2,500 reward for information about her death, which was the largest reward ever offered in a Rio Grande Valley murder case at that time. South Texas businessmen later posted an additional $10,000 reward.
John Bernard Feit
Father John Bernard Feit, the priest who heard Irene Garza's last confession, came under suspicion shortly after her disappearance. Feit, 27, had been serving at the McAllen church since completing seminary training in San Antonio. Church members reported that Feit's confession line moved slowly on the night of Garza's disappearance and that he was away from the sanctuary several times. When the canal was drained several days after Garza's body was found, Feit's photo slide viewer was discovered. Fellow priests noticed scratch marks on Feit's hands after the Easter Vigil mass and said it was unusual for him to take Garza to the church rectory for her confession, as he reportedly did that night. Initially, McAllen police stated that Feit passed polygraph tests, but the tests were later deemed inconclusive.
Feit initially denied hearing Garza's confession in the rectory but later admitted to it. He explained his absence from the sanctuary by claiming he had broken his glasses that night and often played with them nervously during confessions. Feit stated that he drove back to the church’s pastoral house, a short drive away, to get another pair of glasses. When he arrived, he found he had no key and had to climb into the house on the second floor, sustaining the scratches on his hands while climbing the outside of the brick structure.
Three weeks before Garza's death, a woman named Maria America Guerra had been sexually assaulted while kneeling at the communion rail at another Catholic church in the McAllen area. Rumors suggested Feit was responsible, but local church leaders discouraged considering the possibility that a priest could be involved in a violent crime. Feit admitted to visiting a priest at that church on the day of Guerra's attack but denied assaulting her. He was later charged with rape, and the trial ended in a hung jury. In 1962, rather than face a second trial, Feit entered a plea of no contest to a misdemeanor charge of aggravated assault and paid a $500 fine. Years later, Feit claimed he did not understand that a no contest plea would be considered a conviction in the case.
Stagnation in the Case
After the legal proceedings in the Guerra case, Father John Feit was sent to Assumption Abbey, a Trappist monastery in Missouri. An abbot there informed monk Dale Tacheny that Feit had killed someone and asked Tacheny to counsel Feit to determine if he had the disposition to become a monk. Tacheny later reported that Feit confessed to hurting one young lady and murdering another, but Tacheny did not report this to authorities for many years, believing it was not his job to judge Feit at the time.
Feit struggled with the monastic lifestyle at Assumption Abbey. He was then sent to Jemez Springs, New Mexico, to a treatment retreat for troubled priests run by the Servants of the Paraclete. After his treatment, he joined the order as a staff member and eventually rose to a supervisory role. During his time there, he cleared Father James Porter, known for molesting children in the 1960s, for placement in another parish. Porter was later defrocked and imprisoned after abusing as many as 100 children.
Feit left the priesthood in the 1970s, married, moved to the Phoenix area, and had three children. He worked as a food charity volunteer at the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul for seventeen years.
In 2002, Tacheny decided he could no longer keep Feit's confession a secret. Believing the murder had occurred in San Antonio because Feit had trained there, Tacheny contacted authorities in that city, prompting a reopening of the investigation into Garza's death. Texas Rangers investigator Rudy Jaramillo reached out to Father Joseph O'Brien, a priest who had worked with Feit at the time of Garza's death. Although O'Brien had previously claimed in a 2000 television interview that he knew nothing about the murder, he admitted to Jaramillo that Feit had confessed to him shortly after the crime. Later in 2002, the polygraph examiner who had tested Feit in 1960 questioned the reported results, initially indicating that Feit had passed the polygraph, but the report was later edited to state the results were inconclusive. The examiner believed all along that Feit had failed the test.
Rene Guerra, the district attorney of Hidalgo County from the 1980s until 2014, chose not to bring the Garza case before a grand jury until 2004. Tacheny, O'Brien, and Feit were not subpoenaed, and the grand jury declined to indict Feit. O'Brien died in 2005.
Guerra was reluctant to revisit the case, citing a shoddy early police investigation, O'Brien's dementia when questioned, and the lack of physical evidence. He also alleged that Jaramillo had improperly fed Tacheny the location of the murder after Tacheny mistakenly said it occurred in San Antonio. Guerra angered Garza's family by asking, "Why would anyone be haunted by her death? She died. Her killer got away."
Renewed Interest
In 2014, district court judge Ricardo Rodriguez campaigned to unseat Rene Guerra as district attorney, using the Garza case as a campaign issue. Rodriguez promised to seek justice for the Garza family and to reexamine the case if elected.
Following Rodriguez's election as district attorney, Guerra attempted to appoint him as a special prosecutor in the Garza case. However, Rodriguez declined, preferring to review the evidence anew once he took office in January 2015. In April of that year, Rodriguez officially reopened the Garza case.
In February 2016, John Feit was arrested in Scottsdale, Arizona. At 83 years old, Feit used a walker when he appeared in court. He was extradited to Texas in March 2016 and incarcerated at the Hidalgo County Sheriff Adult Detention Facility, where he pleaded not guilty. The prosecution requested a $750,000 bond, while the defense sought a $100,000 bond, citing Feit's stage 3 kidney and bladder cancer. Judge Luis Singleterry ultimately set a $1 million bond.
Status hearings were held in June and November 2016, with the discovery process ongoing as of November. In February 2017, a judge set a trial date for late April, and Feit remained under medical supervision at the Hidalgo County jail. In April 2017, Feit's defense requested a change of venue, arguing that he would not receive a fair trial in Hidalgo County due to extensive media coverage and alleged bias. They submitted a 700-page document claiming that reporters had condemned Feit as a murderer and that the Roman Catholic Church had protected him from prosecution for years. In March, Tacheny testified against Feit in a closed deposition, permitted under Texas law due to his age and exclusive knowledge of the case.
On May 24, Judge Singleterry heard arguments regarding the change of venue request. On June 7, he denied the request, concluding that the defense had not proven community prejudice against Feit. Feit appeared in court for a prehearing on July 19, with the trial set to begin on September 11. However, scheduling conflicts led to a delay. The initial phase of jury selection occurred in mid-September, but the trial was rescheduled for mid-October. On October 30, Feit's defense filed for a continuance, resetting jury selection for November 14 and moving the trial date to November 28.
On December 7, Feit was convicted of Garza's murder. During the sentencing phase, Feit's defense attorney requested probation, highlighting his lack of felony convictions since Garza's death. The prosecution sought a 57-year sentence, symbolizing the time that had passed since the murder. On December 8, 2017, the jury sentenced Feit to life in prison.
Feit was incarcerated at the W. J. Estelle Unit, north of central Huntsville, Texas. He died of natural causes on February 12, 2020.
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