HOUSTON (AP) – For more than half a century, the unsolved killing of a young schoolteacher and beauty queen who was last seen at church haunted the Texas city of McAllen.
But now, nearly 56 years after the bludgeoned body of 25-year-old Irene Garza was pulled from an irrigation canal, police have arrested the man long suspected in her slaying: the former priest who apparently heard her final confession.
Using a walker, a frail-looking John Bernard Feit, now 83, appeared in court Wednesday in Phoenix after being arrested a day earlier at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, on murder charges. He was jailed on $750,000 cash bail while he awaits transfer back to Texas.
“This whole thing makes no sense to me because the crime in question took place in 1960,” he said.
Feit’s arrest followed other investigations over the years, including a grand jury probe in 2004 that concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge him.