They say justice always prevails, and whoever they are they would be completely and utterly wrong. In this one case however, the wheels just turned a little more slowly than many anticipated.
A priest in Texas has finally been bought to justice for the murder of a beauty queen back in 1960, despite the fact that evidence overwhelmingly pointed in the direction of the now 83-year-old John Feit.
The Daily Beast have written a lengthy piece about the murder so we’ll let them run through the specifics:
Irene Garza, a second-grade teacher, was last seen on the night before Easter attending Sacred Heart Church in McAllen, Texas. The 25-year-old former pageant winner had found comfort in church, writing to a friend, “I’ve been going to communion and Mass daily and you can’t imagine the courage and faith and happiness it has given me.”
The last person to see Garza was John Feit, a then-27-year-old Roman Catholic priest, who admittedly heard the confession that would be the woman’s last. Five days later, her body was found in an irrigation canal near the center of town. At the bottom of the canal, investigators found a candelabra from the church and a Kodak slide photograph viewer that belonged to Feit.
Now that alone seems like a decent spot of evidence, but couple it together with this and it seems obvious you have your man:
If that evidence didn’t seem damning enough, there was the unsolved mystery of another attack. Less than a month before Garza’s disappearance, another young woman, Maria America Guerra, had been attacked at a different Sacred Heart Church, a stone’s throw away from the one where Garza was last seen.
In a statement given to police investigating Garza’s death, Guerra, 20, said that she had been kneeling at the communion rail, but before she even began to pray, she was grabbed from behind by a man who tried to put a rag over her mouth. She fell back, screaming, and struggled with her attacker until she bit his fingers and was able to escape.
Guerra said she had seen a man matching Feit’s description—short, dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses—sitting in a back pew. It was the same man she had seen earlier in the afternoon watching her from his sedan, but she had dismissed her concerns. What could happen in a church?
After the attack, Guerra and an eyewitness picked Feit out of a lineup. The priest explained away an injury that resembled fingernail scratches on his hands saying he had hurt himself using a mimeograph machine. Then he failed a polygraph test.
Feit was indicted in the attack against Guerra, but the case ended in a deadlocked jury and rather than go through a second trial, Feit pleaded no contest to misdemeanor aggravated assault and paid a $500 fine. As for Garza, Feit was never charged and was relocated by the church to a monastery in Missouri.
If you’ve watched Making a Murderer (chill, no spoilers) this should seem like ample evidence to lock someone up, but I guess priests enjoy greater protection from the law than unintelligent auto salvage yards owners.
Here’s what’s happening Feit’s arrest this year:
[He] was arrested by detectives with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he lives with his wife and family. Arizona law enforcement officials say he’ll be extradited to Texas, where he’ll face charges of first-degree murder by asphyxiation…He faces up to life in prison.
At his arraignment, a Maricopa County judge set a $750,000 bond and Feit said he planned to fight extradition.
Lock him up and throw away the key, it’s a pity that life imprisonment won’t be that long a stay.
[source:dailybeast]
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