The Best American Crime Writing 2006 (20 page)
BOOK: The Best American Crime Writing 2006
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However, a host of witnesses within the church said Father Feit's confessional line stopped moving about 8:00 p.m. As Father O'Brien later told police, that was a sign there was no priest in the confession booth.
Feit said that at 9:50 p.m., near the end of confession, a screw in his eyeglasses came loose and fell out. He told Father Busch that he would have to go to the pastoral house in San Juan to get his other pair of glasses.
The next day, O'Brien and the other priests noticed that Feit's hand was injured.
Feit explained that injury away:
"Upon arriving at the Pastoral House in San Juan, I found all the doors on the ground floor locked." So he said he placed a wood barricade against the building and climbed up and through a second-story window.
"While entering the house in this way, I scraped the back of my right hand slightly, and the index finger and middle finger of my left hand more severely on the brick wall."
He said he changed clothes and headed back to McAllen for the 11:00 p.m. service.
He said he went to bed at 1:00 a.m. with a "severe headache," which he assumed was caused by his second pair of glasses. He said the spectacles "never fit me as well as the first" pair.
The next morning, Feit gave Mass at 9:00 a.m., then asked Fathers Busch and O'Brien if he could use Busch's car to go to San Juan to get his glasses fixed.
Feit said he worked on the glasses "for five minutes," but had no luck.Then, he said,"I drove straight back to Sacred Heart Church."
At 12:40 p.m., he asked another priest to drive him to the Pastoral House in San Juan, where he said he stayed until about 4:00 p.m.
He returned to Sacred Heart to give 5:30 Mass. Shortly after 7:30 p.m. on Easter Sunday, he said, he was given a ride back to the Pastoral House by Father O'Brien.
Feit said he immediately realized he had left some of his belongings at Sacred Heart, so he borrowed a car and drove back to the church.
There, he said, several priests were talking about the "missing girl." As he stood there, the phone rang. Father Junius answered. It was Irene Garza's parents wanting to speak with the priest who had spoken with her the night before.
The parents came over, and Feit said he spoke with them. He said they asked him if he "had perhaps said anything which might have upset or disturbed their daughter."
In fact, Garza family members say, Nick Garza asked Feit,"What have you done with my daughter?"
Feit said, "I could see the parents were very disturbed and upset themselves, so I sent them home as quickly and as quietly as possible.
"I then picked up my coat, collar, and laundry and headed for home. It was about 9:15 p.m. But I did not go straight home. My talk with the girl's parents had disturbed me. Perhaps I had said something, unintentionally, that might have upset that girl? I was worried, and drove around aimlessly for a while."
He said he stopped at a nearby Whataburger, got a malt, then drove back to San Juan in time for the 10:00 p.m. news.
According to investigators, Irene Garza's body was probably thrown into the canal on Easter Sunday evening.
Several dozen young men were considered potential suspects early in the investigation of Irene Garza's death.
One by one, all proved to have credible alibis. And all passed lie-detector tests administered by state police investigators from Austin.
All except John Feit.
Nobody could vouch for Feit's whereabouts at critical times during the weekend. And time after time, Feit attempted to control his breathing as critical questions were asked during the polygraph examinations.
A lengthy report detailing the exams by Texas authorities, then by John Reid-arguably the top polygraph examiner in the country at the time-paints an ugly picture of Feit.
The tests "definitely implicated him in both crimes," the report said.
"It is the opinion of the examiner, based on this subject's polygraph test, that [Feit] is purposefully attempting to defeat the recordings."
In fact, each time Feit was hooked up to a polygraph machine, he began taking exactly ten breaths per minute, "indicating that he was purposefully controlling his breathing even though he had been given warnings and instructions throughout."
Examiners secretly monitored Feit's breathing rate during normal conversations. On average, they said, he inhaled and exhaled 16 to 20 times a minute when he didn't believe he was being monitored.
Reid went on to describe Feit's demeanor throughout the tests.
"The examiner pointed out in detail to the subject that he should make an effort to tell the truth concerning his implication in these crimes so that the church and the priesthood would not suffer when evidence definitely implicating him is turned up at a later date.
"The subject, in very deliberate and explicit words, stated there will never be any evidence turning up in the future of this case.
"He also pointed out to the examiner that there are two… murders in the area [that] had gone unsolved, one for 15 years and one for 20 years, and that this case, like those, will soon be forgotten."
When asked why he entered the priesthood, Feit answered, "I just wanted to give it a try."
When asked about the attack on Maria America Guerra, Feit's answers bordered on the absurd. At one point, he claimed that Guerra's true attacker had actually confessed to him.
"The subject was queried as to where the confession was obtained, and [Feit] told the examiner that it was not in the confessional box, not in the rectory but out in the open some place and was very vague as to where the open place was."
When asked if the lie detector was incorrect when it indicated that he committed these crimes, he answered, "Your machine is probably functioning correctly, but these men from Austin have told me that I have a vague respiration and a bad heart."
What everyone knew-Feit's attorneys, the examiners them-selves-was that polygraph exams weren't admissible in court.
In effect, the stated belief by examiners that Feit was "concealing the truth" would mean nothing in a courtroom.
Feit had been taken to Austin and then Chicago for the polygraph tests.
Each time, he was escorted by Father Joseph O'Brien, his supervisor at Sacred Heart Church.
It was clear that O'Brien had been placed in charge of Feit by his superiors within the Order of Mary Immaculate.
Prosecutors finally decided to first move forward with the attempted sexual assault case against Feit.
When charges were filed, John Feit became a household name.
It was the biggest story in the McAllen valley in years. And as leaders had feared, it tore the community apart.
Feit remained confident. As he told investigators, he "had the best attorneys money can buy."
The trial was moved to Austin. It was believed Feit couldn't get a fair trial in Hidalgo County.
His trial ended with the jury deadlocked 9 to 3 in favor of conviction.
Rather than face a second trial, Feit pleaded no contest to the reduced charges of aggravated assault and was ordered to pay the five-hundred-dollar fine.
No murder charge was ever filed.
The assumption in McAllen was that a deal had been struck to avoid both further embarrassment to the church and a prolonged fight between the church and elected officials in this predominantly Catholic town.
Documents in the case seem to support the assumption.
Indeed, it is clear that the church promised to ship Feit away from the valley and lock him up in the monastery system.
Irene's aunt, Herlinda de la Vina, remembers Father Joseph O'Brien telling her as much.
"He told us that the church's punishment was greater than any sentence handed down by the courts, and we believed him."
Father O'Brien told the family that Feit would be sent to a monastery and kept there so he would be unable to hurt anyone else.
And that's what happened. For the next decade, Father O'Brien essentially served as John Feit's probation officer, as well as the liaison between civil and church authorities in the matter.
O'Brien was even named a "special investigator" by the city manager of McAllen.
O'Brien's role in the case ended with a short letter sent to McAllen police in December 1971:
"Dear Chief:
"I have just received notice that John Feit has left Denham Springs, New Mexico, and is now living in the Chicago area. He is seeking employment as a layman and will no longer function as a priest. This was his own decision and was not due to a problem.
"If any further information is needed please feel free to call upon me.
"Father Joseph O'Brien, OMI."
N oemi P once-Sigler was ten years old when Irene Garza was murdered.
The cousins, part of a close-knit extended Mexican-American family, were often at the same homes, the same family parties, the same town events.
To a ten-year-old girl, Irene Garza seemed to be everything a woman should be.
"She was beautiful, so graceful, so loving," Ponce-Sigler says.
In 1988, Ponce-Sigler was visiting the house of her aunt, also one of Irene's aunts, when she suddenly felt as if someone were watching her. Nobody was in the room. But on the wall was a large portrait photo of Irene.
"I don't know, I'm sure it was the light or something, but it seemed like she was staring at me," Ponce-Sigler says. "I stared at her photo, and just began asking myself questions about what happened to her. From that visit on, I've just continued to knock on doors asking questions."
She contacted Sonny Miller, then a detective with the McAllen police force. Miller was still interested in the case. He pulled the old files on Irene's murder and began digging again.
He found more new evidence. Still, the local district attorney had no interest in filing charges.
"Everything said this guy Feit was as guilty as sin," Miller, who is now retired, tells New Times.
Besides loads of evidence, Miller says he discovered something else. In the year following Irene's murder, it seemed like everyone lost interest, or was told to lose interest.
Police even later found candlesticks near where Irene's body was thrown into the canal that had come from Sacred Heart Church. But, Miller says, investigators never tried to match them to the wounds on her head.
Miller talked to several of the investigators from the time of the murder, as well as to the daughter of then-police chief Clint Mussey. It became clear that from the turmoil caused just by Feit's sexual-assault trial, the powers that be at the time didn't want to see a priest tried for murder in the valley.
"It frustrated the hell out of the people who knew [that] Feit was the guy," Miller says. "Justice was not done."
In 2002 the Texas Rangers reopened the case.
By 2004 the Rangers and the Garza family believed that justice might finally be had.
And by last year, Noemi Ponce-Sigler believed she finally knew what actually happened to Irene Garza.
"Once I was able to talk to Dale Tacheny and Father O'Brien, it was all pretty clear," she says. "The only thing left is justice for the killer."
Dale Tacheny was a guilt-ridden young man.When he left the U.S. Army in the late 1940s, he decided to become a monk to save his eternal soul.
"It was a very selfish decision," says Tacheny from his home in Oklahoma City. "I wanted to save myself. I wasn't thinking about others."
Forty years later, it was guilt,Tacheny says, that finally led him to speak publicly about his involvement with John B. Feit.
Tacheny began his religious training in 1949 at age twenty.
By twenty-seven, he was already something of a golden boy in the Trappist order.
In the fall of 1958, Tacheny, known as Father Emmanuel, was sent to Rome for two years of study. When he returned to the
United States, he was promoted to second in command at Our Lady of Assumption Abbey in Ava, Missouri.
Tacheny was Novice Master. As such, he was the abbot's right-hand man and the priest in charge of all of the abbey's newest postulants.
He was a sort of spiritual drill sergeant for seven to ten young men seeking to become monks within the Order.
In 1963, Tacheny says, he was given his strangest assignment ever.
"The abbot called me in and said, 'There is a priest who murdered a woman who is in the guest house. He wants to become a monk.We are instructed to take him in.' "
Tacheny was told that the priest had been sent to Assumption Abbey from New Melleray Abbey in Dubuque, Iowa, where, a month earlier, he had attempted to attack a woman as she got into her car outside the abbey.
This attack, he was told, had followed similar attacks in Texas, one of which had led to the death of a young woman.
Tacheny says he then went to the guest house, where he met Father John Feit.
In the days that followed, Tacheny started his new novice down the quietly arduous path to becoming a monk.
The novices rose at 2:00 a.m., and their day included classes, meditation, manual labor in the fields surrounding the abbey, and vespers.They were to be in bed by 8:00 p.m.
Once a week was the Office of Faults, when novices professed or found themselves accused of sinful thoughts or actions. The novices then self-flagellated for one minute by beating their bare shoulders with a knotted rope.
Tacheny met with each of his novices weekly to explain, or be told, how they were doing.
Tacheny remembers Feit having trouble adjusting to the abbey and his fellow novices. For one, he didn't fit in. He was an ordained priest in his late twenties. The others were barely out of high school.
It was during one of their weekly meetings,Tacheny says, that he finally began asking Feit about his past.
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