Best American Crime Writing 2006 - Mark Bowden [72]
He was calling from a nursing home for retired priests. He had decided it was time he told the family what he knew before his mind slipped or his body failed.
By 2004 both O’Brien and Tacheny were willing to become vocal about Feit’s role in the Irene Garza case. They were also willing to talk about their frustration with Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra.
It was Guerra’s job to consider charges in the reopened case against Feit in the slaying of Irene Garza.
For years, Guerra avoided the case. In 2002, when asked if he would pursue charges now that evidence seemed overwhelming in the old case, Guerra told the Brownsville Herald: “I reviewed the file some years back; there was nothing there. Can it be solved? Well, I guess if you believe that pigs fly, anything is possible.”
He concluded, “Why would anyone be haunted by her death? She died. Her killer got away.”
Guerra’s comments naturally angered the Garza family, which still includes more than a dozen first cousins, aunts, and uncles (her parents passed away in the 1990s). But it did not surprise them.
“Guerra is just known to be politically motivated, pretty dang bad at his job, and also arrogant as hell,” Noemi Ponce-Sigler says.
He is also part of a powerful Catholic family in the McAllen valley.
In 2003 the Texas Rangers submitted information from the agency’s new investigation into the case to Guerra, but the D.A. refused to present the findings to a grand jury.
Leaders and media across Texas jumped on Guerra. Finally, in 2004, he agreed to let grand jurors consider the case.
Incredibly, though, Guerra refused to call witnesses such as O’Brien and Tacheny. And Guerra continued to trash the case even as he presented it to a grand jury.
In fact, Guerra called only one witness, a secretary from Sacred Heart Church in McAllen who had served as a defense witness for Feit in the 1961 assault trial.
The grand jury came back with a no bill, meaning Feit was off the hook again.
To investigators, witnesses, family, and many in McAllen, it was clear what was happening.
“[Guerra] didn’t want to stir this up again,” says retired McAllen detective Sonny Miller. “He badly wants this thing to die.”
Soon after the grand jury decision, Father Joseph O’Brien called Noemi Ponce-Sigler to get some things off his chest.
With O’Brien’s consent, Ponce-Sigler recorded O’Brien’s comments for posterity:
Noemi: “Feit told you that he had killed [Irene]?”
O’Brien: “Yes.”
Noemi: “Oh my God!”
O’Brien: “I suspected him from the very beginning.”
Noemi: “What happened that night? You’re the only one who knows besides him.”
O’Brien: “It was Easter week. We had a lot of confessions. After the Mass, we sat down and [Feit’s] hands were all scratched. He gave me two different reasons. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘okay, something is wrong here.’
“So, then, Father Busch—he’s dead now—[and I] searched the attic for her. That’s how suspicious we were.”
Noemi: “She did go to church?”
O’Brien: “Yes. She went to the rectory. I was in the church. Father Busch was in the church. [Feit] went back to answer the phone. We went and heard confessions. [Feit] goes back to the rectory. [Feit] took her to the pilgrim house in San Juan, kept her overnight.
“I’m just speculating that he hit her in the head with the candlestick.”
Noemi: “Was [the candlestick] found in the canal?”
O’Brien: “Yes.”
Noemi: “When in the world did he ever tell you about the murder?”
O’Brien: “To be honest, I sort of tricked him. I said, ‘How can I help you if you don’t tell the truth?’ I kept asking him the question, over and over. Then he came at me. I said, ‘Oh, this is great, one more step and [I’m] dead.’ Then he went back to reading the prayer book he was reading. Then he finally admitted it.”
Noemi: “When he admitted that he killed her, did he say, like, ‘Sorry’?”
O’Brien: “No. Well, I don’t know if he did later. I imagine so. We took him to Chicago to John Reid, the guy who literally wrote the book on polygraph