Brownsville, Texas, Dec 13, 2017 / 17:02 pm
Nearly 60 years after Irene Garza disappeared after going to confession in her Texas hometown, the last person who saw her – who was a priest at the time – has been convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
John Feit, an 85-year-old former priest has been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Garza on Holy Saturday, April 16, 1960.
Irene Garza was a 25-year-old schoolteacher, former beauty queen, and figure in the McAllen Tex. Catholic and Mexican-American communities. Friends and neighbors remember her as a young woman of faith.
"Remember the last time we talked, I told you I was afraid of death?" Garza wrote to her friend mere days before her death. The letter was later published by Texas Monthly. "Well I think I'm cured. You see, I've been going to communion and Mass daily and you can't imagine the courage and faith and happiness it has given me."