Her killer-priest got away because she was Hispanic?
By Gregg Wendorf
Advance News Journal
Note: This is the last editorial/ column I’ll write about the 1960 Irene Garza rape-homicide case for at least the next four weeks. I think over the past month, I’ve written about her murder four times. It’s just that through the course of writing this new true-crime book, Killer in the Clerical Collar, I live with her murder, day in, and day out, as well as the 2017 trial that finally brought her killer to justice. It’s hard to stop thinking about it, which is what led me to this week’s editorial: Usually, I’m not one to write much about the old days with regard to discrimination here in the RGV.
“Why not?”
Because why bring up past sins, past societal dysfunctionality. What good does that do anybody?
“So that it never happens again.”
That’s the standard answer to the question. However, it doesn’t hold water. When, for example, you’re talking about the old days in the Rio Grande Valley, especially prior to the 1970s, as they relate to discrimination by old-school Anglos against Hispanics, who thinks those ways will ever return here? Number one, there aren’t enough Anglos living here. Number two, there is no longer any rampant racism alive in the U.S.
“Racism hasn’t gone away.”
Nor will it ever go away. Here, across the state, the nation, the world. Because for some reasons, in some homes, racists of all stripes and colors abide, and they pass down their hate for (pick a group, any group) to their offspring. It’s usually generational. Great-great grandpa, and even his greatgreat grandpa hated (pick a group), so now, junior hates them too, even though hating makes no sense because there are good and bad people in every crowd.
To say, though, that because spotted racism still exists here and there, among all races and ethnicities, because there’s always at least one racist in every crowd, means that racism is endemic to the U.S., is way off the mark. That’s why I find it counterproductive to talk about the old days vs. the new days when so much progress has been made. Let’s look forward, not backward.
Today, America is more of a melting pot than ever before. Intermarriages, for example, between Hispanics and Anglos has to be at an all-time high, which is just one example of the progress made over the past 63 years since the rape and murder of Irene Garza.
Garza Was Different
The old days in Hidalgo County, though, when too much racism existed on the part of some Anglos, not all; when most Hispanics lived on one side of the tracks, and Anglos, the other; the rape, murder of 25-year-old Teacher Irene Garza, slain in cold blood by a warped Catholic priest, an Anglo originally from Chicago, underscores how much damage racism did indeed cause in years gone by whenever it raised its ugly head.
“Not all Anglos were racist back then.”
No, I never said that, but still today, sadly, there are some Anglos who don’t like Hispanics, and some Mexican-Americans who don’t like Gringos. Thankfully, though, instances of that sort of racism seem few and far between.
Point is, while currently wrapping up the Irene Garza true-crime book — Killer in the Clerical Collar — with an accompanying Garza-related podcast available daily at anjournal.com, it struck me one day last week out of the blue, like a lit bottle rocket – If Irene Garza’s name had been Irene Smith, or Irene Jackson, does anyone believe that local authorities, namely the DA and sheriff, would and could have conspired with the Catholic Church to let her killer go free?
To me, the answer is no, but what do I know?
While it’s true that Irene’s family had “made it,” in the sense that the success of her dad’s dry-cleaning business, and the income it produced, allowed the family to live in the Anglo section of McAllen, and while it’s true that she was the first Hispanic twirler at McHi and had won the Miss South Texas Beauty Pageant (may not be the exact title), in the end, her family was still Hispanic, Mexican-Americans, and the Anglos in power (at least two at the county level) were able to take advantage of the absolute power they possessed.
So was the church rich and powerful back then as it is today. Instead of protecting its flock, it protected a killer. With its thumb firmly planted on the backs of its parishioners, there are reports from back then, 1960, immediately after Irene Garza’s murder, that some priests were telling their parishioners that no Catholic should even imply that a priest might be the culprit. Perish the thought. To think such a thought was indeed a sin.
Indeed, at the time, there was buzz in the community that the priest, John Feit, was Irene Garza’s killer. A woman in Edinburg had picked him out of a police lineup as the man who had attempted to rape her at a Catholic church in Edinburg, and a woman outside the same church had identified Feit, so his character was already called into question.
Irene’s uncle (I need to verify the relationship, but I think it was her uncle) was pulled off the murder investigation, because, some people thought, as a sheriff’s investigator, he was getting too close to the truth – the priest killed her.
Now, let’s say, that Irene Garza had been Irene Jones, and there was a buzz in the Anglo community at the time, that a priest had murdered her and dumped her body into a canal, like a piece of trash, and the authorities knew who the killer was, but were doing nothing about it.
Does anyone, anyone, believe that the local Anglo community wouldn’t have risen up in rebellion against the church and local authorities, had that been the case?
Impossible to know, but clearly, back then, the Anglos had the voice, the power, and the Hispanics had little.
After all, according to a letter sent between two priests, later entered into evidence during the 2017 Feit trial, the church was worried that a murder involving a priest might hurt Kennedy’s chance of winning the presidency in 1960 (no joke). The Hidalgo County sheriff, Vickers, was also a Catholic, and he was worried that such a scandal would hurt his chances of reelection. For its part, the Catholic Church wanted to avoid scandal at all costs.
Clearly, in Hidalgo County in 1960, winning an election was more important than bringing a killer to justice. For the church, avoiding a murder scandal was more important than seeing one of their own tried and convicted of a heinous crime.
Backroom Corruption
Meaning, the county’s top two law-enforcement officers, the DA and the sheriff, let a killer walk free because politics was at play, with both the church’s support and blessing because the church wanted to avoid a scandal.
All of those pieces to the puzzle were successfully laid out as facts during Feit’s 2017 murder trial.
As part of the under-the-table deal struck between the church, the DA, and the sheriff, John Feit copped to the attempted rape, pleading no contest instead to a charge of assault, was fined $500, and then moved out of town quicker than you could say, what happened to that priest suspected of killing Irene Garza?
The deal was all done in the back room. DA Lattimore’s office inside the courthouse. No part of the deal was entered into the record. Meaning, it was a cover-up, not a plea deal. You plead no contest to the assault of America Guerra, and we’ll drop the Irene Garza murder investigation. That was the deal made between the DA, Feit, his high-priced San Antonio- based attorney, paid for by the church, the sheriff, and the Catholic Church who agreed to take Feit away and put him in a monastery for troubled priests.
The question remains: if Irene Garza’s name had been Irene Smith, would the murdering priest, John Feit, have been allowed to leave Hidalgo County without first being tried for her murder?
By 1960, progress within the social and political ranks of local Hispanics was already being seen. In 1954, two of the Pharr five city commissioners were Hispanic, PSJA ISD’s 1958 Homecoming Queen was Hispanic, and Mexican-Americans like Irene’s parents were moving to the Anglo side of town; but among the county’s ruling class, the rich and the powerful, they were by and large Anglo.
Of course, when I ran this scenario by my wife, Jan, she said, that she thought, even if Irene had come from an Anglo family, and her surname had been Smith, and this was still 1960, her killer’s fate would still depend on whether or not her family had wealth and connections, power, because the church would still have wanted to avoid a scandal, no matter if the victim were Anglo or Hispanic.
True, most likely, but would the DA and the sheriff had played along with the church’s cover-up plan? After all, the sheriff at the time, E. E. Vickers, was a Catholic running for reelection, so who knows.
Anglo, Hispanic, no matter, a beautiful, sweet young woman was brutally raped and murdered, and her killer walked free. For at least 57.5 years after he committed the dirty deed.