65 Years After Irene Garza’s Tragic Death, Her Family Finally Found Justice — and the Church’s Silence Was Shattered

Lynda de la Viña

The Roman Catholic Church’s infamous cult of silence extends beyond cases of sexual abuse, sources tell The National Enquirer — and even includes murder when it comes to protecting one of its own.

Sixty-five years ago, a 25-year-old second-grade teacher who worked with indigent kids in McAllen, Texas, near the Mexican border, was found brutally raped and drowned. Irene Garza, a devout Catholic and local homecoming queen who was crowned the 1958 Miss All South Texas Sweetheart, was last seen attending evening confession at Sacred Heart Church in McAllen on April 16, 1960.

Garza’s disappearance ignited a furious search — the largest in the region to that date — but it wasn’t until the 21st that her bruised and battered body was found in a local canal, with all forensic evidence washed away.

Cops interviewed nearly 500 people, but suspicion soon fell upon the 27-year-old churchman, Father John Feit, who oddly had heard Garza’s confession on the 16th in the church rectory rather than in the confessional.

Witnesses reported that the confessional line moved slowly that night and that Feit left the church multiple times. Moreover, fellow priests noticed scratches on Feit’s hands after her disappearance, and his photo slide viewer was later discovered in the same canal where Garza’s body was found.

Feit was soon implicated in another rape of a parishioner but, incredibly, was somehow allowed to plead no contest to misdemeanor charges after his 1962 trial ended in a hung jury.

Church officials transferred him to an abbey in Missouri, where he confessed to another priest, Dale Tacheny, that he had hurt one woman and killed another.

But it wasn’t until 2002 – long after Feit left the priesthood and settled in Phoenix, marrying and raising three kids – that Tacheny broke his silence and told cops.

“He didn’t show what I would consider to be compunction or sorrow or grief or anything like that,” Tacheny told officers in 2002. “I felt at the time rather appalled…but that wasn’t my job to judge him.”

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office

Authorities reopened Garza’s murder case and discovered that Feit had also confessed to the killing to another priest shortly after the woman’s death.

Still, Feit was not busted until February 2016. The then-83-year-old was convicted of Garza’s murder in December 2017, and spend the rest of his years behind bars until his death from natural causes in February 2020.

“He now stands in front of the ultimate judge,” said Noemi Sigler, a relative of Irene Garza. “He left this earth never showing remorse for killing Irene. God have mercy on his soul.”