EDINBURG — The Latest on the John Feit trial:
EDINBURG — The Latest on the John Feit trial:
The court rules Darrell Davis’ testimony regarding his off record meeting with the district attorney in the 1960s will be admissible.
The defense had asked the court for the case to be dismissed based on possible due process violations.
The defense states it will move forward, but under protest.
Back on the stand, Davis said: “(DA) knew that Father Feit killed Irene, and the church knew it, and he was not going to prosecute it, because the Catholic church told the DA they would move him to a monastery for troubled priests.”
11:58 a.m.
During a meeting in the 1960s with the Hidalgo County District Attorney, Darrell Davis said he learned, off the record, that Feit was going to plead no contest to the America Guerra charge. In exchange, he would not be prosecuted for the Garza murder because the church was going to “put him away for life.”
11:01 a.m.
Both the prosecution and the defense have finished with opening arguments. The prosecution has called Darrell Davis as its first witness.
Davis, 77, an attorney from McAllen. He was 20 years old in 1960 and covered the case as a reporter for KRGV.
10:36 a.m.
The state’s prosecutor, Michael Garza, set the scene for jurors during opening arguments.
He led not with Irene Garza’s death, but an incident a month prior. That’s when Maria America Guerra, a Pan Am College student, reported an attack at a church in Edinburg. Guerra said she was in church when a man attacked her from behind and attempted to suffocate her.
Felt would later plead no contest to the charge against him, which was related to the Guerra incident.
The prosecutor also introduced Dale Tacheny, the former monk who claims Feit admitted to Garza’s death in 1963. This was years after her death and a year after the church moved him to the monastery in Missouri.
9:56 a.m.
The long-awaited trial of John Bernard Feit begins today. Feit is accused of murdering Irene Garza in April 1960.
The mysterious circumstances surrounding the murder of Garza, a 20-something McAllen schoolteacher who went missing just before a religious holiday weekend in April 1960 and found dead five days later near where she was last seen, has piqued the interest of not only locals who grew up recounting anecdotal stories and details of what transpired the night she went missing, but also the interest of a national audience.
