the texas rangers were there, the mcallen pd, police chief and the investigators were there waiting outside to go in, and they were never called, week after week after week after week. district attorney guerra stands behind his decision not to ask dale tacheny and father o brien to testify in person, and now father o brien is dead. if you could do it over again, could it have made a difference if you allowed o brien to personally take the stand and let the grand jurors see his eyes? could that have made a difference? i don t believe so. i honestly don t believe so. and again, it s not the indictment that i need. i need a conviction, because i don t want to try just anybody just for the sake of it, for the glory, because if i start going for the glory and indictments of very sensational cases, i m going to compromise my integrity and the oath that i took. some people want to glorify
silence. i was told a priest was coming to the monastery who had murdered a young woman. and what was that priest s name? father john feit. at that time in 1963, you re not thinking, why don t you call the cops? it never entered my mind. how come? we were taught to obey and to do as a superior tells us. tacheny was assigned to be feit s spiritual counselor. but i remember in telling, it was very close to easter, and a young woman came to him to confession. tacheny told police that feit gave up more details over time about sexually assaulting irene and holding her bound and gagged. he put something over her head and put her in the bathtub. this is what he told you? yes. and as he was leaving, she was
progress, two new witnesses had come forward with striking details about the murder of iene garza. investigators thought they could at last close the case. we thought at that point in time that we had reached that threshold of probable cause. i had prepared an affidavit for an arrest warrant. so, you were ready to arrest john feit for the murder of irene garza? yes, sir. but one man was not convinced and never has been. you have no credible person back in 04 and even before that you could put on the stand that would convict feit. rene guerra is the district attorney for hidalgo county, texas. he says he s not protecting the church. he just doesn t believe the two witnesses, father o brien and dale tacheny, partially because they both changed their stories after years of silence, and he questions father o brien s age
he took her to the basement. about keeping her bound and gagged. he put something over her head. about her struggle to live. she was saying, i can t breathe, i can t breathe. and about dumping her lifeless body at the canal. on the way over there, father feit said that he patted her on her breasts, she was in the back seat, and was saying to her, irene, everything will be okay, everything will be okay, irene. even though john feit knew she was dead? yeah, yeah. while it was not unusual at the time for the church to deal with criminal priests internally, tacheny says he asked feit about the secular authorities. but why was he sent to the monastery, in your opinion, and not to the police? i asked, why are you here and not in prison, and he said,
short, five-minute ride to her church. irene went to confession every saturday. she was highly religious. it was very, very important to her. on that april day in 1960, irene met with father john feit, a 27-year-old visiting priest. he had come to the sacred heart church from a nearby town to help out on the busy easter weekend. kind of a nice guy, but he was a rigid fellow. dale tacheny, a former monk, says he spent six months with father feit at this monastery in missouri after irene s murder. tacheny was feit s spiritual counselor and says that in bits and pieces, he told him about a young woman he saw for confession just before easter. he offered to take her to the rectory. about sexually assaulting her. after fondling her breasts,