bye-bye! thanks. bye. thank you. god bless you. what is that? they found it in there. this is irene s sister s yearbook? mm-hmm. irene might even be in here. oh, here she is. here is irene garza. thank you. you have no idea what you did. thank you. you re welcome. i m sorry for your family s loss. wow. you re a remarkable family to save this. i think it s going to bring a lot of joy to this family. i never would have expected this. to noemi, the unexpected gift
how old are you now? i m 25. 25 years old, the same age as irene when she died. and like irene, sarah lives with her parents. in fact, irene s old bedroom is now sarah s bedroom. sarah even bears an eerie resemblance to irene. you almost have the same hair, i must say. she had long, dark hair. noemi asked if she could go in the house. see what it triggers back because i was here as a child. the day that she went missing, i was here. oh, you were here. wow. sarah welcomed her inside where the past came back in a way noemi never imagined. inside, sarah gave something to noemi. after all these years, a high school yearbook from 1949 had remained in the house through three different owners, waiting for the family that would cherish it.
and she kind of transcended that. she was gentle and sweet and beautiful. lynda de la vina is another cousin. she was really a role model, and to see how she had gone through college, was a teacher, was a beauty queen and yet was just a very sweet and simple person to us as children. but in 1960, the body of this inspiring woman was found face down in this canal. she was 25, the age for thinking about getting married and raising a family. she didn t have a life. irene never had that chance. irene garza lived in this house in what was a very nice neighborhood near downtown mcallen and remains so today. she lived here with her sister and parents. on the saturday before easter, she hopped in her car for a short, five-minute ride to her
and she smelled like flowers. reporter: in 1960, irene garza was raped and murdered in mcallen, texas. one thing i remember is just screams. there was a suspect. who do you believe killed irene garza? father john bernard feit. father john feit. back then, a catholic priest. no evidence in this case right now points us in any other direction. so why is he still a free man? by all accounts, irene garza was a remarkable young woman. she kind of broke the mold. irene s younger cousin, noemi sigler. at that time, hispanics stayed on one side of town, anglos lived on another side,
she had gotten us baskets. late that evening, my parents got a phone call that said that irene had gone to church, and she hadn t come back, and she was missing. another cousin, noemi sigler, was at irene s house that day waiting for the easter egg hunt. what i remember is the grown-ups talking, whispering, crying. we were wondering what in the world was happening, but we knew something really bad had happened. irene was missing, but her car was still parked outside the church. family, friends and neighbors formed search parties and looked frantically. everybody was hoping that there was just, you know, some misunderstanding or that she had maybe gone with friends or something, and everybody was very, very worried. two days later, people began to find her belongings.