The 26-year-old beauty queen of the United States did not return all night, and the body of the girl was found in the icy river water 5 days later
And the suspect in this case is full of mistakes and omissions, but he has been at large for 57 years, why is this?The story takes place in The Macallan, a city in southern Texas, which has been rated as one of the safest towns in Texas in recent years, but 60 years ago, there was a horrific ** case here.
The protagonist of the story is called Erin, who is not only the homecoming queen of Pan American University of Texas, but also won the Miss Texas Sweetheart contest and became the queen of the Texas beauty pageant. She also became a kind-hearted and caring girl, and after graduation she became a teacher, teaching at a poor elementary school in Macallan, and she donated all her first salary to buy clothes and books for poor students. Erin is a Catholic and goes to Mass every morning to receive Holy Communion, a Catholic ritual. At the same time, Irene longs for a husband who is also Catholic.
On April 16, 1960, Erin made an appointment with a friend to go to the movies, and before that she wanted to go to church. At 6:30 p.m., Erin called a friend to explain the situation, said goodbye to her parents and drove away from home. After driving 12 blocks, Erin came to the Sacred Heart Church in Texas.
At 3 a.m. the next day, Erin had not yet returned home, and her parents were so anxious that they immediately called the police. It is learned that Erin went to church on the day of her disappearance, and that Erin's car was parked two blocks away from the church. Because Erin was so beautiful, many people saw her in the church on the day she disappeared, but no one saw her leave the church.
Two days after Irene's disappearance, a passerby found a high-heeled shoe on a farm road, and Irene's parents later confirmed that Erin was wearing that type of heel on the day she went to church. Another day later, a teacher found a black purse in a field not far from her shoes with Erin's driver's license in it. Investigators then found the white lace veil that Erin had worn on her head on the day of her disappearance.
At 7:40 a.m. on April 21, a local ** received a police report that the body of a woman was floating on the water in the canal on Second Street. After the body is recovered. It was found that the woman's shoes and underwear were missing. Erin's parents confirmed that the deceased was their daughter, and the priest at the church said that the deceased was wearing the same clothes that Erin was wearing on the day of her disappearance.
The autopsy revealed that Erin had been suffocated by a heavy object, and that the wounds on her inner thighs indicated that she had been assaulted before her death. In addition, the medical examiner determined that Erin died less than 4 days, but she was missing for 5 days, indicating that Erin was imprisoned for at least one day before being killed.
Since the body was found in the river, the evidence that the perpetrator may have left behind on the victim has long been washed away by the river, and the victim has no fingerprints on his body, and the only clue is a pair of muddy shoe prints. The shoe print was found in the 4th block south of the riverbank, where traces of the car's tires and dents in the skirt were also found on the riverbank, and it was here that Irene's body was thrown from the car. However, due to the rain that was always going on in those days, the size of the footprints on the sole was blurred, and only a rough range of 41 to 45 yards could be determined.
Over the next few weeks, more than 500 people were questioned about the case, including Erin's family, friends, ex-boyfriends, colleagues, and people who had seen her in the church.
The 27-year-old priest, Fett, had recently completed his seminary training in San Antonio and often helped out at the Sacré-Coeur. People have the impression that Fett is a wise man, but he does not have much enthusiasm and faith in the work of a priest.
Fett told ** that he had counseled Erin on the night of her disappearance, and that he had left the church with Erin at 7:20 p.m. This is contrary to what witnesses said that night, as Irene was not seen coming out of the church, and the last time witnesses outside the church saw Irene was at 8 o'clock in the evening. When they investigate an attack that took place three weeks before Erin's disappearance, their suspicions of Fett deepen.
On the afternoon of March 12, a 20-year-old girl named Maria came out of the Pan American University when she saw a man sitting in a blue and white car staring straight at her. Mary entered the church and the man followed, and as Mary knelt in front of the communion basket and prayed, the man came up to Mary, grabbed her head, put a cloth in her mouth, and pushed her to the floor.
The man covered her mouth with his hand, and one of the fingers went into Maria's mouth, and Maria immediately bit the man's hand, biting out the blood from his finger. The man's hand was visibly bitten, and he angrily pushed Maria against the wall, who immediately rushed out of the church and called the police that night.
Maria told ** that although she didn't see the man's face clearly, the man who attacked her was dressed like Father Fett, the priest in the church. In response, Fett explained that he had indeed gone to the Sacré-Coeur that night but had been praying, and that Fett had injured the little finger of his left hand, which he explained had been accidentally wounded on a mimeograph machine the day before Maria was attacked, when he had asked one of the church secretaries for alcohol and bandages. But the secretary told the police that Fett had asked for the bandages the day after Maria was attacked, and that the secretary said that the mimeograph machine in the church would not cause damage to people's fingers under normal circumstances.
In the United States, priests are people who have divine authority in the church, and their status is very high, and most people think that priests are very noble. When Maria suspected that the priest was harassing her, she actually felt very ashamed in her heart, so Maria did not pursue the attacker more, and there was no in-depth investigation at that time.
But after the Erin ** case, Father Fett became a suspect again. A week after the body was found, ** drained the water from the Second Street Canal and found a 9-percent new slide projector not far from the body. On the 8th day after Irene's body was found**, he received a note stating that the owner of the slide projector was Father Fett.
Fett told ** that he bought it at a pharmacy in Port Isabel, Texas, last summer. Although Fett said the ** of the slide projector, he did not explain why the slide projector appeared in the canal, and the investigators' suspicions about him further deepened.
Then** was also in the canal, and found a candlestick from the Sacred Heart Church, as mentioned earlier, this Erin was beaten to death by a heavy object, so could this candlestick be a murder weapon?At this time, several other priests in the church told Fett that he was suspicious because Fett had been away from the church for a long time on the day of Erin's disappearance. When they get together for coffee in the evening, they see Fett with visible scratches on his hands.
Next, Fett was questioned as a key suspect, and he once again explained his own whereabouts on the day of Irene's disappearance, and in general, Fett admitted to seeing Erin that night, but firmly denied killing her. He also said that the real ** had confessed to him in church, but he would not have said the name of that person.
From Fayder's testimony, it is not difficult to see that there are many discrepancies between the information he provided and what witnesses saw, and that he did not pass the lie detector test, then it is very likely that he is **, and the murder weapon may be **The candlestick found in the canal. The suspicion of this case also includes the aforementioned **'s shoe size between 41 and 45, but ** did not do too much research on it, all because the local church ** was worried that this matter would affect the reputation of the church and put pressure on **.
Although Fett was not guilty of the crime, the case also involved a previous assault in which he was charged with assault, which ended with Fett's arrest in 1962.
In 1970 he ceased to be a priest and moved to live a normal life, working as a charity volunteer for the Food Association for 17 years.
2002 ** Texas receives a call from a priest in Missouri. He said that Ferrit had confessed to him in 1963 that he had hurt a woman and killed her, and that the priest said that he did not know that the victim Fett had killed was the beauty queen Irene, and that as a priest he was obliged to keep the confession a secret, so he did not report it to the police.
But now more than 40 years have passed, he is very uneasy in his heart, he hopes that justice can be served, so he still decides to confess to **. According to the priest's recollection, Fett was attracted to Erin's appearance when she first entered the church, and after listening to Irene's confession, Fett gagged Erin with a cloth, and then Fett took Erin to the basement of the church.
The next day Fett took Erin to another place, and after assaulting her, he put her in the bathtub and put a bag over her head. But when he returned at night, he found that Erin had been suffocated. Fett then put Erin's body in the car, drove the car to the Second Street Canal and threw the body into the river.
After Fett's crime was revealed, the happiest people were, of course, Erin's parents, and Irene's family and friends had never given up on finding the culprit over the years. But because the police officer in charge of the case had long since passed away and there was a lack of new evidence, it was impossible to prosecute Fett, and the case was put on hold for several more years.
In 2017, Fett was sentenced to life imprisonment for ** crimes, at the age of 84, and he died in prison three years later. The murder of beauty queen Irene in 1960 was not brought to justice until 2017**, a trial 57 years late, and justice was late, but it was not absent.