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For now, Peasley is collecting his pension and marking time. He had a heart attack and quadruple-bypass surgery in 2003, but he has kept some of his old habits. "Cigars is what I do. And I shouldn't even do that," he said. "I shouldn't have done a lot of things. And, unfortunately, the reason I had the heart attack is I probably did everything that was bad for you for so many years it was inevitable that something was going to happen." He is not ready for the El Grande case to stand as his legacy. "It's disappointing," he said. "And the reason is, I worked real hard and, frankly, every case I handled was prosecuted with integrity. And for twenty-seven years I did it, and one case, basically, is the definition of what I've done. I mean, the best that I can hope to be remembered as is the guy who screwed up the triple-murder case." Peasley plans to apply for readmission to the bar as soon as he is eligible, in about four years.
Jeffrey Toobin, a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993, is the senior legal analyst for CNN. His fifth book, about the Supreme Court, will be published in 2007.
On March l, 2005, during the week after "Killer Instincts" was published in The New Yorker, the Supreme Court ruled, by a vote of five to four, that states could no longer execute defendants who committed their crimes before they turned eighteen. The ruling meant that seventy-two juvenile offenders in twelve states would leave death row. One of them was Martin Soto-Fong, who was seventeen at the time of the murders at the El Grande Market.
After the Supreme Court's decision in Roper v. Simmons, Soto-Fong was returned to Tucson for resentencing and for a hearing in his petition for a new trial under Arizona 's habeas corpus law. At those proceedings, his lawyer, Gregory Kuykendall, raised many of the issues discussed in the article-including Ke
The lifting of Soto-Fong's death sentence has improved his life in prison. For his twelve years on death row, he was allowed just three showers and three ninety-minute recreation periods per week. Now that Soto-Fong has returned to the general population, he has greater freedom of movement within the prison, and he is eligible to get a job. At the time of the murders at the El Grande, Soto-Fong was attending Lamaze classes with his future wife, Betty. His daughter, Ashley, was born after his arrest. "Once again I want to be able to hold my family and have a better relationship with my daughter," Soto-Fong said after the Supreme Court's ruling. "Back in 1995, we were allowed contact visits once every six months, but then they stopped those. She's twelve now, and I've only held her twice in my life."
Robert Nelson : Altar Ego
from the Phoenix New Times
It is 1988 in M c A llen, T exas. Irene Garza's portrait hangs in the living room of her aunt's home. The fair-ski
Another family member stops by the house for a visit. Noemi Ponce-Sigler happens upon the portrait and looks into the eyes of the girl. She gets the feeling Irene's looking back.
And a question comes into Noemi's mind that has been troubling her since:
"Who killed you, Irene?"
It is the Friday following G ood F riday, April I960, in McAllen. Police come to the door ofJosephina and Nick Garza's home. They are there to tell the couple that their daughter, Irene, has been found dead in a nearby canal. She had been beaten. It appeared from bruises inside her thighs that her attacker had tried to rape her.
Josephina's body spasms. She collapses to her knees.
And out of her mouth comes a sound so mournful that it has become the stuff of legend in this border town.
"They said it was this long, awful moan from deep inside her body-almost like the howl of a wolf," a niece of Josephina's describes. "They said it was like nothing they had ever heard or ever heard again."
The family's parish priest, Joseph O'Brien, comforted Josephina by telling her that Irene died in a state of grace. After all, she was last seen alive on her way to confession.
The fact was, though, O'Brien had no idea if the cleric Irene saw, Father John Feit-a visiting priest at O'Brien's parish-ever gave her confession.
O'Brien held back another important fact from the Garzas that day:
He was confident he knew who had killed their daughter.
Police had the McA llen canal, in which Irene's body was found, drained a few days later.
They found a nearly new slide projector just feet from the spot where the young woman's body had been dragged into the canal. Police told local newspaper reporters they believed this was the clue that would break the case. Clearly, the murderer had used the heavy chunk of equipment, complete with a long cord, to sink Irene's body to the muddy floor of the canal…
After a headline story in the McAllen paper about the projector, area newspapers never mentioned this clue again.
Police sought the owner of the projector. Eight days after Irene's body was found, they received this note:
This viewer belongs to Fr. John Feit (Order of Mary Immaculate), of San Juan, Texas.
It was purchased in Port Isabel, Texas, in July, 1959, at Freddies Professional Pharmacy.
Terms-cash.
Price-I don't remember. April 29, I960.
Police already knew the young priest was the last person to see Irene Garza alive.
John B. Feit later became the prime suspect in the Garza murder, as well as in an attempted sexual assault of a young woman in a nearby Catholic church three weeks earlier.
Feit wound up pleading no contest to assault charges in the earlier case. He was fined five hundred dollars.
But Feit was never charged in the murder of Irene Garza.
Instead, according to one of his supervisors, the Archdiocese of San Antonio and the Order of Mary Immaculate "shipped him away" for "rehabilitation" at a series of monasteries in Texas, Iowa, Missouri, and, finally, New Mexico.
Feit left the priesthood ten years later to marry a young AT &T worker he met at a church in Albuquerque. In the late 1970s, Feit, his wife, and three children moved to the Arcadia district of Phoenix, where the family became active in the nearby St. Theresa church.
As a layman in Phoenix, John B. Feit has, by all appearances, become a model citizen. For much of that time, he has been a lead organizer of charitable programs for the Phoenix chapter of the Society of St.Vincent de Paul, where longtime coworkers describe him as a tireless advocate for the poor.
Phoenix Police Department investigators tell New Times there are no cold-case files in the Valley that match the modus operandi in the Irene Garza murder or the I960 aggravated assault in which Feit pleaded no contest.
Even in retirement, Feit spends much of his days counseling and helping the infirm or disadvantaged. At his local parish, Feit is one of the organizers of the JustFaith program, an intensive educational program designed to help Catholics put their belief into action on social justice issues.