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48 HOURS: “Sins of the Father” was Saturday’s #1 non-sports primetime program with viewers, according to Nielsen live plus same day ratings for Jan. 27. The broadcast delivered 4.10 million viewers and a 0.8/03 with adults 25-54, the demographic that matters most with those who advertise in news.

Saturday’s broadcast featured Richard Schlesinger and 48 HOURS’ investigation into the disappearance and murder of Irene Garza nearly 60 years ago and the murder case against John Feit, the former priest accused of murdering her. It’s a case 48 HOURS has been reporting on for five years.

In 1960, Garza, 25, told her family she was going to church for confession. She never returned. Five days later her body was found dumped in a canal. Police say she was beaten, sexually assaulted and suffocated. Investigators questioned hundreds of people, but they kept turning to one person: Feit, then 27, who admitted hearing Garza’s last confession in the church rectory. Investigators only grew more suspicious when they learned that three weeks before Garza’s murder, another woman – Maria America Guerra – had been attacked in a nearby church. That woman later identified Feit as her attacker.

Feit would eventually plead no contest to aggravated assault in the Guerra case and was fined $500, but the investigation in the Irene Garza murder eventually stopped, and the case went cold. For decades, rumors swirled that there had been a conspiracy between the authorities and the Church to cover up the crime. The case was reopened in 2002 when the McAllen Police Department asked the Texas Rangers’ cold case unit to re-examine the murder. The investigation took a turn when a former monk, Dale Tacheny, told police that back in 1963, when he was counseling novice monks at a monastery, Feit had admitted to killing a young woman on Easter weekend. Another priest also came forward saying Feit had made a similar admission to him as well. Yet the former district attorney at the time, Rene Guerra, didn’t find the new witnesses credible, and the case would go nowhere. Garza’s family felt they had been denied justice again. In 2014, when confronted by 48 HOURS about the allegations, Feit told Schlesinger he didn’t kill Garza and does not know who did.

Shortly after 48 HOURS’ first broadcast on the case, “The Last Confession,” was presented in 2014, a new DA was elected who promised to look into the case. On Feb. 9, 2016, Feit was arrested in Scottsdale, Ariz. and charged with murder.

In December 2017, Feit was convicted of murdering Garza.

48 HOURS: “Sins of the Father” is produced by Lourdes Aguiar, Ruth Chenetz and Josh Gaynor. Alicia Tejada is the field producer. Michael McHugh is the producer editor. Atticus Brady and Gary Winter are editors. Judy Tygard is the senior producer. Susan Zirinsky is the senior executive producer.

Follow 48 HOURS on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Listen to podcasts at Radio.com.

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