A beauty queen tragedy. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Leib. And this is Ghost Town.

It almost sounds as though waving expedition is a better course, but this whole thing makes

no sense to me because the prime end question took place in 1960.

In late March of 1960, 20-year-old college student Maria America Gera visited a sacred

heart church, 12 miles from a Kalan, Texas. She knelt at the communion rail to pray

on her rosary when a quiet man in a different pew grabbed her from behind and tried to put

a rag over her mouth. Screaming, she fell backward and bit down in his fingers until they

bled. He threw her to the wall and she ran out. I thought that the man that attacked me

was a priest, Gera said, in her sworn statement. She couldn't point any specific proof just

that he had worn black pants like priest did. She felt ashamed for even voicing suspicion

of the church and she kept quiet after that. This attack would foreshadow one of the most

extensive, controversial, and highly publicized investigations in the county's history.

Let's talk about the murder of Irene Garza. Irene Garza was born in 1934 in McAllen,

Texas, a border town where her Latin ex-parents, Nicholas and Josephina, owned a dry cleaning

business. As Garza grew up, her parents' business had become successful and the family

was able to move from the south side of McAllen to a better part of the city. There, Garza

went to McAllen High School. McAllen High was a predominantly white school in the 1950s

and even still the beautiful athletic yet shy Garza was the first Latin student to become

a tourler and then the head drum majorette. Irene Garza went on to Pan American College

where she was the school's homecoming queen and then went on to be crowned the 1958

Miss All South Texas sweetheart. After getting her teaching credentials in college, she was

also the first person in her family to attend college, Garza went on to teach second grade

...