Priest in sex case now charged with trying to hire hitmanBy EVA RUTH MORAVEC
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
Nov. 22, 2010, 10:06PMSAN ANTONIO — A Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy in 2008 in the rural parish where he worked west of here was rearrested last week in Dallas and charged with trying to hire someone to kill his alleged victim.
Father John M. Fiala, 52, was in Dallas County Jail on one count of solicitation to commit murder and two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, officials said. A judge set bail at $700,000.
The sexual assault charges were part of indictments handed up last week in Howard County, which brought to six the number of charges Fiala faces that involve the boy, who was 16 at the time of the alleged offenses.
The Texas Rangers and Department of Public Safety troopers arrested Fiala on Thursday after he negotiated a murder arrangement with an undercover officer at his residence in Garland, DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said. A DPS investigation began Nov. 11, when a neighbor of Fiala tipped off Edwards County Sheriff Don Letsinger.
"I received a call from an unnamed informant who was having problems with the way Fiala was acting," the sheriff said. The neighbor
"had been solicited (to commit the murder) himself, and he didn't want anything to do with that," Letsinger said. Fiala reportedly offered the neighbor $5,000 to kill the teen, the sheriff said.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7307344.html">MORE
- A priest offered a neighbor $5,000 to commit murder??? And here I thought priests lived under a vow of poverty?!?! Wherever could a priest get that kind of money???
Oh. Right.==============================================================================
DeSwiss
"I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world,
and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get." ~ Napolean Bonaparte