Pamela Colloff

Senior editor Pamela Colloff first heard about the unsolved 1960 murder of Irene Garza, in McAllen, when she was reading about the Texas Rangers’ elite cold-case unit last January. That a priest, John Feit, had always been the main suspect in the death of the beautiful South Texas teacher fascinated Colloff, who delves into the full story in “Unholy Act”. Her reporting took her from the Valley to San Antonio, Oklahoma City, and Phoenix. “I really wanted to get a sense of who Irene was,” Colloff says. “The biggest challenge of this story was trying to make a crime that happened nearly half a century ago feel as urgent and horrifying as it did when it took place.”