Imagine this: It's Halloween night, 1981. The air in Amarillo, Texas, hangs heavy with the scent of bonfires and caramel apples. Children dash door-to-door, their laughter echoing like distant bells. But inside the hushed walls of St Francis Convent, a sanctuary of prayer and peace, something unspeakable is about to shatter the silence.
He doesn't just kill her. He violates her—brutally, savagely. Rapes her. Strangles the life from her throat with his bare hands. Stabs her repeatedly, as if to silence her soul itself. Her body is left sprawled on the cold floor, arms outstretched like a crucified martyr, blood pooling around her like spilt communion wine.
This isn't fiction. This is the murder of Sister Tadea Benz—a 76-year-old nun, devoted servant of the Sisters of Charity, whose final hours on All Hallows' Eve became a nightmare etched in true crime history. But here's the twist that chills to the bone: The man Texas executed for this atrocity? He might have been innocent. And the real monster? He confessed—years too late.
Good evening, and welcome back to True Crime Tales with Cosette. I'm your host, Cosette, and tonight, as the veil thins between worlds on this Halloween, we delve into a case that blurs the line between justice and grave injustice. The Halloween murder of Sister Tadea Benz isn't just a story of brutality—it's a damning indictment of a system that rushed to judgement, discarded evidence, and claimed an innocent life. Grab a candle, dim the lights, and join me as we uncover the shadows of St Francis Convent. If you're new here, hit that subscribe button and ring the bell—we've got more untold tales waiting in the dark.
Let's begin where the horror did: Amarillo, Texas, October 31st, 1981.
Sister Tadea Benz was no stranger to hardship. Born in 1905 in what was then Austria-Hungary—now parts of Slovakia—she entered the convent young, dedicating her life to the Sisters of Charity. By 1981, at 76, she'd spent decades in service: nursing the sick, teaching the young, and embodying quiet faith in the dusty heart of the Texas panhandle. The St Francis Convent, a modest brick building on Taylor Street, was her haven—a place of routine prayers, shared meals, and unbreakable sisterhood.
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That Halloween, the convent buzzed with subdued festivity. Nuns exchanged smiles over pumpkin pie in the communal dining room. Children from nearby neighbourhoods knocked for sweets, their costumes a fleeting joy. Sister Tadea, ever the doting elder, retired early to her sparse second-floor room: a single bed, a wooden crucifix on the wall, and a few cherished books of saints' lives. She knelt in prayer, extinguishing her bedside lamp around 10 p.m. Outside, the wind howled like a banshee across the plains.
What happened next would haunt Amarillo for decades. Sometime after midnight, an intruder breached the convent. He didn't smash the front door or force the locks. No—he approached stealthily from the rear, climbing to the second-floor window of the communal lounge. With a pocketknife, he sliced the screen and shattered the glass just enough to slip inside. Footprints were later confirmed: Size 10, left in the flowerbed below, leading away into the night.
He crept through the silent halls, past sleeping sisters, drawn like a moth to Sister Tadea's door. Why her? Was it opportunity—a light under the door, a vulnerability in her age? Or something darker, a predator's instinct honed on the vulnerable? He pushed inside. What followed was a frenzy of unimaginable cruelty.
Sister Tadea awoke to terror. The attacker—described later by partial witness accounts as a man of medium build, dark-skinned, with curly black hair—pinned her down. He raped her savagely, ignoring her pleas for mercy. Then, to silence her, he wrapped his hands around her throat, squeezing until her struggles weakened. But rage overtook him; he grabbed a kitchen knife from the convent's downstairs drawer—likely pilfered earlier—and plunged it into her chest, her side, and her neck. Eight stab wounds in all, some shallow, others fatal. Blood sprayed the walls and soaked the linens. Her habit lay torn nearby, her body left nude and broken on the floor, arms splayed in supplication.
Morning broke cold and grey. At 6:30 a.m., the sisters gathered for Lauds, the first prayer of the day. Sister Tadea was absent—a rarity for the punctual devotee. Concern rippled through the group. Sister Angela Martinez, a fellow Sister of Charity, volunteered to check on her. She knocked softly on the door. No answer. Pushing it open, she froze.
There lay Sister Tadea, pale and still, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Shock hit like a thunderclap. "I thought she'd fallen," Sister Angela later testified, her voice trembling in court. In their grief and denial, the nuns didn't scream for police. Instead, they did what instinct bade: they wrapped her body in a clean sheet, as if preparing her for burial. They mopped the bloodstains from the floor, tidying the room out of respect—or perhaps horror. Only later, inspecting the lounge, did they spot the broken window. Panic set in. They dialled authorities.
Amarillo PD arrived swiftly. The scene was a forensic nightmare. The cleanup had disturbed evidence—blood smeared, fibres misplaced. But what remained painted a grim picture: Semen traces on the body, indicative of rape. A single curly black hair, clutched in Sister Tadea's rigid hand—Hispanic in origin, per early analysis. The murder knife, wiped clean but matching convent cutlery. Footprints leading to and from the window. And in the driveway, discarded hastily: The very knife used downstairs, now bloodied.
This wasn't isolated evil. Four months earlier, on July 9th, 1981, just blocks away on North Houston Street, 77-year-old Narnie Box Bryson had met a similar fate. Home alone, she'd been raped, strangled, and stabbed in her bed. Semen was recovered there, too. Witnesses near the convent recalled a "dark-skinned man with black curly hair" lurking that Halloween eve—fitting the profile from Bryson's case. Police suspected a serial predator targeting elderly women, perhaps Cuban refugees from the 1980 Mariel boatlift flooding the area.
Enter Johnny Frank Garrett. Just 17, born Christmas Eve 1963 to a troubled family in Amarillo. Johnny wasn't a model teen—petty thefts, truancy, a stint in juvenile detention. But he was no monster. Neighbours described him as "slow", a follower plagued by childhood demons: severe head injuries from falls and beatings and sexual abuse that scarred him deeply. Forensic psychiatrist Dr Dorothy Lewis, who later examined him, diagnosed brain damage and dissociative traits—echoes of trauma, not innate sadism.
On Halloween afternoon, hours before the murder, Johnny was arrested for joyriding in a stolen car. Coincidentally—or fatefully—he'd been spotted near the convent days earlier, pilfering cigarettes. Released on bond, he spent the evening at home with his mother, siblings, and girlfriend. Alibi? Ironclad, they swore. But whispers grew. A neighbour claimed to see a "tall kid with an Abe Lincoln face" fleeing the convent at dawn—pointing straight at Johnny.
November 9th: Arrest. Interrogation. No Miranda rights were read properly, claims his defence. Under pressure, Johnny "confessed"—but haltingly, inconsistently. "I went in for money," he stammered. "Things got out of hand." No details matched: He described a cross above the bed (none existed). He claimed to have stabbed with a different knife. Crucially, no fingerprints on the murder weapon. The curly hair? Not his—straight, brown, Anglo. Semen? Never typed to him.
The trial, in August 1982, was a farce. Prosecutor Danny Hill painted Johnny as a demonic "nun-raper", ignoring Bryson parallels. Star witness: A jailhouse snitch, promising reduced sentences for his tale—Johnny bragging about "both old ladies". Discredited later, but it stuck. Pathologist Dr Ralph Erdmann—later indicted for fraud in other cases—testified to semen but admitted discarding it: "No lab to test it." No cross-examination on the hair.
Defence? Meek. No ballistics expert. No alibi bolstering. Johnny took the stand, tearful: "I took a knife two days before for stealing. But I didn't hurt her. God knows." The jury—12 white Anglos—deliberated five hours. Guilty. Capital murder: Death during rape and burglary. Sentenced February 1983. Appeals dragged: Federal courts eyed the flawed autopsy, psychic tip-offs (a medium "dreamt" of Johnny), and even his youth. But Texas was unyielding.
February 11th, 1992. Huntsville Unit. Johnny, 28, strapped to "Old Sparky". His final words, defiant: "I have something to say, but I can't say it now. Maybe one day they'll know." The needle plunged. Lights flickered. He was gone—Texas's 89th execution since resuming the death penalty.
But truth, like justice, is patient.
Fast-forward to 2004. Cold case tech advanced. Re-testing Bryson's evidence: Semen matches Leoncio Perez Rueda, a 50-something Cuban refugee and serial rapist already serving life for other assaults. Rueda—dark-skinned, with curly black hair—confessed to Bryson. And more: In a 2011 prison interview with attorney Cheryl Quackenbush, fighting for Johnny's exoneration, Rueda smirked: "Yeah, I did that nun on Halloween too. Raped her, beat her bloody. Left her like trash." Details matched Benz: window entry, knife from kitchen, post-midnight timing.
DNA from Benz's preserved swabs? Finally analysed in 2008—Ruleda's profile. Exact match. The curly hair? His. Johnny's "confession"? Fabricated under duress. The system had executed the wrong man. Rueda? Indicted for Bryson in 2004, he pleaded no contest—life added to life. No charges for Benz—the statute expired, they claimed. But his words sealed it: he was the Halloween phantom.
Why the miscarriage? Rushed policing in a Bible Belt town hungry for vengeance. Erdmann's sloppiness—discarding evidence that could have saved Johnny. A snitch's lies. And deeper: Johnny's vulnerabilities—his abuse history and intellectual disabilities—made him an easy mark. Dr Lewis noted, "He feared his past abuse revealed more than the needle." Texas executed a broken boy for a monster's crime.
Even 44 years on, echoes linger. In July 2025, the Innocence Project filed renewed motions with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, citing Rueda's confession tapes (unsealed in 2024 via FOIA). Bishop Leroy Matthiesen, who knew Sister Tadea, broke decades of silence in a diocesan statement: "The sisters grieve doubly—for Tadea and for the innocent life lost." Petitions for posthumous pardon garner 50,000 signatures; Change.org campaigns urge Gov. Abbott to act. No hearing yet, but momentum builds amid Texas's wrongful conviction crisis (over 30 DNA exonerations since 2000). Rueda, 80, died in prison in March 2025—natural causes. His passing closed no doors; it slammed them on accountability. Will Johnny's name be cleared before another Halloween? The dead wait, but the living fight.
Sister Tadea Benz died serving light in darkness. Johnny Frank Garrett died betrayed by it. This Halloween, as costumes mask the world, remember: True monsters wear no disguise—they hide in flawed systems, discarded evidence, and unchecked power. What do you think—wrongful execution or cosmic injustice? Drop your thoughts in the comments; let's discuss. If this tale gripped you, like, share, and subscribe for more unvarnished truths. Stay vigilant, stay curious. Until next time, this is Cosette signing off from True Crime Tales. Sweet dreams... or not.
