You're listening to

The Drag.

This podcast contains strong language, references and descriptions of domestic abuse, violence, suicide, and rape.

It also has graphic descriptions of death and abuse in the Catholic Church.

Please take care while listening. It was 1949. World War II had just ended a few years earlier and the Soviet Union had just tested

their atomic bomb.

In the U.S., suburban areas were booming.

In a small town called McAllen, along Texas's southern border, Arturo Torres had just come home from his day as a sophomore at McAllen High School.

He'd just begun to relax when he heard the phone ring.

His mother answered.

When I was 15 years old, my mother got a call from Irene Garza's mother, who was a friend of my

mother's, she said that Irene had been, was invited to a quinsanero, and she wanted to know if I could accompany her to the kinshaena.

And my mother said, of course, I said no, and she said, yes, so I went.

Her mother knew me from church, I guess. Well, she knew my mother also. I knew I was the same age as her daughter.

Arturo had seen Irene Garza around at church and school, but he never really knew her personally,

until that call from Josefina Garza. Yeah, we'd see each other in school all the time.

And if you would see a group of kids from our class, let's say, you'd never see her in the front.

You always see her about two or three rows back.

Just sure.

He was not a very demonstrative person that was out there, you know.

Friend's center.

Yeah.

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