Authorities investigating the slaying of a priest arrested the church janitor on Saturday, alleging he stabbed the cleric 32 times with a kitchen knife after arguing with him in the rectory.
Morris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi said 64-year-old Jose Feliciano was charged in the murder of the Reverend Ed Hinds, whose body was found on Friday in the rectory kitchen of St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Chatham.
The announcement of Feliciano’s arrest was met with shock and tears at Saturday evening Mass, a double blow to the church community where the priest had served for six years and the janitor had worked for 17.
The pair got into an argument on Thursday evening, and it was during the altercation that Feliciano grabbed a knife and stabbed the 61-year-old Hinds multiple times, Bianchi said.
Feliciano, who also faces weapons charges, was arrested on Saturday.
Bianchi said investigators found the priest’s cellphone, bloody clothing and bloody towels at Feliciano’s home in Easton, Pennsylvania, about72km west of Chatham.
Bianchi said Feliciano was one of two people who looked for Hinds after the priest failed to show up for 8am Mass on Friday. The pair found the body, and Bianchi said Feliciano was performing CPR on Hinds when officers arrived and his halfhearted attempts struck them as suspicious.
Bianchi said Feliciano’s son graduated from the church’s school and his daughter is a student there.
The priest, dressed in his clerical robes, had wounds on his upper torso, the back of his body and his head that were created by a kitchen knife, officials said. Hinds also had defensive wounds on his hands and face, Bianchi said. An autopsy determined that the cause of death was severe trauma.
The slaying rocked the community of about 10,000 residents located 40km west of New York City. It was the first violent death in tiny, affluent Chatham since a 1990 manslaughter case.
Parishioner Michael Marotta, 47, said he would not have hesitated to leave his three children in the care of either Hinds or Feliciano, whom he described as caring, quiet, hardworking men.
Marotta, whose 10-year-old son is enrolled at St. Patrick’s School, said Feliciano lived in a home next to the church until a few years ago.
“Everyone loses in this,” said Marotta, who lives down the street from the church.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS