AMARILLO, Texas -- A man held on burglary and attempted rape charges in a Halloween night attack on a young woman is a suspect in the rape and beating death of a 76-year-old nun, police said Wednesday.
Homicide Capt. Jimmy Davis said the suspect, Fernando Flores, 28, a Cuban refugee, was charged Tuesday in Saturday night's burglary and attempted rape.
Davis said that incident occurred about four or five miles from the St. Francis Convent, where Sister Tadea Benz was raped and beaten to death earlier that morning.
Davis said investigators had gathered physical evidence in the case, such as hairs and fibers, which would be flown to Washington Thursday for analysis.
He said Flores appeared to have drifted to Amarillo from a resettlement camp elsewhere in the country but said 'we don't completely know about his travels yet.'
He said the suspect had been questioned in the death of Sister Tadea but that 'we keep getting the same old answers.'
Davis said the 20-man investigative team he heads would continue to look into recent attacks on elderly women in the area -- including a weekend attack that left an elderly women in a coma and the July 9 rape and slaying of an elderly widow who also lived near the convent.
'We're going to wait (on the analysis of the hairs and fibers) and see what we got,' he said.
Sister Tadea's body was found Saturday by nuns who thought she had died from a fall. Police summoned to the convent later that day to investigate a burglary learned of the elderly nun's death.
A subsequent autopsy found Sister Tadea's larynx was crushed, her left eye was blackened and her body was covered with knuckle marks and gouges.
A group of parishioners had offered to pay for a security system to protect the other frightened nuns at the convent, and officials at Amarillo National Bank have posted a $4,500 reward for information in the slaying.
