A FUGITIVE PRIEST’S LAST, LEAN DAYS

MAZATLAN, Mexico —  Father Siegfried Widera, one of the most wanted sex-crime fugitives in North America, lived quietly for 10 months in this Pacific coast city, known as a refuge for Americans on the run.

For Widera, a man who once owned five cars and a home adjacent to a golf course, Mazatlan became a kind of purgatory.

As his money dwindled, Widera, a priest who hadn’t worn a Roman collar for 17 years, settled into a room that rented for $35 a month. He abandoned his car and got around on a rusty three-speed bike. He took free meals offered by a poor local family, ordered a $1.50 breakfast each day at McDonald’s and dined on food samples in local stores, according to those who knew him here only as “Fred.”

But Widera’s efforts to evade capture -- avoiding cash withdrawals and use of credit cards -- ultimately proved futile. Questioned by Mexican authorities who caught up with him last month after a year in hiding, Widera bolted from a hotel room and leaped from a third-floor breezeway window, falling 29 feet to the hotel’s parking lot. He died that day at a nearby Red Cross hospital. He was 62.

Among his effects, investigators found a suicide note -- dated May 25, the day he died -- asking for forgiveness.

“I am so sorry for what I did in the past,” reads a translation of the letter provided by Mexican authorities. “I ask God to have mercy on my soul. Thanks especially to my family. Sometimes I wanted to know how you survived all this. God will reward you. That will be my last wish.”

His death marked the end of a yearlong manhunt for Widera, whom United States marshals called one of the most wanted sex-crime fugitives in the Western Hemisphere. He faced 42 felony counts of molestation in two states. The alleged incidents, some involving boys as young as 6, took place from 1969 to 1985 while Widera was a priest in Milwaukee and Orange County.

Stretching from Tucson to the Caribbean and from El Paso to Mazatlan, the search involved traced credit cards, false leads and a trail that went cold for months after Widera slipped into Mexico.

Those involved said the dogged pursuit was needed because of what they described as Widera’s compulsion to molest children -- acts so perverse that veteran police officers are still haunted by the details three decades later.

“He spent 30 years preying on kids,” said Douglas Bachert, a deputy U.S. marshal from Milwaukee who headed the search. “People around him had no idea who he was and what he was all about.”

Widera was ordained in 1967 and began parish work in Milwaukee. Despite a conviction on molestation charges in 1973 that resulted in probation, Widera was allowed to stay with the church. He was transferred in 1976 to the Diocese of Orange. Although the Milwaukee diocese warned of “a moral problem” with a boy, Orange County church officials say they did not know about the conviction.

In 1985, a woman complained to the Orange diocese about Widera’s sexual misconduct with her two sons. He was sent to a New Mexico treatment center for eight months, a program law enforcement officials said he did not complete, and was stripped by the bishop of his ability to function as a priest in Orange County. Formally, however, Widera remained a priest till his death.

After the treatment, Widera remade himself as a Tucson businessman, working at a family-owned business--the Tucson Container Corp. He lived adjacent to a country club, owned a small fleet of cars and played golf regularly.

Nearly two decades later, the anonymity of Widera’s life came to an end as the Roman Catholic Church’s sex scandal erupted.

In early April 2002, an Orange County man filed a lawsuit against Widera, alleging the priest had molested him and his brother in 1985. The news accounts detailed Widera’s past, and additional alleged victims stepped forward in Milwaukee and Orange County.

Fleeing public scrutiny, Widera left that month for a Caribbean cruise.

On May 22, three days after returning from the cruise and checking into a Florida Keys resort, Widera was charged in Milwaukee with nine felony counts of molestation, acts that allegedly took place between 1970 and 1973. By May 24, the day the charges were made public, Widera disappeared. Law enforcement officials tracked his movements by his Visa card, though investigators were always at least a day behind as Widera zigzagged his way across the south in a 2002 Lincoln Town Car. On June 10, he pulled in to Portland, Texas, where he used his credit card for what would be the last time at a gas station. Sometime within the next month, he swapped the Lincoln for a late-model Buick registered to West Texas Container Corp., a company owned by his brother.

With the trail cold, the task force developed a profile of Widera to determine where he was likely to go. He was a golfer used to a luxurious life. He liked to eat and drink. He enjoyed warm weather. They figured he had driven into Mexico, where he would probably gravitate to resort towns with golf courses.

“We were looking for an elderly white guy in Mexico, which is filled with American retirees,” Bachert said. “It was a needle in a haystack.”

While U.S. investigators searched for clues, Widera obtained a six-month permit for his car to enter Mexico on July 12 and crossed the border in Ciudad Juarez, according to the U.S. marshal. Friends in Mazatlan say he drove more than 15 hours across mountain passes to arrive in Mazatlan two days later.

On his first day in the resort town, he met Hector Enrique Quintero Cervantes, a former hotel worker who said he is dying of cancer. Quintero, 57, said in an interview that he had had no prior acquaintance with Widera but nonetheless agreed to co-sign his lease for a $300-a-month apartment about a block from a beach-front path known as the malecon.

Quintero said he only knew Widera as “Fred.”

“We didn’t ask where he had come from. We didn’t care. What we saw was someone who was lonely, someone who needed help,” said Quintero’s wife, Elvira.

Widera often accepted food from the Quinteros. “He would lick the plate clean. It was like he was famished,” Elvira Quintero said. In return, he offered car rides to the store and friendship to a dying man.

Widera also fell in with a small group of older U.S. and Canadian men, who became part of his daily routine. Though they saw one another often, the men said they never knew anything about Widera’s past or his last name.

He would wake up after 7 a.m. and eat at a McDonald’s near the beach. Restaurant owner Jorge Perez said Widera would regularly order a senior citizen special: Egg McMuffin with sausage for 70 cents, and a coffee for 80 cents. Perez said Widera would stay in the air-conditioned restaurant for two hours, often reading the Bible.

He would often drop by to visit his new English-speaking friends. Wilfred Ziegler, a native of British Columbia, said he met Widera in July 2002. Ziegler kept the friendship going, he said, out of pity. “Whenever you would ask him about himself, he would get tight-lipped,” he said. “We just thought it would be better to leave things alone.”

On weekends, Widera began accompanying Elvira Quintero to the Guadalupana Roman Catholic Church, six blocks from her home. The Rev. Javier Gonzalez said he regularly saw Widera in a back row next to Elvira Quintero at the 7 a.m. Sunday Mass.

In October, Widera moved to a cheaper apartment for $200 per month. At Christmas, Widera appeared at the Quintero household, where family members were gathered. He brought nothing but ate two T-bone steaks.

As is traditional at many holidays in Mexico, everyone phoned a loved one who was not present. “I asked him if he wanted to call anyone,” Quintero said. “He said he had no one to call.”

By March, Ziegler said, it was clear that Widera’s funds were dwindling.

He had stopped using the car except for emergencies. He bought a rusted three-speed Schwinn bicycle at a garage sale.

Back in the United States, authorities needed new leads after nearly 11 months of searching. They held a press conference May 2 in El Paso, where they handed out photos of Widera to the news media -- both U.S. and Mexican -- and said he was a danger to children on both sides of the border. Tips began pouring in.

In Mexico a few days later, Widera moved to an even cheaper apartment -- a barren 6-by-10-foot room in a home owned by Elvira Quintero that he rented for $35 a month. He used a common bathroom with no hot water; the stairs were so steep he needed to descend them backward.

Acting on a tip, authorities found Widera’s car, which was registered to his brother’s company, and moved in on the fugitive May 25. Emiliano Santiago Bautista, a 21-year-old student who rented a room next to Widera’s, said three plainclothes officers approached Widera as he returned from Mass.

Widera was taken to the Vista Dorada Hotel. Claudia Banuelos, spokesman for the Mexican Agencia Federal de Investigaciones, which is akin to the FBI, said three agents had checked into the 39-room hotel that day and spoke to Widera in their room.

Mexican authorities decline to say how, but sometime that afternoon Widera got out of the room and jumped to his death.

His brother, John Widera of Costa Mesa, blamed overzealous government agents, plaintiff attorneys and journalists for unfairly portraying Siegfried as a monster instead of a man who had lived a productive life for 17 years after leaving the church.

“Our heart goes out to any victims that my brother may have wronged,” said John Widera, who ran a family-owned shipping container business where Siegfried served as vice president. “He was no threat to society [anymore]. He’s getting a bad rap.”

But John Habermann, who said he was molested by Widera from 1969 to 1976 in the Milwaukee area, said he was grateful to investigators.

Habermann said the sexual abuse left his life in shambles, even prompting him to attempt suicide after Widera decided to run from the law. “This is like prosecuting war criminals,” he said. “There shouldn’t be a time limit.”

A psychiatrist in 1985 warned the Diocese of Orange that Widera would rather run than be arrested and “felt suicidal over thoughts of jail.”

Habermann said he wasn’t surprised that Widera killed himself.

“When he assaulted me as a kid, he did what he wanted,” Habermann said. “When he was facing charges, he did what he wanted [by taking off]. And when he got cornered by the police and killed himself, he did what he wanted.

“On the positive side, he’s not affecting any more kids’ lives.”

Since Widera’s death, Elvira Quintero has asked a priest in Mazatlan to dedicate six Masses to her U.S. friend since his death. She and the pastor chose a pseudonym to avoid controversy -- announcing the dedications not to Siegfried or Fred, but to “Alfredo.”

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Mena reported from Mazatlan, and Lobdell reported from Orange County.