Mexican police arrest priest, allege he murdered pregnant mistress

Published: 2006-04-21

MEXICO CITY (CNS) -- Police in a Mexico City suburb arrested a Catholic priest for allegedly murdering his pregnant mistress on Easter. Authorities said Father Cesar Torres Martinez, 42, confessed to strangling 22-year-old Veronica Andrade Salinas after she confronted him over the pregnancy and demanded money. Father Torres had just presided over a pre-dawn Easter Mass at Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Netzahualcoyotl, just east of Mexico City, when Andrade confronted him in the rectory, the state prosecutor's office said in an April 19 statement. After a deadly struggle, the priest dismembered Andrade's body with a kitchen knife in the rectory bathroom and dumped the remains in a plastic bag outside a local cemetery, the prosecutor's office said. Father Torres said he was having an affair with Andrade, who was survived by an 18-month-old daughter, according to the prosecutor's office.

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