Siegfried - The Conclusion
From Immigrant to International Fugitive, the Life and Death of a Man of God
XXI.
Detective Phillippi contacted a Department of State officer, who placed a ‘lookout’ on Widera’s passport. The agent also contacted Interpol. The U.S. Marshals Service placed an Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution warrant on Siegfried Widera’s case. The UFAP was rejected by courts for a lack of evidence. A cruise did not necessarily signal unlawful flight. The Marshal’s revised their UFAP warrant and again it was rejected. This alarmed Phillippi. Her perpetrator could disappear as the courts bickered over arguments of definition.
*
While they waited for the UFAP to pass muster, Phillippi and the other detectives working the case returned to potential victims in West Allis and the surrounding towns. By now word had gotten out about the investigation. Though some men were coming forward about their interactions with Widera as boys, many were reluctant. As one put it, “I have friends who are married now; they’re victims, too, but they don’t want to come forward because that would cause too many problems in their lives.”
*
Another man was more than ready to talk. After contacting the District Attorney’s office, he showed up at the West Allis Police Station and spoke with Phillippi and others. He told them that Widera’s molestations were most common following morning mass, inside the sacristy. He also said that old Father Setnicar knew about this; Setnicar had caught Widera. “Widera was tickling me and had moved his hands down to touch my genitals.” Setnicar walked in and Widera stopped. After that, Setnicar kept a closer eye on the young priest and demanded Siegfried no longer bring boys back to the rectory.
*
In late May, another man came into the West Allis Police Department. As a child, he and his family had been members of St. Andrew’s in Delavan, Siegfried’s last stop in Wisconsin. He’d liked Widera. Widera acted like “a regular guy and not just a priest.” He told the detectives of an evening early in the summer of 1976, just before Widera left the Parish for good. Fr. Siegfried had come by the house. The boys were excited. It was a big deal for the father to visit any kid at home. The man and his brother begged their mother to let the priest stay for dinner and were happy when she obliged. While their mother moved to the kitchen to prepare the meal, Father Siegfried began his tickling. He had the boy sit on his lap. At some point, without realizing it, the man’s father came home from work. He told the boys to go into the kitchen with their mother. After a while, they realized that Widera had left the house. He wouldn’t be eating dinner with the family. The boys were incredibly disappointed. “Devastated,” he said. After that evening, he and his brother weren’t allowed around Fr. Siegfried. They didn’t understand. In fact, they were resentful and angry at their father for this new rule. Two decades passed before their father filled them in on what had actually transpired that day:
Dad said while we were being tickled by Widera our mother witnessed Widera touching both [my] and my brother’s penises. She was shocked at what she saw and did not believe her eyes until she saw it happen several times. When our father arrived home from work, she told him what she had seen. Our father also witnessed Widera touching our genitals. At this point he ordered us into the kitchen. Dad said that when we were in the kitchen he ordered Widera out of the house, and threatened to beat him if he ever had contact with his children again.
After that day, Father Siegfried actively ignored the two boys.
The next day, another man who’d served as an altar boy at St. Andrew’s in Delavan came to the Police Department. Detective Fabry took his statement. He confirmed the tickling but said he’d never been touched inappropriately by the pastor. What he remembers was a special outing Siegfried had planned for the boy and the priest. They were to go together to Lake Delavan. Siegfried borrowed Otto’s fishing boat. The trip was set for August of 1975, but as the day approached, the boy grew a bit uncomfortable with the idea of being alone with a priest. He invited a friend of his to go along—not informing Widera about this development. The three went fishing together as planned, but Widera’s attitude changed the instant he found out the boy was not going alone. The trip was short. Widera was quiet. That evening, they dropped off the extra boy first. Widera’s attitude changed again. He began tickling his victim in the VW van. “He was tickling so hard it hurt. He began to touch my penis. He invited me to touch his.” The boy became terrified and refused. Widera drove him home and ignored him from that point onward. He was never invited on another outing.
*
How these victims, which were now near-daily presences at the station, coped with the abuse differed dramatically. Many had drinking and/or substance abuse problems. Many had troubles in their marriages: they were closed-off, afraid of intimacy. Another, however, had turned his life radically toward Catholicism. Paul Yoder had been arrested and had two restraining orders against him filed by priests. His wife explained this to the detectives. “He’s a very devout person. He gets upset when he sees priests not treating the Eucharist, the Body of Christ, properly—not giving it the respect that it is due.” Yoder himself, perhaps as a byproduct of his devoutness, was reluctant to say much incriminating about the priest. He told Phillippi they would go swimming at the Eagles’ Club. “He took his trunks off and swam around the pool naked. Then he took my trunks off and held me close to his body. He looked at my body and hugged me.” But this only happened once, Yoder insisted. “Father was nice to me. Maybe he was drinking or something when he did this.” Paul Yoder did admit that Father Siegfried often plied him with pornography. He continued to stand by the notion, however, that Widera had been a good priest.
*
Yoder’s zealous behavior—bordering on the criminal—was not an anomaly. Another of Father Siegfried’s victims had turned toward the Church with a maniacal desire. Detectives mention an encounter with a man, Charles Landry. Landry claimed to be a victim of Widera’s. The detectives note the following from their interview with the man:
Landry had a supernatural encounter with an angel while considering suicide. He heard the voice of a blessed spirit who actually touched him. The blessed being felt like a blanket around his shoulders. Landry heard a voice say, ''Get on your knees". He got down on his knees and his life changed. At that time, Charles said he was very messed up emotionally. The blessed spirit knew that he was lonely and needed work. Two weeks later, Landry met a girl and she helped him get a job. He said the supernatural encounter occurred on February 10th, which is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Landry admits that his religious practices could be considered extreme, "like the saints of old". He said he has profound and subtle gifts, including the gift to share messages with other people. During my interview with Landry he held a rosary and church music played in the background.
When the detectives checked Charles Landry’s background, they noted that he had a number of arrests for disorderly conduct. Landry explained that these were borne from his desire to spread the Word. Essentially, he evangelized on street corners, “which is something he likes to do. Some of the disorderly conduct citations were for speaking out and giving messages to people. He has no doubt that the Holy Spirit led him to speak out. Landry said that he has not been given any messages for a couple of years. He further said that he likes to attend different churches.”
*
And it wasn’t only boys, now. Women who had had unwanted sexual interactions with Fr. Siegfried as girls came forward. One woman arrived at the West Allis station on May 30; she told Detective Phillippi that while a student at St. Mary’s in Port Washington, Widera would sometimes come up to her in the lunch line and pinch her nipples through her shirt. She told Phillippi he did this to other girls. When Phillippi asked how many times it had occurred to her personally, the woman said too often to count.
*
Another woman recalled an afternoon in the winter of 1973. She was walking from the convent to the school through a tunnel beneath a footbridge. Father Widera was waiting for her in the shadows. He called out to her. She followed him into the darkness, at which point Widera pulled out his penis and asked her to take a look at it. She ran away.
*
But mostly, it was the boys. “He went for the shy, heavyset boys,” a woman recalled, “not the athletic types. He liked the type that sat on the side and watched everyone else.”
*
Somebody tipped the police to talk to Father James Vojtik.
*
The careers of Fathers Vojtik and Widera intersected in a number of strange ways. Widera had been the replacement for Vojtik and St. Mary Help of Christian and then the two had worked together, briefly, in Delavan. They were roughly the same age and loved by the children. Vojtik was a devout man, a caring one, who would take some of the children onto the roof of the rectory to fly kites. Vojtik told the detectives the following:
*
"I arrived in '75 at St. Andrew’s—June or July. Widera was already there. At some point the Pastor told me that he was getting psychiatric help or counseling and that Widera ‘had trouble with boys.’ Widera was supposed to be monitored while at St. Andrew’s. I supposed the Pastor was monitoring him. On the day I was leaving, two ladies rushed into the Rectory after morning mass. They were very upset and very shaken by what they saw. They had attended morning mass and they witnessed Father Widera performing a sex act in the Sacristy with two boys. They came in and told me that they had ‘seen him in the act’ with a young server and saw him with a young child. The ladies were shaken up and crying. The procedure back then was you tell the Pastor and the Pastor took care of it. This time I called the Priest Personnel Board or the Chancellery directly to report what had happened. I don't remember which but it was one of them. I left the parish that afternoon and Widera left the parish that next day; the Diocese moved him almost immediately. I'm not sure what happened but I think there was something that he could not serve in a priestly capacity in Milwaukee. I don't know if Widera was confronted. I believe they passed that off on the Pastor. I don't know if I told the Pastor or not. I did tell the Executive of the Priest Board, Father John Wellbauer and I think I also told Father Bob Sampon."
*
Phillippi followed up on this by interviewing one of the women Vojtik had mentioned at her house in Delavan. The woman said, “We were in the church saying prayers after morning mass. We heard noises coming from the sacristy. We had heard rumors about Widera before and we knew that something was going on. Widera sounded like he was roughing them up. We could hear the two boys crying out, very matter of fact, ‘No! Stop it!’ We knew the boys and knew what he was doing to them in there. We went to the rectory and told Father Vojtik.”
XXII.
A break in the case came on May 28th, 2002. A supervisor from the Help Desk of Holland America Cruise Line told Detective Phillippi that, upon inspecting the Help Desk records, they noticed that Siegfried Widera had disembarked from the cruise in the U.S.A. He’d come back to America. The UFAP was now not important.
*
The District Attorney’s office helped Phillippi’s team place subpoenas on Widera’s cellphone and credit cards. His VISA account showed charges from the Buccaneer Resort in Marathon, Florida, on May 24. From there they followed a trail of charges that showed Widera moving west through southern Texas toward Arizona. The charges ended abruptly in Portland, Texas, a small town just north of Corpus Christi.
*
Another complication sprouted. Days after a warrant was placed on two of his cars, the cars were retitled. They’d been transferred out of Siegfried’s name and into Tucson Container Corp. New plates were issued. Authorities added the new plates to the warrant and waited for Widera to reappear in Tucson.
*
Six months passed. In January of 2003, Deputy U.S. Marshal Doug Bachert alerted Ann Phillippi to a development: in El Paso, Texas, Siegfried Widera had been given a different car, a 2000 Buick, listed to West Texas Container Corp., owned by John Widera. The Buick was spotted at the border, crossing into Juarez.
XXIII.
In the mornings, every morning, the old man rode his rusted Schwinn bicycle to the McDonalds on Avenida Camarón Sábalo in Mazatlán, across the street from the Sea of Cortes. He chained it outside and ordered the senior citizen breakfast: an Egg McMuffin with coffee. The meal ran him $1.60. He sat in a booth alone and ate and read the bible for two hours, leaving, finally, at nine in the morning.
*
He lived in a room with prison cell dimensions, six-feet by ten-feet, adorned with no paint and no wallpaper, no carpet. The room was in a house owned by a woman and her husband, who was dying of cancer. There was no hot water in the common bathroom. The stairs were so steep and so narrow he had to descend them backwards. The rent was $35 a month. Sometimes the man, this foreigner who said his name was Fred, worried about being able to cover the expense.
*
He took lunches at homeless shelters or from his landlords, Hector and Elvira Quintero. The Quintero’s were not wealthy. They were, in fact, bordering on destitution. But they were good people, strong Catholics, and they believed in charity. They fed anybody who needed a meal. Of their tenant’s hunger they reported, “He would lick the plate clean. It was like he was famished.” Hector was fifty-seven; his days on earth were ending. In exchange for meals, Fred often drove the man to pharmacies or to see doctors. This was before the registration on his Buick expired. When that happened, Fred decided not to pay to have it renewed and abandoned the car, opting for the Schwinn he found at a garage sale.
*
Fred was a kind man, they recalled. He attended mass at Guadalupe Roman Catholic Church in the company of Elvira. They walked together to the church, arm in arm, Fred there to stabilize her, to offer strength. They discussed God quite a bit. After mass the two stayed in the pews, Elvira discussing her fears and her sadness regarding the soon-to-be death of her beloved Hector. Fred listened. He was good at that. He knew the bible so well.
*
One thing Fred would not discuss was his past.
*
This was not especially unusual—not in Mazatlán. With its resorts along the Malecón—one of the world’s longest boardwalks—and its lighthouse on a steep cliff overlooking a bay of fishing boats, its proximity to the sea and to the United States, its sunshine, the city appeals to retirees from all over the world. It also appeals to norteños on their way south, men and women who are running from something—sometimes big, sometimes small. The locals don’t ask questions. Of Fred, Elvira Quintero told the L.A. Times, “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.”
*
There were practical reasons not to pry. Mazatlán is a resort town of half a million that so happens to sit in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, just east of the Baja Peninsula. This makes the city an interstitial zone for the Sinaloa Cartel and the Tijuana Cartel. For decades the two gangs have been involved in a gory rivalry. To know too much, to ask too many questions, is foolish.
*
But that world operates in nearly another dimension to the one along the Malecón, where wealthy white people rent bikes and shop or lay out in the sun along the beach. Aside from the Quintero’s, Fred hung out with a group of expatriates—nearly all of them men. His relationship with them was quite different than that with his landlords. The expatriates were typically fashionable, retired, successes in their industries. Fred smelled. He was overweight and very very pale. He drank too much and embarrassed himself. They kept him around out of pity.
*
At Christmastime 2002, at a party where people took turns passing the phone to one another so that folks could make calls back home to their loved ones, Hector Quintero handed the phone to a drunk Fred, who, through teary eyes, said, “I’ve no one to call.”
*
At nights he rode the rusted Schwinn down the Avenue del Mar. The surf crashed against the seawall. In the late winterthe tide was violent and storm surges crashed violently and the Malecón was abandoned by tourists and peddlers and Fred could be alone. He was sixty-two years old. His entire life had been a fight against being alone. He had resorted to horrific measures to avoid it. In Mazatlán, the sea was violent and loud, but the sky was clear.
XXIV.
On May 25th, 2003, Siegfried Widera walked to early mass at Guadalupe Roman Catholic Church. He went alone this morning. A young man who lived in the room next door to Widera, Emiliano Bautista, saw him walking back to his apartment when he was approached by three men. They spoke to Widera for a moment before placing him in a van. The men were plainclothes officers with Agencia Federal de Investigaciones. They drove Widera from the Quintero’s rooming house to the Vista Dorada Hotel, where they’d booked a room on the third floor for the purposes of interrogating the priest. The Vista Dorada was on the busy Avenue del Mar, a white and pink stucco building with small balconies for all the rooms facing the sea. They took Widera through a back door and up to the room. They asked Widera questions, and he answered. The priest asked for paper and a pen. They offered him the hotel’s pad. Widera wrote two notes. He addressed the first one “To Whom It May Concern.” In it, he said that he was sorry for what had happened in the past. He asked God to have mercy on his soul. He thanked his family for always sticking by him. Whatever assets he had back in the States he wanted to have divided between his siblings. The other note, written on stationary from the Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas, was meant to serve as a last will and testament. Everything he possessed in Mazatlán was to go to Elvira and Hector Quintero. When he was done he placed the two notes on the coffee table and, in a sudden movement, went from the sofa to the balcony. He swung one leg and then the other over the third-floor railing and dove head-first to the concrete below.
*
It would be tidy to suggest that the building from which he jumped mirrored the ruined apartment flats of his childhood in Dortmund. It would be tidy, but it would also be true. And since that is the case, it might be tidy but also it might be true, as true as untrue, that Siegfried Widera spent his final seconds as a bomb spends its—falling with all of the weight of the destruction built to bring down upon this earth.
Notes:
All victims and their familial folks have had their names radically changed to the point that I hope you could never find them.
Those in charge are named.
Aside from a FOIA request on Otto’s background and an hour-long conversation with Detective Phillippi, everything written above was found via Google.
The matter is still under investigation in California, as of September of 2023 (https://www.ocregister.com/2023/09/14/case-against-notorious-oc-priest-could-be-1st-in-new-wave-of-sexual-abuse-trials/).
I placed this piece on hold, waiting for Sean Emery of the Orange County Register to let me know if I should put this out or not. Emery did not respond.