A former Roman Catholic priest described as one of the most wanted sex-crime fugitives in the Western Hemisphere fell to his death from the balcony of a Mazatlan hotel as Mexican officials closed in to arrest him, authorities said Monday.
Siegfried F. Widera, 62, wanted on 42 counts of child molestation, including several in Orange County, and the subject of a yearlong manhunt in Mexico and the United States, died of severe cranial trauma after members of Mazatlan's Red Cross rushed him to a hospital near the Vista Dorada Hotel, just off one of Mazatlan's most popular beaches Sunday, officials said.
"Widera had posed a significant danger to children in both nations," said U.S. Marshal William Kruziki, who had been involved in the search. "His death in Mexico is a sad ending to a tremendously complicated and sad life."
Though law enforcement officials said Widera had leapt to his death in an apparent suicide, members of his family Monday disputed that, saying they had been told by a representative of the U.S. Consulate that he fell while trying to escape.
"We are taking steps" to find out what actually happened, Widera's brother John said in an interview from his home.
Widera had been a fugitive since May 2002, when Milwaukee authorities filed nine sexual abuse charges against him.
In October, Orange County prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Widera, charging him with 33 counts of child molestation involving four boys between 1978 and 1985. The alleged molestations occurred while Widera was a priest at St. Justin Martyr Church in Anaheim and St. Martin de Porres Church in Yorba Linda.
He had been ordained a priest in 1967 and six years later was convicted of sexual misconduct with an adolescent boy in Milwaukee. He was sentenced to three years' probation.
Later, he was accepted into the Diocese of Orange, despite a warning letter from the Milwaukee's then-archbishop saying Widera had a "moral problem having to do with a boy in school."
Widera was finally stripped of his ability to act as a priest in 1986 and moved to Arizona, where, his family says, he lived in a retirement community and did hospital volunteer work.
The U.S., in a statement, went on to say that Widera "eventually became one of the most wanted sex-crimes fugitives in the Western Hemisphere."
Widera had been on the lam for a year, authorities say, but had recently been sighted in West Texas, southern New Mexico and northern Chihuahua, Mexico.
