Colorado Community Mourns 2 Slain Priests; Police Hold Suspect

PUEBLO, Colo. —  As a community mourns two priests who were stabbed to death in the rectory of St. Leander Catholic Church, a 20-year-old parishioner who lives across the street has been charged in their slayings.

Douglas James Comiskey was a familiar figure at the church, playing basketball at the church gym and helping the priests with a church carnival just last month, neighbors said.

But Comiskey has a troubled past. He was convicted of pawning his mother’s jewelry and a television set, and spent a month in a Denver psychiatric care unit last December.

Comiskey was arrested late Thursday in the slayings of Father Thomas Scheets, 65, St. Leander’s pastor since 1990, and Father Louis Stovik, a 77-year-old retired priest who also lived in the church rectory.

Comiskey, ordered held without bond on first-degree murder charges, waived his initial hearing Friday, and Pueblo County District Judge Adelle Anderson ordered lawyers not to discuss the case. Another hearing was set for Aug. 19.

Police said they still were trying to establish a motive but that they had found enough physical evidence to make an arrest.

Neighbors said the young man they knew as “Dougie” had helped priests at St. Leander as long as they could remember, and parishioners said both priests were welcoming types.

While the blue-collar Latino neighborhood had grown more dangerous in recent years, “Father Louie,” as Stovik was called, would don a jogging suit and headband every day and make three laps around the block.

Scheets also could be seen striding around the parish, wearing biker boots and a black leather jacket, and doling out advice and even cash--sometimes hundreds of dollars at a time--to those in need.

Bob Lopez, 63, who has lived near the church for the last four years, said Scheets gave him money for the deposit on his home. “He was not just my spiritual leader; he was my friend. He was my buddy,” Lopez said.

Scheets “was well-known as being an easy touch,” said Father Bill Powers, a retired priest who lived a block from the victims and discovered their bodies Wednesday evening. “He was attracting the wrong kind of people. We knew this had no place to go but into ruin.”

More than a hundred mourners sang hymns in Spanish and English at a candlelight vigil outside the church Thursday night.

“I just met both of [the priests] two days ago and now they’re gone,” said Beatrice Espinoza of Layton, Utah, who was in town visiting family. “I don’t see how anyone could do something like this to two beautiful people who were here to help people.”