Ex-priest escaping sex cases

May 27, 2003
A former U.S. priest who crossed into Mexico to escape sex abuse charges in California and Wisconsin died after leaping from the third-story balcony of a hotel in this resort city, authorities said Monday.

Federal and state agents surrounded the Vista Dorada Hotel just off one of Mazatlan's most-popular beaches Sunday and planned to arrest Siegfried F. Widera, who was accused of 42 counts of child molestation in the United States.

Minutes after authorities arrived, Widera ran to the balcony of his room and jumped, said Marta Gutierrez, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office in Sinaloa, where Mazatlan is located.

Gutierrez said it was unclear why 62-year-old ex-priest threw himself off the balcony but that he may have been trying to escape capture. He died of severe cranial trauma as members of Mazatlan's Red Cross were rushing him to a nearby hospital, she said.

Widera's room was on the hotel's second floor but was three stories up because the first floor is located above the lobby, Vista Dorada officials said.

Gutierrez said Widera had not been accused of wrongdoing in Mexico but that federal and state authorities ordered his arrest at the request of their U.S. counterparts. Mexico had planned to extradite the fugitive priest to the United States shortly after his arrest, she said.

Gutierrez said it was unclear how long Widera had been in Mazatlan, 530 miles northwest of Mexico City on the Pacific coast, but that he probably came there from Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso.

The manhunt for Widera had expanded from Milwaukee and California's Orange County to Tucson, El Paso and the service's liaison office in Mexico City, U.S. Marshal William Kruziki said.

This month authorities in Texas said Widera had been spotted in west Texas, southern New Mexico and northern Mexico and that he may have been trying to work as a priest in small villages in northern Mexico.

Gutierrez said it was unclear if Widera had been acting as a priest in Mazatlan or anywhere in the country.