Chalice and accordion stolen from murdered Doon priest, as police reveal new suspects
Doon, Ryan's Fr At Gleeson Limerick St Graveyard, Co Fintan's Grave Brendan Patrick Picture:
Police who have reopened the investigation into the 1981 murder of a Limerick priest have revealed that a chalice and an accordion were stolen during the incident at a motel room in Texas.
Fr Patrick Ryan, 49, from Doon, Co Limerick, was found naked, bound, and beaten to death in his motel room in Odessa in December 1981. An Apache Native American, James Reyos, was convicted in 1983 after he falsely admitted to the murder, before recanting.
A decision is being awaited on a court application to have the conviction of James Reyos overturned by the Court of Appeal in Texas in the coming months.
Odessa Police Department reopened the investigation into the murder recently following the identification of three suspects after fingerprints taken from the scene in 1981 found matches in the US national fingerprint system last year.
The suspects — Vietnam War veteran Bobby Collins, Gary Ehrman, and Charles Burkart — are all since deceased.
Ehrman was a guest in the motel on the night of the murder, while Collins and Burkart lived in Odessa. Collins was buried with military honours in 2012 and was the holder of two Purple Hearts, an honour given to those wounded or killed while serving with the US military.
Chief Mike Gerke of the Odessa Police Department said: “We can place all three in Odessa at that time — at least two of them lived there and one of them was actually checked into the same motel at the time of the murder, so there is a lot more linking all three of these people to the crime than there ever was with Mr Reyos.”
Police have established that a chalice, an accordion, and personal items including Fr Ryan's wallet were stolen in the incident.
But Chief Gerke said: “Who knows if that was the original motive. Sometimes that becomes the secondary motive, after the crime has been committed.
"It is very hard to establish that when we are looking at this case now, 40 or more years later, trying to piece it all back together when we have so many of the witnesses and so many of the people involved cannot be talked to anymore because they have passed away.”
He stressed that no prior connection between the three suspects and Fr Ryan has been established.
Mr Reyos met the Doon native three weeks before the murder when Fr Ryan gave him a spin when he saw him hitch-hiking. Both lived in Denver City in Texas and met a number of times in the following three weeks.
Mr Reyos, who is now 66 years old, says that Fr Ryan forced him to engage in oral sex when he visited his apartment a day before the murder in December 1981.
He says he bears no grudge against the authorities in Texas for his conviction after he confessed in a drink- and drug-fuelled moment 11 months after the murder.