'No hatred': Texas police reopen investigation into brutal 1981 killing of Limerick priest
In a quiet graveyard in east Limerick, a gravestone marks the final resting place of an Irish priest who was found naked, bound, and beaten to death in a motel room in Texas over 40 years ago.
The grave marker bears two photos of Doon native Fr Patrick Ryan — one from the early days of his ministry, and another showing him playing a piano accordion.
The latter brings to mind a gregarious priest with a passion for music, a man known to family and friends as Fr Paddy. It is a world away from the gruesome circumstances of his death in a room of the Sand and Sage Motel in Odessa in the Lone Star State on December 21, 1981. His wallet was also later recovered, away from the crime scene.
Now, police in Odessa have announced a reopening of an investigation into the killing of the priest after the conviction of an Apache Native American has been deemed to be in doubt after the discovery that fingerprints from the scene matched with three other men, who have since died.
Thousands of miles away from St Fintan’s cemetery in Doon, in a room in Austin, Texas, sits the 66-year-old man whose life was irrevocably changed by a chance meeting with Fr Ryan as he hitchhiked in Texas in December 1981. Both men lived in Denver City in Texas at the time. Today, James Reyos is living in transitional accommodation, dreaming that he will get to see the snowy mountains of New Mexico once more.
Since he admitted 40 years ago, in a moment of intoxication from drink and drugs, to the murder of Fr Ryan, his life has been at a standstill.
And despite several attempts by him to have his drunken admission rejected and the case against him thrown out or overturned, he has spent the last 20 years of his life on parole. He spent 20 years before that serving more than half of a 38-year prison sentence imposed for the murder of the Limerick Pallottine priest — a man he had known for just three weeks and whose murder has spawned hundreds of articles in the US media, as well as several documentaries and podcasts.
Fr Ryan had celebrated the silver jubilee of his ordination in Thurles six months before being murdered. After his 1956 ordination, he left Ireland for Tanzania to work in the mission fields until 1965. He returned to the Pallottines in Thurles in 1965 before moving to Stillorgan in Dublin in 1969, where he served as rector of the Pallotine House of Studies for six years.
Three more years were spent in Tanzania before a three-month stint in London, prior to Fr Ryan moving to take up a post in Denver City in Texas in August 1978. He was there for just over three years when he met James Reyos — and before he was murdered.
In the three weeks after meeting the then 25-year-old James Reyos, the Limerick priest never told him his real name, for some unknown reason.
James says now: “When he first picked me up as a hitchhiker on December 6, 1981, I knew him only as Fr John.
He introduced himself to me as John and I knew him for the next three weeks that he was alive as John, as Fr John.”
Anonymity was clearly very important at times to Fr Ryan, who also used a pseudonym when checking into the Sand and Sage Motel in Odessa, 80 miles from his parish in Denver City, on the day of his death.
After he was discovered naked, bound, and beaten to death in his room by a maid, efforts to identify Fr Ryan failed for a number of days — until his parishioners back in Denver City began to worry about him. He had not turned up for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Masses, prompting disquiet among his congregation. The possibility of a connection between the missing priest and the unidentified body in Odessa led to the identification of Fr Ryan four days later.
Not only were the people of his parish in Denver City shocked by his death, but so too were his family and friends back home in Ireland. A Mass took place in Denver City for Fr Ryan, concelebrated by up to 40 priests according to press reports at the time, before his body was flown back to Ireland for burial in his native Doon.
His gravestone, which incorrectly bears his date of death as the day after his murder, contains the words: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”.
Ironically, James Reyos also speaks of forgiveness — but in terms of having to forgive Fr Ryan.
James says that on the day before the murder, Fr Ryan forced him to perform oral sex at his apartment and James left quickly afterwards. On the following day, James returned to Fr Ryan’s home to ask him for a lift to get his car out of an impound lot in New Mexico because, despite what had taken place the previous day, he knew nobody else in the area and needed Fr Ryan’s help.
He says now that when the two men met that day at Fr Ryan’s home, the priest immediately apologised for what had taken place the evening before.
And James says he forgave the priest. He recalls: “I told him that I forgave him, because I am the kind of person who does not hold a grudge against anyone.”
He became a suspect in the case after one of James’ photo albums was found in Fr Ryan’s apartment after his death. But although James was the last known person to have seen Fr Ryan alive, there was a raft of evidence to prove that his drink-and-drug-fuelled admission was false — including multiple witnesses, store receipts, and even a speeding ticket, which proved that he was 200 miles away in the area of Roswell, New Mexico, at the time of the murder.
He was initially ruled out as a suspect in the early days of the investigation and only became a suspect again after his own admission 11 months later. He was convicted of the murder in 1983, though he had immediately recanted his admission.
According to the Innocence Project of Texas: “A forensic psychologist testified at trial that James’ guilt about the incident and his sexuality drove him to a false confession.
Three suspects now identified in the case through fingerprints taken from the scene in 1983 have all died while James served his time in prison. The men were only identified recently through a fingerprint data system which was not available in the early days of the investigation.
Indeed, they might never have been identified if members of the Odessa Police Department had not found the fingerprints in archived files last year and ran them through the national fingerprint database.
His attorney, Allison Clayton of the Innocence Project of Texas, says: “That is devastating for all of us.
Now, James is hoping that the announcement by police earlier this month that they are reopening the case after a review led to “serious questions as to Mr Reyos’ guilt” gives him his best chance of making it back to the Jicarilla Apache Nation Reservation in New Mexico in the coming months.
But he is slow to raise his hopes, saying: “I am just to take every day as it comes.”
Due to turn 67 in May, he suffered a stroke last September and is gradually getting better. But he says his memory and his mobility have been affected.
But he can still remember the first time he met Fr Patrick Ryan as clearly as if it was yesterday. And he can recall the last words his father said to him after his conviction of the murder of the Doon priest, words which have helped him fight year after year to have his name cleared.
He says of those early years after his conviction: “At first I was somewhat bitter because of what I was going through at the time, knowing full well that I had nothing to do with this murder. Anybody would probably have bitter feelings.
His father used those words on a number of different occasions before and following his trial, recalls James.
He adored his father and was grateful for his support through the tough days of his trial in 1983 and suffered deeply when he passed away in 1984.
He says: “My mother passed away in 1972 when I was a sophomore in high school. My dad passed away in 1984, a year after I went to prison.
But ever since, he has hung onto the most important words his father ever used to him about staying strong, saying that to ignore that advice would have meant the words of his father would have been pointless.
He adds: “I possess a positive attitude, which makes me strong inside, and I still reflect on my father’s last words of advice to me. That is what keeps me going.”
As well as the police’s reopening of the investigation, his case has been taken on by the Innocence Project of Texas in a bid to have his conviction overturned, as the reopening of the case by police will not give James his freedom.
His attorney, Allison Clayton, says there is a long process ahead over the coming weeks and months.
She says: “I have filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus which is the initial document that starts up the litigation formally. The State has 30 days to file its response, after which the trial court has another 20 days to decide whether it’s going to hold a hearing in the case or whether it’s going to rule without a hearing.
"In this case, it is infamous to Odessa, Texas, and New Mexico at least.
“If the court sets a hearing, which we think it will do, after that it will issue what is called a finding of fact and conclusions of law. Essentially, what it does is list the facts of the case and its procedural history and it will also have the new facts of the case. In this case, they would include running the fingerprints through our system and getting a hit.
“Then a recommendation will be made. That can be anything, including affirming or reversing the conviction.
"After the deadline for the court deciding on whether there will be a hearing, there are no further deadlines after that, so I would anticipate we would probably get the findings of fact and conclusions of law by May or June.”
However, there could be a further road ahead, as Ms Clayton outlines: “At that point, it goes to the Court of Criminal Appeals — our Supreme Court over criminal cases.
"The longest I have ever seen a case like this is three years, but that particular case was very contentious. In this case, everyone is on board and wants this conviction reversed.”
If, as anticipated, James Reyos’ conviction is overturned, he will automatically be entitled to a lump sum of up to $2.6m for the 40 years he has spent either in prison or on parole. A compensation statute in Texas means that somebody who has been wrongly convicted is automatically entitled to recompense.
Allison Clayton explains: “The compensation is $80,000 a year per year of wrongful incarceration and $50,000 a year per year of wrongful parole in a lump sum.
"In addition to that, there is another $80,000 per year for the rest of their lives. For James, that would be several million. But whenever they [people who have been exonerated] accept that compensation, they waive any right to sue.”
It’s not about the money for James, she says, explaining: “The things that James talks about now — his dreams are really, really simple.
"Where he lives right now is in Austin, Texas, where it may snow, but it would snow real fast and melt, and it would be infrequently. He just wants to be in the snowy mountains. That is all he wants. He just wants to go back home to the snowy mountains of New Mexico.”
He says himself: “I have brothers living there in New Mexico. I have been looking forward to seeing them and meeting them.
While the focus of the Innocence Project of Texas is on securing the overturning of James’s conviction, Allison Clayton says that Fr Ryan’s death was one of at least five unsolved killings of priests in the early 1980s in the southwest of the US. It is not known if any are linked.
However, one element that Allison Clayton wants to examine is whether there is any link to an unidentified man, known as Boise John Doe, who died after taking cyanide in a church in Boise, Idaho, a year after the murder of Fr Ryan.
On December 4, 1982, not long after James Reyos’ admission of guilt, the man went into the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boise and was found dead there later that day. His suntanned appearance and clothing, including a distinctive belt buckle which was traced to a shop in Arizona, caused investigators to believe he was not local to Boise and may have come from the southwest of the US.
The unidentified man had a note and $1,900 in his pocket. The note advised whoever found him to pay for his funeral out of the money, and donate the rest to the Catholic Church.
The note was signed Wm L Toomey, a name which police investigators believed to be false. The name was that of a company in the US which manufactured clothing for priests and nuns, prompting investigators to wonder if the man was himself a member of the clergy.
To this day, the man remains unidentified. Investigators in Boise have questioned whether there could be a connection between Boise John Doe and the killings of priests, including Fr Ryan.
Now, in the coming weeks, Allison Clayton plans to travel to Boise to speak to investigators there to seek more information about Boise John Doe.
She says: “I have been in touch with authorities there, and I don’t know that Boise John is relevant to this case, but I do think that there is a very significant possibility. I have not really dug into it yet.
"The reason I say that is because we do have the murders of other Catholic priests over here in the southwest, around the same time period — between 1981 and 1983. We don’t know the connection to Boise John and the killers in our case, but I am hoping to find out some more information on that.”
She adds: “Fr Ryan was not operating in an official capacity. He booked into a seedy motel room under an alias. It is not directly relevant to James’ innocence and we could prove James’ innocence right now.
"But at the same time, it is relevant to these other people who have never received justice — and everyone deserves justice. If you are a victim of a murder, you deserve justice. That is what we are working for.”