Nearly a year after the murder of Father Patrick Ryan of Saint William Catholic Church in Denver City, Texas, a confession call came into Albuquerque, New Mexico 911. The confessor had already been interviewed by Odessa Police Detectives and eliminated as a suspect, but frustrated detectives and politically motivated prosecutors were chomping at the bit to close the case. Though the only evidence that this man, 26-year-old James Harry Reyos, had beaten the priest to death at the Sand and Sage Motel in Odessa was his drunken confession, he was convicted of the crime. The problem is, Reyos did not kill Father Ryan. Part 3 of 3.

If you have any information about the 1981 murder of Father Patrick Joseph Ryan, please call the Odessa Police Department at (432)335-496 or Odessa Crime Stoppers at (432)333-8477

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The Odessa American, the article “Who Killed Father Ryan?” by The Austin Chronicle’s Jordan Smith, Michael Hall’s Texas Monthly article “The Apache, the Irish Catholic Priest, and a 40-Year-Old Miscarriage of Justice,” the article “Man who denies murder of Limerick priest moves closer to seeing conviction quashed” by Ann Murphy in The Irish Examiner, NewsWest9.com, and Scott Lomax’s book “The Case of James Harry Reyos: A Wrongful Conviction Revealed” were used as sources for this episode.

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