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A 1981 Odessa murder haunts crime researchers On Dec. 4, 1982, a deeply suntanned man, about 40 years old, walked into the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boise, Idaho, and readied himself for confession. He never got a chance to recount his sins to the priest. As he waited perhaps not realizing it would be several minutes before the confessional was available, or perhaps despairing of the condition of his soul the man swallowed a cyanide capsule. A few minutes later, he was dead. When police came to investigate, they found that the man had no identification. A note in his pocket said only that the $1,900 he carried should be used for his burial, with any remainder donated to the church. The note was signed with what turned out to be a false name. To this day, no one has been able to identify the man, nor to determine why he had come to the church to absolve himself of his sins. On the answers to that mystery may hang the fate of a small, quiet, meticulous man who now lives in South Austin, and who spent 20 years in a Texas prison for a murder he says he did not commit, but which investigators believe may be connected to the dead man at the Boise Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Last year, James Harry Reyos moved into a small room just east of I 35, at a transitional living facility owned by the state's corrections department. Although he is free of prison bars, his movements and activities remain restricted. His whereabouts are determined by a weekly schedule, strictly accounted for and subject to the approval of his parole officer. It is a rigid life, but one that seems to mesh fairly well with Reyos' personality. Indeed, his personal wall calendar given to him by aides to El Paso Democratic state Rep. Paul Moreno, who has taken an interest in his case reflects the same attention to detail, cataloging his meetings with state representatives, reporters, and others who call or come to visit. Reyos spends his days looking for work, attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and keeping appointments with his parole officer. At night and on weekends he is not allowed to leave his small room not even into the courtyard that runs the interior length of the building. If he were to try, the electronic monitor strapped to his ankle would set off an alarm. But Reyos doesn't try; he is not a rule breaker nor, despite his prison record, has he ever been. It is hard to find anyone who now believes that Reyos murdered Father Patrick "Paddy" Ryan in an Odessa motel on Dec. 21, 1981 although he was duly convicted of the crime. Everyone familiar with the details of the case agrees that it would have been physically impossible for Reyos to have murdered Ryan, primarily because Reyos could prove, through a series of time stamped receipts as well as a traffic citation issued by a New Mexico state trooper, that he was approximately 200 miles away from Odessa at the time of the murder. But in 1983, an Ector Co. jury found Reyos guilty of murder and sentenced him to 38 years in prison. During the 20 years that Reyos lived behind bars in a maximum security prison in Tennessee Colony, the Jicarilla Apache Indian from Northern New Mexico steadfastly maintained his innocence. And since finally being paroled in 2003 first to El Paso, then in January 2004 to the transitional living facility in Austin Reyos, now 49, has earnestly sought to clear his name. Along the way he has earned strong support of a wide range of people including a former Ector Co. prosecutor, a former bishop of the Amarillo Catholic Diocese (once Father Ryan's superior), a retired police detective, and a recently deceased investigative reporter from The Dallas Morning News, Howard Swindle, who spent years looking for Ryan's real killer. Reyos' current goal is that the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry grant him a "pardon for innocence," which would expunge his record, restore his civil rights, and finally declare that he was not responsible for the brutal beating death of Father Ryan. After nearly 24 years, with the latest addition to his team of supporters Lubbock criminal attorney Jeff Blackburn Reyos may at last be on a road that could eventually lead to a pardon. His request is no simple matter, in part because, nearly 11 months after the murder, he voluntarily confessed a confession recanted within hours, but thus far upheld by the courts. Within a week of Ryan's murder, Odessa police had originally used Reyos' careful collection of documentary evidence to clear him as a suspect. But it took little more than Reyos' "sloppy" confession (as his attorney John Cliff describes it) to prompt prosecutors to try Reyos for the crime. Reyos had drunkenly told police that he'd beaten Ryan and sliced the priest with a razor inside Room 126 of the Sand and Sage Motel. Despite the lack of any physical evidence connecting Reyos to the murder, the brief and general confession was all that it took to seal his fate. Although false confessions are in fact quite common, even a nuisance to police, Cliff says the Odessa jurors chosen to determine Reyos' fate simply could not believe that a person would ever voluntarily confess to a serious crime he did not commit. Reyos had done exactly that and moreover, the reason he gave to explain why he'd done so only further alienated the jurors. According to Reyos, on Dec. 20, 1981, one day before the priest was murdered, he accepted an invitation to visit Ryan at his apartment in the rectory at St. Williams Church in Denver City, Texas, the tiny Panhandle town 94 miles Northwest of Odessa where both men lived, so that Ryan could look through a photo album of pictures from Reyos' childhood on the New Mexico Apache Indian reservation. At the apartment, Reyos said, the two began drinking beer and when that ran out, Ryan began mixing vodka drinks. Then suddenly, Reyos said, the priest grabbed him by the shirt collar and pushed Reyos to perform oral sex. Reyos complied. Afterward, Reyos was shocked, ashamed, and frightened. "I didn't even grab my stuff" before hurrying out of the rectory, he recalled recently. "I was walking down the street thinking, 'That didn't happen; that couldn't happen with 'Father [Ryan].'" The next day, Reyos said he had a hangover, and in his hazy mind, the incident was surreal: "It was like a dream but it did happen." The incident was a turning point for Reyos. He was 25 years old, lonely, out of work, and ashamed of his sexuality. He'd known he was gay since childhood, but he'd never admitted it, in part because in the conservative Native American culture in which he was raised, homosexuality was a sin and a weakness. His discomfort with being gay his "dystonic homosexuality," as a psychologist categorized it at trial had already led to other problems, primarily alcoholism. Indeed, by the time Reyos met Father Ryan in Denver City in early December 1981, he'd already been arrested 30 times on alcohol related charges for being drunk in public or for drunk driving and had lost a field job with Mobil Oil because of his addiction. (Despite his numerous arrests, Reyos had never been charged with any violent crime.) Ryan's abrupt death sent Reyos into a tailspin. Less than 24 hours after their sexual encounter, Ryan was violently murdered in an Odessa motel room he'd checked into under an assumed name. "I feel a lot of guilt about that," Reyos told the Houston Chronicle. "I was still in the closet and in denial about myself . and he was a priest." The guilt ate at Reyos for the next few months. On Nov. After days of drinking and downing several Quaaludes, he stumbled outside to a pay phone and called police. "And so I asked him what it was about, and he said, 'The killing of a Catholic priest in Odessa, Texas,' . And I asked him .'Who are you?' And he said, 'You are talking to the killer.'" Police picked Reyos up at the Bow and Arrow and took him into custody; although the officers testified at trial that they only detected a slight odor of alcohol on Reyos, an Albuquerque public defender called to counsel Reyos that afternoon said that he was clearly intoxicated. He couldn't answer questions directly and instead kept repeating the same things over and over notably, a protestation of innocence: "In the name of God, I didn't do this." Nonetheless, Reyos' taped confession was entered into evidence at his trial and was the lynchpin to his conviction one juror told the Odessa American that they convicted Reyos "based on his confession and characteristics" presumably, that he was gay, perhaps also that he was an alcoholic and an Indian. To Cliff, it was a combination of prejudice and incredulous indignation toward Reyos' allegation that his victim, Father Ryan, was gay that swayed the jurors. Cliff now thinks that perhaps he and his former law partner, John Smith (now the Ector Co. district attorney), miscalculated by trying to prove Reyos' innocence instead of simply raising the requisite doubt about the state's flimsy case. "We shouldn't have taken on that burden, to convince them of his innocence, but I don't know what else we could've done," he said. With Reyos' conviction, Cliff lost interest in criminal law; Reyos' case, he said, simply "soured my stomach." Since then the courts have summarily dismissed Reyos' claims of innocence. Cliff handled Reyos' direct appeal, but failed to raise any real issues for El Paso's 8th Court of Appeals. The only issue he raised was whether the state's evidence that is, Reyos' confession was sufficient to support the guilty verdict. In November 1984, the court ruled that the confession was enough in that it provided the necessary evidence to support the legal principle of corpus delicti specifically, the fact that Ryan was dead and that he'd been murdered was all that needed to be corroborated by the confession. However, the court noted, it could not rule on whether the confession itself was legally admissible evidence since Reyos' appeal did not raise that question. In 1994, Texas Civil Rights Project Director Jim Harrington filed Reyos' writ of habeas corpus with the Court of Criminal Appeals, again raising the issue of sufficiency, challenging the El Paso court's interpretation of the corpus delicti rule, and arguing that Texas law provides insufficient protection against wrongful convictions based on false confessions. That appeal was also denied without a hearing and without a written ruling by postcard. That was the end of Reyos' appeal to the courts for help, and it has left him with apparently one final option to clear his name: getting the Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend, and Gov. Perry to grant, a pardon. By law, the BPP is charged with making parole decisions and pardon recommendations to the governor. (Only the governor can grant a pardon, and can only do so if the board recommends it.) In order to consider a pardon for innocence, such as Reyos is seeking, the board must first receive a request for review from the governor, then it requires the petitioner to offer evidence of his innocence meaning either a positive court ruling or order, or the affirmative support from at least two of the original trial officials (the prosecuting attorney, presiding judge, and the chief of the investigating law enforcement agency). Reyos filed a pardon request with former Gov. George W. Bush in late 2000, but it was ignored and forwarded to Perry in 2001; to date, Perry has not said whether he will ask the board to review the Reyos case. As it stands, even if Perry were to ask, the board would likely find that Reyos lacks the "evidence" they conventionally require to review a case. The circular situation is a catch 22 for Reyos and his defenders. Although it might be possible, few think Reyos could get his case back in front of a court. And so far none of the trial officials in Ector Co. has responded to requests for support not even Reyos' former defense attorney, Ector DA John Smith. "Since he's been DA he has refused to be interviewed in connection with the case. He thinks it's not right for a DA to be doing that," Cliff said. "But John will tell you privately, over a glass of scotch, that [James] was his only innocent client." Indeed, virtually everyone who has reviewed the case has become convinced of Reyos' innocence. A few people notably, The Dallas Morning News' Howard Swindle, his colleague Tim Wyatt, and retired Boise Police Detective Frank Richardson were so convinced that they have gone out of their way to try to provide the evidence that Reyos needs by trying to answer the lingering question in the case: Who killed Father Ryan? Without an answer to that original question, Reyos may forever remain unpardonable. New Mexican Highways Father Patrick Ryan was an Irish born priest who reportedly spent a decade as a Pallottine missionary in Africa before being reassigned, in 1979, to St. Williams Church in Denver City under Bishop Leroy Matthiesen of the Amarillo Diocese. 6, 1981, the 49 year old priest was driving that stretch of road in his red and white Chrysler when he stopped to pick up Reyos, who was hitchhiking to Hobbs to look for work. The two men drove into town and spent the evening at a local bar, drinking beer and vodka, before Ryan drove them back to Denver City. Reyos says Ryan introduced himself only as "John," and he only learned Ryan was a priest later that night when Ryan dropped him off outside the St. Williams rectory. Reyos says he never knew Ryan's real name until he saw television news reports of his murder in Odessa. The two had several friendly encounters over the next two weeks, until the evening of Dec. 20, when Reyos says that Ryan assaulted him in the rectory living room. When Reyos fled the apartment, he left his backpack behind him in the rectory. It contained his photo album and several audio cassettes of country music he'd taped off the radio that he thought Ryan, an accomplished accordionist, would enjoy. The next morning, Reyos found a $750 check from his father waiting in his mailbox Reyos' share of the royalties from mineral rights on the Apache reservation. The windfall meant Reyos could retrieve his pickup from a bail bondsman in Hobbs to whom he'd handed over the vehicle as collateral after he was arrested for driving without a license. But Reyos needed a ride to Hobbs. "The only person I could think of to help me out," he recalled recently, "was Father Ryan." Reyos nervously returned to the rectory. "[Ryan] came to the door and the first thing he said was, 'I am sorry about last night, I don't know what got into me,'" Reyos recalled. "I said, 'Forget about it. The reason I am here is to see if you can drive me to Hobbs.'" Ryan agreed and the two got into the Chrysler and headed toward New Mexico. Along the way, Reyos says, Ryan stopped to pick up a middle aged black man hitchhiking west. The three arrived at the home office of bondsman Charlie Bostick in Hobbs around 11:30am. Although Reyos asked Ryan to wait for a few minutes while he went inside to talk, Ryan drove off while Reyos was inside talking to Bostick's daughter an account she confirmed at trial. According to Reyos, that was the last time he ever saw Ryan. Approximately nine hours later, Ryan was dead. It took about an hour for Reyos to get his truck. Reyos stopped at Tipp's, a nearby bar, where he bought beer and bumped into an old friend named Harold. (Harold died before Reyos' trial.) The two men headed to Levi's Auto Parts Center where Reyos bought gas and a new gas cap for which he retained, as was his habit, the time stamped receipt. Reyos dropped Harold off at his home around 1:30pm and turned the truck north, heading to Albuquerque where he planned to visit his family over the Christmas holidays. Reyos' supporters suspect that this man, who commited suicide inside the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boise, Idaho, in December 1982, is quite likely connected to, or in fact responsible for, the murders of Fathers Patrick Ryan in Odessa and Benjamin Carrier in Yuma, Ariz. Although Boise Detective Frank Richardson traced the dead man's distinctive belt buckle back to one Arizona gift shop, investigators have never been successful in identifying the man who remains known only as the Boise John Doe. On his way out of Hobbs, Reyos happened upon the same black hitchhiker that he and Ryan had picked up that morning. Reyos said that the man who has never been identified told him that Ryan stopped abruptly several blocks from Bostick's, dropped him off, and then drove away. The two drove to Artesia, where Reyos bought gas at a Mobil station around 4:30pm, before arriving in Roswell around 6, where Reyos dropped the man at the bus station. From there, Reyos took a spin around the Eastern New Mexico University campus where he'd been a student a year before. At a nearby Minit Mart, Reyos ran into an old college friend, David Myer. The two drove to a local bar, bought a case of beer, and headed to Myer's house where they drank and talked until about 8:30pm, Myer testified. After leaving Myer's place, Reyos took a drive 15 miles southeast to Bottomless Lake State Park before turning around and heading east to Tatum, where he stopped for gasoline again, leaving with a receipt, which he later gave to Odessa police. Reyos drove around, drinking beer, until 12:15am, when he was pulled over by a state trooper 15 miles west of Roswell, and issued a speeding ticket. On his way back to town, Reyos drove his truck into a ditch where he remained until passing motorists stopped to help him out. Realizing that Reyos was drunk, one of the passersby drove Reyos in the truck to Sambo's restaurant in Roswell. At the restaurant, Reyos discovered that he had a flat tire so he went inside and called a wrecker service the receipt from the wrecker indicated the time as 4am. The truck was towed to a nearby truck stop; after the tire was replaced, Reyos fell asleep in his truck.