•  CASE STUDIES
   by Leon Podles
• Philip Anthony Magaldi
• Peter Kramer
• Donald Matthew Osgood
• Canon N.
• Clive Lynn
• Edward Donelan
  
•  MURDER CASE STUDIES
   by Leon Podles
• Joseph J. Pilger
• Michael Mack
• John Patrick Kerrigan
• Alfred J. Kunz
• Reynaldo Rivera
• Irene Garza
• Patrick Ryan
• John J. Geoghan
• Ryan Erickson

The Murder of Rev. Patrick Ryan

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Ryan dropped Reyos off at the bondsman Charlie Bostick’s house. Reyos asked Ryan to wait until he was sure that he could get his pickup truck and that it would start, but Ryan drove away with the other hitchhiker, a scene witnessed by Bostick’s daughter.12Jordan Smith, “Who Killed Father Ryan?” Austin Chronicle, June 17, 2005.

 

Reyos retrieved his truck, bought a case of beer at Tip’s Inn and met an acquaintance, Harold (who died before the trial), and bought a gas cap (and kept the receipt, as he always did with all his receipts). Reyos dropped Harold off at home about 1:30 P.M. and was driving to Artesia on the way to Albuquerque, where he hoped to spend Christmas with his family, when saw the hitchhiker who had been with Ryan. Reyos drove with the hitchhiker to Artesia, where he arrived about 4-4:30 P. M.; Reyos fuelled his truck there and got a receipt. About 6 P.M. Reyos pulled into Roswell and dropped the hitchhiker off at a bus station.13Jordan Smith, “Who Killed Father Ryan?” Austin Chronicle, June 17, 2005. Records there showed that a ticket was sold at that time to a black man travelling to Clinton, Oklahoma.

 

In Roswell Reyos bought beer (he had a receipt for this purchase) and met an old student friend, David Meyer. They went to Meyer’s apartment and drank; they parted about 8 P.M.14Paul G. Caswell attacks this part of Reyos’ defense (“The Guilty and the ‘Innocent’: An Examination of Alleged Cases of Wrongful Conviction from False Confessions” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Spring 1991). Myers was uncertain at the trial about the date he met with Reyos, but Cadra pin-pointed it to his satisfaction to December 21st  by a process of elimination, using dated receipts that traced Reyos’ movements. More and more intoxicated, Reyos drove to Tatum, New Mexico, bought gas (he had a receipt for this, but it does not seem to have been time-dated) and drove west past Roswell. He turned around and was heading east toward Roswell (not west away from Odessa)15 David Elliot, “District Attorney: Inmate Is Innocent,” Austin American-Statesman, May 10, 1992., where he got a speeding ticket at 12:15 A.M., 215 miles from the murder scene in Odessa. Reyos drove his truck into a ditch; passing motorists got him out and took him for coffee.  But he had a flat tire, so at 4 A.M. he had a wrecker tow the truck to a truck stop. Reyos fell asleep in his truck until 8 A.M., woke up and bought some beer. About 30 miles outside Roswell, he got another flat tire, hitchhiked back to Roswell to a Chevron station, and arranged for his truck to be towed. He waited all day for the tire and wheel to be fixed, and at 7 P. M (as indicated by a receipt) left for Albuquerque.16Jordan Smith, “Who Killed Father Ryan?” Austin Chronicle, June 17, 2005. Paul G. Caswell, who thinks that Reyos is guilty, refers to the trial transcript that indicates “Olivia Gonzales…testified that she saw Reyos driving the victim’s car by himself the day after the murder (“The Guilty and the ‘Innocent’: An Examination of Alleged Cases of Wrongful Conviction from False Confessions” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Spring 1991). But Reyos was in Roswell waiting for his truck. Therefore he could not have been driving Ryan’s car on that date. And Ryan’s car, according to witnesses, had been parked at the Moose Lodge in Hobbs since the morning of December 22 (Jordan Smith, “Who Killed Father Ryan?” Austin Chronicle, June 17, 2005). If it was at the Moose lodge, Reyos was not driving it.

 

At some time in the afternoon of December 21, Ryan started making dinner at his rectory in Denver City. Something happened to make him turn off the stove, leave the steak and potatoes on the stove, and drive ninety-four miles to Odessa.

 

Between 7:30 and 8 P. M on that day, a desk clerk at the Sand and Sage Motel in Odessa, Texas, checked Ryan, who was using a false name and address, into room 126. Another customer checked into the room next to room 126 at 9 P. M. and heard nothing that night.

On the morning of December 22, 1981, a maid opened room 126 and ran shrieking to the manager’s office. The room had seen a struggle: the sheetrock by the door was bashed in and covered with blood. The phone was shattered; the mattress was knocked on the floor, the headboard splintered. She saw a man’s body.17Howard Swindle, “Shadows of a Doubt,” Dallas Morning News, July 4, 1993. It was nude; the hands were tied behind his back. He had been beaten so hard that his heart stopped. He had died, according to the pathologist’s report, sometime before midnight. The police did not know who he was, and took him to the morgue.

 

Ryan did not show up for Christmas Eve Mass. The parishioners thought he might have been called away on an emergency. Then he did not show up for Christmas morning Mass. The local police put out a missing person’s report, and the police in Odessa said they had an unidentified body. On December 26, several parishioners drove to Odessa to identify Ryan’s body.

 

The police found Reyos’ backpack in the rectory. An Odessa detective questioned him; Reyos described his last meeting with Ryan at the rectory and gave the detective the receipts from his truck. Reyos took and passed a polygraph test. The detective asked Reyos to pull up his shirt; apart from a small scratch on his hand, Reyos was uninjured. The detective took Reyos to Hobbs to see Ryan’s car; it was not at the Odessa motel, but somehow had been driven to the Moose lodge in Hobbs and left there on the morning of December 22.18“Dead Priest’s Car Investigated,” Del Rio News-Herald, December 28, 1981. Reyos identified the car. There was money in the trunk, but Ryan’s accordion and silver chalice were missing.

Bishop Leroy Matthiesen of Amarillo and Bishop Joseph Fiorenza of San Angelo presided at Ryan’s funeral on December 29. Matthiesen called Ryan “yet another martyr.’ Matthiesen continued:

 

 

After Ryan’s picture appeared in the Hobbs newspaper, two teenagers told police that they had been approached by Ryan who said he was looking for “young studs” for sex, or, as they said later at the trial, “to fuck him.”20Howard Swindle, “Shadows of a Doubt,” Dallas Morning News, July 4, 1993; Jordan Smith, “Who Killed Father Ryan?” Austin Chronicle, June 17, 2005.

 

Reyos drifted around and lived in Memphis, Tennessee for six months. He went back to Albuquerque and took a room in the Bow and Arrow Motel. He was arrested for public drunkenness and when he started saying that he may have killed a priest, he was taken to a mental health center. He was immediately diagnosed as an alcoholic, and the staff noticed that he had hallucinations.21Howard Swindle, “Shadows of a Doubt,” Dallas Morning News, July 4, 1993. He went back to his hotel and took some pills someone had given him. He drank, and then on November 18, 1982 called 911 from a public phone to tell the Albuquerque police he had killed a priest.22“Warrant Issued in Priest’s Death,” Galveston Daily News, November 21, 1982, p. 4-A. When an officer came to the motel, Reyos said “I killed Father Ryan.”23Ginny Carroll, “True Confessions – Or False?” Newsweek, September 13, 1993. When he sobered up he said he had not committed the murder, that he was innocent.24“Defendant Denies He Killed Priest,” Galveston Daily News, June 9, 1983, p. D-1. 

 

 

 

 

Footnotes

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