Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / The Murder of Father Patrick Ryan Part 3: Railroaded

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The Murder of Father Patrick Ryan Part 3: Railroaded · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

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Before we start, we'd like to thank everyone who helped out our special little
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girl reach her goal of going to Girl Scout Diva Camp by buying cookies.
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It means a lot to her and to us. Thanks y'all. Now onto
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the episode. The Concold podcast may contain violent or graphic subject matter. Listener
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discretion is advised. In November of nineteen eighty two, the case of the
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murder of father Patrick Joseph Ryan was as cold as they come. By that
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time, detectives had chased down leads at home in Texas, neighboring states like
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New Mexico, and even as far away as Washington State. It had been
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nearly a year, and though the police in Odessa, Texas seldom win a
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day without thinking of the slain priest, particularly Detective Jerry Smith, investigation on
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the case was basically inactive. The cops had nothing. That all changed on
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November eighteenth, nineteen eighty two, beginning with a two pm phone call to
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Albuquerque, New Mexico nine one one, nine one one, what's your emergency?
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I know about a killing that happened in Odessa, Texas involving a priest,
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a Catholic priest. What is your emergency. There's no emergency. I
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would like to talk with the proper authorities about a murder that took place in
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Odessa, Texas, involving a Denver City Catholic priest. Who am I talking
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to you? You're talking to the possible well, the killer, the killer?
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Yes? When did you kill the priest back in December of nineteen eighty
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one? Do you remember the priest's name? Yes, Father Patrick, Ryan,
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father Patty. The confessor identified himself as Jay REOs. This man was
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calling the emergency number from a pay phone near the Bow and Arrow Lodge,
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where he requested the operators send officers to take him into custody. Albuquerque policeman
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were happy to oblige, but not before discussing his strange call first. It
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wasn't everyday criminals called into authorities and confessed their crimes, and anyway, he'd
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been unable to understand many of the nine dispatcher's questions. The confessor was slurring
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his speech and seemed confused. It was obvious he was under the influence of
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alcohol and perhaps something else. When policemen arrived at the caller's room at the
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Bow and Arrow Lodge, they sat him down and asked him to go over
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his confession again. The man's eyes were bloodshot and he smelt of beer,
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but the policeman later hoarded he was calm as he answered their questions. When
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the officers attempted to cuff him, however, the confessors struggled and had to
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be physically restrained. It seemed in contrast to the soft spoken man's otherwise polite
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and cooperative demeanor. He was placed under arrest at five fifteen pm. This
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confessor, Jay Rios, of course, is James Harry Rayos, who Father
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Ryan had given a lift to Hobbs, New Mexico on December twenty first,
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nineteen eighty one, just several hours before the priest was murdered in room one
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twenty six at the Sandon Sage Motel in Odessa, Texas. He was once
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detective's only solid lead in the father Patrick Ryan case, but after producing a
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series of receipts showing that he was not in Odessa or even Texas at the
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time of the slang, allowing detectives to search his apartment, providing hair samples
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and fingerprints that did not match the evidence found at the crime scene, and
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passing a polygraph examination Rios had been eliminated as a suspect with this confession.
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However, Odessa Police detective Jerry Smith raced to Albuquerque to question the man again.
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Investigation into the murder of father Ryan had more or less grinded to a
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halt months earlier, but now the train was back on the track, heading
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feverishly in one direction and one direction only, while paying no mind to where
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the many diverging tracks along the way might lead them. The railroading of James
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Harry Rios had begun after confessing to the December twenty first, nineteen eighty one
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murder of father Patrick Ryan at a cd Odessa, Texas motel. The detectives
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in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wanted a crack at twenty six year old James
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Harry Rios for one of their state's unsolved cases, the August fifth, nineteen
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eighty two execution of father Rainaldo Rivera in Santa Fe. While Detective Jerry Smith
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of the Odessa Police headed to Albuquerque. Detectives there questioned Rios about the almost
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three month old killing. Any hopes they had of solving father Rivera's murder alongside
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father Ryans were eventually dashed when it was confirmed Rios was working as a day
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laborer in Memphis, Tennessee, from late May nineteen eighty two to November ninth,
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about a week before he called nine one one with his admission. Rios
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was given a court appointed defense attorney, but still cooperated with police interviews.
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One thing had changed. He was now insisting that he did not, in
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fact kill Father Ryan. In the name of God, I didn't do this,
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Rios said. According to Scott Lomax's book titled The Case of James Harry
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Rios, a Wrongful Conviction revealed, I'm not the killer. I just like
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to cause trouble for law enforcement. After arriving in Albuquerque, Detective Smith questioned
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James Harry Rios about the Father Patrick Ryan murder on Friday, November nineteenth.
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During the recorded interview, Rios told the Odessa policeman a completely different story.
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After driving to Hobbes, Rios said he Father Ryan and the hitchhiker they'd picked
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up headed to Odessa, where they drank and drove around for several hours.
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Father Ryan suggested they get a motel room, he continued, and after they
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did, the priest asked the hitchhiker to have sex Rios watched as Father Ryan
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and this man had sex, he told Detective Smith. At some point during
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the act, a fight broke out between the hitchhiker and the priest, and
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Father Ryan ended up dead. He and the unknown man drove Father Ryan's car
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to Hobbs ditched it near where he'd parked his truck earlier. Rios went on
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and then drove to Roswell, where Rios dropped the hitchhiker off at the bus
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station. Detective Jerry Smith wasn't buying James Harry Rios's new story, and for
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good reason it wasn't true. Detective Smith was holding on to Rios's confession since
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the prisoner had refused extradition back to Texas, where he now faced a warrant
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for capital murder. Rios languished at the Bernolio County Detention Center on a two
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hundred and fifty thousand dollar bond for months until an extradition warrant was completed while
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he was locked up in New Mexico. On Thursday December sixteenth, nineteen eighty
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two, and Ector County, Texas Grand Jury indicted him and a one hundred
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thousand dollar bond was set to be effective upon his arrival. Extradition proved to
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be a lengthy process because Rios had refused to cooperate with it, he said
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because of death threats he'd received while in custody. Authorities in Ector County had
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to file the paperwork and wait for the approval and signature of Governor Bill Clements,
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and when that was said and done, the papers were filed in New
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Mexico, where they awaited Governor Bruce King's autograph. After three months had passed
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since his arrest, James Harry Rios was extradited to Texas. He arrived at
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the Odessa City Jail at nine thirty pm on Thursday, February twenty fourth,
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nineteen eighty three. The following Monday, February twenty eighth, Rios was arraigned.
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He pleaded not guilty. In the following couple weeks, one of Rios's
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court appointed attorneys, John Cliff, filed several motions, including a change of
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venue request, which was ultimately denied, but the court did allow Cliff the
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time to send his client for a psychological evaluation. Seventieth Judicial District Judge Jean
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Ader changed the trial's start date from April eighteenth to June sixth, nineteen eighty
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three, and there was no doubt anyway that Attorney John Cliff needed more time
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to prepare defense, since the original trial date would have given him less than
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two months to prepare when Ector County prosecutors had begun preparing the case more than
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two months before Cliff was appointed. A small team of investigators assembled by District
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Attorney Bill Holmes had been working on the case, and Odessa police detectives continued
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to collect evidence A word to be used very lightly here. As he once
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again languished in jail, this time in Texas, James Harry Rayo said he
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was relayed several more threats to his life, But as his court appointed defense
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team got to know him, and as they continued to prepare their case,
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attorneys John Cliff and John Smith experienced something they never had before and never again
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would in their careers. They believed, without a single doubt that their client
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was absolutely innocent of the murder charges he faced. While it took months to
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extradite James Harry Rios from a jail in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the
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Odessa City jail house, and then a few more before he stood before a
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jury. The trial itself, in contrast, was markedly short for one of
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such high stakes, and there's a reason. Generally prosecutor's burden of proof takes
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time. A substantial amount of evidence should be presented to the court proving guilt
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beyond a reasonable doubt, especially a case with no physical evidence. In the
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case of James Harry Rios, however, the state essentially had only one piece
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of evidence, the confession. On Wednesday, June eighth, nineteen eighty three,
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arguments in the State of Texas versus James Harry Rios began on opening arguments.
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Rios's defense attorney, John Cliff, told jurors confidently James Harry Rios did
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not kill Father Ryan and could not have killed Father Ryan. The night before
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the priest's disappearance, Cliff said he and the defendant were together drinking beer and
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vodka, listening to country music cassette tapes Riyos had recorded off the radio.
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They talked about the young man's life growing up as a Hickoria Apache on the
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reservation in northwest New Mexico. Father Ryan, he continued, initiated sexual contact
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with Rios, and that gave prosecutors a motive to work with a motive that
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was seemingly contradictory to their portrayal of Father Ryan as a devoted man of the
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cloth. Unexpectedly, Rios testified on that first day of the trial, Father
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Ryan grabbed him by the suller and pushed him down toward his penis, expecting
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him to perform oral sex. Rios complied, and after the act was completed,
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he hurried out of the priest's bungalow rectory next to Saint William Church in
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Denver City, Texas. He left so quickly, Rios told the court he
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didn't even think to grab his belongings, a backpack that essentially held his life
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inside. That item is how Odessa police detectives found him and questioned him in
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the first place, just before reviewing evidence that he could not have possibly been
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in their city when the murder was committed, and subsequently clearing him. Rios
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walked down the street shocked, frightened, and ashamed. On his way home
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that night, he testified, telling himself repeatedly that didn't happen, That could
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not have happened. The following day, after waking up in a hungover hayze,
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the act felt like a dream. But it did happen, Rios said,
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recalling that assault was excruciating. Since he was a teenager, James Harry
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Rios had suppressed his sexuality, partly due to the stigma being gay held in
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his culture. The shame he felt forced the young man to begin self medicating
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with alcohol at an early age, a factor that almost cost him his degree
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in petroleum engineering, and also a factor that undoubtedly led him to comply to
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father Patrick Ryan's forcing him into oral sex as a man of power. His
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father and sister two sat in the courtroom, and because they did, Rios
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felt compelled by that shame to avoid the question of his sexuality altogether. He
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needn't have. Rios neither admitted nor deny to dogged prosecutors that he was gay
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for much of his testimony, until he was finally forced to relent. Later
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embracing his son, Rios's father told him he accepted him for whoever he is.
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But even as he realized his father's love was stronger than cultural and societal
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norms and expectations, he also knew that the twelve men and women that comprised
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the jury likely had no such soft spots. This was nineteen eighty three in
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the West Texas oil town Odessa. Being a gay defendant in a murder trial
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was a huge strike against a verdict of not guilty. Rios also knew being
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hickorya apache worked against him with a jury that was comprised mostly of white men.
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Officer Ray Gutierrez of the Albuquerque, New Mexico Police played down James Harry
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Rios's level of intoxication when he and his partner arrived at the Bow and Arrow
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Lodge just after Rios had made the confession call to nine one one. He
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only smelled of beer slightly, Gautierres testified, but in reality, the call
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was the culmination of the shame he felt and a week long benge of queludes
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chased down with beer and liquor. The confused and sometimes incoherent effects the latter
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had were incredibly apparent on the nine one audio tape. No matter Officer Gautierrez's
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testimony, the jurors heard the recording of that call, of course, in
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which the distract caller identifies himself as Jay Rios. Upon cross examination of the
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state's witness, Rios's lawyer, John Cliff asked Dolly Woodie the one dispatcher if
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she could be sure the confessor and James Harry Rios were the same people.
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She could not, and Rios had testified earlier that he did not remember making
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the confession call, literally the prosecution's only piece of evidence. That attempt at
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establishing reasonable doubt meant little, since Officer Ray Gutierrez had testified that Rios confessed
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to him and his partner when they responded to the nine one one call.
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I asked him how he killed him, Gautierrez said in court he said with
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a razor, but I mostly beat him. Rios never offered anything in his
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confession call or to police directly. It should be noted that was not public
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knowledge. Even though the defense's efforts fell flat there, it was hardly the
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only seed of reasonable doubt planted. Rios, after all, had passed a
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polygraph test. Just after Father Ryan was slain. There was a mysterious hitchhiker
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Father Ryan had picked up as he drove Rios to Hobbs that day. Fingerprints
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on the scene did not match Rios, not a one. But what should
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have been enough for the jury were the several pieces of evidence that showed James
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Harry Reyos could not have been in Odessa at the time of Father Patrick Ryan's
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murder. That evidence consisted of ten timestamped receipts for various goods and services in
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New Mexico surrounding the time of the brutal beating murder. Also testimony from the
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bail bondsman he had visited at home when he picked up his truck the day
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Father Patrick Ryan was slain. The bail bondsman said that Rios was alone.
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There was testimony two from an old college acquaintance he'd spent that evening drinking with
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one who didn't know Orios well enough to cover for him. And finally,
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there was a speeding ticket Rios had gotten after he was pulled over by a
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New Mexico state trooper fifteen miles west of Roswell at twelve fifteen am that night.
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These receipts, presented as evidence of his innocence, showed that Rios couldn't
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have possibly driven to Hobbes, New Mexico from Odessa to ditch the priest's car,
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returned to Odessa for his own pickup truck, and then driven two hundred
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and fifteen miles away back to New Mexico in time to be given the speeding
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ticket. It was calculated then and by many cents, that he would have
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had to have been driving just shy of one hundred and thirty miles per hour
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or a little more than one hundred and ten, depending on who's doing the
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math, without anything else holding him up or going wrong to have done all
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these things and kill the priest. While it's not a impossibility in theory,
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it almost certainly is practically impossible in actuality. Ector County prosecutors called the receipts
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and speeding ticket that provided Rios an alibi to directly quote Ector County District attorneys
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Handy. The defense also provided witnesses that, along with Rios's account of Father
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Ryan's sexual assault against him, gave a potential and plausible motive as to why
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someone else might want to cause the priest harm. At trial, two young
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men testified that Father Ryan, wearing casual clothing, pulled up to them at
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a grocery store in Hobbs, New Mexico. According to these witnesses, the
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priest rolled down his car window and told them that he was quote looking for
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a young stud to fuck him end quote. Had the forty nine year old
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man of God propositioned someone or worse at the Sandon Sage Motel in Odessa,
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leading to a rageful retaliation that resulted in his beating death. His laughably dated
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and outlandish takes on why a gay man might kill a lover. Aside.
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Professor of psychology and assistant Professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico in
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Albuquerque, doctor Samuel Role provided the court with a relatively sound psychological evaluation of
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James Harry Rios. Doctor Roll was a specialist in forensic psychology and over his
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career had extensively studied false confessions. It was extremely unlikely that Rios was capable
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of such a heinous crime, the doctor said. His confession, the man
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continued, was the result of the defendant's mental anguish over the sexual act Father
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Ryan forced him to perform, and the tremendous guilt and shame he felt about
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his sexuality not only gave him the need to confess to something anything other than
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being gay, but also, in some strange way, he actually felt responsible
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for the priest's death. Ultimately, after three days of trial, the state's
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single piece of evidence, the drunken, drug fueled confession of James Harry REOs
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almost certainly aided by the facts that he was gay, and Apache won out
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over the seemingly overwhelming evidence of his innocence. He was convicted and sentenced to
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thirty eight years in prison, according to Scott Lomax's book. Interestingly, two
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others had confessed to killing Patrick Ryan over the course of the investigation, but
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were deemed mentally ill by detectives. It's hard to swallow that cops and prosecutors
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truly believed in the case against Achos, but the case was cleared from the
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books. Nearly a year after the murder of father Patrick Ryan. On Saturday,
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December fourth, nineteen eighty two, a man around forty years old waited
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in a few to confess his sins at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boise,
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Idaho. Moments later, he fell to the floor. The man had died
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by suicide cyanide poisoning. After the discovery by parishioners, Boise policemen arrived at
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the scene at about five five pm. In the dead man's pocket, Sergeant
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Frank Richardson found a brown envelope and the contents were somewhat shocking. Inside there
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were nineteen one hundred dollar bills and a letter typewritten on three by five note
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cards. It read, in the event of my death, the enclosed currency
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should give more than adequate compensation for my funeral or disposal preferred to be cremated
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expenditures. What is left over. Please take this as a contribution to this
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church. God will see to your honesty in this WM L to me.
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The dead man didn't seem to police to belong in Idaho. He was heavily
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sun tanned and dressed in cowboy boots and a long sleeved shirt with a braided
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leather bolo tie, the slide of which was turquoise encased in silver. On
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the back of the slide was stamped P white. The man's blue jeans were
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held up by a belt in which the large buckle bore a Mexican one hundred
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paco coin. Though the belt buckle was eventually traced to a Phoenix, Arizona
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gift shop, police found nothing that could identify this man. Any items that
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might have identified him had been removed from his wallet. The name WM L.
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Toomey or William L. Toomey was a pseudonym. Detectives believed as no
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one by that name had been reported missing in the United States or Canada,
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and because the signature on the letter didn't have the natural strokes present and most
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the man's fingerprints matched none in Idaho's databases and none in the FBI's. Two
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months before this man died by ingesting cyanide, the infamous Taylanol murders occurred in
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Chicago due to someone's tampering with capsules lacing them with potassium cyanide. Seven people
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who had taken the over the counter drug died. This similarity left some lawman
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to believe the dead man found at a Catholic church in Idaho was responsible for
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the Chicago deaths. The laced drugs, after all, had been manufactured in
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Texas, and the man's heavy sun tan and clothing suggested he was from the
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South or Southwest. Some also theorize that this man is somehow connected to the
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still unsolved murders of priests in those regions of the United States, including Father
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Patrick Ryan. To this day, March fifth, twenty twenty three, the
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man known as Boise John Doe remains unidentified, though it is most certainly not
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for the cops lack of trying less than A year after he began his prison
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sentence, James Harry Rios's father died, leaving him parentless since his mother had
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died more than a decade earlier in nineteen seventy two. It was another blow,
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but he fought the pain, remembering the last words of advice his father
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gave. Rios told Irish journalist Ann Murphy this year to stay strong and never
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give up, and he did not for decades. From the Texas Prison System's
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mixed security caufilled unit in Tennessee Colony, Rios collected all the documents on his
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case he could get his hands on, studied the law extensively, and continually
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wrote letters to newspapers, magazines, and authors asking to allow him to plead
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his case. To their credit, many publications obliged, including the Odessa American,
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where one of his letters was featured in the newspaper's column titled My Turn.
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In it, Rios cites the other unsolved murders of clergymen in the region
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and beyond strongly declares his innocence and reminds folks the evidence of that innocence was
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presented at trial exhaustively. After being incarcerated for eight years in nineteen ninety two,
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former Ector County Assistant District Attorney Dennis Cadra wrote a letter to Governor Ann
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Richards arguing that James Harry Rios was, in fact not guilty. Cadra was
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in charge of stating his office's case against Rios's appeal years earlier, but had
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since become convinced of his innocence, he says, when he snagged the court
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transcripts from the original trial when they were about to be thrown out, He,
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like many others who have reviewed the case since, were appalled by the
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jury's decision to convict James Harry Rios. In nineteen ninety three, the Dallas
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Morning News ran a substantial story about Rios's likely wrongful conviction, which was prompt
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by Dennis Cadra's letter to Governor Richards. According to another step on Rios's long,
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very long journey to justice, an impressive article in the Austin Chronicle by
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Jordan Smith, it was that publication, in fact, that persuaded the Innocence
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Project of Texas to take on the case of James Harry Rios in two thousand
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and five. After serving twenty years. In two thousand and three, Rios
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was paroled to El Paso, and the following year he ended up in a
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Texas Department of Corrections transitional living facility. Though articles and media exposure in general
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have been scant since, countless clergy persons, attorneys, and citizens sleuths have
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taken up Rios's cause. Even though FBI's updated APHISTS or Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification
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System has been operational since nineteen ninety nine, fingerprint evidence was only recently put
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through that system in the case of the murder of father Patrick Ryan. After
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the current chief of the Odessa Police Department, Michael Gurky, became aware of
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the case in the fall of twenty twenty one, upon a few of his
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detectives investigating further and reporting back, Chief Gerky wondered how the hell Rios was
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convicted, but the case file had been destroyed for the most part in nineteen
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ninety three, ten years after the case was cleared as his standard procedure,
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something did still exist. However, the original cards that documented the latent fingerprints
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found at the scene of the murder of Father Ryan. They were scanned,
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ran through APHIS and matched three men, none of whom or James Harry Rios
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that to anyone who'd been following along was absolutely no surprise since they didn't match
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in nineteen eighty one, when he was originally questioned. One of the men
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whose fingerprints did match, in Stark, contrast to the soft spoken and gentleman
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who had been convicted of the crime, had a long criminal record, one
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rot of violence. All three men, from what I understand, died during
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the twenty years Rios served in prison. In an extremely rare set of circumstances,
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the Ector County District Attorney's Office, charged with prosecuting crimes, and the
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Innocence Project of Texas were soon working side by side to right this wrong in
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and of itself rare for a Texas governmental agency to be involved with at all.
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They have been professional, they have been transparent, They and helpful.
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I mean, this is a prime example of everyone making sure justice is done.
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Deputy Director of the Innocence Project Texas, Allison Clayton, told Midland Odessa's
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Channel nine about the Ector County DA's office and the Odessa Police Department. Assistant
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District Attorney Greg Barber, like the Odessa Police chief, who had brought his
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department's findings to him, was shocked at the obvious wrong conviction, even as
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a seasoned prosecutor and former policeman. In April of twenty twenty two, Barber
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contacted Clayton of the Innocence Project himself, and the ball finally got rolling at
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a steady speed. Months later, in September twenty twenty two, James Harry
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Rios suffered a stroke in Austin and is still not allowed by the conditions of
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his parole to step foot out of Texas to go back home to northwest New
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Mexico, still essentially a prisoner. Though Clayton offered to arrange the release of
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parole restrictions so that he might return home, Rios declined, I'm not going
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to leave Texas until I'm officially considered actually innocent, he told Michael Hall of
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Texas Monthly. I don't want to leave Texas until I know I don't have
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to come back. Rios, I am elated to report appears to be on
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the road to recovery from his stroke, and perhaps that good news is in
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some part the result of several other pieces of good news, or at least
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as good as news can be, considering the man's been labeled a convicted murderer
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for more than forty years. The Odessa Police have officially reopened the father Patrick
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Ryan case and intend to conduct as full an investigation as possible with a scant
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evidence that remains and the few witnesses who might still be alive. Meanwhile,
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on Thursday, February second, twenty twenty three, Clayton filed a writ of
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habeas corpus on behalf of a now sixty six year old James Harry Rios,
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citing proof of his actual innocence. Likely if you're listening to this episode when
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or soon after it comes out, you will not be waiting long for an
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update stating that James Harry Rios has been exonerated. And when that report comes
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in with it, investigators say, will come the names of three men whose
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bloody fingerprints were found at the Sand and Sage Motel in Odessa, Texas on
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December twenty second, nineteen eighty one, the day after father Patrick Joseph Ryan
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was murdered there. If you have any information about the nineteen eighty one murder
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of father Patrick Joseph Ryan, please call the Odessa Police Department at four three
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two three three five four nine six one, or Odessa crime Stoppers at four
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three two three three three eight four seven seven. If you have not already,
35:20
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