ODESSA, Texas — Some murder cases are solved, but others turn cold and are forgotten. The Permian Basin has its own share of cold cases.
"There have been podcasts," Odessa Police Department Chief Michael Gerke said. "I think there's been a book written about this."
"People have been talking about it... forever," Executive Director of the Texas Innocence Project Allison Clayton said.
Some of these cold cases have been cold for a long time... Frozen, if you will.
This case however, was just opened.
On this episode of The Basin's Unsolved... we're diving into the mystery of Father Patrick Ryan's murder.
December 21st, 1981: A Denver City Priest Father Patrick Ryan was staying in a room at the Sand and Sage Motel in Odessa.
A motel that by morning would be a crime scene.
"Father Patrick Ryan was found murdered in a hotel here in Odessa, Texas," Gerke said.
According to court documents, the priest’s body wasn’t found until the following day by the manager of the property.
It was there in room 126 at the Sand and Sage Motel where Father Ryan’s naked body was found with his hands bound behind his back.
To police, there was little doubt. Father Patrick Ryan had been murdered.
The room captured the violent last moments of Father Ryan's life: holes punched out of the sheetrock, blood all over the walls and floors.
And fingerprints, which police were able to collect. But in 1981, they had no way of checking them. The technology simply wasn't around back then.
"Please understand that the ability to compare those and the AFIS system that we have now didn't exist then," Gerke said. "So that is one of the issues that came up with this case."
With no eyewitnesses, the case went cold… Until about a year later.
In comes James Harry Reyos, who reportedly had a sexual encounter with Father Ryan around that time. Reyos reportedly gave a drunken confession for the murder of Ryan to New Mexico police, and was arrested.
But later he said he didn’t do it.
"I can with all sincerity - knowing that I am telling you the honest truth! - assert that I DID NOT KILL FATHER PATRICK RYAN! I AM TOTALLY INNOCENT!" were Reyos' words.
"Through the investigation," Gerke said. "A suspect was developed. Mr. Reyos, Mr. Reyos was subsequently tried and convicted and sentenced to 38 years in prison. I believe of those 38 he served 20 years and then was paroled. He still, I believe, is on parole."
The case, however, gained national attention.
"Scholars back in the 1990s," Clayton said. "[They] were saying that James's case was an example of a false confession, and people have been talking about it forever."
40 years after the original case went to trial, Odessa Police Chief Michael Gerke and investigators of the Odessa Police Department began to suspect something didn’t seem right.
"I asked my captain, Captain John Sykes, bring me this case," Gerke said. "I've heard some things about it. I've talked to some folks about this. And as I was reading through the case, and I got to the end, and I just felt, wow, there should be more... for this person to be convicted I felt there should be more."
So the case was looked at again, and after reviewing it a second time, investigators found something game changing.
"And as they did they found other evidence and some other things," Gerke said. "That led us to believe that maybe Mr. Reyos did not actually commit this crime."
The bombshell: the evidence showed that Reyos was most likely somewhere else at the time of the murders, and his fingerprints were never found in room 126.
"He was in New Mexico for a long period of time," Gerke said. "For him to get to Odessa to commit the crime, he would have to have driven an extremely high rate of speed all the way. I mean, for the timeline to fit. It doesn't make sense that there's fingerprints at the crime scene, but his fingerprints aren't at the crime scene."
The Odessa Police Department got together with Allison Clayton and the Texas Innocence Project, and they were committed to prove Reyos’s innocence.
"We filed the lawsuit because there's proof of James's actual innocence," Clayton said. "And as soon as we got proof of his innocence, and we knew that we had a pathway to have some kind of litigation, that's when we filed the lawsuit."
So after 20 years behind bars, and many more years of serving parole, Reyos has plans for exoneration.
"So when you have a case, like James's case where, you know he's innocent, you can finally prove that he's innocent, You've got the help and the cooperation of the state actors, the police and the district attorney's office," Clayton said. "It is-- golly-- it is one of the best feelings as an attorney and as a human being."
The Innocence Project wants it to be known that they don’t fault the justice system that wrongly convicted Reyos.
"And I just hope it encourages, like, a more open dialogue about how our justice system is not perfect," Clayton said. "How nothing that we do is perfect because we're humans, but how we can work together to make it right."
But now the question becomes… who DID kill Father Patrick Ryan in 1981?
With a 40-year head start, time isn't the only thing on the killer's side.
In the 80s and 90s, police had different policies when it came to closed cases.
"As soon as the case was disposed and all of the appeals had been gone through, then the evidence could be destroyed," Gerke said. "And that's what happened in this case."
But investigators aren’t giving up hope. The fingerprints found in Room 126 were recently found in files and were never destroyed.
"So some of the things that did come up were some fingerprints were located in the room, and those people would have to explain why those fingerprints were in the room at the crimes," Gerke said.
But time has done more than destroy evidence, it's also made witnesses and suspects disappear.
"I think some of those fingerprints belong to individuals that are deceased," Gerke said. "So that will make things obviously a lot more difficult."
One chapter for a convicted man trying to prove his innocence is closing, but for investigators, a new chapter is beginning.
"You can never put a timeline on solving a case," Gerke said. "Honestly it may never get solved at this point, because you do have some now possible suspects that are deceased."
If no new evidence can be found, well… it’ll remain as just another one of the Basin’s Unsolved.