‘Innocent man jailed for
killing Irish priest’
A WRITER who campaigned for the convicted killer of Jill
Dando believes a man jailed for life for murdering an Irish priest is
innocent.
English crime writer Scott Lomax, author of “The Case of Barry
George”, the man who allegedly shot the TV presenter, and its updated
version “Who killed Jill Dando?” has turned his attention to what
he believes is another “miscarriage of justice”.
Co. Limerick born priest Fr Patrick “Paddy” Ryan (49) was
brutally murdered in a seedy motel in Odessa,
Texas,
on December 21,
1981.
The following day, the Pallotine priest’s body was found naked, hands
tied behind his back and bludgeoned to death.
The former Dean of Studies at the Pallotine seminary in Thurles had no
identification with him when found, and the room, at the Sand and Sage Motel,
was registered under a different name.
MURDER
Fr Ryan, from Doon, Co Limerick,
joined St William’s Church parish, in Denver
City,
Yoakum County,
Texas,
three years before his murder, having served 13 years in Tanzania.
His hands were tied with strips of heavy cloth and he appeared to have been
dead for about 10 hours before he was discovered.
The motel where he was found was 94 miles from his parish.
Mr Lomax, who set up a website to highlight the case, said it took the police
a number of days to identify the body.
In the meantime, a missing person’s investigation had been launched to
Find Fr Ryan after it was determined he had failed to say Christmas Mass and
had left some food being cooked at his home.
The police struggled to find the individual responsible for Fr Ryan’s
horrific murder.
But 11 months later, in November, 1982, an Apache Indian named James Harry
Reyos, a closet homosexual, who admitted being with Fr Ryan before the crime,
was arrested after making a drunken confession to the police.
Reyos retracted his confession and has consistently maintained his innocence
ever since, Mr Lomax said.
“The conviction of James Reyos is incredibly worrying because there was
absolutely no evidence linking him to the murder of Fr Patrick Ryan,”
Mr Lomax says.
“There were fingerprints and hairs at the scene of the crime which did
not belong to Mr Reyos or Fr Ryan.”
Despite evidence showing he was 200 miles away from the crime scene on the
night of the murder – including receipts and a traffic stop by police
– Reyos was convicted and sentenced to 38 years imprisonment.
In 2004, Reyos was released from prison, on parole,
after it was determined he posed no danger to the public. But now he wants to
clear his name, Mr Lomax says.
INNOCENCE
“He is an innocent man and wants this to be recognised with Governor
Rick Perry (the Governor of Texas) issuing him a full pardon on the grounds
of innocence.
“Having spoken to him and having studied the facts, I am sure, as are
many US
politicians and even one of the lawyers involved in the prosecution at Mr
Reyos’ appeal, that this is a grave miscarriage of justice,” Mr
Lomax said.
The unsolved murder of another priest, Fr Benjamin Carrier, in November,
1982, in Yuma,
Arizona,
was very similar to Fr Ryan’s case.
On December 4,
1982, a man waiting for confession in the Sacred
Heart
Church
in Boise,
Idaho,
swallowed a cyanide capsule. He died before he received absolution.
Police never identified the man – but one detective believes he was
connected to the deaths of Fathers Ryan and Carrier – and may even have
been a Catholic priest.
“Was Fr Carrier killed by the same man who killed Fr Ryan?”, Mr Lomax asked.
Police have since destroyed the forensic evidence in Fr Ryan’s case
– so a connection to the death of the man in Boise
may never be proved.
The above article appeared in the Evening Herald (a newspaper from the Republic
of Ireland)
on Saturday
6 August 2005. I only received a
copy of the article in November 2005.
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