Deborah Esquenazi: Night in West Texas

Then she says, have you seen a photo of my son and I am like, who is this person?

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Hi, I'm Danielle Robe, host of Bookmarked, the podcast by Reese's Book Club.

And this week, we are talking about a monster or maybe the woman who refused to be one.

I'm sitting down with Maggie Gyllenhaal to unpack her new film, The Bride.

And trust me, this isn't your grandmother's bride of Frankenstein.

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He asks his lead detective a guy he really trusts and says, listen, I want you to pull the

James Reo's file, pulls the file, reads it, and then he says to the detective, where's

the rest of it?

And he goes, that's it.

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a non-fiction author and journalism professor in Austin, Texas.

I'm also the co-host of the podcast, Buried Bones on Exactly Right.

And throughout my career, research for my many audio and book projects has taken me

around the world.

On Wicked Words, I sit down with the people I've met along the way.

Amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers and podcasters who have investigated and reported

on notorious true crime cases.

This is about the choices writers make, both good and bad, and it's a deep dive into

the unpublished details behind their stories.

We're taking you back to 1980's West Texas, oil country.

When a Catholic priest was found murdered in a city hotel in Odessa, investigators focused

on a gay, a patchy man who had made an accusation against the victim.

Director Deb Eskenazi tells the story at the center of her documentary, Night in West

Texas.

Will you set the scene for what Odessa, Texas was like in 1981, first of all, where is

Odessa for people who aren't in Texas?

Yes.

So 1981, Odessa, Texas is the seat of what we call the Permian Basin, which is where basically

well-known in American frontier lore as oil country.

It is the center of the oil and gas world.

It's where you get the most oil, raw crude oil in America.

And 1981 in West Texas, this is like a flat country, essentially.

It's quite desert.

All of that oil is like, you know, as my call at Texas monthly would say is dinosaur guts.

It's just old, old, old, you know, rough sort of like raw black tar underneath the

rock.

81 was a boom town, Odessa was.

It was a heavy wildcatter world.

It was the seat of the most homicides in America at the time, which is hard to believe

1981, but it was, which was a product of boom town culture.

I think fans of Landman might kind of understand this world a little bit better.

And what took place at the time, what I was interested in was this little microcosmic

world, which was basically, I would describe it as the red light district of Odessa, Texas.

If there was a place, it would be this.

And the San and Sage Motel, which was this kind of, again, the seat of this red light

district, you know, was the seat of this murder that took place of a Catholic priest in 1981.

Well, let's go back because now I'm fascinated with the, you know, high crime rate in Odessa.

So we're talking about Reagan, right?

This is the Reagan years 81.

And I have to assume that oil was sought out and supported and all of that.

Is this a lot of money or are we talking because there are a lot of wealthy people mixed

with oil workers, it's caused conflicts or what does it all mean?

Yes.

So what's happening are drift workers or man camps, what are called man camps are getting

built because there's so much work around drilling at this time that a lot of these sort

of drifter communities would come in.

We call them wildcatters to sort of help drill the oil.

This isn't really a place where you're going to see that sort of, you know, wealth that

you would see saying Houston, that kind of river Oaks money or Dallas money.

This is really just these blue collar workers coming to this area, living in man camps.

And this is like a world where, yes, this is blue collar world, essentially.

The murder rates really had to do with the size of the place and the amount of murders

it took place.

I mean, this is a really small stretch of land.

It's not even, I mean, we're not talking about the size of the entire West Texas, this

is a small town.

You know, these murders, we're talking about generally speaking people with making a lot

of money.

These are transient populations.

And when they come in, you know, these other things happen.

Just like make a ton of money and small amount of time because they're working super hard.

And then they leave after the bust.

So you get these kind of cycles, these sort of in and out populations of people coming

to this, to this town.

When I interview people about Texas stories, particularly in the 80s and before, they

sometimes talk about towns in relation to how many churches they have or how many bars

they have or both.

And then sometimes I add in tattoo parlors because you know, we see when you've got different,

you know, military bases around and so I'm always interested in that.

So what is this a bar or a church or a combination or the scene of the crime literally is this

red light district and you won't find a church anywhere near here at the time.

However, because this is the murder of a very beloved priest from a nearby town, the

town of Denver City, that does have quite a few churches and the seat of that town is

the church that Father Patrick Ryan was in.

And he was from Ireland, came to America for reasons we cannot understand or know.

It like he sort of seemed to drift in, out of nowhere, who's really interesting when

we were trying to understand this man and how he ends up being an Irishman in Texas.

There were a lot of theories.

This case essentially had quite a bit of lore attached to it, which is one of the reasons

I wanted to direct this film and why I started getting really interested in like people

were making up and or trying to understand how this man seems to arrive in the United

States out of thin air.

So there were theories, some of which I could share, some of which I was not never able

to confirm.

But you know, what he's doing there is he's, you know, now he's running a parish, a church

in Denver City nearby and how he gets to Odessa that night that he has murdered is another

mystery that nobody seems to be able to solve.

Okay.

Well, that's always an interesting story is when there are some things that you're never

going to be able to figure out.

Let's do a couple of more contextual detail things.

Number one, tell me a little bit about the red light district specifically.

I know you mentioned a motel.

Are we talking about sex work or is it gambling or what, what is it?

Yeah, probably both.

You know, obviously there's no official red light district, right?

So the original owner of the hotel of the Sandin Sage Motel is somebody I entered, had

the pleasure of interviewing and he, he basically recollected the time for me because now it's

just a bunch of warehouses.

The motel has been turned into a million other things that have nothing to do with sex

work.

But at the time, it really was like the place that you would rent out an hour here and

hour there.

Sometimes one day, sometimes a week is really interesting.

He said it was just, you know, it was a rough place.

They made a ton of money at that motel and they were constantly turning the rooms.

And he said there were a few people that would rent those rooms for a week here, a week

there.

And, you know, nearby were other motels.

It was a place where women would, you know, there was a quite heavy prostitution population

in 1981, drugs were also part of this sort of stretch.

And at the motel, there was a pretty popular diner that I guess was open 24 hours.

So it was a place where you could, you know, get really wasted but also get sobered up.

It seemed to be really popular and of course, the original owner said, you know, he was

making money, you know, hand over fist at the time.

But somewhere in his own journey, this motel owner, he said, you know, he sort of turned

to religion and turned to God and he just couldn't, he couldn't do it anymore.

He couldn't run a place like that.

And so he eventually closed it down, turned it into something else.

Okay.

And in Odessa and 81, what was the demographic?

It's interesting because, you know, Odessa, Texas, 1987 becomes extremely famous in a tiny

little book called Friday Night Lights.

And that book became, when I was in my early 20s, that was, well, years ago now, that

was like the great book about the, you know, West Texas and the Permian Basin.

And so Buzz Bissinger, who's in my film night in West Texas, we'll tell you that the town

is, there are racial tensions and the town is predominantly white.

And you know, in his world, of course, he's talking about the primary high school there.

And the Permian panthers and the football team and all the race relations, which were quite

volatile.

But in terms of where this motel is, this is mostly, again, these are going to be mostly

oil workers coming in.

These are transient populations and these primarily would be white men.

In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief.

The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific

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Lucy Lepi has been found guilty.

But what if we didn't get the whole story?

The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.

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Hi, I'm Danielle Robe, host of Bookmarked, the podcast by Reese's Book Club.

And this week we are talking about a monster, or maybe the woman who refused to be one.

I'm sitting down with Maggie Jill and Hall to unpack her new film The Bride.

And trust me, this isn't your grandmother's bride of Frankenstein.

It's darker, smarter, sexier, a full reimagining of what happens when the monster gets a voice

of her own.

What I was more interested in was the monstrousness inside of each of us.

You can spend your life running from those things, or you can turn around and shake hands with

them.

If I'm honest about that, and I tell my story about monsters really dealing in something

truthful, and I do it in a way that's pop, that's hot, that's like getting on a roller

coaster, will people respond.

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Biggie.

You put on biggie when you feel uncomfortable?

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Who do you want to be, and what's the song that can take you there?

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Let's switch to when this happens, and you know why this is a true crime story.

We know that Father Patrick Ryan is our victim here.

He came from Ireland, and it's very mysterious, right?

But you said he lived at a parish in Denver City, which was how far away from Odessa?

It's about 80 miles, not terribly far, and of course, as you, as so many people might

imagine, West Texas, this is like driving country.

It's not easy.

These aren't like the northeastern corridor where you easily get through trains and other

means, you know, this is like raw, wide country, big sky.

It's agricultural.

It has a massive cotton farming, agricultural sort of presence aside from oil, and so, you

know, to get from one town to the other, you're going to have to get in a car.

And there's a lot of driving, and there's a lot of nothing.

So yeah, it is really interesting.

Now, the one thing that we do know about the victim, about Father Patrick Ryan, is that

he did speak Spanish, and so Denver City would be populated with quite a bit of agricultural

workers.

It's a little different from Odessa.

So Odessa's our sort of wildcatter, the seed of the wildcatters, right?

So we're imagining these are oil workers, and then you've got Denver City, and that

is a much more Latino population, and that's where he was a priest.

He was very beloved, and in our research, we never found anything on toward about Father

Ryan.

We can go into these, something like bishopsaccountability.org, and look, you know, was there anything in

proprietist or nefarious regarding Father Ryan, as you have with other priests, and we could

never find any traction.

So, you know, when people say they loved him, and he was a good guy, by all accounts, people

loved him, and he was a good guy.

You know, how he gets to Odessa, how he has murdered that night, was, you know, a great

mystery after it happened.

And it happened the night of Christmas, which was a pretty remarkable time, I believe,

to miss your priest, right?

In Denver City, you've got, you know, individuals seated in pews ready to do the mass, and then

he doesn't show up.

And what sort of becomes like a little bit of a, like, curiosity turns into panic, and

what you can read about in the trial transcripts.

Eventually, you can read about how these individuals made their own mass that night.

So the people are sort of panicking, what's going on, where's our priest?

And it's like, well, we have a mass to do, so the people sort of get up and do their

own impromptu mass that night.

And next day, people are on the phone, people are making calls, they want to know where Father

Ryan is.

Wow.

Okay.

So, they are making phone calls, they don't know where he is.

Of course, this is way before CCTV, before cell phones, before tracking on cars, he has

a car though, right?

He can travel somewhere.

When do they make the connection between Father Ryan and whatever terrible thing happens?

I have to presume in this motel in Odessa that night.

So 24 hours later, a John Doe shows up, 11 a.m.

A maid comes in, sees this man brutally, brutally murdered.

Not just a murder.

We're talking about, you know, what we say in the film, this was an act of overkill, which

is a very specific kind of murder.

A few hours after that, there's a proclamation of a John Doe looking for identity.

Next thing you know, the cops are making, you know, putting two and two together.

There's a missing priest who vanished.

We've got a John Doe.

So one of the heads of the brotherhood of this Denver City parish, so this man, Angel Perez

is his name.

I remember him from the trial transcripts that I poured over and he says, I drove to Odessa,

you know, a bundle of nerves walks in to make the identification and he realizes, oh my

god, that's Father Ryan and he describes a father Ryan that doesn't even look like

Father Ryan.

I mean, this man is just so brutally beaten.

So it took about 24 hours to make the identification.

Now I know that Odessa has the highest crime rate in the country, but is this something

that stands out, is it that you can't identify the person, is that, is that what makes this

alarming even maybe before they identify him as a Catholic priest?

Well, that's a really good point.

What makes it, I think, alarming is that we have Angel Perez saying, this is Father

Patrick Ryan, but in the Odessa, San and Sage entry, right, when you go in and you rent

a room, you give a name, Father Ryan gave a false name.

He doesn't have any of his Catholic, you know, garb, you know, anything to identify himself.

And so the question is, well, why is he lying?

What's he doing here?

I mean, there, you know, so I think part of the lore of this case is not just this beloved

man vanishes, you know, on Christmas of all days.

He ends up in Odessa, which does have the highest crime rate, but why is he giving a false

name and why is he here?

And I guess the other thing that was really disturbing is when they had looked through

his, the factory where he was living in Denver City, he had made this beautifully elaborate

meal.

It was like a meat and potato brisket kind of meal.

And it was just there had been left.

And so, you know, never touched, kitchen was clean except for, you know, this meal had

been made.

And there were questions about what's going on here, like, Father Ryan made this meal

ostensibly for somebody, but never gets back to Denver City to have this meal.

So there were just a ton of questions.

And I think also because, you know, look, I get the sense in my research that Odessa,

West Texas, a lot of the people who were going to be seeing murdered at the time were connected

to sort of these nefarious acts, right?

This man didn't seem to have a connection to anything.

He just sort of appeared out of thin air.

The other thing that was really curious to me, especially, especially after I visited

the motel and motel still stands there, like I said, not as a motel, but it still stands

there walls and everything.

And what's startling is nothing about it had really changed.

So the motel room was really similar, even the down to the tile where they end up finding

bloody fingerprints.

So, you know, when I walked in there, my first thought, and I went with the innocence project

of Texas who I'm basically embedded with in the film, and the students are just, they're

just cannot believe the walls are paper thin.

And the kind of violence that we're talking about that took place, the walls were bashed

in, Father Ryan looked horrendous.

I mean, I have access to all those crime scene photos, and I've seen a lot of crime scene

photos as a journalist.

These are some of the worst I've seen.

You know, and the question the students kept saying, I think in a chill really was, why

did nobody say anything?

I mean, the cops went door to door asking if any of the other folks heard anything, nobody

had heard anything.

And this would have been not even that late.

We're talking about, they suspect between 8 and 10 pm that Father Ryan would have been

murdered.

Who was the last person, aside from whoever killed him, to see Father Ryan alive?

I guess back in Denver City at the parish, was it Christmas morning on the 25th or when

was it?

Well, that's a really important question you're asking because that's the center of the

film night in West Texas, which is the last person to see Father Ryan was a man named

James Harry Reos, who was a young gay Apache man, a former oil engineer, who became friendly

with Father Ryan.

They used to occasionally hang out and have beers and we imagine that James Reos, this

young Apache man from, you know, gay Apache man from New Mexico is sort of drifting in

his own ways.

You know, he is an alcohol issue, alcohol problem.

And he basically, the morning that Father Ryan is found dead that morning before, before

he's found, asks Father Ryan to give him a ride to go pick up his car.

New Mexico of all places.

So it wasn't even like James was in the state.

So James was the last person that we know saw Father Ryan and that's sort of where night

in West Texas really begins.

And that's, that, that was my job and the innocence project of Texas's job was to unravel

what really happened and what else we found.

I imagine that police don't come to, to that realization that quickly they're busy

canvassing and seeing if anybody in the CD motel heard anything and of course they didn't.

So when they start looking into Father Ryan, are they just as confused as you as the filmmakers

were, they just cannot find anything about him except that he was a wonderful priest.

Well, yes.

And then they have something else which draws them closer to James Harry Reos.

So when they return to the factory in Denver City to see if they can find anything about

his, where he was, his location, anything, they discover a photo album and the photo album

is of a young Native American boy and it's all these like wonderful pictures.

And you can tell that somebody had brought those pictures as to share with Father Ryan.

And what we end up learning from James Harry Reos was that Father Ryan had taken a massive

interest in indigenous populations was really interested and James is upbringing in the Hickorya

Apache homeland, which is in northern New Mexico.

And so in this part of this friendship was having some drinks and talking about life

and that the night before the murder, James shows them baby pictures, pictures of life

on the, on the reservation.

And so I think what ends up happening, I wasn't there of course, but detectives are like,

you know, who, who do these belong to?

And that's how they get to James Harry Reos.

That's how James becomes a person of interest.

Is there not a high Native American population in Denver City or Odessa and it was kind of

easy to track James down?

Well, that's a really good question.

I don't know how easy I think I don't, I'm sure that James wasn't hiding.

He had a department that was not very far from where the parish was.

So, you know, he wouldn't have been difficult to find.

He also was a former engineer in the oil fields.

And so, you know, he was a graduate and in terms of like, you know, are there populations

of indigenous folks, not as many as you would think as for those of us that are, you know,

we imagine sort of Texas and New Mexico is, you know, cousin states, you know, we don't

really have except for around El Paso that I can think of in West Texas for living reservations.

This was, you know, James came to West Texas for a job.

He wanted to be an oil engineer and he was able to get a decent, actually pretty good

job until he lost it due to drinking.

So this was not, James was not an agricultural worker.

He was not one of the drifters you're talking about that was in Odessa.

This is someone who obviously, you know, either was educated or had just a tremendous amount

of experience and also remind me of how old James is at the time.

So James is 23 at the time and not just is James, you know, really well educated.

He came from a prominent family from his reservation, his mother, you know, I just, I love his

story.

In fact, so James's mother was a prominent ranch owner on the Hickorya reservation.

And he grew up with his family on the reservation.

Now she ended up dying early and that shattered the young James.

It really did and it shattered James's father with whom James was very close.

But you know, James has his own sort of hero's journey, right?

I mean, he, he's this brokenhearted kid.

He is obviously not out.

That comes way later in our story and struggling with his own internalized homophobia.

And when he meets father Ryan, my, my real honest opinion is that he found, you know, a

father figure, father Ryan was 50, James was 23.

So, you know, this friendship, I guess you could say sort of started, it didn't have time

to bloom.

It was just kind of beginning.

And so, you know, James being a person of interest was, I would say, as somebody who's

an investigator, it made a lot of sense because of, you know, what is discovered at the

directory?

James doesn't have a record.

I have to assume.

He does.

But it's mostly for drunken driving.

But there's, you know, when you meet James, what you do in the film, you couldn't imagine

a softer, kinder, quieter, small man.

I think he's about five, four, father Ryan was six feet tall.

He speaks very softly.

He's very formal.

He says gentleman and lady, like when he's talking about people, he's the least angry, violent

person you would ever meet in your entire life.

So for me, when I look at those crime scene photos and I know James, I know what I saw

could not have been achieved from this tiny man.

In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief.

The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific

child killer in modern British history.

Everyone thought they knew how it ended.

A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Levy.

Lucy Levy has been found guilty.

But what if we didn't get the whole story?

The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.

I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast Doubt, the case of Lucy Levy, we follow the evidence

and hear from the people that lived it, to ask what really happened when the world decided

who Lucy Levy was.

No voicing of any skepticism or doubt.

It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong.

Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Levy, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever

you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Danielle Robe, host of Bookmarked, the podcast by Reese's Book Club.

And this week, we are talking about a monster.

Or maybe the woman who refused to be one.

I'm sitting down with Maggie Jill and Hall to unpack her new film The Bride.

And trust me, this isn't your grandmother's bride of Frankenstein.

It's darker, smarter, sexier, a full reimagining of what happens when the monster gets a voice

of her own.

What I was more interested in was the monstrousness inside of each of us.

You can spend your life running from those things, or you can turn around and shake hands

with them.

If I'm honest about that, and I tell my story about monsters really dealing in something

truthful, and I do it in a way that's pop, that's hot, that's like getting on a roller

coaster will people respond.

Listen to Bookmarked, the Reese's Book Club podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Welcome to Boys and Girls, the podcast where dating is in dating.

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So when they start to talk to James Rios, he explains that they're friends, that Father

Ryan is sort of a father figure, mentor, that, you know, they hung out and spent time together.

But, you know, they were, they were friends and nothing else.

I mean, do the investigators even think to say were you two involved in a relationship

in any way?

No.

I don't think so at all.

That's not what I gathered.

That comes later.

Now, what he does say, eventually he does admit to something that is, you know, trigger

warning here, but he does say that Father Ryan, that night, does try to rape him.

And that's one of the reasons he runs in the middle of the night.

And that was a, that was a big point that was quite controversial and for obvious reasons,

right?

I mean, the cops would have wanted to play that very carefully, considering that they

wouldn't have wanted to offend the church in any way.

But here you have a young 23 year old who's admitted now in this story that he was almost

raped by Father Ryan.

He was able to pull away that, that's what he says on the stand.

The sort of unraveling of this conversation is, well, like, who really was the victim

here, right?

I mean, and, and I think that adds to the dimensionality of the mystery, you know, who

was this Father Ryan?

And, you know, they really, they can't find anything untoward about him.

And so James, of course, when you meet him, you would understand, like, he just, he's

really, he's at this point in time.

He's doing the best he can to work with the cops.

And the other big question that they had is, so the night before you asked him for a ride,

he had tried to assault you.

Why did you come back and ask him for a ride to get your truck in another place if you

were afraid of him?

And I think what James was trying to say and something we can all, I think, now understand

about the way friendships and assaults work is that it was messier than that.

They had been drinking.

They were friends.

James was extremely upset, but the way that, you know, especially in same-sex assaults,

these things happen.

It's, you know, the lines were crossed, but James is still just a kid.

And this is the only guy he trusts in West Texas.

And so you have two ways of looking at this, like, you know, how are you going to get

your truck?

How are you going to, you know, and this man was fallen tons and purposes when he was

not drinking was very loving.

So it's complicated.

And in the film, you know, it's, we have to really complicate that.

We have to let James tell it the way James needs to tell it, which is it was all very confusing

and very difficult.

But he returns the next morning, I need my car.

He says to father Ryan, father Ryan says, oh my god, I am so sorry.

I am so sorry about what I did.

And James says, it's fine.

It sounds like he was a little chilly.

It's fine.

I need my truck.

Please help.

And of course, father Ryan is obliged to do it.

Okay.

So father Ryan says, I will give you a ride, but what happens after that?

He doesn't, right?

No, he does.

He takes them all the way to New Mexico, drops him off.

There's record of everything here.

James was an extraordinary record keeper.

Every receipt was kept.

He had a gas cap that he needed that to buy.

He's got the receipt for it.

He has gas he needs to buy.

He has the receipt for it.

So here's what we know.

James is a New Mexico getting his truck.

There's a receipt for it.

And hours later, probably about six hours later, father Ryan is found murdered in Odessa.

Now, James didn't even have any sense at all that father Ryan was going to go to Odessa.

So even James is like, I don't know what he was doing there.

I thought he was going to go back to Denver City.

We're talking about Christmas, right?

So James was as confused and as upset and as traumatized.

I mean, I think that's a really big important word.

He's as traumatized.

That's sort of where we end the, for a little bit, we end the James story.

Because then it's like, well, then it probably wasn't James.

So this timeline works the way James explains it, right?

The amount of time it takes to get to where as truck is in New Mexico, when they arrive,

all of these like time stamps with the receipts and stuff.

And James and father Ryan both leave at some point.

Father Ryan is supposed to go back to Denver City as is James, but father Ryan goes to Odessa

instead.

And then James is left clueless and now probably with no alibi at that point is that right

because what he just goes home to Denver City.

So what happens is James gets drunk and is thrown in a drunk tank in New Mexico.

Oh, great alibi.

Great alibi.

However, it didn't work.

It doesn't work.

So even though there is evidence, police evidence that James is in a drunk tank in New Mexico,

he is still indicted for the murder of father Ryan.

Wow.

Exactly.

Do you think or did anybody you spoke to think that if he had not said what he said about

the attempted rape that he would not be the focus of this, that they just thought that

that was so contrary off the wall, provocative, that it must be somebody making this story

up to cover up a real murder?

Well, you're half right about that.

So I think there is that as an amazing investigative reporter who is in night in West Texas says,

they needed to find a monster, right?

I mean, they needed to find you because you don't want to make father Ryan the monster,

right?

You don't want to offend the church.

I mean, this is a big theme for sure.

But here's the other thing that happens.

So James is in the clear, right?

The cops are like, it's definitely not that guy.

Besides the fact that he's tiny, he was in a drunk tank.

And then something happens.

He's watching an episode of Perry Mason and he's drinking and he's taking quailudes.

And in one of his, I guess, like, drunk in, fugue, like, states, he calls the cops and

then slurring his words says, I killed the priest.

What was really interesting, though, is when he called to make a confession, the answer

from the 9-1-1 operator was which one, oh, because there was more than one.

And he said, I killed father Ryan.

That sort of snowballs because now a confession has been made despite the cops in Odessa knowing

what they know about James.

Now we're getting into this weird psychological territory about false confessions that the

cops don't know what to do with.

So before we get to the other priest, I'm assuming, I mean, are they done investigating

for that year or had they been looking at some other folks in the meantime?

Yeah.

They didn't have anybody and that was weighing on them because, you know, they needed

to find somebody.

And finally, they're like, well, let's re-look at James.

And so the things that were clearly like the evidence, you know, that was the reason

why he was in the clear are things they're going to ignore so that they can make, you

know, they can put him away.

They can sort of indict him for this case.

Okay.

What's the deal?

Is there one more priest who's murdered or is what is it?

There's quite a few.

And that's part two of the film we're making.

So, okay.

But that was the response is which one.

And then James says, Father Patrick Ryan and the second he sobers up, the minute he sobers

up, he regrets saying and he recants and he was like, oh, my God, I don't know what

I've done.

I was so drunk.

I, you know, and then he tells the story about how he had been watching Perry Mason,

somebody had confessed to something.

He was feeling this insane amount of guilt and it'd been weighing on him.

And, you know, that's why he confessed.

Now, what do experts tell you about that?

I wouldn't call it a phenomenon, but that instinct because, I mean, we know from the

innocence project statistically that, you know, a large portion of people who end up being

wrongfully convicted are there because of false confessions.

And just because you confessed doesn't mean you did it.

There's a myriad of reasons why you would do that.

But tell me what the experts, I guess, when I assume we go to trial here, what they say

about what James did.

Yeah.

You know, it's a really interesting thing because James's case specifically becomes sort

of famous.

Now, this isn't in night in West Texas because night in West Texas is unraveling the mystery.

But in my research and in the conversations, and again, in the innocence project doing

their own work, you know, this phenomenon of like internalized homophobia or internalized

self-loathing coupled with an issue with alcohol and drug abuse sort of creates these

states, these internal states of, you know, self-disgust.

I mean, I don't know how else to say it that makes you feel so guilty that you confess

to something.

Perhaps you're not confessing to what you think you're confessing, but you're confessing

to something.

And that's sort of important here.

James in the film says, you know, when I interview him and we restart to the innocence, when

you meet him in night in West Texas, the innocence project of Texas has taken up this case 40

years later.

So he's been sitting on this case.

This is the only thing he's ever fought for.

And he says in a moment of like, you know, clarity says, I just felt this horrendous self-loathing.

I felt this guilt and I was the last person to see Father Ryan.

And I think there was also a part of James who loved Father Ryan.

You know, I don't want to place it into like just romantic love.

But a blooming friendship between individuals.

And then there was the complication of the rape.

So there were just so many feelings.

And, you know, I think he also, James also talks about his feelings of masculinity.

You know, he's just this very sweet, soft individual.

And he talks about his own kind of guilt being, you know, being raised in the Apache world

where men were presumed to be like, he describes it as like the warrior.

And he was like, you know, I never was that man.

And there's just a lot of kind of identity searching as the 20s are.

Like just to sort of place it in context, my 20s, I was like that.

I was, you know, I didn't come out until I was in my early 30s.

And, you know, I would say my 20s were all about that guilt,

all about those feelings of complication.

And, you know, so he's kind of exactly where I think most people in their 20s are.

Just looking for who they, just looking for their identity in the world,

their little place in the world.

And James was really no different in that sense.

We're talking about why he would go back after this, you know, attack,

the attempted rape.

And then he goes back and says, I need a ride.

And then he's in the car with this man for, you know, however many miles to get back to New Mexico.

One thing that, you know, I would add is certainly that feeling of I did something wrong.

I'm the one that caused what happened.

And so, you know, I think that also internally must mitigate things for him to just say,

well, I mean, we were drunk.

That was a mistake.

I did something wrong to cause that.

So, you know, that might be another part of it, not necessarily the coercion part of it,

but just in general, the guilt that he felt too.

And now it's extending to this confession, right?

Exactly.

Okay.

So the cops are, I would have to assume pleased that this is happening.

Finally, they're catching someone who there must be under tremendous pressure to catch the killer of a priest.

How quickly does this arrest come?

I know you said he recants, but do they just show up at his door or does he go in?

Or how does this proceed?

So, if we can imagine that the murder happens 1981, Christmas 1981,

and his original trial is happening 1983.

So, two years pass, which seems slow, but in the world of policing and police and law enforcement

and trials, that's actually kind of fast.

Is he in jail?

He does go to prison.

He does.

He's indicted for 38 years and he goes to prison.

Did we have police in New Mexico saying this guy was drunk?

We arrested him.

He's in the drunk tank.

Here's the records of that.

Yes.

And even more remarkable,

along James's journey of innocence, in this case, every,

I would say every 10 years would get traction, advocates, innocence lawyers,

the original prosecutor, James's original prosecutor.

10 years later, it comes out and says he made a massive mistake.

But what is remarkable and what you see in Night in West Texas is that the New Mexico assembly,

the entire house, you know, basically New Mexico's house of representatives comes forward

to plead with Governor Ann Richards to let him go, because they believe they know that

he was in New Mexico at the time of the murder and that didn't even make a difference.

So Ann Richards says what to all of this?

Ann Richards ignores it.

Wow.

I know.

I know.

I hate hearing that.

Yeah.

I mean, I hated hearing that.

I hated looking at, you know, I mean, she doesn't respond.

She doesn't even respond to the request.

Wow.

That's surprising.

So, okay.

So he's indicted 38 years.

So there's hope for parole, obviously.

And he does.

He does get parole.

He gets paroled early 20 years later.

Again, when we talk about people's lives and I say, oh, he was paroled early.

It took 20 years.

I just want people to let that sink for a minute.

How much 20 years of your life is spent fighting one thing.

And so 20 years later, he is paroled and he's released to the city of Austin into

basically a transitional housing unit.

And that's where I find him 40 years later still in this transitional housing unit.

So he's 23 when this happens with Father Ryan, you said, right?

And then so he's indicted.

He goes to prison at 25.

Is that right?

Yeah.

Just roughly.

Yeah.

So he's out on parole at 45 ish, right?

In Austin.

And he's in this transitional housing, which clearly is not meant to be permanent housing.

What is happening over that 20 years?

I was going to ask how prison was, but I'm sure it was awful for him.

What happens in that 20 years between 45 when he's 45 and released and when you get to meet

him?

Well, it's remarkable because what you see in the in the archival footage that we get

to draw on is a lot of people wanting to help James.

Because it's one of those people who I would describe, you know, I don't know if anybody

knows their Buddhist mythology, but as somebody I describe as a bodhisattva, who's this like

being in the world who's so soft, but who's also a little bit, I don't know, too soft

for a world like this, you know, like he's just this really sweet person and you feel

this connection.

A story is so big, it's so bit bigger than he is.

And he's sort of at the center of this like mysterious vanishing, you know, then discovery

of Father Ryan, but there are too many questions.

And then over the years, over the course of not just 20, but 40 years, a lot of people

come to help him.

And it seems like nobody can.

Most famously is a Dallas news reporter who became obsessed with James's case.

And even on his deathbed said on his deathbed that his biggest regret was not helping James

find an ending to his journey.

Tell me about James's identity over the past, you know, 40 years.

Is he able to come out and have some semblance of sort of feeling as a whole person, even

though he has this terrible crime hanging over him even when he's been paroled?

When you mean coming out, like coming out as gay and as a gay man, I don't think so.

I mean, he's out, but has he had meaningful relationships?

No.

The one relationship he had was in prison and I would hardly call that a meaningful relationship.

I can't imagine that you can have a deep, you know, abiding equal relationship with somebody

in a place like that.

It was something though and it meant a lot to him.

But when I meet him, he's just turning 66 or he's 66 years old and he's had a stroke.

So he's aging very quickly.

And the Innocence Project of Texas has declared that they're going to take this case thanks

to the city of Odessa, where the police chief becomes partly interested in James's case.

And that's sort of where, you know, when you're in the middle of act two in night in West

Texas, that's where we begin as sort of the town of Odessa and how they're pulling

the pieces back together.

Tell me about what happens with the police chief and how this all proceeds, you know, and

you're involved in it and they're looking at evidence to me about some of the discoveries

that happen.

So the police chief in Odessa, a man named Chief Mike Gurkey, tells the story about how

he's sitting around a kitchen table with his daughter-in-law and his son and she says,

Hey, Pops, have you ever heard of this story about this guy named James Harry Raios?

And he was like, yeah, I've heard about it.

It's come up here and there over the years and Gurkey's been a cop in this system for

a long time before becoming a chief.

And he's like, let me take a look at it.

I mean, it certainly wouldn't hurt anything, you know?

So he tells the story in the film that he asks his lead detective, a guy he really trusts

and says, listen, I want you to pull the James Raios file.

Tell me what you find.

Pulls the file, reads it, and then he says to the detective, where's the rest of it?

And he goes, that's it.

He's like, that's it.

This is how we indicted that kid.

Yeah, that's it, chief.

And it sort of really begins there because thanks to the chief to the DA's office in Odessa

in Texas to kind prosecutors, this is where James gets really the sort of, you know, last

chance for a possible exoneration.

And it is remarkable because remember Odessa in 1981 is not quite Odessa of 2023, but

it's still an oil town.

It's still, you know, in part of a boom and bust cycle.

It's still very much, you know, it's much more filled out of neighborhoods and houses

and lives.

The town next door, Midland is known for its more upper middle class, sort of, you know,

living in West Texas, but Odessa is a different place, but it's still deeply conservative.

It's still a place where wildcatters and, you know, other people transient populations

come to do their work and then they leave after the season is over, after the cycle is over.

So, you know, it was an amazing thing for me.

I started my career at the village voice, you know, so many years ago.

And I just remember, for a little while, I was just doing a bunch of police brutality

research.

And I just remember thinking, gosh, if the day ever comes when a cop actually does the

right thing, I can't wait to tell that story.

And I get to do it in I didn't West Texas.

I get to do what I always thought was the unthinkable, which is a story about this amazing

chief of police in a pretty politicized time actually wanting to sort of take up arms

and use his resources to help a gay man who was indicted with a jury and, you know, could

have completely brushed it off, but he didn't.

He and his lead detective make this their most important case at the time.

I mean, this was it.

This was the thing they were going to do.

They were going to help James.

I get to be there to document that along with the innocence project of Texas.

And I won't lie that it is probably one of the great highlights of my career.

Well, can you give me kind of a summary of what they end up finding 40 years later that

really gives James back his reputation, his name?

Yes.

And I do want people to go see it.

It'll be on PBS in April.

So, you know, millions of people will get to see it.

But, you know, so what they find is the first dash of hope is when they discover that

all the evidence was destroyed.

And that was like, oh, no.

So this, you know, like plan to be victorious just takes a turn.

Like crestfallen, as I think the word, I can see that they were feeling.

But then because of a really savvy fingerprints expert, she says, well, let me call somebody

I know because sometimes if we're lucky, they would have digitized these fingerprints.

They would have digitized them and stuck them in like, you know, like an archive essentially.

And I have to remember, as you said early in the podcast, that there was no such thing

at the time as fingerprints.

And that was correct, unless you had a fingerprint that you could compare, right?

They didn't have anything like a database, which we do now called a fist.

So that's a database that we have now.

So this, while the fingerprints expert goes to, you know, one of her colleagues and says,

can you take a look in this database for these fingerprints?

And low and behold, they find the fingerprints that they found from father Ryan's murder.

40 years later, the very fingerprints that, you know, if, if aphys becomes a thing in

the late 80s, early 90s, think about how much time nobody was looking at those fingerprints

to help James.

So, but here, finally, we've got them.

So the fingerprint experts starts to spend as much time as she can studying the prints.

So what did they find these prints on where they could say this is connected to father

Ryan's murder and wasn't some previous, you know, person who stayed in the room?

Yeah, absolutely.

And here's, here's on in the hearing, the actual exoneration hearing, that question comes

up.

And it's like, well, they were bloody fingerprints.

Yeah.

There you go.

So that's pretty, yeah, forensically.

I mean, I know you can't say 100%, but I think she gives a 99.9% assurance that it's

the killers and none of them are James, by the way, of course.

So there's a bloody fingerprint on a credit card in the card that is found later to be

found, you know, dumped somewhere.

There's a bloody fingerprint in the bathroom.

There's a bloody fingerprint at the shower head.

So somebody had tried to wipe off all of, you know, of the blood and they found that bloody

fingerprint.

So there were quite a few fingerprints that they were able to find.

And thankfully, thankfully, now with AFIS's help, they get three hits.

All of these are guys in the system, right?

Right.

Okay.

So system as in prison or system as in drivers license stuff, drivers license stuff and military

records.

Okay.

So you've got three hits, is that three suspects?

That's right.

Wow.

Three suspects.

Four people talking in one room with paper thin walls and are they packed to the gills

in this hotel on Christmas Eve or Christmas day or what?

Yes.

God, it drives me crazy.

I mean, that's just awful.

Like, that nobody did anything.

That's awful.

Nobody.

Nobody.

And, you know, when I tell you that this place looks exactly the same, those, those walls,

you know, there was, when I walked into the crime scene where where Father Ryan was murdered

by the door, they had put particle board where Father Ryan's head had been bashed in to

the side.

I mean, it was like this place just, it was like locked in time.

It was so eerie and it was so eerie and it was raining that day and it was freezing

and it was me and some of the Innocence Project students and the lead lawyer who's sort

of my, my starlet along with James in this case and they, you know, we all have a moment

of just like extraordinary pain.

Like I couldn't, I can't describe it as anything else, just this chill, this bone chilling grief

for Father Ryan, for all men, for the people who never had the goodwill to say anything

for James in his years.

I mean, it was just this grief just taking over us, you know, those were some, that was

some dark days.

But those fingerprints were the reasons that they could return to file the writ of habeas

corpus, which is the vehicle that helps innocent, imprisoned individuals seek exoneration.

So what is ultimately the motive?

That is an amazing question that we still don't know because all the men are deceased.

Oh, I hate it when that happens.

It's awful, awful, and, and this is where I'm going to push everyone to go see the movie

because the things that James, so much of night in West Texas is not just about this mysterious

case.

It's about James's internal, internal world that he has to face alone while he is learning

all of these things.

And the man I see really trying to come to terms with the facts is heart wrenching.

Like I can't, I sometimes can't even believe I was in the room for those things, you know,

and my job is to make myself very small when I'm documenting stuff and I'm filming.

I don't bring a crew, I film all by myself and, you know, the things I could see, the things

I saw James move through, not just in his body, but the pain and his own grief.

This extraordinary, and it made me want to like rage that there couldn't be justice for

him.

Does the identity of these men help us understand anything about how, you know, Father Ryan

ended up at this hotel in Odessa or, I mean, is this robbery?

Can we get, do we have any information on that?

There's no robbery.

There was change in the room.

They did steal the car and they did take that was in the trunk.

They did take a chalice, you know, some of the sort of Catholic accoutrements, they did

take a chalice.

I think they stole his accordion.

He was like a, Father Ryan was a beloved, you know, accordion player.

So those things were stolen, but no, there was a watch that was broken.

I mean, that could have cost, you know, they could have sold for some money.

So, so it didn't seem like robbery was it, you know, here's the thing.

We have more questions than answers at this point.

And that's, it's really hard.

I tee up the theory of overkill in the film and we talk, we sort of go into overkill as

a kind of social, socially structured forensic conversation and the issues that happened

when men are gay and overkill becomes kind of the, you can sort of see that this was

a hate crime because so many of crimes committed against gay individuals do look like overkill.

It's like you can't just kill someone, you have to overkill them because of the rage

and disgust or perhaps somebody's in own internalized homophobia sort of coming out.

So no, there's, there's so many more questions that I am still trying to find to be, to

be honest.

You know, one of the things I was thinking about is my other show with, you know, forensic

investigator Paul Holes.

We've talked about overkill in certain cases and he says there's, there's a misconception

in some cases and I don't think that's this one where people say 27 stab wounds.

This must be personal.

This is overkill and he goes, no, it's not easy to kill someone.

They move around.

They fight you.

And sometimes the killer who could be a total, yeah, stranger is so frantic to make

sure the victim is dead that it looks like overkill, but it's really not personal.

It's just sort of like this person has to be dead.

But with three men as the offenders, it doesn't seem like overkill that type of scenario.

This seems like very personal, especially if they're ramming his head into a wall and

things like that.

No, that's a really, really good point, you know, and that's, and that's true, right?

Like the idea of stabbing and, you know, like you have to have a certain, the knife has

to be a certain length or, you know, I mean, I totally get that.

Three huge men because they were big in this room.

Now Father Ryan was also tied and he was partially nude.

So, you know, it is my theory is there was an element of hate crime here, but could I

say for certainty, no, I couldn't, but whatever it is, it's, it's, it's heartbreaking.

And Father Ryan is in my dreams a lot.

And Father Ryan is in the dreams of Alice and Clayton, the head lawyer of the Innocence

Projects of Texas.

She says, I had another dream about Father Ryan, me too.

It just, it's hard to shake and this case is hard to shake.

How do you come to terms with feeling sorrow and pain for Father Ryan when the person we

know who has been truthful in this case, you know, James has said this man attacked

me.

I know.

You know, is it hard, you know, to sort of like unwind those two images of this man who

you, you really couldn't sort out just because he had such an ambiguous history, you know,

that is hard.

Do I believe that Father Ryan deserved that?

No.

Did he deserve something for what he did to James?

Yes.

But I don't know how to talk about it without it all being messy and complicated, right?

Like, I don't, I was not there that night with James and Father Ryan.

I know that I believe, obviously believe James and James was vulnerable.

Whatever happened, James was 23 and Father Ryan was 50.

So the power structure is tilted, but I'm still able to feel grief because I just, you

know, a human and I, and I think that Father Ryan was probably hurting very much.

I think if you live your life having to hide in a constant state of hiding who you are

and we do know that Father Ryan was having sex with men.

There was enough evidence of that not to go into that because it doesn't matter.

But, you know, I feel like Father Ryan was a victim of his time as well.

And it's interesting because, yeah, the question is, why so much grief for Father Ryan?

Well, I felt so much grief for James.

I guess I just naturally in order to make Father Ryan human had to mourn him as well.

And I, you know, like I was saying, I was sitting with those crime scene photos and they

were so horrendous.

And there was a moment for myself when I noticed that I'd become very obsessed with Father

Ryan's feet.

I know that sounds weird, but I'm just trying to explain like maybe the way grief works.

But, you know, Father Ryan, there was all this amazing, really interesting study, kind

of forensic study about men's feet.

When they're in dress shoes, they become very squeezed, like bound, almost like bound

feet.

And I could tell that Father Ryan was probably always wearing really tight dress shoes because

of the way his poor toes had been bound.

And I remember thinking, this is so weird that I'm obsessed with this.

And I just remember thinking, oh, I think I'm grieving.

Like I think I'm feeling sad.

And I felt like, you know, I had to tell myself and remind myself, well, who is this man?

Right?

Father Ryan, who came to this country in a small, like a really small West Texas town with

not knowing a single person, living a gay life in 1981 in a time when no doubt there

would have, it would have been very difficult to be gay.

And I did mourn him the way that I've mourned James losing the years.

So has James been officially exonerated?

He was.

Was one of those extremely victorious, amazing moments in the film.

It certainly came as a surprise.

We really, you'll see, if you watch the night in West Texas, we've really thought there

was no chance.

So when it happens, it's pretty extraordinary, yeah.

And did this change him in a way where he's able to finally have peace, you know, moving

forward?

So I want to tell you that he has found peace.

And I want to tell you that he moved back to New Mexico, which was his lifelong dream

when this happened.

But the man I met, James, when he started the journey of exoneration and the man who

is now exonerated is not the same man.

Exoneration did something that is very real.

My first film also follows an exoneration and helped exonerate these four women out of

San Antonio.

And what I discovered after was this idea that if your identity is bound to one thing,

one fight, and that identity is stolen from you.

And you look back, you take the victory, but you look behind you and all those years

are gone.

Who are you without that?

And you know, James is still in transitional housing, which is extraordinary, considering

he has millions of dollars now, which he never touches and very rarely leaves his room

and has become a just a really, I don't want to say broken because that's crazy, like

that's a crazy thing to say, but has become a really hurt individual.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, Niden West Texas has some very beautiful moments.

And I want people to see James, because I think we can learn so much about grace, kindness

and healing from this man.

And despite what he's experiencing now, the way he is, the classy, like, he is just

an angel, just too big for this world.

His heart is too big for this world.

And I just think people need to see what an extraordinary being he is.

And what he endured, which of course is the metaphor for the things that we can endure.

And I think, you know, when you're looking back, I'm sure you do this too.

When he looks back, he looks at, you know, the loss of years, but the loss of potential.

You know, I mean, he, when he made that phone call, he was in a bad state, taking drugs

and drinking alcohol and everything.

And then, you know, he'd lost somebody.

But then to think, well, what could I have become or would have gotten worse, I mean,

all of that unknown, a path that could have been taken, but it was blocked off, taken

from him.

Exactly.

I'm sure must just be maddening for him, you know, for someone who's older now.

So.

Exactly.

And tell the story of an elderly man looking back on the years, like, I just feel like

I saw so much grace, even in the moments that really hurt, and there are a lot of moments

that hurt.

I assure you, but there are a lot of moments of victory.

And so yeah, no, it's tough.

It's tough.

If you love historical true crime stories, check out the audio versions of my books, The

Sinners All-Bow, The Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock.

And don't forget, there are 12 seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold

More Wicked, right here in this podcast feed.

Scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already.

This has been an exactly right production.

Our senior producer is Alexis Emeroci.

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

This episode was mixed by John Bradley.

Curtis Heath is our composer, artwork by Nick Toga, executive produced by Georgia Hardstock,

Karen Kilgerif and Danielle Kramer.

Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and Facebook at Tenfold More Wicked and on Twitter at Tenfold

More.

You'll know of a historical crime that could use some attention from the crew at Tenfold

More Wicked, email us at infoattenfoldmorewicked.com.

We'll also take your suggestions for true crime authors for Wicked Words.

Then she says, have you seen a photo of my son and I'm like, who is this person?

Welcome to the Boys and Girls Podcast.

Arranged marriage is basically a reality show and you're auditioning for your soulmate

and who's judging.

Only your entire family, I sacrificed myself to this ancient tradition hoping to find

love the right way and instead I found chaos, comedy and a lot of cringe.

Listen to Boys and Girls on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your

podcast.

Hi, I'm Danielle Robe, host of Bookmarked at the podcast by Reese's Book Club.

And this week on Bookmarked, we're basically hosting the Ultimate Girls Night.

Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner, Judy Greer, Rita Wilson, and Gary Rice and author

Laura Dave.

These are the women behind season two of the Apple TV series The Last Thing He Cold Me.

We're talking about turning a book into a hit show and what it really takes to bring

a story to life.

The most important metric for me is do I want to share this book with somebody.

That's what creates community and that's the main thesis of our book club and why we started

it was just to connect people together.

Listen to the bookmarked by Reese's Book Club podcast on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast

or wherever you get your podcast.

When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on?

Biggie.

You put on biggie when you feel uncomfortable?

I don't want to get confident.

This is DJ Hester Prins Music Is Therapy.

A new podcast from me, a DJ and license therapist, 12 months, 12 areas of your life, money,

love, career, confidence, this isn't just a podcast, it's unconventional therapy for

your entire year.

Listen to DJ Hester Prins Music Is Therapy on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever

you get your podcasts.