In a shocking tale of injustice, the murder of a gay priest in Texas leads to the wrongful conviction of an innocent Apache man. This story is explored in the documentary ‘Night in West Texas.’
A Gay Priest Is Killed, An Innocent Apache Man Stands Accused
EXCLUSIVE: In 1981, the battered body of a closeted gay Catholic priest was discovered in the Sage and Sand Motel in Odessa, Texas, his arms knotted behind his back.
The Wrongful Accusation
Within a year, Texas authorities pinned the crime on a closeted Apache man, James Harry Reyos, even though Reyos had an alibi for the night of the killing and wasn’t in Odessa or even in Texas at the time of Father Patrick Ryan’s slaying. A jury convicted Reyos despite his alibi, and he spent 20 years in prison, followed by decades trying to prove his innocence.
Documentary Insight
This dramatic scenario is the basis of Deborah Esquenazi’s new documentary Night in West Texas, which screens on Sunday at Frameline, the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival. Watch an exclusive clip from the film below.
Exposing Injustice
“Law enforcement in the oil-rich town of Odessa, Texas, knew they were targeting an innocent man,” notes a description of the film. “But James was seen as a ‘throwdown character’ – he was closeted and Native American, two characteristics that the prosecution exploited to leverage rampant homophobia and racism locally.”
A Turning Point
In 2017, Mike Gerke became police chief in Odessa, marking a turning point in this long-neglected miscarriage of justice. Chief Gerke reopened Reyos’ case when his daughter-in-law, a true-crime podcast fan, raised questions about the conviction after listening to an episode of Crime Junkie. Gerke’s re-investigation uncovered a massive oversight: latent bloody fingerprints from the scene had never been processed through AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System), technology that didn’t exist in the 1980s. After reinvestigating the prints, three suspects emerged to breathe new life into Reyos’s battle to clear his name.
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The Fight for Exoneration
“Represented by Allison Clayton and a team of four women students at the Innocence Project of Texas, the struggle for James’ exoneration begins.”
Filmmaker’s Mission
Esquenazi, a Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated filmmaker, is behind Myths of Monsters, a production company with a mission to “use storytelling to upend pernicious myths about women, BIPOC, and queer folks.”
Frameline writes, “Anyone who has seen Deborah S. Esquenazi’s Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four (which won the Best Documentary Award at Frameline40) knows the Peabody-winning director and investigative journalist is no stranger to seeing innocent LGBTQ+ folks thrown into Texas prisons for crimes they didn’t commit. Night in West Texas is a probing look at the cracks in the American justice system and how one innocent man so easily slipped through them. At once both harrowing and deeply affecting, the film shows how Reyos was vilified as a minority but also how a community rallied around him to battle for the justice he deserved.”
Documentary Premiere
Night in West Texas, produced by Myths of Monsters, Naked Edge Films, and Texas Monthly, premiered at the Dallas International Film Festival in April. Producers are Daniel J. Chalfen, Adrienne Collatos, and James Costa.
In the clip below, the Innocence Project of Texas and Reyos prepare for his crucial exoneration hearing.
