Crime Junkie: Crime Junkie Helps Solve a Case

Hi, crime junkies, Ashley here, and I want to share with you some very exciting news.

Britt and I are teaming up with Mariette Bonvoy to bring some lucky crime junkies the ultimate

behind-the-scenes crime junkie experience.

I mean, do you want a chance to sit down with us and talk about all things true crime, your

countless theories, and get a first-hand look at how we obsessively deep-dive into cases?

Well, then this moment was made for you.

You can get all of the details on our exclusive Mariette Bonvoy moment's crime junkie experience

and how to score a spot by visiting our website crimejunkiepodcast.com or our Instagram at

crimejunkiepodcast for more information.

We cannot wait to hang out crimejunkie style.

Hi crime junkies, I'm Ashley Flowers, and you know what I love?

I love that after almost six years we still have first together.

I remember the first time we all did fundraising together and helped identify the Sumter County

Doze as Pamela Buckley and James Freund.

I remember the first time we founded a non-profit together, shout out to Season of Justice, and

I remember the first case that was solved through Season of Justice funding in January

2022.

It was the 1985 murder of Javed Ahmed from Alaska.

This killer was arrested and brought to justice.

I remember the first time I sat down with a victim's family and you got to hear their

story straight from them.

Peyton, I still think about you all the time.

Well today, we all get to celebrate another first.

The first time that one of you took action after an episode and helped get a man fully

exonerated of a murder that he was wrongfully convicted of.

I'm talking about James Reos.

A man convicted of the murder of Father Patrick Ryan.

A man who ultimately served 20 years in prison for that crime.

Well on Wednesday, October 4th, 2023, James was officially declared innocent of a crime

he could have never committed in the first place.

And I hope you don't think for one second this isn't as big of a deal as it is because

don't think like, oh, he was out of jail already for 20 years, no biggie.

He had been on parole, like I said, as a convicted murderer for those 20 years.

The restraints put on people as convicted felons are unbelievable.

Your life is still not your own.

And at 67 years old, James probably believed he would die labeled a murderer.

But two crime junkies, two of you who did the most simple thing we tell you to do all

the time, share the story.

You shared the story and now James Reos is an innocent man.

And though no one can give him back the 20 years he spent in prison or the almost 20

years he spent on parole, he will now be compensated by the state of Texas because of two crime

junkies, Harley and Michael.

Now you might have heard me touch on this briefly in the middle of our Denise Flum episode,

but that was just what got the ball rolling.

Now that we've gotten to the happy ending, I actually want you to hear how this happened

straight from the crime junkies who made it happen.

I'm Harley Gerke and I'm Michael Gerke.

We're both from Odessa and we're high school sweethearts from Myer-Wenton Permian High

School.

We got married and moved down to the Bryan College Station area of Texas, so seven hours

away from Odessa.

We make frequent trips back to Odessa so that the seven hour drives.

And we just kind of needed something to make the time pass and we found crime junkie early

on in our marriage.

We were hooked.

So on our seven hour drives, we would listen to it so much and we would have so many trips

planned.

We would run out of crime junkies to listen to and we needed more, obviously.

So we decided to join the fan club.

That way we could get more episodes, get early released episodes, things like that so that

we could continue listening to crime junkie on our drives.

He drives and I look at everything.

While we're listening, I go and I look up the case.

I look at the notes on the crime junkie app.

I look at the comments from everybody, the conversations that are happening.

I share them with him, but he's the one that drives and I'm the one that looks at everything

and does all the further research on it.

So we were on our way to Odessa and it happened to be one of the cases that we needed to listen

to.

We had never heard about this case before.

There are those cases in your hometown that everybody knows about and everybody hears

about, but this one wasn't one of them.

I had never heard about it before.

I don't think he had either.

And so when it started playing and Odessa started being mentioned, I mean, we were both kind

of surprised.

I think we were actually only about an hour away from Odessa when we were listening to

this.

So by the time we got there, it was still fresh in our minds and my dad was home and it's

like, Hey, have you ever heard of this?

Yeah, listening to it and just hearing all the details about it.

And I mean, it was kind of very obvious to me that he couldn't have done it, especially

the way that Ashley and Britt laid it out.

I mean, it was very obvious.

We need to let your dad know about this, just see what he can find out, see if he can go

look at the details of it.

I mean, what if he could spark something to get done about it?

Now, who dad is, is kind of key to the story because listen, I love to think that every

crime junkie dad could spark something in every case like the superheroes we want our

dads to be, but that's just not reality.

Unless your dad is the chief of police for Odessa PD, like Michael's dad.

So chief Gherky went away.

He did look into it, but things don't happen overnight.

That episode came out in May of 2021.

In March of 2023, our crime junkie team got an email from the managing director of the

Innocence Project of Texas.

She said, quote, I wanted to share that Mr. Reos has an evidentiary hearing scheduled

for next Friday, 3 24 in Odessa.

The Ector County DA's office is working with us to clear his name.

For years, all the physical evidence in this case was thought to be destroyed and there

was no legal path forward.

It was after the Odessa chief of police's daughter listened to your episode on Father

Ryan's murder that he requested a new search for evidence and found templates of fingerprints

taken from the scene.

The fingerprints were run through CODIS and the real perpetrators of the crime have been

identified.

Thank you for bringing attention to James's case, end quote.

It was a while before we heard anything back from him.

Yeah, it was probably a couple months before we ever talked about it again or we heard

anything about it again.

I think in that time, my sister went and listened to it, the episode, and she was talking to

my dad about it and she still lives in the area, so she talks to him quite a bit more

frequently and especially about that.

Next thing we find out is, one, that they reopened it and two, that I think at that

point they had already gone back and was in the process of putting it in front of whoever

the jury or whatever to look and see if there was a way to get him exonerated.

We were so excited when we heard that he was set to possibly be exonerated, but it was

all because of crime junkie.

I mean, if y'all hadn't heard about this case and put out an episode, if we hadn't

been on one of our seven-hour drives and listening to crime junkie, you know, if his father wouldn't

have been the police chief and we wouldn't have went home and told him, I mean, it all

happened because of crime junkie, because y'all released an episode.

If that wouldn't have happened, we would have never known about this case and it wouldn't

have never been re-looked at at the police department.

It really was just the perfect storm of everything because we decided to listen to something other

than crime junkie when we're first taking these drives.

This doesn't happen.

We don't listen to podcasts to begin with.

This doesn't happen.

We don't stumble upon this episode.

This doesn't happen.

It really was the perfect storm of everything and it feels good to be able to help make

a difference.

All we really did was bring it up and bring it up to the right people.

The men ultimately responsible for the murder of Father Patrick Ryan are already deceased,

so they got to live their lives never being held responsible for a crime they actually

committed.

And though James Rios took the fall for something they did, he was ultimately exonerated on

Wednesday, October 4th, 2023, after spending almost 40 years as a convicted murderer.

An identity that should have never been his to begin with.

And now at the age of 67, James is finally a free man.

He's currently living in a transitional community in Texas where we are told he is surrounded

by the community that is giving him the support he needs.

And while this exoneration will never give him back those years, James' story is important

because there is something for all of us to take away from it.

I hope investigating agencies learn from his case and remember his story because it could

be a crucial part of preventing others from experiencing all that he has.

And if mistakes have already been made, I hope agencies will take a page from Chief

Gurke's book and do everything in their power now to make it right.

From what I've seen over the past few months, I truly commend the current officials associated

with this case for doing the right thing.

We have seen the opposite of this happen time and time again for many heartbreaking reasons.

But there are good people out there doing good work.

And what I want you all to hear is that the thing we can do is actively look for those

cases that might have been forgotten about, talk about them, share them, correct mistakes

that were made, and learn from them over and over again.

James Rios' story is not a one-off.

Wrongful convictions happen more often than we want to admit.

A 2022 study by University of Michigan law professor and the co-founder of the National

Registry of Exonerations, Samuel Gross, and some of his colleagues share some staggering

statistics.

First being, it takes about 11 and a half years to achieve an exoneration.

The second thing is that the number of wrongful convictions has increased 70% since 2017.

And finally, black individuals are seven and a half times more likely than white to be

wrongfully convicted of a murder.

Now, this discrepancy exists within other marginalized communities too.

I mean, James Rios is a member of the Hickorya Apache Nation in northern New Mexico and

is a gay man.

It would be impossible to share his story without acknowledging the bias that contributed

to this nightmare from the get-go.

Which is why the work of local innocence projects is so important.

Right now, there is more work to do and even James's case because James could still be

facing an indictment so his legal team's next step is to try and get a trial judge

to grant a motion to dismiss after they submit that motion to the DA's office.

So they're working on that and working on getting paperwork done that is needed for

James to get compensated from the state of Texas.

Basically, for every year that he was in prison, the state of Texas owes him about $80,000.

And for what it's worth, he's planning on taking some of his money and making a donation

back to the Innocence Project that made him a free man.

Moral of the story, the Innocence Project of Texas needs support to continue doing the

important work that they do every day.

We've made a donation on behalf of CrimeJunkie and AudioChuck, but your individual support

would make a huge difference as well.

So please go check out the Innocence Project of Texas at InnocenceTexas.org.

And whether it be through donation, maybe hosting a fundraiser, joining their advocacy,

or whatever works best for you, get involved.

Go take a look around, see how you can help them continue providing no-cost legal counsel

and investigative resources to those who have been wrongfully convicted.

And now, if you're interested in hearing our original episode on Father Patrick Ryan,

the story Michael and Harley heard all those years ago that got the ball rolling, stick

around because we're going to play that next.

And don't forget, talk about these cases, share these cases, get involved, because like

our old friend Robert Stack used to say, maybe you can solve a mystery.

It's late morning on December 22, 1981 in Odessa, Texas and a housekeeper from the Sand

and Sage Motel is making her rounds.

She knocks on the door of room 126.

No answer.

So she puts her key in the lock and pushes the door open.

And what she sees as soon as that door swings open nearly knocks her off her feet.

The room is completely trashed.

There is blood everywhere and most disturbing of all, there is a man, a dead man lying right

in the middle of the room.

She runs to the manager's office screaming for him to call for help.

And within minutes, officers are on the scene.

Now, I'm not sure anything could have prepared these officers for the gruesome scene that

they are about to walk into.

Like I said, everything is covered in blood.

And when I say everything, we're talking the walls, the floor, the furniture.

It is everywhere.

And the man is lying face down on the floor in a pool of blood.

And his hands have been tightly bound behind his back, either with a sock or a pillowcase

depending on the source material that you read.

Now he's totally naked and he's been beaten so severely that his face is swollen and his

features are distorted.

When they look closely, they notice that he has scratches on his arms and another long

slash across his buttocks.

According to a piece by Jordan Smith, the Austin Chronicle, the room itself has been

totally ransacked.

So when I said it was trash, I mean we're talking the TV is smashed, the phone has been

ripped from the wall and is in pieces.

Even the AC unit has been pulled out of the wall and is just like hanging there.

The bed's broken, headboard frame, all of it.

There are clothes and beer cans and cigarette butts everywhere.

And get this, even the walls are damaged and in some spots the walls like are completely

caved in to the point where like the drywall has crumbled and is in pieces on the floor.

So it's crystal clear that whatever happened here was extremely violent.

Job one for investigators at this point is figuring out who their victim is.

There's no ID anywhere.

No wallet, nothing that provides any kind of clues as to who their John Doe might be.

But the one bright side is that this is a motel so they figure there's a decent enough

chance that he registered at the front desk when he checked in.

So they head to the office to check with the manager who tells them that the man in room

126 checked in sometime between 7.30 and 8 o'clock the night before, which would have

been December 21st.

Now it's not clear if they just like know based on what the manager tells them or if

they have to go on a little bit of an investigative fool's errand.

But it turns out that the man registered with a fake name and a fake address.

So do we know what name he gave them?

Like was it kind of like a Donald Duck Mickey Mouse situation or something that was like

kind of close to something that could be real?

Yeah, no, I wasn't able to find out exactly what name.

That's what I'm saying.

Like I don't know if it was Donald Duck.

Right there.

Or if they had to actually kind of track it down and figure out that it wasn't working.

But police are able to find out what car their John Doe arrived in.

It was a 1979 White and Maroon Chrysler Newport, which is this like big long boxy boat of a

car.

Like whenever you're picturing something when people talk about like the cars in the early

80s, like this is that.

So I don't have to picture this.

My first car was an 86 Lincoln town car.

You got it.

You got it.

Exactly what this looks like.

Yeah.

The hotel guests are supposed to provide their vehicle registration number, but that ended

up also being fake, which means police can't just like plug in a number into the system

and like Bada Bing, Bada Boom, find the owner.

At this point, police decide to call in the state medical examiner who arrives at around

noon.

And based on his assessment in the room, he estimates that the man died sometime between

6pm and midnight the night before.

Once an autopsy is complete, the ME confirms what has been obvious to police just by looking

at the scene that this man has been beaten to death.

According to a book on this case written by Scott Lomax, the ME finds that the man was

beaten over the head with a blunt instrument.

He's thinking something like a table leg and there was one of those broken off of a

table in the motel room.

Ultimately, the fatal blow was to the man's throat.

But even without that blow to the throat, his head injuries alone would have caused

his death eventually.

Now I mentioned that there was one laceration across the man's butt, which the Austin Chronicle

article describes as quote, a long superficial slice wound.

The book also says that the victim had been sexually assaulted, but this detail wasn't

shared publicly at the time to quote, provide some dignity to the dead man and to spare

the feelings of his relatives.

End quote.

Okay, so were there any defensive wounds on him?

Like, imagining what a mess the scene was, I feel like the guy had to have put up some

sort of fight, right?

So that's what's weird.

The autopsy does note scratches on the man's arms, remember?

But they're not called defensive wounds in any of the material I've seen.

And I have to think that if they were, like surely that would have been noted somewhere,

you know what I mean?

Right.

Remember the man, when they find him, he is bound with his hands behind his back.

So they're thinking that he was likely tied up first, which wouldn't give him much wiggle

room to even defend himself.

And that's the other thing.

So their John Doe is not a small guy.

Like the descriptions of him say that he's like 200 pounds.

So either the person they're looking for is big enough to overpower a man that size, or

the other theory is that their John Doe consented to having his hands bound.

You mean like as a part of a sexual encounter?

Exactly.

And because of the brutality of the crime and the damage to the room, they're confident

that whoever did this was in fact a man.

Like one man, one person only, for sure not two.

Well, they're not ruling out like multiple people at this point, but there's an episode

of American justice on this called shamed into confession that aired in like April of

2003.

And the law enforcement officials interviewed for that show say that they just had this

sense right away from the moment that they walked into the room that they feel like they

knew what happened.

They're not ruling out robbery as a motive because remember this man's like while it

is gone, his car is missing.

But when they go in, they said that there were a bunch of things that suggested to them

that the man was at the sand and sage motel to meet another man for a sexual encounter.

I mean, does it have to be or could he have maybe met someone there and then was assaulted,

which I mean, it's pretty clear he was assaulted.

Yes.

I mean, that's totally possible, right?

But when police are looking at the whole picture, this is what they think it's telling

them because first of all, because he was naked when his body is found, like that's

making them think potentially that's why he was there.

Second, he gave a fake name and a fake address.

So they're thinking that he didn't want people to know where he was, right?

Like if it's just a random night in a hotel and a stranger attacks you or whatever, you

don't need to hide your identity.

Like there's a reason he didn't want people to know who he was or potentially why he

was there.

But third and possibly most telling, the motel itself is known for being this kind of like

drop in by the hour place that's often used for like different types of sexual encounters.

Okay, gotcha.

The good news is, even by looking around, investigators know that the crime scene itself

has got a ton of physical evidence.

And as they do a sweep of the room, they find that their suspect or suspects have left behind

pretty much every kind of physical evidence possible.

There's hair, there's fingerprints, semen, saliva from cigarette butts, all kinds of

stuff that they can use to nail the monster responsible for all of this.

But before they can start looking for a suspect to compare all of this to, they need to identify

their victim.

Because I mean, we know this, right?

Like nine times out of 10, that's what leads to a perp.

Right.

But that's proving to be a difficult task until five days later on December 26th, when

Odessa police see a statewide missing person bulletin issued by police in Denver City,

Texas, which is this little rural community about an hour and a half away.

The Denver City cops are looking for a missing man, middle aged, just like their John Doe,

same size as their John Doe, same basic description as their John Doe.

It just, it seems impossible because the thing is the guy Denver City is looking for is the

very last person that the detectives would have ever considered.

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The missing person that the police in Denver City are looking for is a Catholic priest.

Oh, okay.

So not exactly the kind of person they would have expected back then to discover naked,

bound, and beaten in a seedy motel nearly a hundred miles from home.

But the description is just like bang on.

And the cops have been working in this business long enough to know that anything is possible.

So the Odessa police ring up the guys in Denver City to get some more information.

The Denver City officers tell them that the priest they're looking for is 49-year-old

father Patrick Ryan.

Some of his parishioners reported him missing when he didn't show up for mass on Christmas

Day.

And that was actually the second service he'd missed in a row.

Initially, they were worried maybe something had happened to him, like some kind of accident,

like, you know, he'd fallen ill, he needed some medical attention.

I mean, because he lived alone, of course, out of celibacy and all.

But when they went to the rectory to check on Father Ryan, they found the door locked

and his car was gone.

One of the parishioners managed to get through a window, but there was no Father Ryan and

no sign of where he might have gone.

There was a fully cooked, but totally untouched meal of steak and potatoes on the stove.

And he could tell it looked like it had been there a while, like long enough that the fat

in the pan had hardened and turned white, but literally nothing was out of place.

No signs of a struggle, nothing remarkable at all.

The cops in Denver City aren't sure exactly when Father Ryan went missing because the

last known sighting of him was by actually the same guy who climbed through the rectory

window who said that he saw Father Ryan late on the morning of December 21st, about ten

miles outside of town.

When he saw him, he said that the priest was driving and he had two other men in the car

with him.

According to that episode of American Justice, I mentioned Father Ryan's brother was asked

to view the body, and he said he could barely recognize him, and he had to rely on this

little round scar that the priest had on his forehead since childhood to even know that

it was his brother.

But it was, and now that they know who their victim is, the Yocum County Sheriff's deputies

in Odessa start trying to piece together the puzzle about what happened to Father Ryan.

How did he end up dead and beaten in this motel room?

One of the detectives drives down to Denver City to search the church rectory, which would

have been Father Ryan's house, and he notes that two things are missing, his accordion

and his chalice.

So are these like super valuable items?

Because to me at least they seem kind of random.

Right, yeah.

So I thought the same thing, but apparently Father Ryan always took those two things

with him when he left, or when he was going anywhere for any length of time, like the

things you need, but you leave home like accordion check, chalice check, like do you ever leave

without your accordion?

I guess I just don't get it, because the man who reported the priest missing said there

was a fully cooked meal on the stove.

That says to me that he wasn't planning to leave for that long at all.

It's true, but again, we know Father Ryan's car is still missing, so the only thing that

I can think is that maybe those things were like in the trunk from a trip that he took

before or maybe after dinner he was planning on going somewhere and like again had to have

his things, I honestly don't know.

The only other thing the detective notices in his search of Father Ryan's place is this

backpack sitting on a chair.

When he opens it up, he sees a couple of cassette tapes and an album of family photos, but here's

the thing, it's not Father Ryan's family photos, it's someone else's.

Someone named James Harry Rayos, at least according to the high school diploma Scott

Lomax writes is tucked inside the album.

Police don't have to go far to find James Harry Rayos, who is 25 and goes by Harry,

because he lives right there in Denver City, just three blocks from St. William's Church

and Father Ryan's house.

The detective scoops up the backpack and heads straight to Harry's place to take a look

around and talk to him.

He doesn't find the missing chalice or accordion, nor does he find Father Ryan's keys, but

he does find Harry and he brings him in for questioning anyway.

Harry tells the officer he did see Father Ryan on the night of December 20th and then

again the next day on December 21st.

He says the two had only just met in early December when Harry was hitchhiking along

the road and Father Ryan picked him up.

They spent five hours talking and drinking in this small New Mexico town called Hobbs,

which is like 35 to 40 minutes away, and that whole time Harry only knew this guy as John.

He didn't even know he was a priest until much later in the night when Father Ryan dropped

Harry off in front of the rectory.

He said he didn't even know the priest's real name even until he heard it on the news

after his death.

Oh, I would love to know if John was the fake name that Father Ryan used at that motel registration.

Same, same, same, same.

Anyway, Harry tells investigators that on the night of December 20th, Father Ryan, or

John as he knew him then, had invited Harry over for a few drinks so he could look through

an album of pictures from Harry's childhood growing up on the New Mexico Apache Reservation.

Uh, hold up.

He invited this guy over to have some drinks and look at a family photo album?

Like, yes, yes.

I guess he just met this person.

It's, I could see if it was just the album, then like, he's a church leader using it as

an entry point to minister, but the fact that they were drinking to-

Well, he doesn't even know he's a priest, right?

Like, right.

And then Harry was invited into the rectory.

I don't know, all these things together are just major, major, major red flags.

Yeah, I have all of the questions about this as well.

The source material for this case doesn't actually spend a lot of time on this point.

Again, I don't know why, because like, my crime-junkie brain is just going-

Yeah, it's all I can think about.

Yeah.

And like, I've never met anyone, much less like someone in a position of power who's

like, hey, come to my house, show me your family photo album like five minutes after

meeting them.

And even after five hours of meeting, I legit have not seen my husband's photo album from

like his childhood.

So either I'm like a terrible wife, which actually might be the case, or this is like

you're saying a huge red flag.

Yeah, I'm picking up some really sketchy vibes here.

Here's the one thing I will say that Father Patrick Ryan was from Ireland.

And as far as I can tell, his first assignment in the U.S. was this one in Denver City starting

in 1979.

So again, if you're going to say this is normal, like maybe there is some genuine interest

there.

Like it's possible he didn't have like a ton of exposure to like the Native American

culture.

But to your point, like when you look at the whole scenario, like it feels odd.

And you know what?

It was a red flag because Harry tells the officer that he and Father Ryan drank some

beer at first.

And when that ran out, they switched to vodka and orange juice.

And then it happened.

Harry says that Father Ryan grabbed him by the shirt collar and pushed Harry to perform

oral sex on him.

Oh my God.

In the American Justice episode, Harry said quote, I struggled to get away from him.

I tried to push him away and I did.

I walked all the way back to my apartment thinking to myself that did not happen.

And I just kept telling myself that could not have happened.

End quote.

Harry says that he was in such a hurry to get out of there that he left all of his

stuff, his backpack, everything behind.

But the next morning, so this is now December 21st, Harry tells police that he found himself

in need of a ride to Hobbes.

That's that New Mexico town that I mentioned that's like 35, 40 minutes away from Denver

City.

He needed to go get his truck back from a bail bondsman who was holding it for collateral.

Wait, so Harry has a criminal history?

He's definitely not a stranger to police, but all of his prior arrests have been alcohol

related like nothing violent.

Like the Yolkham County Sheriff told American Justice that even though Harry was new in

town and had only been there for eight months, there were times when he was spending up to

like three nights a week in jail for public intoxication.

Like Harry is deep into an alcohol addiction at this point in his life.

And despite a really promising start, like, I mean, he'd been a strong student.

He graduated high school and went off to university to study engineering.

It all fell apart once he was living on his own.

So when he met Father Ryan earlier that month, Harry had no job, no money and no friends.

So he is literally the perfect prey for a predator, like someone who was clearly vulnerable

to begin with considering his alcohol use, but he has no money, no connections or family

and friends nearby.

Like this is predator behavior 101, targeting people who have no choice but to just continue

to come back to their abuser again and again and again.

Absolutely.

I mean, and Harry was really struggling at the time, which is why he found himself back

on Father Ryan's doorstep the day after the assault on the morning of December 21st.

Harry tells police that he didn't have any other options.

He needed a ride to Hobbes and Father Ryan was literally the only person he could think

of who might be willing to do it.

So like you said, Harry goes back to the rectory, back to the person who just abused him to

ask for a favor.

He says that when he went back, Father Ryan apologized for what had happened the night

before and he agreed to take him to Hobbes to pick up his truck.

Later along the way, Harry tells police that Father Ryan pulled over to pick up a hitchhiker

who continued on with them.

So those were probably who the eyewitness saw in the car that day.

Father Ryan, Harry and then this random hitchhiker.

Yep.

Harry tells the detective that they arrive at the Bale-Bonsman's place at around 11.30

that morning.

And even though he asked Father Ryan to wait a few minutes while he talked to the Bale-Bonsman,

by the time he came out of the house, Father Ryan was gone.

And was the hitchhiker still with them at this point?

As far as I know, yes, I think so.

So you'd think police would at least be a little interested in this hitchhiker as a

potential suspect or at least a person of interest like wanting to find him, but they

are more interested in Harry because they're thinking like what if this was Harry's retaliation

for the sexual assault that happened prior?

I mean, that could be a really strong motive, except Harry says that he wasn't anywhere

near Odessa on the night Father Ryan was murdered and he can prove it.

He has a pile of receipts from December 21st and 22nd and on top of all of that, a speeding

ticket that can prove without a doubt that he was 200 miles away in New Mexico during

that time.

Does check Harry over anyway, thinking surely whoever did that in the hotel room to Father

Ryan would have at least some kind of injury to show for it?

But Father Ryan was bound, right?

And he was beaten with a table leg.

What exactly are they even looking for?

I don't know because I agree, right?

They said he didn't have defensive wounds, but I assume they're looking for like bruised

knuckles, cuts.

I mean, again, that place was destroyed.

Someone was like going after the walls or whatever.

I don't know exactly what they were looking for, but whatever they were looking for, they

don't find it.

All they have on him is like this one small scratch on his hand, but otherwise nothing.

So how big is Harry?

Is this something that he could do and just walk away completely unscathed?

Not in my opinion, because this guy, he's like 125 pounds, which means Father Ryan had

like 75 pounds on the guy, right?

Yeah.

He even agrees to give them fingerprints, hair samples, saliva samples.

I mean, again, we have so much physical evidence to test against.

And none of it matches the samples taken from the crime scene.

And not only that, he actually offers to take a polygraph, breaking every crime junkie

roll in the book, but he passes, so police let him go.

At this point, the investigation is pretty much back where it started.

Sure, they know the identity of their victim, but if his killer was a stranger that he was

meeting for a one time sexual encounter, then they're looking for a needle in a haystack.

They need something that will help point them in the right direction.

And the very next day, they get it.

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On December 27th, the Odessa police get a call.

It's unclear from the source material who makes the call, but they get this call telling

them Father Patrick Ryan's car has been found 40 minutes away parked outside the Moose

Lodge in Hobbes.

There are differing accounts of how long the car had been parked there.

Like in his book, Scott Lomax says that it was abandoned on December 24th, which is three

days after the murder.

But Jordan Smith's piece for The Chronicle says that witnesses put the car there beginning

like on the 22nd, which is just the morning after the murder.

So the police head to Hobbes to search the car, hoping that this is going to give them

the break that they need to start tracking down a viable suspect.

They find some cash in the trunk, but there is no sign of the things that they know had

been missing from the rectory, which remembers that chalice and this accordion.

Just like in the motel room, the killer left behind plenty of fingerprints, which police

collect as well.

But fingerprints are only useful if you have something to compare them against, and they

don't at this point.

Police start trying to look into Father Ryan's history, but even that is kind of a mystery.

Like they know that he was in Ireland until 1956 before spending 12 years doing missionary

work in Tanzania.

But then there's just like nothing until 1979 when he showed up in Texas.

Scott Lomax writes in his book, quote, those who have researched Father Ryan's life have

not been able to piece together his life story for most of the 1970s, and those who know him

have not assisted in providing any useful information.

End quote.

Okay, that seems bizarre.

Yeah, the guy didn't even have a driver's license, though he did have a car.

So I don't know, I just have a lot of questions about who he was and where he was.

But anyway, police don't come out of their own investigation into his background with

anything useful that might guide them to a suspect.

And somehow, despite the outright brawl that happened in that motel room, somehow there

are no witnesses either.

Okay, so I was actually thinking about this since you first mentioned how destroyed the

room was.

To that degree, someone had to have heard something like walls were caved in.

Yeah, like, I get annoyed when people next to me are playing music too loudly at like

a hotel.

So breaking TVs and smashing walls, it had to have been so noisy.

Right.

So I assume that it's not that there wasn't anything to see or hear.

Just maybe there weren't people in the rooms nearby.

Not really.

There was actually a guy who stayed in the room right next to the one Father Ryan died

in.

That man says he checked in around 9 p.m., just an hour or a little more than an hour

after Father Ryan.

And he says that he didn't hear anything at all.

Okay, Ashley, do you remember the time that we were staying a floor apart and could talk

to each other through the vents?

Through the toilet?

Yes.

I'd like to talk into my toilet for you to hear me.

Yes.

And I could hear you in the vent above my toilet?

Yes.

There was no way this guy didn't hear anything.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, especially a motel.

This isn't like some like giant brand new building with like concrete walls.

This is like a-

We're talking about a little bit of plaster between two beds, I know.

So if you think about that, that means that, again, we're assuming that if this is like

the manager of the motel, his timeline is correct and the guy, the neighbors like have

an accurate story.

I believe all of that.

Then the window for this murder is down to an hour.

Like between eight when Father Ryan arrived and nine when the guy next door checked into

the room.

Could the guy in the neighboring room just have been like passed out or just a really

deep sleeper?

Like how credible is this guy's story?

I mean, again, I don't know the guy, but it's not like he got there and crashed.

He says that from the time that he checked in at nine that he ended up like staying awake

until the wee hours of the morning watching TV.

And it's not like it could have happened after he fell asleep in the wee hours of the morning

watching TV because we know that the medical examiner said that Father Ryan had to have

died between six p.m. in midnight.

So again, we just have this one hour, one hour for the killer to meet Father Ryan in

that room, drink a bunch of cans of beer, smoke a bunch of cigarettes, and then beat

him to death and then leave.

I mean, or maybe he didn't leave.

Like, did the guy in the next room say anything about whether Father Ryan's car was there

when he got to his own room?

There's nothing that talks about whether the neighbor reported the car or not, actually.

And I don't even know if he would have known, right?

Like he's not paying attention to that stuff.

Right.

You're just like checking into your hotel room.

Yeah.

So I guess the alternative is that the killer kills Father Ryan and then just hangs out in

this completely destroyed room sitting on the broken bed, the floor, like everything

was destroyed with the body of this guy he killed, smoking and drinking.

Like, I mean, I guess it's possible, but it's pretty cold.

No, I mean, it's really cold.

But anyone who can beat a man to death with a table leg is cold.

So it's not impossible.

True.

With no more information from this witness and no other witnesses who can provide

anything, the case goes cold pretty quickly.

Months go by with no new leads.

But then in November, 1982, this is almost a year after Father Ryan's death, the

Yocum County sheriffs find out about another crime, a shockingly similar crime.

On November 10th, a housekeeper making her rounds at the El Rancho Motel in Yuma,

Arizona, which is a solid days drive from Odessa, opens the door to room 32 and is

shocked to find that the guest hadn't checked out on time.

Now, he seems to be asleep still.

He's lying face down in the pillow with the blanket pulled up around his shoulders.

So she calls out to the man a couple of times, but he's not responding.

And he doesn't even move.

So she goes to tell the manager and the manager comes down to see what's going on.

And he confirms what they've both been dreading all along.

This man in the bed is actually dead.

Depending on the source material, the man is either nude or wearing just a pair

of pants and his hands and feet are both bound with electrical tape.

His wallet is missing and his vehicle is gone, too.

It's not clear just by looking at the man, how he died.

Like there are no obvious signs of of him being shot or stabbed or beaten like

we saw in Father Patrick Ryan's case.

And there's nothing obvious about the room either.

So this one isn't trashed like the last one.

No, not at all.

It's actually pristine, really.

Because the investigators don't find any ID for the man in the room.

They make that same trek to the manager's office at the cops in Odessa

did a year before they asked for the registration details for room 32.

And when the manager hands it over, the man's name is Benjamin Carrier,

Father Benjamin Carrier, a Catholic priest from

Descanso, California, just outside of San Diego.

So another Catholic priest.

Yep. Police in Yuma are off to a running start compared to their counterparts

in Odessa. And so the investigation into Father Carrier's death seems to start

off really strong.

I mean, the hotel managers remembered him checking in the day before and witnesses

reported seeing him around the pool that afternoon with two men.

So you mentioned that there were no obvious signs of trauma on the body

while investigators were in the room, but did the autopsy give them any more

information? It does.

Yet the cause of death was asphyxiation.

And the manner of death, no surprise, given the bound hands and feet is a homicide.

It's worth noting that this man is also very small.

He's often described in the media coverage as slight and frail.

And the Emmy finds that he had died when he was in poor health.

So were there any signs of sexual assault this time?

There was no evidence of sexual assault.

And actually, pretty much from the start, police feel like Father Carrier's death

was likely part of a robbery.

And when they speak to his friends and family and parishioners, right away,

they get a lead on another suspect, two, actually.

It turns out Father Carrier left Descanso Monday night, two days before

his body was found with two hitchhikers.

OK, this feels like a recurring theme, right?

And I had to keep checking myself.

Like, why are these guys picking up all these hitchhikers?

But again, this was the 80s.

Very different time, not to mention the stories about priests.

And it is literally their job to help the less fortunate.

And when police speak to Father Carrier's friends and family,

they describe him as a genuinely good guy, like they said he was super generous.

He was always going out of his way to help people, always picking up hitchhikers,

always giving them a place to stay, a meal, whatever they needed.

Paula Parker reported on this story for the L.A.

Times back in 1982 and said that Father Carrier was so trusting

that he was even kidnapped at one point by a stranger that he befriended.

Yeah, the guy he was trying to help.

So the prevailing thought among most people who knew him

is that he probably just trusted the wrong person or the wrong people.

OK, but people said all that same stuff about Father Ryan, too.

That, you know, he was always lending a helping hand,

always stopped to pick up hitchhikers, all of that.

And based on what we know, his motives weren't always pure as a driven snow.

You know, like I feel like a ton of people would have vouched for him, too.

Yeah, it's hard to decipher what the real motives were

behind helping the less fortunate.

But in Father Carrier's case, police don't find anything

to suggest that he was a bad dude.

Anyway, police start looking for the hitchhiker's father Carrier was seen with

when he left Escanso and those two other guys that he was seen with

at the motel pool, but their search comes up empty.

So the hitchhikers and the guys at the pool, they're not the same people?

Well, in Paula Parker's L.A.

Times piece, she just says that it's unclear whether they were the same or different.

But they get descriptions from witnesses that suggest

they're looking for like completely different guys.

And even though they have these descriptions,

like they blast that out to the media thinking that maybe they'll get a lead.

But even that doesn't help them track them down.

And I want to say that the trail just kind of goes cold,

except I'm not even sure there was ever a trail to begin with.

And then three days later, Father Carrier's truck turns up in Las Vegas.

Police are able to lift a ton of fingerprints.

But until they track down either the men at the pool or the hitchhikers

or both, they're kind of stuck.

I wish I could tell you more about the investigation into Father Carrier's murder.

But at that point, after they find his truck,

it pretty much falls out of the news and honestly kind of stays out of the news.

And like there are no follow ups.

Now, no one is willing to rule out a connection between these two murders.

But they're just like way too similar.

Both men, both priests, both found in motel rooms, bound, lying face down,

both robbed of their wallets and vehicles.

And then the vehicles get found, abandoned days later in neighboring states.

Like, yes, there were definitely differences.

Don't get me wrong, like the difference in the MO being a big one.

But right. But MO evolves over time anyway.

And we usually hear that as like an escalation or about serial killers.

You just get better at certain things as they go or even adapt to different situations.

Like, in my opinion, these were clearly different situations.

Like you said, Father Ryan was a pretty big dude.

Like maybe that murder was completely unplanned.

And in a different situation, maybe the person who did it would have strangled him.

But he's too big.

It wasn't even possible.

Whereas Father Carrier was small kind of frail.

You said that, I mean, he said maybe even in poor health.

They wouldn't have taken nearly the same force to strangle him.

Yeah, good point.

You wouldn't need to like break the room down trying to like.

Right. I don't know.

Well, at this point, the only lead police in Yuma have

is the one about these guys who are seen at the motel with Father Carrier that day.

And police in Odessa, almost a year after Father Ryan's death, have made no good headway.

So what they need is a break.

And lucky for them, what comes next is more than just a break.

On November 18th, just over a week after Father Carrier was found dead in Arizona,

a 911 call comes into dispatch in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

According to a 1993 Newsweek article,

the man on the other end of the line says that he wants to talk about, quote,

the killing of a Catholic priest in Odessa, Texas.

And, quote, what?

The dispatcher asked the man to identify himself, and he just says, quote,

you're talking to the killer.

The dispatcher sends police to where this man is calling from,

the bow and arrow lodge, which is this like rundown motel

where the guy on the line has been living.

They arrest him and bring him down to the station

and then ring up law enforcement in Odessa.

OK, but who is this guy?

Well, here's the twist, Fred.

This guy on the other end of the phone is James Harry Rayos,

who was, remember, pretty much the police's only suspect

in Father Ryan's case from the get-go.

But didn't they clear him as a suspect?

They did, but clearly they missed something a year ago

because here he was calling to confess.

And this truly out of the blue confession

is the kind of break in the case.

Investigators can only dream about in a cold case like this one.

But you know what they say.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

And pretty much from the moment Harry is in police custody,

he starts walking it back, recanting his confession,

saying, I'm not the killer.

I just like to make trouble for law enforcement.

Wait, so this is just some kind of prank or something?

Not so much a prank as in like a momentary lapse of judgment.

Harry says that he wasn't in his right mind

when he called 911 that day.

He said he was drunk and high after taking some random pills

that someone had handed him in a bar.

In the Austin Chronicles story,

Jordan Smith writes that Harry was too messed up

to even answer questions from his own lawyer.

And he just kept repeating over and over, quote,

in the name of God, I didn't do this.

And if he hadn't been a person

that police suspected early on anyway,

like if he had just been a total rando like drunk AF who called in,

like they might have been able to write off this

as just some like attention seeking guy and just move on.

But remember, I mean, they knew Harry was with Father Ryan

on the day that he was murdered.

And since he claimed to be sexually assaulted by the priest,

he had the best motive by far of anyone they'd come across.

So the whole thing together means motive confession

is enough for authorities to charge Harry with Father Ryan's murder.

Harry's case goes to trial the next year in June of 1983.

And over the course of a four day trial,

the state presents a case based on Harry's connection

to the victim and his confession.

OK, but what does his defense team say about why Harry confessed?

Just that he was drunk and high and wanted to be a pest.

Drunk and high, yes,

but they know that this isn't going to be a strong enough argument on its own.

They know that they need to be able to really make the jury understand

why this guy would confess to a crime if he isn't, in fact, guilty of the crime,

especially considering Harry picked up the phone on his own to confess to the murder.

There's not like a worst confession or police pressure or anything else involved.

But they do say that they have a rationale for this.

And it's one that surprises everyone.

The defense says that Harry confessed to murder

that night on the phone, not because he was guilty,

but because he felt guilty.

OK, care to clear that up for me.

To Harry, Father Ryan's death was kind of his fault.

Like, maybe if he hadn't asked Father Ryan to drive to Hobbes that day,

he might still be alive.

So Harry felt some kind of responsibility for his death,

even though he says that he wasn't actually responsible for his death.

And he says that some part of his brain thought that confessing to the killing

might help assuage some of that guilt.

I mean, that's actually not hard to believe, really,

especially when you layer in not just the fact that he was really messed up

on drugs and alcohol that night, but also his life seemed to be

so off the rails at the time anyway from his ongoing alcohol use.

Right. And actually, it's even more nuanced than that, because Harry was gay.

He knew that he was gay and he was having a really hard time

coming to terms with that.

He didn't just feel guilty about what he thought was alluring

Father Ryan to his death.

He also felt so much shame about his own sexuality.

I mean, this is, again, early 80s and not to say that there isn't still

a lot of complicated feelings in our society around anything

other than like heterosexual cisgender persons and their relationships.

Like, there definitely are.

But there were just so few examples out there for Harry to point to

that he could like see himself in.

Right. And we're also talking about something that could be deeply seated

in his culture. And if he can barely admit this fact about himself to himself,

it would be almost impossible for him to be able to verbalize this to anybody else.

Totally. Now, because he was so evasive about his own sexuality,

the jury read that as some kind of guilt and they felt like he was shifty.

I mean, I get that, but I also get how tough it would be to overcome a confession.

But I mean, there's still zero physical evidence tying him to the scene.

Correct. Oh, nothing. No, not a single hair, not a drop of saliva,

not one fingerprint in that motel room or even in Father Ryan's car.

Belong to Harry.

And he also said he couldn't have been there.

Like he was hundreds of miles away at the time and had time stamp receipts to prove it.

Like, how was the prosecution able to refute those?

This is what I can't wrap my head around because not only do we have time stamp

paper receipts, but remember, we have that speeding ticket to where he's like

engaging with a law enforcement officer that puts him in Roswell, New Mexico,

200 miles away during the time period that Father Ryan was murdered.

And the defense even has a witness, this old college friend of Harry's,

who was with Harry in Roswell until at least eight p.m.

Texas time on the night of the murder.

And again, he got his signature on the speeding ticket issued by a New Mexico

highway patrol just over four hours later, just outside of Roswell.

So let me lay this out for you.

If Harry murdered Father Ryan, he would have had a window of just over four hours

to drive from Roswell to Odessa, murder the priest, drive Father Ryan's car

70 miles away and park it, find his way back to the sand and sage

to pick up his own truck and still have to drive back to Roswell.

And what's that trip even like?

Oh, it's like three, three and a half hours drive, like just one way.

Like, I guess you can't say it's impossible.

I don't know, but it is certainly a stretch.

It's a stretch with a perfect driver and a perfect car on a perfect day with no traffic.

But this is pretty much the opposite of that scenario.

Harry wasn't just an imperfect driver.

He was hammered and his car wasn't just imperfect.

It had to be gassed up like all the time, multiple times a day.

And driving conditions were definitely not perfect.

In the American Justice episode I mentioned, they say that in order

to be in Odessa that night, Harry would have had to average, quote,

one hundred eleven miles an hour round trip on narrow country roads.

End quote. OK, so let me let me just recap this really quickly.

Yeah, there's no physical evidence putting him at the scene.

Check. He has honestly an incredibly solid alibi,

putting him hundreds of miles away during the window of time

that the murder had to have happened. Check.

He was drunk and high when he confessed.

Speaking of that confession, he almost immediately recanted it.

Yes, I'm honestly surprised the prosecutor felt like there was even enough

to go to trial with this, but it did.

And after seven and a half hours of deliberation,

the jury agrees with the prosecution and they find Harry Rayos guilty of murder.

What? Mm hmm.

Based on what? Based on this confession?

Jordan Smith actually quotes a juror in his Austin Chronicle piece

saying they convicted Harry, quote, based on his confession and characteristics.

End quote. What do you mean?

Characteristics. I mean, he's a gay man.

He's a gay indigenous man with an alcohol use disorder on trial

for killing a beloved priest. I mean, take your pick, really.

The jury actually does the sentencing in Harry's trial.

So after he was found guilty, he was sentenced to 38 years,

which given the options in Texas at the time is a really interesting choice.

Yeah, I mean, I would have at least expected life in prison for a murder

or even the death penalty.

Well, luckily for Harry, he missed out on the death penalty by a couple of years.

But given the sentence, Harry's defense attorney thinks that there was at least

a few people on that jury who had doubts about his guilt.

I mean, clearly not enough doubt to find him not guilty,

but enough to give him what amounts to a pretty light sentence for murder.

So Harry heads off to prison.

He does appeal the jury's ruling a year later in 1984,

but the judge upholds the original conviction.

And that's probably where Harry's story would have ended, except that years later

in the early 90s, the same prosecutor who argued against Harry's 1984 appeal

decided pretty randomly to take another look at the records.

Like something about this case just like never made sense to him.

And he figures, what the heck?

According to Newsweek, he had never thoroughly examined the trial transcripts

even back in 84 during the appeal, which to me is bonkers.

But he decides to do that now.

And the more he reads, the more he realizes something isn't right there.

The prosecutor, who at the time was a 19 year veteran named Dennis Sadra,

told American Justice that he stayed up basically all night

charting out timelines and checking them against the evidence.

And by the time he's done, he is one hundred percent convinced

beyond a shadow of a doubt that Harry Rios is innocent.

So in December, 1991, Dennis writes an eight page letter

to the governor of Texas, outlining what he found in the evidence

that Harry couldn't possibly have committed the crime.

And he is advocating for a full pardon.

I mean, is this something that prosecutors just do?

It wasn't a thing that Dennis had ever done before,

nor since at least as of 2003, when he spoke to American Justice.

And it certainly shocks his colleagues.

It's certainly something I've only seen one other time.

So the governor hands the letter over to the Texas Board of Paroles

and Pardons, who ruled in a 16 to nothing vote

to deny Harry's petition for a pardon.

It's not until December 2003 that Harry is finally released on parole.

And as far as I can tell, he's been out ever since on parole.

I mean, I mean, this case to me just highlights

how freaking backwards our legal system is, like even in the face

of a top prosecutor saying, hey, we messed this up.

We think a pardon is in order.

They keep this guy in prison when and when he is finally released.

He's not even really released.

He's on parole.

I think that's so backwards, too.

Like I don't understand.

If you it's almost like our legal system has no way for you to acknowledge

you messed up, right?

Like we got it wrong the first time we're going back.

And the people who are in charge of putting him in prison

are now saying he shouldn't be there, but like that's not allowed.

Right. It's not even like someone else is questioning it.

They're questioning themselves and finding themselves in error,

which is which is how it should work, right?

Like I feel like we can talk all day long to our blue in the face

about cases where it's so clear that the prosecution messed up

and they're just like sticking to one side to like keep their conviction.

And it becomes about winning and losing and not about like real justice.

But you actually get good people who are trying to do the right thing.

And like even they can't get anything through like their hands are tied.

Right.

OK, so what about now?

Like we've had so many advances in technology since Harry was convicted.

For sure, in forensic evidence like genetic material, specifically,

could any of that be tested again or checked against like what now

must be like a much more robust database?

Like, I mean, even Golden State Killer style with a genealogy database.

So theoretically, yes, all of those things would be possible,

except that the Odessa police destroyed all of the crime scene evidence

in Father Ryan's murder back in 1994.

So when you say destroyed, you mean like not like it's like it's like a fire.

No, no, no, no, they like ordered it to be destroyed on purpose, on purpose.

OK, on purpose.

Is that like an agency policy?

It doesn't seem that way.

No, like based on the source material I have, they actually acted against policy.

But everything I have, there's no explanation as to why.

So without an answer to the real question in this case, the question of who killed

Father Patrick Ryan, reporter Jordan Smith says it's going to be pretty

tough for Harry to ever clear his name.

So the other priest you mentioned in this case, Father Carrier,

did that ever come back to Harry?

It didn't.

Like I'm sure the Yuma police considered him as a suspect after they got that 911 confession.

But again, I couldn't find anything in the source material to say that Harry

was looked at or ruled out as a suspect in Father Carrier's murder.

I like to believe they like checked his prints.

Since they had always been kind of like linked together, but it never comes back around.

Remember, there's like never any additional reporting about Father Carrier.

I have no idea what happens as far as I know.

That case is just sitting unsolved somewhere as well with or without evidence.

And there's still like a whole group of people out there who think that these

murders really still are connected and like potentially Harry going to prison

for Father Ryan's kind of just like confused this whole thing and got it

super messy and the real killer of one or both of these men is potentially still out there.

You know, there was one theory that emerged in like the mid 90s about a man who at least

some law enforcement and journalists thought might have been connected to both of the cases.

They thought maybe he was even responsible for the murders.

And they thought this because in early December of 1982, this would have been just after Harry's

confession. This guy walked into a Catholic church in Boise, Idaho for confession.

But then he ended up dying by suicide before he ever was able to speak to a priest.

So there's kind of this off the wall theory that, you know, he saw what was happening to Harry.

He knew Harry was innocent, so he was going to like go in and confess,

but like had taken cyanide pills and like died before he could actually get the confession out.

Like he was trying to clear Harry's name, but it all just kind of got like washed away.

And ultimately, that is never like officially connected to the case.

There's a lot of really interesting details about that.

We're actually going to do a little bit of an audio extra mini episode in the fan club.

If you're in there, we're going to drop that the same time as this episode.

But ultimately, he's never officially connected to the case.

And ultimately, Father Carrier and Father Ryan's cases are never officially connected either.

So that's it. Father Carrier's murder remains unsolved.

And depending on what side of the fence you find yourself on, Father Ryan's is still unsolved too.

And Harry Rayos, he is still out there, still fighting to clear his name.

Fan club members, don't forget to check your feed for the bonus mini episode that connects

with this case. And for those of you not part of the fan club, you can find that on our website,

crimejunkiepodcast.com. Just click the fan club tab.

And you can find all of the pictures and source material for this episode on our website as

well. Again, that's crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at

crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?

Britt, if you and the crime junkies have an extra couple of minutes,

I want to tell you about this new show on NBC called Found.

Okay, count me in because I am in the market for a new series right now.

Good. Okay. So it's about this woman named Gabby Mosley. She was kidnapped as a child,

escaped, and now she leads a team dedicated to finding missing people who no one else is looking

for because she knows what it's like to be forgotten. But Gabby has a secret of her own.

She is keeping her childhood kidnapper locked up in her basement. Oh, plot twist.

I know. And actually, I have a sneak peek of the first few episodes. So let's see what you think.

20 years ago, I won't let what you did to me be for nothing, whatever it takes.

I tell you what to help with and you help with quite the partnership. We're not partners,

you're a monster. You think you're not like me? The ones that no one else seems to be looking for.

I find them and I return them safely. You are so self-righteous. You kidnapped a child.

And you kidnapped a man. Build a profound retracer steps. We need to move fast.

Your clients would never be found if it weren't for me. Tell me that you need me.

You think you're in control, but you're not. Tell me that I'm your partner.

You want to be here, don't you? Remove the chain and find out.

That was intense. So her kidnapper helps her solve cases?

By giving her an inside look into the mind of a kidnapper, exactly.

I gotta see where this goes. So don't miss Found, Tuesdays on NBC and Streaming on Peacock.

Many more. To start listening, download the Amazon music app or visit Amazon.com

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.