Man Was Falsely Imprisoned for Murdering a Priest. Then a Texas Couple Listened to a True Crime Podcast

James Reyos wrongfully spent 24 years behind bars

They were in the right place at the right time to become the catalyst to exonerating a man from a wrongful murder conviction.

In June 2021, young married couple Harlee and Michael Gerke were spending lots of time driving back and forth from the College Station area in East Texas to their hometown of Odessa in the western part of the state to see their families.

To pass the time on the seven-hour drive, they listened to podcasts. “We got hooked on Crime Junkie,” Harlee, 25, tells PEOPLE, referencing the hit true crime podcast.

That May, Crime Junkie hosts Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat went in-depth on the brutal 1981 murder of Father Patrick Ryan at a motel in Odessa.

“We had never heard about the case before,” says Harlee.

They learned that James Reyos from the Jicarilla Apache Nation in New Mexico had been convicted of the crime on the flimsiest of evidence.

On the night that the priest was viciously killed in a seedy Odessa motel, Reyos, an unemployed hitchhiker the priest had befriended, was in Roswell, N.M.

Though Reyos, then 25, had seen Ryan that night, he was able to prove that he was out of town with gas receipts and a speeding ticket he got on the night of the slaying, Texas Monthly reports.

A year later, Reyos was plagued by feelings of guilt for asking the priest for a ride, which he believed set the chain of events in motion that led to the priest's killing. One night, while intoxicated, he impulsively called police and confessed to the slaying.

He recanted the story soon after, but it was too late. Two years later, he was convicted of Ryan’s murder and sentenced to 38 years in prison.

Despite the false confession, “It was really obvious to us that there's no way he could have done it just with all of the circumstantial evidence,” says Harlee, about what she and Michael heard on the podcast.

At the time, they were about an hour away from Michael’s parents’ house in Odessa, where they were going to stay. “So we were like, ‘Hey, we need to tell your dad about the case,’ she says. “’Maybe see if he can look into it.”

Michael’s dad happens to be Odessa’s chief of police.

The minute they told Chief Michael Gerke, 52, about Reyos, he read through the original case file and came to the same conclusion his son and daughter-in-law had: “There just wasn’t enough there to support a conviction,” Gerke told the Los Angeles Times.

But he thinks he understands how it came to be. “I think in the 1980s in small-town West Texas, you take a Native American who happens to be gay and he was probably considered a throwaway person,” he told the Times.

So Gerke had his team look into it further.

Most of the evidence for the case was long gone, but Sergeant Scotty Smith managed somehow to dig up copies of fingerprint cards, Texas Monthly reported in March.

Smith's colleague, crime-scene technician Stacy Cannady, tracked down the original fingerprint cards, according to Texas Monthly. Thanks to advances in technology, she ran the fingerprints through an automated national system and saw they closely matched three men who have since died, the outlet reports.

Reyos’ prints, it turns out, were not at the scene.

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While Reyos was released from prison in 1995, he was sent back for a DUI and then for allegedly exposing himself to a woman, which he denied, Texas Monthly reports. (The victim later said it wasn’t Reyos who exposed himself to her, the outlet reports.)

Out of prison but still on parole, he still had a murder conviction on his record. But thanks to Harlee, Michael and his dad, that would soon change.

Armed with the new fingerprint evidence, Chief Gerke notified the district attorney, who brought the case to Allison Clayton of the non-profit Innocence Project of Texas.

That led to an evidentiary hearing in March, where Chief Gerke and others testified. The court ruled that Reyos should be given the chance to be found innocent.

On Oct. 4, by a vote of 9-0, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that Reyos was innocent of the murder charge and recommended he be exonerated, Texas Monthly reported earlier this month.

As a result, Reyos will receive $80,000 in restitution for the 24 years he wrongfully spent behind bars, Texas Monthly reports.

“This is the best day of my life,” Reyos, now 67, told Texas Monthly after the decision.

Among those cheering on the decision were Harlee and Michael.

“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought they would've found new fingerprints — new evidence that would've led to this man's exoneration,” says Harlee.

“It was a perfect storm,” says Michael, 27.

Says Harlee: "It's been such a crazy experience. We're so overjoyed that James Reyos is exonerated."

Michael downplayed the role he and Harlee played in helping to clear Reyos' name.

"I feel like we had the smallest part in this," he says. "All we did was know the right people to tell about it.

"It's just amazing that he gets to be a free man now."

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