The Priest Murders

In the summer of 1982, Father Reynaldo John Rivera was lured out to a location by a male caller who said they needed last rites performed. Father Rivera's body was found days later; he had been bound and strangled. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the murders and disappearances of priests in the 1980s. There are some eerie connections between a number of priests who were either murdered or disappeared under suspicious circumstances. These connections have led many online to speculate about conspiracy theories involving a person or persons who wanted revenge. You can help support the show through Patreon. We'd love to connect with listeners on social media. We are available on the following platforms: Facebook - Facebook Discussion group - Instagram - Threads - X Formerly Twitter - Blue Sky - Twitch - Tik Tok Criminology is an Emash Digital production hosted by Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Hello everyone and welcome to episode 409 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.

• 0:43Speaker 02

  And this is Mike Morford.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Morf, how you doing this week, buddy?

• 0:47Speaker 02

  Doing pretty good. How you doing?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  I'm doing great. Uh, got a lot of stuff coming up. I think we've talked about some of it. Obviously you and I are getting ready to go to CrimeCon and then about, I have a week at home and then I had, uh, across the pond, across some ponds, down for my daughter's wedding, basically. She's getting, uh, she's having a destination wedding.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  So you've got some travel miles coming up.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is strange for a guy who, uh, you know, doesn't leave his basement all that often.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Well, you gotta get out every once in a while. I'm getting ready for summer. Our kids are getting off in, you know, about two, three weeks out of school and, you know, they're gonna be home and playing sports and doing what it is that kids do. So getting ready for it to get a little louder in here.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, my oldest daughter and obviously my wife, they're, they're both in the education profession. So, uh, they're almost done for the year and they're both coming to Vegas with me. So. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had one new Patreon and that was Brian A. But we really appreciate that support.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you so much, Brian. It really helps us out and for anyone else that supports the show, thank you. And if anyone wants to help and get started, head over to patreon.com/criminalogy.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  All right, buddy. It's time to jump into this week's case, or should I say cases? Because we're discussing the murders of multiple men. And it's a little reminiscent of our episode a couple of weeks ago about dead and missing scientists. But this time around, we're exploring the violent deaths of priests. Some people theorize that there may have been someone out there targeting priests for murder in the 1980s. But whether or not that's the case, one thing is for sure, the attacks we're going to discuss in this episode are nothing short of brutal.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  In the summer of 1982, Father Reynaldo John Rivera, a Catholic Franciscan priest, was one of the priests working at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis in Santa Fe, New Mexico. On August 5th, a man called the cathedral looking for help. He said his name was Michael Carmelo, and that he was driving with his very sick grandfather who appeared close to death. He was pulled over at a rest stop in Waldo, a ghost town about 45 minutes from Santa Fe. He was in desperate need of a priest to perform last rites before it was too late. Since someone who has already passed away cannot receive these prayers, time was of the essence. At the time this call came in, it was already dark, and Father Patrick Gerard, the priest who answered Carmelo's car that night, couldn't drive in the dark due to his

• 3:32Speaker 02

  poor vision. So Father Gerard asked Carmelo to call back again shortly, while he found someone else who could help him.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Michael Carmelo called back that night at about 8:30. And this time, Father Reynaldo Rivera answered the phone. Father Rivera was more than happy to make the drive and perform last rites for the dying grandfather. Carmelo said they would be in their vehicle, a blue pickup truck, waiting for him. Father Rivera left the cathedral around 9pm. This would prove to be the last good deed that he would ever carry out. He didn't return back to the cathedral that night. Father Rivera's body was found days later, laying in a muddy field off the side of Interstate 25, near the Waldo exit. He had been brutally murdered.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  There were signs that his hands had been bound at some point, and that he had been strangled with some kind of thick wire, like a metal wire hanger, before he was shot once in the stomach. There was no sign of the Father's brown 1974 Chevrolet Malibu. And like we said upfront, Morph, I mean, we're going to be talking about some brutal murders, and this is one. What struck me about this whole scenario, though, was Father Rivera getting this call about traveling to a truck, right? Somebody's dying inside a truck, and the caller wants the father to perform last rites.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  I mean, there's a part of me that wants to be skeptical about that. But then, at the same time, I think that, you know, this is probably a person who is very trusting, wants to believe the best in others, and sees this as, you know, something he really needs to do.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think a lot of time, people come into churches for help, seeking counsel, or guidance, or prayers, whatever it may be. But I know there are times when priests go out to others, you know, whether it's to their home, or wherever it might be, to help them. So I think this was probably something that happened sometimes, and Father Rivera probably wasn't worried. But I also think it's a little bit odd, if he had time to stop and wait for the father to come out there, and then called back later on to talk to a different father, maybe in that time, he could have just driven to the church. So to me, that was a little bit strange.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's a great point, right? Driven to a church, driven to a hospital.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Somewhere other than just kind of staying in this truck. But again, my point is, I, I, I don't know that Father Rivera or any priest would maybe be as, as skeptical as I would be.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Those that knew Father Rivera were shocked and couldn't think of anyone that would want to harm him. That made the investigation harder for police. And they felt that if they could find Father Rivera's car, it might yield more clues. Over 100 miles west of where Father Rivera's body was found, his car was found. It was parked near Grants, New Mexico, at a rest stop off Interstate 40. The gas tank was completely empty. Whoever had driven it had left it there and apparently had no choice but to find a different way to travel or call attention to themselves with the stolen vehicle of a murder victim, if they asked for help in getting gas. Since it was a rest stop, we can probably assume that the person hitched a ride out of the area.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Father Rivera's last rites kit, which would have held holy water, a crucifix, candles and other items, was not found with his body, and it wasn't in his car. Neither were his glasses or his wallet. To this day, none of his items have turned up. Investigators did examine the vehicle and collect fingerprints.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  And I think what's standing out to me most here, Morph, is that someone drove his car. And presumably, you would think it would be the, the person who killed him. But what would be the reason? If the person really had a truck, as they claimed in the phone call, why couldn't they just have driven away in the truck? Why the need to drive the, the father's car? So I don't know if that points to maybe there was no truck or if there was more than one person involved.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it sounds like the spot where the father went out to where he was supposed to meet this Carmelo guy, it doesn't seem like a spot that was someplace you could get to without driving there. So perhaps this person had some other way they got to that spot, you know, dropped off by someone, or maybe they had hitched a ride there, killed the father, and then took his car to get out of the area. I mean, it opens up so many possibilities. But one thing that jumped out to me was if you've just killed this priest and then taken his car, you're taking a chance driving 100 miles. That's quite a distance to be driving in a car of someone that you just murdered.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true, because, you know, when the investigation starts, they're going to try to figure out if anyone had seen that car, because the car is known about. They're going to know what type of car that that he drove, and ultimately, they did find it. They would have seemingly no idea other than a truck, right? They don't know what color, they don't know what kind. So there's just a lot of strange things here so far. It wasn't long before Father Rivera's case cooled off, and police in New Mexico turned to the FBI to help them. Apparently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation created a psychological profile

• 9:49Speaker 01

  of the suspect and determined that the most likely motive for Father Rivera's murder was revenge. But Father Rivera wasn't the one who initially answered the call that came in for help that evening, and this mysterious caller, this Carmelo, which police came to believe wasn't his real name, never asked for help from any specific priest. What if Father Gerard hadn't had such poor eyesight at night? Would he have been killed? Or would he have performed last rites and made it back to the cathedral safely? Did the caller know the father's and know that regardless of who answered the phone, if something needed

• 10:32Speaker 01

  to be done at night, only Father Rivera could respond? Was this a way of luring the father without revealing that he was driving straight to his death? One interesting thing the police found was that they discovered that the payphone at the rest stop where this mystery man Carmelo said he was calling from wasn't working. So the caller had to have been somewhere else intentionally luring a priest, apparently any priest, to the remote location. So we definitely have a real mystery here, right? A person calls in and says that their grandfather's dying, they need a priest to perform last rites.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  But then that priest ends up dead. They find out that the place where this person said they were calling from, the payphone wasn't working. There were no cell phones back then. So that takes that out of the equation. I think if you're the police, you got a real mystery on your hands. As to, you know, number one, who did this? Cause that's the big question. But then also, why? Did this person simply want revenge on the church? Revenge against organized religion? And were they targeting Father Rivera specifically?

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Or was any priest suitable for their pent up rage? I mean, these were all questions investigators had to consider. No matter the motive, people living in the area and those involved with the church were horrified. Later, when speaking with K R Q E Archbishop Michael Sheehan of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, said that it was an evil thing to ask a priest to come and do his ministry and then at that moment to take him and kill him.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  With no clear suspects or motives, Father Rivera's case faded from the headlines and became cold. But almost two years later, the disappearance and presumed murder of a different priest, a thousand miles away in Montana would make headlines. Montana authorities in that case actually contacted investigators in New Mexico to compare notes and try to collaborate due to some similarities. This time, the victim would be Father John Patrick Kerrigan. Father Kerrigan was transferred to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Ronan, Montana on July 18th, 1984. Just two days later, he vanished.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  He was last seen as he left the bakery on July 20th. He had popped in on his way home from a jog. At 6:30 the next morning, there was no father for mass. Father Carrigan simply hadn't shown up, and this was alarming. No priest transferring to a new congregation would ever let this be his first impression. Still, he was given some grace. It was thought that maybe he was confused about the schedule or got lost in the area when he went out. But on July 23rd, after two days of nobody seeing or hearing from Carrigan, he was officially reported missing. Also missing was Father Carrigan's car.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Nearly a week after Father Carrigan was declared a missing person, bloody clothing determined to belong to him was found off of Montana Highway 35. The shirt found had a $100 bill in the pocket, potentially ruling out a robbery. Also found there on the shore of Flathead Lake was a metal wire hanger covered in blood. These items were discovered just five miles from the town of Roanoke. The next day, Father Carrigan's car, which was interestingly a brown Chevrolet Malibu, just like Father Rivera's, was found. And also like Father Rivera's Malibu, Father Carrigan's car had been abandoned.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  The keys had apparently been tossed. They were found in some brush about 30 yards from the car. But there were items inside the trunk that were cause for concern. First, the father's wallet, full of cash, was still inside. That doesn't instill a lot of confidence that Father Carrigan had just walked away from the church in his old life. It's unlikely that Father Carrigan would have left behind $1,000. And, you know, when you look at that with inflation, if that happened today, it would be like leaving behind nearly $4,000. If the money being left wasn't alarming enough, there was also a pillowcase and a shovel, both covered in blood.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  The car appeared to have been wiped down to remove fingerprints, but the interior was stained with blood. Searches for Father Carrigan failed to turn up any sign of him. But based on everything we've mentioned, police believe that he was murdered. Though to this day, his body is still missing. And Morpheus, you and I talk a lot in, in certain cases about the possibility that, you know, someone decides to up and leave, right? Maybe they're not happy with their life. They want to start a new one. And so they leave. It does happen. Now, I think it's rare in a lot of the cases that we talk about.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  But when you look at the facts of this one, to me, it's even less likely. Where you think about, there's blood inside the car. There's a bloody pillowcase and a shovel with blood on it in the trunk. And then you have what is really a large amount of money, right? A thousand dollars in the 1980s. To me, that says a couple of things. Number one, the motive for whatever happened to Father Kerrigan wasn't money. And number two, what person goes and, and, you know, starts a new life without this big chunk of money?

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Also, why is a priest carrying around a thousand dollars? You know, that kind of jumped out at me. To me, if someone is, is going to target someone for money, I would think a priest or a member of the clergy would be the last person you would think of as someone who would have a lot of money on them.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I, I'm not familiar overly with how much, you know, priests get paid or got paid, especially back in the eighties, but I can imagine that they, it wasn't a lot. You know, it wasn't a lucrative career from what I understand. So, you know, some people might raise questions about, well, why does he have so much money? Was there something shady going on with him to begin with to have that kind of money? And then to carry it around is, is obviously risky because you could lose it. You know, you could be robbed, anything could happen. Yeah, I think leaving that kind of money behind the equivalent of $4,000 today, it just screams to me that he's met with foul play because I don't think there's any circumstance

• 17:45Speaker 02

  that he would willingly leave that kind of money there.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Now, to be fair, I think in the eighties, a lot more people carried cash or more cash than what they do today. I can't remember the last time I went to an ATM. I just don't carry that much cash. In the world we live in today, you just, you really rarely even need it.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  So I can see him carrying around some pocket change, maybe to buy lunch, get some gas, run an errand, but a thousand dollars is a lot of money to be carrying around back in the eighties.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, no doubt. And to your point, you know, I, I don't think priests made a lot of money. I don't think they make a lot of money now. Now, they, they may not have a lot of expenses, but it's still interesting that, you know, he had that much cash on him.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, to me, that opens up a possibility at least that maybe he was being blackmailed, maybe he was bringing that money to give someone and something happened. But if that's the case, why didn't the money exchange hands? I think in a case like this, you have to consider all the possibilities.

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• 20:16Speaker 02

  So these two cases happened two years and a thousand miles apart, but investigators had to consider that they might be connected due to several things being similar. First of all, both victims were Catholic priests. They were both 58 years old at the time they were killed or disappeared. They both had a brown Chevy Malibu. Father Rivera may have been strangled with a metal hanger, and a bloody metal hanger was found in Father Carrigan's trunk. But there was another possible connection. It turns out that Father Carrigan had spent some time in New Mexico before ending up in Montana. In 1983, he was at the congregation of the servants of the parochial in Hamez Springs, New Mexico for three months. Hamez Springs is about an hour and a half from Santa Fe where Father Rivera was killed.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Although there were some key similarities in both cases, there was one thing that was markedly different in the two victims. Father Carrigan had been accused of sexually molesting children. Apparently, the Hamez Springs, New Mexico congregation, where he was at before going to Montana, was basically full of troubled priests. And the site was used as a place to get them back on track after personal issues, addictions, mental health problems, or any kind of misconduct, including sexual abuse. This could certainly be a motive for abducting and killing the priest. By contrast, there were no such allegations against Father Rivera.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  So the sexual abuse allegations were one key difference between the victims. But for the most part, the parallels in the cases of both priests were hard to ignore. And no doubt, this is an angle that police would have to explore. And if Father Carrigan had been accused of sexually molesting children, that would definitely be a motive. You could see where maybe a parent of a child who had been molested by him would want to take their revenge. Or depending on when it happened, maybe somebody had grown up, but wanted to take their revenge.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Against Father Kerrigan for something he had done to them in the past.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that certainly opens up some some avenues of investigation, but the, to me, the odd thing about that is, why would that person wait until two days after he's transferred to another state, you know, from into Montana, quite a distance away? Why do it then? It seems like it would be easier to do while he was back at the old congregation, unless maybe they wanted some distance between themselves and didn't want to, you know, do it while he was there. That could be a reason for that.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was my thought exactly. The timing seems strange, but is it? If you had this built up rage against someone, but you didn't want to be connected to the crime, maybe once you found out that this person was being transferred to another state. Well, that puts some distance between what happened to you or your child and the abduction slash murder.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  So that makes me wonder if the police considered any of those sexual alleged sexual abuse victims or their families as suspects, because now that gives them an avenue to go down. We don't have all the details about that and who were suspects and how far they were investigated, but it seems like an avenue worth pursuing by the police.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Well, and we said there were no allegations against Father Rivera, but no allegations doesn't necessarily mean something couldn't have happened. Now, I don't want to smear this man's name, obviously, I have no idea, but I think you'd have to say that. It doesn't absolutely mean something couldn't have happened that somebody wanted to to get back at him for.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  At the time, Santa Fe Police Officer Lieutenant Gilbert Yoloberry wholeheartedly believed that the cases were related. He told the Almagordo Daily News that he had a quote "gut feeling" that the cases were connected. However, he has since changed his mind and stated that he does not think there's any connection between the two cases. This is important, because if there was anything that could verify a real connection between these two cases, investigators likely would have found it. They initially believed the cases were linked, which means they were looking for things that would have backed their theory up. But they apparently couldn't find anything that conclusively did. So this wasn't a case of tunnel vision where investigators were so focused on something that they didn't think to look into any other connections,

• 25:08Speaker 02

  or where they just didn't investigate other theories. The cases were investigated as if they were connected, and only over time did the people working on both cases start to change their mind, as no connection could be found.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  These cases are frequently discussed on websites like Web sleuths and Reddit, and a lot of people there focus on the similarity, that both victims were priests. But two days after Father Carrigan disappeared, a teacher from Missoula, Montana, also vanished. Thirty-one-year-old Curtis Holman, who taught math at Target Range Elementary School, disappeared and his 1976 Toyota pickup truck was found on a logging road just 40 miles from the area where Carrigan's car was found. Curtis Holman's brother, not the authorities, felt that the cases of his missing brother and the missing priest might somehow be connected. Some of Holman's belongings were still in the car,

• 26:06Speaker 01

  including his glasses, wallet, and a map of the forest, but the keys weren't there. A search of the area revealed footprints that matched the size Holman wore, but they weren't the only prints. There were also paw prints from a grizzly bear. A female grizzly had been reported in the area, leading to speculation that Holman had been killed in a bear attack. It would otherwise seem odd for him to become lost. In the woods, the map was spread open in the passenger seat and Holman was a survivalist. He'd once hiked for an entire year throughout the United States and Canada, living off of

• 26:47Speaker 01

  stockpiled food. However, authorities believe that Holman may have taken his own life because the last time he saw his brother, he reportedly seemed depressed or distant. Most people who discuss the cases of the murdered or missing priests don't think either case is connected to the disappearance of Curtis Holman.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  One case that does get connected by some people to the cases of the two priests is one that preceded both of them. Just two months before Father Rivera was killed and a full two years before Father Kerrigan vanished, Reverend Father James Otis Anderson, an Episcopal priest, vanished from Townsend, Montana. He was last seen at around eight o'clock in the morning on June 13th, 1982, driving east on Highway 12. He was reported missing after he missed the evening service. The sermon he was supposed to give at that service was still sitting on his desk at home. Everything at the house looked normal. All of his personal belongings, even daily toiletry items like a razor and toothbrush were where they were supposed to be. The only thing besides Father Anderson that anyone could tell was missing

• 27:53Speaker 02

  was his car, a silver 1975 Volkswagen Scirocco.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Four months later, just days before Halloween, Father Anderson's car was found abandoned in the mountains 25 miles east of Townsend. The car was nearly completely concealed. Tree branches hid the vehicle from view by air and thick brush and trees obscured the car from view of any hikers or anyone driving by on the road. It was a hunter who ultimately stumbled upon the car and called it in as suspicious. Inside the trunk, investigators found a shovel that appeared to be covered in blood with hair stuck to it. This is eerily reminiscent of the bloody shovel found in the trunk of Father Kerrigan's abandoned car. A ground search, including sniffer dogs, began in the area.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Of the car on a ridge about a half a mile from the vehicle, a prayer book, clerical collar, hat, and a pair of glasses were discovered. They were determined to belong to Father Anderson. Nothing else was found in the search, which was eventually called off. His handgun, address book, and his favorite blanket were never recovered. Father Anderson is still missing to this day.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  In 1990, Father Anderson was declared legally deceased. Father Anderson and Father Carrigan once worked together in White Sulphur Springs, Montana. They were also said to be friends. At the time of Father Anderson's disappearance, he and his wife Patricia were in the process of a divorce. The two were also battling over custody of their two children. He was also potentially facing trouble at work and might have even been on his way to getting fired. These facts, coupled with the fact that Father Anderson's handgun was never found, has caused many people to consider the possibility that he went out into the mountains to take his own life. If he did, the gun and his body would likely be found at the same time. Since both are missing, there's a real possibility that they're likely in the same spot.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  And that could be, right? Obviously, he was going through some things in his personal life, but it also could open up the possibility more of, as we've seen in so many cases, that he was killed over these things that, you know, he was going through in his personal life. The one thing that I guess kind of stuck out to me was potentially facing trouble at work and maybe about ready to be fired. The problem is, we don't really know what that was about. But you have to ask the question, you know, could it be something along the lines of

• 30:40Speaker 01

  the allegations that were levied against Father Carrigan? If so, then, you know, some of the same things we said about him would apply. There could potentially be people out there who wanted their revenge against Father Anderson.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  And I think it's, it's easy to say, you know, he's going through stuff at work. He's having relationship problems. Maybe he was just depressed and he was going out there to end his own life. But then what really jumps out to me that makes me say, well, hold on a second. He knew and worked with Father Carrigan and they were said to be friends. So if that's the case, that's a connection that, you know, makes my ears perk up.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of what, you know, fuels conspiracy theories. At the very least, it deepens the mystery, right? There, there could be a very simple explanation for what happened to Father Anderson. He could have taken his, his own life. But you add in these other elements and other possibilities, you know, it's hard to ignore them. In 2015, the Diocese of Helena released a list that contained the names of 80 people who'd been accused of sexually abusing minors.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Father Carrigan was among the names on that list. If Father Rivera had any such allegations against him, this list would not have included his name because he was a Franciscan priest, not a Diocesan priest. But as we mentioned, as far as we could find in the research, there were no such allegations against Father Rivera. Some people have considered the possibility that maybe Father Rivera was mistaken for Father Carrigan and inadvertently killed. And when the killer realized they made a mistake, they caught up to Father Carrigan two years later. As we mentioned, they both drove a similar brown Chevrolet Malibu and both had been in New Mexico.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  There had been other cases in which a killer attacks the wrong victim. For example, a man named Daniel Ott was killed during a home invasion in Ohio in 2006. It turned out that a different Daniel Ott had been cooperating with authorities in an organized crime case, and the hitman apparently used the name to track down an address, not realizing there were multiple people with that name in the same area. We also previously covered the Mary Morris murders that have a similar theme. In that case, in October 2000, two different women named Mary Morris were found dead in their cars in Houston, Texas, just four days apart. Mary Lou Morris, the first to die, was so badly burned that the cause of death couldn't be determined, but Mary McGuinness Morris, who died just a few days later, was shot

• 33:36Speaker 02

  to death in her car. It's long been a popular theory that the second Mary Morris was the intended victim, and that the first one was killed by mistake. So could there be a situation like this with Fathers Rivera and Carrigan?

• 33:49Speaker 01

  If there is a situation of mistaken identity and the wrong priest was killed, since Father Rivera was attacked first, this would likely make Father Carrigan the intended target. Father Rivera would have been the one who was just unlucky enough to drive the same car as the priest someone actually wanted dead. It would make sense for Father Carrigan to be the target, because the suspects in that scenario would have apparently started looking in New Mexico where Father Carrigan had been when the killer realized their mistake. They could have done more research and tracked down the right priest.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  And we talked about the timeframe here more, in the 1980s, early 80s. There's no internet. It's a little bit tougher to get information on people, or it would have been back then than it is today, obviously. You know, we can sit at our computer and search, and now you have AI that helps you compile all that. In the early 80s, that was a much tougher proposition.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's an interesting theory too, that maybe Father Rivera was accidentally killed by someone thinking he was Father Carrigan. But I also go back to the point that Father Rivera wound up going out to that truck stop sort of randomly. The person didn't ask for him specifically. He only went because the other priest couldn't see well enough to drive at night. So, you know, that to me kind of throws cold water on the theory that he was killed by someone wanting to kill Father Carrigan.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm kind of with you. I understand why people look at it that way, discuss it that way. But that mere fact alone, that the caller didn't ask for Father Rivera, kind of points away from that scenario.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  We should point out that there are some people that don't even think Father Carrigan ever met with any harm. Author Brian Di Ambrogio, who wrote a book about unsolved crimes in Montana, has put forth a theory that Father Carrigan wasn't murdered. This theory is purportedly developed from the notes of the lead investigator trying to solve Carrigan's murder and track down his body. The theory is that Carrigan wanted to disappear, possibly because of the sex abuse allegations he knew eventually would pop up, and that he had decided to fake his own death and had staged the scene to make it look as if he had been attacked. And it's one thing to leave some of your belongings behind or plant some clues to make it look like you met with foul play. But what Carrigan really have left behind

• 36:37Speaker 02

  will be the equivalent of $4,000 in cash today. It seems unlikely. If he started a new life, he likely would have needed that money.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, in a lot of cases, we're talking about, okay, there's no activity on a person's bank account. And you're kind of walking that line of thinking, well, if someone wanted to start a new life, they would need access to that money versus if you're trying to sell the fact that something happened to you because you're trying to sneak away, well, then you can access your bank accounts. But this is different because he already had the cash. To me, there's absolutely no reason to not have taken it if you were planning to start a new life.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Or maybe just leave a little bit of the cash, you know, as you know, a hundred hours or something just to say, okay, well, you know, that would throw off investigators because they'll think it wasn't a robbery because here's cash sitting here, but he could have taken the bulk with it and left a little bit behind as a decoy. So I think that's to me points to the him really meeting with foul play.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  There is another case that people tend to discuss with the other priest cases, though it's not unsolved or open like the others. In January of 1989, Father Francis Craven was found dead in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. His vehicle, a GMC van, was found burned and abandoned in a huge puddle of water nearly a week later, about 12 miles from the crime scene. Father Craven had obviously been murdered. His body was badly burned. There were signs that he had been beaten before he was killed, likely in the very spot he was found, judging by the blood and hair found deep in the dirt. His hands were still

• 38:31Speaker 01

  bound in front of his body. The heat from the fire had made his muscles stiffen, freezing his arms up in the air. His eyes and mouth were covered by the charred remains of something. Investigators believe it was duct tape. Drag marks in the sand showed where the father had likely been pulled out of a vehicle. His head was resting on a prayer book. A metal chain, a dog leash, was still around his neck.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Neighbors were shocked by the discovery of Father Craven's body, and it definitely rocked their sense of safety. Harold O'Quinn, Jr., a Northport Police Department officer who lived in the area, told thepatch.com, "I still can't believe I was so close and never heard anything. They would have had to driven right by my house to get to that spot." A man named David Thomas Lightner was convicted of the murder of Father Francis Craven. He was the one who called authorities to inform them that the unidentified burned body was undoubtedly Father Craven. He even gave the name of Father Craven's dentist, which did lead to his identity being confirmed. In 1996, Lightner took his own life behind bars, hanging himself with a bed sheet after his final appeal was rejected. He maintained his innocence.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  As far as we know, since the contents of his suicide note were never released to the public, according to the patch.com, Lightner once told a group of reporters, "I'm guilty of being bisexual. I'm not guilty of killing my friend."

• 39:58Speaker 01

  There are signs that Father Craven's murder was a sexual fantasy gone terribly, terribly wrong. In the rectory, inside of a closet with multiple locks, investigators found a journal that included some very graphic, very detailed fantasies. The writings described the father being abducted, bound and dragged from a vehicle, all things that seemed to have really happened to him. But at the end of his writings, he was still alive. If he was playing out a wonded fantasy, something changed. Something went wrong. Priests still have personal lives and they still have interactions with other humans that they can make angry.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  They still do dangerous things. They have secrets. With Father Craven's murder, it's easy to take the priest part out of the equation and focus on risky secret sex and a panicked cover up of whatever went wrong. Maybe there's something like that in the other priest cases that we just don't know about. In this case, to me, Morph is fascinating as well. You know, you often hear in cases that, you know, the person who finds the body or the person who calls the authorities about a body is often a suspect in the beginning,

• 41:21Speaker 01

  right? They have to be ruled out. Well, here you see why. The person who called in about the body turned out to be the killer. At least they were convicted of being the killer. But this idea of a sexual fantasy gone wrong.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  It does kind of in some ways line up, right? Lightner once told a group of reporters that he was bisexual, but he didn't kill his friend. It to me, kind of seems like the two had some type of sexual relationship. Now, were they playing out some fantasies and something went wrong? It's possible. We don't have all the details of the evidence, the trial. We don't have time to go into all that and we actually don't know it all. But there's no doubt that a jury found him guilty, Lightner.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  But obviously you can't discount, you know, this journal with the graphic details of a fantasy that later kind of turns into reality in some aspects.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, in this last case, we have that journal. We know more. Obviously, the case was solved. There's a conviction. So there's answers that we don't have with some of the other cases we talked about. And it opens the possibility, maybe there's something like that going on in those cases as well, but they just don't have the pieces of the puzzle to solve it. We mentioned earlier that there was a list of 80 names of priests who had apparently been guilty of sexual abuse. And Father Kerrigan wasn't the only one on that list to vanish. There's at least one other priest that disappeared in the 1980s. Father George Ferguson, a member of the Helena Diocese, moved to Mexico in 1980.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  In June of 1986, he disappeared after leaving his home. His housekeeper was there when he received the phone call from someone who spoke English. Father Ferguson wrote something down and then left the house. He never came back. Investigators believe he was murdered, although who may have done it and why remains unknown. On December 21st, 1981, Father Patrick Ryan was found dead in a motel in Odessa, Texas. He had been driving from Denver City, Texas to New Mexico. For some reason, he checked into the motel using fake information, including a false name. The father was found naked on the floor, face down with his hands behind his back, tied together with a sock. The room was covered in blood, and there were obvious signs of a struggle. The air

• 44:05Speaker 02

  conditioning unit had been broken and was hanging off the wall. The TV screen was broken. The phone had been ripped from the wall. Furniture had been knocked over and broken. A man named James Harry Reyes was convicted of Father Ryan's murder. Even the receipts and a speeding ticket could prove that he had been in New Mexico, not Texas, when Father Ryan was killed. The violent struggle would have been loud, but no one heard anything, leading investigators to believe that Father Ryan was killed just after he checked in at 8:00 PM, but before the neighboring room was occupied at 9:00 PM. James Harry Reyes found himself connected to the murder because he confessed to it one night when he was drunk. Despite an airtight alibi proving that he hadn't killed Father

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Ryan, for a jury, the confession was enough. Reyes was sent to prison where he served 40 years before officially being exonerated, while Father Ryan's real killer walked free.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Another case worth mentioning is that of Father Benjamin J. Carrier. On November 10th, 1982, police in Yuma, Arizona responded to the El Rancho motel and found Father Carrier dead on a bed inside one of the rooms. His hands were tied behind his back, and he had been strangled or smothered. His car was found three days later in Las Vegas. He had been seen at the hotel with two white men. These men have never been tracked down. So, I mean, there's, there's not a lot of details or information about that case in particular, but it is another priest found dead. You know, the last two that we talked

• 45:44Speaker 01

  about, there are some similarities. You know, hotel rooms.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  It kind of lends one to think that possibly they were meeting someone at this hotel or at these hotels for some type of sexual encounter. Something went wrong. They were killed. Now, I don't know that for sure. I'm kind of speculating. But as we're wrapping up this episode more, I think we definitely have to look at the cases of Fathers Rivera and Carrigan. Once again, we touched on it, right? Similar cars, coat hangers possibly used in both cases, both of them with a New Mexico connection. But there's also a connection

• 46:34Speaker 01

  between Father Carrigan and some of the other priests, these being Fathers Ferguson and Anderson. They shared a Montana connection. So that's an interesting aspect as well. But you know, when you start digging into these cases, you quickly realize just how many priests have met an unfortunate fate over the years, especially in the 1980s. And this goes back a bit to what we touched on a couple of episodes back in our coverage of the missing and dead scientists. If you look closely enough at any profession, could you find a pattern of suspicious cases? Well, if you do that, there were many murders of

• 47:19Speaker 01

  priests then worth considering in the 1980s. I think with, you know, Fathers Rivera and Carrigan, there are enough similarities that are hard to just simply brush off without considering a connection. You also have the connections with Carrigan and Fathers Ferguson and Anderson. You know, one thing that I keep thinking about as we've gone through these cases more is the sexual component. There seems to be

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Allegations against some of these men, some were killed in what appeared to be sexual situations. Was there something bigger and much broader at play here? And this is where I think some people point to the conspiracy angle, which would be in sexual abuse by some of these priests who had connections? And could that have led to one or more individuals wanting revenge against them?

• 48:39Speaker 01

  I think it's one scenario that that you have to at least consider. I also think there's the possibility that none of these are connected. Right? You would have to say that's something to consider as well. But there are some things jumping out at me that that I think at least some of these could possibly be connected.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think for police, when they can find the motive, they can often find a suspect. But when they don't have a motive, that makes it tougher. And it's easy to say in Father Kerrigan's case, you know, there's a motive there, the sexual abuse. But in Father Rivera's case, there's no known sexual abuse claims against him. And as we mentioned a couple of times, he wound up going to that rest stop because he was the only one that could see at night to drive. So it seems like he could have gone there randomly. Of course, maybe the person that lured him out there knew he was the only one that could drive at night, so he'd ultimately be coming there. So unfortunately, it just doesn't answer any questions. It just leads to more questions.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'd be remiss if I didn't kind of circle back to another possibility, which is someone just upset with either the church, religion in general, just wanting to take revenge against people with whom they really had no real connection. You know, I think that's a possibility that you have to keep on the table as well.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, the one thing that really does seem like an interesting connection to me is that both Father Rivera and Father Carrigan were the same age, they're both 58, they both drove the same kind of car, they had both been in New Mexico. So those three things there really jump out as, you know, if they're coincidences, they're huge coincidences.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do think you can make the argument that those two cases probably have the most probability of having a connection. But then you factor in the fact that Father Carrigan, you know, knew these, these two other priests. Maybe it's all connected, but like we said, Father Rivera was a case of mistaken identity. You can see more of why this is a case that people like to talk about online. They like to dissect it, cover different theories because there's a lot of angles to, and paths to go down.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  One thing we don't know for sure is how much physical evidence the police have in both Father Rivera's and Carrigan's cases. Maybe they have something that might yield DNA from the killer. And it'd be interesting to see if they've been looking to test that with more recent advances in science. Might there be something there that they couldn't test back in the 80s that now might yield answers? And it would be interesting to see if they can solve one or both cases and if they are ultimately connected.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is an interesting point that you bring up. I mean, both of those murders occurred before DNA was, was being used. We talked about coat hangers or metal hangers and things like that. It would be interesting to know what, if any, types of evidence they have that could provide a DNA profile. And maybe because this case is so old.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  They just haven't gone back and either swabbed it, tested it. We just don't know. But that's it for our episode on the priest murders. As always, if you love the show but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a review, a rating. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the podcast really helps us out.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  If you want to find us on social media, we're on every major platform. Just search for Criminology Podcast on your favorites. And for news about the show, old episodes and more, head over to our website, criminologypodcast.com. And finally, if you want to join a discussion about the podcasts and the cases we discuss, head over to Facebook and search for Criminology Podcast, discussion and fans.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  So that's it for another episode of Criminology, but Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  And Morph.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  We'll talk to you next week.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Take care, everyone.