Who Killed Father Ryan?

This is an amazing story about a man who confessed to a crime he didn't commit: Murdering a priest. It's very complicated:

On Dec. 4, 1982, a deeply suntanned man, about 40 years old, walked into the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boise, Idaho, and readied himself for confession. He never got a chance to recount his sins to the priest. As he waited – perhaps not realizing it would be several minutes before the confessional was available, or perhaps despairing of the condition of his soul – the man swallowed a cyanide capsule. A few minutes later, he was dead.

And that's just the first paragraph.

James Reyos has been paroled, but is still trying to gain a pardon. It's not looking too hopeful. Because, unfortunately, in Texas, the defense attorneys like to sleep in the courtroom and stuff. An interesting thing to note in the article: Apparently the Catholic church kept absolutely no records on its brethren until the 1980s. So priests could be like Secret Agent Men, popping up here, disappearing the next day, no fingerprints on file, nothing.

We had a priest go missing in my hometown but it turned out that his car slid down an embankment in a snowstorm.

They found him that spring. (via MeFi.)