The 1980s Franciscan priest murders refers to the mysterious disappearances and/or murders of two Catholic priests, one of whom was a Franciscan, in the western United States between 1982 and 1984.
On August 5, 1982, Father Reynaldo Rivera, O.F.M., a priest at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was murdered in an unknown location and his body found three days later. A year and a half later, on July 20, 1984, Father John Kerrigan, a diocesan priest in the Diocese of Helena and assigned to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Ronan, Montana, disappeared after leaving a bakery. Several days later, bloodied articles of clothing were found along Montana Highway 35, as well as a blood-stained coat hanger. Kerrigan's vehicle was discovered in Polson seven days later; his wallet, which contained $1,200, was left in the trunk of the car, along with a bloody shovel and pillowcase. Kerrigan's remains have never been recovered.[1]
Though a definitive connection between Rivera and Kerrigan has not been discovered, the murders of both priests have been linked due to the fact that Kerrigan also had ties to New Mexico prior to being appointed at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena. Additional parallels were uncovered at the respective crime scenes. In 1988, the cases were profiled together on the NBC series Unsolved Mysteries. In 2015, the Diocese of Helena published an extensive list of clergy and staff who had been implicated in sexual abuse of minors, in which Kerrigan was included.
^Huff, Steve (April 4, 2018). "The Unholy Mystery of the Murdered Priests". Inside Hook. Archived from the original on July 8, 2019.
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