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; hi