Texas Monthly Expands Into Feature Docs With West Texas-Set Exoneration Pic From Deborah Esquenazi
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Texas Monthly, the magazine that has been chronicling life in the Lone Star State since 1973, has continued its expansion into film and TV by setting its first-ever feature documentary, to be made in partnership with Peabody and Critics’ Choice Award-winning filmmaker Deborah Esquenazi (Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four).
The currently untitled film centers on James Reyos, a gay Apache man who for 40 years has sought to clear his name of the brutal murder of a Catholic priest in oil-rich West Texas.
Embedding with the Innocence Project of Texas that has taken up Reyos’ case, Esquenazi with her doc sheds new light on a story that has eluded detectives, crime researchers and amateur sleuths for four decades, exposing a web of media lore and homophobia, as well as whispers of a possible serial killing team targeting clergy in the 1980s.
The project extends coverage of the case on the part of Texas Monthly, which has had award-winning executive editor Michael Hall look at it in print.
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