# 72: Mother Frees Her Daughters MURDERER Then He Was Killed 27 YEARS LATER

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 28 May 2024, 1 h 26 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO6676780604.mp3

Today's case is on Angie Dodge, the youngest daughter of a loving family in Idaho Falls, Idaho, who was tragically murdered in June 1996. After over a decade of tireless investigation by Carol, the man originally arrested and charged for the crime was set free - and the hunt for the true killer began… Find more details on the work of the Innocence Project here. Trigger Warning: rape and murder Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:00] Angie Dodge was a popular, confident young woman, 18 years
[0:04] old and ready to make her own way in the world.
[0:06] But her life was brutally cut short when she was raped and
[0:10] murdered in her own home. Police.
[0:13] Took DNA samples from hundreds of different suspects, but they
[0:17] eventually decided that Angie's killer was one of her own good
[0:20] friends, a man named Chris Tapp. Chris was locked up and it
[0:24] seemed that justice was served. Everyone was overjoyed to put
[0:28] this case to rest. Everyone except the victim's own
[0:33] mother, Carol Dodge, wasn't convinced that the case was
[0:36] fully solved, so she went to speak face to face with the man
[0:41] that they say raped and murdered her only daughter.
[0:45] But when she saw Chris Tapp sitting there in his prison
[0:48] overhauls, just one look in his eyes confirmed it for her.
[0:52] They had the wrong guy. With that, Carol took the
[0:55] investigation into her own hands.
[0:57] She followed new leads, badgered the police for information and
[1:01] even questioned local drug dealers for clues.
[1:04] She was relentless, driven by a mother's love and a fierce
[1:08] pursuit of. Justice After 20 years of
[1:11] detective work, Carol was able to free an innocent man for a
[1:15] crime that he did not commit, and it forced the police to
[1:18] reopen her daughter's case. And start looking for the real
[1:22] killer. This is the story of Angie
[1:25] Dodger's tragic murder and her mother who stopped at nothing to
[1:30] solve it. This series is intended for
[1:36] educational purposes, to memorialize victims, and to
[1:39] amplify important conversations. All opinions stated are mine
[1:42] alone. This episode will cover
[1:45] especially sensitive topics, including discussion of rape and
[1:48] murder, so viewer discretion is advised.
[1:51] So today's case begins in Vancouver, WA on the West Coast
[1:56] of America. That's about 300 miles away from
[1:58] the. Other Vancouver.
[2:00] In Canada that you've probably heard of.
[2:02] It's a bit confusing, but anyway, we're in Washington and
[2:04] that is where Angie Ray Dodge was born on December 21st, 1977.
[2:10] She was the youngest child to her parents, Jack and Carol
[2:13] Dodge. Her father was in the Navy.
[2:15] So when she was young her family was constantly moving around
[2:19] state to state to state. Whenever they would get like
[2:21] settled and happy, they would then have to pack all their
[2:24] stuff and move again. And it wasn't easy, especially
[2:27] for Angie being the youngest and the only girl in the family as
[2:31] well, apart from her mother. But I guess what I'm trying to
[2:33] say is the three older brothers that she had, umm, all had each
[2:37] other and they could all like play football together and
[2:39] stuff. They would all have more in
[2:41] common with each other than they would have with Angie I bet.
[2:44] It was a very lonely childhood, but her mum Carol was always
[2:48] trying her best. She knew that this was something
[2:50] that her kids were struggling with, so she was always trying
[2:53] new methods to like get them to explore their new cities and
[2:57] help them to connect with the other kids and make friends.
[3:00] She really tried to give them the best life that she possibly
[3:03] could despite their circumstances.
[3:06] Soon the family ended up in California and this is where
[3:09] little Angie really started to bloom into her own person.
[3:14] She discovered that she loved the outdoors and nature and
[3:17] camping. She was a very like active
[3:20] little girl and she would always like play a fight with her
[3:23] brothers and wrestle with them. She became very strong doing
[3:26] that as well. She was physically stronger, but
[3:28] also mentally stronger. She was more resilient.
[3:31] I guess. Again, you kind of have to be
[3:33] having three older brothers. I imagine there was a lot of
[3:35] teasing going on in that house. And actually, this is something
[3:38] I was going to bring up later, but I'll bring it up now.
[3:40] Later on in life when Angie had male friends that would tease
[3:44] her again, boys she wouldn't take.
[3:47] Any shit because she'd had it all.
[3:49] Her life from her brothers, she wasn't afraid to give it back to
[3:52] other boys. So she was a pretty cool kid.
[3:54] She was tough, she was active, she loved Christmas and like,
[3:59] I've feel you, girl, it was because her birthday was so
[4:02] close to Christmas on December 21st that it was like.
[4:05] A. Double party for her every year
[4:07] all her extended family would get together every single year.
[4:10] They would put on a little nativity of their own and Angie
[4:13] was always merry she'd make necklaces for all her family
[4:17] members that had like little bells and ribbons on it's.
[4:20] It really was the most wonderful time of the year for Angie.
[4:22] When Angie. Was still pretty.
[4:24] Young, Her dad retired from the service and this meant that they
[4:27] could finally settle down. Some were permanent.
[4:30] Her mum Carol was over the moon because she had been worried
[4:34] about her kids with all of this moving, and she was glad that
[4:37] now they were going to finally get to lay down their roots.
[4:40] So they moved to Idaho Falls in Idaho, UMM, where Angie joined
[4:45] the local high school and she made a bunch of friends, friends
[4:48] that she was finally allowed to keep after school and on
[4:50] weekends, Angie and a bunch of the other local kids would go
[4:53] down to the Snake River and they would all just basically like
[4:56] chill there, chill on the banks of the river.
[4:59] They'd jump in and go swimming whenever it was warm.
[5:01] They would take their cars down there and like drive along the
[5:04] side of the winding river until like their gas ran out.
[5:07] They'd be there to the middle of the night.
[5:10] It's proper like classic American teen movie stuff.
[5:13] Like that's what I'm imagining in my head, like a little
[5:15] montage. The kids that met up there all
[5:17] ranged in ages and they went to all the different schools in the
[5:20] area. But obviously the thing that
[5:22] they had in common was the area Idaho Falls.
[5:26] They'd all pretty much grown up there apart from Angie.
[5:29] But she did. Fit in very, very well.
[5:31] They loved her. And she was quite the social
[5:33] butterfly. She made friends pretty easy.
[5:36] I guess with a childhood like that you kind of learn to make
[5:39] friends easy. But the more this.
[5:40] Group saw each other. The more bonded they became and
[5:44] eventually they started calling themselves the River Rats.
[5:47] But outside of her friendships, Angie was thriving at this point
[5:51] in her life. As a teenager, she was super
[5:54] intelligent. She did really well in her
[5:56] studies. In fact, she did so well that
[5:58] she could tutor the other kids in like maths and English.
[6:02] In 1995 she graduated from high school and a little bit later
[6:06] that year she got her very first job working at Barnes and Noble,
[6:10] the bookstore. Angie was taller than most girls
[6:12] her age, she was almost 6 foot and she was rather insecure
[6:16] about this, which broke my heart to read about.
[6:19] She always thought that her shoulders were too broad or her
[6:22] feet were too big, and she would actually buy shoes a couple of
[6:26] sizes smaller than she needed them and she would squeeze into
[6:29] them just to make her feet look smaller.
[6:31] She was literally walking around in pain every day because she
[6:35] was worried about what people would think or what people would
[6:38] say. And I just want to give her a
[6:39] big hug because she really was so beautiful.
[6:42] And I'm not even just saying that.
[6:43] Like, she had this gorgeous thick blonde hair that was in a
[6:47] really short Bob cut just below her ears.
[6:50] She had such a genuine beaming smile, a smile that radiated
[6:54] through her whole face and through her eyes.
[6:56] And from all of the pictures that I've seen, it seems that
[6:59] Angie Dodge was a big fan of a statement earring.
[7:01] And it really suited her with that short haircut.
[7:04] And then the earrings would come out underneath.
[7:06] Oh my God, it looked great. But isn't this just always the
[7:08] case? And it's such a shame that
[7:10] strangers can see so much beauty in us, but we can't see it in
[7:14] ourselves. But you know.
[7:15] Like I said. Angie in general was a very
[7:18] resilient and strong woman. She never let things get her
[7:21] down for too long. By 1996, Angie was 18 years old
[7:25] and she was well underway with the next.
[7:28] Chapter of her life she was. Looking into taking a course at
[7:31] Idaho State University at the time, and she'd actually just
[7:35] moved out of the family home. She'd moved into an apartment
[7:38] all by herself and she was in a pretty rundown area of the
[7:43] neighborhood, but it was close to her parents and it was close
[7:46] to the Snake River where her and all of her mates would hang out.
[7:49] So it was pretty perfect for a first place.
[7:52] On the night of June 12th, 1996, Angie visited the family home
[7:57] and this was the first time she'd visited since she moved
[8:00] out. And she hadn't actually moved
[8:02] out on good terms. According to her mum, Carol,
[8:05] Angie had broken one of the house rules and we don't know
[8:09] what the house rule is, but point is she broke one of her
[8:12] mum's rules, they had a fight and it ended in her moving out.
[8:16] I don't think she was kicked out, I really don't think it was
[8:18] that kind of vibe. But I, I don't know, maybe she
[8:22] was kind of on the edge, wanting to move out anywhere.
[8:24] She was 18 after all. And I guess a fight with your
[8:27] mom could push you to finally make that step and move out.
[8:31] Either way, this fight that they were having really wasn't that
[8:34] serious. Because that night when she went
[8:35] over to her mom's for dinner, they hugged and made-up and they
[8:38] chatted. And Carol said to her daughter,
[8:41] I'm so glad you're not mad at me anymore.
[8:43] And Angie looked up at her and replied, Not even in a blue moon
[8:46] that night on the 12th. Was the 1st.
[8:49] Time that Carol had seen her daughter since this pretty big
[8:52] fight that they'd had, and it was also the last time she would
[8:56] ever see her again. Angie drove back home that night
[8:59] in her brand new car that she had literally just finished
[9:03] saving up for. Ever since she got the job at
[9:05] the bookstore, she had been saving her paychecks because her
[9:08] old car was pretty beat up. She'd been wanting a new one for
[9:11] a while and she had finally got it.
[9:13] She was really proud of herself as well.
[9:15] Your first big purchase from your first job is always, it's
[9:18] always like a big thing for you, you know?
[9:21] So Angie arrives home at 44 I St. in Idaho Falls.
[9:26] She lived. On a ground.
[9:27] Floor apartment in a two-story house and she was due at work
[9:31] for a shift the next day at Barnes and Noble.
[9:33] But when that morning rolled round, Angie never showed up for
[9:38] her shift so her boss called her home phone to see where she was
[9:42] and she didn't pick up. So two of her work friends then
[9:45] called her home phone and like left messages and stuff thinking
[9:48] that she might respond to them. But no, Angie wasn't responding
[9:52] to anyone. So the work friends were a bit
[9:54] worried and they decide to go to her apartment and check on her.
[9:58] They get there, they knock on the door, but she doesn't come
[10:01] and they don't really hear any movement inside.
[10:04] So they decide to just like try the handle and it goes.
[10:07] The door was unlocked, it was closed, but it was unlocked.
[10:10] So they let themselves in and they start walking through her
[10:13] house. They're calling out for Angie as
[10:15] they're going from room to room, but again, they're not even
[10:18] hearing any movement in that house.
[10:20] And then they got to the bedroom.
[10:23] They pushed open the door, and they found Angie laying in a
[10:28] pool of her own blood on her bedroom floor.
[10:31] She was lying on her back, almost completely exposed.
[10:36] Her sweatpants and her underwear had been pulled down to her
[10:39] knees, and her top had been almost completely torn off her
[10:43] body. It was immediately obvious that
[10:46] Angie had been violently raped and brutal actually murdered.
[10:51] There was blood everywhere, and the cause of death was quite
[10:55] clear too. There were stab wounds and and
[10:58] slashes littering her whole entire body, and one
[11:02] particularly horrific wound to her throat that looked like it
[11:06] had pretty much decapitated her. Every single element of this
[11:10] crime scene was horrific, and the two.
[11:13] Friends that had walked in and found Angie like this were
[11:17] instantly traumatized. They called the police, who
[11:20] came. Down right away and they taped
[11:22] off the crime scene. She'd only lived there for three
[11:25] weeks at 18 years old, she had literally just started laying
[11:29] the groundwork for her adult life and someone had snatched it
[11:33] all from her before it could even really begin.
[11:36] And it really hits you just how young this victim was when you
[11:40] hear that laying right beside her body was a basket full of
[11:44] her childhood stuffed animals that was now covered in blood.
[11:48] The. Police.
[11:49] Gathered a bunch of forensic evidence from the crime scene,
[11:52] including a lot of DNA from the killer.
[11:55] Of course, they have no idea whose DNA this is, but there
[11:57] were skin cells under Angie's nails.
[12:00] There was a hair at the scene that didn't belong to her, and
[12:03] there was forensic evidence of the rape in the form of semen on
[12:07] Angie's body, which meant that they could take that for DNA
[12:10] too. But I think just in itself, I
[12:13] want to talk about the fact that there was semen left on her
[12:16] body. The killer, really.
[12:18] Didn't try to get rid of any evidence as to what they've done
[12:21] to Angie. I guess there's no hiding the
[12:23] evidence of the murder, but they could have hidden the rape
[12:27] aspect, but they didn't and police think this was quite
[12:30] intentional. As if it was the.
[12:32] Killer like leaving his calling card there basically like
[12:35] leaving a mark that he was there he knew that police were going
[12:38] to come in and find this crime scene and he wanted them to see
[12:42] everything that he had done to Angie.
[12:44] Later that day, Angie's parents were contacted and given the
[12:48] heartbreaking news that their only daughter had been murdered.
[12:53] Her mum Carol just could not believe it that the intelligent,
[12:58] strong, kind girl that she had only just made-up with after a
[13:02] big fight three weeks ago, she was now gone forever.
[13:07] The whole family was completely devastated.
[13:10] Everyone at work, everyone that had gone to school with Angie in
[13:14] Idaho Falls, everyone was completely shell shocked and I
[13:18] can only imagine how the river rats felt as well.
[13:21] Not only was one of them now dead and gone forever, but she
[13:25] was brutally, savagely murdered and violated in an apartment
[13:30] that was just a couple of streets away from the river that
[13:33] they always hung out at. Obviously everyone wanted to
[13:36] know what happened and they expected that police were going
[13:39] to solve this case very quickly and soon they would have
[13:42] answers. But actually there was no
[13:44] obvious suspect right off the bat.
[13:47] Police kind of struggled when they were first looking at this
[13:49] case to figure out who might want to do something like this
[13:52] to Angie. Obviously they thought of ex
[13:55] boyfriends and things first. They questioned all of them and
[13:58] they all seemed to be on good terms with Angie, so their first
[14:02] lead was a bit of a dead end. With the sexual motive to the
[14:06] crime, it made sense that her killer could have been like some
[14:09] stalker figure or like a loner, perhaps someone that had
[14:12] followed her home that night. Maybe it was an opportunistic
[14:16] killing. But what if it was even more
[14:18] sinister than that? What if someone had been
[14:21] watching her for quite some time?
[14:23] Or what if it was one of the river rats that had like
[14:27] developed a crush on her or something?
[14:29] Or maybe a customer of the bookstore that had taken an
[14:33] overly keen fancy to her. Like we mentioned before, the
[14:36] front door was unlocked, so we're guessing that that's how
[14:39] the killer gained entry to her house.
[14:41] There was no sign of forced entry or anything.
[14:44] So that leaves us with two options.
[14:46] Either Angie just left the door unlocked and they let themselves
[14:50] in, or maybe it was someone that Angie knew and she confidently
[14:55] invited into her home, not expecting them to do this to
[14:59] her. Obviously.
[15:00] Police determined that Angie had been killed anytime between
[15:03] 12:45 AM and 11:15 AM, which is a big window of time.
[15:09] Is it not like 10 1/2 hours? But you know, I guess that's 90s
[15:13] technology for you these days. They'd be able to refine that
[15:16] window a bit more, wouldn't they?
[15:17] Quite early on in the investigation, police came up
[15:20] with the theory that there might have been two attackers, not
[15:24] just one person did this to Angie.
[15:25] I'm not entirely sure why they thought that.
[15:28] I don't think there were like two different DNA profiles found
[15:31] at the scene or anything. I think, I don't know, they just
[15:34] thought that and they thought they would look into it.
[15:37] During the initial search much for Leeds, of course police were
[15:39] questioning everyone that Angie knew, that's the River Rats,
[15:44] other friends, family, work colleagues, neighbors and almost
[15:48] every single person that police questioned.
[15:50] They also took adna sample from, which meant they ended up
[15:53] collecting over 100 samples. And the police were pretty
[15:57] confident that when all of these samples were tested against the
[16:00] crime scene DNA sample from Angie's killer, they thought
[16:04] they were going to get a match. And from the way I just said
[16:06] that, I'm sure you've already guessed there was no match.
[16:10] It was no one that knew Angie, or it seemed that way anywhere.
[16:14] This was a pretty bittersweet finding, I guess for everyone
[16:19] that knew Angie because, well, they're all in the clear now.
[16:22] None of them are suspects, and they have the knowledge that no
[16:25] one close to Angie had betrayed her like that.
[16:28] But now that they knew the killer wasn't someone in her
[16:31] immediate life, this made the investigation harder.
[16:35] This meant that there was no. Leads if her killer.
[16:38] Was a total stranger then like, where do you start looking for a
[16:42] total stranger? Police ran the crime scene DNA
[16:45] of the killer through like the FBI's database CODIS that has
[16:50] loads of other known criminals in it.
[16:52] But again, there was no match, so no leads there.
[16:55] By now, police are realizing that this case is going to be
[16:59] way harder to crack than they had initially thought.
[17:02] And six months into the investigation, they still didn't
[17:06] have any promising suspects or leads.
[17:10] Even that year, the Dodge family saw Christmas of 1996 and what
[17:14] would have been Angie's 19th birthday passed by and still
[17:19] they were no closer to finding out who had taken their
[17:22] beautiful daughter from them. Her family felt like police
[17:25] weren't trying hard enough. I mean, what do you mean?
[17:28] It's been 6 months and we still don't have any promising
[17:31] suspects or leads that is off putting.
[17:34] It's just not very comforting is it?
[17:36] I also wouldn't have a lot of confidence in the police team
[17:38] the way that Angie's family didn't.
[17:41] In fact, they thought police. Were doing such a poor job that
[17:44] Carol Dodge. Her own mother went out and
[17:47] started printing out thousands of Flyers and handing them out
[17:51] throughout the neighborhoods asking if anyone had any
[17:53] information on Angie. She felt like that.
[17:56] Was where police were falling short.
[17:58] They weren't looking into the small things like neighbors and
[18:02] and witnesses on these liars that she was printing out.
[18:05] Carol was even offering a $5000 reward for any information that
[18:09] people could bring that would lead to a conviction.
[18:12] She was just so desperate for answers and for justice.
[18:16] And of course she was already very critical of the way that
[18:19] police were handling things themselves.
[18:21] She actually accused them all of being under qualified to handle
[18:24] a case like this, saying that they were just St. cops that had
[18:27] been promoted. Naturally, the longer Angie's
[18:30] family waited for answers and for justice, the more police
[18:34] were under pressure to get results.
[18:36] So the police team gave themselves a shake and they
[18:39] looked at the case again with fresh eyes.
[18:41] They were very interested in Angies friend group, the river
[18:44] rats that would all hang out together in Idaho Falls.
[18:47] None of them had seemed like suspects in the beginning, but
[18:50] the more police thought about it, the more it seemed possible.
[18:54] After all, they were a bunch of teenagers and young adults all
[18:57] hanging out on this riverbank. Police were thinking that they
[19:00] might be getting up to no good. I mean, Angie was a good kid,
[19:04] but how could police be sure that all the river rats were
[19:08] good kids? Well, in January 1997, just
[19:11] after the six month point in this case, there was finally a
[19:15] breakthrough. One of the river Rats, a man
[19:18] named Benjamin Hobbs, had been arrested in Nevada, over 400
[19:23] miles away from Idaho Falls, for sexually assaulting a woman at
[19:29] knifepoint. And just take that in for a
[19:31] moment, because how similar is that to the case of Angie Dodge
[19:36] that police were currently investigating a woman that was
[19:39] raped and then butchered with a knife and then this guy, one of
[19:43] her friends, travels 400 miles away.
[19:47] We'll talk about that in a second.
[19:48] And then gets. Convicted, they found him
[19:51] guilty. Of this sexual assault.
[19:54] So he definitely did it. He is the type of guy to do this
[19:57] to a woman. And the fact that he is now 400
[20:00] miles away from all of this case says a lot to me.
[20:04] Like could it be that he fled? Tidal hoe falls very quickly
[20:08] after Angie's murder. That's what it looked like to
[20:12] police. Either way, Benjamin Hobbs was
[20:14] now police's prime suspect. So they drove all the way to
[20:18] Nevada, where he was being held in custody to question him about
[20:22] this case. And this man was very confident
[20:26] and relaxed in this interview, which is either a sign of actual
[20:30] innocence. Like he is, actually.
[20:32] Telling the truth or complete psychopathy, and he's a lying
[20:36] narcissist. And at this point in time, with
[20:38] the first interview, it's kind of hard to tell which one it is.
[20:42] So I think they started out the interview by just asking him
[20:44] questions about Angie, asking him what he knew about the whole
[20:47] situation. And he told the police that he
[20:50] didn't know whether Angie was raped during her murder.
[20:53] And we find that kind of strange because this was one of his
[20:57] friends, quite a close friend from the River Rats.
[21:00] I mean, we don't know exactly how many times they hung out or
[21:03] exactly how close they were because the River Rats weren't
[21:06] like, a consistent group with a fixed amount of members.
[21:10] You know, I get the impression that it was like, people coming
[21:12] and going. Some people hung out a lot.
[21:14] Some people were less frequent. So we don't know exactly how
[21:18] close Benjamin and Angie were. But if one of your friends was
[21:22] brutally raped and murdered, I mean even if it was just an
[21:25] acquaintance, surely you're going to hear the details from
[21:28] someone or somewhere. Especially given that her case
[21:32] was national news. Like, everyone had heard about
[21:35] Angie Dodgers case from all over America, different states,
[21:39] hundreds and hundreds of miles away.
[21:41] Yet one of her friends is claiming that he doesn't know
[21:44] much. I don't know.
[21:45] Police just thought it was odd. But like I say, he was very,
[21:48] very confident to the point where he was saying to police,
[21:51] like, if she was raped and there's her killer's DNA on her
[21:54] body, then test my DNA against it and that will prove my
[21:57] innocence. And you know what it did?
[22:00] The DNA on Angie's body did not belong to Benjamin Hobbs.
[22:04] He was not her rapist at least, but police weren't fully ruling
[22:09] him out yet because remember, they have that theory that it
[22:11] could have been two people. So just because the semen isn't
[22:14] a match doesn't mean that Benjamin wasn't involved.
[22:25] So police were thinking about how they were going to go about
[22:27] this, and they decided probably the best course of action was to
[22:31] question some of the other river rats and figure out what
[22:35] Benjamin and Angie's friendship or relationship was like.
[22:39] And during his interview, Benjamin had actually given over
[22:42] the name of one of his river rat friends, a 20 year old man named
[22:47] Christopher Conley Tap, born in 1976 and had lived in Idaho
[22:52] Falls his whole life. He was a couple of years old
[22:55] than Angie. There wasn't that much between
[22:57] them and he didn't go to the same high school as her.
[22:59] He went to one a few miles away. But like I said, the River Rats
[23:03] was just a mishmash of all the different youngsters in the area
[23:07] and in the year that Angie was murdered in 1996.
[23:10] Christopher Tap was. A bit of a freeloader.
[23:14] He was a high school dropout. He couldn't keep a consistent
[23:17] job, and he was just crowd surfing between his friends,
[23:20] surfers. At this point in time, he
[23:23] basically had a lot of time on his hands.
[23:25] So two days after police had spoken to their first suspicious
[23:29] river rat, Benjamin Hobbs, they call in Chris.
[23:32] And like I say, at this point, they're just trying to get Intel
[23:35] about Benjamin because they're still a bit suspicious about
[23:38] him. So they're asking all kinds of
[23:40] leading questions to Chris about Benjamin's involved involvement
[23:43] and almost insinuating that Chris knew more about the
[23:47] situation than he was letting on.
[23:48] But Chris was adamant that both he and Benjamin hadn't had
[23:52] anything to do with Angie's murder.
[23:55] In fact, he got so irate with the police that he yelled at
[23:58] them. I don't know what you guys want.
[23:59] I wasn't there. Chris told the police that on
[24:02] the night of her murder, he wasn't hanging out with the
[24:04] River Rats like he usually did. He was actually on a date with a
[24:08] girl, so he didn't have anything that he could tell them at the
[24:11] end of the interview. Police thank him for his time
[24:14] and they schedule another interview for a couple of days
[24:16] time. But this second interview is
[24:19] where everything starts to go wrong.
[24:22] Police are back at it again with their insinuations and their
[24:25] leading questions implying different things, asking all
[24:28] sorts about Benjamin until Chris eventually.
[24:31] Agrees with the police. That Benjamin might have been
[24:35] involved in Angie's murder. And well, police see this as
[24:39] Chris Tapp changing his story. From his initial story in the
[24:44] first interview where he was saying adamantly that both he
[24:47] and Benjamin were not involved. They now see this as him
[24:51] changing his story. Well, maybe Ben was involved.
[24:54] I'll be honest, I think Chris was saying it more in the way of
[24:57] that he couldn't vouch for Benjamin because remember, Chris
[25:00] said that he was on a date with a girl.
[25:02] But police saw this as quite suspicious.
[25:05] They think that they've actually just cracked him and that he's
[25:08] starting to tell the truth, when really I think he was just
[25:11] confused and he was telling police what he thought they were
[25:15] asking to hear. So now police are equally
[25:19] suspicious of both Benjamin and Chris.
[25:21] And remember what we said about them having that 2 assailant.
[25:25] Theory. They thought it was 2 attackers.
[25:27] Well, now police are thinking that they've got them both.
[25:30] And that it was actually angies friends.
[25:32] All along. So police asked Chris for a
[25:35] third interview, and now he was anxious.
[25:39] And his whole family was anxious because they just didn't really
[25:42] understand what the police wanted with so many interviews.
[25:46] Like were they actually trying to get help solving Angie's
[25:49] murder, or were they just trying to get someone to confess to it?
[25:53] Chris was so anxious, in fact, that he decided that he couldn't
[25:57] go to that third interview and he just didn't turn up.
[26:00] Of course, this kind of made things even worse. 1st police
[26:03] were a lot more suspicious of him now.
[26:05] It seemed like he was hiding from them, so they decided to
[26:08] just show up at his house. They drove down to where he
[26:10] lived, knocked on the door and his mum actually answered.
[26:14] She quite firmly told the police that her son would come down to
[26:18] the station in a few days and this time he would have a
[26:22] lawyer. Chris had never really felt the
[26:24] need to lawyer up in the beginning of all of this because
[26:27] it seemed like he was just being called in to help police with
[26:30] the case and to give them some information about Benjamin men.
[26:33] That was until police seemed to decide that Chris Tapp was
[26:38] guilty. Police were not happy with this
[26:41] agreement that his mother had proposed where he was going to
[26:44] like voluntarily come to the station in two days because
[26:47] honestly, police was so suspicious of Chris at this
[26:49] point in time that they just didn't believe that.
[26:52] They thought that he was running away at this point in two days,
[26:56] he could do anything. He could flee the whole entire
[26:59] country. He could come up with a fake
[27:01] alibi and make fake evidence to corroborate the alibi.
[27:05] He could do too much in two days time and.
[27:08] Police were so suspicious. At this point that they thought.
[27:11] Well, let's just get. An arrest warrant.
[27:13] Let's just arrest him. So at this point, Chris was
[27:15] arrested for being an accessory to the crime.
[27:19] He's taken to the police station.
[27:21] His lawyer meets him there, but doesn't actually stay in the
[27:25] room with him as he's being questioned this third time.
[27:28] And this time he is actually arrested on suspicion of his
[27:32] involvement. But for some reason, the lawyer
[27:34] is not in the room. And I can't understand why.
[27:37] Police obviously prefer to question suspects without a
[27:40] lawyer present because, well, one, it's more intimidating.
[27:44] And two, the suspect will be more likely to slip up and give
[27:48] them something useful if their lawyer is not right next to them
[27:51] making sure that they're being safe.
[27:54] You know, I think they put the lawyer in the room next door and
[27:59] put like ATV in there so that he could watch the interview.
[28:01] And he was a allowed to interject at any point if he
[28:04] felt like he needed to. But obviously, putting him in
[28:07] another room makes that process a lot harder.
[28:09] It puts up like buffers. So we can only imagine that the
[28:12] lawyer probably didn't help Chris as much as he could have
[28:17] if he would have actually been sat in the room.
[28:19] You know, In total, Chris Taps interviews with the police
[28:22] lasted around 60 hours and he sat for.
[28:26] Multiple different polygraph tests AKA lie detector tests.
[28:31] Now, this isn't the first time we've spoken about polygraph
[28:34] tests on this channel, and it's worth pointing out that they are
[28:37] far, far, far from an exact science.
[28:41] It's basically where a suspect is like strapped up with all
[28:44] these different, like monitors and wires.
[28:46] They're asked a bunch of questions, and as they're
[28:49] answering them, this machine and all these wires is measuring
[28:52] things like their blood pressure, how fast the person's
[28:56] breathing, how fast their pulse is.
[28:58] And as those numbers go up, that is supposed to be an indicator
[29:02] that the person is lying, I guess because they're like
[29:05] anxious. About the lie.
[29:06] That they're telling, but again, not an exact science.
[29:11] Tests like these have been used in criminal investigations for
[29:14] decades, but we've realized in more recent years that they're
[29:18] not that reliable, they're not that accurate, and so they
[29:21] actually can't be used as evidence in court these days.
[29:24] But they conveniently didn't tell Chris any of that.
[29:27] In fact, they told him the complete opposite.
[29:30] One of them said to him the machine never the lies and
[29:33] honestly Chris looks really stressed out whilst taking these
[29:37] polygraph tests. He.
[29:38] Keeps like rolling his neck, easing out the tension, pinching
[29:41] his nose. His head is like slumped.
[29:44] And obviously the police are taking all of this as evidence
[29:47] that he's guilty and that he's anxious about telling lies in
[29:51] the polygraph test when really it's because they're saying like
[29:55] really fucked up stuff to him as this is all happening.
[29:58] Like they're making him scared of the polygraph test by saying
[30:02] the machine never lies and one of the officers actually told
[30:05] him that people that get convicted for rape and murder,
[30:09] the charge that he was being accused of, they said.
[30:12] That. Those kind of people either get
[30:14] life in prison or, quote, go to the gas chamber.
[30:17] So they were basically sat there putting the thought in his mind
[30:21] that this machine is a big scary machine that's going to tell us
[30:24] if you need executing or not. Like, yeah, I'd be pretty
[30:28] fucking anxious taking it too then.
[30:30] And I'll be honest, Chris taps. Polygraph results were a bit
[30:34] suspicious looking. But I think it is because of all
[30:36] these different reasons and even more reasons.
[30:39] Do you want me to tell you that? Obviously he'd been interrogated
[30:41] for like 40 hours in total at this point.
[30:44] And as they were giving him this lie detector test, they were
[30:48] showing him pictures of the crime scene, which they are not
[30:52] supposed to do. And there's so many reasons that
[30:55] they're not supposed to do that. For example, if he actually was
[30:59] fully innocent and he had never seen that crime scene before
[31:02] showing him those pictures, he's obviously then going to become
[31:05] familiar with it. And then later down the line, if
[31:07] he mentions any kind of detail that he saw in those photos,
[31:11] they're going to take that as evidence that he was there.
[31:14] And even just on a very simple level of they shouldn't really
[31:17] show him these crime scene photos while he's being
[31:19] polygraphed up because naturally seeing something so distressing
[31:25] and remember, this is one of his friends that has been raped and
[31:28] murdered, butchered. And they're showing him photos
[31:30] of that. Like, of course that is going to
[31:32] increase your stress levels and your anxiety levels.
[31:35] That's going to feel awful. And actually, when they showed
[31:38] him these crime scene photos, one of the detectives actually
[31:41] asked him if it was how he remembered it, despite the fact
[31:45] that Chris had already told them from the beginning that he
[31:48] wasn't. There, it's like they were
[31:50] playing. Mind games on him to get a
[31:52] confession. Seeing those kind of images,
[31:55] especially when you're so worn down and exhausted after being
[31:58] accused of a crime for 40 hours. Like.
[32:01] It is emotionally devastating. It is going to elicit a strong
[32:05] reaction. So Chris starts telling the cops
[32:08] what he thinks they want to hear and towards the end of his 60
[32:12] hour interrogation his story had changed.
[32:14] Changed multiple times. He goes from being adamant that
[32:18] he wasn't there that night to eventually saying well maybe I
[32:22] was there, I just don't know. His memories had been probed and
[32:26] prodded by these police officers until he couldn't even tell what
[32:30] was real anymore. The detectives start suggesting
[32:33] to Chris that maybe the details of the crime that he committed
[32:37] was so traumatic that he had blocked them from his own
[32:41] memory. And Chris agreed.
[32:43] With them, this young man that was once so certain that he was
[32:47] innocent starts to admit that he.
[32:50] Held. Angie down with his friend
[32:53] Benjamin Hobbs, and with these admissions, he confirms police's
[32:57] theory that it was definitely more than one person, more than
[33:00] one attacker. And then Chris goes one step
[33:03] further to say that there was a third person there too.
[33:06] Now with these several dramatic changes to his story, honestly,
[33:11] things weren't looking good for curious as this one the death
[33:14] penalty would be on the cards. One of the detectives on his
[33:18] case had actually worked at Chris's high school and so he
[33:21] felt some kind of loyalty to this kid.
[33:24] And so on the low, he said to him, I'm a cop.
[33:27] I shouldn't be saying this, but I'm kind of close to you.
[33:30] You've got to save your life. He told Chris that if he feared
[33:34] for his life during Angie's attack, then his sentence might
[33:38] be reduced. So with that, Chris changed his
[33:41] story again. He was now telling police that
[33:44] he had joined in the murder only because Benjamin had threatened
[33:48] to kill him if he didn't. So now, because of this new
[33:52] information from Chris, police are looking for 1/3 suspect in
[33:55] this case. They think that Chris and
[33:57] Benjamin held Angie down while a third person raped and murdered
[34:02] her. So they asked Chris For more
[34:04] information and he eventually names 18 year old Jeremy Sargis,
[34:09] another member of the River Rats.
[34:11] And so police go and arrest this kid right away.
[34:14] And now they have all three friends, all three suspects in
[34:19] custody. But Chris was the only one who
[34:22] had given them any sort of confession.
[34:25] The other two boys completely and adamantly denied it, just
[34:29] like Chris did right in the beginning.
[34:31] Just like police had done with the other boys.
[34:33] Jeremy Sargis had his DNA sample taken and compared with the
[34:37] crime scene DNA and it wasn't a match.
[34:40] Soon after that, both Jeremy Sargis and Benjamin Hobbs had
[34:45] their charges completely dropped in.
[34:48] Relation to Angie. 'S case anyway.
[34:50] Benjamin was, of course still dealing with that sexual assault
[34:53] at knifepoint case that still happened.
[34:56] That's still disgusting. But when it came to the rape and
[34:59] murder of Angie Dodge, Chris Tap was the only suspect that
[35:03] remained and soon he was charged.
[35:07] His trial began in 1998 when he was 22 years old, and every
[35:12] single day of the trial, Carol Dodge turned up with a shirt
[35:17] with Angie's face on. She wanted Chris, who she
[35:21] believed to be the murderer, to look at Angie's face every
[35:25] single day and see the life that he had taken from this earth.
[35:29] She said that going to the trial was like reliving the horror of
[35:33] Angie's murder every day, but she wanted Chris Tapp to suffer
[35:38] the way that her daughter had. The prosecution called a female
[35:41] witness who said that she had actually overheard Chris Tapp
[35:45] talking with some other members of the River Rats at a party
[35:48] talking about Angie's murder. I'm assuming talking about it as
[35:52] if they did it not just like talking about it, but that was
[35:56] big, that they had someone else to kind of corroborate Chris's
[36:00] own admissions. Speaking of his admissions, the
[36:03] court watched loads of different clips from his interrogations
[36:06] where he describes the way that he cut Angie and the way that
[36:11] she cried out for help. The court wasn't shown all 60
[36:15] hours of interrogation footage, by the way.
[36:18] None of the starting interviews where he was adamantly saying I
[36:21] wasn't there. I don't know anything about
[36:23] this. I don't know what you want me to
[36:24] say because I wasn't there. They obviously didn't show any
[36:27] of that in court. They only showed the parts where
[36:30] Chris admits to different things, which like, I can't like
[36:34] I get it, you're obviously going to save time in court and only
[36:37] show the parts where he admits his guilt.
[36:40] But those police knew what those admissions were in the context
[36:44] of a 60 hour long process of wearing him down and
[36:49] manipulating him and practically bullying him into saying
[36:53] whatever they want him to say. But even in the clips that the
[36:56] court was shown where he was like admitting to little things,
[37:00] he looked so stressed and worn down and exhausted and he just,
[37:06] he barely even seemed like a coherent human being.
[37:10] And they tried to point out to the court just how exhausted and
[37:13] worn down and not right this looked.
[37:18] But of course, the prosecution shut that down fast.
[37:21] They were saying, well, why would an innocent man confess to
[37:24] rape and murder? Why would someone throw away
[37:27] their freedom and potentially get the death penalty if they
[37:31] were? Innocent and that.
[37:32] DNA from the crime scene had still not been identified.
[37:36] There was someone out there getting away with this, but no
[37:40] one was mentioning that at all. But he confessed to the crime,
[37:45] and that was enough for the jury to find him guilty of being an
[37:49] accomplice to the murder and rape of 18 year old Angie Dodge.
[37:54] As his sentencing drew closer, everyone was thinking that he
[37:58] should, and probably would get the death penalty for what he'd
[38:02] done. He was allowed to make a
[38:04] statement to the judge in which he said that he wasn't the
[38:07] monster that everyone thinks I am.
[38:09] And he begged the judge to spare his life.
[38:13] And when he said that Carol Dodge obviously sitting in that
[38:16] courtroom listening to every word, she burst into tears and
[38:20] said how dare he asked to spare his life when Angie begged for
[38:24] hers. But the judge did have mercy on
[38:26] Chris. He didn't give him the death
[38:28] penalty. Instead, he would serve a
[38:31] minimum of 30 years in prison. Twenty of those years was for
[38:35] the murder and ten of those years was for the rape.
[38:39] Even though the semen that was found on Angie's body wasn't a
[38:43] match to Chris Tap. It makes no sense and it is
[38:47] absolutely insane. But 20 years for murder, 10
[38:50] years for rape. Those separate sentences will
[38:53] become important later. But for Carol Dodge, this wasn't
[38:57] justice. Police still hadn't identified
[38:59] who had raped her daughter. In fact, Chris said that there
[39:03] were two other people involved and they were currently getting
[39:07] away with this crime. Almost as soon as Chris's trial
[39:09] was over, Carol turned back up at the police station, reminding
[39:13] them that this case wasn't fully solved.
[39:15] And she was demanding to know. What they were doing about the
[39:18] rest of it, sorry. The reason I had a bit of a
[39:20] giggle then is because Carol herself has said how annoying
[39:24] she was with the police. In this case, they actually
[39:27] nicknamed the back door of the police station the Carol door
[39:30] because they told her to just use that door whenever she came
[39:32] around because she was coming around like every single day to
[39:35] talk to them. She herself says that the.
[39:37] Police were sick of her and it just, it just.
[39:39] Makes me laugh, but I love her determination like that is one
[39:44] thing that you cannot knock Carol Dodge for.
[39:46] She was incredible. And you're going to see that.
[39:48] She was determined to find everyone that had had a hand in
[39:52] her daughter's death and she was going to make all of them pay
[39:55] for it. She didn't care how long it took
[39:58] to find them. But then a year went by and
[40:01] another year, and then five more years and police still weren't
[40:06] looking for this man because with Chris behind bars and a
[40:09] confession. They had their guy as far as
[40:12] they were concerned. Carol was so frustrated and
[40:15] enraged with the police. As I just said, like 7-8 years
[40:19] had gone by and almost every single one of those days she was
[40:23] back at the police station badgering them to stay on this
[40:25] case. It's not fully solved.
[40:28] Get justice for my daughter. She was just so frustrated and
[40:32] enraged with the shit police work on her daughter's case that
[40:36] one day she decides to go out and look for answers all on her
[40:40] own. So she starts her own detective
[40:43] investigative work and Oh my God, I love this.
[40:47] Maybe I shouldn't say I love it because I think she was doing a
[40:50] couple of questionable things. But when your daughter has been
[40:53] raped and murdered, maybe I'll let you off, You know?
[40:55] She would drive around town late at night tailing people in her
[40:59] car, including one of the initial suspects, Jeremy Sargis.
[41:03] She would also get in contact with the local drug dealers
[41:07] somehow. I don't know how, but she would
[41:09] go and meet them and ask them if they knew anything.
[41:12] And obviously, like, I'm sure a lot of you will realize that
[41:15] that's not really something you should be doing with drug
[41:17] dealers. And one time somebody actually
[41:19] pulled a gun on Carol Dodge because she'd gone snooping
[41:24] around the wrong part of the neighborhood, I guess.
[41:26] Then in 2009 / a decade after Angie's murder, Carol gets a
[41:33] computer for Christmas. And this is when her
[41:35] investigation reaches a new level.
[41:38] She discovered the Idaho Innocence Project, which is an
[41:41] NGO that helps to free innocent people and stop wrongful
[41:47] convictions from happening, in 1992.
[41:49] It was founded by a leading DNA expert and according to them, in
[41:53] the last 35 years. Nearly 400 people have been
[41:58] proven innocent by DNA. Testing that wasn't available at
[42:02] the time when they were first convicted.
[42:04] And while this isn't directly related to our case at hand, I
[42:07] think it should be noted that about 70% of those wrongful
[42:12] convictions were of non white people.
[42:15] It's really, really scary to think about that, that many
[42:18] people were innocent the whole entire time and had DNA
[42:22] technologies not developed, they might have died in prison with
[42:27] everyone thinking that they were a horrible, evil criminal.
[42:31] But the whole time they were innocent and they knew it.
[42:34] And they're always shouting it as well.
[42:36] But obviously, who believes them when police have supposedly got
[42:40] evidence and confessions? People don't believe them.
[42:44] And that's why they need things like the Idaho Innocence Project
[42:48] that Carol stumbled across online one day and decided to
[42:51] reach out to her. But she wasn't the only one that
[42:54] had reached out to them about this case.
[42:56] Chris Tapp himself had written to them from prison begging them
[43:01] to look into his case. When the Idaho Innocence Project
[43:04] was first contacted by Carol, that was the first time they'd
[43:07] ever been contacted by the family of a murder victim, like
[43:12] the victim of a crime. And I think that says a hell of
[43:15] a lot that both sides of this situation, the supposed
[43:18] perpetrator and the family of the victim, feel like this
[43:22] decision is wrong and it is ruining an innocence life.
[43:26] Chris wasn't going to be eligible for parole for another
[43:29] 30 years, so he'd be about 50 by then, before he would even have
[43:34] a chance at a life. Imagine losing all of that time
[43:39] in such crucial years of your life as well.
[43:42] In your 20s you you're supposed to be out there meeting new
[43:45] people and experiencing things and making mistakes.
[43:48] So imagine being preserved in a box for 30 years.
[43:53] Not much about you will develop or change, but the whole world
[43:57] around you will. By the time he was due to get
[44:00] out in his 50s he wouldn't be able to get a job or or explore
[44:04] many opportunities he probably missed like child raising years
[44:08] and he'd struggle to get married.
[44:10] And honestly, there would be a lot of people that would still
[44:14] only ever see him as a murderer and a rapist for the rest of his
[44:18] life. Chris Tapp says that he.
[44:27] Lost himself in prison. They can be very violent places
[44:32] and while they're obviously supposed to cut criminals off
[44:34] from their connections on the outside, connections start to
[44:38] form on the inside and it becomes a horrible environment.
[44:41] Chris had actually taken back his original confession in 2001,
[44:45] four years after the police first questioned him.
[44:48] So that was a long, long time ago, because at this point in
[44:51] the case, we're at least 10 years out.
[44:53] So he'd been saying for over half a decade that police had
[44:56] falsely shaken that confession out of.
[44:59] Him, he didn't. Mean it.
[45:00] He was saying it wasn't true and that he had been locked up
[45:03] because he'd felt forced to confess.
[45:06] But no one really took him seriously.
[45:08] No one listened to that. And honestly, the last person he
[45:12] expected to be on his side was Angie's own mother, the woman
[45:16] that he had seen breakdown in tears in the courtroom.
[45:20] He just couldn't believe that she believed.
[45:24] Him it happened in 2000. And nine, when a local paper got
[45:28] hold of Chris's interrogation tapes through the Freedom of
[45:30] Information Act, and they passed them on to Carol, thinking that
[45:35] she might want to see them. These were VHS videotapes.
[45:38] This was obviously a time before DVDs, so the image was grainy.
[45:43] There were obviously no subtitles.
[45:44] The audio recording equipment was shit.
[45:47] It was quite hard to figure out what they were saying, honestly.
[45:50] But Carol says she sat through pretty much all of those tapes
[45:54] and what she saw made her want to put her fist through the TV.
[45:59] Chris looked so worn down and so confused.
[46:04] He didn't seem sure of his own words and the things that he was
[46:07] saying or confessing to. Like at one point he says that
[46:10] he doesn't remember which house Angie lived at and the police
[46:13] had to remind him. Like what if he genuinely didn't
[46:18] know? He also said at one point that
[46:20] Angie was killed in the living room of her apartment and again
[46:23] police had to correct him and say that she was killed in the
[46:26] bedroom. Police claimed that all of this
[46:28] is because Chris was lying to them and he did actually know
[46:31] all these things, but he was just trying to seem innocent.
[46:34] But how could they say that when Chris was just saying what they
[46:39] were telling him to say? They were asking him leading
[46:41] questions and shit like that and he was just turning it back to
[46:45] them. On average, people that falsely
[46:47] confessed to a crime were interrogated for up to 16 hours.
[46:52] 16 And we know that Chris was interrogated for 66, zero, 60
[46:58] hours. Across. 9 separate
[47:01] interrogations and seven separate polygraph tests.
[47:06] That is fucking overwhelming isn't it?
[47:08] And I just can't believe that if the police had grilled Chris for
[47:12] over 60. Hours and they still didn't
[47:15] have. Any solid evidence?
[47:17] Then how could they believe it? That kind of.
[47:19] Level of. Intense interrogation is more
[47:23] about wearing down the suspect than actually trying to find out
[47:27] the real truth. It's been illegal for police to
[47:30] use. Violence against suspects.
[47:32] For a long time now, but they can still use other methods of
[47:36] manipulation, like excessive interrogation.
[47:39] The police will sometimes tell suspects that they have evidence
[47:43] against them that doesn't actually exist and it's
[47:46] perfectly legal for them to do. That, by the way.
[47:49] In Chris's interviews, for example, they told him that his
[47:52] friend Benjamin Hobbs had already told them that Chris was
[47:56] involved. Ben had never said that.
[47:58] Carol watched these interrogation tapes and she felt
[48:02] so bad for Chris Tapp, her daughters convicted killer,
[48:07] because she could see the way that he had been bullied and
[48:11] manipulated into changing his story and confessing to a murder
[48:15] that she didn't believe that he had committed.
[48:19] So she tracked down Chris's new defense lawyer, a man named John
[48:23] Thomas, and she asked to speak with him.
[48:26] This wasn't the defense lawyer that he'd had the whole entire
[48:29] time, you know, through his trial and everything.
[48:31] Because let's be honest, that lawyer was probably a bit shit.
[48:35] You would. Hope that a really.
[48:36] Good lawyer would fight to stay in the interrogation room with
[48:40] their client, but I think the fact that that lawyer was OK
[48:43] with and in another room tells me kind of everything I need to
[48:46] know. So Chris had gone and found this
[48:48] new defence lawyer and they had launched a number of appeals
[48:51] together and they were trying all sorts of things here.
[48:54] They argued that his previous lawyer made a load of mistakes.
[48:58] They argued the fact that his rights weren't being respected
[49:01] during his interrogations. But so far all of these appeals
[49:05] that they tried to make had been rejected.
[49:08] So the two of them start working with Judges for Justice, which
[49:11] is another group that helps to overturn own wrongful
[49:15] convictions. And they determined from the
[49:17] interrogation tapes that Chris had told at least six different
[49:22] stories about the night that Angie was killed, each time to
[49:27] match what he thought the police wanted to hear.
[49:30] Like, did the police really? Think.
[49:33] That all six versions of that story were true?
[49:36] Like, surely not. They're either stupid or
[49:39] purposefully ignoring the contradictions.
[49:42] In 2014, Chris's defense team published a report alleging that
[49:47] his original confession was coerced out of him by the
[49:51] police. They claimed the officers had
[49:53] wrongly supplied Chris with evidence, quote UN quote,
[49:57] evidence that helped them come to the conclusion that he was
[50:00] guilty. Like the time when the officer
[50:02] implied that if he feared for his life, then he might get a
[50:06] lower sentence. That changed his story and it
[50:09] wasn't true. And finally, 20 years after
[50:13] Angie's murder, his team launched a new appeal to reopen
[50:16] the investigation. And they had a pretty solid case
[50:20] this time. Obviously, the crux of their
[50:22] argument was that Chris was manipulated by the police, but
[50:25] he wasn't the only one that they manipulated.
[50:28] Do you remember? I only spoke about it briefly
[50:30] during his trial, but they'd found this woman that said that
[50:34] she'd overheard Chris and some of the other river rats at a
[50:37] party talking about this murder. Well, it turns out they had
[50:41] coerced that out of her. She recanted that that statement
[50:45] and she also advocated for Chris taps innocence and for his
[50:49] freedom. Then finally in 2017 his lawyer
[50:53] managed to get the rape charge against him dropped, which it
[50:58] never should have been given to him in the 1st place.
[51:00] Do you remember? The DNA literally didn't match.
[51:03] But anyway, it was finally dropped and because at this
[51:06] point, Chris had served. 20. Years in prison Remember I said
[51:10] the murder charge had a 20 year sentence and the rape charge had
[51:14] a 10 year sentence well, he'd served the 20 and now with that
[51:18] 10 year rape charge taken away, Chris Tapp was a free man for.
[51:23] Years Carol Dodge had hated Chris.
[51:27] Once that verdict was read out, she hugged him tight and as they
[51:31] left the courthouse, the two of them walked hand in hand and
[51:34] they actually raised their fists to the sky in triumph.
[51:37] But here's the thing, even though Chris was out of prison,
[51:41] now he is a free man. He was still legally considered
[51:44] a murderer. Because.
[51:46] The murder charge had never been dropped or taken back, and of
[51:49] course he wanted to change that. And Carol wanted to change that
[51:53] too, partly because she had formed a bit of a friendship
[51:56] with Chris now. And obviously, obviously no one
[51:58] wants to see another human being done unfairly.
[52:01] But there was also something in it for Angie's side of this case
[52:05] too, because if Chris was officially recognized as
[52:08] innocent, then that means that they can finally start looking
[52:11] for the real killer 20 years after Angie's murder.
[52:15] Pretty much all the police officers that were originally on
[52:18] the investigation had since retired, but there was a new
[52:22] police. Chief in Idaho.
[52:23] Falls and he was determined to finally get.
[52:27] The truth in this investigation and the police had a lot more
[52:31] tools at their disposal. Now, in the past 10 years also
[52:34] the practice of genetic genealogy has become extremely
[52:38] widespread. And you might not know what I
[52:40] mean by the term genetic genealogy, but if I say 23andMe,
[52:44] does that give you a better idea?
[52:46] It's basically where companies will take your DNA and then tell
[52:50] you your genetic racial mix from it or they can help you track
[52:54] down like biological relatives of yours.
[52:56] There are huge huge huge databases.
[52:59] Online that tell. The stories of families for
[53:01] generations, they include things like birth certificates,
[53:05] marriage certificates, all the links are there.
[53:07] And eventually law enforcement realized that if you can find
[53:11] your ancestors using this DNA technology, then maybe they
[53:15] could do the same thing in reverse to find a killer from
[53:19] their ancestor. So basically DNA testing the
[53:22] killer's DNA alongside a bunch of other samples can help them
[53:27] to find a shared ancestor. So like a great, great, great
[53:30] grandmother that they have in common.
[53:32] And then from there they can trace the family tree back down
[53:35] again to the present day or to the year of the murder and find
[53:40] someone in that family that would have been in the area and
[53:44] around the the right kind of age at the time that the crime was
[53:48] committed. It's very technical.
[53:50] It's a. Little bit confusing.
[53:52] I'll be honest, I'm still not 100% there with it.
[53:54] I pretty much understand it to be able to understand the.
[53:57] This case, so in 2015, police found a potential link between
[54:02] the killer's DNA that was found on Angie's body and an older man
[54:07] that they believed could be the father of a potential suspect.
[54:11] The man that they'd identified the father, he was called
[54:14] Michael Ozri and conveniently so was his son.
[54:17] He was Michael Ozri Junior and Michael Ozri Junior, the suspect
[54:22] or the potential suspect had two sisters who were going to
[54:26] university in in Idaho at the same time that Angie Dodge was
[54:31] killed in Idaho. So it's all connecting.
[54:34] He had a reason to be in the area.
[54:35] He would have been a young man around the time.
[54:38] So yeah, he was a suspect. 14 years after Angie's murder,
[54:42] police go to speak to this Michael Usry junior.
[54:45] They get Adna sample from him. They run the tests.
[54:48] And then 33 days later, 33 days, by the way, a whole month and a
[54:53] little bit of him being considered a suspect and being
[54:56] probed and questioned. His life really, really changed.
[55:00] And it wasn't very secretive either, like this news was
[55:03] spreading around the town and it was somewhat damaging to his
[55:06] reputation because even though nothing had been proved yet, he
[55:10] was only being tested and looked into.
[55:12] People started to look at him differently.
[55:14] And then 33 days later when the results came back, it was
[55:18] negative. He wasn't the killer yet for the
[55:21] last 33 days, people had almost treated him as if he was.
[55:25] It was awful for Michael Osry Junior, and it was also a huge,
[55:30] huge set back for the police. And right now they were feeling
[55:33] kind of hopeless because what are the chances that they're
[55:36] going to be able to find another worth while suspect this far out
[55:40] after the murder? Again, the police had put a lot
[55:43] of eggs all into one basket when it came to Michael Usry Junior
[55:47] kind of the way that they did when it came to Chris Tap.
[55:50] And that failed too. Police kind of gave up with
[55:53] genetic genealogy after the first attempt didn't work.
[55:56] And once again, Carol was very disappointed that they were so
[55:59] easy to give up when it came to getting justice for her
[56:03] daughter. And so Carol went elsewhere for
[56:06] help once again. This time she went to a genetic
[56:08] genealogist named CC Moore, who calls herself the genetic
[56:12] detective because she helps people to find long lost
[56:16] relatives or she helps adopted children to find their
[56:19] biological parents. Around 2015, she also started
[56:23] assisting police with criminal investigations into super old
[56:27] cold cases and they were using genealogy to be able to solve
[56:31] them. And they've estimated that she
[56:33] has solved over 300 cold cases that would have probably never
[56:38] been solved if it weren't for CC and her team.
[56:41] So after meeting with Carol CC and her girls, it was an all
[56:45] girls team, by the way. Love it.
[56:47] They get hold of the crime scene sample and they get to testing.
[56:50] But they realized that it was so deteriorated, obviously decades
[56:55] out from the murder. It had just been lying in a
[56:58] police basement as evidence for years and years and years.
[57:01] And it wasn't very intact anymore.
[57:03] You know how you see the strands of DNA in that like Helix that
[57:06] have the strands connecting the few long bits?
[57:09] Loads of those had broken. So they had to do like surgery
[57:13] on this DNA to try to put it back together so that they could
[57:17] actually test it. But eventually they worked their
[57:19] magic and they were able to find a list of 6 potential suspects.
[57:25] And of those six, only one of them was living in Idaho in 1996
[57:31] at the time of the murder. So in February 2019, the Idaho
[57:35] Falls Police Department got to work to try to get a fresh DNA
[57:39] sample from this suspect. But they had to be very careful
[57:42] because obviously they didn't want this suspect to know that
[57:46] he was a suspect in a super, super old cold murder case
[57:51] because, well, if he knew that police were finally on to him
[57:54] after all these years, then he could try and escape.
[57:57] Or in the case that he wasn't actually the killer, then police
[58:00] wanted to keep their distance this time.
[58:02] Because remember what happened to Michael Osry Junior and
[58:06] especially what happened to Chris Tapp?
[58:08] Like there was a pattern of police may be accusing people
[58:11] too soon and ruining their reputation.
[58:15] So again, this time they did it all secretly and quietly.
[58:19] Their plan was to just hang around where the suspect lived
[58:23] and wait for him to maybe drop something that they would be
[58:26] able to collect and take adna sample from.
[58:29] So things like water bottles that he drunk out of or
[58:32] cigarettes that he'd smoked on the first day of the
[58:35] investigation, police followed him for 14 whole hours.
[58:40] But they did didn't get anything.
[58:41] He didn't leave behind anything useful.
[58:43] And to make matters worse, he actually lived in a really
[58:46] remote part of Idaho. Like there was very little
[58:49] around his house. So it made it really obvious
[58:52] that police were watching him. They had to be even more
[58:55] careful. They couldn't park like too
[58:57] close to his house because there weren't many houses around
[59:00] there. And everyone that did live there
[59:02] would notice a random car being parked there for 14 hours
[59:06] straight. So it was difficult.
[59:08] So on day 2 of this, they decided to switch up their
[59:11] tactic a little bit because they realized that their suspect had
[59:15] a son. Now, they weren't suspecting the
[59:17] son. I think he would have been too
[59:19] young to have been around at the time of Angie's murder, but he
[59:23] would have shared DNA with his dad, right?
[59:24] So they start following both the suspect and his son again for
[59:29] water bottles or cigarettes, things that they could get a DNA
[59:32] sample from. And eventually the son pulls up
[59:35] to a petrol station and spits out this lump of chewing tobacco
[59:39] that the police then had to run over and pick up and put in an
[59:43] evidence bag. It's a bit gross.
[59:45] But as all of this was happening, so now they actually
[59:47] had the Sun's DNA. They were waiting to be able to
[59:50] test it. But as that was happening,
[59:52] they'd gotten a lead when. It came to the dad.
[59:55] He hadn't spat anything out yet, which is what they were hoping
[59:58] for actually, but they had realised that the license plate
[1:00:02] on his car had expired, which is the perfect excuse to be able to
[1:00:05] pull him over and do a like a routine traffic stop as part of
[1:00:10] this. Routine traffic stop.
[1:00:11] They were going to have to breathalyze him to make sure
[1:00:14] that he wasn't driving under the influence.
[1:00:16] They didn't really think that he was, but they just wanted an
[1:00:19] excuse to shove. Something in his mouth and get
[1:00:22] his DNA all over. So they did it.
[1:00:24] They breathalyzed. Him and then they took that
[1:00:26] breathalyzer tube back to the lab and now they had DNA of both
[1:00:30] him and his son. Police were buzzing with these
[1:00:32] new finds. They were really excited to get
[1:00:34] those results back. But it turned out.
[1:00:37] Neither of those men. Was the killer once again, so CC
[1:00:41] Moore goes back to the. Drawing board because she thinks
[1:00:44] there has to be something that she's missed.
[1:00:47] And it turns out there actually was.
[1:00:49] Remember how I said they'd narrowed it down to six
[1:00:52] suspects? Well, it turns out there was a
[1:00:54] secret 7th that was hiding this whole time.
[1:00:58] They hadn't seen this 7th person before.
[1:01:00] Because he was actually adopted and didn't share the same
[1:01:03] surname as these other six suspects, but he did share the
[1:01:07] genetic makeup. This guy's name was Brian Lee
[1:01:10] Drips Senior. He was now in his 50s, but
[1:01:13] around the time of Angie's murder, he would have been 30
[1:01:16] years old and living in Idaho Falls, right across the road
[1:01:22] from where Angie Dodge was raped and murdered.
[1:01:26] Brian Drips was born in Missouri and he joined the Marines as a
[1:01:30] young adult. He was very physically strong.
[1:01:33] He was a very hard worker all his life.
[1:01:35] And even when he came out of the Marines, he got a job in
[1:01:38] construction. So this is the kind of guy who
[1:01:41] at this point in his life, in his 50s, his appearance was
[1:01:44] telling the story of his life. His back was hunched from all
[1:01:47] that hard work. His hands were calloused.
[1:01:50] He had this big, like, curly white beard.
[1:01:52] But life for 30 year old Brian was quite a different story.
[1:01:56] He had a wife and everything. But then in 1996, the same year
[1:02:00] as Angie's murder, his wife filed for divorce and she took
[1:02:05] their three kids as well. She says that she left Brian
[1:02:08] because he was a cocaine user. And actually, I think both of
[1:02:12] them were only when Brian did it, he couldn't control himself.
[1:02:16] He couldn't control his anger. He turned violent and mean and
[1:02:20] dangerous, not only for his wife, but again, for their three
[1:02:24] kids. She was doing this for the
[1:02:26] betterment of them. So that's the kind of situation
[1:02:28] that he was in in 1996, around the time of the murder.
[1:02:31] And police had actually questioned him because remember,
[1:02:35] they were questioning all the neighbors on Angie's Street.
[1:02:37] So they knew who he was. But for some reason they hadn't
[1:02:41] actually taken his DNA all the way back then, which is crazy
[1:02:45] because they took about 100 DNA samples.
[1:02:48] In the early. Days of the investigation, but
[1:02:51] annoyingly, I think they were focusing on the theory that it
[1:02:54] could have been someone that knew Angie like knew Angie well,
[1:02:57] someone in her circle. They took all kinds of DNA
[1:03:00] samples from her friends and people from her school and the
[1:03:03] River Rats. Why not Brian?
[1:03:06] Drips the man living a. Across the road.
[1:03:08] It's annoying, but they never did it at the time and they were
[1:03:11] going to try and do it now over 20 years later.
[1:03:15] But again, just like with the last people, they had to do it
[1:03:17] all like secret stealth mode because, well, because of the
[1:03:20] reasons that I told you before, if he was the killer, he might
[1:03:23] try to run away. If he wasn't, then police had a
[1:03:26] fucking track record now, don't they?
[1:03:28] So they do the same thing as before.
[1:03:29] They start like sneaky, following him around in their
[1:03:32] cars. Brian actually lived with his
[1:03:34] mother at the time. So they were like parked outside
[1:03:37] at his mom's house. And one morning they see him
[1:03:40] leaving, probably for work, and he's got a cigarette hanging out
[1:03:44] of his hand out of the window of the car.
[1:03:46] And they think, perfect, let's just follow him and watch him
[1:03:49] until he's finished smoking it. And he throws it out of the car.
[1:03:52] Then perfect, they've got the DNA.
[1:03:53] Eventually the cigarette butt shoots out of the window.
[1:03:56] Police pull over the car and they all get out and they start
[1:03:59] scrambling around the floor for this cigarette butt.
[1:04:02] But there's fucking loads of them.
[1:04:04] I mean, it is the street, after all.
[1:04:07] And. Fortunately, a lot of.
[1:04:08] Smokers do just Chuck their cigarette butts on the floor.
[1:04:11] There was no way for them to be able to tell which one was
[1:04:14] Brian's. It was annoying, but they didn't
[1:04:17] lose hope. And the very next day they were
[1:04:19] back at it doing the exact same thing.
[1:04:21] And so was Brian. Actually, it must have been a
[1:04:23] bit of a morning routine for him to leave the house in the car
[1:04:26] with a cigarette hanging out the window.
[1:04:28] So again, police do the exact same thing.
[1:04:30] They start following him and then they see him shoot the
[1:04:33] cigarette out of his window. And this time it's still
[1:04:36] smoking. It's.
[1:04:37] Still lit so when the police pull over.
[1:04:39] They can tell exactly which one he had just thrown out.
[1:04:42] Perfect. They now took this cigarette
[1:04:45] butt back to the lab to DNA test.
[1:04:48] And you know what? After all this time, it was
[1:04:51] Brian Drips. It was a match.
[1:05:02] After to 23. Long years, they had finally
[1:05:06] found the man that had raped and murdered 18 year old Angie
[1:05:10] Dodge, and it was all thanks to her mother, Carol Dodge, and her
[1:05:15] relentless pursuit for the truth and for justice.
[1:05:18] If it wasn't for her, the wrong man would still be in jail to
[1:05:23] this day and the real killer would have never been caught.
[1:05:26] Brian Drips would have just lived his life.
[1:05:29] And now police know that they can finally get this guy.
[1:05:32] They can finally arrest him. So they move in one day when
[1:05:36] he's just gone to the bank. He is totally unsuspecting.
[1:05:39] Bear in mind, it's been 20 years that he has been getting away
[1:05:43] with this. So he is just living his life
[1:05:45] completely normal. And then one day he's leaving
[1:05:48] the bank and three police officers approach him, saying
[1:05:51] that they need to speak to him, they want to take him back to
[1:05:53] the police station. What do you think was going
[1:05:56] through his head at that point in time?
[1:05:58] Brian had been in trouble with the police a couple of times in
[1:06:01] his life, but for nothing overly serious.
[1:06:03] He got done once drunk driving one time for possession of
[1:06:07] drugs. But imagine you're leaving the
[1:06:10] bank one day in your 50s. You know that you've gotten away
[1:06:13] with a murder your whole entire life.
[1:06:14] And then all of a sudden, three police walk over to you and ask
[1:06:17] to take you back to the station. And you know that you've not
[1:06:20] done anything else other than that murder.
[1:06:22] He must have realized in that moment that his past was finally
[1:06:27] coming back to haunt him. So when they get him back to the
[1:06:29] station, police took him into the small room, and they asked
[1:06:33] him what he knew about Angie Dodge.
[1:06:35] And he was saying nothing really.
[1:06:37] So they remember find him of everything that happened to her
[1:06:40] over 23 years ago and Brian was interviewed about the whole
[1:06:43] thing for about 5 whole hours straight and he was denying
[1:06:47] everything the whole entire time.
[1:06:49] He said he had no idea who Angie Dodge was or what happened to
[1:06:52] her, but police were trying to make it clear to him.
[1:06:55] Like we know that you had something.
[1:06:57] To do with this. You might as well just tell us.
[1:06:59] But he wasn't. He wasn't at this point.
[1:07:02] He didn't realise how damning the evidence was that police had
[1:07:05] wasn't until towards the end of this five hours.
[1:07:08] They go, look, we've got your DNA at the crime scene.
[1:07:11] You cannot actually deny this. And when he hears that, Brian
[1:07:15] goes quiet and he asks the police if he can go out for a
[1:07:18] smoke break and they let him. He goes outside for a few
[1:07:21] minutes and then when he comes comes back in, he's still very,
[1:07:24] very quiet. He sits down and he says I did
[1:07:27] it. I raped her and apparently I
[1:07:30] killed her. Brian said that that night in
[1:07:33] 1996, he was so incredibly drunk and high that he didn't even
[1:07:39] remember really committing this crime.
[1:07:41] He does remember raping her, but not killing her.
[1:07:45] In fact, he said that he never actually had the intention of
[1:07:48] killing her, but he did admit something truly horrific and
[1:07:52] that was that he he did go across to her house that night
[1:07:55] with the intention of raping. Her.
[1:07:57] We have a quote from him, he said.
[1:07:59] I guess it just happened when I was there.
[1:08:01] I remember the rape part. That's all I remember of that
[1:08:04] evening and that was his defence that.
[1:08:08] I only meant to. Rape her Please forgive, I
[1:08:11] didn't mean to kill her. What?
[1:08:14] What is just disgusting and incomprehensible.
[1:08:18] But police finally had their killer and IN201955 year old
[1:08:23] Brian Drips was finally arrested for the crimes that he had
[1:08:26] committed 23 years ago. At the time that this arrest was
[1:08:31] announced to the public, both Carol Dodge and Chris Tapp were
[1:08:35] at the police station, and Chris was told by the police that now
[1:08:40] his name would finally be cleared.
[1:08:42] By now, everyone knew that he wasn't the killer, but the law
[1:08:46] still didn't recognize it. Because remember, he'd served
[1:08:49] his time. He served 20 years for murder.
[1:08:52] It wasn't like that charge was dropped from his record.
[1:08:55] So on July 17th, 2019, Chris Tapp was officially declared
[1:08:59] innocent of the crime. He was no longer considered a
[1:09:03] murderer in the eyes of the law. Carol Dodge was just over the
[1:09:07] moon for him because they had fought for this for so long, and
[1:09:10] poor Chris Tap had lost so much of his life because of this.
[1:09:15] He hadn't just lost all of those years of freedom, he'd also lost
[1:09:19] his sense of self. He no longer knew who he was
[1:09:22] outside of those prison walls. He didn't know how to navigate
[1:09:25] the world. He didn't know his likes, his
[1:09:28] dislikes. He didn't know how he was in a
[1:09:30] crowded room. All of that had been taken away
[1:09:33] from him. So much development.
[1:09:35] You don't realize that after the age of 22.
[1:09:37] He was 20 to when he was incarcerated, but from 22 to 50,
[1:09:41] something that is still a lot of growth and development that's
[1:09:44] missed out on. Just because it's not your most
[1:09:46] formative years doesn't mean that it isn't so important to
[1:09:50] your functioning as a human being in society to be out there
[1:09:54] with society every day. But that day that he was finally
[1:09:58] vindicated and declared innocent in the eyes of the law, that day
[1:10:02] marked a new beginning away from all of the pain in the past.
[1:10:06] He would never get those years back.
[1:10:08] But finally the burden was lifted.
[1:10:11] On February 9th, 2021, Brian Drips pleads guilty to Angie's
[1:10:15] rape and murder. And he told the court pretty
[1:10:18] much everything that he'd told the police, that he went over
[1:10:21] that night only with the intention to rape her.
[1:10:24] He never meant to kill her. He must have just butchered her.
[1:10:28] In this incredibly. Intoxicated state that he was
[1:10:31] in, but Angie's mum Carol also made an impact statement and
[1:10:35] this was the first time that she was ever able to look her
[1:10:38] daughter's murderer in the eyes and speak directly to him.
[1:10:43] She said You have shattered our family.
[1:10:45] There is no way to pick up the pieces ever again.
[1:10:49] You, Brian drips, deserve eternal hell.
[1:10:52] One of Angie's brothers actually brought out a huge blown up
[1:10:56] picture. Of the.
[1:10:57] Crime scene of Angie's body and he laid it on the floor of the
[1:11:01] courtroom while he gave his statement.
[1:11:03] He said that crime scene is speaking.
[1:11:06] Your honour. Angie is crying out, asking you
[1:11:09] to hear her voice. The size of the photo pales.
[1:11:12] In comparison to the. Enormity of the situation and
[1:11:15] the enormity of the horrific nature of Mr. Drip's actions.
[1:11:19] After all of that, Brian was sentenced to 20 years to life in
[1:11:24] prison for what he did to 18 year old Angie.
[1:11:27] That was finally it. That was everything that Carol
[1:11:31] Dodge had ever wanted. She never gave up.
[1:11:33] And because of that, an innocent man was free and a guilty man
[1:11:37] was locked. And like, who knew that a man
[1:11:40] accused of murder and that murder victim's own mother would
[1:11:44] come together to form an alliance and, and form a
[1:11:47] friendship? It's so incredibly unique.
[1:11:50] And I'm just. So glad that Chris had someone
[1:11:53] that was listening to him and believing him.
[1:11:55] But returning to civilian life wasn't easy for Chris at all.
[1:11:59] Like we said, he'd missed out on so many years of his life that
[1:12:03] he just didn't really know how to function in our modern
[1:12:05] society. He'd been locked up in the 90s
[1:12:08] and it was now the twenty 20s. Imagine how many technological
[1:12:12] advances had happened in that time.
[1:12:14] Like imagine being handed a smartphone for the first time in
[1:12:17] all those years. It's like those jokes that
[1:12:19] people make, like things that would explode a Victorian child
[1:12:22] in our modern day. But like Chris actually kind of
[1:12:25] lived that. He said that the first time he
[1:12:27] ever went to a shopping mall, he had to run straight back out
[1:12:30] because the crowds and and everything, it was so
[1:12:32] overstimulating. But Chris gradually started to
[1:12:36] get his life back. He got himself a job, he
[1:12:39] reconnected with old friends, made some new friends, and then
[1:12:42] in 2019 he actually got married. His wife was a woman named Stacy
[1:12:47] that had actually grown up in Idaho Falls.
[1:12:50] She was a bit younger than Chris, so chances are as a
[1:12:53] teenager she had grown up hearing about his.
[1:12:56] Case on the news and and she will have thought that he was a
[1:12:59] murderer being locked up for killing someone in their area
[1:13:03] but obviously now this woman knew that none of that was true
[1:13:06] and and they got married and she brought.
[1:13:08] All of this love and hope back into his life, and for the
[1:13:12] moment, it looked like Chris was finally getting his happy
[1:13:16] ending. But that didn't quite happen.
[1:13:19] Chris Tapp is actually dead now. He died in quite tragic
[1:13:24] circumstances, just six years after being released from
[1:13:28] prison. He had six years of freedom.
[1:13:31] It's like a cruel joke, isn't it?
[1:13:33] He was locked up for so long and then when he's finally allowed
[1:13:37] to go get back out there and live his life, someone else
[1:13:41] takes it from him. That's right, he was actually
[1:13:44] killed by another person. He didn't die of natural causes
[1:13:48] or an accident or disease. He was killed.
[1:13:52] There is actually an ongoing murder trial, murder
[1:13:55] investigation as we speak. But before we get to his death,
[1:13:59] I want to speak about those brief 6 years of life that he
[1:14:03] lived after being released from prison because he really did
[1:14:06] some good stuff for. Sure, he managed to get Idaho.
[1:14:08] Governors to sign a law that says that people who were sent
[1:14:11] to jail for something that they didn't do, they can actually get
[1:14:15] money back from the government, 10s of thousands of dollars for
[1:14:18] every year that they spent in prison.
[1:14:21] That meant that Chris himself actually received $1,000,000
[1:14:25] from the government for his 20 years in jail.
[1:14:27] But that wasn't all the compensation he got, because in
[1:14:30] 2022, Chris actually sued the Idaho Falls Police Department.
[1:14:34] Because obviously it was. All their fault that he was.
[1:14:38] Locked up wrongly he sued them for $12 million and won so this
[1:14:45] man is a multi multi millionaire and I've actually written in my
[1:14:48] notes Chris was free and financially stable for the rest
[1:14:52] of his life financially stable is the understatement of the
[1:14:55] century this man had $30 million in the bank but now we actually.
[1:14:59] Have to talk. About the bad things that
[1:15:01] happened in those six years of freedom, because in 2017, just
[1:15:05] six months after he was exonerated and declared
[1:15:08] innocent, the police were called to his family home in Idaho
[1:15:12] Falls. Chris and his wife had had a
[1:15:15] huge fight and it was actually Chris that called the police,
[1:15:18] but he only did that because he thought that his wife was
[1:15:21] calling the police on him first. You're going to have to stick
[1:15:24] with me through this one because I was quite confused trying to
[1:15:27] piece this all together. But Chris and his wife were
[1:15:30] having a fight and in the middle of it, she whips out her phone.
[1:15:34] She says that she wanted to call her mum just to like, talk about
[1:15:37] this with her, get some space from Chris.
[1:15:40] She was calling her mum, but Chris assumed.
[1:15:43] In his head that. She'd got her phone out to call
[1:15:45] the police for some reason. Was this argument really that
[1:15:48] bad that she would call the police?
[1:15:49] Chris thought so. So Chris panics, thinking that
[1:15:52] the police are going to be involved in his life once again.
[1:15:55] And not just any police, the Idaho Falls police that probably
[1:15:58] don't like him a lot at this point in time because they were
[1:16:01] sued for 12 million. He panics, doesn't want police
[1:16:03] involvement, so he goes to grab her arm and grab her phone off
[1:16:07] her. But in this kind of physical
[1:16:10] scuffle, she loses her balance, falls over and cuts her hand
[1:16:15] open. She's bleeding a lot and she
[1:16:18] swears that it was an accident, that all of this happened
[1:16:20] accidentally. He'd never actually like
[1:16:22] intentionally tried to harm her. But after she had cut her hand
[1:16:26] open, Chris was then sure that she was going to call the police
[1:16:30] because she was injured, obviously.
[1:16:32] And then as soon as the police get out there, they're going to
[1:16:34] see that he was the one that did it, and then he would get
[1:16:38] arrested. I don't know.
[1:16:38] All of this was going through his head.
[1:16:40] He wasn't thinking very straight.
[1:16:42] So he called the police first himself to kind of like up to an
[1:16:47] accident, I guess. When police arrived, they
[1:16:50] arrested Chris Tapp despite his wife's protests.
[1:16:53] She was saying to the police that she he never meant to do
[1:16:56] anything to her. She wasn't going to press
[1:16:58] charges. She refused to write any kind of
[1:17:00] statement that could be used as evidence.
[1:17:02] She insisted that Chris was an innocent man.
[1:17:05] But regardless, Chris was taken into police custody for the time
[1:17:08] being and his case was going to go to court.
[1:17:11] But when it did go to trial, the prosecution brought up something
[1:17:14] very interesting because while Chris, Chris had been in police
[1:17:18] custody, he'd been doing a lot of phone calls with his wife on
[1:17:20] the outside. And I think he forgot that phone
[1:17:24] calls in prison are recorded. The prosecution brings up 15
[1:17:28] different recorded phone calls, and they allege that Chris was
[1:17:33] telling his wife what to do and what to say in court to help his
[1:17:38] case. The prosecution also claims that
[1:17:40] Chris's wife had told the police previously that she was scared
[1:17:44] of him and she denied all of this in court.
[1:17:46] She. Denied that Chris told her what
[1:17:49] to say. And I don't know what exactly
[1:17:50] was in those police phone calls, because surely if they played
[1:17:54] them in court. That would speak for itself.
[1:17:56] Basically, she really tried to defend him.
[1:17:58] But obviously the prosecution and the police must have
[1:18:01] believed that there was something behind this case
[1:18:03] because in the end, Chris was charged with misdemeanor
[1:18:06] domestic battery. His wife stuck by him the whole
[1:18:09] entire time, even afterwards, because she she knew how badly
[1:18:13] Chris. Struggled in his day-to-day
[1:18:16] life. Life and everything that he'd
[1:18:17] been through had really, really affected him.
[1:18:19] He had depression, anxiety, PTSD.
[1:18:22] And she says that, yeah, that affected him and the ways that
[1:18:26] he responded to things sometimes, but he never did
[1:18:29] anything with malice. Chris hadn't received any kind
[1:18:32] of support or rehabilitation from the police in the aftermath
[1:18:35] of his false conviction. He was just left to mentally
[1:18:39] suffer as far as they were concerned.
[1:18:42] I mean, he did go through some therapy, but he had to go and
[1:18:45] seek it out himself and pay for it himself.
[1:18:47] He wasn't given any help. In 2023, Chris Tapp and his wife
[1:18:52] Stacy got a divorce, but by the end of the year, both of them
[1:18:57] would be dead in separate tragic circumstances.
[1:19:01] Stacey died first on August 15th.
[1:19:04] She was driving in her car late at night when it flipped and
[1:19:08] crashed and she died of her injuries later on that evening.
[1:19:11] She was 41 years old at the time.
[1:19:14] Police couldn't really figure out what happened.
[1:19:16] It was just a one vehicle incident and they don't believe
[1:19:20] it was intentional. It was just her car lost control
[1:19:24] on the road and she unfortunately passed away.
[1:19:26] And then, just two months after that, Chris Tapp would also lose
[1:19:30] his life at the hands of another person in a hotel room in Las
[1:19:35] Vegas, since he had won all of. Those lawsuits and he had all.
[1:19:38] These fucking millions in the bank.
[1:19:40] Chris was enjoying life. He was putting money into his
[1:19:43] new hobbies and his new interests, one of which was drag
[1:19:47] racing. Not drag Queens, but like actual
[1:19:49] car racing. He was a sponsor of two
[1:19:51] different drag race teams and there was this like drag racing
[1:19:55] convention going on in Las Vegas in October of last year.
[1:19:58] So he attends this event along with a bunch of other fans and
[1:20:02] sponsors and different people in the industry.
[1:20:04] It's a mixture of like meeting people and networking during the
[1:20:07] day and watching the races. And then in the evenings it's
[1:20:10] more of a party vibe. And October 29th, Chris had
[1:20:14] everyone background at his hotel room.
[1:20:16] And by everyone, I mean like just a group of people that.
[1:20:19] He met at the convention. I'm getting a bunch of different
[1:20:22] friends, including a former pro wrestler named Daniel Rodemer.
[1:20:27] A witness that was in the hotel room said that most of the group
[1:20:30] was doing cocaine that night. And they also alleged that 47
[1:20:34] year old Chris Tapp was getting awfully close to a 21 year old
[1:20:39] girl there. And this wasn't just any 21 year
[1:20:41] old girl, this was former pro wrestler Daniel Rodemers
[1:20:46] stepdaughter. Can you see where this is going
[1:20:49] yet? At one point the 47 year old
[1:20:51] Chris supposedly offers this 21 year old girl cocaine and this
[1:20:56] is when her stepdad loses it. He starts screaming at Chris if
[1:21:00] you ever talk. To my daughter.
[1:21:01] Again, I'll kill you. And then witnesses heard two
[1:21:05] banging sounds coming from the hotel room.
[1:21:08] Daniel had punched Chris in the head, knocking him over.
[1:21:11] That was the first bang. The second was when Chris was on
[1:21:15] his way down. He hit the back of his head hard
[1:21:19] on a coffee table. And after that, he just laid
[1:21:22] there on the floor, limp and unresponsive.
[1:21:25] Everyone kind of just stood there in silence, not knowing
[1:21:27] what to do, just watching as Chris didn't move a muscle.
[1:21:32] And then people started to panic and the police were called.
[1:21:36] Chris was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance but later that
[1:21:39] night he died from his injuries. Blunt force trauma to the head
[1:21:44] at the age of 47 after 20 years locked up for a crime.
[1:21:48] That he didn't commit. Chris Tapp finally tasted
[1:21:51] freedom and for six years he was rebuilding his life only.
[1:21:56] For it all to come. To a tragic and sudden end in a
[1:22:00] Las Vegas hotel room. Initially, the police concluded
[1:22:03] that this was just an accident, but they were doing some
[1:22:06] digging. They were looking into Daniel
[1:22:07] Rodemer, and they'd got on his phone for evidence.
[1:22:10] And then they found a very suspicious text from his wife.
[1:22:14] I believe the context of this text wasn't about the Chris Tapp
[1:22:18] incident. It was about a different
[1:22:19] incident. But that in itself tells you a
[1:22:22] lot about Daniel Rodemer. He's always getting himself into
[1:22:24] these physical, violent altercations for no real reason.
[1:22:28] Well, maybe he don't does have reason, but he doesn't have to
[1:22:31] go about it in a violent way. You know, he could have brought
[1:22:34] that issue up with Chris without punching him in the head and
[1:22:37] killing him. Sorry, got slightly off of
[1:22:38] topic. Police had found this text from
[1:22:41] Daniel's wife in his phone that said I watched you nearly murder
[1:22:45] somebody and I had to take your hands off of his neck as he laid
[1:22:48] there and you ran away. And this, like I said, just
[1:22:52] proves the kind of guy that Daniel Rodeman was.
[1:22:54] He was violent and he was close to killing people at a moment's
[1:22:58] notice often. So he he was arrested in March
[1:23:01] 2024, just a couple of months ago, and as of the time of
[1:23:04] filming this video, he actually just pled not guilty to the.
[1:23:09] Murder of Chris. Tapp.
[1:23:10] So I wonder how that's going to go.
[1:23:12] I guess I'll keep you updated. Maybe it would get reduced to a
[1:23:15] manslaughter kind of charge, but I don't know.
[1:23:18] I guess we're going to have to keep our eyes on it and see what
[1:23:21] evidence comes out at trial. This case is such a
[1:23:24] heartbreaking example of missed opportunities and fatal mistakes
[1:23:28] made by the police. For 20 years.
[1:23:31] They had the wrong man behind bars but Angies mum Carol never
[1:23:35] gave up even when everyone else told her to.
[1:23:38] When everyone thought that the case was closed and they told
[1:23:41] her to just accept it, she never did.
[1:23:44] If Carol had just accepted it the way that police insisted she
[1:23:47] should, then the wrong man would still be behind bars and her
[1:23:51] daughter's real rapist and murderer would have never been
[1:23:54] found, would have never been brought to justice.
[1:23:57] Not only did Carol get justice for her daughter, but also for
[1:24:00] Chris. And even though he tragically
[1:24:02] died only six years after his release, at least he died a free
[1:24:07] man with his name cleared. But there are still people in
[1:24:10] prison right now that will be in the exact same situation as
[1:24:14] Chris Tapp. They have been wrongly convicted
[1:24:16] of a crime and they have tried to shout that from the rooftops.
[1:24:20] But who believes A convicted killer?
[1:24:22] And that's why I thank God for these organisations like the
[1:24:26] Innocence Project that helped Chris, that actually heard him
[1:24:29] out and actually fought his corner.
[1:24:31] So if you want to help to make a change for those people that
[1:24:35] have been deny justice for so long, then we're going to link
[1:24:38] the Innocence Project down below in the description of this
[1:24:40] episode. You can donate to them or you
[1:24:43] can sign petitions on there. They have so much information as
[1:24:46] to how you can help in situations like this.
[1:24:49] It's incredible, so I do. Urge you to check out the links
[1:24:52] in the description of this video, but that finishes this
[1:24:56] case. Thank you so much for listening.
[1:25:02] To usual disclaimer, at this point, I just want to say that
[1:25:04] if you've been affected by any of the topics we discussed
[1:25:07] today, please check the description where we've left
[1:25:10] some helpful resources. If you want to hear more cases
[1:25:13] like this one, make sure to follow Usual Disclaimer on your
[1:25:16] podcast app so that you get notifications when we post new
[1:25:19] episodes. And if you really enjoyed, I'd
[1:25:22] love it if you could leave a rating and a review too.
[1:25:25] Usual Disclaimer with Ellen O'Neill is an Audio Boom Studios
[1:25:28] production. See you next time.

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