True Confession

27:56What do you say? No? No, I didn't murder that girl? But if Tapp's friends thought they were being tortured, Angie's mom, Carol, was living in her own personal hell. That's when I went to the streets and I literally put 60 ,000 miles on my truck searching for her killer. I distributed like 1 ,200 flowers through the summer. Did you go to scary places, dangerous places? Oh, yes. And I remember going to a place and the lady said, you know, you need to leave before somebody hurts you. And yet she kept doing it for years, taking incredible risks. I had a gun put to my head one night. And during those nights, Carol often ended up parked outside the apartment where Angie was murdered.

28:47I would just stare at that house and stare at the windows and try and figure out how scared she must have been. She also endlessly is... Is talk the right word? Those friends of Chris Tapp, like Jeremy Sarges. There was times I would be working, look up, and there she is. She'd been watching me for a while. She was relentless. And by that time, I think Furman had her pretty convinced that we had something to do with it. That's Detective Jared Furman, of course. Carol prodded him. Prodded them, the whole department, insisting they keep searching for the killer for more than a decade. She spent her days and nights reading police reports, practically memorizing them.

29:38I don't sleep when I get up and I just go. What part of this don't I understand? In one of those reports, Carol found a phrase which, the more she read it, sounded out of place in the DNA world. It was about pubic hairs, which, in addition to the semen, had been found on Angie's body. It was written in this lab report that it's similar or same as the victim. And I said to myself, it's either Angie's or it's not Angie's. It can't be an either or. Then Carol remembered reading an article about an internationally known DNA expert who just so happened to live and work right in Idaho. This is the expert, Dr.

30:22Greg Hampikian, a fruit fly geneticist from Boise State University. But Dr. Hampikian's work is not all done in the classroom. In fact, his own path changed years ago when he was asked to test some DNA and got an innocent man freed from a Georgia prison. And just like that, the doctor found a new colleague, founder and director of Idaho's Innocence Project. Secrets can be kept, I guess, but, you know, science reveals those secrets. So Carroll called this Dr. Hampikian and discovered that his Innocence Project had just taken on the case of Christopher Tapp, at which she might have been forgiven for hanging up the phone, but she didn't.

31:14Quite the reverse. Her words to me I'll never forget were, I just want to know what happened to my daughter. And, you know, it still brings the hair up on the back of my neck. The curiosity of hers surprised you? The knowledge surprised me. She's turned all of that love and devotion for her daughter into a very careful record of this case. Carol was well on her way to becoming an expert in her own right in forensic science. So she read that report to him, the one that said the pubic hairs found on Angie looked similar to or the same as the victims. He goes, well, they're either hers or they're not.

31:55Just as you thought. He said, well, where are the hairs? I said, I assumed that they're still in evidence. So she called the Idaho Falls Police Department, which found the hairs in an envelope in the evidence room. And once DNA tests were run on those hairs and compared with the semen and all the other materials from the crime scene, Dr. Hampikian concluded this. There was no evidence whatsoever that anyone was inside Angie's apartment besides Angie and the mystery man who killed her. It's all one person who did this in terms of the DNA. Dr. Hampikian believed police were mistaken. There was one killer, not three, like the police thought.

32:40To imagine that there is this group of criminals who know about DNA and are so careful, what did they do? They planted somebody else's semen and pubic hair and then cleaned up all their own DNA? Now that remarkable news could mean only one thing. According to the Idaho Innocence Project, Chris Tapp's confession was false. He didn't do it. No matter what the police thought, he wasn't even there. The news came down on Carol Dodge's head like a hammer. For 13 years, they had me convinced that Chris Tapp was there. All they kept saying is, he confessed, Carol. He confessed. I was extremely angry. When they have DNA, not once but twice, that belongs to the same person and it's not Chris Tapp, something's wrong.

33:33Next step, watch those Chris Tapp confession tapes for herself. There's times that I wanted to put my fist through the TV.

33:54The DNA convinced Carol Dodge. There could be no doubt that Chris Tapp was nowhere near her daughter's bedroom the night Angie was killed, and he needed to be out of prison. But the question remained, why would he confess? So what'd you do? I met with the chief, and I asked for copies of all of the videotapes. Those videotapes, including the ones in which Chris Tapp had confessed to taking part in the murder. And now, a dozen years after the murder of her daughter, Carol watched every single minute of those hours and hours of videotapes. Interviews with all those men who'd been interrogated. Like I told you, we're just going in circles.

34:39Well, I know. That's why I think this is bull****. Starting with Ben Hobbs. Man, he was adamant that he said, I did not kill Angie Dodge. Please don't be hurt. Next, she watched the police interview Jeremy Sargis, whom Chris Tapp had implicated. I mean, literally, I said, what is going on here? Their strategy was that they were trying to get each one of these guys to roll on the other one. And Ben and Jeremy were much smarter and just basically, you know, didn't play their game. What she saw amazed her, as did what she learned. That the man interrogating Chris Tapp, then Detective Jared Furman, had been a school resource officer well known to a young Chris Tapp.

35:35I trust you, and hopefully you trust me, okay? Furman kept telling Chris, just trust me, Chris. You've got to trust me. You know, we go way back, Chris. And I think that he was taught to respect adults. Sure. And he was a follower. She watched as Chris told Furman he knew nothing about Angie's murder. And then she watched the detectives get tapped to imagine himself as an active participant. Let's say, for example, hypothetically, Chris, you were there, okay? Okay. Hypothetically, Chris, how do you think it happened? And I remember Chris saying, you mean like a TV show? Next, she saw police administering polygraph after polygraph and almost always with the same result.

36:21They would tell him he was deceptive. But perhaps what troubled Carol most was seeing how confused Tapp was. Even 10 days after his first interviews, he still seemed not to know what house Angie lived in. And she might live on the corner, or was it? It was a fellow blind. For a guy who'd taken part in a murder, Tapp also seemed not to know much about the layout of Angie's apartment. So Detective Brown suggested this helpful memory aid. Why don't you try and dry? Sometimes it's easier if you can dry out. They seemed to be coaching him. He still couldn't do it. And then they showed him where the murder happened.

37:04Bath and bed here. The bedroom. I'll take back here. The bedroom is back here? Yeah. There was more, Carol was stunned to see that police had shown Tapp photos of the crime scene. I want you to know if that's how you remember it, if that's how you don't remember it, maybe it's going to draw some memories for you, and we're going to go from there. And finally, remember that the police theory of the crime after DNA didn't match Tapp or Hobbs was that three people committed the murder together. Together, the detective spent hours literally trying to drag the name of that third man out of Tapp. And when Carol saw the tape, well, you watch it.

37:46The name, nothing comes to my head. It was Jim. It was us. Winckelson, Mackleton. There's times that I wanted to put my fist through the TV. By the time you had gone through all of those tapes, what did you think about Chris Tapp? How did they do this to me? How have they managed to convince and keep someone in prison for all these years? And it's a possibility he's not there. So then Carol made the most remarkable decision. She would do everything in her power to free the man convicted of killing her own daughter. Impossible, of course. Tapp had lost all his appeals. It was over for him. And the detective who'd put him behind bars, who's now more powerful than ever, was mayor of Idaho Falls.

38:36And absolutely certain that Chris Tapp was as guilty as sin. What's it like to know that Carroll is now actively campaigning for his release? Believes in innocent man.

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40:34For years after the murder, finding Angie's killer was Carol's reason for living. Through three heart attacks, the death of her estranged husband, often on battles with the Idaho Falls police. And then that fight became way more complicated because Because Detective Jared Furman was soon elected mayor of the city. And as mayor, Jared Furman still seemed to be caught up in the Angie Dodge case, as Jeremy Sarges and his mother discovered. Mom worked at City Hall, and he wasn't fond of her, and she wasn't fond of him. Well, he still believed you were guilty. He did, and he would make sure and tell her that, too.

41:18Your son's gotten away with murder. Yeah, we know he's done something to Tapp. Mayor Furman and Detective Captain Ken Brown were so sure the doubters were wrong that back in 2012, they were more than happy to sit with us and answer whatever questions we had. And here, the mayor told us he absolutely knew that Chris Tapp was guilty. Knew because it was he, Furman, who took Tapp to the crime scene, where he, not the doubters, saw how Tapp behaved in the bedroom, where Angie Dodge was murdered. He took us into the bedroom and relived that night. And you could see it on his face. He was reliving it.

42:02Of course, the critics wouldn't be able to see that because it was one of the only times during the investigation when the police did not videotape Chris Tapp. But... I have no doubts in my mind that Chris Tapp is part of that homicide itself. You can't fake anything. The worrying thing, though. Well, you can't. People do confess to things they didn't do. We know that, but when people confess to crimes that they don't do, they don't know the minute details of that case. And Chris knew the minute details of that case. He, of course, claims that he knows them because he was fed them. We would politely disagree with that.

42:39Is it possible, at least, that there was some suggestion involved in these things before he actually said them? that he heard in the questions he was being asked some hint of what the answer might be. Hypotheticals, as it were. For us to sit and say there's absolutely no possibility anything could have happened, you know, we can't say things like that. We can say that we have reviewed those tapes over and over. We had a jury who reviewed those tapes. For two guys who interviewed this person and found that in the first interview, the second interview, the third interview, the fourth interview, the fifth interview.

43:16He lied like a sidewalk. Then you finally get to the seventh interview, and that's the gospel truth. Well, no, absolutely, absolutely not. During each of the interviews, he was bringing out information that he absolutely knew was not fed to her, the color of clothes that she was wearing, the position of the clothes. Interesting. Many times as the interviews progressed, Chris Tack claimed to know nothing about the clothes Angie Dodge was wearing. Do you remember if she was clothed, dead clothed? No. But some details in the interview could be interpreted to back up claims by the police. Once, for example, before Tab was shown the crime scene photos, he did seem to, in a guessing kind of way, know what Angie was wearing.

44:01I knew it was only a company that had the course of my life, but he shouldn't have sweat. And although he's wrong about the color of her clothes, After being asked many times if her clothes were half on or half off or pulled up or pushed down, he does correctly say this about her pants. I just like that I'm half on. I've won baby. Also, said the detectives, Chris talked about Ben Hobbs hitting Angie behind the ear. And? We have the evidence to back it. We have bruising where he says that Ben hit her. So detectives insisted they were right. Ben Hobbs was the ringleader. Chris Tapp was involved, and an unknown third man left the DNA in the form of seaman.

44:45But as we talked to the mayor and the detective, we knew, and they knew, that the victim's mother, Carol Dodge, believed Tapp was innocent, and they, detectives, had made a terrible mistake. What's it like to know that Carol is now actively campaigning for his release? Believes in an innocent man. I think that's part of the process. Her heart has been broken. And she's convinced you got the wrong guy. When I heard that, I was genuinely surprised. She's looking for closure. Tomorrow or the next day, Chris could be guilty in her mind again. Hmm, really? Hello there. Anyway, perhaps this, we decided, would be a good time to talk to the man in the middle of it all.

45:32The serial confessor, Christopher Tapp. Have a seat. Thank you.

45:54There comes a time in every tale to meet the person at the center of the story. And here he is, Christopher Tapp. No longer the aimless pothead you've seen on those videotapes from 1997. At the time of this interview in 2012, he was a man of 35 who'd done more than a decade of hard time. As people look at you, what do you most want them to know about you? I've been so wronged all these years. How could individuals do something to another human being like they've done to me? You're an innocent man? Yes, sir, I am. Of course, everybody in prison is innocent, right? If you look at the whole entire case, the DNA, none of them points to me, none of them.

46:44On that point, there is little dispute, of course. But how did Chris Tapp get here? That's a familiar story to many families. The sweet little boy shown in all these pictures of a typical childhood started smoking marijuana at 13. Then at 16, turned to meth. Chris dropped out of high school, hanging out down by the river in Idaho Falls with all those kids his mother warned him about. That, he said, is how his name came up after the murder of Angie Dodge. Did you think anything of that? No. I had no rhyme, no reason to be scared. Until, you'll recall, January of 1997, when Tapp was brought in for questioning, after his friend Ben Hobbs was arrested for a Nevada sexual attack, which police said was similar to the murder of Angie Dodge.

47:34I didn't know what I was being brought in for until I got there. You didn't connect it with the Angie thing at all? No. I thought I was, honestly, I was going in for drugs. And as you've seen, over the course of several weeks, Christopher Tapp soon went from saying he knew nothing about Angie Dodge's murder to being the only man charged in the case. Well, of course, one of the difficulties was your story kept changing, right? Very much it did. I mean, you went from saying, I don't know anything about this, to then saying, well, maybe Ben had something to do with it, to then, well, maybe there's a third guy involved, to, wait a minute, I was there, and, oh, yeah, and I cut her.

48:18Where did that come from? Trying to give them what they wanted to hear, just to appease them. Wait a minute, but why would you say you cut her? Because during that time, Mr. Furman, he said, hypothetically, even if you did cut her, it still ain't going to matter. We'll be able to help you. You just need to help us. And indeed, here it is on tape with then-detective-turned-mayor Jared Furman in charge of the interview. Hypothetically, if Chris Tapp was holding on to Angie as she was being cut, and then some of the other stuff was going on, or if Chris Tapp took part in the knife in any way, shape, or form in cutting her, okay?

48:56But I didn't. Would you listen? Okay. Okay. Hypothetically, I said. Okay. If you took part in any of that, that's okay. Because you're still here. You're still showing some good faith that you want to cooperate. Do you believe that story? Hook, line, and sinker. Try to put yourself there right now and tell me what was going on inside your stomach and your brain. Scared. Trying to figure out what they want just for them to leave me alone. Why? I didn't kill nobody. I was never there the night the murder happened. They just kept focusing on, well, if you was there, if you did do it, if you held the knife, it's okay.

49:36We will help you. So, like an idiot, I believe them. And then they charge you with murder? Yeah. As we spoke here back in 2012, Chris Tapp was fighting to clear his name with the support of the Idaho Innocence Project and the victim's mother. Carol Dodge came around. To your side. What was that like? It's an amazing feeling. And I appreciate her finally understanding that I'm innocent. Carol, of course, despite this turnabout and new mission in life, was still stuck in her grief. And by the time our first report on this case aired in 2012, more than 16 years after the murder of Angie Dodge, Those river kids, Chris Tapp's friends, had tried to move on as well, but couldn't.

50:32Russ Baldwin had bounced around the country from coast to coast with only occasional visits back to Idaho Falls. It just feels like every time I go there, I need to watch my step. That's why I can't live there. Jeremy Sarges, wrongly accused by his friend Chris of taking part in the murder, had gone into a kind of exile 500 miles from Idaho Falls. My friends, my support group had kind of disbanded, and I was kind of alone. But your family was there. That's your home. You grew up there. What was it like having to leave and try to find a new life somewhere else? It was scary. My family has a business that's been there for over 100 years, and I always felt like I had a path, a career, stuff like that kind of takes its toll on you a little bit too.

51:25The rookie cop who'd manned the door at the murder scene, Bill Squires, was now a sergeant and still convinced that Chris Tapp's confession and conviction were righteous, as they say. You would just never expect somebody to confess to something repeatedly that they didn't do. Yeah, there's no doubt. We've got a suspect here and they're admitting to this. Why would we do anything differently? Carol Dodge, of course, could think of a lot of reasons to do something differently, was convinced those detectives had blown the case completely and had browbeaten an innocent man into a false confession.

52:03She needed help now. And so she looked and looked until she found him, the man who might make all the difference. My phone rang, and I picked up the phone, and I almost fell out of my chair.

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54:03Carol Dodge had to look a long way from Idaho Falls to find the one she needed. the one who could help her convince the police there was something very wrong with the Chris Tapp conviction. She looked all the way to Chicago, in fact, where she found him. He is Steve Drizen, a clinical professor of law at Northwestern University, legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, and one of the world's leading experts on the phenomenon of false confessions. When that Dateline program about the case aired, Drizzen had been watching. I had seen the Dateline show, so I was aware of who Carol Dodge was and my phone rang.

54:48And I picked up the phone, and the woman on the other end of the line was Carol Dodge. And I almost fell out of my chair. It's hard to get your head around that in a way, isn't it? It is extremely unusual that a victim's family member would reach out to me. And when he watched those hours and hours of Chris Tapp's interrogation tapes, well... This was the worst example of police contamination, fact-feeding, suggesting a story that I have ever seen in all my years at looking at these cases. Chris was trying, in a sense, to come up with a story that would please the polygraph machine. If he could tell a story that would show that he was telling the truth according to the polygraph, he would get the benefit of an immunity deal.

55:46Why would he get that idea? Because that's what the law enforcement officers told them. It was all a ruse. Well, now that would shake things up, thought Chris Tapp's public defender, John Thomas. Wouldn't it? So with that, you know, world-leading false confession expert, did the police attitude begin to change? Not really. It just fell on deaf ears. So Drizzen got the National Innocence Project involved. And while progress was not immediate, things began to happen. For one thing, this woman was having a change of heart. Remember Destiny Osborne, one of the river kids? to that little knot of uncomfortable stuff was working away inside.

56:31Yeah, it's not a little knot. It's a big knot. A knot in her stomach. Cause Destiny, who testified at Tapp's trial and told the jury that she had heard him confess to the crime, gathered up her courage and told Angie's mom, Carol, that police had pressured her to lie and that she hadn't heard Chris Tapp confess at all. What did that feel like? Finally come clean. It was great. I mean, she was in shock. And I'm just like, I lied. It was all a lie. Like, yeah, so. Oh, my. Destiny had been in trouble when police approached her after the murder. She was in juvenile custody at the time. Did they suggest what might happen to you if you didn't cooperate with them?

57:15Oh, yeah. They pretty much told me, you can either come meet with us today or you can just go right to the big jail. Then the police fed her a story, she said, and made her rehearse it. I was literally told things that weren't true and I knew they weren't true, but for some reason when someone's telling you they're true and you're lying, you kind of maybe start to think that you're the crazy one. I think the common expression they use on the street is, my ******. Well, that's what I was going to say, but I chose to keep it a little bit appropriate. The city of Idaho Falls lawyer said that in Destiny's diary a year after the murder, and during a police interview six years after that, she repeated the story she told in court.

57:59But Destiny told us it all stemmed from what police told her to say. What stopped you from coming forward to say that was all BS? How do you undo that without being charged with perjury yourself? And I ended up in a situation for probably like a good 15 years after that that prevented me from really doing much, even leaving my house. But the fabric of Tapp's conviction was fraying at the seams. And prosecutors decided to make him an offer, plead guilty to murder, and be re-sentenced to time served. In other words, admit to something he said he didn't do and remain a felon for the rest of his life, but get out of prison.

58:43Do you remember what you thought about that? I was kind of torn. He had spent 20 years in prison. That's a reasonable sentence to have to put in. I was torn between that and that, why are we letting him out of prison when we know that he's guilty? Thank you. Please be seated. It was March 2017 when Christopher Tapp, along with defense attorney John Thomas, appeared in court to take the deal. And the room went silent when Angie Dodge's mother Carol took the witness stand. I can't imagine that, knowing what we know now, that anyone can convict someone that there's no DNA. and before long the legal details were done and the courtroom exploded in celebration as a deputy removed Chris Tapp's handcuffs for the last time and he was engulfed in the arms of Carol Dodge and along with Tapp's mother Vera was Jeremy Sarges, that once close friend of Chris's about whom Tapp had lied to police about being at the crime scene, scene of the murder the man who once said he hated Chris.

1:00:01I cried. You felt pretty bad about that. He's still the same Chris. He's just been through some rough stuff. Yeah. Did he apologize to you? Multiple times, yeah. You felt pretty bad about that. He does. Which he should. He shouldn't have done that. That's all right. We're only halfway done with life, so we got the good half now. Yes, fate. Rarely what anyone expects. Chris Tapp said he wanted to find the real killer now. And so did this man, the new chief of the Idaho Falls Police, Bryce Johnson. For me, and this is going to sound a little hard, for me, I wanted to make Chris Tapp irrelevant to the investigation we were doing.

1:00:53The reality was we had a DNA sample that didn't belong to him. We wanted to find out who left that DNA sample. And so that's what the entire focus was, was finding that person. Since the original investigation, Detective Ken Brown had retired. Detective-turned-Mayor Jared Furman had developed Alzheimer's and withdrawn from public life. So to lead the reinvigorated investigation, the new chief promoted Bill Squires to Detective Captain. It was Squires, remember, who worked the door at the original crime scene more than 20 years before. My guidance for our staff was always, let's look at this completely differently again with the eyes that we have now and the technology we have now.

1:01:41Squires didn't know it yet, but a woman known to be at the leading edge of that technology had been approached to work on the case. And her first thought? My first assessment of this case was that it was not viable for investigative genetic genealogy. But of course, CeCe Moore had yet to encounter Carol Dodge.

1:02:15Chris Tapp had a lot to get used to. The world was a very different place, as was Idaho Falls. What did it feel like to walk out of prison a free man in 2017? What it felt like to walk was overwhelming. Truly, truly overwhelming. I had a panic attack, you know, the first time I went shopping. And I had to run out of the store because I couldn't handle it all. There was so much. Never had choices before. And so he made up for lost time, got a factory job inspecting potato sacks. And he got married, which made him both a husband and stepfather to a couple of kids. Meanwhile, that very spring, the Idaho Falls police kept looking for the man who'd left DNA on the body of Angie Dodge in 1996.

1:03:09A DNA technology company called Parabon Labs had made this sketch of what that man might look like based on genetic material left at the scene. And then Parabon made an offer to the new man in charge of the murder investigation, Captain Bill Squires. Parabon said, hey, you know, by the way, we've got some hours that we have available to commit to this. Would you be interested in doing that? And it was easy for me to say, yes, absolutely. Let's do this cooperatively. and see where it goes. No matter the cost, full steam ahead. And with that kind of priority, Parabon asked the head of its law enforcement unit to join in.

1:03:48The world's most celebrated genetic genealogist, Cece Moore, a pioneer in the field, who closed hundreds of cold cases like Angie's. But this case? There was a problem. It was highly degraded DNA, So we were missing about 40 % of the genetic markers that we need for investigative genetic genealogy. In fact, when your services were first requested, didn't you turn it down? So my first assessment of this case was that it was not viable for investigative genetic genealogy. But then, guess who? Carol Dodge, Angie's mom, intervened again, begging Cece to get involved and sending her the crime scene photos, which changed everything.

1:04:38It made me just ill and very, very, very angry seeing what had been done to Angie. Not the sort of thing you can get out of your mind. I opened them out of respect for Carol because I thought if she had to look at what had been done to her daughter, I should be able to do that as well. It just really had a deep impact on me and made me even more determined to find a way to help Carol and help Idaho Falls Police Department. It's a big challenge. It certainly was. And the first time that we were trying to use genetic genealogy on a sample that was that degraded. So how'd you go about that? What I always do is just building trees.

1:05:24Family trees, that is. Somebody who had sent a sample to America's vast body of voluntarily shared DNA also shared a marker or two with the suspect. Some distant relation. Trick was to figure out who. The idea is to build trees and find commonalities between the people who are sharing DNA with the unknown suspect. You find common ancestors. And once I am able to do that, I know there's promise. I know I'm going in the right direction. And so I just started building trees. And despite her initial pessimism, Cece Moore began to come up with some answers, all connected to a family with the name of Usri.

1:06:09Tell me what it was like when, what you thought at least, when you first got a name from Cece Moore. Oh my gosh, we were so excited, I can't even tell you. There was potentially six males that could match this based on their age. And one of them happened to live in Idaho and had lived in Idaho the whole time. Five of them were eventually ruled out, but that one person lived only a couple of hours from Idaho Falls in Twin Falls. But how to get a DNA sample without spooking him? Could this person be your suspect? Yeah, he absolutely could be. Could he not be? Yeah, that's possible too. So do you go down there and just knock on his door?

1:06:53Or do you go down and try to collect a sample without him knowing in a legal manner that doesn't compromise the investigation in case that's not your person? And finally just came to the conclusion, look, we're going to try to do this clandestinely and try to get this sample without him knowing because I am not going to be the person that compromises this investigation once we've gotten to this point. So we're just not going to leave anything to chance. The usual methods, grabbing a cigarette butt or a glass from a restaurant, didn't work. So police got creative when they noticed the man was driving a car with expired license plates.

1:07:31The officer pulled him over, and so while they had the subject stop, they asked him, hey, would you, this officer's in training, would you mind giving us a breath sample just so he can get the practice of running this machine? You don't even have to get out of your car. and he's like of course yeah no problem and we collected two breath samples in those breath tubes on the alka sensor device and that gave us the dna sample but when the results came back from the lab no match whoa that one huge disappointment that one hit us hard we really thought we were on the right track and really forced us all to go back to the drawing board.

1:08:16Oh, including CeCe Moore. He had to be in there somewhere. He had to. Genetic genealogy had never led me wrong. And I was beating my head against the wall. But as Moore went back through the Usry family trees, all the names, the connections, something struck her. There could always be an adoption, son who's been born to a man and he doesn't know about it could there be someone missing

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1:10:26There had to be a missing link. C.C. Moore had found the family with its six men, who had to be closely related to the person who left DNA at the crime scene, the Ustry family, had to be another male Ustry. But there were no more Ustrys. Unless... When I went back to the drawing board, I again focused on that and said, is somebody missing here? Families can be complicated. Secrets, affairs, or brief or abandoned marriages. Sometimes kids are the result. So? My colleague started calling around, and she called this very small local library in a small town where this family had been based initially.

1:11:14And some sweet librarian agreed to go through their archives. Where he found an obituary for a woman who, the obit revealed had a daughter, and the daughter had been married to a man named Usri, except that was no longer the daughter's last name. So she had obviously remarried, and she had one son. The son who had Usri DNA, but took on the name of his stepfather, which explained why he had been so hard to find. So tell me what it was like to discover that. It was an amazing moment because finally all the pieces started falling in place. We learned he actually lived in Idaho Falls in 1996. And when Moore dropped all this knowledge of the Idaho Falls police.

1:12:07It was very hard not to break into tears telling them. I don't know if we would have ever found him. I really don't. Without them finding it. The specter who had eluded all efforts to identify him for decades Now, apparently, maybe, had a name So, what was the name? Dripps, Brian Dripps Brian Dripps And lo and behold, it was a name that had come up right after the murder Back in 1996 Detective Captain John Marley His name had been listed in there as a neighbor that had lived across the street. Detective Lieutenant Sage Albright. So this neighbor, he said that he had been drinking heavily that night, couldn't remember where he had been or what he had been doing, and basically couldn't account for anything that had happened on the night that Angie was murdered.

1:13:10Was there a DNA sample for this fellow? No. No DNA test for a neighbor with no alibi? Why the heck was that? He had left the area shortly after that. He had moved to another state and then, as far as we know, had never returned to the Idaho Falls area. An excuse? Not really. Now retired Detective Jeff Pratt, the man who from the start thought DNA would solve the case. It was really quite unnerving, you know, to think that we were that close and should have been doing that work, you know. It's investigating 101. It is. Now, clearly the priority was to get a sample of DNA from this Dripps character.

1:13:53This man, right here. At the time all this was going down, Brian Dripps was 53 years old, an ex-Marine and father of three. He now lived 300 miles from Idaho Falls in a town called Caldwell, just west of Boise. So those detectives decamped to Caldwell. I could not have had a more motivated staff. We're going to go solve a murder. We're going to go solve a 25-year-old murder. And on May 10th, 2019, just a month shy of 23 years since the murder of Angie Dodge, and after days and nights of surveillance, they watched Brian Dripps flick a cigarette butt from his car. Three of us were on that cigarette butt so fast that would make your head spin.

1:14:37We didn't care whether a car was going to take us out or not. Off it went to the Idaho State Crime Lab. And the very next day, the captain got a call from his lieutenant. And, geez, I almost want to tear up. I'm trying to keep it calm and collected here. When he called me, he said, I just got a call from the lab. It's him. Those are the words. It's him. and hung up the phone with him. And I remember just going, my gosh, this is huge. What this means for the family and what this means for our city. The case you were on from the very beginning as a patrolman, you're getting the result finally all those years later.

1:15:21Yeah. Yeah. So what do you do about that? You got to go arrest the guy, right? We do. And four days later, Brian Dripps was led into an interview room. Well, what questions do you have for us to begin with? Well, where did it start? Yeah, what's basically going on in that murder case? It's the only thing I can think of that happened when I was living there. Was it odd that the suspect himself brought up the crime? From what I remember that night, I was drinking with my buddies and woke up the next day and there was a cop car sitting up front that went to work. And that's all I really remember.

1:16:03But of course, it wasn't. He claimed he didn't know a thing, except for what he'd seen watching Dateline. There was that kid that they did arrest and got charged with it, and the mom, I guess, said that he wasn't. He never did it. Four hours, Dripps kept denying that he killed Angie Dodge. And then... So you would just be completely shocked if we had your DNA at the scene? Yep.

1:16:41We have your DNA at the scene. Yep. That's why we're here. At that moment specifically, he wanted to take another break. We took him out of the interview room, brought him out into the balcony so that he could smoke. And that's when he told us that he didn't mean to kill her. And then back inside, it all spilled out. I went to paper. Because I was almost stuck on coke and drunk. How did you get in? I just walked through the door. Did she say anything to you? Did she, was she screaming, calling for help? I don't think, I don't recall that she did, no. But she fought? Yes, I mean, and I think that's when it ended up killing her.

1:17:34What did you use? My knife. Was she moving at all when you left? I don't remember. I was on top of her and I took my thing and then I left. And just like that, the murder of Angie Dodge was solved. But there was one more big task for Brian Tripps. To convince detectives that the other man who confessed to the crime and still had a conviction on his record, that is Chris Tapp, was truly innocent. If you were trying to convince us that nobody else was there, how would you do that?

1:18:28Before detectives were finished interrogating now confessed killer Brian Dripps, they had to put one huge issue to rest. Did Dripps commit the crime alone? Or was someone else, say Christopher Tapp? Did someone go with you over there? No. Drips stood firm. If you're trying to take the blame and there was other people involved or... The answers seemed clear. So... Well, Brian, at this point, it's our obligation to tell you that you are under arrest. Can I smoke my last cigarette before you do that? Frankly, I was a bit surprised. Really, I believe that we were going to find out that he had some relationship with Chris Tapp.

1:19:19Did you realize that whole time that they still thought you were a guilty man? I got to watch the Outer Falls Police Department detectives try to lead that man down a path towards me. And he did what was right. He finally did what was the complete total truth and said he acted alone and I had nothing to do with it. It must have been a nerve-wracking experience to start watching this guy not knowing what he was going to say exactly. It was rough. Because, again, at the end of the day, to save himself, he might have been like, well, hey, yeah, I know Christopher Tapp. But thankful he was finally, you know, a man enough to admit what he did wrong.

1:19:48I'm appreciative for him finally being truthful. And just like that, the long black cloud of suspicion that had hung over Christopher Tapp and his River Kid friends for all those years vanished. And life was suddenly like sun after rain. Chris called me when the arrest had been made and said, they got him, Jer. They freaking got him. And the guy was right across the street. Right there. Maybe they didn't have enough Q-tips to do DNA to the neighbors or something. I just, I don't know. But it was pretty bad police work. But that was for another day. For now? Today we're here to announce that we have arrested Brian Lay Dripps for the murder and rape of Angie Dodge.

1:20:39Idaho Falls Police Chief Bryce Johnson made the announcement. Along with the woman without whom the crime might never have been solved, Angie's mother, Carol Dodge. I can't even express how hard this journey has been. And the hundreds of people that's been affected by one person's choice to take my daughter's life. Including, of course, the man who'd spent more than two decades in prison after confessing falsely that he killed Angie, Chris Tapp. I got asked the question, do you owe Chris Tapp an apology? But we hadn't done that follow-up investigation yet to verify what Dripps had said. So I kind of said at the time that, hey, right now we're here to talk about Dripps, and the day will come in which we need to talk about Chris Tapp.

1:21:32It was two months later, in July 2019, when, in the words of the police chief, Chris Tapp finally got his day. You nervous about this? Yes. Very ignorant. We rode with Chris to the courthouse for what was potentially the day of his exoneration, if the judge signed off. We can walk in, the state's in, you know, agreeance with, you know, my actual innocence, everything else, but the judge can be like, maybe I don't agree. And then where do we go from there? Well, we're about to find out. Yeah. We are. At his attorney's office, Chris Tapp was greeted by many of his oldest friends, those river kids, wearing t-shirts bearing a message they'd repeated ever since the start.

1:22:23Innocent. We told you so. They all marched with Chris to the courthouse, a block away. Those present included Jeremy and Russ and George. From my perspective, all of those white t-shirts walking into that courthouse, was middle fingers in the air. We told you so.

1:22:48Here's what happened when Chris walked into the courtroom. Carol Dodge was there, of course. Call rise. The prosecution went first. In my view, there's clear and convincing evidence the defendant was convicted of a crime for which he did not commit. Based upon that, we're going to move to dismiss, to vacate the jury verdict, and moved to dismiss that case. Brent Dodge, Angie's brother, spoke for the family. This day, I think, is a day of healing for all of us. It was then time for Chris to speak. I'm thankful that I've been given this second chance of life. I'm thankful for the Carol Dodge, Brent Dodge, the Dodge family, for continuing to push forward.

1:23:41to believe it in me when they actually saw the truth, I am so grateful and humbled to be their friend. And then, finally, the judge. So I am going to grant the state's motion to dismiss both the rape conviction and the murder conviction on the basis of actual innocence of Mr. Tapp. As far as this court is concerned, you are innocent of the convictions that you've been living under for the past 20-plus years. So I don't think any of us can really put ourselves in your place. But I'm just glad that that can be corrected at this time. And we're off the record in this matter.

1:24:29It was finished. Chris Tapp had become, according to the Innocence Project, the first person in the world to be exonerated by genetic genealogy. If our story ended here, well, that ending might be a happy one. But it doesn't end here. And this ending? Well, it's more Greek tragedy than anything else. I don't know if there's a way to make sense of this.

1:25:10Nearly a quarter century to the day after he raped and murdered Angie Dodge, Brian Dripps shuffled into a courtroom in Idaho Falls. He'd cut a deal and pleaded guilty. This was sentencing day. Why would a long, 25 years of pure hell Brian Dripps, you put us through. Carol Dodge told us she was too torn up to sit down with us for a final interview about her struggle to get justice for her daughter, Angie. But in court, she did not hold back. You, Brian Dripps, deserve eternal hell. You better look up at me instead of looking at that table. We have to go through 25 years of pure hell trying to find justice.

1:26:02We're looking for you. Before sentence was pronounced, Dripps spoke to the Dodge family. I'm sorry. I know you're not forgiving. I'm sorry. The judge sentenced Dripps to life in prison. he must serve 20 years before he's eligible for parole, in 2039, when he will be 73 years old. But nothing else will be in recess, thank you. The two original lead detectives charged with finding Angie Dodge's killer were not in court that day. Ken Brown, who's retired, did not respond to her questions about Chris Tapp's exoneration or about the failure to collect Drip's DNA. and Jarrett Furman, the former mayor, died from Alzheimer's a year after Dripps was sent to prison.

1:26:55He was 60 years old. As for the fully exonerated, actually innocent Chris Tapp, what word would he use to describe himself after all he's been through? I've been a little lucky. Lucky enough that you guys picked up the case. Lucky enough that, you know, the Dodge family started to believe in my innocence. So again, I take it as luck. Yeah. It's really amazing, isn't it? I mean, you were a pariah. You were that drug-addled bad kid from the riverbank. Oh, yeah. Who with his bad friends did this terrible thing. It was nice for people to finally see the truth. If it wasn't for this show, through all this bad luck, I guess I'd probably still be sitting in an 8x10 cell right now.

1:27:39And once he was out, Chris Tapp became a bit of an activist. It is my honor to be here today. In 2021, he watched as Idaho's governor signed a law providing compensation for the wrongfully convicted. The law provided Chris more than a million dollars. He lobbied for similar laws in other states. And he filed a lawsuit against the city of Idaho Falls and its police department. Chris settled it for an apology from City Hall and$11.7 million. Still... It doesn't take away my father passing away while I was inside. It doesn't take away the chance that I had the ability to have my own children. They stole that away from me.

1:28:19So I just don't see how it's fair for them to walk away completely clean and I have to live this nightmare. I had talked to Chris often through the years, found him rather, well, sweet. The kid who loved his mother and his old friends. And for whom there might finally be a storybook ending. but no this wasn't that kind of story that marriage after his release didn't work out and then in august 2023 as he and his wife stacy were in the middle of their divorce she went for a ride in her new corvette and was killed in a wreck it hurts that i know she won't be here for her kids or her family and honest truth you know i'll never get the closure i want with her either.

1:29:09It hurts. This conversation was one month later in Chris's new home, September 2023. All right, done. And then the interview was over. Okay. It's been nice talking to you all these years. It's been amazing, Keith. I mean, like I said, here we are 11 years later, who would have thunk it? An interview that ended with TAP making a vow. It's nice to see it to its conclusion. Me too. Because this is my last one. I will never not, this is my last interview. I will never talk about the edgy Dodge case again. And so we packed up our cameras, not thinking much of it. Assuming that's just something Chris said, something we all say from time to time.

1:29:51I'm done with that, never again. Only this time? Well. Six weeks later, Chris was visiting Las Vegas overnight for a car show. So what I had heard happen is that he was in his hotel room in Las Vegas, and he was walking through the suite and tripped and fell and hit his head on the coffee table. He was rushed to the hospital with serious head injuries. And a week later, Nate Eaton, news director of the East Idaho News, heard his phone. It was a Sunday night when I got a text message saying, have you heard that Chris Tapp died? And I said to my wife, Chris Tapp died. And she's like, what? It was true.

1:30:40Chris Tapp was 47 years old. Days later, Carol and Destiny sat side by side as Tapp's shocked family and friends gathered in Idaho Falls for his funeral. Chris's life being cut short is the exact opposite of what anyone expected from Chris. Chris had ideas of what he was going to do for the rest of forever. I love him very much, and I miss him very much. All of his old closest friends are hurting really bad right now. And then, January 2024, like a bolt from the blue, this from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Through the course of the suspicious death investigation, LVMPD homicide detectives have learned Tapp was in an altercation inside a room at a resort before being located and transported to the hospital.

1:31:40The Clark County Coroner's Office has since ruled Tapp's death a homicide as a result of blunt force trauma to the head. In March of 2024, Daniel Rodimer, a former professional wrestler, was charged with murdering Chris Tapp during a party at the resort. Rodimer pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. I don't know if there's a way to make sense of this. It's just so incomprehensible. One day, years ago, we encountered a grieving mother who was trying to do something we had never heard of before. Free the man convicted of killing her daughter. And she, this force of nature, against all odds that seemed insurmountable, succeeded.

1:32:30But life and history are stubbornly unmoldable and weren't finished yet. With the story of the River Kid, Christopher Tapp. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.

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