Angie Dodge: The Heartbreaking Murder in Idaho and Carol Dodge's Fight for Chris Tapp

In conjunction with our new episode on Chris Tapp’s tragic death, we are re-releasing our original episode about the heartbreaking murder of Angie Dodge. This story is set in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and dives deep into the details of Angie’s unsolved murder and the tireless, decades-long fight her mother, Carol Dodge, waged for justice. Carol’s fight was not only for her daughter but also for Chris Tapp, who was wrongfully convicted and served years in prison for the crime.

This episode is the essential first part of a complex and moving story. We highly encourage you to listen to both this re-release and the new episode on Chris Tapp. Together, they follow the dramatic twists and turns of this case that eventually led to Chris’s exoneration and, tragically, to his untimely death. Both episodes are necessary to fully grasp the complexities of the investigation and the ongoing search for true justice.

Check-out bonus episodes up on Spotify and Apple podcast now!

Get new episodes a day early and ad free, plus chat episodes at ⁠⁠Patreon.com/momsandmysteriespodcast⁠⁠

Check-out ⁠⁠Moms and Mysteries⁠⁠ to find links to our tiktok, youtube, twitter, instagram and more.

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Hey guys, Melissa here. We're Rereleasing our 2018 episode on Angie Dodge's Tragic Murder, but we've also got something new out there for you today. Along with this episode, we're releasing a brand new episode on Chris Tapp, who was originally convicted of Angie's murder, but later exonerated and then murdered himself.

And these two episodes go hand in hand, so be sure to listen to both to get the full story behind the Heartbreaking case and the journey of Justice.

So this story unfolds in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Melissa has googled this city for us. Look, it's a statement now. It's not a question. Yeah. Did you? It's you did. Yeah. So there's not actually a ton of information I could find on Idaho Falls. Um, as of 2016, there were around 60,000 residents in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

And this is from a Wikipedia entry. So some 13-year-old could have written it, but it made me laugh. Idaho Falls was [00:01:00] originally named Eagle Rock, but in 1891, after. A huge drop in population in an effort to attract farmers. The name was actually changed to Idaho Falls as farmers were worried about both eagles and rocks.

Oh. So it makes sense, but like, oh, I guess if you put those two together and you're a farmer, that would kind of stink. Yeah. Like somebody's gonna to eat your food and Oh, also there's nowhere to plant anything 'cause of all these rocks. So this is an Idaho fun fact. Like I said, there was just not a whole lot on Idaho Falls.

Um. This one sort of broke my heart. In Idaho law forbids a citizen to give another citizen a box of candy that weighs more than 50 pounds. Oh, that's a terrible law. Keep your hands out of my confectionary goodness. So that's all the really. Facts I found for we Googled the city. We need an outro. There isn't one, so just pretend.

Play. Play music in your head. We'll keep going. All right, so Angie Dobb was born on December 21st, 1977 in Vancouver, Washington. She [00:02:00] was the youngest of four children to her parents, Jack and Carol, and she was their only daughter. Her brothers recall her birth as a big event in the family. I remember them saying like their dad was like running, and they were just so excited.

They have this sister in their family, this little girl. Early in life, her parents and teachers recognized her remarkable intelligence, and by high school, she was tutoring younger children in both math and English. She graduated high school in 1995 with honors and briefly attended Idaho State University.

Angie was a lover of the outdoors and enjoyed spending time in nature. Camping with her family, and sometimes this was in re remote locations, was one of her favorite ways to relax. As a younger child, she enjoyed playing for hours with her Cabbage Patch dolls and spending time with her cousins. Some people might feel cheated out of their birthday if they were born so close to Christmas.

I would be the biggest brat. My birthday is December 1st, and I'm already bitter about that. Yeah. And it's like, it's far enough away from Christmas that it shouldn't be a problem, but I always like to complain because it's like in the middle of everything. Yeah. It's right after Thanksgiving and then it is before Christmas, [00:03:00] and so, oh, it's an afterthought, Mandy.

I know no one cares about my birthday ever, but, uh, Angie actually loved being born around Christmas and she totally embraced it and loved having large family gatherings to celebrate her birthday and the holiday at the same time. Angie had a very close relationship with her mom, so it was especially hard on them both when Angie got her own apartment when she turned 18, she had been working hard at a beauty supply store to be able to afford her own place, as well as a new Chevy that she had just recently bought, um, to replace her first car, which she affectionately referred to as the Oldsmobile boat.

And I think we can all picture exactly what car that was. Yeah, I know exactly. I am. My dad used to drive like something similar. It wasn't an old mobile, but it was like a boat car. Right. So I can see, um, and yeah, he wanted me to drive it for like, he wanted to give it to me as my first car. And I was like, no.

Yeah, I don't want that. Yeah, my parents bought this. I don't know why this brings this up to me, but it was just horrific. Um. There. My [00:04:00] parents had this, like told us they were buying this van and they were so excited to tell us, well there was this one kid in my class in the sixth grade, I shouldn't say grades in a grade I went to, and he was so nerdy and so terrible and everybody said I liked him.

Nobody liked me, I didn't like him, but I was so concerned, like he had the ugliest van in the world and I have to make up a name. I'm gonna call him Tom Smith. Wow. I'm creative. But I was like, mom, did you get a Tom Smith van? And she was like, no, I, you know, it's this van, blah, blah, blah. And she drives up in it and it is one of those with the motor, it like slams down like this in the front and then there's a motor next to it.

So the radiator overheated one time and it's literally overheating in the van with you. But I was like, oh my gosh. Is a Tom Smith fan? And I like wondered to drop me off way down the road. We can edit all this out, but continue. Cool story. Cool Story broke. So Angie had been living on her own for three weeks when the reality of adulthood kind of hit her hard, and she went to visit her [00:05:00] mom for some comfort.

On June 12th, 1996, she and her mom, Carol, had a talk about how much she loved living in her new place, but it was just hard being on her own and growing up, and I totally understand that. I remember when I first was starting out and actually I ended up moving back home. Um, after I lived on my own for a little while, then I moved back with my parents because it's hard.

And when you're 18 it's hard. Yeah. So Carol and Angie had this kind of, um, this special moment between each other and they hugged. And, um, Carol says that, that during that conversation Angie kind of just like laid her head on her, on her mom's shoulder and, and it was just like a loving exchange that they had.

So then they hugged and then Angie left to go back to her apartment around 10:20 PM that night. Neither of them knew that this would be, um, their last moments together. So the next morning, Angie was a no-show at her job, and some of her worried coworkers decided to drive over to her apartment and check up on her, and that's when they made the horrifying discovery that their friend had been killed in a violent attack.

Officers arrived to find a brutal [00:06:00] crime scene. It appeared that Angie had been sexually assaulted and then stabbed 14 times. There was no signs of. They did notice that her clothing was halfway off and they found semen on her body. She had many defensive wounds, which showed that she had put up a fight for her life.

Police found no signs of forced entry. Angie's boyfriend at the time was out of town, so detectives began investigating other possible suspects in her murder. They were able to pull a complete DNA profile from the semen left at the scene, but unfortunately it did not turn up any hits in their databases.

Police began requesting DNA swabs from dozens of local men who they believed could have committed such a crime, as well as from everyone that Angie knew or had a connection with. But none of these men were a match. The trail started to go cold after months had passed without any arrests and any hope of finding anyone who had done this was starting to dwindle.

But then on January 6th, 1997, six months after her murder, an acquaintance of Angie's named Ben Hobbs was arrested in Nevada on charges of sexually assaulting a woman at knife point. Due to the [00:07:00] similarity in the type of crime committed against Angie, they felt that he was a solid suspect in her murder, and they took him into custody.

While Ben Hobbs was being held in Nevada Police back in Idaho Falls were working diligently to try to connect him to Angie's murder. As part of this process, they began requesting interviews with friends of Ben's in hopes that one of them would be able to implicate him in this particular crime. One of the men that they brought in was named Christopher Tap, and he was a 20-year-old, um, with I guess some might say he had a questionable past really.

He, he just wasn't kind of involved in drugs whenever he was younger. So Chris T's life started out pretty typical. He had a pretty good childhood and a good mom who loved him and wanted to help him succeed. But at age 13, he started smoking pot, and by age 16 he had moved on to a much harder drug, uh, meth.

Eventually he became a high school dropout and spent his days getting as high as possible, hanging out by the river with all the other quote unquote bad kids. This is what, uh, this was in his words, you know, these bad kids that, [00:08:00] right. His mom warned him about, you know, don't hang around those kids. So when the police first contacted him about coming in for an interview in Angie's murder, he initially thought that they were just bringing him in on something related to his drug use, and he was stunned when they started talking about this.

Terrible, like brutal murder. His mom did not want him to speak to police, and she was actually very scared about that and kind of tried to warn him and say, you don't need to get involved in this. You know as much as you can, like you just need to stay out of it. But he. Kind of told her he didn't have anything to hide and he didn't have any reason not to talk to the police.

Uh, so he agreed to, to do an interview and also to submit his DNA so that he could have his name cleared. This would end up being a choice that would haunt him for the rest of his life. That's so tough 'cause you think I'm doing the right thing. I have, I didn't do anything and they'll, they'll know I didn't have anything to do with this.

So. You think, and he's young. He's a young kid. 20 is young. Yeah. I mean, you don't know. And, and you're very trusting of the process and everything at that point. Right. So you're like, all I have to do is just give him [00:09:00] my DNA and they'll be able to see that. Right? It wasn't me, you know? Very obvious. And it should be over, you know, at that point.

Right. Uh, before we get into the rest of the story, we're gonna take a break for a quick word from this week's sponsor. Detectives first interviewed Chris on January 7th, 1997, and he was adamant that he had absolutely nothing to do with the murder and had no real connection to Angie at all. But the police weren't buying his story, and they began feeding him information and details about the murder in a pretty sketchy way.

He was interrogated for over 20 hours in subject to numerous polygraph tests, which police insisted proof that he was being deceptive with the story he was giving them. So one thing, uh. I had noticed on, there was like a, it was a Dateline special and I had seen that years ago, but then I saw the Keith Morrison, um, who killed Angie Dodge.

It's like the ID special. Oh yeah. Yeah. So it was like the extended dateline basically. Um, and the guy. Who was interrogating him had actually been a police officer at his school, so, you know, in high school and stuff, he had seen [00:10:00] this officer. So he had like a trusting relationship with this guy. So he has no reason to think this guy.

Could be leading me in the wrong direction. Right. You know, so it's not just a cop, it's this cop. He actually had a relationship of some, you know, a friendship with, um, from high school. So after the first few days of interrogation, days of interrogation, which blows my mind, Chris began to crack and he started telling the officers what he believed they wanted to hear.

You hear that all the time and things like this. Uh, four days after the interrogation began, Chris found himself arrested and charged with being an accessory to a felony. Chris's story was never consistent though. At first he told the police that he could give them the name of Angie's Rapist, but he eventually gave them several names, including Ben Hobbes.

Jeremy Sarge, and a man he only referred to as Mike. When pathologists tested the DNA from Ben Hobbes and Jeremy Sarge and realized it didn't match the DNA at the crime scene, they insisted that Chris was lying and they had a previous immunity deal that was. Based on him telling the truth the entire time.

Right? And [00:11:00] because at this point, the DNA doesn't match well, he's lying, and therefore the immunity deal is off the table. Right? After several more hours of interrogation and polygraph testing, Kris finally confessed to the murder. He told police that he had held Angie down while Ben Hobbes and another man sexually assaulted her, and fatally stabbed her.

He even stated to police that he himself had used the knife to cut. Angie. Chris was arrested on January 29th, 1997, and charged with rape and first degree murder. There was just one small or huge, if you ask me problem. The DNA they collected from Chris did not match the DNA at the crime scene either, which meant that someone other than Chris was in Angie's apartment and had assaulted her.

Even though there was only one person's DNA collected at the crime scene, police insisted that it must have just come from a third unknown person. So they're not even, they're just saying like, we know you did it, and we know that this other guy, Ben Hobbs, had something to do with it. And the only reason that your DNA has nothing to do, you know, that doesn't mean you [00:12:00] weren't there, it just means somebody else was also there.

Right. And so, but it's like, what? Like, and the guy who has actually been arrested in another state for sexually assaulting, they were like, oh no, he didn't do it. What, like I didn't even get how that guy got off so easy. Like Right. Like, but you're still going after him. His, his DNA is not there either. How?

Right. This guy has a history and this one does. Yeah. It made no sense to me. No, it didn't make any sense. It was really, it was strange to watch how like it all like kind of went from like one point to like another Yeah. And you're just kind of like, how did we get here? Like to this like with him? Yeah. It was like they focused on it and they, that was it.

That was just the route they were going and there was just no turning back. Right. There was absolutely no evidence to support this idea that three people had committed this crime, but the detectives marched on with the story as if it was the truth. When it came time for Chris to go to trial, Angie's mother Carol was relieved to finally be getting justice for her daughter, and she was fiercely angry when Chris stood up in court and pled not guilty.

At this point, she's [00:13:00] thinking she only knows what the police have told her, and they're like, this is the guy. We've got the guy he's confessed. He's confessed, right? He confessed to doing it, and so she is like. As a mother, I could see where she would be horrified whenever he stood up and was like, not guilty.

Yeah, like after he already confessed to this murder. Um, but his defense was that he had given this false confession due to manipulation tactics and lies fed to him by the detectives, and then coerced back out of him on tape. He maintained his story that he had nothing to do with the murder, but after 13 hours of deliberating the jury found him guilty of aiding and abetting the rape and murder of Angie Dodge, and he was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in connection with the crime.

But this is not where the story ends. As we talked about previously, there was absolutely no forensic evidence that Chris Tapp was anywhere near the scene of Angie's murder, which was a big problem for Carol, who eventually came to believe in his innocence. I. Love Carol. Me too. Love Carol. You're, I told Mandy, I text her like as I'm watching the Dateline thing, I'm like, I've, I've cried a thousand times.

Very sad. And it's very sad. All this lady sad. Yeah. Yeah. She's [00:14:00] just so, she loved her daughter so much, and you can relate to that as a parent, as a, you know, relative, as a parent, child, anything like that. If you have that kind of love in your life, it's, it was excruciating To watch her going through that and then to realize that she, she had to come to that realization that.

This guy that I wanted in jail that did this to my daughter, I was wrong. Yeah, that's a, I have chills. Yeah, that is a lot to take in. So she actually essentially launches her own investigation at this point into Angie's murder, and she puts over 60,000 miles on her truck searching for answers. She spends countless hours reviewing the interrogation tapes and the forensic lab reports, and came to a conclusion that Angie's killer was still on the loose, and that an innocent man was serving time for murder that he did not commit.

One thing that stood out to Carol from a lab report was in regards to two pubic hairs they'd found on Angie's body. The report stated that the hairs were similar or same as the victim, but Carol thought that was strange considering how precise DNA [00:15:00] testing was, and she wondered how it could be an either or thing.

The hairs either belonged to Angie or they did not. At this point, Carol contacted a renowned DNA expert named Greg Hampi Kian, and asked for his help in finding out what happened to her daughter. Greg had previously worked as a fruit fly geneticist. What is that? What is I that, but I finally got through that word, took me 35 times.

I just wanna know how dare you is I know that, I mean, that's like, do you grow up wanting to be that? Yeah. Or do you just like later in life are like, well that's, that's pretty cool. Like, yeah. I just, I mean, fruit flies are like the most annoying little things ever. Yeah. I can't imagine dedicating my life to like, not exterminating them to learning about their genetics.

Like Yeah. That, no. Yeah, that's kind of weird. I don't know if he would've been my top of my choice for help there. Yeah. So his, uh, career path actually changed when he was able to. Assist on A DNA case that eventually led to a man being exonerated and released from prison. [00:16:00] His calling in life became clear and he began doing more work on DNA cases in 2011.

He was part of the team that helped exonerate Amanda Knox, and he eventually went on to found the Idaho Innocence Project, whose mission is to correct and prevent wrongful convictions through research, education, and litigation. I freaking. Love the Innocence Project, all of them. They're just so amazing.

And if you ever are looking for a place to give money and you just are rich and you don't wanna send it to us, then I would definitely recommend sending it to your local Innocence Project. They do amazing, amazing work. Yeah. Carol asked the police department to look for the hairs that were stored in evidence, and she wanted to send them to a special crime lab where DNA testing could either prove or disprove that Chris or Ben Hobbs were the ones that were in Angie's apartment.

The results that came in were pretty clear in terms of the DNA evidence. There was only one person who had committed this crime and the long held police theory that there were three people responsible was just. Ridiculous that that wasn't, there was nothing [00:17:00] whatsoever to support that. In 2014, over a decade after Angie's murder, Carol pressured the police to use a controversial search process, um, involving like familial DNA.

So this is, um, where they go into their databases and they look for, they put the DNA in, but they're not looking for an exact match. They're just looking for possibly a relative of Right. Whoever's DNA, they have. So she, so a lot of, uh, states actually do not allow this kind of search process because there really are some serious privacy concerns, um, as it pertains to police being able to go in and do that.

And like Right. They're, they're essentially looking into, well, it's not your DNA, it's family. Right, exactly. But this op this has come up recently with Golden State Killer. Right. And like, this is now becoming more and more of a thing. But when, a couple years back when this was going on. It wasn't really like a widely known, huge thing.

Yeah. But now it's becoming more and more of a thing that a lot of police agencies are using this technique to track down. [00:18:00] Right. People they haven't been able to find for years and years and years. Right. And, uh, very controversial stuff. And I'm gonna just keep a lot of my opinions to myself. Oh, you will keep them to yourself.

Or they will go out in editing. So Idaho happens to be one of the states that does not allow this type of search in their criminal databases. But this guy, Greg Ian, saw a loophole and suggested something that really is even more controversial, which was to search public databases. So these are like your ancestry dot com's, 23 and me, um, any of these ones where you spit in a tube and send off your DNA to wherever it gets.

And, um, you guys know I don't, I'm a conspiracy person. I personally won't be giving my DNA to anyone. I, my personal endorsement is that you keep your DNA to yourself. Um, but I understand Melissa's rolling her eyes at me because I know there are situations where sometimes it's a good thing and whatever, you know, like the Golden State Killer, how that turned out.

That, but I [00:19:00] mean, I, I get it 'cause you're not giving consent. It's somebody in your family. But you know what I say, don't murder somebody. Maybe don't do that and maybe, okay. Yeah. But I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Okay. Yeah. But these people sometimes are having their DNA and like they're having an investigation on them.

They don't even know about it. Yeah. And they're not even the ones who are guilty. Right. And so, and that's where, I mean, it is like a privacy concern, like that the police can like use your DNA to track on someone else. Yeah. It's like, that's cool if you end up catching a, a murderer. But like, also, I don't think it's cool that you.

We're like looking into like me and my whole family, like yeah. Without me even being aware of it. Like that's not, yeah, no, I get that. Well, it's not you giving consent. I feel like if you send your DNA off and you put it in one of those sites, yeah. They can, you know, check you out, but. Every person in your family tree hasn't consented that to that, so I get it.

But it's one of those catch 20 twos. There's really good stuff that can happen with it. And then also it's a violation of your privacy and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And blah. Oh, it's just a little thing. A little violation of your privacy. It's just the constitution, but [00:20:00] blah, blah, blah. No, I'm kidding. So in the summer of 2014, um, they searched the DNA database ancestry.com, which at the time was all public.

Um, anybody could search the. That's crazy. Yeah, I know. But Ancestry has since made their database private. They surprisingly had a close match when they did this search and they believe that they had located a relative of Angie's killer. It was an extremely close match with 34 out of 35 matching alleles.

And I'm not a scientist, but that sounds. Pretty close. Um, so they obtained a warrant for, um, ancestry to reveal the identity of the person, and they learned that it belonged to a man named Michael Usri, Sr. They knew that he himself could not have been the killer, otherwise it would've been a perfect match.

So they started honing their sights in on his son Michael Usri Jr. As a potential suspect. When police looked Michael Jr. Up on Facebook, they quickly realized that he had connections in Idaho Falls. As they continued their preliminary [00:21:00] quest for information about him, they also discovered that he was a filmmaker who specialized in sinister mo murder movies.

They remember back to when Chris Taf had mentioned the name Mike in the interrogation room and wondered if this man, Michael Re, could be the mike. They've been missing all these years, or he just gave a basic name to get you off of his back. Yeah, it's one of those two things. Yeah. Detectives brought Michael Jr.

In for questioning, where they asked him about his connections to Idaho Falls and whether he had taken a trip there around the time of Angie's murder. He told them that he had gone up there with his friends for one night and they had driven through Idaho Falls on their way to Rexburg, Idaho. Huge red flags started going up for the detectives as they immediately pulled out a DNA swab and collected a sample of Michael Junior's DNA and sent him on his way.

Michael Re's light was turned upside down at this point. He knew he hadn't committed a murder, but here he was with the police hot on his trail, and there's another man claiming, Hey, I'm in jail and I'm innocent, so you've gotta think, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get railroaded next. Yeah. He spent whole days inside his home too, scared to leave a house.

He wanted answers as to why the police felt that he was a suspect in this [00:22:00] terrible crime. So he started to do some research of his own. He found out that his father had participated in a genealogy project at his church many years prior to this. Crazy yes. The DNA that was collected from his father was then put into a database that was later purchased by ancestry.com.

At this point in time, this was the only instance of police officially requesting that ancestry actually share the personal information, um, from a DNA profile that. They had a hit on. And since this story has taken place, they've actually made their database private, as I said before, so it can no longer be accessed by police or the public, um, unless they are compelled to do so via a search warrant.

On January 13th, 2014, Michael Junior received an email from the police letting him know that his DNA did not match the DNA at their crime scene, and he was cleared of all suspicion, but the experience. Obviously left him traumatized and he went public with his story in a documentary. I'm sorry. They sent him an email that said you're not, yeah, [00:23:00] you're not accused of murder.

Yeah, and it was like the email said, I'm like. Your DNA didn't match the crime scene, and then in parentheses, like, as you already know, like it was just such a like informal, like that's like an evite. You'd send somebody like, yeah, it's an evite, like press decline. You're no longer, yeah. I don't know. That is kind of strange.

A strange way of, of letting someone know that they're, I've like a phone call. Yeah. I'd like a phone call or maybe he didn't answer his calls. I probably wouldn't need to either. So he made this documentary, um, he started making this documentary so that he could share his personal story of his experience dealing with the police and this whole DNA fiasco.

And um, although it was supposed to just be his story, his focus actually shifted after he met Angie's mother, Carol. And he was able to form a close bond with her, and then he decided to. Change the direction of the documentary and make it more about, um, just Angie's case in general, and to help Carol on her quest to learn the true identity of her killer.

Since Chris Tapp has been in prison, he has appealed his [00:24:00] conviction to the Idaho Supreme Court and he's lost. He's filed for post-conviction relief five times, three of which failed and two of which were pending until just recently. There have been several documentaries on this case, including a two hour dateline, which is a Keith Morrison one like we talked about, um, and also on id, and they did a really, really good job on the ID one, just having so much extra information.

When the Dateline ran, a woman named Lori Hollinsworth saw it and immediately felt that Chris was innocent and wanted to reach out to him with a letter and offer to become an advocate for his case. After sending letters back and forth, the two realized they were in love and they got married in a quick ceremony that was done at the prison on July 28th, 2013.

Unfortunately, Lori died in a car accident. In January of 2016. That is so come on. And like the way he, like, I had read an article where he had been interviewed where Chris Tapp had been interviewed about and talked a little bit about, um, his wife and, you know, he just said that she like saw something in him that like he didn't even see and that she was like his rock basically.

Yeah. You know, and like that [00:25:00] she really believed in his innocence and um, that's just so heartbreaking that that. That happened, um, to her and she had two little girls and everything. We'll talk a little bit more, um, because I think he actually did get to meet them. Oh gosh. I have chills. I can't even deal with this story anymore, Mandy.

I know. It is really a terrible story. Later in the fall of 2016, Kris's lawyers came up with an idea and they asked Bonneville prosecuting attorney Daniel Clark about settling Kris's two pending appeals. The deal was that Kris's murder conviction would stay on his record, but the rape conviction would be dropped and he would be immediately released from prison.

For time served already on the murder conviction. He had already been in jail for 20 years. Um, so this would mean he would finally go home right away and he could live a life outside of a prison cell, but he would forever be labeled a convicted murderer for a crime. He did not do this part of the story made me so upset because I really wish there was more that could have done for him.

And he had like to really think about, like, think this through. Like, do I take this deal and. [00:26:00] There was one guy, I can't remember who it was exactly, who said I sat with him an hour on the day he was making the decision, begging him not to do it. But I understand all the reasons he did it. Like he can leave, but he's giving up a lot.

A lot. Yeah. And, and he was never guilty to begin with. Right. But he is still having to wear this scarlet letter forever, right? 'cause of taking this deal. That should have, he should have been out. Yeah. I mean, and I, the other option though, and like he said, like if I didn't. If I like rejected the deal, then he's like, what if I never could get out of prison?

Or, you know, he's like, I've been fighting it this whole time and I've never been able to get like anywhere with it. Right. You know? And so why, you know, why would I think that this wasn't like my one chance to actually get out of jail? And the immunity deal already blew up in his face. Right. You know, he had a somewhat of a shot before and that went, you know.

It is really upsetting though. I do wish there was more, but I mean also like he could really sue though if he had his conviction overturned because he was wrongfully imprisoned. So I feel like a little bit for like [00:27:00] the state, like that was kind of their way of saying like, okay, like we'll let you go, but.

Like, you can't, like now, you can't come back and sue us because you're still a terrible, a convicted murderer. Terrible. It's terrible. It's terrible. So Chris walked into the courtroom in handcuffs for the last time, and after just a few legal formalities, he was uncuffed and set free. He immediately went and hugged his mother and then Carol Dodge, who had become one of his biggest advocates, as we had said, um, after she had really hated him and believed that.

He was Angie's killer really for the first 10 years or so of his sentence. Um, so his first two stops after his release from prison were to his father's grave. His father had passed away while Chris was in prison and he was not given permission to attend the funeral. And again, it just makes me say like this poor guy has been through so much and yeah, like didn't deserve any of it.

Um, the next place he went after that was to visit his wife, Lori's family. And as I said, she had two little girls and um. So he got to meet them, meet her parents, and like he had said like with that, he said he wanted them to like see that he was a real [00:28:00] person, you know, and like that they like, he really did like care about her and like they had this relationship and everything.

And so that was kind of like closure for him, I guess. You know, having to go through these like terrible losses while he's behind bars, it's like so awful. Yeah. I saw the whole time whenever he's, when they're in the. Uh, courthouse, and he's hugging Angie's mom and he's hugging his mom. And his mom keeps saying to him like, Carol's the reason you're out.

Like, she, she did this. You know, really? She's like, if you have the victim's mom advocating for something, like, I know this. It did not, he did not do this. That's huge. Like she's giving up a lot. But then the flip side of that, on her side, if there's this convicted killer there. Are the police. The police aren't going after anybody else, right?

Somebody's being charged, somebody's serving time. So why are they gonna do this? So it's important on her side to also, I guess, flip the conviction. I love that lady so much. Me too. She's, and that's what she said, like, she's never gonna stop, like, fighting. And I don't believe that she ever will, never, ever, [00:29:00] ever, like, I mean, she's, she's very determined to like, figure out who, who did this.

Yeah. And we'll have, um, her memorial site up on our thing. Yes. Please, please, please look at it. Please look at all the information on there. And we're not like. Big advocates on our show whatsoever. But man, like if you, if we have so many people listening, just take a look at it. Take a look. Yeah. And there's some contact information there even for like, um, anonymous leads or anything.

Yeah. You know, you never know. You don't, you really don't ever know. And it really is a, it's, it's a nice, um, tribute website to her. There's a video on there with pictures and everything. Yeah. And they play, um. It's a Kenny Chesney song. Um, who You'd be Today I think, no, I can't Uhuh, I, I don't put music on websites, but that would, I started watching it and I couldn't even make it through.

I really couldn't. So Chris Tap now lives back in Idaho Falls, which kind of surprised me 'cause I feel like I would absolutely never go back there. But I guess if that's where your roots are and that's where you have support his is there and everything. Right. And so he actually took a job, he did find a job with a construction company [00:30:00] in a neighboring state, but for his own privacy, he, he didn't like.

Give details on where that was. So Carol Dodge says that she will never give up searching for her daughter's killer. And as Mandy said, we definitely don't think she will. And I really hope in her lifetime, you know, somebody is found for this. And, um, she's made it, her life's mission to see that he gets caught one day.

She talked about, um, in the Dateline that. There are days where she says, I can't do this anymore. And you know, a few days later something nudges her to start again. She considers Chris Tapp another victim. In this case, police believe for a while that the killer must be someone in the S3 family tree, but science says that's not always the case.

And on July 12th, 2017, the Idaho Falls. Police department put out a press release stating that they were 87.63% sure that the DNA from the crime scene did not match the S3 family, and so their names were cleared. Here's one thing I thought about. So sure. They've gone through, like everybody in their family.

You have no idea if like. Somebody in there stepped out with somebody [00:31:00] else and had an affair and there's an illegitimate child. Right. And that's the person that, you know what I mean? Right. Like it could Yeah, that's true. Not saying it's in that family at all, but I could see how that could happen in cases where, um, there's a child that's may give up for adoption and that's not totally out in the open, and that's the person that did it.

Right. You can't chase. But you're not, it's not connected to like the rest of the family tree. Right, exactly. So as we said, a memorial site has been set up in Angie's Honor, and you can find that@angiedodge.com. Please, please, please go visit that site. Turn off the music if you don't wanna cry. Actually, you're gonna cry anyway.

Yeah, but if you need to cry, sometimes I just need to cry. That's the kind of thing you need to go to. Yes, there are links there to some of the documentaries and news articles featured in this story, if you'd like to check those out and learn a few more details. And of course, we will link everything in our show notes as usual.

Mandy. That was a terrible, sad, sad case. It was. I mean, it's like, it's one of those ups and downs I feel like it has. Yeah. Good and, and terrible and mostly terrible. Thank goodness for good attorneys like our dear friend [00:32:00] defense attorneys like Channing. Yes. The defense attorney in this case was amazing and and is still fighting to help Carol, even though he's not connected to Carol really?

You know? Yeah. Uh, connected to Chris, um, to help her find answers. So sometimes I think attorneys, defense attorneys get a bad rap because, you know, oh my goodness. How could somebody. Represent this person, but my goodness, there are all these people who need good attorneys, right. That are being wrongfully convicted, that do make false confessions and stuff, and where will they be if they don't have a good attorney?

They'll, they'll be in jail like this guy. Right? I, that's not why he was in jail, but you know, he may have never gotten out if he didn't have a good attorney, so, right. Ugh, this makes me feel too many things. I know. I know this was a very fascinating story, but definitely one of the more sad ones. I think we've [00:33:00] done.