The Snare, Episode 5: The Cigarette

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“These are the bins of evidence for me, and you dodge homicide case.”

There are over 400 pieces of evidence on this case. Jeff Pratt was one of the police officers who collected the evidence from Angie Dodge's apartment back in 1996. Years later, he looked back at some of what he found at the crime scene. Enreached for one of the clear plastic bins stacked high in a shelf in the Idaho Falls police station. This is, uh, this is going back for me, going back to that day when we collected on this.

We heard him back in our first episode.

He was the officer who took photos of the crime scene with his pentax camera. This is the purple sweatpants collected at the scene from the victim. Angie Dodge. This is a shirt collected at the scene.

“There was one thing out of all of the evidence that stayed on his mind, but it wasn't in those bins.”

Instead, he opened the door of a small freezer, jam packed with vanilla envelopes, and pulled out one in particular. This is, uh, the NA evidence biological evidence that we have to keep in this, this method to keep it preserved. This one in particular is the, is, uh, the an extract from the Dodge case. It's been more than 20 years since this DNA evidence was collected from Angie's room.

Brat says he always thought this evidence would unlock the case.

But he says after Christophe's conviction in 1998, believes on who's DNA that was seemed to go cold. Even though police knew the killer was still out there, someone who left their DNA at the crime scene, somehow seemed to have vanished. So, when the Idaho Falls Police Department called Jeff Pratt back in, decades later, to take another look at the case, you agreed.

It was, this was a case that really haunted me. I have run into Carol Dodge, uh, innumerable times. Um, we've spent hours chatting, and I really wanted to do the very best thing I could for her, and I wanted to close this for me as well. He was going to help a new set of investigators take on Angie's case,

and they turned to that DNA evidence again. Technology had advanced. Would this DNA tucked away in storage for decades? Finally, lead them to an answer. From ABC Audio and 2020, I'm Maggie Ruley.

And this is the snare. Episode 5, the cigarette. For years, Christophe's appellate attorney, John Thomas, worked closely with Carol Dodge to overturn Chris's conviction. But even his experts in false confessions and organizations like Judges for Justice and the Innocence Project, joined their efforts, they still were not successful.

We found five post-conviction, uh, petitions for post-conviction relief,

and they were always struck down, struck down, struck down.

The Bonneville County Prosecutor's Office also ordered an independent review of Chris's conviction.

but cast out on his confession regarding his personal involvement in her death.

“Daniel Clark, the county prosecutor, issued his own report in 2016.”

He determined that this statement, Chris's attorney said, "We're a coerced, we're similar." This statement's Chris made to acquaintances. What asked about the outcome of the two reports, Clark noted. The question for me was whether there was new, clear and convincing evidence of innocence. There simply was not.

But Clark says at the same time. We had some concerns about the confession. I had some concerns about the level of sentence, as it related to taps admitted involvement. Based upon Clark's concerns, he and Chris' defense team agreed on a deal.

Chris Tap is offered a deal where the rape charge is completely vacated.

So he's no longer a sex offender, but the murder charge would stay in place.

Under the deal, Chris would be released from prison. He'd be a free man after 20 years behind bars. But he wouldn't clear his name. Legally, he'd still be a convicted murderer. But John Thomas says the alternative wasn't much better.

“Why would we make this deal knowing that Chris Tap was an innocent man?”

And Chris and I talked about this and we looked at each other and we thought, "We just didn't know what was going to happen. There was too much uncertainty." So Chris Tap took the deal. In March 2017, Chris walked into the same courthouse

where he had gone on trial as a young man. This time, he was 40 years old and there to formally accept his deal with the state. He wore a white button down shirt and had a tight buzz cut and a cleanly shaving face. Time served 20 years 54 days. And I'm free.

No parole, no probation, no nothing. So the deal I took to come home to give my freedom wasn't the greatest deal. But it got me home. It's a win, you know what I mean? It's a win, it got me out.

When Chris walked out of the courtroom,

“people were standing in the halls clapping for him.”

Chris looked kind of nervous. He'd run his hands. He's Idaho news, capture the scene. How does it feel to not have handcuffs on? Different, yeah? Different.

And then he stepped out of the Bonneville County Courthouse of free man. It was just nice to be able to look out and not see Bob Oyer. See a fence, see a guard dog. It was nice to be able to actually know that I could walk down the road if I wanted to. Laura knows I couldn't because I was still in so much a shock.

And so couldn't use to confinement. But I knew I could. His attorney was by his side. And so was Carol Dodge. Carol even held his hand as the three of them took questions from reporters.

Carol, what are your thoughts here? Oh, it's just a day of celebration. I pressed. I didn't bring any cookies. No.

It's all right. Yeah, it's a great day. You know. Carol, Angie's mother. And now one of Chris's fiercest advocates was beaming as they stood side by side.

Chris was finally out in no small part due to her efforts.

Afterwards, she turned to Chris. And asked if you wanted to go down the steps to create the dozens of people cheering him on. What? Press it up. It was just a madhouse for me to see everybody.

You know what I mean? See, there was 50, probably 50 some people outside of the courthouse. That day when I was released, clapping. And happy that I was free. You know, they were, they were, how do I say it?

They were happy that I was home. They didn't think justice was served. But they were happy that I was home. Thank you.

And probably will ever have in my life because you know, you're in a closed environment

“and you're in a structured environment for so long.”

And then, you know, in prison, you don't really like to be touched. You don't like to be, you know, certain things. And all these people want to hug everybody. One of the pieces of my time, everybody want to talk to me. And, you know, and it was out of true, true care and concern that they wanted to talk to me.

But Chris was still a convicted murderer. He says it limited his job prospects and made life hard. He tried to stop thinking about the case and focused on moving forward. I had to get a job, I had to get a car, I had to, you know, I had to get my stuff in order to get in the line.

So I quit really paying attention to the case.

“But his attorney John Thomas says he and Carol never stopped paying attention to the case.”

Ultimately, Carol Dodge and I decide that, hey, we're going to continue pursuing this. We need to find the killer and I'm thinking if we find the killer, they'll have no choice but to exonerate Chris. And for them, finding the killer meant returning to the DNA. In fact, when Carol Dodge stood on the courthouse steps, she said she hoped Chris being released would get investigators to focus on finding the one DNA match. The one person who left his calling card at the crime scene.

So she kept doing what she'd been doing for years investigating.

She has always been on kind of the leading edge of the DNA technology.

It was rare to talk to a lab person or a specialist in the field that hadn't already met Carol or talked to Carol. If you like your true crime, like you like your coffee, red-handed is the podcast for you. It's dark, intense, and might just keep you up all night. I'm Hannah, I'm Serity, and every week on red-handed, we break down a different fascinating case.

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I'm Harvey Gean, and this is Killer Stories. Every Monday, I'm cutting the lights. I'm telling you, a bedtime story. Except, these stories are all real. We're talking Brasin Heist, devastating cons, serial murders, and cases that defy tidy categories.

So join me for new episodes of Killer Stories with Harvey Gean, every Monday. Hello to Friday's Fridays. Yeah, full of surprises this season. Project runway is back. Times start not over its biggest season ever.

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Project runway new episodes Friday's stream on Hulu and Disney+. Well, everyone knew of the edge dodge case when I became a police officer. In 2002, that was always a case that was kind of legend around Adolf Falls. This is Captain John Marley of the Idaho Falls police. He says he inherited the dodge case when he was a sergeant of the investigations bureau.

My primary responsibility was to look at it and get it assigned to a detective. I signed that case to detective Sage Albright. Some of me says that it's because I was the only person who would say yes. Albright had just become a detective. He says that was actually why he was given the case.

Fresh eyes on Idaho Falls' most notorious cold case. He says it came with a lot of pressure. This case had been so traumatic and difficult for everyone that it almost like a curse.

Well, detective Albright was going back through the case.

“The binders and bins of documents, the sealed bags of evidence.”

The police department had also been hearing consistently from Carol Dodge. Carol Dodge was a force to be reckoned with the entire investigation.

She never once led up. She was relentless on finding the truth.

In Carol, I'd been learning about major advances in DNA technology, including genetic genealogy. You've probably heard about how consumer DNA testing has led to breakthroughs in high-profile cold cases like the Golden State Killer. Genealogical testing companies were mostly meant to help people find out more about their family history.

“You submit your DNA sample and that's used to create a family tree.”

People with very similar DNA to yours.

When it was first introduced, it was often used to help people find parents and siblings and resolve family mysteries.

Eventually police departments started using this technology as part of their investigations. Captain Bill Squires was one of the officers reinvestigating the Angie Dodge case. Back in the summer of 1996, he was in his first year as a patrolman and was one of the officers who responded to Angie's apartment and helped secure the crime scene. Authorities had submitted the DNA sample to Cotus, the FBI's database of DNA profiles. But it didn't get them anywhere.

“I mean, previously when we looked at DNA as related to this case, it was from the perspective of either matching that Cotus profile or not matching it.”

It was one or the other. It was either a match or it wasn't. But now through a larger number of people being entered into these databases, it's actually possible then to dig deeper into the DNA and say, "Okay, well, it's not a match, but is it close to one of the other relatives to someone that's in there?" And be able to look at the familial lines of who the suspect is and be able to find it that way. Carol Dodge had been talking with a company called Parabon that was at the cutting edge of genealogical testing.

Eventually, the Idaho Falls Police Department and Parabon connected about the case. Parabon used the DNA sample from the crime scene to create a phenotype profile of Angie's killer.

Basically, what would this person look like? I color, hair color, height, facial structure, things like that.

Snapshot of what the suspect's traits look like, the department had done a big press release and had kind of made yet another public display and request for any other tips and unfound material we might not have already. This shows that hey, these are the characteristics this person might have and if you have information that hasn't been provided to the police before or something, we haven't looked at or haven't looked at well enough. Call us again and set up a hotline number for anyone to call in and give us those tips that we can follow up on.

Police released a rendering of what Angie's killer possibly looked like, a white male, around 40 years old, with brown hair and eyes. And there was about a 50/50 chance that he had freckles. They didn't get any new leads, but Parabon could also compare the DNA sample to DNA from millions of other people. Dancer, who shares DNA with the killer? Who is the killer's family? The idea was to create a family tree, a web of people the killer is related to, and then reverse engineer the killer's identity from that.

Parabon didn't find any real close family matches, no parents or siblings, but there were more distant relatives, people who looked more like third and fourth cousins. One of them came to the forefront because of proximity, this person lived not too far away, could easily have connections to southeast Idaho because of where he even currently lived, and so very exciting, very exciting for us to have something to actually go do. It was not only for big lead, but really just about the only lead.

And it was really deflating, so we thought, "Great, we're going to be basically back at square one." But Squire says weeks later, Parabon identified another potential match, a man who took his stepfather's last name and was missed in the initial family tree search.

“And our jaws about dropped, we didn't break down and cry that much or could have, we were jumping for joy, how exciting and to get that information to be able to have hope of wrapping this case up on my gosh.”

After more than 20 years, they finally had a major breakthrough. The man identified was named Brian Drips. Detective Siege Allbright actually recognized that name.

When Allbright was reviewing Angie's case, looking through the binders and binders of records, he had sorted through all the interview cards, all the people investigators had talked to. And even before the genetic genealogy analysis, one of those people stood out to him, Angie's neighbor when she was killed. Brian Drips. There's this man who lives across the street from where the murder happened, where Angie was living, and he can't really count for his time. He tells the officer that he doesn't remember what happened that night.

Detective Allbright looked into whether Drips's DNA was ever collected. And if it was, how it could be tracked down.

“I think just the reality of so many people having their hands in this case over the decades that we've had it, some of the records were just kind of hard to track.”

You were hard to keep track of everybody and we had collected like 100 DNA samples on this. And so when I started asked questions, people were like, well, if he was identified as somebody in the area at the time, I'm sure we got his DNA. And I kept asking and we couldn't really lock down if we had a DNA sample from him and it didn't seem like we did. So now investigators had a man who at the time of the murder had lived across the street from Angie's apartment, who hadn't been able to account for his time during Angie's murder, and who hadn't seemed to have had his DNA collected or tested.

And they also had a family tree telling them this man could be the killer. To the investigators, it seemed like a breakthrough.

We feel great about him as a suspect. But Squares says they knew they had to play this new lead very carefully. I'm getting a sample from him, but if it's not him, then we don't know what the familiar relationships are, and we didn't want our suspect to get a heads up if it wasn't him or to have any kind of tip off that we were looking at him or even that close. So we thought the best course of action was to try to do it so we didn't ruin the other investigative efforts down the road.

They'd have to be creative. They'd have to travel across the state and get his DNA sample without him knowing.

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So, see you. Everybody get a brief heat. I need a brief heat. All right. How about swabs? Somebody else got a kid. A handful of Idaho Falls police officers traveled about four hours west to Caldwell, small city just outside the state's capital.

They were gathered in an empty parking lot to go over their plans for the day. The sun hadn't even risen yet.

It was the first day of their surveillance operation on Brian Drip's.

Who had left Idaho Falls and now lived in Caldwell. The mood was light, almost buzzing. But cabin squires told his team to stay vigilant.

“You know what, the only thing I do, I want to make sure we remember here is that we're here to get the sample and we'll try to help through the case.”

But remember that we potentially looking at it on the side suspect. We got no idea what this poor guy's personality is like. I could have already made a decision on what's going to happen if the police confront him on something like this. So he told you. Captain Squires says, there is a real art to undercover operations.

If the person who's surveying sees the same car or the same couple of cars all the time, whatever time he leaves.

You know, even the most aloof person is going to figure out that you're being followed. Yep. Mr. Turnback here. Let's put a gift for not looking at my GPS. They got to Drip's his home around six a.m.

“They didn't want to miss anything about his day.”

Okay. So right here in the area. The subdivision over here to the right is where he lives. And we're going to keep an eye on endurance is coming out. So we can follow if he does leave.

Captain Squires says he and his team were posted around Drip's house all morning. Waiting.

And it wasn't until about noon that he first left and went to a convenience store that was nearby.

What he pulls into the parking lot, we have another guy pull up to the gas pumps to keep an eye on pretend to get gas. And get a really good eye on him. And he goes in and gets two fountain drinks and gets right back in his same truck and heads right back home.

“From watching him that day, they also noticed something crucial.”

He's got his arm out the window of his red pickup truck with a cigarette in his hand. He's a smoker. Squires says discarded cigarettes can be great for collecting DNA samples. After following Drip's for hours, police finally saw Drip's flick the cigarette out into the middle of the road.

They hurried to retrieve it, but it was too risky without running into traffic and drawing people's attention. They just weren't in place to get it. And we watched for the rest of the day until late and he really, he had taken another trip to another store, smoked another cigarette on that one, but he dropped the cigarette button the back of his truck and that's not discouraging it.

Where anybody in public could get it. They didn't have a warrant to search the truck and Drip's didn't go out again that day. But the team was starting to have a sense of his routine. On day two, Squires says the officers were better prepared. We had units pre-staged by that working line into the convenience store already.

They're already sitting there and able to pick him up. It hopes of getting a better opportunity to cigarette butt if it gets flipped. Like clockwork, Brian Drip's drove to the convenience store. And officers waited there, watching for him to toss his cigarette. They spotted their target.

Now officers were waiting to see when he dropped it. So they could swoop in and recover the cigarette. The officers saw Drip's flick his cigarette butt out the window, just like they predicted. They waited until Drip's left before going in to retrieve the distorted butt.

Oh my gosh, don't get out of here.

I didn't think it was like that. When officers grabbed the cigarette butt, it was still burning. Captain Squires was waiting nearby listening on the radio. And I hear one of my guys say he flipped it. I got it.

And made my day.

“Everybody I think ceremoniously is, you know, arms of the air are super excited.”

Because it was a huge hurdle. And to be able to get that and by the time I got up to that scene, you know, close to the parking lot where our subject could see us. My guys had already gone out. It was still smoldering.

I mean, the detective was able to actually see.

The land exactly wears and I was exactly was the right cigarette butt and it was the one.

So we able to take it, package it right there and add it. They sent it off to a lab for testing. Normally, these tests took months to process. But Captain Squires says they placed an expedited order. Instead of months, they would find out if they had a match in a matter of days.

I guess that hadn't had it day off for a long time. I told him, look, try to get some time off right now. When we get the, not expecting to get it back till sunset until Monday, we'll, you know, go back and actually see your family for a while.

“Because it would really been going hard on following these aerosols before then.”

Their break was short lived. Because the next day, Captain Squires got a call from his lieutenant. So I'm out on my lawnmower on Saturday trying to get my yard mode. He calls me and I know he would only be calling me about this at this time. And Joel says it's match.

Idaho Falls Police finally had a match to the crime scene DNA.

It was huge. Man, I'm here to tell you. It was huge to have that confirmation now that this is it. That's really what it's talking with me, man. This is the guy.

This is the guy we've been looking for for 23 years. But getting the DNA match was not the end of their time tailing Brian drips. Now, investigators wanted to talk to him. About a week after Idaho Falls Police retrieved the cigarette,

but they were back in Coldwell.

“One of the officers gave a briefing on how they planned to bring him”

into the local station for questioning. Thank you. Thank you for being here. This is a big day. Hopefully it's going to be one of those everybody remembers when

they're very encouraging to tell him a little. The little ones about things they did today. He described Brian drips in detail. Brian El Dritt Senior is a white guy in his early 50s. Looks like a great whole day on sort of tendon.

A 10-B. Long period kind of as easy to talk about. Then, you know, yep. He is built somewhere on the order of 510-ish. 150-ish pounds.

A little bit of a pop balance. He also described the routine officers had carefully observed. Two sodas at the convenient store around noon. Another trip later in the afternoon. And then home.

The officer explained that the goal was to come ly intercept Brian drips as he went about his typical day. They wanted him to feel comfortable to talk, not dependent. After the briefing, officers set out to follow drips again. But right away, he veered from his routine.

We don't really know where he's going this little bit out of. We haven't taken this trip before when we've tailed him in the past. They realized he was stopping at a bank, instead of going to the convenience store. The officers decided to keep their plan the same.

Comely intercept him when he leaves the bank. I still feel pretty good about it. I think I don't think he is onto us. I don't think he's suspicious in any way. I think we're good shape.

In the car, the officers described what they were going to see to him. Yes, we're following you for this. We're following up on all reports. And you know, you got to get it. As he exited the bank and approached his vehicle, Detective Allbright and I approached him and introduced ourselves.

And that's where it all started.

"It was one of the most nerve-wracking moments of his life."

“I'm getting nervous right now, just remembering it.”

It was hard not to get swept away with the gravity of this case. This was a case that was a black mark on the, you know, I don't false police department for many, many years. There was so many unanswered questions. The family wanted to know.

There was just so much weighing on this, and I didn't want to be the one to screw it up. He says, "Drips did not want to go with them. Drips had his dog, a German shepherd in the car, and wanted to go back home to drop the dog off."

And so I made the decision then to work with him and say,

"Hey, how about I get in your vehicle and we drive your dog home together,

“and we make sure your dog's taken care of.”

And then after that, you get in the vehicle, Detective Allbright and I, and we'll go to the station to talk. We want to make sure we want him to feel comfortable with us and establish some kind of relationship with us. Our guys are going to try to talk him into writing

with them in our car to get him there. If that's, if he's reluctant or if that's a point of contention, then we're going to let him drive his truck."

After they dropped the dog off together,

Drips agreed to get into the car with the officers. The suspect, while our search and detective, and we're headed for the Cold War Police Department, to try to do us and form a interview. Police were about to see what Ryan Drips, a neighbor,

who had once lived across the street from Angie Dodge, knew about the murder, and what he might share. Even with the DNA batch, Detective Allbright says they needed more evidence, more cooperation. We didn't want to just lock in on this idea that because his DNA was there,

he absolutely was the person who murdered Angie. There was a real possibility that he was not guilty of homicide. There was a real possibility that he had had an intimate relationship with Angie, and that his DNA ended up there in an innocent way.

We couldn't conclusively say that absolutely 100%. Because his DNA is there, he had to have murdered her. And so we had to make sure that we were open for other possibilities.

“So the officers felt this interview with Ryan Drips was crucial.”

Our really only focus is to try to find the truth that the total truth would happen. And it needed to be done just right. The snare is a production of ABC audio in 2020. Hosted by me, Maggie Rulley,

produced by Camille Peterson and Sabrina Fang with help from Emily Sillinder and Emily Schutz. Edited by Tracy Samelson, our supervising producer, is Susie Liu, music by Evan Viola, mixing by Balmallery.

Special thanks to Katie Dendos, Janice Johnston, Nancy Rosenbaum, Sasha Aslinian, Suzanne DeCunto, and Michelle Margolis. Josh Cohen is our director of podcast programming. Amy McNiff is our executive producer.

When a charming neurosurgeon wrote into western towns selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room and became sought after by patients.

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wherever you get your podcasts, or binge the entire series right now, only with audible. [BLANK_AUDIO]