True Confession

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That tells me how to cook to keep myself healthy. I look at my happened and like, Wow, I'm not just 7,000 steps today. Start today meets you where you are. Download the star today wellness app now

on your Apple Air Android device. Terms apply. See you at print details. I'm Craig Melv. Cheers. Cheers.

I've always been a glass half volt kind of guy.

And now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that we too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their trials, challenges, their stories, their funny, and my candy. So I hope you'll join me each week and who knows. You might just come away with your own glass half volt.

Search glass half volt with Craig Melv and from today on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. It really hits deeply. Actually seeing the crime scene photo, it made me just very, very angry.

What had been done to Angie.

“The day that Angie was found, he had my whole system shut down.”

Everything just shut down. Who would do that to Angie? It's one of our friends. The accusations were flying. They were not in a gun at for anybody.

Your handcuff? Yeah, they treated me like I was part of this nasty crime. They were convinced that you were there.

Yeah. These people robbed my life for 20 years for something I never did.

All they kept saying is he confessed, Carol, he confessed. I said, what is going on here? I went to the streets searching for her killer. She was advocating for justice. She was a force to be reckoned with.

She was not going to let it go. She begged me to give it a deeper look. The potentially have a break on this. Oh my gosh. We're going to solve a murder.

We're going to solve a 25-year-old murder. Years lost. Lives shattered. A mother fights to uncover the truth. I'm lester-holt.

And this is daylight.

“Here's Keith Morrison with True Confession.”

They call it a snake river. And it glides wide and placid. Past the gleaming white more than temple. And then twists and temples over rocks and wears Through the town of Idaho Falls.

And twists and temples like this most improbable tale. The one that began right here. Where are your kids? Well, before the state of Idaho was associated with notorious names like Lori Valor, Chad Daybeller.

Brian Coberker. Brian, did you do it? We thought we knew the story. We're about to tell. Perhaps you think you know it too?

But that old cliché is a cliché for a reason. Truth is often stranger to fiction as you will see. I don't think anybody saw this coming. I don't think that you could have imagined this in a million years. But here at the river is where it first went wrong.

Among a group of young men and women who formed what felt to them like a kind of family. It was an almost every night thing during the summertime that we would go down there and hang out with friends. Me girls.

A daily gathering of the ones who didn't quite fit anywhere else. We're a bunch of wild kids. Young adults just haven't fun trying to live our lives. One of their number had just left the family nest, set out on her own.

She was a special one because of a kind of no nonsense charisma she seemed to carry around with her. Her name was Angie. She was a personality. That's for sure.

You didn't want to cross Angie. And she wrestled me down. I thought she was going to put me in the river. She was happy. 18 year old Angie Dodge.

This is your brother, Brent, and your mother, Carol. She grew up in a household of three brothers.

So she wrestled with him, and her friends always knew that nobody got in her face

because she would take care of you. She was good sized too. I mean, she wasn't. We would take things. She was five and eleven and she was strong.

Strong and grown up and have in 1996 to move across town from the family home to grow on the partner. And we gave each other hug. She walked towards a car. And she threw me in key as it says.

And I did the same. And it was like she's in slow motion. And she drifted up the street. And it's the last time I saw her. It all seems surreal now.

“That thing that happened all these years later.”

It was the morning of June 13th, 1996. Bill Squires was a rookie cop when he got the call to go to a house and a residential neighborhood here on Ice Street in Idaho Falls. So I just barely got out of training and was working as a solo police officer myself back all came out.

You made his way upstairs to a tiny second floor apartment. What did you see inside that apartment? What appeared to be, unfortunately, a murdered young lady. That was the first homicide that I'd ever been exposed to. The victim was, of course, Angie Dodge.

Keep a log set a senior officer. And that's what Squires did. He kept track of everyone who went in and out. Standard procedure. Jeff Pratt was a veteran cop by then.

It was the most horrific scene that I had ever worked up in, you know, in that 15 years of my career at that point. What happened down to that young woman? Well, she was nearly decapitated. Man. What else do you remember finding on around her?

Well, there was a lot of blood spatter on the walls, the carpet, the bedding around her. A lot of other injuries on her body that had been inflicted by a sharp instrument. Near the bed was a stuffed teddy bear, soaked in blood. On the dead girl's stomach was a bloody hand print. Could you get a print off that?

Usable print? We tried. And in that time, we were not capable of doing that.

But the killer had left critical, verifiable DNA evidence on the victim's body.

A lot of biological materials that had been left behind indicating there had been a sexual assault. At the time, DNA was quite new. It was.

“And that's why we were focused so hard on collecting all of those biologicals.”

This moment, this place, would imprint itself on the detectives for life. For Angie's family, called down to the police department. It was beyond imagining. So I brought in some pictures as this is your sister. And pictures of the crime scene.

How's that to look at? It's just horrifying. My whole sister shut down, my emotional light, everything just shut down. Well, the CSI's went about their work. Homicide detectives looked for the murder weapon, had to be a knife of some sort.

But they couldn't find it. They determined there was no forced entry. The killer left the exterior door a jar. And when they looked at the body, it seemed to them almost posed. What did that say to you?

I mean, it was a passionate crime. It was somebody who wanted her to humiliate her. Former detectives can brown and Jared Furman. There was well over 14 different wounds. It was that horrific.

They detectives had a hunch from the start.

There had been powerful emotions at play here.

Angie had lived in the apartment only a matter of weeks. She'd been dating a young man for about the same length of time. You checked him out? Yes. You didn't match.

Do you need a match? They learned that some of Angie's friends had gone to see her before the murder. But they left shortly before 1 am. They all checked out. Do you need a match?

Well, the detectives began casting a wider net focusing on interviews. Crime scene investigative Jeff Pratt was increasingly sure. It was DNA that would take to lead role in finding the killer.

“I really believe that that was going to be the solving factor from the very beginning.”

Was that recommendation you were able to make to the lead investigators in the case? I made that suggestion. They were already kind of on task on some other things. They didn't really follow that. And like you say, DNA was relatively new.

It wasn't well received. What was that like for you?

Well, it's kind of like trying to sell something that's never been, you know, they've not seen it before.

It was hard. I believed in it. I knew that that was going to be instrumental in big, you know, a big issue. But I couldn't convince everybody, you know, initially. Which was it would turn out a great pity.

And none of them had a clue, of course, how could they? That the mystery begun here would be unlike any other in this town.

And thus a decades-long obsession took over carols every waking minute to find the man who killed Angie.

But also, to demand a particular sort of justice, which would turn out to be the most improbable demand of all.

“Like I called it by the prosecutor, and, you know, Carol, you have to stop it.”

I wouldn't stop. Carol Dodge lost her mind after her daughter Angie was raped and murdered that awful summer of 1996 that was Carol's own assessment. And why would anyone doubt it? Certainly not her son, Angie's brother, Brent. I remember going down to the mortuary, and we had to choose a casket for her.

Mom laid on the casket and said, "You're not burying my baby in this." It was beyond what you can imagine and make up. It was tough, too, for Angie's friends, those who hung around down by the snake river. Like Jeremy Sardges, known as Jared. She was definitely a part of the girls that came down to the river every day, or, you know, multiple times a week at least.

What was she like? She was a personality. That's for sure. You didn't want to cross Angie. Yes, she was a personality, a social butterfly.

Yeah. She'd been bullied through school a little bit. Because of her signs? Yeah. She's tall.

Yeah.

“And at that point, you know, I think she was getting comfortable with herself.”

Among those river kids, Angie Dodge was a force, smart, fun loving, respected by her friends. Angie graduated high school early at 17, with honors. And then turned 18 and started college and had a new job at a beauty salon. She was a good friend to people. Destiny Osborne was a friend.

She was a very nice person and very responsible. Everybody loved her. Result when was also a river regular. She had a big bright, beautiful character. He just knew who she was.

As was George Paise. It was wild as somebody we knew had been murdered. Police were a constant presence at the river.

In those first days and weeks after the murder.

Jerry was terrified. I was terrified. Our everyday lives are suddenly scrutinized and they're asking where were you six days ago. And I really don't remember. For months, it seemed police got nowhere.

Which drove Carol Dodge even more mad. Everybody went on with their lives, except. Me. I drove to the police department every day that they were open. You became a fixture in there.

I did. Nobody could stop me from talking to those detectives. I didn't bother to say could I talk to someone. So I just walked right back in their office. I got called in by their prosecutor.

“And you know, Carol, you have to stop and I wouldn't stop.”

Finally, about six months after the murder.

We had information that one of the people that we had interviewed at this case that given an alibi at the river was arrested in Eileen Ivata for very brutal rape and cutting a young woman with a knife. Kind of the same pattern, though. His name? Benjamin Hobbs, another of the river kids.

As you see here, Hobbs even carried flowers behind Angie's casket at her funeral. So, as one detective traveled to Nevada to confront Hobbs, others began calling in Hobbs as friends, including the kids from the river. Hey, Chris. Now, for a video taped interviews. What do you think you did?

Honestly, I have no idea. One of whom was a 20-year-old named Christopher Tap. Tap said he would like to help, but he said he... He didn't know anything about Angie's murder. If I didn't know about this, I would say...

Now that he made his statement, Christopher Tap went home and the clearer apparently. A couple of days later, the detective asked him to come downtown again. I told him, "What are you doing?" I said, "This is a murder case." This is Tap's mother Vera. She understood what he apparently did not.

That her son was quite possibly talking himself into very big trouble. He said, "Mom, I don't have anything to hide. I want to tell him that I don't know anything." Oh, I know it was I did not kill him. 400 miles away in Nevada. Then Hobbs said he didn't kill Angie either, and he didn't know who did.

"Well, she's right to touch his kill. Tell me, was she right?"

“I don't know. That's why I'm asking you, because if she wasn't like he named, we'll find him. This is right there.”

They took blood samples from both Hobbs and Tap. And they pulled Tap in again for more questions. Nine times, a total of 20 hours of questions. They polygraphed him repeatedly. And eventually it came out a confession of sorts.

Tap admitted he was in Angie's apartment with Ben Hobbs when Hobbs did it, killed Angie. And with that, police were convinced they had their killers. But sometime after all those interrogations, the DNA tests were done, and results came back. And the Seaman found on Angie's body did not belong to Ben Hobbs, or Chris Tap. "What went through your heads when the DNA results came back?

And it showed that the attacker was not Ben Hobbs. If you're going to nail it down to one word, it's frustration." The detectives Brown and Furman were as sure as could be that Tap knew more than he was saying, more than even his confession, so they kept him in jail, and developed a theory to account for those negative DNA results.

“There had to be a third attacker with Hobbs and Tap.”

And it was that third man who left the DNA.

So they worked at Tap some more. And what do you know? Tap fingered another buddy who was also a friend of Angie's. "What do you think of Ben Hobbs? My God, I'm Jared."

"Jerry?" "But you've met him." "Jerry of me, Sargeus." "I remember waking up on my birthday. The police were there to arrest me. Told me I was under arrest for accessory to the murder of Angie Dodge." "What was that?"

"That was one of the scariest things I've ever been through." "Your handcuffed?" "I'm handcuffed." "Yeah, they took me downtown, treated me like I was part of this nasty crime." Meanwhile, the police went hard at the other river kids.

Maybe Jeremy was the third man, or maybe it was one of the others.

Like George Pines. They flat out told me I was lying to them and I was predicting my friends. I was terrified because none of us were violent. And I thought I was next. I thought that my girlfriend at the time was next.

Playing in simple, every single day. I was afraid that there was going to be a police man show up to my work and arrest me for this. "Rust Baldwin was on the list too, but..." "I was a jail. But that's how that went."

"And they were like, "What?" "And I'm like, yeah. I wasn't jail when this happened." Strange, but true. Record-showed Baldwin had been picked up at a warrant for failure to appear in court for,

in all seriousness, fishing without a license. At 7.29 pm, the evening before Angie Dodgers murder. Records that he wasn't released from jail until five days after the murder. But the police weren't so sure. "I mean, they even went as far as to to man DNA,

because I could have broken out murdered Angie Dodgers and then broke back in." But the DNA was not Baldwin's and he was cleared.

So, who was that third man?

Police just couldn't put it down. Or, had they already? "What did..." Officer Furman told you that Chris Tap had said about you. Then Chris has placed you there.

Rock and roll royalty spent Sunday mornings with Willie Geist. This summer, Hall McCartney. Keith Richards. And this weekend, Mick Jagger.

“Do you still get that thrill or those nerves on the eve of an album, Willie?”

Yeah, you do. You want them to just take notes, you know? This Sunday morning, on Sunday today, with Willie Geist on NBC. Hey, guys. Willie Geist here reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

On this week's episode, I get together with the multi-talented Mindy Kaling to talk about her beginnings on the office. Her hit creation, running point, and her latest series, "Not Suitable for Work." You can get our conversation for free,

wherever you get download your podcasts.

And she dodged it in dead seven months.

When they arrested Jeremy Sargis, charged him as an accessory to murder. So, Jeremy cooled his heels in jail, knowing full well who put him there. Why got it from Jared?

“What did Officer Furman tell you that Chris Tap had said about you?”

Then Chris has placed you there. He's just trying to tell me that he knew we did this. That Mr. Tap stated that Jeremy Sargis was one of the individuals that actually held her arm down during the homicide itself. What was like there to that?

It was heartbreaking because you thought Chris was your friend. You don't lie about something like that. I mean, it was hard to deal with.

But it turned out that Jeremy had something going for him

that Chris Tap did not an aggressive attorney. But what advice did you return to give you? All you can say under the advice of your attorney, you invoke your Fifth Amendment right. And without more evidence that Chris Tap say so,

prosecutors were forced to drop the charges against Jeremy. The fact of matter was, if you didn't talk to them, they couldn't prove anything. Right. How long were you actually in jail? Just two days. Two days of bitterness betrayed by a friend. How'd you feel about your old friend, Chris Tap?

Oh, I hated him. I hated him. What the hell are you thinking, man? Being time-policing prosecutors kept talking to Chris Tap because unlike Jeremy, he kept talking to them. And then it happened. Sometimes during those many hours of interviews,

Chris Tap added to his confession something very disturbing. He didn't just watch Ben Hobbes do it. He played a role in Angie's rape.

“And remember that blood-soaked teddy bear, police found near the bed?”

Tap told police that Ben Hobbes held that over Angie's face as he, Hobbes, slither throat. More persons of interest were brought in, more DNA tests were done. That rookie cop would work the crime scene, kept up on the case by keeping his ears open around the station house.

I think every time they did a DNA sample that didn't match Keith, I think it was a punch in the gut every time. With Ben Hobbes already behind bars in Nevada on different rape charges

and not enough evidence to charge him or some mysterious third man,

prosecutors in Idaho decided it was time to move on what they had, which was Chris Tap's confession. They called the press conference to announce they were charging Tap with first-degree murder, rape, and use of a deadly weapon. Was there a collective sigh of relief when Chris Tap was arrested?

I can only speak for myself, but I looked at it as, "Okay, well, we've got one of the suspects now in custody. Now we just need to find out the rest of the story so we can close the case completely." Oh, we're fondly. When Chris Tap won a trial in 1998, Carol Dodge was convinced he absolutely played a role

in the rape band murder of her daughter. "I mean, I was finally looking, somebody in the eye, somebody who saw me, when I thought was a devil who had taken my daughter's life, the anger surged within me." She watched him in court, rise full of venom,

as she listened to the evidence against him. That is, his own confession is many confessions, which the defense tried unsuccessfully to suppress. Tap's own words convinced Carol he was guilty. But if that wasn't enough for the jury,

then one more witness would do it. A woman you've already met.

“What did they tell you would happen if you refused?”

I was going to let a killer walk free. I got to do what's right. Destiny has born. Angie's friend and Chris's friend, too. Testify that she heard Chris Tap confess to the crime at a party.

Destiny said she wanted to do the right thing, especially since she knew both Angie and Angie's mother, Carol. She was happy you testified. Well, I mean, yeah, because she felt it gave her some answers. Yes, answers, Angie's mother had been desperate for for so many months.

What did you want to have done to him? They had discussed the death penalty, but I didn't believe in the death penalty. No human being on this. Human Earth has the right to take another person's life.

Even the person who murdered your dad. Absolutely not.

and set off to state prison for 40 years. Except that couldn't be the end of it. Tap so-called "third accomplice" the owner of that DNA was still out there.

“So DNA, Carol felt sure, had to be the key.”

But the police couldn't seem to find the person. And so Carol decided she would. This was your search now. Find the person who was the owner of that DNA. Exactly.

Because they could tell the story. They're the only one. That person is the one that's going to tell the story. It was a partial victory. Some justice for Angie, Dodge, and her mother, Carol.

Chris Tap was in prison. His alleged accomplice Ben Hobbes was behind bars in Nevada for a different crime,

though he was never charged with Angie's murder.

But of course, it wasn't over. The Idaho Falls police made it known they were still searching for that third man. The one who left his DNA on Angie's body. And something like a public guessing game ensued. Was it this man or this one?

Or was it this man George Pockies? It seemed like the whole town suspected him. Just because Chris was his friend. I would have patrons of my family's restaurant. Walk in the door and walk straight up to me and ask me if I was a murderer.

What do you say? No. No, I didn't murder that girl. But if Tap'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, at 60,000 miles on my truck, searching for her killer. I distributed like 1,200 flowers through the summer. To do go to scary places, dangerous places. Oh, yes.

“And I remember going to a place in the lady said, you know, you need to leave before somebody hurt 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. I would just stare at that house and stare at the windows and try and figure out how scared she must have been. If you also endlessly is stalked the right word, those friends of Chris Tap, like Jeremy Sarges.

Never as 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 her. 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 in nights reading police reports, practically memorizing them.

“I don't sleep when I get up and I just go, what part of the stone I understand?”

In one of those reports, Carol found a phrase which the more she read it sounded out of place in a DNA world. It was about pubic hairs, which in addition to the seaman 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 in either war. 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. Greg 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 Dr. 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 Carol called this Dr. Hampikian and discovered that his Innocence Project had just taken on the case of Christopher Tap. At which she might have been forgiven for hanging up the phone, but she didn't quite diverse.

Her words to me I'll never forget were, I just want to know what happened to my daughter.

The curiosity of her surprise 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 hair is found on Angie looked similar to or the same as the victims. He goes while they're either hers or they're not. Just a truth.

He said, well, where are the hairs? I said I assume 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 seamen 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.

“To 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 seamen 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 Tap's confession was false. He didn't do it. No matter what the police thought he wasn't even there.

The news can down on Carole Dodge's head, like a hammer. For 13 years, they had me convinced that Chris Tap was there. All they kept saying is he confessed, Carole, he confessed and I was extremely angry. When they have DNA not once but twice, the blood's to the same person and it's not Chris Tap. Something's wrong.

Next step, watch those Chris Tap confession tapes for herself. There's times that I wanted to put my fist through the TD. The DNA convinced Carole Dodge. There could be no doubt that Chris Tap 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 would you do? Those video tapes, including the ones in which Chris Tap had confessed to taking part in the murder. And now, a dozen years after the murder of her daughter, Carole watched every single minute of those hours and hours of video tapes. Interviews with all those men who'd been interrogated.

Starting with man Hobbes. Man, he was adamant that he said, I did not kill Angie Dodge. Next, she watched the police interview Jeremy Sarges, whom Chris Tap 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 along the other one.

And Ben and Jeremy were much smarter and just basically, you know, get play their game.

What she saw amazed her as did what she learned. The man interrogating Chris Tap, then detective Jared Furman, had been a school resource officer well known to a young Chris Tap. I trust you, and hopefully you trust me, okay? Furman kept killing Chris, just trust me, Chris. You got to trust me.

You know, we go way back, Chris. And I think that he was taught to respect a doctor, 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. For the same example, I've said to Chris, you were there.

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.

They would tell him he was deceptive.

Even 10 days after his first interviews, he still seemed not to know what house Angie lived in.

And she liked living on the corner, I was here. It was a terrible time. For a guy who taken part in a murder, Tap also seemed not to know much about the layout of Angie's apartment. So, to take your brown suggested, this helpful memory aid. They wanted to find rice sometimes, and he didn't do this, but he didn't draw it out.

They seemed to be coaching him, he still couldn't do it. And then, they showed him where the murder happened. Tap in the hair group, and touch him on the back here. It was more. Carol was stunned to see that police had shown Tap photos of the crime scene.

“"I want to be known if that's how you remember it.”

If that's how you don't remember it, maybe it's going to be out of memory 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 Tap or Hobbes

was that three people committed the murder together. The detectives spent hours literally trying to drag the name of that third man out of Tap. And when Carol saw the tape, "Well, you watch it." "The name doesn't come to my head." "It wasn't you."

"It wasn't me." "It wasn't me." "It wasn't me." There's times that I wanted to put my fist through the TD.

“By the time you had gone through all of those tapes, what did you think about Chris Tap?”

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 possibilities 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.

The impossible, of course, Tap had lost all as appeals it was over for him.

And the detective who put it behind bars was not a more powerful than ever.

It was mayor of Idaho Falls and absolutely certain that Chris Tap was as guilty as sin. What's it like to know that Carol is now actively campaigning for his release, believes in innocent man? For 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 for the Idaho Falls police.

And then that fight became way more complicated 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're guilty. And he didn't even make sure and tell her that too.

Do sons gotten away with murder? Yeah, we know he's done something to tap. Mayor Furman and detective Captain Ken Brown were so sure the doubters were wrong. 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 Tap was guilty.

New because it was he, Furman, who took tap to the crime scene, where he, not the doubters saw how tap behaved in the bedroom. Where Angie Dodge was murdered. He took us into the bedroom and relieved that night. And you could see it on his face. He was reliving it.

Of 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 Tap. But I have no doubts in my mind that Chris Tap is a part of that homicide. But you can't blame me, but 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 that my new details of that case. And Chris knew the my new details of that case. He of course claims that he knows them because he was fed them. Well, we would politely disagree with that.

“Is it possible at least that there was some suggestion involved in these things before he actually said them?”

He heard in the questions he was being asked. Some hint of what the answer might be. Hypothetical says it worked. For us to sit and say there's absolutely no possibility anything could have happened.

We can say that we have reviewed those tapes over and over. We had a jury who reviewed those tapes. For two guys, we interviewed this person and found that in the first interview, the second interview, the third interview, the fourth interview, the fifth interview, he lied like a sidewalk. Then you finally get to the seventh interview.

And that's the gospel truth. Well, not 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 closed 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 and the dodge was wearing.

He never used to clothes that clothes.

I don't know. But some details in the interview could be interpreted to back up claims by the police. Once, for example, before tap was shown the crime scene photos, he did seem to, in a guessing kind of way, know what Angie was wearing. I don't think he had a ghostman on that.

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. 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 tap was involved.

And an unknown third man left the DNA in the form of semen.

But as we talked to the mayor and the detective, we knew. And they knew. The victim's mother, Carol Dodge, believed tap 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 innocent man.

“I think this part of the process, her heart has been broken.”

And she's convinced you got the wrong guy. When I heard that, I was just genuinely surprised. She's looking for closure. Tomorrow, or the next day, Chris could be guilty in her mind again. Really?

Hello there.

Anyway, perhaps this we decided would be a good time to talk to the man

in the middle of it all. The serial confessor, Christopher Tap. Let's see. Thank you. It comes a time in every tale to meet the person at the center of the story.

And here he is. Christopher Tap. No longer the aimless pot-edge you've seen on those video tapes from 1997. Thanks. 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 turquoise, the DNA, none of the points to meet, none of them. On that point, there is little dispute, of course. But how did Chris Tap 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 as mother warned him about. As that he said, as how his name came up after the murder of Angie Dodge. Did you think out of the of that?

No, I had no rhyme, no reason to be scared. Until you recall, January of 1997, when Tap was brought in for questioning. After his friend Ben Hobbes was arrested for a Nevada sexual attack, which police said was similar to the murder of Angie Dodge.

I didn't know what I was being brought in for. Didn't you connect it with the Angie thing at all?

“No, I thought I was honestly going in for trucks.”

And as you've seen over the course of several weeks, Christopher Tap 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. I kept changing, right?

I mean, you went from saying, I don't know when to be about this.

“To then say, 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. Where did that come from? Trying to give him what they wanted to hear. Just to appease him.

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's 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 the endotective turned mayor, Jared Furman, in charge of the interview.

Hypothetically, if Chris Tap was holding on to Angie, as she was being cut, and as some of those stuff was going on, if Chris Tap took part in the knife in any way, she performed and cutting her. Okay?

But I did. Would you listen to her? Okay. Hypothetically, it says. 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?

Hope lying in sinker. Try to put yourself there right now.

“Tell me, what was going on inside your stomach and your brain?”

It's scary. 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 he was there, if you did do it, if you held the knife, it's okay. We 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 Tap was fighting to clear his name with the support of the Idaho Innocence Project and the victim's mother.

Carol Dodge came around. Dear side. Who was that like? It's an amazing feeling. And I appreciate her finally understanding.

God, I'm innocent.

“Carol, of course, despite this turn about a 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 Tap's friends, that tried to move on as well, but couldn't.

Breast bald went at 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 Sargis, wrongly accused by his friend, Chris, of taking part in the murder, got into a kind of exile. 500 miles from Idaho Falls. My friends, my support group, it kind of disbanded.

It's kind of a loan. But your family was there. That's your home. You grew up there. I was like having to leave and try to find a new life somewhere else.

I was scared. My family has a business that's been there for over 100 years.

I always felt like I had a path.

The career or stuff like that kind of takes the toll on you a little bit too. The rookie cop who'd manned the door at the murder scene, Bill Squires, was now a sergeant, and still convinced that Chris Tap'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 brow beaten an innocent man into a false confession. She needed help now, and so she looked and looked until she found him,

the man who might make all the difference. I fell rag, and I picked up the phone, and I almost fell out of my chair. Carol 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 Tap 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,

on the phenomenon of false confessions.

“When that deadline program about the case aired,”

Drizen had been watching. I had seen the date line show, so I was aware of who Carol Dodge was, and my phone rang, and 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 Tap'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 in 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. Why would he get that idea?

“Because that's what the law enforcement officers told them.”

It was all aruse. Well, now that would shake things up. Thought Chris Tap's public defender John Thomas. Wouldn't it? So with that, you know, we're a leading false confession

expert. Did the police attitude begin to change? Not really.

It just fell on deaf ears.

So, Drizen 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 a way inside? It's not a little knot, but you know. And not in her stomach. Cause Destiny, who testified at Tap'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 Tap confess at all. What did that feel like? It was great.

I mean, she was in shock and I'm just like, I lied, it was all 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? Oh, yeah. They pretty much show me you can either come with us today

or you can just go right to the big jail. Then the police fed her story, she said, and made her rehearse it. I was literally told things that weren't true and I like knew they weren't true,

but for some reason when someone's telling you like they're true and that, you know, you're lying, you kind of maybe start to think that you're the crazy one.

“I think the common expression that you's in the street is my.”

Well, that's what I was going to say, but I chose to give it a little bit appropriate. The city of Idaho Falls lawyer said that in Destiny's diarrhea year after the murder and during a police interview six years after that

she repeated the story she told in court. The Destiny told us it all stem 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 good 15 years after that that prevented me from really doing much even leaving my house, so. But the fabric of Tabs' conviction was freeing at the seams and prosecutors decided to make him an offer. plead guilty to murder and be resented to times 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. Do you remember what you thought about that? I was kind of torn. He had spent 20 years in prison.

That's a reasonable set and staff to put in. Us torn between that and that why are we letting him out of prison when we know that he's guilty? It was March 2017 when Christopher Tap 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 down. I can't have been looking. That.

Knowing what we don't know, they anyone can convict someone that there's no DNA. And before long, the legal details were done.

as a deputy removed Chris Tap's handcuffs for the last time

and he was engulfed in the arms of Carol Dodge. And along with Tap's mother Vera, was Jeremy Sargis that once closed friend of Chris's. About whom Tap had lied to police about being at the crime scene of the murder.

The man who once said he hated Chris. I cried. He's still the same Chris. He just bent through some rough stuff. Did he apologize to you?

Multiple times, yeah. You felt pretty, pretty bad about that. He does. She should. She shouldn't have done that.

That's the right. We're only halfway done with life, so we got the good half now. Three. Yes, fate. Really, what anyone expects.

Chris Tap 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 heart. For me, I wanted to make Chris Tap irrelevant to the investigation we were doing.

The 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, and 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 in the technology we have now.

Squires didn't know it yet, but a woman known to be the leading edge of that technology have 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, C.C. Moore had yet to encounter Carol Dodge. This tab had a lot to get used to. The world was a very different place, as was Idaho Falls.

“What do you feel like to walk out of prison free man in 2017?”

When Phil liked to walk was overwhelming, truly, truly overwhelming. I had a panic attack, you know, the first time I went shopping. I had run out of this door because I couldn't handle it all, there was so much never had choices before. And so he made up for law's 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. The DNA technology company called Parabon Labs had made this sketch of what that man might look like based on genetic material left to 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?" 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 for that kind of priority, Parabon asked the head of its law enforcement unit to join in. The world's most celebrated genetic genealogist, C.C. Moore, a pioneer in the field, who closed hundreds of coal 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 C.C. to get involved,

It made me just ill and very, very, very angry, seeing what had been done to Angie.

“Not the sort of thing you could 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. The 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.

Family 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, CC Moore began to come up with some answers. All connected to a family with the name of us three. Tell me what was like when I'm what you thought at least when you first got a name from CC 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. It's no matter who falls in twin falls.

But how to get a DNA sample without spooking him. Could this person be your suspect? Yeah, absolutely could be it. Could he not be? Yeah, that's possible too.

“So do you go down there and just knock on his door?”

Or 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 your cigarette butter a glass from a restaurant didn't work. So police got creative.

And they noticed that man was driving a car with expired license plates. The officer pulled him over. And so why they had the subject stop? They asked him, "Hey, would you? This officer is 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 alchus 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 drawn board. Oh, including C.C. 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 Austrian family trees, all the names, the connections. Something struck her. There could always be an adoption.

Son who's been born to a man. He doesn't know about it. Could there be someone missing? Rock and roll royalty spent Sunday mornings with Willie Geist. This summer, Hall McCartney.

Keith Richards. And this weekend, Mick Jagger.

“Do you still get that thrill or those nerves on the eve of an album, Willie?”

Yeah, you do. You want them to just take notes, you know? This Sunday morning, on Sunday today with Willie Geist on NBC. Hey, guys. Willie Geist here reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

On this week's episode, I get together with the multi-talented Mindy Kaling to talk about her beginnings on the office, her hit creation running point, and her latest series, not suitable for work. You can get our conversation for free wherever you get download your podcasts.

CC Moord found the family with its six men who had to be closely related to the person who lived DNA at the crime scene.

“The Usory family had to be another male usory.”

But there were no more usories. 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 of fairs or brief for 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. And 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 Usory, except that was no longer the daughter's last name. So she had obviously remarried, and she had one son. The son who had Usory DNA, but took on the name of his stepfather, which explained why he had been so hard to find. So tell me what I 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 more dropped all this knowledge of the Idaho Falls police... It was very hard not to break into tears telling them. I don't know if we would ever have found him. I really don't. Without them finding it. The spectrum who had alluded all efforts to identify him for decades.

Now, apparently, maybe, had a name. So what was the name? Drips. Brian Drips. Brian Drips.

And low on 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, say, "Jolved, right." 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 though. Angie was murdered. Was there a DNA sample? For this one? 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 as far as we know, it never returned to the Idaho Falls area.

And excuse? Not really. Now retired Detective Jeff Pratt, the man who from the star 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 interesting to get you 101. It is. Now clearly, the priority was to get a sample of DNA from this drip scarator. This man, right here, at the time all this was going down, Brian Drips was 53 years old, an exberine and father of three.

He now lived 300 miles from Idaho Falls. In a town called Coldwill, just west of Boise. So those detectives decamped a coldwill? I could not have had a more motivated staff. We're going to solve a murder. We're going to 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 Drips flick a cigarette butt from his car. Three of us were on that cigarette butt so fast that would make your head spin. We didn't care whether a car was going to take us out or not.

Often went to the Idaho State Crime Lab. And the very next day, the captain got a call from his lieutenant. And she's, I almost want to tear up. I'm trying to keep it calm and collected here when he called me, said I just got a call from the lab.

It's him. Those are the words.

“And hang 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're on from the very beginning is a patrolman.

You're getting the result finally all those years later.

Yeah. Yeah. So what do you do about that? You've got to go a restaurant, right?

And four days later, Ryan Drips was led into an interview room.

Well, what questions did you have for us to be in place? Well, where is Nards? Yeah. What's the base of me going on? That part of the case.

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 was, I was very little of my buddies.”

And we'll go to the next day. There was a cop person up front. I went to work. And that's all I really remember. But of course, it wasn't. He claimed he didn't know a thing. Except for what he'd seen watching day-line.

He did. They took the rest and got charged with it.

The mom I guess said that he wasn't. He never did it.

Four hours, Drips kept denying that he killed Angie Dodge. And then? So you just completely shocked if we had 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. And with your favor, because I was almost up on coke and drunk.

How'd you get in? Just to the door.

“Did she say anything to you? Did she scream in call for help?”

No, I don't think. I don't think so. That she did, no. But she fought? Yes, you think. I think. That's when I ended up. What did you use? A knife?

Was she moving it all when you left? I don't know. That's what I'm down over here. Did my hand and then know that. And just like that, the murder of Angie Dodge was solved.

But there was one more big task for Brian Drips to convince detectives that the other man who confessed to the crime and still had a conviction on his record. That is Chris Tabb. Was truly innocent.

“If you were trying to convince us that nobody else was there, how would you do that?”

Before detectives were finished interrogating, now confessed killer Brian Drips. They had to put one huge issue to rest. Did Drips commit the crime alone? Or was someone else a Christopher Tabb? Did someone go with you over there?

Drips stuck firm. If you were trying to take the blame and there was other people involved, you would be the killer. The answer seemed clear. So.

Brian, at this point, it's our obligation to tell you that you are under arrest. Can't remember what I said about it between you two. Frankly, I was a bit surprised. Really, I believe that we were going to find out that he had some relationship with Chris Tabb. Did you realize that whole time that they still thought you were a guilty man?

I got to watch the out of all the police department detectives trying to leave that man down a path towards me and he.

He did what was right. He finally did what was the plea 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's going to say to him. It was rough, because again, at the end of the day to save himself, he might have been like, "Hey, yeah, I know Christopher Tabb, but thankful he was finally a man enough to admit what he did wrong. I'm appreciative for him to finally be in truthful."

And just like that, the long black cloud was a suspicion that it hung over Christopher Tabb 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, Jair. They fricking got him. And the guy was right across the street.

Right there, maybe he didn't have enough cue tips to do DNA to the neighbors or something. I just don't know, but that was pretty bad police work.

For now?

“Today we're here to announce that we have arrested Brian Lane Drips for the murder and rape of Angie Dodge.”

Idaho 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 is, Pat." "And the hundreds of people that spent a decade by my personal choice can 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 Tabb. I got asked the question, "Do you owe Chris Tabb and apology?" But we hadn't done that fall-up investigation yet to verify what Drips has said. So I kind of said at the time that, "Hey, right now we're here to talk about Drips and the day we'll come and what we need to talk about Chris Tabb."

“It was two months later in July 2019, when in the words of the police chief, Chris Tabb finally got his day.”

"You nervous about this?" "Yes, very nervous." 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 states and you know, greens, but you know, my actual innocence, everything else, but the judge quickly. Maybe I don't agree, and then where do we go from there?"

"Oh, we're about to find out." At his attorney's office, Chris Tabb was greeted by many of his oldest friends, those river kids, wearing t-shirts, bearing a message they repeated ever since the start. "Innocent." We told you so.

"We 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." "Courthouse." "Was middle fingers in the air."

"We told you so."

Here's what happened when Chris walked into the courthouse.

Carol Dodge was there, of course. "All rise." The prosecution went first. "In my view, there's clear and convincing evidence that defendant was convicted of a crime for which you did not commit. Based upon that, we're going to move to dismiss a vacate the jury verdict and a move 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 that Carol Dodge ran Dodge the Dodge family for continuing to push forward, to believe in me when they actually saw the truth. I'm so grateful and humbled to be there for him." 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. Tap." "As far as this court is concerned, you are innocent as 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 record in this matter." "It was finished." "Chris Tap had become a coordinated the innocence project." "The first person in the world to be exonerated by genetic genealogy."

"If our story ended here, 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." Nearly a quarter century to the day after he raped and murdered Angie Dodge, Brian Drip's shuffled into a courtroom in Idaho Falls. He'd cut a deal, and pleaded guilty. This was sentencing day.

"Play with one, twenty-five years of pure hell, Brian Drip's shuffled him through."

But in court, she did not hold back. "You, Brian Drip's deserve a eternal title. You better look up at me and still looking at that table." "We have to have those good twenty-five years of pure hell trying to find justice." "You're working for you." "Before sentence was pronounced Drip's spoke to the Dodge family."

"The judge sentenced Drip's to life and prison. He must serve twenty years before he's eligible for parole." "In 2039, when he will be 73 years old." The two originally detectives charged with finding Angie Dodge's killer. "We're not in court that day." Ken Brown, who's retired, did not respond to our questions about Chris Tap's exoneration,

or about the failure to collect Drip's DNA. And Jared Furham and the former mayor died from Alzheimer's, a year after Drip's was sent to prison. He was sixty years old. As for the fully exonerated, actually innocent to Chris Tap,

“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 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." "I was bad friends, did this terrible thing." "It was nice for people to finally see the truth." "For was it for this show through all this bad luck?"

"I guess I'd probably still be sitting in an eight by ten cell right now." And once he was out, Chris Tap 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 the lawsuit against the city of Idaho Falls and its police department. Chris settled it for an apology from City Hall. And 11.7 million dollars.

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. So I just don't see how it's fair for them to walk away completely clean. And I have to live this nightmare."

"Well, Chris, 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 Stacey were in the middle of their divorce. She went for a ride in her new Corvette and was killed in a wreck. "The hurts that I know she won't be here for her kids or her family.

And honest truth, you know, I'll never get to close you.

I want her with her either." "It hurts." This conversation was one month later in Chris's new home. September, 2023. "Alright, 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 thought it?"

"And interview that ended with Tap, making a vow." "It's nice to see you through 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 edge of your 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. I've 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 happened 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 Tap died?"

And she's like, "What?" "It was true."

Chris Tap was 47 years old.

“Days later, Carolyn Destiny sat side by side as Tap shocked family and friends gathered in Idaho”

Falls for his funeral. "Chris's life being up 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 this 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, LVMVD homicide detectives, have learned Tap was in an altercation inside a room at a resort before being located and transported to the hospital. The Clark County coroner's office has since ruled Tap's death the homicide as a result of blunt force trauma to the head.

In March of 2024, Daniel Roadheimer, a former professional wrestler, was charged with murdering Chris Tap during a party at the resort.

“Roadheimer 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 the odds that seemed insurmountable, succeeded. With life and history are stubbornly unmoldable and weren't finished yet, with the story of the River Kid, Christopher Tap. That's all for now. I'm Lester Hold. Thanks for joining us.

Friday night on an old new deadline. I believe Anna was in that suitcase. When a young woman vanishes overseas, I wanted to come here and just do everything that I can and my power to find my friend. You really are in a race against time.

An old new deadline. Friday night at 10/9 central. Only on NBC.