Dateline NBC - True Confession

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Idaho resident Christopher Tapp is sentenced to life after falsely confessing to the murder of his friend Angie Dodge. When the real killer is caught over 20 years later, the case appears to finally be closed until a chilling twist begins a new chapter in the decades-long saga. Keith Morrison reports.

Tonight on Dateline. 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, 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 running and gunning for anybody. You're handcuffed? 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 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. To potentially have a break on this? Oh my gosh. We're going to go solve a murder. We're going to go solve a 25-year-old murder. Years lost. Lives shattered.

A mother fights to uncover the truth. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with True Confession. They call it the Snake River, and it glides wide and placid past the gleaming white Mormon temple and then twists and tumbles over rocks and weirs through the town of Idaho Falls. It twists and tumbles like this most improbable tale.

The one that began right here. Where are your kids? Long before the state of Idaho was associated with notorious names like Lori Vallow or Chad Daybell or Brian Koberger. 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 cliche is a cliche for a reason.

Truth is often stranger than 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'd 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, meet girls. A daily gathering of the ones who didn't quite fit anywhere else. We were a bunch of wild kids, young adults just having fun,

trying to live our lives. One of their number had just left a 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. Man, 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 her brother Brent and her mother Carol. She grew up in a household of three brothers, so she wrestled with them. And her friends always knew that nobody got in her face because she would take care of you.

She was a good size, too. I mean, she wasn't a wee petite thing. She was 5'11", and she was strong. Strong and grown up enough in 1996 to move across town from the family home to her own apartment. And we gave each other a hug, and she walked towards her car, and she threw me a kiss and says, I love you. 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 in a residential neighborhood here on I Street in Idaho Falls. So I just barely got out of training and was, you know, working as a solo police officer myself when that call came out. He 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, said 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 had been done to that young woman? Well, she was nearly decapitated. Near the bed was a stuffed teddy bear, soaked in blood.

On the dead girl's stomach was a bloody handprint could you get a like a print off that a usable print we tried and 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. Perangi's family called down to the police department. It was beyond imagining. So they brought in some pictures. Is this your sister and pictures of the crime scene? How's that to look at? It's just horrifying.

My whole system shut down. My emotional, my everything just shut down. While the CSIs 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 ajar. And when they looked at the body, it seemed to them almost posed.

What did that say to you? Yeah, I mean, it was a passion of crime. It was somebody who wanted to humiliate her. Former detectives Ken Brown and Jared Furman. There was well over 14 different wounds. It was that horrific. The detectives had a hunch in 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. DNA didn't match? DNA didn't match. They learned that some of Angie's friends had gone to see her before the murder, but they left shortly before 1 a.m.

They all checked out. DNA didn't match. Well, detectives began casting a wider net, focusing on interviews. Crime scene investigator Jeff Pratt was increasingly sure it was DNA that would take the lead role in finding the killer. I really believed that that was going to be the solving factor from the very beginning. Was that a recommendation you were able to make to the lead investigators on the case? I made that suggestion. They were already kind of on task on some other things. On other things, 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. That the crime committed against Angie Dodge would spread its damage like a contagion. And thus a decades-long obsession took over Carol's 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. I got called in by the prosecutor,

and, you know, Carol, you have to stop. 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. And 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 Sargis, known as Jer. 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. 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. Tessidy Osborne was a friend. She was a very nice person and very responsible. Everybody loved her. Russ Baldwin was also a river regular. She had a big, bright, beautiful character. You just knew who she was. As was George Poggies. It was wild that somebody we knew had been murdered. Police were a constant presence at the river in those first days and weeks after the murder. Jer was terrified. I was terrified.

Our everyday lives are suddenly scrutinized, and they're asking, where were you six days ago? And I was like, 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 so-and-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 in this case and had given an alibi at the river was arrested in Ely, Nevada,

for very brutal rape and cutting a young woman with a knife. Kind of the same pattern, huh? Yes. 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' friends, including the kids from the river. Hey, Chris. Now for videotaped interviews.

Why do you think you're down here? Honestly, I have no idea. One of whom was a 20-year-old named Christopher Tapp. Tapp said he would like to help, but he said he didn't know anything about Angie's murder. If I did anything know about this, I would say, but I do not know. That's all that's true. All I know is I did not kill Angie Dodd.

400 miles away in Nevada, Ben Hobbs said he didn't kill Angie either, and he didn't know who did. And then he asked a question. Was she raped and then just killed? I don't know. That's why I'm asking you. Because if she was, my DNA will put my innocence right there. They took blood samples from both Hobbs and

Tapp. And then they pulled Tapp 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.

Tapp admitted he was in Angie's apartment with Ben Hobbs when Hobbs did it. Killed Angie. You know what happened? I don't know what happened. He stopped 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 semen found on Angie's body did not belong to Ben Hobbs or Chris Tapp. 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 Tapp 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. What about Jeremy? There had to be a third attacker with Hobbs and Tapp. And it was that third man who left the DNA. So they worked at Tapp some more. And what do you know? Tapp fingered another buddy who was also a friend of Angie's. Jer? Well, you've met him. Jeremy Sargis.

I remember waking up on my birthday. The police were there to arrest me. Pulled me out of bed, cuffed me, dragged me downtown. Told me I was under arrest for accessory to the murder of Angie Dodge. What was that like? That was one of the scariest things I've ever been through. You're handcuffed? I'm handcuffed.

Yeah, they took me downtown and 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 Pais. They flat out told me I was lying to them and I was protecting my friends. I was terrified because none of us are violent, and I thought I was next. Russ Baldwin was on the list too, but... I was in jail, and that's how that went. And they were like, what? And I'm like, yeah, I was in jail when this happened.

Strange, but true. Records showed Baldwin had been picked up on a warrant for failure to appear in court for, in all seriousness, fishing without a license at 7.29 p.m. the evening before Angie Dodge's murder. Records said 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 demand DNA because I could have broken out, murdered Angie Dodge, 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 pin it down. Or had they already? What did Officer Furman tell you that Chris Tapp had said about you? That Chris has placed you there. It was the middle of winter in Idaho. Angie Dodge had been 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. I got it from Jeremy. What did Officer Furman tell you that Chris Tapp had said about you? That Chris has placed you there. He's just trying to tell me that he knew we did this.

Mr. Tapp stated that Jeremy Sargis was one of the individuals that actually held her arms down. Right. During the homicide itself. What was it like to hear 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 Tapp did not. An aggressive attorney. What advice did your attorney give you? All you can say under the advice of your attorney, you invoke your Fifth Amendment right. And without more evidence that just Chris Tapp say so, prosecutors were forced to drop the charges against Jeremy. The fact of the 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 Tapp? Oh, I hated him. I hated him. What the hell are you thinking, man? Meantime, police and prosecutors kept talking to Chris Tapp, because unlike Jeremy, he kept talking to them. And then it happened. Sometime during those many hours of interviews, Chris Tapp added to his confession something very disturbing. He didn't just watch Ben Hobbs do it. He played a role in Angie's rape.

And remember that blood-soaked teddy bear police found near the bed? Tapp told police that Ben Hobbs held that over Angie's face as he, Hobbs, slit her throat. More persons of interest were brought in. More DNA tests were done. That rookie cop who'd worked 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 Hobbs 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 Tapp's confession. They called a press conference to announce they were charging Tapp with first-degree murder, rape, and use of a deadly weapon. Was there a collective sigh of relief when Chris Tapp 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, if only. When Chris Stapp went on trial in 1998, Carol Dodge was convinced

he absolutely played a role in the rape and murder of her daughter. I mean, I was finally looking somebody in the eye, somebody looking at somebody, what I thought was a devil who had taken my daughter's life. The anger surged within me. She watched him in court, her eyes full of venom, as she listened to the evidence against him. That is, his own confession. His many confessions, which the defense tried unsuccessfully to suppress. Tapp's own words convinced Carroll 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 to testify? I was going to let a killer walk free. I got to do what's right. Destiny Osborne, Angie's friend and Chris's friend too, testified that she heard Chris Tapp 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 daughter? Absolutely not. But she was pleased when Chris

Tapp was found guilty and sent off to state prison for 40 years. Except that couldn't be the end of it. Tapp's 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 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 Tapp was in prison. His alleged accomplice, Ben Hobbs, 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? 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 Tapp's friends thought they were being tortured, Angie's mom, Carol, was living in her own personal hell. That's when I went to the streets, and I literally put 60,000 miles on my truck, searching for her killer. I distributed like 1,200 flowers through the summer. Did you go to scary places, dangerous places?

Oh, yes. And I remember going to a place, and the lady said, you know, you need to leave before somebody hurts you. And yet she kept doing it for years, taking incredible risks. I had a gun put to my head one night. And during those nights, Carol often ended up parked outside the apartment where Angie was murdered. I would just stare at that house and stare at the windows and try and figure out how scared she must have been.

She also endlessly is, is talk the right word? Those friends of Chris Tapp, like Jeremy Sargis. There was times I would be working, look up and there she is. She'd been watching me for a while. She was relentless. And by that time, I think Furman had her pretty convinced that we had something to do with it. That's Detective Jared Furman, of course. Carol prodded him.

Prodded them, the whole department, insisting they keep searching for the killer. For more than a decade. She spent her days and nights reading police reports, practically memorizing them. I don't sleep and I get up and I just go, what part of this don't I understand? In one of those reports, Carol found a phrase which, the more she read it, sounded out of place in the DNA world. It was about pubic hairs, which, in addition to the semen, had been found in Angie's body. It was written in this lab report that it's similar or same as the victim.

And I said to myself, it's either Angie's or it's not Angie's. It can't be an either or. Then Carol remembered reading an article about an internationally known DNA expert who just so happened to live and work right in Idaho. This is the expert, Dr. 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 doctor found a new calling, founder and director of Idaho's Innocence Project. Secrets can be kept, I guess, but, 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 Tapp,

at which she might have been forgiven for hanging up the phone. But she didn't. Quite the reverse. Her words to me I'll never forget were, I just want to know what happened to my daughter. And, you know, it still brings the hair up on the back of my neck. The curiosity of hers surprised you?

The knowledge surprised me. Carol was well on her way to becoming an expert in her own right in forensic science. So she read that report to him. The one that said the pubic hairs found on Angie looked similar to or the same as the victims. He goes, well, they're either hers or they're not. Just as you thought. He said, well, where are the hairs? So she called the Idaho Falls Police Department, which found the hairs in an envelope in the evidence room. And once DNA

tests were run on those hairs and compared with the semen and all the other materials from the crime scene, Dr. Hampikian concluded this. There was no evidence whatsoever that anyone was inside Angie's apartment besides Angie and the mystery man who killed her. It's all one person who did this in terms of the DNA. Dr. Hampikian believed police were mistaken. There was one killer, not three like the police thought. And that remarkable news could mean only one thing. According to the Idaho Innocence Project, Chris Tapp's confession was false. He didn't do it.

No matter what the police thought, he wasn't even there. The news came down on Carol Dodge's head like a hammer. For 13 years, they had me convinced that Chris Tapp was there. All they kept saying is, he confessed, Carol. He confessed. And I was extremely angry. Next step, watch those Chris Tapp confession tapes for herself. There's times that I wanted to put my fist through the TV.

The DNA convinced Carol Dodge there could be no doubt that Chris Tapp was nowhere near her daughter's bedroom the night Angie was killed, and he needed to be out of prison. But the question remained, why would he confess? So what'd you do? I met with the chief,

and I asked for copies of all of the videotapes. Those videotapes, including the ones in which Chris Tapp had confessed to taking part in the murder. And now, a dozen years after the murder of her daughter, Carol watched every single minute of those hours and hours of videotapes. Interviews with all those men who'd been interrogated. Like I told you, we're just going in circles. Well, I know. That's why I think this is bulls**t.

Starting with Ben Hobbs. Man, he was adamant that he said, I did not kill Angie Dodge. Please don't be nervous. I'm just not used to being down here. Next, she watched the police interview Jeremy Sargis, whom Chris Tapp had implicated. I mean, literally, I said, what is going on here? Their strategy was that they were trying to get each one of these guys to roll on the other one. And Ben and Jeremy were much smarter and just basically, you know, didn't play their game. What she saw amazed her, as did what she learned.

That the man interrogating Chris Tapp, then Detective Jared Furman, had been a school resource officer well known to a young Chris Tapp. I trust you, and hopefully you trust me, okay? Furman kept telling Chris, just trust me, Chris. You've got to trust me. You know, we go way back, Chris. And I think that he was taught to respect adults. Sure. And he was a follower.

She watched as Chris told Furman he knew nothing about Angie's murder. And then she watched the detectives get tapped to imagine himself as an active participant. Let's say, for example, hypothetically, Chris, you were there. Okay. Okay. Hypothetically, Chris, you were there. 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.

But perhaps what troubled Carroll most was seeing how confused Tapp was. Even ten days after his first interviews, he still seemed not to know what house Angie lived in. Angie might live on the corner. It was a lower block. For a guy who'd taken part in a murder, Tapp also seemed not to know much about the layout of Angie's apartment.

So Detective Brown suggested this helpful memory aid. Why don't you try and dry it? Sometimes it's easier if you can dry it out. They seemed to be coaching him. He still couldn't do it. And then they showed him where the murder happened. Bathroom is up here. Bedroom is back here. Bedroom is back here. And then they showed him where the murder happened. It was more, Carol was stunned to see that police had shown T police theory of the crime after DNA didn't match Tapp or Hobbs was that three people committed the murder together.

The detective spent hours literally trying to drag the name of that third man out of Tapp. And when Carroll saw the tape, well, you watch it. The name, nothing comes to my head. It wasn't you. It wasn't us. Mickelson, Mackleton. There's times that I wanted to put my fist through the TV. By the time you had gone through all of those tapes, what did you think about Chris 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 a possibility he's not there. So then Carol made the most remarkable decision. She would do everything in her power to free the man convicted of killing her own daughter. Impossible, of course. Tapp had lost all his appeals. It was over for him. And the detective who'd put him behind bars was now more powerful than ever,

was mayor of Idaho Falls, and absolutely certain that Chris Tapp was as guilty as sin. What's it like to know that Carol is now actively campaigning for his release? Believes in innocent men. 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, off and on battles with 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 Sargis 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. He did. And he would make sure and tell her that, too. Your son's 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 that back in 2012, they were more than happy to sit with us and answer whatever

questions we had. And here, the mayor told us he absolutely knew that Chris Tapp was guilty. Knew because it was he, Furman, who took Tapp to the crime scene, where he, not the doubters, saw how Tapp behaved in the bedroom where Angie Dodge was murdered. He took us into the bedroom and relived that night. And you could see it on his face. He was reliving it. 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 Tapp. But... I have no doubts in my mind that Chris Tapp is part of that homicide itself. The worrying thing, though, well, you can't. People do confess to things they didn't do. We know that, but when people confess to crimes that they don't do, they don't know the minute details of that case. And Chris knew the minute details of that case.

He, of course, claims that he knows them because he was fed them. We would politely disagree with that. Is it possible, at least, that there was some suggestion involved in these things before he actually said them? That he heard in the questions he was being asked some hint of what the answer might be. Hypotheticals, as it were.

For us to sit and say there's absolutely no possibility anything could have happened, you know, we can't say things like that. We can say that we have reviewed those tapes over and over. We had a jury who reviewed those tapes. For two guys who interviewed this person and found that in the first interview, the second interview, the third interview, the fourth interview, the fifth interview,

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

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 Tapp 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 that the victim's mother, Carol Dodge, believed Tapp was innocent, and they, detectives, had made a terrible mistake. What's it like to know that Carol is now actively campaigning for his release? Believes in innocent man. I think that's part of the process. Her heart has been broken and she's convinced you got the wrong guy. When I heard that, I was genuinely surprised. She's looking for closure.

Tomorrow or the next day, Chris could be guilty in her mind again. Hmm, really? Hello there. Anyway, perhaps this, we decided, would be a good time to talk to the man in the middle of it all. The serial confessor, Christopher Tapp. Have a seat. Thank you. There comes a time in every tale to meet the person at the center of the story.

And here he is, Christopher Tapp. No longer the aimless pothead you've seen on those videotapes from 1997. At the time of this interview in 2012, he was a man of 35 who'd done more than a decade of hard time. As people look at you, what do you most want them to know about you? I've been so wronged all these years. How could individuals do something to another human being like they've done to me? You're an innocent man?

Yes, sir, I am. Of course, everybody in prison is innocent, right? If you look at the whole entire case, the DNA, none of it points to me. None of them. On that point, there is little dispute, of course. But how did Chris Tapp get here? That's a familiar story to many families. The sweet little boy shown in all these pictures of a typical childhood started smoking marijuana at 13. Then at 16 turned to meth. Chris dropped out of high school, hanging out down by the river in Idaho Falls with all those kids his mother warned him about.

That, he said, is how his name came up after the murder of Angie Dodge. Did you think anything of that? No. I had no rhyme, no reason to be scared. Until, you'll recall, January of 1997, when Tapp was brought in for questioning after his friend Ben Hobbs was arrested for a

Nevada sexual attack, which police said was similar to the murder of Angie Dodge. I didn't know what I was being brought in for until I got there. You didn't connect it with the Angie thing at all? No. I thought I was, honestly, I was going in for drugs. And as you've seen over the course of several weeks, Christopher Tapp soon went from saying he knew nothing about Angie Dodge's murder to being the only man charged in the case. Well, of course, one of the difficulties was your story kept changing, right?

Very much it did. I mean, you went from saying, I don't know anything about this, to then saying, well, maybe Ben had something to do with it. To then, well, maybe there's a third guy involved. Wait a minute, I was there, and oh, yeah, and I cut her. Where did that come from? Trying to give them what they wanted to hear, just to appease them. Wait a minute, but why would you say you cut her?

Because during that time, Mr. Furman, he said, hypothetically, even if you did cut her, it still ain't going to matter. We'll be able to help you. You just need to help us. And indeed, here it is on on tape, with then-detective turned mayor, Jared Furman, in charge of the interview. Hypothetically, if Chris Tapp was holding on to Angie as she was being cut,

and that some other stuff was going on, or if Chris Tapp took part in the knife in any way, shape, or form in cutting her, okay? But I didn't. Would you listen? I'm said okay if you took part in any of that that's okay because you're still here you're still showing some good faith that you want to cooperate do you believe that story hook line and sinker try to put yourself there right now and tell me what was going on inside your stomach and your brain.

Scared. Trying to figure out what they want just for them to leave me alone. Why? I didn't kill nobody. I was never there the night the murder happened. They just kept focusing on, well, if you was there, if you did do it, if you held the knife, it's okay. We'll help you. So, like an idiot, I believe them.

And then they charge you with murder. Yeah. As we spoke here back in 2012, Chris Tapp was fighting to clear his name with the support of the Idaho Innocence Project and the victim's mother. Carol Dodge came around to your side. What was that like? It's an amazing feeling, and I appreciate her finally understanding that I'm innocent. Carol, of course, despite this turnabout and new mission in life, was still stuck in her grief.

And by the time our first report on this case aired in 2012, more than 16 years after the murder of Angie Dodge, those River kids, Chris Tapp's friends, had tried to move on as well, but couldn't. Russ Baldwin had bounced around the country from coast to coast with only occasional visits back to Idaho Falls. It just feels like every time I go there, I need to watch my step. That's why I can't live there. Jeremy Sargis, wrongly accused by his friend Chris

of taking part in the murder, had gone into a kind of exile 500 miles from Idaho Falls. My friends, my support group had kind of disbanded, and I was kind of alone. But your family was there. That's your home. You grew up there. How was it like having to leave

and try to find a new life somewhere else? It was scary. My family has a business that's been there for over 100 years, and I always felt like I had a path, a career. Stuff like that kind of takes its toll on you a little bit, too. The rookie cop who'd manned the door at the murder scene, Bill Squires, was now a sergeant and still convinced that Chris Tapp's confession and conviction

were righteous, as they say. You would just never expect somebody to confess to something repeatedly that they didn't do. Yeah, there's no doubt. We've got a suspect here and they're admitting to this. Why would we do anything differently? Carol Dodge, of course, could think of a lot of reasons to do something differently. Was convinced those detectives had blown the case completely and had browbeaten an innocent man into a false confession. She needed help now.

And so she looked and looked until she found him, the man who might make all the difference. My phone rang, and I picked up the phone, and I almost fell out of my chair. 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 Tapp conviction. She looked all the way to Chicago, in fact, where she found him.

He is Steve Drizzen, a clinical professor of law at Northwestern University, legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, and one of the world's leading experts on the phenomenon of false confessions. When that Dateline program about the case aired, Drizzen had been watching. I had seen the Dateline show, so I was aware of who Carol Dodge was and my phone rank. 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 Tapp's

interrogation tapes, well. This was the worst example of police contamination, fact-feeding, suggesting a story that I have ever seen in all my years at looking at these cases. Chris was trying, in a sense, to come up with a story that would please the polygraph machine. If he could tell a story that would show that he was telling the truth according to the polygraph, he would get the benefit of an immunity deal. Why would he get that idea? Because that's what the law enforcement officers told them. It was all a ruse. Well, now that would shake things up, thought Chris Tapp's public defender, John Thomas.

Wouldn't it? So with that, you know, world-leading false confession expert, did the police attitude begin to change? Not really. It just fell on deaf ears. So Drizzen got the National Innocence Project involved. And while progress was not immediate, things began to happen. For one thing, this woman was having a change of heart. Remember Destiny Osborne, one of the river kids? So that little knot of uncomfortable stuff was working away inside her. Yeah, it's not a little knot, but yeah.

It's a big knot. A knot in her stomach. Because Destiny, who testified at Tapp's trial and told the jury that she had heard him confess to the crime, gathered up her courage and told Angie's mom, Carol, that police had pressured her to lie and that she hadn't heard Chris Tapp confess at all. What did that feel like, to finally come clean? It was great. I mean, she was in shock. And I'm just like, I lied, it was all a lie. Like, yeah, so.

Oh, my. Destiny had been in trouble when police approached her after the murder. She was in juvenile custody at the time. Did they suggest what might happen to you if you didn't cooperate with them? Oh, yeah. They pretty much told me, you can either come meet with us today or you can just go right to the big jail. Then the police fed her a story, she said, and made her rehearse it. I was literally told things that weren't true,

and I, 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 they use on the street is, my... Well, that's what I was going to say, but I chose to keep it a little bit appropriate.

The City of Idaho Falls lawyer said that in Destiny's diary a year after the murder and during a police interview six years after that, she repeated the story she told in court. Destiny told us it all stemmed from what police told her to say. What stopped you from coming forward to say that was all BS? How do you undo that without being charged with perjury yourself? And I ended up in a situation for probably like good 15 years after that that prevented me from really doing much, even leaving my house. But the fabric of Tapp's conviction was fraying at the seams, and prosecutors decided to make him an offer, plead guilty to murder, and be re-sentenced to time served.

In other words, admit to something he said he didn't do and remain a felon for the rest of his life, but get out of prison. Do you remember what you thought about that? I was kind of torn. He had spent 20 years in prison. That's a reasonable sentence to have to put in. I was torn between that and that,

why are we letting him out of prison when we know that he's guilty? Thank you. Please be seated. It was March 2017 when Christopher Tapp, along with defense attorney John Thomas, appeared in court to take the deal. And the room went silent when Angie Dodge's mother, Carol, took the witness stand. I can't imagine that, knowing what we know now, that anyone can convict someone that there's no DNA. And before long,

the legal details were done. And the courtroom exploded in celebration as a deputy removed Chris Tapp's handcuffs for the last time and he was engulfed in the arms of Carol Dodge. And right there as well,

Jeremy Sargis, that once close friend of Chris's, about whom Taff had lied to police about being at the crime scene, scene of the murder. The man who once said he hated Chris. I cried. I did.

He's still the same Chris. He just been through some rough stuff. Yeah. Did he apologize to you? Multiple times, yeah. You felt pretty bad about that. He does.

Which he should. He shouldn't have done that. That's all right. We're only halfway done with life, so we got the good half now. Victory! Yes, fate. Rarely what anyone expects.

Chris Tapp said he wanted to find the real killer now. And so did this man, the new chief of the Idaho Falls Police, Bryce Johnson. For me, and this is going to sound a little hard, for me, I wanted to make Chris Tapp irrelevant to the investigation we were doing. 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 had developed Alzheimer's and withdrawn from public life. So to lead the reinvigorated investigation, the new chief promoted Bill Squires to Detective Captain. It was Squires, remember, who worked the door at the original crime scene more than 20 years before. My guidance for our staff was always, let's look at this completely differently again with the eyes that we have now and the technology we have now. Squires didn't know it yet, but a woman known to be at the leading edge of that technology had been approached to work on the case. And her first thought?

My first assessment of this case was that it was not viable for investigative genetic genealogy. But of course, CeCe Moore had lot to get used to. The world was a very different place, as was Idaho Falls. What did it feel like to walk out of prison a free man in 2017? What it felt like to walk out of prison a free man in 2017? What it felt like to walk was overwhelming. Truly, truly overwhelming. I had a panic attack, you know, the first time I went shopping.

I had to run out of the store because I couldn't handle it all. It was so much. Never had choices before. And so he made up for lost time. got a factory job inspecting potato sacks. And he got married, which made him both a husband and stepfather to a couple of kids. Meanwhile, that very spring, the Idaho Falls police kept looking for the man who'd left DNA on the body of Angie Dodge in 1996. A DNA technology company called Parabon Labs had made this sketch of what that man might look like based on genetic material left at the scene.

And then Parabon made an offer to the new man in charge of the murder investigation, Captain Bill Squires. Parabon said, hey, you know, by the way, we've got some hours that we have available to commit to this. Would you be interested in doing that? And it was easy for me to say, yes, absolutely. Let's do this cooperatively and see where it goes. No matter the cost, full steam ahead. And with that kind of priority, Parabon asked the head of its law enforcement unit to join in.

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

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

What I always do is just building trees. 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, CeCe Moore began to come up with some answers, all connected to a family with the name of Usry. Tell me what it was like when, what you thought at least, when you first got a name from C.C. Moore. Oh my gosh, we were so excited, I can't even tell you. There was potentially six males that could match this based on their age, and one of them happened to live in Idaho and had lived in Idaho the whole time. Five of them were eventually ruled out, but that one person lived only a couple of hours from Idaho Falls in Twin Falls. But how to get a DNA sample without spooking him? Could this person be your suspect? Yeah, he absolutely could be. Could he not be? Yeah,

that's possible too. So do you go down there and just knock on his door? 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 a cigarette butt or a glass from a restaurant, didn't work. So police got creative when they noticed the man was driving a car with expired license plates.

The officer pulled him over, and so while they had the subject stop, they asked him, hey, would you, this officer's in training, would you mind giving us a breath sample just so he can get the practice of running this machine? You don't even have to get out of your car. And he's like, of course. Yeah, no problem.

And we collected two breath samples in those breath tubes on the AlkaSensor device. And that gave us the DNA sample. But when the results came back from the lab, no match. Whoa. That one, huge disappointment. That one hit us hard. We really thought we were on the right track and really forced us all to go back to the drawing board.

All 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 Usry family trees, all the names, the connections, something struck her. There could always be an adoption, son who's been born to a man and he doesn't know about it. Could there be a missing link.

C.C. Moore had found the family with its six men who had to be closely related to the person who left DNA at the crime scene. The Usry family had to be another male Ussry. But there were no more Ussrys. Unless... When I went back to the drawing board, I again focused on that and said, is somebody missing here? Families can be complicated. Secrets, affairs, or brief or abandoned marriages. Sometimes kids are the result. So?

My colleague started calling around, and she called this very small local library in a small town where this family had been based initially. 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 Asri, except that was no longer the daughter's last name. So she had obviously remarried, and she had one son.

The son who had Usry DNA, but took on the name of his stepfather, which explained why he had been so hard to find. So tell me what it was like to discover that. It was an amazing moment because finally all the pieces started falling in place. We learned he actually lived in Idaho Falls in 1996. And when Moore dropped all this knowledge on the Idaho Falls police... It was very hard not to break into tears telling them. I don't know if we would have ever found him. I really don't, without them finding it. The specter who had eluded all efforts to identify him for decades,

now, apparently, maybe, had a name. So, what was the name? Drips. Brian Drips. Brian Drips. And lo and behold, it was a name that had come up right after the murder, back in 1996. Detective Captain John Marley. His name had been listed in there as a neighbor that had lived across the street. Detective Lieutenant Sage Albright.

So this neighbor, he said that he had been drinking heavily that night, couldn't remember where he had been or what he had been doing, and basically couldn't account for anything that had happened on the night that Angie was murdered. Was there a DNA sample for this fellow? No. No DNA test for a neighbor with no alibi? Why the heck was that? He had left the area shortly after that.

He had moved to another state and then, as far as we know, had never returned to the Idaho Falls area. An excuse? Not really. Now retired Detective Jeff Pratt, the man who from the start thought DNA would solve the case. It was really quite unnerving, you know, to think that we were that close and should have been doing that work, you know. It's investigating 101. It is. Now, clearly, the priority was to get a sample of DNA

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

his car. Three of us were on that cigarette butt so fast that would make your head spin, and we didn't care whether a car was going to take us out or not. Off it went to the Idaho State Crime Lab. And the very next day, the captain got a call from his lieutenant. And geez, I almost want to tear up. I'm trying to keep it calm and collected here. When he called me, he said, I just got a call from the lab. It's him. Those are the words words it's him and uh hung up the phone with him and i remember just going my 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 as 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 arrest the guy, right? We do. And four days later, Brian Dripps was led into an interview room. Well, what questions do you have for us to begin with? Well, where to start?

Yeah. What's basically going on? That murder case. Was it odd that the suspect himself brought up the next day and there was a cop car sitting out front and 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 Dateline. There was that kid that they did arrest and got charged with it. You know, and the mom, I guess, denying that he killed Angie Dodge.

And then... We have your DNA at the scene. Yep. We have your DNA at the scene. It is. 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, he didn't mean to kill her. And then back inside, it all spilled out. I went to favor her.

Cause I was almost up on coke and drunk. How did you get in? I just walked through the door. Did she say anything to you? Was she screaming, calling for help? I don't recall that she did, no. But she fought? Yes, I mean, I think that's when it ended up. He killed her. What did you use? A knife.

Was she moving at all when you left? I don't remember. I was on Dababird and... I did my thing and then I left. And just like that, the murder of Angie Dodge was solved. But there was one more big task for Brian Dripps, to convince detectives that the other man who confessed to the crime and still had a conviction on his record,

that is, Chris Tapp, was truly innocent. If you were trying to convince us that nobody else was there, how would you do that? Before detectives were finished interrogating now-confessed killer Brian Dripps, they had to put one huge issue to rest. Did Dripps commit the crime alone? Or was someone else, say, Christopher Tapp? Did someone go with you over there? No. Dripps stood firm.

If you were trying to take the blame and there was other people involved, or... I don't know. The answers seemed clear. So? Well, Brian, at this point, it's our obligation to tell you that you are under arrest.

Can I smoke one last cigarette before you do that? Frankly, I was a bit surprised. Really, I believed that we were going to find out that he had some relationship with Chris Tapp. Did you realize that whole time that they still thought you were a guilty man? I got to watch the Outer Falls Police Department detectives try to lead that man down a path towards me. And he did what was right.

He finally did what was the complete, total truth and said he acted alone and I had nothing to do with it. It must have been a nerve-wracking experience to start watching this guy not knowing what he was going to say exactly. It was rough because, again, at the end of the day to save himself he might have been like well hey yeah I know Christopher Tapp but thankful he was finally you know a man enough to admit what he did wrong. I'm appreciative for him finally being truthful. And just like that the long black cloud of suspicion that had hung over Christopher Tapp and his River Kid friends for all those years vanished. And life was suddenly like sun after rain. Chris called me when the arrest had been made and said they got him, Jer. They freaking got him. And the guy was right across the street. Right there. Maybe they didn't have enough Q-tips to do DNA to the neighbors or something.

I just, I don't know. But it was pretty bad police work. But that was for another day. For now... Today we're here to announce that we have arrested Brian Lay Dripps for the murder and rape of Angie Dodge. 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 has been. And the hundreds of people that's been affected by one person's choice to take my daughter's life. Including, of course, the man who'd spent more than two decades in prison after

confessing, falsely, that he killed Angie, Chris Tapp. I got asked the question, do you owe Chris Tapp an apology? But we hadn't done that follow-up investigation yet to verify what Dripps had said. So I kind of said at the time that, hey, right now we're here to talk about Dripps and the day will come in which we need to talk about Chris Tapp. It was two months later in July 2019 when, in the words of the police chief, Chris Tapp finally got his day.

You nervous about this? Yes, very 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 state's in, you know, agreeance with, you know, my actual innocence, everything else, but the judge can walk in, the state's in agreeance with my actual innocence, everything else,

but the judge can be like, maybe I don't agree. And then where do we go from there? Well, we're about to find out. Yeah. We are. At his attorney's office, Chris Tapp was greeted by many of his oldest friends, those river kids, wearing T-shirts bearing a message they'd repeated ever since the start. Innocent. We told you so. They all marched with Chris to the courthouse, a block away. Those present included Jeremy and Russ and George.

From my perspective, all of those white T-shirts walking into that courthouse was middle fingers in the air. We told you so. Here's what happened when Chris walked into the courtroom. Carol Dodge was there, of course. All rise. The prosecution went first. In my view, there's clear and convincing evidence the defendant was convicted of a crime for which he did not commit.

Based upon that, we're going to move to dismiss, to vacate the jury verdict, and 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, Brent Dodge, the Dodge family, for continuing to push forward, to believe in me when they actually saw the truth. I am so grateful and humbled to be their friend. And then finally, the judge. So I am going to grant the state's motion to dismiss both the rape conviction and the murder conviction on the basis of actual innocence of Mr. Tapp. As far as this court is concerned, you are innocent of the convictions that you've been living under for the past 20-plus years.

So I don't think any of us can really put ourselves in your place. But I'm just glad that that can be corrected at this time. And we're off the record in this matter. It was finished. Chris Tapp had become, according to the Innocence Project, the first person in the world to be exonerated by genetic genealogy. If our story ended here, well, that ending might be a happy one. But it doesn't end here.

And this ending? Well, it's more Greek tragedy than anything else. I don't know if there's a way to make sense of this. Nearly a quarter century to the day after he raped and murdered Angie Dodge, Brian Dripps shuffled into a courtroom in Idaho Falls. He'd cut a deal and pleaded guilty. This was sentencing day. We were one, 25 years of pure hell, Brian Dripps, you put us through. Carol Dodge told us she was too torn up to sit down with us for a final interview about her struggle to get justice for her daughter, Angie. But in court, she did not hold back.

You, Brian Dripps, deserve eternal hell. You better look up at me instead of looking at that table. We have to go through 25 years of pure hell trying to find justice. Looking for you. Before sentence was pronounced, Dripps spoke to the Dodge family. I'm sorry. I know you're not forgiving me,

but I am sorry. The judge sentenced Dripps to life in prison. He must serve 20 years before he's eligible for parole in 2039, when he will be 73 years old. If nothing else, we'll be in recess. Thank you. The two original lead detectives charged with finding Angie Dodge's killer were not in court that day. Ken Brown, who's retired, did not respond to our questions about Chris Tapp's exoneration or about the failure to collect Drip's DNA. And Jared Furman, the former mayor, died from Alzheimer's a year after Drip's was sent to prison. He was 60 years old. As for the fully exonerated, actually innocent Chris Tapp,

what word would he use to describe himself after all he's been through? I've been a little lucky. Lucky enough that you guys picked up the case. Lucky enough that, you know, the Dodge family started to believe in my innocence. So again, I take it as luck. Yeah. It's really amazing, isn't it? I mean, you were a pariah. You were that drug-addled bad

kid from the riverbank who, with his bad friends, did this terrible thing. It was nice for people to finally see the truth. If it wasn't for this show, through all this bad luck, I guess I'd probably still be sitting in an 8x10 cell right now. And once he was out, Chris Tapp became a bit of an activist. It is my honor to be here today. In 2021, he watched as Idaho's governor signed a law providing compensation for the wrongfully convicted. The law provided Chris more than a million dollars. He lobbied for similar laws in other states. And he filed a lawsuit against the city of Idaho Falls and its police department.

Chris settled it for an apology from City Hall and $11.7 million. Still, it doesn't take away my father passing away while I was inside. It doesn't take away the chance that I had the ability to have my own children. They stole that away from me. So I just don't see how it's fair for them to walk away completely clean and I have to live this nightmare. I had talked to Chris often through the years, found him rather, well, sweet. The kid who loved his mother and his old friends and for whom there might finally be a storybook ending. But no, this wasn't that kind of story. That marriage, after his release, didn't work out. And then in August 2023, as he and his

wife Stacy were in the middle of their divorce, she went for a ride in her new Corvette and was killed in a wreck. It hurts that I know she won't be here for her kids or her family. And honest truth, you know, I'll never get the closure I wanted with her either. And it hurts. This conversation was one month later in Chris's new home, September 2023. All right, done. And then the interview was over. Okay. It's been nice talking to you all these years. It's been amazing, Keith. I mean, like I said, here we are

11 years later. Who would have thunk it? An interview that ended with Tapp making a vow. It's nice to see it to its conclusion. Me too, because this is my last one. I will never not, this is my last interview, I will never talk about the Angie 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'm done with that, never again. Only this time, well. Six weeks later, Chris was visiting Las Vegas overnight for a car show. So what I had heard 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 Tapp died? And I said to my wife,

Chris Tapp died! And she's like, what? It was true. Chris Tapp was. And she's like, what? It was true. Chris Tapp was 47 years old. Days later, Carol and Destiny sat side by side as Tapp's shocked family and friends gathered in Idaho Falls for his funeral. Chris's life being cut short is the exact opposite of what anyone expected from Chris. Chris had ideas of what he was going to do for the rest of forever. For however many days I have left on this earth, I will miss him every day.

I love him very much, and I miss him very much. All of his old, closest friends are hurting really bad right now. And then? January 2024, like a bolt from the blue. This from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Through the course of the suspicious death investigation, LVMPD homicide detectives have learned Tapp was in an altercation inside a room at a resort

before being located and transported to the hospital. The Clark County Coroner's Office has since ruled Tapp's death a homicide as a result of blunt force trauma to the head. The investigation is ongoing, we are told, But Las Vegas Metro isn't saying much. 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 before, free the man convicted of killing her daughter. And she, this force of nature, against all odds that seemed insurmountable, succeeded. But life and history are stubbornly unmoldable and weren't finished yet with the story of the river kid, Christopher Tapp. That's all for this edition of Dateline, and check out our Talking Dateline podcast. Keith Morrison and Josh Mankiewicz will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again Sunday at 9, 8 Central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.