My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 279 - MFM Guest Host Picks #2: Elizabeth Taylor

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

Throughout the months of June and July, Exactly Right family members will be guest hosting My Favorite Murder! Each week a guest host will pick their favorite stories from Karen and Georgia. Today's episode is hosted by Elizabeth Taylor -- co-host of The True Beauty Brooklyn Podcast on Exactly Right -- covering the stories of the Tulsa Race Massacre (Episode 211) and the Murder of Angie Dodge (Episode 185). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C, on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. Exhibit C. It's truly criminal. Hey guys, welcome to my favorite murder. I'm Elizabeth Taylor.

I'm the co-host of the True Beauty Brooklyn podcast on the Exactly Right Network. And today I'm going to be guest hosting for Karen in Georgia. So I'm really excited to share with you my story picks because I've been a huge fan of my favorite murder for years and years, sort of since the beginning. I actually remember the first day that somebody told me about the show. Somebody came into my studio and they were like, oh, do you like podcasts? There's the show called My Favorite Murder. You'd probably love it.

And I was like, my favorite murder, this sounds fucking wacky. And then I put it on and I just couldn't stop listening. They became like the rest of you guys, they became my homegirls, my friends, these people who really indulged in this weird thing that I was also interested in. And it's been such a complete joy and fucking mind blowing to now be on the network with them. And now to also be guest hosting, I'm just really excited to share with you guys my favorite murders.

So the first story that I'm going to be doing is episode 211, the Tulsa Massacre. And the reason that I picked this is because, you know, growing up as a minority in America, we spent a lot of time sort of waiting to see yourself reflected accurately in media. And one of the things I love about podcasting is that it allows for this medium to be created and consumed by the general public. So everyday people can take back the narratives, the stories and disseminate information further and faster than before. So that's really one of the reasons that I love My Favorite Murder.

And I think the reason that all of us do is because we speak about murder and we indulge in this weird morbid fascination, but we also get to hear the stories of the victims and we learn their narratives and allow their stories to go on. So the Tulsa Massacre is one of my favorite stories because it's, you know, one of many that have been told throughout black American households for generations. But until recently, it was overlooked in American history. And true allyship to marginalized communities means going out of your way to learn the truths of our collective's cultures and then using your voice to amplify those who are not heard.

And Karen said it beautifully, this is our collective American history, the true story of the Tulsa Massacre. So enjoy. This week I'm going to do the Tulsa Race Massacre. It's also called the Black Wall Street Massacre of 1921 or the Greenwood Massacre. So did you watch Watchmen, the HBO series? Yes. Okay.

So you know how it started? And then there was that one episode that was highly dedicated to, that's a true fucking story. That was crazy. Okay. So this is very cool. So I remember watching that and the whole time I was watching it going, please don't let this be real.

And of course it was. And then I read articles about it, whatever. Or at least I read one article about it, basically confirming like, oh no, this is real. And it made me think of it because like the Wednesday, like after we recorded last week, someone, Akilah Green, who I follow on Twitter retweeted this amazing article from The Root, which I'll talk about at the end of the episode, but basically reminded me what an amazing story it is and it was told in Watchmen so compellingly and incredibly. And in this way where you're just like, oh, this is, this is that, what has been termed

black history in this country where basically it doesn't get talked about because really fucked up shit happened. Yeah. And no one wants to acknowledge it. Yeah. People don't acknowledge it in it. And when they do, it gets whitewashed or mishandled and then cue me walking in with my papers. Hey.

But the cool thing is, when a show like that, that's popular and cool and then taking notes, Alan Moore, taking this historical context and then being like, hey, here's this character you care about. Yeah. This is this thing that happened to like her ancestors, essentially, and now you're in this story. Yeah. Now you understand that this was a real place in time.

Yeah. I just really did a good job of like showing the fear that you would have no matter, you know, in that situation and how dire and desperate and terrifying it was. Insane. So, just to quote the sources, obviously, the original concept was because watching Watchmen and me going, oh my God, oh my God, the work that got done around this and basically kind of in the retelling, there's an amazing article. So the root article was written by a writer named Jay Connor and a podcaster.

There was also an article in The Washington Post by a writer named Denine L. Brown. And that article is unbelievable and it has pictures and it's lots of first-hand accounts and there's a city council woman who lives in Tulsa now and she talks about how, I believe it was her grandmother, she said, who she learned about it from her, but they barely talk about it. It was literally a taboo subject. Sure. They just didn't want to discuss it because it was a massacre and it's been referred

to since historically as a race riot. And classically, the phrase race riot means black people started it. And that's why it's called a race massacre and that people want it referred to as that because of how the story actually goes. It's just one of those things where wording matters. Yeah. And it's a thing that you don't understand how ignorant you are until you learn how ignorant you are and then how you deal with that ignorance is you can either go, no, I'm not.

Fuck you. And it's just a sad for me, a white person, or you could actually pay attention and read and try and try, open it up a little and then do better, try to clap, clap, clap, do better. Okay. So there was the, there's also a great article in Smithsonian magazine by a writer named Allison Keys about the 2015 discovery of a first-hand 10 page type written, I should have said first-hand here, first-hand account of this massacre by a lawyer in, in the Greenwood District named Buck Colbert Franklin.

So he basically saw it all happening, walked outside, like, and then when it was all over, went home and typed up everything he saw and remembered. And then folded it up basically and put it away and it wasn't discovered until like four or five years ago. Holy shit. And now it's in the Smithsonian. Oh my God. So that's a great article if you want to look that up and see.

And then there's a book by a writer named Scott Ellsworth called Death in a Promised Land about the Greenwood Massacre. The forward of that book is by a man, a historian named John Hope Franklin, who I believe worked at the Smithsonian and he is the son of Buck Colbert Franklin. Wow. Okay. So that's all. If you want to do more reading about this, those are good places.

Also, of course, our friend Wikipedia was there for me. So was there for Jay, Elias, my researcher, and our assistant. Okay. So this starts Monday, May 30th, 1921. It's Memorial Day in Tulsa, Oklahoma and in the rest of America. So a 19 year old boy named Dick Rowland, who is a shoe shine that works nearby. He goes into the Drexel building at 319 South Main Street and he gets into the elevator because he needs to ride up to the top floor because that's the only place where there's

a black's only restroom in the entire area. And he is a black man and so he has to go there, it's the only place he can go. So this elevator is operated by a 17 year old white girl named Sarah Page. So they've at the very least seen each other before because she's the only elevator operator in the only elevator in the Drexel building and he's clearly had to use that restroom at the top of that building before. So soon after Dick Rowland enters the elevator, a clerk at the Drexel's first floor clothing store, Renberg's, here's a woman's scream from the elevator.

So that clerk rushes out to see a black man running from the building and then he goes into the elevator area to find Sarah Page still in the elevator and what he described as a quote distraught state. So the clerk assumes Sarah's been assaulted and he calls the police. The police arrived, they speak with Sarah, there is no written statement on the record. None is ever taken. The police begin an investigation. And the exact details of what actually happened in the elevator are still unknown.

But most people believe that Dick either tripped while he was walking into the elevator and fell and grabbed Sarah's arm to steady himself or he stepped on her foot as he walked into the elevator and then grabbed her so she wouldn't fall over. But there was basically physical contact and it's likely she screamed because she was like startled by it. So Dick immediately ran knowing that the worst would be assumed about his actions and his intentions no matter how innocent the incident actually was. So Dick goes to his mom's house in the Greenwood district of Tulsa.

So this here's a little historical context, all of which was mostly brand new information to me, the person with barely a high school education. Okay, so when the Civil War ended in 1865, the slaves in Oklahoma are emancipated and they stay in the area and resettle as free people. So in the early 1900s, Tulsa experiences this huge boom because there's a discovery of a massive oil supply at Red Fork that's just across the Arkansas River from Tulsa. And then in 1905, workers strike another oil well that they call Glen Pool and Tulsa becomes one of the most oil-rich areas in America.

Did you know that? No. There was oil in Oklahoma? I'm completely not. No idea. No, no idea. No. Did not know.

There's oil. So more and more people come to the area for work and the population grows from around the year 1900, there was like almost 1400 people that lived in Tulsa and 20 years later, 98,874 people live in Tulsa. I couldn't get one more for a fucking round number. Could we just have a round number? I also like that this is an estimated number and it's the most random number of all time. But that was when I would normally step in and round it up myself and then, you know,

give fuck Wikipedia over once again. Okay, so Oklahoma becomes a state in 1907. Basically it's the whole turn of the century and after this time of amazing growth, especially for the black community in Tulsa. They're thriving. It's a huge accomplishment because this is post-Civil War Jim Crow South. Their segregation and bigotry has a constant oppressive reality for all black Americans. And yet the black citizens of Tulsa have figured out how to succeed and prosper despite like

a whole system that's rigged against them. So it was a very big deal. So much so, the reputation of this thriving black community in Tulsa draws the attention of leading black intellectual and educator of the day Booker T. Washington. And he takes a trip out to Oklahoma to see what's going on. What year did you say? 1905. A year later with Booker T. Washington's guidance, they officially organized this 4,000-acre

entirely black-owned neighborhood as the Greenwood District. There's two newspapers, two movie theaters. One of the movie theaters is featured in Watchmen. Three stores, churches, nightclubs, medical centers, dentist's office, all entirely black-owned. And for the next 13 years, Greenwood, the Greenwood District flourishes. And its success earns the nickname Black Wall Street. After World War I ends in 1918, American servicemen returning from the war flocked to Tulsa because there's a bunch of work and a bunch of money there because of the oil.

But many of these white veterans are not happy that they have to compete for jobs with educated black citizens. So this is also the same time. Black American veterans are coming back to America and they're trying to assert their equal rights. Right. They just fought for the country. They just fought and watched their fellow soldiers die for their country.

They come back to us. But they have no fucking... They have no rights. They can't vote. They can't go to the bathroom in a regular restroom. It's so restrictive and ridiculous and they're just like, this is bullshit as it is. And then kind of like the third or one of the elements that's the topper, which I mentioned in my story last week about the death of Mary Fagan, the murder of Mary Fagan and the murder

of Leo Frank, it's around this time the KKK starts to have a resurgence. So tensions are high in the South and everywhere. In 1920, a white 18-year-old boy named Roy Belton is accused of murdering a local Tulsa Chaxie driver. And before his guilt is even confirmed, a group of armed men storm the jail, take Belton and lynch him. Holy shit. Yeah.

He was white or black? He was white. Wow. So many Tulsans blame the police for not protecting Belton. Others support this lynching as this vigilante act that's righteous. But this event makes the black citizens of Tulsa fear for their lives because if that can happen to a white boy, they know that they are definitely not safe. So now we're back to 1921 with the elevator incident.

The morning after, which is Tuesday, May 31, 1921, the police find 19-year-old Dick Roland at his mom's house on Greenwood Avenue and they take him to the Tulsa City Jail at 1st and Main Street for questioning. Dick explains to police that although he did put his hand on Sarah, he was not trying to hurt her. That afternoon around 3 p.m. with Dick and custody, the white-owned newspaper, the Tulsa Tribune, prints a story about Dick's arrest with the headline, quote, Nab Negro for attacking girl in an elevator.

The rest of the article supports this biased headline and makes Dick look guilty of an attempted assault. Yeah. Okay. So the same paper also publishes an editorial piece. It's like they had these ready to go. And they publish an editorial piece with the headline, quote, to Lynch Negro Tonight, essentially calling for more vigilante justice.

So obviously this newspaper is putting Dick Roland's life in danger intentionally. It's like a call to action. It certainly is. So after the paper releases those articles, police commissioner J.M. Atkinson gets an anonymous phone call threatening to kill Dick Roland. So that coupled with the fact that the police are still shaking off the criticism that they didn't properly protect Belton, Commissioner Atkinson moves Dick Roland to the more secure jail on the top floor of the Tulsa County courthouse.

But rumors of a potential lynching and the calling for a goddamn lynching in the newspaper yet it's not a rumor, draws more and more people to the courthouse. And by 7.30 that night, hundreds of angry white Tulsans are gathered outside the courthouse demanding to be shown Dick Roland, dear, it's called a mob. It's an angry terrorist mob. So Sheriff Willard M. McCullough sends six of his officers to the roof of the courthouse with rifles. He disables the courthouse elevator and he positions more officers on the top floor with

directions not to open the door for anyone. To 8.20, three white men from the angry mob somehow, quote unquote, get inside the courthouse. The sheriff immediately gets them out and he then addresses the crowd telling them there isn't going to be a lynching they all need to leave. Now it's, it's, you know, questionable whether or not he made a real effort here. Because despite his quote unquote orders, the crowd continues to build and by nine o'clock that night there are 400 angry white Tulsans outside of the courthouse. With rumors of a potential lynching swirling around the town, the people of the Greenwood

District gather on Greenwood Avenue to come up with a plan because they know Dick Roland is basically a dead man. He's innocent and they're going to kill him terribly. They don't know what their strategy should be though. The World War I vets want to collect up guns and ammo and prepare for a potential battle. The businessmen want to be as peaceful as possible because they don't want anything that would threaten their hard earned properties and businesses. About 20 to 50 of the men of the Greenwood District decide to go to the courthouse as

a group, some of them armed and offer their services to the sheriff to help protect Dick Roland. Oh dear. Right. But I was thinking about that where I was like, it's not the best idea, but you would have to go armed. Yeah. Because as this tiny group of black men, you can't not take.

Sure. It's understandable. Come with you. It's just like, you know where this is going. But the only option is to let them kill an innocent 19-year-old. Totally. Totally. And also, I think these were very empowered, intelligent people who are just kind of like,

it ain't going to be this way anymore. Yeah. Like, let's not. Yeah. When they arrive, the sheriff is like, no thanks, get out, we don't need your help, you're making it worse. They go back to the Greenwood District. But the angry white men who had been standing outside the courthouse were surprised by this

group of Greenwood District men. And they were enraged that they would appear there. So a bunch of them leave the courthouse, a bunch of the angry white mob leave the courthouse, go home to get their own guns. And a group of several hundred decide to try to get more weapons by robbing the National Guard. Oh no. Yeah.

So Mayor James Bell, who was of the National Guard's 180th Infantry Regiment, he knew what was happening downtown at the courthouse and he was prepared. He had his guards prepped and ready to shoot any intruders on site. And so basically they come up to the National Guard, I guess, armory to go and be like, we're taking guns and we're going to go. And they were all just like, we'll kill you if you keep coming. So they just walked away. Okay, great.

Right? So they give up there and go back to the courthouse. So now the crowd or the courthouse has swelled to nearly 2,000 angry white men, most of whom are now armed. Word of the growing armed mob gets back to the Greenwood District and some of the men in Greenwood decide that this is their last chance to save Dick Rowland from being lynched. This time, 75 black men from the Greenwood District, now most of them armed, arrive at the courthouse just after 10pm.

Then they offer their services to the sheriff, again, he says no. But now that the white mob is armed, they're feeling bolder. One of them reportedly approaches one of the black men from Greenwood, the Greenwood group, and demands he give up his pistol. The black man refuses, a shot is fired. So no one knows for sure who fired that shot, whether or not it was an accident. If it was just like every, you know, emotions were running high. If it was meant to scare both groups off, no one knows what happened, but ultimately

it doesn't matter because it starts a shootout that leaves 12 people, some black and some white, dead. They're drastically outnumbered, so the group of black men retreat back to the Greenwood District, but this time the white men follow, looting stores along the way for more weapons and ammo. So now it's on. The gunfight continues along the Frisco train tracks, which separate the Greenwood District from the neighboring white districts.

Some of the white mob drive into Greenwood proper and start shooting at people and businesses drive by style. So they just start and some of these people didn't know what was going on. So there's, that was part of the watchmen thing that was so amazing is people coming out of a movie theater. They went into movie theaters where those people had no idea and then just murdered everybody in a movie theater. So they're just picking people off on the street.

In some cases, business owners trying to protect themselves return fire. Meanwhile, the National Guard officers come up with a way to stop the chaos, but it's not a great plan. They station guards at the courthouse, but then they station protective guards only around the white neighborhoods. They send other guards to round up black people, whether they're participating in violence or not, and detain them at the convention hall on Brady Street. So immediately it's protect white people and arrest black people.

The fighting continues through the early morning hours of Wednesday, June 1st, 1921. Around 1am, the white mob begins setting black businesses along Archer Street on fire. Some reporters say the Tulsa Fire Department tried to put the fires out, but the white mob threatened to shoot them if they did. Some other reports suggest that the fire department was siding with the white mob and deliberately didn't put the fires out. The fires rage, and by 4am, roughly two dozen black-owned businesses are burning. Oh my God.

Okay. So this is where Buck Colbert, I'm pronouncing it Colbert, like Stephen Colbert, or it could be Colbert, but Buck Colbert Franklin, this is from his 10-page document where he wrote it right after he saw it. And you can also read this in Smithsonian Magazine. He wrote, quote, I could see planes circling in midair. They grew in number and hummed, darted and dipped low. I could hear something like hail falling upon the top of my office building.

Down East Archer, I saw the old Midway Hotel on fire, burning from its top. And then another, and another, and another building began to burn from their top. The sidewalks were literally covered with burning turpentine balls. I knew all too well where they came from, and I knew all too well why every burning building first caught, first caught from the top. I paused and waited for an opportune time to escape. Where aware is our splendid fire department with its half-dozen stations, I asked myself, is the city in conspiracy with the mob?

So people were flying overhead of the Greenwood District and throwing turpentine, flying, burning turpentine balls down onto the building so they'd all catch on fire and burn. So it was like a complete, it was a complete onslaught, yes, completely overpowered by the mob. Many Greenwood District residents flee the city. Troops from another Oklahoma National Guard station arrive on the scene around 9.15 a.m. on June 1st as backup. At this point, roughly 4,000 black people have been detained by the local National Guard,

4,000. The National Guard declares martial law around 11.50 a.m. and try to regain order. Between 12 and 1 p.m., the violence finally stops, but the fires rage on for two full days. Shit. The rounding up and detention of black citizens in the city continues throughout. When martial law is finally withdrawn on Friday, June 4th, 1921, there are still about 6,000 black people being held in detention.

Some are held for as long as eight days. Wow. All of a sudden done, more than 35 blocks in the Greenwood District are destroyed. 35 blocks. Oh, my God. 191 businesses, 1,200 homes, churches, and schools are burned to the ground. An estimated 10,000 black citizens are left homeless. It's hard to say exactly how many people died because many media outlets at the time would

change their counts and release conflicting information. But the estimates today range anywhere from 55 people to 300. Wow. And there is a really amazing in that Washington Post article, they talk about how there's a potter's field that's out in the back of the cemetery in Tulsa. They believe that they dumped a bunch of bodies out there that just, they just buried them in a mass grave. And that's why they don't know the number.

Fuck. James B. A. Robertson calls for a grand jury to investigate how the massacre came about. The investigation starts on June 8th, 1921, and includes both black and white witnesses as well as the sheriff and other city officials. They're all questioned about the events over a 12-day period. But the jury is made up of all white people and they find the massacre was incited by the black citizens. Of course they do.

While they do acknowledge the law enforcement failed to prevent the violence, that's ultimately a worthless concession. The court reviews 27 different cases associated with the massacre and 85 people are indicted. But when all the legal proceedings are done, not one person is convicted for the murders or the damages in the Greenwood district. When questioned about what happened, Tulsa police, firefighters, National Guard and other officials try to say they did everything they could to stop the violence. But witness accounts say otherwise.

There are mentions of the city preventing the Red Cross from coming in to provide medical aid and firefighters either letting the fires rage or being persuaded by the white mob to stand down. There are even reports, which is not a hard thing to be persuaded by a fucking angry mob. There are even reports that local police had deputized some of the mob, giving them weapons and the authority to attack or detain black residents. Hope Franklin, the son of Buck Franklin from the man who wrote his eyewitness. He says, the term riot is contentious because it assumes that black people started the violence

as they were accused of doing by whites. We increasingly use the term massacre or I use the European term pogrom. It's a long road to rebuild the Greenwood district and even though it's eventually rebuilt, of course, it's never the same. Today gentrification threatens to bury the history of the massacre and of the once thriving prosperous black community. Historians and activists have been fighting to have the story of the Greenwood massacre taught in Oklahoma Classers for years.

But since the success and popularity of HBO series Watchmen starring America's Queen Regina King, and their incredibly impactful use of the advance of the Greenwood massacre, that has apparently pushed the argument over the edge. And this month, February of 2020, Oklahoma, and this was what that root article was all about. Yeah. Root article written by Jake Connor. Oklahoma's Department of Education has announced that it will be officially adding the story

of the Greenwood massacre to public school curriculums by this fall just in time for its 100th anniversary in 2021. Holy shit. And that is the up until very recently, kind of untold history of Tulsa's Greenwood massacre. And if anyone's interested, the writer for the article for the root, Jake Connor, he also produces and co-host a podcast called The Extraordinary Negroes. So you might want to give that a listen. Amazing.

Because it's a, yeah. And also just, I don't know any of this shit. I had to look up the details of what the Jim Crow laws were. There's so, especially like in the 80s, we were not educated in any, I think, effective way about black history. It says if it's our choice, whether or not we want to know stuff like this. Yeah, totally. And so that's also not to overdo it, but the importance of diversity, especially in goddamn

show business and in Hollywood, is because these stories are great, important, vital American stories that should be told and the people that made the Watchmen prove that point. Like what an amazing use of fact and horrible, like there's plenty of horrible stories in our history, but they don't have to just remain taboo unspoken, don't talk about that, because it actually helps people learn how to do better when we know how fucking bad it actually was. Not covering over, not rationalizing, not saying it was their own fault, it was someone else's fault. It was a riot.

They should have done that. Yeah. It's none of that stuff, but actually going, how do we make it so there's less angry mobs in general? Yeah. Still to this day. To this goddamn minute. Good job.

No, great. That was incredible. Thank you. I'm speechless. That was hardcore. Well, it's fucking heavy. Important. It's heavy and scary to talk about.

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Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast against the odds. In our next season, three masked men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of Chowchilla, California. They bury the children and their bus driver deep underground, planning to hold them for ransom. Local police and the FBI marshal a search effort, but the trail quickly runs dry as the air supply for the trapped children dwindles, a pair of unlikely heroes emerges. Follow against the odds wherever you get your podcast.

You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Hope you guys enjoyed that. So George's murder that I'm going to be doing is number 185. And that's the murder of Angie Dodge. So the reason that this is my favorite murder is because, you know, on the True Beauty Brooklyn podcast, we really celebrate women, but one of the things that we love the most is generations of badasses. And this story is incredible because, you know, Angie's mom Carol really just worked

for over 20 years to figure out the true killer of her daughter. And she worked tirelessly, you know, the one thing connecting everything and the one thing that every single person had to say was Carol Dodge really would not give up. She was a badass and she's the reason that this murder got solved. But the other reason that this murder got solved is because of a badass genetic genealogist named CC Moore. So all throughout the story, it's just women coming together to solve this case, this tragic story of Angie Dodge.

It's, you know, the one happy ending, I guess, is just seeing how strong women are and how much we can do together and collectively, you know, do anything, I guess. So guys, enjoy episode 185, the murder of Angie Dodge. All right. Mm. Should we do this? Yeah, I think, I think. Have we fucking problem long enough?

We have to go up the basement stairs out of the rec room and into the formal living room. Yeah. That is my favorite murder. I think I'm first, right? Yeah. So put that shit down. I did. I did.

I'm going to hold it like a news reporter as you do your story. Karen, I'm so anal retentive about us not finding out what the other person is doing. And so I'm really careful. Just before when you were talking to Jay in the other room about like your story and some research, I plugged my ears because I didn't want to hear it. Like I'm really fucking, I don't know why I'm like this. Did you hear that halfway through that conversation when we were talking full voice in a very echoey kitchen, and then I went, oh, lower your voice, you can hear it.

No, I had my ears plugged. Literally. I was a child with my fucking fingers in my ear because I just love the surprise. And then you just held up your papers and it had the photo of the murder you're doing on the back of it. Yeah, that's right. But it's meaningless. It's okay.

It's okay. It's meaningless to this point. All right. What if I really did that? All right. Oh, my baby. You see? One and two.

I'm doing the murder of Angie Dodge, a.k.a. the nation's first exoneration to rely on genealogical DNA testing. Whoa. Here. Are you ready for this? Here we go. I'll take other now. I got a shit ton of information from Washington Post's article by Kyle Swenson of show called

Keith Morrison Investigate 48 Hours, TheInnocenceProject.org, and a podcast called Double Loop. Okay. So, here we go. In 1996, in Idaho Falls, Idaho, 18-year-old Angie Dodge had just graduated from high school with honors. She was born in 1977. She's the youngest of four kids and all her older siblings were boys, so she was like the fucking princess.

Yeah. You know how that goes. She's described as driven and talented and bubbly and like, of course, she's just this lovely, bright smile, beautiful, sweet girl. She looks, so it's 96. She looks like you in her teens. Really? She has a button nose, she has like a short, short bob, bleach wand bob that like, it's

so 90s, thin eyebrows, like she's quintessential 96. And I think I was 16 at the time and had the same fucking look. Yeah. And she just, yeah, she's totally normal. But after graduation, she's at 18, she's like, I'm fucking ready to live on my own. And it's not like she had a bad relationship with her parents, she was just like wanting to be independent. And she gets her own apartment, which at 18 is like, if you're not going to college,

you're just moving into your own apartment. That's a big fucking step. That makes me think she, so you're saying there wasn't, there was not a problem in the family? Well, I don't know, maybe there was, but her mom is a lovely person. Yeah. Yeah. But maybe she just had that thing of like, I need to be on my own.

I had that. I'm not going to wait until I qualify for college or do a bunch of stuff. I did that and lived in a $375 room in an apartment that was a converted office building. Ooh. That had no closets and what's the lighting called? That's terrible. Fluorescent. Fluorescent lighting with a bunch of girls, it was terrible.

And were there desks and dividers? No. Those got cleared out. So she wants to be on her own. She wants to be independent. Sorry. Bunk beds? No, no, no.

Was it just one big one? There was offices. Like, there were single offices. Do you shut the shades if you wanted to get a bed here? No. They were like, each one had an office. We all had an office, basically. Oh, got it.

In the building. In the building. Yeah. Now I understand how office buildings work. So sorry. Oh, $375 a month. So she moves in on her own. She's like, I'm going to be independent.

She tells her mother, Carol, that she needs to grow up and make her own mistakes, but they are close. And she moves into her same town. It's not like she moves far away. Yeah, yeah. She just wants to be on her own. Yeah. Idaho Falls is fucking gorgeous.

There's falls. Right. But it's in the southeastern corner of Idaho, next to Wyoming, about 150 miles to Yellowstone. So it's beautiful. More than half of the residents are Mormon. And because of this, it's kind of known as a safe town. Everyone knows everyone. No one locks their doors.

The story we've heard a million times. It's like country living. That's how I grew up, too. When you're out far enough or like... It's a town. Oh, she's in town. It's a town town. Got it.

But it's so safe because everyone knows each other. Yeah. So June 13th, 1996, when the very reliable Angie doesn't show up for her shift at a beauty supply store, which, yes, I looked up, it was called Beauty for All Seasons, two co-workers go by Angie's apartment to check on her because they're like, this is so not like her. They ask the boss if they could leave and go check on her. That's how rare it was. And they find the front door slightly ajar.

She lives on the second floor. They go upstairs and go into the bedroom and they find a bloody scene with Angie Dodge lying half naked on the bedroom floor, her throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 14 times. Oh, my God. I know. She's sexually assaulted. It's possible she wasn't raped.

It's kind of unclear. But what investigators do find is the perfect semen sample taken atop of Angie's body. So they have DNA. The neighborhood's canvassed and her friends and family are questioned. They're eliminated as suspects. And the first six months of the investigation are spent on tips that go nowhere and testing of DNA of local men and it goes nowhere. And fortunately in this town, the average homicide rate is zero to one per year.

Wow. But because of that, the homicide investigators don't have a ton of experience investigating these kinds of crimes. So they're not prepared. They're not experienced. One of the two lead detectives put on the case, Jared Furman, who gets like fucking decimated for the story in so many of the articles. He had been a high school parole officer.

You know, like he had a... A truancy officer? No, like a security officer walking around in the shed, which is like a fucking noble job and nothing wrong with it. But then to then go to homicide detective is hard to understand. Okay. So he had almost no investigative experience at all. Meanwhile, Angie's mom, Carol, is like determined.

It's cold. It's months and months. She's like, I'm going to find leads on my own. And she starts to question Angie's circle of friends and go to the places they all hung out. And in January of 1997, one of those friends, a guy named Ben Hobbs, who was possibly... One of the things that he was the last, one of the last people to see Angie alive. And in there's a video of him carrying flowers at her funeral.

So he's like close to her. He gets arrested in Nevada on suspicion of brutally raping a woman at knife point. Oh, no. So they're like connection. Yes. Right. Obviously. They're like in eyes being involved at all, but when police start interviewing Hobbs's

friends, they're led to a 20-year-old high school dropout named Christopher Tapp. He had kind of been a juvenile delinquent in the past. Seems like he was on the straight and narrow. Maybe just a hangout guy. But none of Tapp's DNA matches with the samples taken from the scene or the semen found on Angie. Police ignore this evidence and assume he's involved somehow. So over three and a half weeks, Tapp is interrogated nine different days for over 30 hours total.

He's given six polygraphs and questioned for more than 40 hours. Wow. Yeah. He's just a skinny 20-year-old kid. He doesn't have high school education. He's not ready to like fucking spar, but he like cooperates because he knows he didn't do it. Yeah.

So he's cooperating and coming in every time they call him in. So they start to lie to Chris Tapp to get him to confess. They tell him that his friend confessed to the crime. He said that Hobbes had not only confessed to killing Angie, but that he had also implicated Tapp in the murder. So they're lying to him and it's all videotaped, which I guess you can do, which is so crazy. They tell him that he had likely suppressed his memory of the incident and he should trust them because they would be able to prove he was there anyways and he'd get the

death penalty. So if he doesn't confess and they still take him to trial and find him guilty, which they said they could totally do, then he's getting the death penalty. So he might as well start talking and they can offer him immunity. That's what they tell him, which they can't do. Yeah. And they can help him and he'll just go home. It's the fucking classic story.

Yeah. That sounds like Brendan Dassey. Exactly. Yeah. There's a show called The Confession Tapes on Netflix that is just hard to watch because it's these cases over and over again. It seems like using subterfuge to get a suspect to admit something seems like a good idea, but there should be limits.

The idea that you could suggest that someone is repressing a memory and basically fuck with their own, like the way their mind works and be like, and we have the proof that you're repressing your memory. How do you not go, what if I'm repressing my memory? He says exactly that, like he's hooked up to the polygraph machines and he's like, I wouldn't know if I did it, right? I wouldn't remember, right? Like he is, he clearly trusts, here's the thing.

He went to the same school where the investigator was the cop at the school, so he trusted this guy too. And he's like, why would they want to frame me? I'm going to work with them. Maybe like, why would they lie? They're right. He trusts them. Yes.

You know? So, well, and also when you're, sorry, but when you're in that situation, you can't do anything else but tell the truth because if you didn't do anything, all you can do is keep on repeating exactly what you know about what you did. That's just the idea that you don't know what you did is really fucked up. Exactly. And so TAP trusts Furman because he knew from high school and police interrogators threaten TAP with the gas chamber, like quote, the gas chamber or life in prison, they attack

his memory, they feed him information, which when you watch the video of it, it's ridiculous. Like they're even like, and that's when you cut her and then he goes, and that's when you and like let him finish cut. Like it's so fake. So they promise immunity and threaten to take it away. They push aside TAP's claims of innocence and they offer leniency in exchange for a confession. At first, Chris TAP denies any involvement, but over time he's coerced into telling six different stories, which is a red flag in itself.

I would think. Like there should be one story. Eventually, investigators assured him that if he cooperates and admits he was there, he can go free. They like lie and tell him that. So he agrees to cooperate whatever version of events police think happen. They feed him the story and he confesses to detectives that he and two friends, including that dude Hobbes who had been brought in with him, had gone to Dodge's apartment on the

night of her death and that after fighting with her, Chris TAP says he held her down while his friend killed and raped her. So he just like puts himself there. But neither Hobbes nor Chris TAP match the DNA at the crime scene. It doesn't match them. Oh, yeah. So Chris TAP then tells them of a third friend who was there. He says he could only remember the name Mike.

Like he invents a fucking person. Yeah. It's beyond road flag. Yeah. And we're into, this is like a mountainside in Tibet where it's just red material flapping in the wind everywhere the eye can see. That's right. Horrifying.

So this guy Hobbes maintains his innocence. He is convicted of this case in Nevada of rape at night point. So that's fucking crazy. But he's let go by the Idaho Falls investigators. But even though his DNA isn't at the crime scene and there isn't any other evidence pointing to him, police arrest Chris TAP on his confession and charge him with murder. His case goes to trial in 1998 where he recants his confession. He pleads not guilty, which upsets Carol Dodge, of course, she's like just distraught.

And it sounds like they coerced someone else to, a young woman, police had manipulated her into a false testimony claiming she had heard Chris TAP mention his involvement in the murder at a party. Now we're into the West Memphis three shit. That's right. Oh God. Somehow they got her, maybe they were like had gotten her on some evidence and this is how she got out of it.

Yeah. Maybe. At the trial he testifies that the admission had been coerced and that the DNA clearly shows that he's not the killer, but prosecutors withhold the videotapes of his confession. They only show little bits and pieces of it that, you know, cooperate their story. Right. On May 28th, 1998, the jury convicts Chris Christopher TAP of aiding and abetting rape and murder and he sentenced to life in prison with a maximum of 30 years.

And you know, at the time Idaho Falls, they're, this doesn't happen, they're freaking out. They want, and it took like a couple months for them to finally get someone who is like they said responsible, they needed to close this case. Yes. It's the pressure. I mean, it's the story every time. Is there always working under massive pressure and fear, the fear that the community has right?

Especially when it's a small community and people know who the victim is. Yeah. Yeah. That creates that pressure cooker, but still it's just like as the people in that position as the authorities along those lines, knowing full well, you are, you're putting a young man in jail or person in jail that is going to be there for the rest of their life. Believe it though. Like they still in this Keith Morrison investigates show when he interviewed them in 2012, they

won't, they won't go on camera anymore or be interviewed. They're like, they just keep saying, look at the tapes. Look at the tapes where it's like, yeah, we looked at them and look, they, they believe it still. Oh, because they don't realize they were coercing him. They don't realize they were feeding him the story. They didn't understand. I don't think so.

They didn't know the procedure. They knew that they, in their minds knew that he had done this thing and they were helping him to get it off his chest. Yeah. Oh yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. That makes sense.

And it needs to be like, they need him to be. Meanwhile, Carol Dodge, the mom who's like the sweetest woman ever is determined to find out who this fucking Mike person is because he's the killer and she's like stoked that Christopher Tapp had gotten to prison, but she's like, there's still murderers out there. I need to find these people, I'm not settled. So by 2009, the DNA profile of the killer, the actual killer, had been put in the National Database CODIS, no match. Then she read an article in the paper about an internationally known DNA expert named

Dr. Greg Hampakian. He's the executive director of the Idaho Innocence Project. She just fucking read about him. Thank God. And she was just like, I need help. Yeah. And just like fucking calls him up. It's interesting though, because she's calling the Innocence Project to talk about a killer,

not getting somebody that she loves off, or would it usually what people go to the Innocence Project for is going saying, well, he said this is the first time a victim's family member had contacted him. But he was a well-known DNA expert, so she just, and she read an article and you know how moms cut articles out and they're like, maybe this guy can help us. What else is she going to do? I can't look it up in the phone book. Yeah.

I mean, there's, yeah. No. And it turns out that Dr. Greg Hampakian is like, yo, I can totally help you, but full disclosure, I just started working on Christopher Tapp's conviction overturn. I just started working on Christopher Tapp's case trying to see if it was a false confession. Because Christopher Tapp probably has a family that's like, there's no way it was him. Well, yeah, they keep trying to overturn the conviction. So she's like, I don't care.

I just want to know what happened no matter what the outcome is. So let's work together. That's real mom energy. I know. I just want the truth to come out. Yeah. So she's like, just, yeah, let's see what the truth, let's see where the DNA leads us, what the truth is.

Yeah. So together, they persuade investigators to use familial DNA, a fucking brand new thing, to try to find Angie's killer. But Idaho doesn't allow familial DNA searches in their criminal database. So Greg Habakian, he is like, let's try to search public databases. So in 2014, they search a public database owned by Ancestry.com that has, it's fucking crazy. They have all these connections to the Mormon community.

Did you know they're like one of the biggest contributors to DNA? Yes. They're the big family tree people. Yeah. Like the Mormon church knows all about your family and where you come from and all that stuff. And they're keeping it in like a bomb-proof mountain shelter. And all these churches like line up to get their fucking cheek swab.

Like understandably, it's not a big deal. I don't think. But they get their cheek swab, they get their fucking ancestry built up and shit. And so Ancestry.com was like, can we have that Eoynk and like bought it? Wow. Yeah. So basically six, one point. Sorry, I want to see the documentary movie about the person who brokered that deal because

it's some sweet talking Mormon. Oh no. That was someone that sweet talked some Mormons. Who knows? Like Slick Salesman had to go in and be like, well, of course I won't drink coffee. Yeah. Can we have access to this? I know you're already rich.

Yeah. Here's some more money. Yeah. Basically 1.6 million people in Utah alone have given their DNA to this database. And then Ancestry bought it. Amazing. Yeah. So according to a search warrant, investigators received a list of 41 potential matches when

they put in the DNA from the crime scene in July 2014. One match is just one DNA marker away from the killer's DNA, 34 out of 35 markers. They're like, great. They track him down. And when the man is looked into further, investigators are like, holy shit. The man's name is Michael Erskie Jr. and right off the bat, they're like, his name is Mike. His name is Mike.

That's what Christopher Tapp said. Yeah. Right? So they're like, boom. Then they look more into his life and they look on his Facebook and it turns out that he has friends in Idaho Falls, even though he doesn't live there, he lives in New Orleans. Then they look more into him. He's a low budget filmmaker whose films are like literally about violence and murder.

Let me read you one of the, this is what one of the movies are about. The description is, an average suburban housewife tries to stop her neighbor from going on a rampage after he witnesses a gruesome attack. And the other one's called murderabilia. It's just about murder. It's stuff. His passion. Right.

So they go to New Orleans, they question Erskie and he admits to being in Idaho Falls in the spring of 96, like on a trip. He's like, I was totally there visiting friends, but I don't know what was going on that night. I don't know anything about this. He provides a DNA swab and in early 2015, he's cleared. Whoa. It's totally not him. It's fucking just coincidence after coincidence.

Jesus. But at this point, he's like, I want to get on the fucking bed, I want to get to and help like solve this. So he teams up with Carol to help her. So now, wait, sorry, but we have to pivot back and then be like, just because you like horror movies and just because you love those inches doesn't make you a killer. It doesn't mean anything. Yes.

That's unrelated. Let's turn our opinions around. I was happy to jump on board with that. I see the error of my way. Yeah. But I bet if you question him for 30 fucking hours straight, he can, like he, what's it called? Confess to.

Yeah, yeah. Probably. The Idaho Innocence Project had taken Christopher Tapp's case and they're able to get Tapp's interrogation videos released and then they're like, holy shit. Angie's mom, Carol, watches the videotapes too and she's just like, oh shit. She's like, I kept thinking and she was reading all the case files. She's like, I kept not understanding what I was getting wrong and like what I wasn't understanding until I realized it was all a false confession.

Yeah. It was not the whole story. It didn't make sense. Yeah. I was convinced that the man's serving time for her daughter's murder was coerced into confessing and wrongfully convicted. Oh. I know.

She's so sweet. The victim's mom. The mom. I can't. Her only daughter. Oh. She even contacts an expert. An expert?

Mm-mm. She even contacts an expert in false confession analysis, which is like, what a fucking cool job. Yeah, really. His name's Steve Drizzen. He watches all the videos as well and he says it's a textbook case of psychological coercion. He says that police fed Christopher Tapp facts about the crime scene using deception and

other sophisticated and psychologically manipulative techniques and that's how they got the confession out of him. Wow. Yeah. Couldn't have been too sophisticated. If they have no, if they're not experts enough to be good at solving the crime, we can't then turn around and say that they're expert manipulators in the interrogation room.

I mean, it can't be that hard to convince a 20-year-old high school dropout. These men are educated professionals that he did it, same with Brendon Dassy. It's not like Brendon Dassy was a mastermind and they got him to confess. Yeah, that's true. It could be the emotional ploy, as opposed to... Anyway, okay, go ahead. No, no, it's good. So during this time, Christopher Tapp appeals his case several times and eventually taps

attorneys offer prosecutors a deal in March of 2017. For his immediate release from prison, Tapp would agree to keep the aiding and abetting murder conviction on his record, but they're going to drop the aiding and abetting rape conviction. So both sides agree to this fucking deal. And after 20 years in custody, it just lets Christopher Tapp walk free. He was in jail for 20 years. Yeah.

Holy shit. Yeah. And you should see like... He's... Yeah, it sucks. Yeah. So like when he's at trial, the videos at trial and stuff, he's just this little boy and now he's his grown man.

It's crazy. So fucking cut to this past May of 2019. Oh. What's that? Four months ago? Four months ago? Yeah. Idaho Falls police announced that they had used familial DNA and they were able to find

a match to the contributor of the DNA at Angie's crime scene. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. A man now 53 years old named Brian Dripps. Dripps and Tapp. Is that the fucking case? Terrible. It's like such a coincidence.

That's crazy coincidence. So Brian Dripps had been living in Idaho Falls at the time of Dodge's murder, but he had no history of violent crimes. He had been talked to by investigators when they were doing the canvassing of the neighborhood because he lived across the street from Angie's house. So they had like talked to him and he was like, I went out and came home and I was drunk and passed out. Like, I don't remember what happened and they were like, great, goodbye.

Talk to you later. Yeah. So what happened was investigators had gotten a familial DNA hit thanks to the help of Parobon Nano Labs, which is the Virginia-based company that also helped ID the Golden State Killer recently. Hey, what's up, best friends? Good job, everybody. Good job, guys.

Police had, they got the match, like familial match. They had to do the same thing with Golden State Killer where they followed him. They found a cigarette butt, tested it to be sure, and it matched him exactly. So over the course of an interview that lasted about five hours, Dripps admitted to the rape and murder of Angie Dodge and said he acted alone. Whoa. Yeah. So Christopher Tapps is finally cleared.

He's charged the same night. The two investigators who had coerced a false confession from Christopher Tapp, they're now retired and they refuse to talk about the case. I saw one thing that was like, one of the investigators said he doesn't remember anything about the case. But then I saw another thing that was like, he might have early onset Alzheimer's. So that might be why it's not. I mean, then you could argue early onset Alzheimer's, you forget current things first.

Really? Not to be an argumentative. Be it. But I also bet there is such a massive amount of guilt that they can't even acknowledge because to actually look and face, they approach that with, you know, we're all doing our best at all times. They approach that with, we want to get this woman's killer off the street. These things are pointing to you, whatever we have to do to get you off the street.

And that's what they were trying to do. Their aim was true, but it was just way off. It was off. Yeah. And like, I wonder if they'll even admit it now that he had nothing to do with it or if they'll say, well, I bet he was still there aiding in a bedding. Like, they must have known each other somehow. You know what I mean?

Like, yeah. Won't let it go still. But if the actual killer is like, I acted alone, that's kind of the end of the story. Okay. So, on July 17th, 2019, that was just like a month ago. Yeah, that's right. And now, 43-year-old Christopher Tapp's charges were vacated. After fighting for his freedom for 22 years, he said, quote, I am appreciative and deeply

humbled that this moment has finally come. His case will serve as the nation's first exoneration to rely on genealogical DNA testing. Wow. So, I mean, I feel like we should expect more of those. I'm sure. So, more than 25% of the more than 360 wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence in the United States have involved some form of a false confession. Recently, Brian Dripps was in court for preliminary hearing and he said that he didn't know Angie

Dodge and he was drunk and high on cocaine and didn't remember what happened that night. He had just had a baby, so he admits it. But there's a whole thing about like, now he's fighting because he's saying they didn't read him as Miranda writes, but it's all just stalling and bullshit. Right. So. Well, and that sounds like actually even more kind of internal denial where it's like, yes, drugs will make you do things, especially amphetamines or like uppers that you normally

wouldn't do, but murdering a person in cold blood is a whole different area. Like you knew there was a single woman living there alone. So you must have seen her there before and like that's premeditation on cocaine. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So you knew where to go. Yeah.

Yeah. Just happened. Right. So Carol Dodge mommy was present at the hearing and sat through the details about how her daughter was brutally raped and I don't know how families do that. They do it. I know. And it's, I mean, it's just so sad.

It's so sad. I get it. Like you want to, you, you don't want them to have suffered alone. Right. You think you're there with them a little bit maybe. Yeah. It's just so, it's such a, like a brave and incredibly strong thing to do because you're already in the worst place you can be.

Right. And then it's like, and now we have to go. Yeah. Even further. I wonder if they feel obligated to sit through that. So they understand. Yeah. So they know the whole story.

Because also the, I'm sure not knowing makes it worse because that means you're writing whatever you're thinking. It's like every time we get to this part in any kind of true crime documentary, it's just like, good God. Yeah. The amount of grief this person went through is insane. So she sat through the hearing and after the hearing, Carol Dodge approaches Brian Drip's mother and says to her, it's going to be okay.

Oh no. And in tears, the women embraced outside the courthouse. You know that's the one that gets me the worst. I know. You know, it's like, you see before during Christopher Tapp's trial, she was so angry. Like the son might, one of the sons might have yelled something at them like they were pissed off. Hell yeah.

And now this time around that she's had some time to fucking deal with, you know, that this is part of her life. She had compassion. Right. Which I think is so beautiful. Yeah. And she would be 41 today if she hadn't been killed. Carol says about her only daughter's death that quote, grief has no time limit, I can't

let go. Right. And that is the murder of Angie Dodge, the nation's first exoneration to rely on genealogical DNA testing. Wow. Oh. Can I fuck that? Yeah.

Yeah. Amazing. I found that when I was looking on Wikipedia for convictions that were overturned. Oh yeah. Yeah. So thanks Wikipedia. Yeah, good job Wikipedia. That was great.

All right guys, I hope you enjoyed that murder, the murder of Angie Dodge. That's it for me. I had such a great time. I hope that you guys loved listening to these stories again. You can catch the True Beauty Brooklyn podcast with myself and my co-host Alex Shapiro every Friday on Exactly Right. Our show's a lot of fun. We, like I said before, just celebrate women.

We celebrate marginalized communities. We talk all things beauty. We answer your listener letters. We laugh a lot. It's a lot of fun. I think that you guys will enjoy it. So come check us out and have a great week. Stay sexy and don't get murdered.

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