Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery - Introducing "The Snare"

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Today, we're bringing you a new episode of our latest series from 20/20 and ABC Audio, "The Snare." In episode one, police in Idaho Falls bring in a young man named Chris Tapp to answer some questions. This will set him and others on a path they never would've predicted. To get new episodes early, follow "The Snare" for free on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amazon Music⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, I'm ABC News correspondent Maggie Rooley, and today I want to tell you about a new true crime podcast I'm hosting from 2020 and ABC Audio called The Snare. It's a story about loyalty, persistence, and a decades-long fight for justice. We tell the story of Angie Dodge, who was brutally murdered at just 18 years old. Police soon identified a suspect and put him behind bars. but the DNA evidence found at the crime scene still didn't line up. For years, questions lingered about who was really responsible, and Angie's mother continued to search for answers. Finally, two decades later, a shocking revelation changed everything. In our new podcast, The Snare, we'll be sharing the whole story over the next six weeks. Keep listening now to

hear the first episode right here. And if you like it, you can get the rest of the series by following The Snair on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now. Now, here's episode one of The Snare. This spring, denim gets a softer, lighter update. Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel like for summer. Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. with a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming.

Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. On a cold winter night in 1997, police in a small city in Idaho have brought a young man to the station to help answer some questions. His name is Chris Tapp. He shifts around in his chair inside a spare interrogation request. propping a baseball cap on the knee of his faded blue jeans. Chris is 20 years old. The detective asks if he's comfortable and says he can leave any time.

Not under arrest, you're not in trouble. You can get up and say, hey, I'm done, take me home. You just want to kind of pick your grade and kind of go from there. The detective seems to think Chris knows something about the death of a young woman he knew, the brutal murder of 18-year-old Angie Dodge. who'd been found stabbed and sexually assaulted in her apartment more than six months before. Chris is confused about why police would want to talk to him. What more can I say? I mean, I'm going to be helpful.

I'm going to try to do everything I can. But I really don't know that much. But the detective doesn't appear to believe him. He shifts gears, saying if Chris is lying, he's going to pay a heavy price. Starting to shape up that some heads are going to probably roll a little bit. And it appears yours is probably on the chopping block. He says things will only get worse if it turns out Chris is hiding something. But if he cooperates and fesses up now, then maybe police can throw him a lifeline.

I can't make this promise to you, but I can tell you that because of my position and everything, I could hold attempt to pull some serious streams. Okay? Okay. Chris thought he was here to help the police, but now he's starting to realize this might not be a friendly conversation. He tries bargaining with the detective.

I'll take a lie detector test. I will find anything that would just verify what I said. You can take it to court. I'm being a scared little man. Chris has just said he's a scared little man. He's also volunteered to take a lie detector test. Soon, detectives will take him up on that offer. And it will set him and others on a dark path.

A path they could never have predicted. From ABC Audio and 2020, I'm Maggie Rooley. This is The Snare. Episode 1, Peacekeeper. In June 1996, young people in Idaho Falls, Idaho, were starting to settle into summer. Jeremy Sargis, Angie Dodge's classmate all through high school, was one of them. It's an outdoorsy place.

It was a good place to grow up. We all were dorks back in the day. We all had good times and hooky-bobbing and water fights and, yeah, driving around with your feet hanging out the window. Idaho Falls is a town of around 50,000, not far from the Grand Teton's and, yeah, Yellowstone National Park. It's known for having some of the best fly fishing in the country, and is home to Idaho's oldest rodeo, the War Bonnet Roundup. The town is named after a set of

man-made waterfalls in the Snake River, which cuts it in half. My friends and I spent a lot of time hanging out down at the river, being kids. We seem to all get along really good. Right along the river, there's a sprawling white Mormon temple. It's one of the town's defining features. There's a big Latter-day Saints community in Idaho Falls, and the temple, with its massive steeple, towers over everything else. But for Jeremy Sargis and his friends, the Snake River was what mattered in the summer of 96. Everybody kind of cruised around earlier in the morning to see who'd stopped and was swimming or picnicking. And then one person would stop and another person would stop. and, you know, sometimes by the end of the night,

they wouldn't be anywhere to park. I mean, at certain points, there was hundreds of people down there hanging out and having a good time. Angie Dodge hung out at the river, too. You'd have the cowboys over here and the jocks over here, and Angie was a social butterfly, so she would be in all the groups. It wouldn't be just our clique that she would be with, she would be with them all.

Tim Quick was one of Angie Dodge's best friends. Angie's mom and my mom went to high school together. So I met Angie at a very young age. And then we grew up together. Families did a lot together. Tim says that summer, Angie was really feeling her freedom. She was 18 and had a job at a makeup store in town called Beauty for All Seasons. She answered calls and processed orders.

And when she wasn't working, she was socializing at the river. Being a teenager in Idaho Falls was like freedom. It was like you could go hang out where you wanted. You could pretty much do what you wanted. But Tim says the real taste of freedom for Angie that summer came in the form of an apartment. She had moved out of her family home into her own place. After the boat docks officially closed at 10 p.m.,

Angie and her friends would go to someone's house to hang out. In the weeks leading up to Angie's murder, her new apartment was one of those hangout spots. Angie's place was on the top floor of an older wood shingled house with creaky floors. The bathroom had a water-stained, porcelain, porcelain, and pink floral wallpaper. Angie had only been living there for a few weeks. She hadn't even gotten to real bed yet and was still sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Still, she'd set up her kitchen with a spice rack. The apartment was small, and it wasn't fancy, but it was hers, and it was what she could afford.

The rent was just $250 a month. Tim remembers how happy she was about getting her own place. You would have thought she was moving into an mansion. She was super excited. It was the best house in the world, just pure joy when she had her own place. On the morning of June 13th, Angie was supposed to clock into her shift at Bure. Beauty for All Seasons at 7 a.m. But she didn't, which was unlike her.

So by 7.30, her coworkers tried calling her home phone. No answer. They left a message on her answering machine. They tried calling her again a few hours later. Still, no answer. That's when two of her coworkers decided to go to her house and check on her. They checked the front door, which was closed but unlocked. They made their way up the carpeted stairs and walked to her bedroom.

But instead of finding that Angie had overslept, her coworkers found Angie's body, lying on the floor, covered in blood. They rushed to Angie's home phone to call 911. Around 1115 that morning, Detective Jeff Pratt was sitting at his desk, following up on some case reports when he got a call from his sergeant. And he basically told me we have a suspicious death. I want you to come and process this crime scene. Brad had first joined the Idaho Falls Police Department as a patrol officer.

By the time he was promoted to detective in 1996, he'd been on the force for 15 years. As part of his new detective assignment, he'd taken some photography classes to learn how to document crime scenes. After hanging up the phone, Pratt grabbed his personal camera, a 35-millimeter pentaxe and drove over to Andrew's apartment in an unmarked car. Pratt was familiar with Angie's address, 444 I Street. He'd live nearby when he was starting out as a rookie cop. That's what we call the lettered streets. They follow the alphabetical letters, and it had seen better days.

By the time Angie moved in, the neighborhood was kind of dilapidated and had a reputation for being unsafe. There were reports of drug dealing and other crime. When Detective Pratt pulled up to Angie's house, he was met by a handful of law enforcement officers who'd already been inside. They gave me a briefing that they had been in the building, that they had found the victim,

and cautioned me that there was a pretty graphic and violent scene, a lot of blood. At this point, Pratt didn't know the name of the victim or anything about Angie. His job was to document evidence from the crime scene. and so he focused his Pentax camera as he made his way inside. At first, he didn't see any obvious clues that something was off. I noticed that the apartment is really clean. It seems to be fairly orderly.

Nothing seemed out of place, and there was no sign of forced entry. But when Detective Pratt turned a corner into Angie's bedroom, the outlines of a violent crime scene came into focus. There was blood splattered on the walls. Next to Angie's body, a white wicker laundry basket piled high with stuffed animals, including a blood-stained teddy bear. Tucked under Angie's left arm, a white-stuffed bunny rabbit. Still, there were no signs of a struggle. A pink table lamp on Angie's nightstand appeared to be untouched.

The room was pretty much intact. The bed was messed up and the bedding was, you know, flowing off of it, the sheets and blankets. But other than that, in the immediate vicinity, within a few feet around the victim, was the only real chaos of the room. I can see that she has some extensive lacerations or incisions, stab wounds, and there is a horrific wound to the throat. Obviously, a lot of blood spatter.

He documented more than a dozen stab wounds, including a six-inch gash across Angie. left breast, which was exposed. There were a few small defensive wounds on her arms and hands. Angie's purple sweatpants had been pulled down to her knees. She wasn't wearing any underwear. It appeared she'd been sexually assaulted. And most striking of all, there was a 14-inch gash across Angie's throat. Detective Pratt had a theory about that.

The injury to Angie's throat, I believe, really early on would have severed the larynx and the voice box. I don't believe she could have screamed. I've always thought that. It was probably the worst case I've ever seen. Even to now, you know, a number of years later, it's still one of the worst cases I've ever seen. It's the one that sticks with me.

It's the nightmare. It's the one that you desperately want to solve, to know. I can't imagine anyone wanting to do that to cut someone like that. As Detective Pratt took in the totality of the crime scene, it seemed to him that whoever had done this had been motivated by pent up emotion and rage. He thought this was the type of crime that was likely perpetrated by a lone killer.

Still, he noticed this pattern in the blood spatter along one wall in Angie's bedroom that made him question this, this lone killer theory. Imagine if you flicked a wet paintbrush at a wall. If someone happened to be standing in front of that wall, the spatter would land on them and leave a blank space on the wall behind them,

essentially an outline or a void. That's what Detective Pratt noticed on this one wall in Angie's bedroom, and it made him wonder if maybe the killer hadn't acted alone. So it's possible that there was something or something, or someone in the path of where the blood was spraying that created a voided shadow. So I couldn't out and out categorically say there is more than one person,

but it kind of appeared that that was a possibility. Over the next 24 hours, Detective Pratt and Idaho Falls Law Enforcement collected physical evidence from the crime scene. They swapped blood from the wall in Angie's body. They collected samples of semen and samples of hair from a hair clip, a pink fuzzy toilet seat cover, and from Angie's purple sweatpants. We found one hair that we believe was a pubic hair that was obviously different than the others. DNA technology was just starting to emerge at the time. Detective Pratt says he knew collecting all these samples could lead to a DNA match and to Angie's murderer.

The killer absolutely left his killing heard there. According to police, officers in Idaho Falls were mostly used to dealing with thefts or drug crimes, especially meth. The year before Angie's death, there had only been two murders in the town. And while the police investigation began, Angie's family, friends, and community began asking their own questions. Why would anyone want to hurt Angie? And who could have committed this brutal murder? This July 4th, Disney celebrates America 250, 24 hours nonstop live all across the country, and David Muir is right there. 250 years of America, more than 24 hours on the air.

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I just met the woman of my dreams. You've got to chill out and not come on too strong. That goes against my entire personality, but I'll try. Watch not suitable for work now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. The night before Angie died, she visited her mom, Carol. In photos, you can see how similar they look, blonde hair, heart-shaped faces, and gray-blue eyes. Angie was Carol's only daughter and the baby of the family.

She had three older brothers. You know, they'd wrestled. They played football. Carol says Angie was tough and didn't take no for an answer. She was known for being outspoken. If someone was being pushed around, Angie would have something to say about it. She'd get right in your face. She'd tell you how it is. Because she really went through some hard times when she was younger because she was big for her age.

But she says that toughness came with a lot of compassion. She would always bring a stranger home. And they would cook and do all sorts of things and listen to music. She'd see some new kid come to school or, you know, and she was very compassionate. Angie was also serious, determined, and seemed eager to grow up. She'd graduated from high school with honors the year before and was working full time. Angie was interested in entrepreneurship and had taken some classes at Idaho State. Actually, one of the pieces of evidence detectives collected from her apartment was a textbook about entrepreneurship sitting on her nightstand.

There is no doubt that Angie would have become an entrepreneur. She was very business-minded. And when she was a freshman in high school, she ran our finances for a whole year. When I see her day planner, she had her money. This is what I owe. This is how much money I have in the bank. This is what I need to write checks for.

It was like she was so organized. With her money, Angie had secured her apartment. And she'd also bought a car, a Chevy Geo Metro. You know, it wasn't an expensive car, but it was a brand new car, and she was just excited as compete that she got alone at 18. Angie's car was called the boat. This is Angie's longtime friend, Tim Quick again. She would pull up to anything with her foot out the window of her car. You'd see her foot, and then you'd see her face.

And it's just big smile, like, I've arrived, the party has started. it has begun. You know, it's just like pure joy. Tim recalls how special Angie's smile was. Her smile would light up any room we were ever in. Aside from being outgoing and boisterous, he says Angie was also a peacekeeper. I used to get in a lot of scuffles when I was younger.

Angie would step in all the time. Tell me it wasn't worth it. Tell me it wasn't worth the trouble I was going to get into or worth hurting myself or the other person. She was always a peacemaker. I always wanted everyone to be happy. Tim says this continued all the way through high school and to Angie's time hanging out at the river,

where he says it wasn't uncommon for people to get into fights or for the cops to show up. And Angie would love to get in the middle of it to break it up just to make peace so we wouldn't get removed from our hangout. Tim says Angie and her mom were both strong-willed and

opinionated. And Angie had argued with her mom a few weeks before her death. One of the reasons why she moved at us because she disobeyed a house rule. And she said, why don't you just let me grow up and, you know, just, I'm 18 mother, just let me grow

up. That's how we learn, you know. On the night of June 12th, 1996, the sun was setting, and Carol Dodge was outside the house doing yard work. And I heard her come through the back way up the patio, and her and I were always known to be barefooted. We just never wore shoes, but she had her Birkenstock son. And anyway, she just says, Mom, I'm here. Carol hadn't seen her daughter since the fight, since Angie had moved into her own apartment. I was so grateful that she had come over because I hadn't seen her for three weeks.

Carol says Angie had come over to make peace, to put their big fight behind them. We sat down and we talked, and I just took a hold of her, and she laid her head on my shoulder. And I rocked her and I said, I'm so glad you're not mad at me anymore. And she just looked up, she said, not even in a blue moon. That was a God-given night. As Carol held her only daughter, Angie confided in her mom about something that happened weighing on her. She says, you know, Mom, I've done something really stupid. And I said, sweetheart, we all do things stupid. Look at the stupid things that I've done. She says, no, Mom, this is really stupid. Carol didn't ask Angie what that stupid thing was. For years, she says she would regret this decision a million times over. I keep going back when Angie said, I've done something.

something really stupid. What is it that she did that possibly was the reason why she was killed? Before long, police would ask Carol about these last moments with Angie. What did she remember about Angie that night? All I can remember is how her hair smelled and how she smells so clean and just I remember how cute her hair looked that night. So the time Angie passed away, I had I found out by her mother calling me. It was before all the news stations came on with it. And before, all I can remember really is Carol. I said hello.

And Carol said she's gone. It was one of the hardest days of my life. I would love to know Angie now. That's the hardest part. But who in their right mind would want to kill someone was such a pleasant, someone so pleasant, someone so joyful, someone's so perfect for life, someone that could bring happiness to the saddest moment in someone's life. Carol was destroyed.

I've got a daughter that's the same age as Angie was when she was killed. I can't even imagine what that would be like. Tim says he and Angie's other friends wanted to do whatever they could to help Carol. And in the days and weeks after Angie's murder, helping Carol would mean trying to find Angie's killer. At Volvo, safety is not a feature. It's our purpose. Rigorous crash testing. Decades of learning from real accidents. Innovations that help prevent accidents before they happen and help protect you when they occur. Going above and beyond industry standards. A vision of zero collisions.

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A couple of days after Angie's murder, her friends and family gathered for a memorial service. In grainy video footage, you can see people wiping away tears and carrying big flower arrangements, a mix of carnations, roses, and lilies. The police were there too, including Detective Jeff Pratt, the officer who took photos of the crime scene at Angie's apartment. On this day, he's wearing a gray suit and navy blue tie. He has his Pentax camera strapped around his neck. Pratt and another detective are here to investigate.

They're watching, even recording with a video camera. Could Angie's killer be mingling? among her friends and family. After the service ends, police follow the crowd outside to a nearby cemetery with the video camera. It's a windy June day, and the camera zooms in on different faces as if it's hunting for clues.

At that time, there were no suspects. The police chief was open about that when he previously spoke to the press. It was a brutal homicide, and we do not have a suspect at this time, and there is a reason for people to be cautious right now. And people in Idaho Falls were cautious. Jeremy Sargis remembers the fear in the community.

Nothing like that happens in Idaho Falls. It just doesn't. There's some crazy stuff that happens in every town, but that was pretty extreme. I know that I started carrying a knife. It scared people. It really did. He also remembers how quickly. Quickly, rumors started swirling about who could have killed Angie.

Everybody had an idea of who might have done it and what might have happened, and, you know, I guess that's just the nature of people. I remember the police pulling in hundreds and hundreds of people for questioning all of us, really. What was highly unusual for this case and especially unusual for Idaho Falls is it was a who done it. This is Brian Clark, a reporter in eastern Idaho, who has covered the Angie Dodge case. There were no witnesses. There was physical evidence, but no obvious way to tell who it came from. Brian Clark says police looked at other items found in Angie's apartment, like a planner. They wanted to find out what her routine had been, who she'd been speaking with.

There were also voicemails on her home phone. And so they started looking into the people who had called. Police officers interviewed Angie's family and her ex-boyfriend and cleared them. They also interviewed her neighbors and friends. Basically, they wanted to talk to anyone who knew Angie. But after all that, they didn't identify any suspects. As they did all these interviews, investigators collected DNA samples from around 100 people, trying to get a match to the physical evidence from the crime scene.

But officers weren't the only ones asking around and trying to figure out who had killed Angie. Brian Clark says Carol Dodge got very involved in the hunt for her daughter's murderer. She started hitting the streets like a cop, interviewing people, trying to find out who killed her daughter. She tracked down people. She started looking into the drug scene in the area

and finding people who were involved in the drug scene, interviewing them. She put 2,500 flyers up, offering rewards for information. I'd go home 3 or 4, 5 o'clock in the morning. Tim Quick remembers helping Carol Dodge with these efforts. We thought we were our own investigative team. Went and asked questions, everyone, anyone who would know. Still, as the summer of 1996 went on, neither the police nor Angie's family and friends had any leads. Summer became fall, fall became winter, and there were no suspects, no arrests.

The investigation seemed to be at a standstill. Until one day in January 1997, when Idaho Falls Police learned about a crime that seemed strangely similar. There was an arrest hundreds of miles away in Nevada of a man who hung out down by the Snake River, too, a man who knew Angie Dodge, a man who was even captured on video at Angie's funeral. The snare is a production of ABC Audio in 2020, hosted by me, Maggie Rooley,

produced by Camille Peterson and Sabrina Fang with help from Annalisa Linder and Emily Shutz, edited by Tracy Samuelson. Our supervising producer is Susie Lou. Music by Evan Viola. Mixing by Bob Mallory. Special thanks to Katie Dendos, Janice Johnston, Nancy Rosenbaum, Sasha Aslanian, Suzanne DeCunto, and Michelle Margulis.

Josh Cohen is our director of podcast programming. Amy McNiff is our executive producer.