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ANGIE DODGE was just 18 years old when she was killed in 1996.
The truth behind her murder wouldn’t be uncovered until 2019.
Who was Angie Dodge?
Angie Dodge was an 18-year-old woman from Idaho.
She had moved out of her family’s home in 1996 after she and her mother disagreed on a house rule.
Three weeks after she moved into her new apartment, she visited her parent’s home and made amends with her mother.
Her mom, Carol Dodge, told ABC7, “The night that she came over, 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,'” she continued.
What happened to Angie Dodge?
The night Angie Dodge returned from her parent’s home, she was raped and stabbed to death in her apartment.
Her body was found by her co-workers, who went to check up on her.
Carol Dodge said, “The next day, that’s when they told me that Angie had been found dead.”
Police said that DNA tests showed that semen, hair, and other DNA samples gathered at the scene belonged to the same suspect.
The case was notable for its use of familial searching, which is a way to search for biological relatives of an unknown evidence profile.
What happened to Christopher Tapp?
Police brought in then-20-year-old Christopher Tapp for questioning.
After over 100 hours of interrogation, Tapp confessed to the crime even though there was no evidence tying him to the scene.
Although his confessions were considered contradictory and inconsistent at the time, he was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in jail.
In 2017, Tapp appealed and his sentence was shortened to 20 years. By then, he had already served 20 years and was released.
However, it wasn’t until 2019 that the real perpetrator, Brian Leigh Dripps Sr., was apprehended and Tapp was fully exonerated.
Tapp then sued the city of Idaho Falls for the wrongful conviction and settled for $11.4 million in June 2022.
Sadly, he died in a Las Vegas hotel room in October 2023. The Las Vegas Police Department ruled his death a homicide.
He was 47 years old.
