True Confession

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Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. I've always been a glass half full kind of guy. And now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way, too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges. Their stories are funny and quite candid. So I hope you'll join me each week. And who knows, you might just come away with your own glass half full. Search glass half full with Craig Melvin from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. [01:27] It really hits deeply. Actually seeing the crime scene photo, it made me just very, very angry.

What had been done [01:38] to Angie. The day that Angie was found dead, my whole system shut down. [01:43] 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 searching for her killer. [02:13] 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. But potentially have a break on this? Oh my gosh. [02:24] 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. [02:44] Here's Keith Morrison with True Confession. [02:51] They call it the Snake River, and it glides wide and placid past the gleaming white Mormon temple.

[03:04] and then twists and tumbles over rocks and weirs through the town of... [03:09] Idaho Falls. [03:11] 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 [03:25] Brian! Brian, did you do it? [03:29] We thought we knew the story we're about to tell. Perhaps you think you know it too? [03:36] But... [03:37] That old cliché is a cliché for a reason. Truth is often stranger than fiction, as you will see.

[03:47] I don't think anybody saw this coming. I don't think that you could have imagined this in a million years. [03:56] But here at the river... [03:58] is where it first went wrong. Among a group of young men and women who'd formed what [04:04] Felt to them like a kind of family. [04:07] It was an almost every night thing during the summertime that we would go down there and hang out with friends. [04:11] me girls. A daily gathering of the ones who didn't quite fit anywhere else. [04:16] We're a bunch of wild kids, young adults just having fun, trying to...

[04:20] live our lives. One of their number had just left the family nest, set out on her own. She was a special one. Because of a kind of no-nonsense charisma, she seemed to carry around with her. Her name was Angie. She was a personality. That's for sure. You didn't want to cross Angie. Man, she wrestled me down. I thought she was going to put me in the river. I mean, she was happy. 18-year-old Angie Dodge. [04:49] This is her brother Brent and her mother Carol. [04:52] She grew up in a household with three brothers, so she wrestled with them, and her friends always knew her.

[05:01] Nobody got in her face because she would take care of you. She was good size, too. I mean, she wasn't a wee petite thing. She was 5'11", and she was strong. [05:11] 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... [05:24] Therumakias! [05:27] and says I love you [05:29] And I did the same. [05:31] And [05:32] And it was like she's in slow motion. [05:35] Thank you.

[05:36] And she just [05:38] drifted up the street. [05:40] And it's the last time I saw her. [05:45] It all seems surreal now, that thing that happened all these years later. [05:56] It was the morning of June 13, 1996. [06:01] 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... [06:13] I was working as a solo police officer myself when that call came out. [06:17] He made his way upstairs to a tiny second-floor apartment.

[06:23] 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. [06:37] And that's what Squires did. [06:39] He kept track of everyone who went in and out. Standard procedure. [06:43] Jeff Pratt was a veteran cop by then. It was the most horrific scene that I had ever worked up in... [06:51] you know, in that 15 years of my career at that point.

[06:55] What had been done to that young woman? [06:57] Well, she was nearly decapitated. Man, what else do you remember finding? [07:03] on around her? Well, there was a lot of blood spatter on the walls, the carpet, the bedding around her, a lot of other injuries on her body that had been inflicted by a sharp instrument. Near the bed was a stuffed teddy bear soaked in blood. On the dead girl's stomach was a bloody handprint. Could you get a like a print off that, a usable print? We tried. And in that time, [07:33] were not capable of doing that.

But the killer had left critical, verifiable DNA evidence on the victim's body. [07:42] A lot of biological materials that had been left behind indicating there had been a sexual assault. [07:48] At the time, DNA was quite new. [07:50] It was, and that's why we were focused so hard on collecting all of those biologicals. [07:58] would imprint itself on the detectives for life. [08:02] For Angie's family, called down to the police department. [08:05] It was beyond imagining. So they brought in some pictures. Is this your sister? And pictures of the crime scene.

[08:13] How's that to look at? [08:14] It's just horrifying. [08:16] My whole system shut down. My emotional, my everything just shut down. [08:22] While the CSIs went about their work, homicide detectives looked for the murder weapon. [08:27] Had to be a knife of some sort. [08:30] But they couldn't find it. [08:31] 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 hosed. [08:41] What did that say to you? Yeah, I mean, it was a passionate crime.

It was somebody who wanted to humiliate her. [08:47] 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. [09:07] She'd been dating a young man for about the same length of time. [09:11] 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

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. [09:38] I really believe 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 in the case? [09:48] I made that suggestion. They were already kind of on task on some other things. [09:52] So they didn't [09:55] really follow that.

And like you say, DNA was relatively new. [09:58] uh, [10:00] It wasn't well received. [10:02] What was that like for you? Well, it's kind of like trying to sell something that's never been, you know, they've not seen it before. It was hard. I believed in it. I knew that that was going to be instrumental and a big issue. But I couldn't convince everybody, you know, initially. Which was, it would turn out a great pity. And none of them had a clue, of course, how could they, that the mystery begun here would be unlike any other in this town.

[10:32] Crime committed against Angie Dodge would spread its damage like a contagion. [10:38] And thus a decades-long obsession took over Carol's every waking minute. [10:43] to find the man who killed Angie. [10:46] 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. [11:06] you [11:19] Carol Dodge lost her mind. [11:22] 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? [11:31] Certainly not her son, Angie's brother, Brent. [11:35] I remember going down to the mortuary and we had to choose a casket for her. And mom laid on the casket and said... [11:43] 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 Sarges, known as Jerr. [12:00] She was definitely a part of the girls that came down to the river every day.

[12:04] You know, multiple times a week at least. What was she like? [12:08] Thank you. [12:09] She was a personality. [12:11] That's for sure. You didn't want to cross Angie. Yeah, she was a personality, a social butterfly. Yeah. She'd been bullied through school a little bit. Because of her size? Yeah. She was tall. Yeah. And at that point, you know, I think she was getting comfortable with herself. Among those river kids, Angie Dodge was a force, smart, fun-loving. [12:33] respected by her friends. Angie graduated high school early at 17 with honors.

[12:39] and then turned 18 and started college and had a new job at a beauty salon. [12:44] She was a good friend to people. Tesside Osborne was a friend. She was a very nice person and very responsible. Everybody loved her. Russ Baldwin was also a River regular. [12:56] She had a big, bright, beautiful character. You just knew who she was. As was George Pahey's. 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. [13:26] Dodge even more mad. Everybody went on with their lives except me. [13:33] I drove to the police department [13:36] every day that they were open. You became a fixture in there. I did. [13:40] Nobody could stop me from talking to those detectives. [13:43] 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.

[13:53] 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 Ailey, Nevada for... [14:07] very brutal rape and cutting a young woman with a knife. [14:12] Kind of the same pattern, huh? Yes. His name? Benjamin Hobbs, another of the River Kids. [14:19] As you see here, Hobbes even carried flowers behind Angie's casket at her funeral. [14:25] So as one detective traveled to Nevada to confront Hobbs, others began calling in Hobbs' friends, including the kids from the river.

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... [14:47] He didn't know anything about Angie's murder. If I did anything to know about this, I would say, but I do not know. That's all it's true. [14:57] And having made his statement, Christopher Tapp went home. In the clear, apparently. A couple of days later, the detectives asked him to come downtown again. I told him, I says, what are you doing?

I says, this is a murder case. This is Tapp's mother, Vera. She understood what he apparently did not. [15:17] talking himself into very big trouble. He said, Mom, I don't have anything to hide. And I want to tell him that I don't know anything. All I know is I did not kill Angie Dodge. 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 the question. [15:36] Was she raped and then she was killed? Tell me, was she raped?

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 Hobbes and TAP. [15:49] And then they pulled TAP in again for more questions. Nine times, a total of 20 hours of questions. They polygraphed him repeatedly. And eventually it came out. A confession of sorts. [16:06] Tapp admitted he was in Angie's apartment with Ben Hobbs when Hobbs did it. Killed Angie. [16:21] 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. [16:36] body [16:37] did not belong to Ben Hobbs. [16:40] And... [16:41] 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 [17:11] There had to be a third attacker with Hobbs and Tapp.

And it was that third man who left the DNA. [17:20] So they worked at Taps Amore. And what do you know? Taps fingered another buddy who was also a friend of Angie's. Who do you think Jane got the knife? My guy from Jared. Jared? Well, you've met him. Jeremy Sarges. I remember waking up on my birthday. The police were there to arrest me. Pulled me out of bed, cuffed me, dragged me downtown. Yeah. [17:48] told me I was under arrest for accessory to the murder of Angie Dodge. [17:53] What was that like?

That was one of the scariest things I've ever been through. You're handcuffed? [17:58] I'm handcuffed. Yeah, they took me downtown and treated me like I was part of this... [18:04] 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 Pies. 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. I thought that my girlfriend at the time was next.

Plain and simple, I was next. [18:30] Every single day. [18:31] I was afraid that there was going to be a policeman show up to my work and arrest me for this. [18:37] 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... [18:55] In all seriousness, fishing without a license at 7.29

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... [19:13] Demand DNA. [19:14] because I could have broken out, murdered Angie Dodge, [19:19] and then broke back in. But the DNA was not Baldwin's, and he was cleared. So who was that third man? [19:27] Police just couldn't pin it down. [19:29] Or had they already? What did Officer Furman tell you that Chris Tapp had said about you?

That Chris has placed you there? [19:46] Hey guys, Willie Geist here, reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit-Down Podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with the biggest rock star of them all, Mick Jagger, to talk about The Stones' latest album and his favorite of the band's iconic records over all these years. You can get our conversation now for free wherever you download your podcasts. [20:09] What they did to your family, you're lucky to make it out alive. Streaming on Peacock. [20:16] going to come after me. Taking them out is my only chance.

Put a bullet in her head. From the co-creator of Ozark. Looks like a family was running drugs. Execution style killing is rare for the keys. They lead on who they might have been running for. The cartel killed my family. I'm gonna kill them. [20:33] All of them. MIA. Streaming now. Only on Peacock. [20:46] It was the middle of winter in Idaho. [20:50] Angie Dodge had been dead seven months. When they arrested, Jeremy Sarges charged him as an accessory to murder. [20:59] 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 Sarges was one of the individuals that actually held her arms down. Right. During the homicide itself. [21:27] What was it like to hear that? It was heartbreaking. [21:31] Because... You thought Chris was your friend. You don't lie about something like that, I mean... [21:36] It was hard to deal with. But it turned out that Jeremy had something going for him that Chris Tapp did not.

[21:44] An Aggressive Attorney [21:45] What advice did your attorney give you? All you can say, under the advice of your attorney, you invoke your Fifth Amendment right. [21:54] 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. [22:03] Right. How long were you actually in jail? [22:06] Just two days. Two days of bitterness betrayed by a friend. How did you feel about your old friend Chris Tapp?

[22:15] Oh, I hated him. I hated him. [22:17] What the hell are you thinking, man? [22:20] Meantime, police and prosecutors kept talking to Chris Tapp. [22:23] 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. [22:46] And remember that blood-soaked teddy bear police found near the bed? [22:51] Tapp told police that Ben Hobbs held that over Angie's face as he...

[22:55] Hobbs [22:56] Slit her throat [22:59] 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. [23:09] I think every time [23:10] they did a DNA sample that didn't match Keith. I think it was a punch in the gut every time. [23:17] With Ben Hobbs already behind bars in Nevada on different rape charges and... [23:22] 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...

[23:31] was, [23:32] 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. [23:42] Was there a collective sigh of relief when Chris Tapp was arrested? [23:45] 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. [23:55] 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.

[24:07] I mean, I was finally looking somebody in the eye, looking at some... [24:14] Thank you. [24:15] what I thought was a devil who had taken my daughter's life. [24:20] The anger surged within me. She watched him in court, her eyes full of venom. [24:27] as she listened to the evidence against him. [24:30] that is, his own confession, his many confessions, which the defense tried unsuccessfully to suppress. [24:38] 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. [24:51] 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. [25:09] 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.

[25:29] 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. [25:39] 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. [25:57] Tapp's so-called third accomplice, the owner of that DNA, was still out there. [26:03] 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. [26:19] Exactly. Because they could tell the story. They're the only one. That person is the one that's going to tell the story. [26:38] It was a partial victory. Some justice for Angie Dodge and her mother Carol. [26:43] Chris Tapp was in prison. His alleged accomplice Ben Hobbs was behind bars in Nevada for a different crime. [26:50] 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. [27:03] And something like a public guessing game ensued. [27:07] Was it this man or this one? [27:09] Or was it this man, George Pockies? Seemed like the whole town suspected him, just because Chris was his friend. [27:18] I would have... [27:20] 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. [27:26] 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. [27:43] Searching for her killer. [27:44] I distributed like 1,200 flyers through the summer. Did you go to scary places, dangerous places? Oh, yes. And... [27:53] 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.

[28:07] I had a gun put to my head one night. [28:09] And during those nights, Carol often ended up parked outside the apartment where Angie was murdered. [28:15] I would just stare at that house and stare at the windows and try and figure out [28:21] How scared she must have been. [28:25] She also endlessly is... Is talk the right word? Those friends of Chris Tapp, like Jeremy Sargis. There was times I would be working... [28:37] Look up, and there she is. [28:39] She'd been watching me for a while. [28:42] She was relentless.

And by that time, I think Furman had her pretty convinced. [28:48] that we had something to do with it. [28:50] That's Detective Jared Furman, of course. Carol prodded him. Prodded them, the whole department, insisting they keep searching for the killer. [29:00] 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. [29:09] What part of this don't I understand? [29:12] 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 on Angie's body. It was written in this lab report that it's similar or same as the victim. And I said to myself, it's either Angie's or it's not Angie's. It can't be an either or. [29:42] expert who just so happened to live and work right in Idaho. This is the expert [29:49] Dr. Greg Hampikian. [29:51] fruit fly geneticists from Boise State University [29:55] But Dr. Hampikian's work is not all done in the classroom. [30:01] His own path changed years ago when he was asked to test some DNA and got an innocent man freed from a Georgia prison.

[30:10] And just like that, the doctor found a new colleague, founder and director of Idaho's Innocence Project. [30:18] Secrets can be kept, I guess, but, you know, science reveals those secrets. So Carol called this Dr. Hampikian and discovered that his innocence project... [30:31] had just taken on the case of... [30:34] Christopher Tapp. At which he might have been forgiven for hanging up the phone. [30:41] but she didn't quite the reverse her words to me I'll never forget were [30:47] I just want to know what happened to my daughter. [30:50] And, you know, it still brings the hair up on the back of my neck.

[30:54] The curiosity of hers surprised you. [30:56] The knowledge surprised me. She's turned all of that love and devotion for her daughter into a very careful record of this case. Carol was well on her way to becoming an expert in her own right in forensic science. [31:13] 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. [31:21] He goes, well, they're either hers or they're not. [31:24] Just as you thought. He said, well, where are the hairs?

I said, I assume that they're still in evidence. So she called the Idaho Falls Police Department, which found the hairs in an envelope in the evidence room. And once DNA tests were run on those hairs and compared with the 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. [31:54] the mystery man who killed her. It's all one person who did this in terms of the DNA. Dr. Hampikian believed police were mistaken. There was one killer, not three, like the police thought.

To imagine that there is this group of criminals who know about DNA and are so careful, what did they do? They planted somebody else's semen and pubic hair and then cleaned up all their own DNA? [32:24] 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.

I was extremely angry. [32:54] that belongs to the same person, and it's not Chris Tapp. [32:59] Something's wrong. Next step, watch those Chris Tapp confession tapes for herself. [33:06] There's times that I wanted to put my fist through the TV. [33:15] 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? [33:37] 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 Christoph had confessed to taking part in the murder. And now... [33:54] 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, [34:05] Like I told you, we're just going in circles. Well, I know. That's why I think this is bull****. [34:11] Starting with Ben Hobbs. Man, he was adamant that he said, I did not kill Angie Dodge. [34:18] Please don't be nervous. I'm just not used to be down here.

Next, she watched the police interview Jeremy Sargis, whom Chris Tapp had implicated. [34:31] 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... [34:41] were much smarter and just basically... [34:46] you know, didn't play their game. What she saw amazed her, as did what she learned. The demand 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 got to trust me. [35:12] 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. [35:35] Hypothetically, Chris, how do you think it happened? Uh-huh. And I remember Chris saying, you mean like a TV show?

[35:42] Next, she saw police administering polygraph after polygraph and almost always with the same result. They would tell him he was deceptive. [35:52] But perhaps what troubled Carol most was seeing how confused Tapp was. [35:56] Even ten days after his first interviews, [35:59] He still seemed not to know what house Angie lived in. [36:03] Didn't she like live around the corner or was it? It was a 12 o'clock. [36:09] For a guy who'd taken part in a murder, Tapp also seemed not to know much about the layout of Angie's apartment.

[36:15] So Detective Brown suggested this helpful memory aid. [36:24] They seemed to be coaching him. He still couldn't do it. And then they showed him where the murder happened. Bathroom's up here. Bedroom's up here. Bedroom's up here. Bedroom's up here. [36:38] There was more. Carol was stunned to see that police had shown Tapp photos of the crime scene. [36:45] I want you to tell us if that's how you remember it, if that's how you don't remember it, maybe it's going to jog some memories for you, and we're going to go from there.

[37:01] Three people committed the murder together. The detective spent hours literally trying to drag the name of that third man out of tap. [37:09] And when Carol saw the tape, [37:12] Well, [37:12] You watch it. [37:14] The name nothing comes to my head. It was a junior. It was a... Yes. Winckelson. Mackleton. Mackleton. [37:20] There's times that I wanted to put my fists through the TV. [37:24] By the time you had gone through all of those tapes, what did you think about Chris Tapp? How did they do this to me?

How have they managed to convince and keep someone in prison for all these years? [37:37] And it's a possibility it'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. [37:52] The impossible, of course, Tapp had lost all his appeals. It was over for him. And the detective who'd put him behind bars, who's now more powerful than ever, was mayor of Idaho Falls, and absolutely certain that Chris Tapp... [38:08] was as guilty as sin.

[38:11] What's it like to know that Carroll is now actively campaigning for his release? Believes in innocent man. [38:31] - For years after the murder, finding Angie's killer was Carol's reason for living. [38:37] through three heart attacks, the death of her estranged husband, off and on battles with the Idaho Falls Police. [38:46] And then that fight became way more complicated because Detective Jared Furman was soon elected mayor of the city. [38:55] And as mayor, Jared Furman still seemed to be caught up in the Angie Dodge case, as Jeremy Sarges and his mother discovered.

[39:06] Mom worked at City Hall and [39:08] He wasn't fond of her and she wasn't fond of him. Well, he still believed you were guilty. He did. And he would make sure and tell her that, too. [39:15] 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... [39:26] Back in 2012, they were more than happy to sit with us and answer whatever questions we had. [39:32] And here, the mayor told us, he absolutely knew that Chris Tapp was guilty.

Knew because it was he, Furlman, who took Tapp to the crime scene, where he... [39:42] Not the doubters saw how Tapp behaved in the bedroom where Angie Dodge was murdered. [39:49] He took us into the bedroom and relived that night. And you could see it on his face. He was reliving it. [39:59] 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. [40:08] But... [40:09] I have no doubts in my mind that Chris Tapp is part of that homicide itself.

You can't fake anything. [40:18] 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. [40:26] And Chris knew the minute details of that case. He, of course, claims that he knows them because he was fed them. [40:33] We would politely disagree with that. [40:36] Is it possible at least that [40:39] There was some suggestion involved in these things before he actually said them? That he heard in the... [40:44] 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... [41:00] reviewed those tapes over and over. We had a jury who reviewed those tapes. For two guys, we interviewed this person and found that in the first interview, the second interview, the third interview, the fourth interview, the fifth interview, he lied like a sidewalk. [41:15] Then you finally get to the seventh interview, and that's the gospel truth. Well, no, absolutely. [41:21] 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 Tack claimed to know nothing about the clothes Angie Dodge was wearing. Do you remember if she was clothed, dead clothed? No. [41:43] But some details in the interview could be interpreted to back up claims by the police. [41:48] Once, for example, before Tab was shown the crime scene photos, he did seem to, in a guessing kind of way, know what Angie was wearing. [41:58] I'm with the only thing that comes in half across my life that is easier to sweat.

[42:04] and although he's wrong about the color of her clothes, [42:07] 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. [42:16] I just let the iPad on one lady. 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. [42:46] And they knew that the victim's mother, Carol Dodge, believed Tapp was innocent. And they, detectives, [42:53] had made a terrible mistake. [42:59] actively campaigning for his release. Believes in an 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... [43:12] I was genuinely surprised. She's looking for closure. Yeah. Tomorrow or the next day, Chris could be guilty in her mind again.

[43:20] 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. [43:52] There comes a time in every tale [43:54] to meet the person at the center of the story. [43:58] And here he is. [44:00] Christopher Tapp. [44:02] 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. [44:12] who'd done more than a decade of hard time.

[44:16] As people look at you, what do you most want them to know about you? [44:21] I've been so wronged all these years. [44:25] How? [44:26] Could individuals do something? [44:29] To another human being like they've done to me. You're an innocent man? Yes, sir, I am. [44:34] Of course, everybody in prison is innocent, right? If you look at the whole entire case, the DNA... [44:39] None of them points to me. None of them... On that point, there is little dispute, of course. [44:44] 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. [44:59] Chris dropped out of high school [45:01] 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. [45:11] Did you think anything of that? No. [45:13] I had no rhyme, no reason to be scared. [45:17] 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.

[45:33] being brought in for. [45:34] You didn't connect it with the Angie thing at all? No. I thought I was, honestly, I was going in for drugs. [45:41] 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 [45:49] to being the only man charged in the case. [45:52] Well, of course, one of the difficulties was your story... [45:55] Kept changing, right? Very much it did. [45:57] 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.

[46:06] to then, well, maybe there's a third guy involved, to, wait a minute, I was there, and... [46:12] And oh, yeah, and I cut her. [46:15] Where did that come from? [46:16] 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. [46:31] And indeed, here it is on tape with then-detective-turned-mayor Jared Furman in charge of the interview.

[46:40] Hypothetically, if Chris Tapp was holding on to Angie as she was being cut, and then some of the 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. [46:55] Would you listen to her? Okay, hypothetically. If you took part in any of that, [47:03] that's okay because [47:06] 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. [47:19] Trying to figure out [47:20] What they want just for them to leave me alone. Why? [47:24] I didn't... [47:25] 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 will help you. So like an idiot, I believe them. [47:36] And then they charge you with murder. [47:39] As we spoke here back in 2012, Chris Tapp was fighting to clear his name with the support of the Idaho Innocence Project and...

[47:49] The victim's mother. Carol Dodge came around. [47:53] To your side. [47:55] What was that like? It's an amazing feeling. And I appreciate her finally understanding. [48:05] That I'm innocent. [48:06] Carol, of course, despite this turnabout and new mission in life, was still stuck in her grief. [48:14] And by the time our first report on this case aired in 2012, [48:19] More than 16 years after the murder of Angie Dodge, [48:22] 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...

[48:33] Only occasional visits back to Idaho Falls. [48:36] It just feels like every time I go there, I need to watch my step. [48:40] That's why I can't live there. Jeremy Sarges, 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... [48:52] 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. What was it like having to leave and try to find a new life somewhere else?

[49:07] I'm just scaring my family has a... [49:10] Business and... [49:11] been there for over a hundred years and [49:14] 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. [49:44] Carol Dodge, of course, could think of a lot of reasons to do something differently. [49:52] was convinced those detectives had blown the case completely. [49:56] and had browbeaten an innocent man into a false confession. She needed help now, and so she looked and looked until she found... [50:07] 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. [50:30] Carol Dodge had to look a long way from Idaho Falls to find the one she needed.

[50:35] 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 Drizen, a clinical professor of law at Northwestern University, legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions and... [50:57] one of the world's leading experts on the phenomenon of [51:00] false confessions [51:03] When that Dateline program about the case aired, Drizzen had been watching. I had seen the Dateline show, so I was aware of... [51:12] who Carol Dodge was and my phone rank.

And I picked up the phone and, uh, the woman on the other end of the line was Carol Dodge and, uh, [51:22] I almost fell out of my chair. It's hard to get your head around that in a way, isn't it? [51:27] 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...