5 key details about Christopher Tapp's wrongful conviction
Christopher Tapp is a man from Idaho Falls who was wrongfully convicted for the murder of Angie Dodge. Angie was an 18-year-old teenager who was r*ped and murdered at her apartment in Idaho Falls on June 13, 1996.
The investigators failed to find a suspect until January 1997. Christopher Tapp was the friend of Benjamin Hobbs, who was charged with s*xual assault on January 5, 1997. Though Tapp was initially released by Idaho Falls police, he was called to be interviewed again on January 10, 1997.
After that, Tapp faced a series of legal troubles regarding the murder and was sent to prison. The story of Christopher Tapp's wrongful conviction is documented in the Dateline NBC episode titled True Confession. The episode was released on February 23, 2024.
5 key details about the wrongful conviction of Christopher Tapp
1) Christopher Tapp was arrested at his house
As per the Innocence Project article, Christopher Tapp and Benjamin Hobbs were part of a group called the River Rats. They used to hang out around the Snake River.
The Idaho Falls Police got to know about Tapp while interviewing Benjamin Hobbs' friends. After initial interrogation on January 7, 1997, he was interviewed again on January 10.
Tapp was called to be interrogated the next day; however, he hired an attorney. Tapp's mother said that her son would only come to the station on January 13, accompanied by the attorney.
However, the police did not agree. They attained a search warrant and arrested Christopher at his home, charging him with his involvement in the murder.
2) Christopher Tapp's stories were found to be falsified
As per the Innocence Project article, during the first interview, Tapp said neither he nor Hobbs was involved in the crime. However, on January 15, he changed his story, saying that he was present when Hobbs killed Angie. Tapp claimed that Hobbs killed Angie as she was trying to break his marriage.
As per the Innocence Project, most of the interviews taken with Tapp were recorded. All the questions on him were monitored by his attorney.
3) Christopher Tapp entered into a series of immunity agreements with the prosecutors
During Christopher Tapp's interrogation, taken on January 15 and January 17, he was presented with a series of terms and conditions. As per the immunity agreements, he had to provide them with true information about the crime.
In return, he would only be charged with having contact with the murderer. However, when the DNA results from the s*men samples found from the victim's body arrived, it changed the course of the investigation.
The DNA sample neither matched with Benjamin Hobbs nor Christopher Tapp. Christopher again came up with a new story and claimed that another friend, Jeremy Sargis, was involved with the murder. However, when on January 27, 1997, the DNA results came back, they did not match with Sargis.
According to the Innocence Project, prosecutors were angry upon Tapp's story and revoked the immunity agreement on January 29. The same day, Tapp was taken to the crime scene. He later claimed that he was an accomplice in the murder. Tapp said that he was the one to cut Angie Dodge's right breast and joined Hobbs in assaulting her.
The next day Tapp took his fifth polygraph test with a hope to decrease his sentence and claimed that he participated in the murder because Hobbs had threatened to kill him.
4) Christopher Tapp was charged with r*pe and first-degree murder
As per the Innocence Project article, it was on February 3, 1997, when Tapp was charged with r*pe, felony, possession of a deadly weapon, and first-degree murder of Angie Dodge.
Though Benjamin Hobbs was convicted for a se*ual assault in Nevada, he was not charged with the murder of Angie. Tapp was eventually sentenced to spend life in prison, with a minimum sentence of 10 years for the r*pe conviction and 30 years for the murder conviction.
5) Christopher Tapp was found not guilty after spending 20 years in prison
It was in 2007 when the Idaho Innocence Project took on Tapp's case. They requested a DNA test to be done on the strands of hair recovered from the crime scene.
As per the Innocence Project article, mitochondrial DNA testing was performed in the FBI's regional laboratory. The DNA sample in the hair strands matched the one in the s*men. But none of them belonged to Christopher Tapp.
As per the Innocence Project article, in May 2016, Tapp's attorneys filed a motion for post-conviction relief in collaboration with John Thomas from Bonneville County's Public Defender's Office. They argued that Christopher's statements were the result of police coercion and trickery.
On March 22, 2017, John Thomas agreed with Attorney Danny Clark from Bonneville County District. Charges against Tapp for r*pe conviction were vacated. His sentence was eventually reduced to the time he already served behind the bars.
After Christopher was released, the Idaho Falls Police began working with the Innocence Project to find the true culprit. They reached out to a forensic company named Parabon Nanolabs to find out the source from the DNA sample.
The company ran the DNA sample through a database, where people uploaded their genetic sample to search for their relatives or find their ancestry. With family tree sampling, they found seven people of interest from the same lineage.
A man named Brian Dripps came under prime suspicion, who used to live in Angie Dodge's neighborhood, when she was murdered. The Idaho Falls Police followed him and managed to take a DNA sample from the cigarette butt he threw away.
The sample was immediately sent to Parabon Nanolabs, who tested it and found it matched. It was on May 15, 2019, when Brian Dripps was arrested. He was charged with r*pe, and murder. Dripps confessed to committing the crime alone. It was on July 17, 2019, when the murder conviction on Tapp was finally vacated.
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