Transcript of The Snare, Episode 5: The Cigarette

This is Deborah Roberts here with another weekly episode of our latest true crime series from 2020 and ABC Audio, The Snare. Remember, you can get new episodes early by following The Snare on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now. Now here's the next episode of The Snare. Oh, gee, oh, fühlt sich das nach Sommer an! Die neue Sommerwäsche von CHIWO begeistert mit leuchtenden Farben und fröhlichen Prints. Feine Spitze, leichte Mikrofaser und sommerliche Schnitte sorgen für pures Wohlgefühl, selbst an heißen Tagen. Entdecke jetzt die neue Wäschekollektion von Tchibo und finde deine Lieblingsstücke für den Sommer.

On this case.

Jeff Pratt was one of the police officers who collected the evidence from Angie Dodge's apartment back in 1996. Years later, he looked back at some of what he found at the crime scene and reached for one of the clear plastic bins stacked high on a shelf in the Idaho Falls Police Station.

This is, uh, this is going back. For me, going back to that day when we collected all this.

We heard him back in our first episode. He was the officer who took photos of the crime scene with his Pentax camera.

This is the purple sweatpants collected at the scene from the victim, Angie Dodge. This is a shirt collected at the scene.

There was one thing out of all of the evidence that stayed on his mind, but it wasn't in those bins. Instead, he opened the door of a small freezer jam-packed with manila envelopes and pulled out one in particular.

This is DNA evidence, biological evidence that we have to keep in this method to keep it preserved. This one in particular is the— is a DNA extract from the Dodge case.

It's been more than 20 years since this DNA evidence was collected from Angie's room. Pratt says he always thought this evidence would unlock the case. But he says after Chris Tapp's conviction in 1998, the leads on whose DNA that was seemed to go cold. Even though police knew the killer was still out there, someone who left their DNA at the crime scene somehow seemed to have vanished. So when the Idaho Falls Police Department called Jeff Pratt back in, decades later to take another look at the case, he agreed.

It was— this was a case that really haunted me. I have run into Carol Dodge innumerable times. We've spent hours chatting. And I really wanted to do the very best thing I could for her. And I wanted to close this for me as well.

He was going to help a new set of investigators take on Angie's case. And they turned to that DNA evidence again. Technology had advanced. Would this DNA, tucked away in storage for decades, finally lead them to an answer? From ABC Audio and 20/20. I'm Maggie Rooley, and this is The Snare. Episode 5, The Cigarette. For years, Chris Tapp's appellate attorney, John Thomas, worked closely with Carol Dodge to overturn Chris's conviction. But even as experts in false confessions, and organizations like Judges for Justice and the Innocence Project joined their efforts, they still were not successful.

We filed, uh, 5 post-conviction, uh, petitions for post-conviction relief, and they were all always struck down, struck down, struck down.

The Bonneville County Prosecutor's Office also ordered an independent review of Chris's conviction. It concluded that Chris was present when Angie was attacked and stabbed, but cast doubt on his confession regarding his personal involvement in her death. Daniel Clark, the county prosecutor, issued his own report in 2016. He determined that the statements Chris's attorney said were coerced were similar to statements Chris made to acquaintances. When asked about the outcome of the two reports, Clark noted, "The question for me was whether there was new, clear, and convincing evidence of innocence.

There simply was not." But Clark says at the same time, we had some concerns about the confession. I had some concerns about the, the level of sentence. As it related to Tapp's admitted involvement.

Based upon Clark's concerns, he and Chris's defense team agreed on a deal.

Chris Tapp is offered a deal where the rape charge is completely vacated, so he's no longer a sex offender, but the murder charge would stay in place.

Under the deal, Chris would be released from prison. He'd be a free man after 20 years behind bars. But he wouldn't clear his name. Legally, he'd still be a convicted murderer. But John Thomas says the alternative wasn't much better.

Why would we make this deal knowing that Chris Tapp was an innocent man? And Chris and I talked about this, and we looked at each other, and we thought, we just didn't know what was going to happen. There was too much uncertainty.

So Chris Tapp took the deal. In March 2017, Chris walked into the same courthouse where he had gone on trial as a young man. This time he was 40 years old and there to formally accept his deal with the state. He wore a white button-down shirt and had a tight buzz cut and a cleanly shaven face.

Time served, 20 years, 54 days, and I'm free. No parole, no probation, no nothing. So the deal I took to come home to get my freedom wasn't the greatest deal, but it got me home. It's a win, you know what I mean? It's a win. It got me out.

When Chris walked out of the courtroom, People were standing in the halls clapping for him. Chris looked kind of nervous. He wrung his hands. East Idaho News captured the scene. How does it feel to not have handcuffs on?

Different.

Yeah?

Different.

And then he stepped out of the Bonneville County Courthouse a free man.

It was just nice. To be able to look out and not see barbed wire, see a fence, see a guard dog. It was nice to be able to actually know that I could walk down the road if I wanted to. Lord knows I couldn't, because I was still in so much of shock and so used to confinement. But I knew I could.

His attorney was by his side. And so was Carol Dodge. Carol even held his hand as the three of them took questions from reporters.

Carol, what are your thoughts here? Oh, it's just a day of celebration.

Right, Chris?

Yes, ma'am.

I didn't bring any cookies.

No, it's all right.

It's a great day. You know, Carol, Angie's mother, and now one of Chris's fiercest advocates, was beaming as they stood side by side. Kris was finally out, in no small part due to her efforts. Afterwards, she turned to Kris and asked if he wanted to go down the steps to greet the dozens of people cheering him on.

What?

Kris?

It was just a madhouse for me to see everybody, you know what I mean? See, there was 50, probably 50-some people outside of the courthouse that day when I was released, clapping and happy that I was free. You know, they were— how do I say it? They were happy that I was home. They didn't think justice was served, but they were happy that I was home.

Hey, Chris.

Welcome home, Chris.

Thank you. Welcome home.

Been rooting for you for a long time.

One of the most overwhelming days I've ever had in my life. I probably will ever have in my life because, you know, you're in a closed environment and you're in a structured environment for so long. And then, you know, in prison you don't really like to be touched. You don't like to be, you know, certain things. And all these people wanted to hug. Everybody wanted a piece of my time. Everybody wanted to talk to me. And, you know, and it was out of true, true care and concern that they wanted to talk to me.

But Chris was still a convicted murderer. He says it limited his job prospects and made life hard. He tried to stop thinking about the case and focused on moving forward.

I had to get a job. I had to get a car. I had to, you know, I had to get my stuff in order and in line. So I quit really paying attention to the case.

But his attorney, John Thomas, says he and Carol never stopped paying attention to the case.

Ultimately, Carol Dodge and I decide that, hey, we're going to keep— continue pursuing this. We need to find the killer. And I'm thinking, if we find the killer, they'll have no choice but to exonerate Chris.

And for them, Finding the killer meant returning to the DNA. In fact, when Carol Dodge stood on the courthouse steps, she said she hoped Chris being released would get investigators to focus on finding the one DNA match, the one person who left his calling card at the crime scene. So she kept doing what she'd been doing for years— investigating.

She has always been on kind of the, the leading edge of the DNA technology. It was rare to talk to a lab person or a specialist in the field that hadn't already met Carol or talked to Carol. Hello, designers.

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Well, everyone knew of the Adji Dodge case when I became a police officer in 2002. That was always a case that was kind of legend around Idaho Falls.

This is Captain John Marley of the Idaho Falls Police. He says he inherited the Dodge case when he was the sergeant of the Investigations Bureau.

My primary responsibility was to look at it and get it assigned to a detective. I assigned that case to Detective Sage Albright.

Some of me says that it's because I was the only person who would say yes.

Albright had just become a detective. He says that was actually why he was given the case. Fresh eyes on Idaho Falls' most notorious cold case. He says it came with a lot of pressure.

This case had been so traumatic and difficult for everyone that it, it almost like a curse. It was extremely overwhelming to get this case.

While Detective Albrecht was going back through the case, The binders and bins of documents, the sealed bags of evidence. The police department had also been hearing consistently from Carol Dodge.

Carol Dodge was a force to be reckoned with the entire investigation. She never once let up. She was relentless on finding the truth.

And Carol had been learning about major advances in DNA technology, including Genetic genealogy. You've probably heard about how consumer DNA testing has led to breakthroughs in high-profile cold cases, like the Golden State Killer. Genealogical testing companies were mostly meant to help people find out more about their family history. You submit your DNA sample, and that's used to create a family tree. People with very similar DNA to yours. When it was first introduced, it was often used to help people find parents and siblings and resolve family mysteries. Eventually, police departments started using this technology as part of their investigations. Captain Bill Squires was one of the officers reinvestigating the Angie Dodge case. Back in the summer of 1996, he was in his first year as a patrolman and was one of the officers who responded to Angie's apartment and helped secure the crime scene. Authorities had submitted the DNA sample to CODIS, the FBI's database of DNA profiles, but it didn't get them anywhere.

I mean, previously when we had looked at DNA as related to this case, it was from the perspective of either matching that CODIS profile or not matching it. It was one or the other. It was either a match or it wasn't. But now through, uh, a larger number of people being entered into these databases, it's actually possible then to dig deeper into the DNA and say, okay, well, it's not a match, but is it close to one of the other? Are they relatives to someone that's in there? And be able to look at the familial lines of who this suspect is and be able to find it that way.

Carol Dodge had been talking with a company called Parabon that was at the cutting edge of genealogical testing. Eventually, the Idaho Falls Police Department and Parabon connected about the case. Parabon used the DNA sample from the crime scene to create a phenotype profile of Angie's killer. Basically, what would this person look like? Eye color, hair color, height, facial structure, things like that.

So when Parabon completed that snapshot of what the suspect's traits look like, the department had done a big press release and had kind of made yet another public display and, and request for any other tips and, and unfound material that we might not have already. They showed that, hey, these are the, the characteristics this person might have, and if you have information that hasn't been provided to the police before or something we haven't looked at or haven't looked at well enough, call us again and set up a hotline number for anyone to call in and give us, give us those tips that we can follow up on.

Police released a rendering of what Angie's killer possibly looked like: a white male around 40 years old with brown hair and eyes, and there was about a 50-50 chance that he had freckles. They didn't get any new leads, but Parabon could also compare the DNA sample to DNA from millions of other people. To answer, who shares DNA with the killer? Who is the killer's family? The idea was to create a family tree, a web of people the killer is related to, and then reverse engineer the killer's identity from that. Parabon didn't find any real close family matches, no parents or siblings. But there were more distant relatives, people who looked more like third and fourth cousins.

One of them kind of came to the forefront because of proximity. This person lived not too far away, could easily have connections to Southeast Idaho because of where he even currently lived. And so, very exciting. Very exciting for us to have something to actually go do. It was not only the first big lead, but really just about the only lead.

Idaho Falls sent investigators to another part of Idaho to collect DNA samples from a father and son. But when Parabon analyzed the samples, they were not a match.

And it was really deflating. So we thought, oh, great. We're going to be basically back at square one.

But Squire says weeks later, Parabon identified another potential match, a man who took his stepfather's last name and was missed in the initial family tree search.

And our jaws about dropped. We didn't break down and cry then. We sure could have. We were jumping for joy. How exciting. And to get that information, to be able to have hope of Wrapping this case up? Oh, my gosh.

After more than 20 years, they finally had a major breakthrough. The man identified was named Brian Dripps. Detective Sage Albright actually recognized that name. When Albright was reviewing Angie's case, looking through the binders and binders of records, He had sorted through all the interview cards, all the people investigators had talked to. And even before the genetic genealogy analysis, one of those people stood out to him. Angie's neighbor when she was killed, Brian Dripps.

There's this man who lives across the street from where the murder happened, where Angie was living. And he can't really account for his time. He tells the officer that he doesn't remember what happened that night.

Detective Albright looked into whether Drips's DNA was ever collected, and if it was, how it could be tracked down.

I think just the reality of so many people having their hands in this case over the, you know, the decades that we'd had it, some of the records were were just kind of hard to track. They were hard to keep track of everybody. And we had— we'd collected, like, 100 DNA samples on this. And so when I started to ask questions, people were like, well, if he was identified as somebody in the area at the time, I'm sure we got his DNA. And I kept asking, and we couldn't really lock down if we had a DNA sample from him. And it didn't seem like we did.

So now investigators had a man who, at the time of the murder, had lived across the street from Angie's apartment. Who hadn't been able to account for his time during Angie's murder and who hadn't seemed to have had his DNA collected or tested. And they also had a family tree telling them this man could be the killer. To the investigators, it seemed like a breakthrough.

We felt great about him as a suspect.

But Squire says they knew they had to play this new lead very carefully.

You know, easily I think we probably could have justified getting a warrant, just go contacting him, getting a sample from him. But if it's not him, then it— we don't know what the familial relationships are, and we didn't want our suspect to get a heads up if it wasn't him, or to have any kind of tip-off that we were looking at him or even that close. So we thought the best course of action was to try to do it surreptitiously so we didn't ruin the other investigative efforts down the road.

They'd have to be creative. They'd have to travel across the state and get his DNA sample without him knowing.

If you like your true crime like you like your coffee, Red Handed is the podcast for you. It's dark, intense, and might just keep you up all night. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And every week on Red Handed, we break down a different fascinating case from the most recent US trials everyone is obsessing over, like Brendan Banfield, Karen Reed, and Ellen Greenberg, to the most unbelievable stories from around the world. There's nothing we love more than digging into every detail of the cases we cover, getting beyond a basic analysis and cutting to the heart of the story. Red Handed has over 400 episodes ready to binge right now. Plus, be sure to check out our weekly sister show Shorthand, where we unpack everything from the Black Death to Area 51. If you're looking for smart, detailed true crime with personality, check out Red Handed wherever you get your podcasts.

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A handful of Idaho Falls police officers traveled about 4 hours west to Caldwell, a small city just outside the state's capital. They were gathered in an empty parking lot to go over their plans for the day. The sun hadn't even risen yet. It was the first day of their surveillance operation on Brian Dripps, who had left Idaho Falls and now lived in Caldwell. The mood was light, almost buzzing, but Captain Squires told his team to stay vigilant.

You know what, the only thing I do, I want to make sure that we remember here is that we're here to get this sample and to try to help prove the case, but remember that we're potentially looking at a homicide suspect. We got no idea what this poor guy's personality is like. He could have already made a decision on what's going to happen if the police confront him on something like this. So be diligent.

Captain Squire says there is a real art to undercover operations.

If the person you're surveilling sees the same car or the same couple of cars all the time, every time he leaves, you know, even the most aloof person is going to figure out that you're you're being followed. Yep, missed a turn back here. That's what I get for not looking at my GPS.

They got to Drips' home around 6 AM. They didn't want to miss anything about his day.

Okay, so right here in the area The subdivision over here to the right is where he lives. And we're going to keep an eye on entrances coming out so we can, uh, follow if he does leave.

Captain Squires says he and his team were posted around Drips' house all morning, waiting.

And it wasn't until about noon that he first left. And went to a convenience store that was nearby. When he pulls into the parking lot, we have another guy pull up to the gas pumps to keep an eye and pretend to get gas and get a really good eye on him. And he goes in and gets 2 fountain drinks and gets right back in his same truck and heads right back home.

From watching him that day, they also noticed something crucial. He's got his arm out the window of his red pickup truck with a cigarette in his hand. He's a smoker. Squire says discarded cigarettes can be great for collecting DNA samples. After following Drips for hours, police finally saw Drips flick the cigarette out into the middle of the road. They hurried to retrieve it. But it was too risky without running into traffic and drawing people's attention. They just weren't in place to get it.

And we watched for the rest of the day until late. And he really— he had taken another trip to another store, smoked another cigarette on that run, but he dropped the cigarette butt in the back of his truck. And that's not just discarding it where anybody in public could get it.

They didn't have a warrant, to search the truck, and drips didn't go out again that day. But the team was starting to have a sense of his routine. On day 2, Squire says the officers were better prepared.

We had units pre-staged by that parking lot into the convenience store already. They're already sitting there and able to pick him up in hopes of getting a better opportunity, a cigarette butt if it gets flicked. Is that you behind him, Joe? Yeah, he's up there a ways though. I can't see anything yet.

Like clockwork, Brian Dripps drove to the convenience store and officers waited there, watching for him to toss his cigarette. They spotted their target.

Cigarette is in hand.

Now officers were waiting to see when he'd drop it so they could swoop in and recover the cigarette.

That's good.

The officer saw Drips flick his cigarette butt out the window, just like they predicted. They waited until Drips left before going in to retrieve the discarded butt.

Bear with me for a second here. Oh, he's still standing there. Oh my gosh, don't get out.

"Bingo, looks like we got it." When officers grabbed the cigarette butt, it was still burning. Captain Squires was waiting nearby, listening on the radio.

And I hear one of my guys say, "He flicked it. I got it." And made my day. Everybody, I think ceremoniously, is, you know, arms in the air, super excited because it was a huge hurdle. And to be able to get that, and by the time I got up to that scene, uh, you know, close to the parking lot where our subject could see us, my guys had already gone out. It was still smoldering. Got it. I mean, the detective was able to actually see it land exactly where, to know it was exactly, it was the right cigarette butt, and it was the one. So we were able to take it, package it right there, and had it.

They sent it off to a lab for testing. Normally, these tests took months to process, but Captain Squire says they placed an expedited order. Instead of months, they would find out if they had a match in a matter of days.

My guys hadn't had a day off for a long time. I told them, look, try to get some time off right now. When we get the— not expecting to get it back till Monday, we'll, you know, go back and actually see your family for a while. Because we'd really been going hard on following these aerosols before then.

Their break was short-lived because the next day, Captain Squires got a call from his lieutenant.

So I'm out on my lawnmower on Saturday trying to get my yard mowed. He calls me, and I know he would only be calling me about this at this time. And Joel says, it's a match.

Idaho Falls Police finally had a match to the crime scene DNA.

It was huge, man. I'm here to tell you, it was huge to have that confirmation now that this is it. That's really when it sunk in with me, man. This is the guy. This is the guy we've been looking for for 23 years.

But getting the DNA match was not the end of their time tailing Brian Dripps. Now, investigators wanted to talk to him. About a week after Idaho Falls police retrieved the cigarette butt, they were back in Caldwell. One of the officers gave a briefing. On how they planned to bring him into the local station for questioning.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here, everybody. This is a big day. Hopefully it's going to be one of those everybody remembers when their grandparents and telling the little, little ones about the things they did today.

He described Brian Dripps in detail.

Brian L. Dripps Sr. is a white guy in his early 50s, looks like the Grateful Dead concert beard attendant— attendee. Long beard, kind of ZZ Top, but thin, you know. Yeah, he is built somewhere on the order of 5'10"-ish, 150-ish pounds, a little bit of a pot belly.

He also described the routine officers had carefully observed: 2 sodas at the convenience store around noon, another trip later in the afternoon, and then home. The officer explained that the goal was to calmly intercept Brian Dripps as he went about his typical day. They wanted him to feel comfortable, to talk, not to panic. After the briefing, officers set out to follow Dripps again, but right away he veered from his routine.

We don't really know where he's going. This is a little bit out of, uh, we haven't taken this trip before when we've tailed him in the past.

They realized he was stopping at a bank instead of going to the convenience store. The officers decided to keep their plan the same— calmly intercept him when he leaves the bank.

I still feel pretty good about it. I think— I don't think he is on to us. I don't think he's suspicious in any way. I think we're in good shape.

In the car, The officers described what they were going to say to him.

Yes, we're following you for this. We're following up on old reports and, you know, yada, yada, yada.

As he exited the bank and approached his vehicle, Detective Albright and I approached him and introduced ourselves. And that's where it all started.

Captain John Marley says it was one of the most nerve-racking nervewracking moments of his life.

I'm getting nervous right now just, just remembering it. Um, it was hard not to get swept away with the gravity of this case. This, this was a case that, that, uh, was a, a black mark on the, you know, Idaho Falls Police Department for, for many, many years. There was so many unanswered questions. The family wanted to know, um, There was just so much weighing on this, and I didn't want to be the one to screw it up.

He says Drips did not want to go with them. Drips had his dog, a German Shepherd, in the car and wanted to go back home to drop the dog off.

And so I made the decision then to work with him and say, hey, how about I get in your vehicle and we drive your dog home together? And we make sure your dog's taken care of. And then after that, you get in the vehicle with Detective Albright and I, and we'll go to the station to talk. We want to make sure— we want him to feel comfortable with us and establish some kind of relationship with us.

Our guys are going to try to talk him into riding with them in our car to get him there. If that's— if he's reluctant or if that's a point of contention, then we're going to let him drive his truck.

After they dropped the dog off together, Drips agreed to get into the car with the officers.

The suspect with our sergeant detective, and we're headed for the Caldwell Police Department to try to do a formal interview.

Police were about to see what Brian Drips, a neighbor who had once lived across the street from Angie Dodge, knew about the murder and what he might share. Even with the DNA match, Detective Albright says they needed more evidence, more cooperation.

We didn't want to just lock in on this idea that because his DNA was there, he absolutely was the person who, who murdered Angie. There was a real possibility that he was not guilty of homicide. There was a real possibility that he had had an intimate relationship with Angie and that his DNA ended up there in an innocent way. We couldn't conclusively say that absolutely 100%, because his DNA is there, he had to have murdered her. And so we had to— we had to make sure that we were open for other possibilities.

The officers felt this interview with Ryan Drips was crucial.

Our really only focus is to try to find the truth, the total truth, what happened.

And it needed to be done just right. The Snare is a production of ABC Audio in 2020. Hosted by me, Maggie Rouly. Produced by Camille Petersen and Sabrina Fang, with help from Annalisa Linder and Emily Schutz. Edited by Tracy Samuelson. Our supervising producer is Susie Lu. Music by Evan Viola. Mixing by Bob Mallory. Special thanks to Katie Dendoss, Janice Johnston, Nancy Rosenbaum, Sasha Aslanov, Mullanian, Suzanne DeCunto, and Michelle Margolis. Josh Cohan is our director of podcast programming. Amy McNiff is our executive producer. When a charming neurosurgeon rode into western towns selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted He wore cowboy boots in the operating room and became sought after by patients.

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