Disclaimer: This article contains mentions of murder and assault. Reader discretion is advised.
Dateline NBC’s episode “True Confession” examined Christopher Tapp’s wrongful conviction in Angie Dodge’s murder case. The episode premiered last Friday, February 23, 2024.
According to NBC News, Tapp had served 20 years in prison for Dodge’s 1996 murder, a crime he did not commit. In 2019, a judge acquitted him after DNA found on Dodge’s body linked another suspect, Brian Dripps, to the killing. Moreover, a witness who claimed to have heard Tapp admit to the crime later recanted her testimony. This witness alleged that authorities had pressured her into lying.
The outlet reported that Dripps had been the victim’s neighbor when at the time the murder occurred. He eventually pleaded guilty and received a prison sentence of 20 years to life. A few years after his release, Christopher Tapp filed a federal lawsuit against Idaho Falls and its police department. In 2022, the city settled with the exoneree, following which he received $11.7 million. However, as Tapp tried to settle into his new life, tragedy struck again when he died after an accident.
What happened to Christopher Tapp after exoneration in Angie Dodge’s murder case?
NBC News reported that a jury had convicted Christopher Tapp in Angie Dodge’s murder case. Tapp and Dodge were part of the same friend group, “River Rats,” and often hung out by the Snake River. The former was then accused of raping and nearly decapitating Dodge in her Idaho Falls apartment in 1996.
Interview tapes from the time showed that Tapp initially told police that he did not know anything about the murder. However, after multiple polygraph tests and additional interviews, the then-20-year-old confessed to participating in Dodge’s rape and murder. He also implicated two other members of their group. Following his conviction in 1998, Tapp received a 40-year prison sentence.
More than two decades later, in 2019, a judge exonerated Christopher Tapp after a re-investigation found DNA on Dodge’s body, linking another suspect to the crime. This suspect was Brian Dripps, Angie Dodge’s neighbor. Authorities arrested and charged Dripps with murder, and he eventually pleaded guilty and got 20 years to life sentence.
In 2022, Tapp received $11.7 million in settlement money after successfully suing the city of Idaho Falls and its police department, per The U.S. Sun. The following year, he lost his wife in a fatal car crash while the couple was in the middle of a divorce.
Then, two months later, while visiting Las Vegas for a car show, Christopher Tapp got into a tragic accident. Las Vegas police stated that medical personnel had found him suffering from injuries on October 29, 2023, after a “purported accident.” He was reportedly in a coma after tripping, falling, and hitting his head on a coffee table in his Resorts World suite in Vegas.
Later, homicide detectives learned that before the accident, Tapp had been in a fight inside a hotel room. The coroner’s office eventually declared that he died as a result of blunt-force trauma to the head, ruling it a homicide. Authorities had previously described his death as an accident.
The investigation into Christopher Tapp’s strange death is still ongoing, and no additional details have been revealed as of yet.
