The murder of Angie Raye Dodge
Idaho Falls, Bonneville County, Idaho · 1996
Overview
Angie Dodge, 18, was raped and killed in her first apartment in Idaho Falls, Idaho, in the early hours of June 13, 1996. DNA from the scene came from one unknown man. In January 1997 a 20-year-old acquaintance confessed after more than twenty hours of questioning and seven polygraph sessions, although the DNA was not his, and in 1998 a jury convicted him. Angie's mother, who at first wanted him executed, came to believe the confession was false, helped win his release in 2017, and kept pressing the police to identify the DNA. In 2019 genetic genealogy led to Brian Leigh Dripps Sr., who in 1996 had lived directly across the street and had been spoken to by officers five days after the murder. He confessed, the convicted man was exonerated in July 2019, and Dripps pleaded guilty in 2021 and was sentenced to 20 years to life.
How it was solved
Semen left at the scene gave police a single male DNA profile in 1996, but it matched none of the dozens of local men sampled and, later, nobody in the national criminal database. Police have said evidence and tips at the time suggested more than one attacker, and that theory allowed a 20-year-old acquaintance to be charged on the strength of a confession even though the DNA excluded him. Experts who later reviewed the recorded interrogations and polygraph sessions said he was threatened with the gas chamber, told he had repressed the memory, promised immunity that was then withdrawn, and shown details of the scene; the Idaho Falls police have denied wrongdoing, and courts upheld the confession for years. In 2014 police ran the profile's Y-chromosome markers against a genealogy database later bought by Ancestry and got a 34-of-35 match to a Mississippi man; his son, a New Orleans filmmaker, was swabbed under a warrant and cleared in January 2015. In November 2018 the department turned to Parabon NanoLabs for genetic genealogy on a badly degraded sample. The family tree was the same one, on a branch that had split off more than a century earlier, and it produced six candidates. When the nearest was ruled out by DNA from discarded chewing tobacco, and proved more distantly related than expected, genealogists found an obituary showing a seventh man born after a brief marriage and raised under his stepfather's surname: Brian Dripps. Utility records and a pawn receipt put him at 459 I Street, across from Angie's apartment at 444, from April to August 1996, and the file held a canvass note of his account from June 18, 1996. Detectives recovered a cigarette butt he threw from his car in Caldwell on May 10, 2019; the state laboratory reported a match the next day, the first in more than 100 samples. He was arrested on May 15, 2019, and after about five hours admitted the rape and killing, saying he acted alone.
Sources
- Police release in-depth report about Angie Dodge murder case (May 22, 2019)
“An old pawn receipt and archived utility records showed his address as 459 I Street in Idaho Falls from April 3, 1996 to August 2, 1996.”
- How a discarded cigarette led to an arrest in Idaho teen Angie Dodge's cold case murder (June 27, 2020)
“He was right across the street. It took me 23 years when they had it in the first 25 pages of the investigation.”
- Case summary, courtesy of the National Registry of Exonerations (September 6, 2019)
“It was believed to be the first time that genetic genealogy has been used to exonerate a defendant.”
- In an Apparent First, Genetic Genealogy Aids a Wrongful Conviction Case (July 16, 2019)
“It is better to provide no answer than the wrong answer.”
- New Orleans filmmaker cleared in cold-case murder; false positive highlights limitations of familial DNA searching (March 12, 2015)
“The strongest match was 34 of 35 alleles, which the Sorenson Forensics Lab in Utah deemed exceptionally good.”
- The Angie Dodge case from 1996 until today: what's happened, why and what's next (July 17, 2019)
“She graduated from Idaho Falls High School in 1995 with honors.”
- Dripps says he didn't mean to kill Angie Dodge and acted alone, according to court documents (May 17, 2019)
“Dripps told the officer that he was extremely drunk and couldn't remember any vehicles or people in the area.”
- Walks free after 20 years: 'I never thought this day would come' (March 22, 2017)
“As she left the stand, the courtroom audience stood in silence.”
- Brian Dripps pleads guilty to the rape and murder of Angie Dodge (February 9, 2021)
“I didn't mean to murder her. I guess it just happened when I was there.”
- After 25 years, Brian Dripps goes to prison for rape and death of Angie Dodge (June 8, 2021)
“He knew someone was serving time for his crime, and yet every day, he woke up and refused to take accountability for his actions.”
- Mayor apologizes as city of Idaho Falls settles wrongful conviction lawsuit for $11.7 million (June 10, 2022)
“The city pledges to review its policies, procedures, and training, especially related to custodial interrogations.”
- An exonerated Idaho man finally had his freedom. What came next was 'incomprehensible.' (February 23, 2024)
“His death was initially described as an accident, but the Clark County Coroner's Office later ruled it a homicide.”
- Idaho Falls man wrongfully convicted of murder dies at 47 (November 6, 2023)
“He served 20 years in prison for crimes he did not commit.”
- Murder of Angie Dodge
“Read for leads only.”