ROGERSVILLE â A Hawkins County man accused of holding his girlfriend against her will for several hours, beating her and threatened to kill her on Sept. 6, was named in a two-count indictment charging him with aggravated kidnapping and aggravated domestic assault.
Brandon Lee Murrell, 27, 289 Byrd Creek Road, Sneedville, was indicted by the Hawkins County grand jury on Dec. 7 and arraigned in Criminal Court on Dec. 11.
He has been held in the Hawkins County Jail on $100,000 bond since his arrest on Sept. 8.
On Sept. 7, the alleged victim told Hawkins County Sheriffâs Office Cpl. Mark Harrell that her boyfriend, Murrell, had beaten her over the course of several hours the previous day at a residence on Spruce Pine Road.
guilty, they were sure of it. so that mystery dna must have come from a third man, a third attacker. so they put tapp back in the little interrogation room and asked him, was a third man involved in the crime? and sure enough, chris tapp said, yes, there was a third man. but no matter how many times detectives asked, he couldn t or wouldn t tell them who it was. so prosecutors made a decision. if tapp wasn t going to tell them the whole truth, he wouldn t get his deal. chris tapp was charged with murder, but only chris. not enough evidence to go after hobbs or anyone else. the announcement caught carol dodge by surprise. detectives had kept her in the dark until now. but one look at christopher tapp in court, and she knew she wanted him dead. i mean, i was finally looking somebody in the eye i thought was a devil who had taken my daughter s life. chris tapp was found guilty and sent off to state prison for 40 years, which is when carol
alibis too. so they turned to the physical evidence, like this bloody handprint on angie s stomach, must have been left after angie s dead, when her killer did something quite beyond sick, pulled down her pants, pulled up her shirt, left a deposit of semen on her body, his mark and his dna. there was a lot of anger, a lot of humiliation involved in this. and frustration for the cops because that dna didn t match any of their possible suspects. month after month, they chased leads into disappointing dead ends, and all the while carol dodge haunted the investigation, practically stalked the detectives, desperate for information, begging them, find the killer. i drove to the police department every day that they were open. and then one day seven months later, dead of winter, january 97, an arrest next door in nevada broke the case wide open. in custody was a young man named benjamin hobbs, one of those less savory friends of angie s. here he is at angie s funeral
carrying flowers. get this, hobbs was now charged with sexually assaulting a woman at knife point. sound familiar? so while detective ken brown rushed off to question hobbs, detective jared furman began talking to hobbs friends. 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 was no felon, but he was an admitted druggy, and what do you know, chris tapp had a bit of a history with ex-school resource officer, now detective fuhriman. he was in trouble at the time or two. he was, so just trying to help him out. i trust you, and hopefully you trust me, okay? yes, said tapp, he trusted fuhriman, but didn t know anything about angie s murder. if i did know anything about this, i would say, but i do not know. that s the honest truth. and having made his statement, christopher tapp went home, in the clear apparently. a couple of days later, the
corner. i wasn t clear. police, carol noticed, kept correcting him. for a guy who d taken part in a murder, tapp seemed to not know much about the layout of angie s apartment. maybe if you could just draw it out. when they asked him to draw it, he couldn t do it. detectives even, perhaps inadvertently, showed him where the murder occurred. it happened in here, in the bedroom, back here. it s back here. and there s more. police always told carol tapp knew things only the killer would know, the position of angie s body, the clothes she was wearing. now carol could see for herself on tape the reason chris would know those things. carol was stunned to see police had shown tapp photos of the crime scene. i want you to tell me how you remember it, how you don t remember it, and we re going to go from there. there s times i wanted to put my fist through the tv. and finally, remember that the police theory of the crime after dna didn t match tapp or hobbs was that three peopl