that night as the police had theorized, but just one. and that remarkable news could mean only one thing, at least according to the idaho innocence project, chris tapp s story was a false confession. he was not there. he was an innocent man. the theory of multiple killers, ridiculous, said the doctor. to imagine that there is this group of criminals who know about dna and are so careful, what did they do? they planted somebody else s semen and pubic hair and cleaned up all their own dna? as you might well imagine, that conclusion that chris tapp had to be innocent, the killer had never been caught, came down like a hammer to the head on angie s mother. i was extremely angry. when they have dna, not once but twice, that belongs to the same person and it s not chris tapp, something is wrong. so what did you do?
did you think that if you decided not talk to the police that you were going to be able to go home? no, i would not have been allowed to go home. but tapp had to acknowledge when questioned by the prosecutor, he had indeed lied over the years, many times. including in sworn affidavits used in past appeals. you admitted fact that you lied on any number of occasions. and if you lied before, how can we believe you now? of course you re going to say i m a liar now. he s trying to save himself. but it is the truth. i m innocent. i ve never committed this crime. when testimony was over it was up to the judge, would he order a new trial for chris tapp or would he send him back to prison, maybe for good? and then four months later, a ruling. chris tapp was never threatened, restrained or handcuffed, said the judge. and thus was not in custody.
i says, this is a murder case. this is tapp s mother, vera, she understood what he apparently did not that her son was quite possibly talking himself into very big trouble. mom, i don t have anything to hide. i want to tell them that i don t know anything. but it didn t quite work out that way. before long, chris tapp had written a statement for police saying that ben hobbs said he killed her and i just laughed it off like he was just telling me a joke. ah, but that was just the beginning. over the next several weeks they had tapp in here 9 times, questioning him 20 hours, even gave him an immunity deal and that is when mr. tapp s story began to evolve. yes, he admitted he was there when ben hobbs killed angie, even held her down, he admitted, when ben stabbed her and then finally, he said, he even stabbed her once himself. the motive, revenge. supposedly angie had been meddling in ben s marriage and mr. hobbs did not like that one
him, the one that said the pubic hairs found on angie were similar to or the same as the victim. he goes, well they re either her s or they re not. just as you thought. he said, well where are the hairs? i said i assume that they re still in evidence. so, she called the idaho falls police department which found the hairs in an envelope in the evidence room where they had been stored for all those years. well, after carol s calls those pubic hairs were sent off to the crime lab where state-of-the-art dna could show that chris tapp was there at the crime scene or that ben hobbs was there at the crime scene or that the entirety of the physical evidence was left by one unknown third man. that was a fundamental question, huge. and the answer from the dna left no doubt. only one person who did this in terms of dna. one killer. the science said there was no evidence there were three attackers in angie s apartment
on? no. do you remember she was clothed or unclothed? no, i don t know. but some details in the interview could be interpreted to back up the claims by police. once, for example, before tapp was shown the crime scene photos, he seems to, in a guessing kind of way, know what angie was wearing. and although he s wrong about the color of her clothes, after being asked many times if her clothes were half on or half off or pulled up or pushed down, he does correctly say this about her pants. they were half on. like, one leg. also said the detective, chris talked about ben hobbs, hitting angie behind the ear and we have the evidence to back it. we have bruising where he says that ben hit her. so, detectives insisted they were right.