In May of 2019, Brian Leigh Dripps was arrested in the stabbing death of Dodge after a search of GEDMatch, a service that compares autosomal DNA data files, identified the 53-year-old as a possible suspect.

Police were able to collect Dripps’ DNA from a discarded cigarette butt, which matched the sample found in Dodge’s home. Shortly after he was taken into custody, Idaho Falls Police Chief Bryce Johnson said that Dripps confessed to both the rape and murder.

"He knew Angie as an acquaintance," Captain Bill Squires shared during a press conference, revealing that Dripps lived across the street from Dodge’s apartment building at the time of the homicide. "[They were] not friends, he just knew of her."

A young police officer briefly questioned Dripps in 1996 while out canvassing the neighborhood, but the then 31-year-old denied knowing anything about the crime. He left town seven weeks later.

Dripps will stand trial on charges of first-degree murder and rape in June 2021. Prosecutors filed a notice in November that they intend to seek the death penalty. A few months later, Dripps’ attorneys requested that the court suppress his confession, in which he claimed that Dodge’s murder was an accident.

"He said that he intended only to rape her and did not mean to kill her," court documents read. "He confirmed that he entered Dodge’s apartment by himself with a knife with the intent to rape her, that he did in fact rape her, that he had held a knife to her throat during the commission of the rape, and had cut her throat."

The defense also asked that the jury be compiled outside of eastern Idaho. "I would be surprised if there’s even one prospective juror in Bonneville County, Idaho, that has not heard or read something about the case and formed an opinion about the case," attorney James Archibald wrote in an affidavit.