As the DNA of a killer sits in a crime lab, an unsolved homicide in Idaho continues to overwhelm the mother of a teenager who was raped and murdered weeks after moving out of her childhood home more than two decades ago.

Angie Raye Dodge, 18, graduated from Idaho Falls High School in May 1996 and celebrated her success with a new apartment. But just three weeks later, on June 13, 1996, she was raped and murdered there – her body discovered by co-workers after she didn’t show up for work.

Police interviewed dozens of men in connection to the crime, especially some who hung out on boat docks along the Snake River, as Dodge herself had. Investigators ultimately took DNA samples from more than 20 men, but none matched the semen sample found on Dodge’s body.

Seven months later, the teen’s acquaintance, Ben Hobbs, was arrested in Nevada for raping a woman at knifepoint, prompting investigators to check him out further in the teen’s death and interview some of his friends — including a 20-year-old Idaho Falls High dropout, Christopher Conley Tapp.

Tapp told the Idaho Statesman he went to police on his own to submit a DNA sample, which did not match the sample found on Dodge. But just days later, Tapp was arrested on a charge of being an accessory to a felony and was given limited immunity in exchange for cooperation with investigators.

After telling police he could identify Dodge’s rapist, Tapp gave several versions of events, naming different people as her killer, including Hobbs and others. Police eliminated those alleged suspects after DNA tests, and Tapp’s immunity deal fell apart after investigators determined he was lying.

Tapp finally told police after 20 hours of interrogation and several polygraph tests that he held down Dodge by her arm while Hobbs and another unidentified person – whom Tapp claimed he did not know – raped and stabbed her. Tapp was later arrested on charges of first-degree murder and rape, eventually going to trial in May 1998, some two years after Dodge’s death.

Hobbs, meanwhile, was later convicted of the rape in Nevada and remains imprisoned there, the newspaper reports. Tapp was convicted by a jury of aiding and abetting Dodge’s rape and murder and he was sentenced to life with a minimum of 20 years for aiding the murder and a minimum of 10 years for aiding the rape. He would not be eligible for parole until 2027.

But Tapp, now 40, walked out of the Bonneville County Courthouse in late March after his attorneys worked out a deal with prosecutor Daniel Clark to settle his two pending appeals. Under the proposal, Tapp’s murder conviction would stand, but his rape conviction would be dropped and he would be released from prison as his two appeals faded away.

“It finally just came to the point where I am able to come home,” Tapp told the newspaper. “I do not have to worry about any more hearings. I do not have to worry about the next court case, the what-ifs. … It sucks to have a murder conviction on me for something I did not do. But on the other side of that coin … Do I come home with this, or do I continue something from prison and maybe I never come home?”

Of the deal, Tapp put it simply: “I took the less of two evils.”

Tapp is now trying to restart his life with a new job for a construction company in a nearby state, but Dodge’s mother and her brother aren’t so lucky. They spoke at Tapp’s release hearing, detailing the pain they continue to suffer, as well as Dodge’s father, Jack, who had a mental collapse after his daughter’s death and died in 2004 of a “broken heart,” according to Carol Dodge.

“I am just overwhelmed,” she said during the March 22 hearing. “Sitting here today, a whole lot of memories came back. Chris, the day that we were here and chose your jury, the jury that convicted you, little did we know what we know now.”

Dodge continued: “For 13 years, I was really angry at you and, of course, you were angry at me … I remember visiting you at the jail, asking you what my baby’s last words were. Little did I know that you just did not know … I had a hardened heart, because for 13 years they programmed my mind to believe that you were part of my daughter’s killing.”

Brent Dodge, Dodge’s sister, said the agreement was not perfect, but agreed it provided an opportunity for healing.

“So, your honor, on behalf of our family and Angie, we absolutely recommend Chris be set free,” Brent Dodge said during the hearing, according to the Idaho Statesman. “Absolutely.”

Clark characterized the deal as a “means to an end,” adding that while there are still concerns about how police interrogated Tapp and DNA evidence not pointing to him, they do not prove his innocence.

“To be clear, there is not sufficient evidence to prove Tapp is innocent – which is the proper legal question at this time,” Clark said in a statement as Tapp was released. “From the state’s perspective, justice has been served in regards to Christopher Tapp. The state will continue to pursue justice for Angie Dodge.”

One expert at Boise State University said a DNA sample from the killer is in the hands of investigators, awaiting a match.

“We know exactly who this person is by DNA,” said Greg Hampikian of the Idaho Innocence Project, which has reviewed the case extensively. “But we do not have their name.”

Hampikian said a break in the came last fall when a judge agreed to new DNA testing on all evidence connected in the case using a new forensic collection system.

“All of those items were tested and they all pointed to one man. Not Chris Tapp,” Hampikian said. “The science spoke clearly and contradicted everything they fed him.”