How an Iowa woman became a key witness in her own murder

On the morning of Oct. 8, 2022, the serene Mississippi River town of Bellevue, Iowa, population about 2,500, woke up to a calamity — news of an apparent homicide, the first in nearly a decade.

Dozens of investigators from six different law enforcement agencies were combing the crime scene at the Mississippi Ridge Boarding Kennels with body cameras rolling. The woman who ran the kennels, Angela Prichard, 55, had been gunned down.

Her sister, Wendy Budde, believed she knew who was responsible: Angela's husband, Chris Prichard.

Wendy Budde (emotional): He knew how to get in the front door.

Jonathan Vigliotti | "48 Hours" contributor: In that moment, did you know it was Chris?

Wendy Budde: A hundred percent. One hundred percent, I knew it was him.

Budde says Angela had been trying to leave him for months — and lived in fear he would kill her.

Ryan Kedley: This appeared to be an assailant that knew her very well.

Ryan Kedley and Dustin Henningsen are special agents with Iowa's Department of Criminal Investigation. Bellevue's small police force, with just several officers, invited the state police to lead the investigation. While Angela's family was convinced Chris Prichard was the killer, the special agents had to connect all the dots.

ANGELA PRICHARD NAMES HER KILLER IN HER FINAL MOMENTS

Dustin Henningsen: We had received a word that there was a 911 call in the morning.

Jonathan Vigliotti: Tell me about that 911 call.

Dustin Henningsen: Essentially, you're listening to the end of her life on the 911 call …

Those were the last words spoken by Angela – and the first clue investigators had to identify her killer.

Jonathan Vigliotti: She says the name Chris on this call. Who is Chris?

Ryan Kedley: Chris Prichard, her estranged husband.

911 OPERATOR: Ma'am, where are you at?

Dustin Henningsen: As the dispatcher continues to ask what's your emergency …  you can faintly hear somebody say…

911 CALL (male voice): F*** you.

Jonathan Vigliotti: When you listen to this 911 call … how do you process what you were hearing?

Ryan Kedley: On a personal level, it's a very difficult thing to listen to someone's end of life moments. … On an investigative level, that was a pivotal piece of evidence in the opening stages of the investigation.

Dustin Henningsen: It was a very violent scene.

Ryan Kedley: Passing by the kennel door on the right … and this is the area where we initially get a firsthand glimpse of Angela's deceased body here on the floor.

Pools of morning light illuminated pools of blood surrounding her body. Angela was lying face down in the kennel's washroom where she bathed the dogs. Kedley photographed the scene.

Ryan Kedley: She has a very large significant gunshot wound to the chest.

Jonathan Vigliotti: At close range.

Ryan Kedley: At, I would say, at very close range.

Ryan Kedley: There has to have been some very, very high emotions involved in that ...

Jonathan Vigliotti: You have Angela Prichard deceased here. You have Chris Prichard, a person of interest, nowhere to be found. How do you track him down?

The special agents spotted a barely visible blood trail.

Ryan Kedley: Leading out of this room and then into the dog kennel area through this door …

Ryan Kedley: We believe our assailant traveled from that area … left some blood evidence, and then likely went out this door, directly in front of us.

Ryan Kedley: We're certainly trying to keep an open mind and determine that, OK, if Chris didn't do this, well, then who did?

Digging into Chris Prichard's life, the special agents soon learned about his volatile history with Angela, which included violence and violations of a restraining order.

Ryan Kedley: But at this point, all of the information seems to be consistent with Chris being the guy that we need to locate.

Dustin Henningsen: As we continue to work the investigation … We began to establish our timeline.

Investigators reviewed the footage starting at midnight the day of the shooting. For hours, there was nothing to see. But just after 4 a.m., there was something to hear.

Dustin Henningsen: You can hear dogs start to bark. … We had determined that was most likely the point when he arrived at the kennels.

Henningsen believes Chris Prichard entered the kennels and lay in wait for nearly four hours.

Dustin Henningsen (with Vigliotti at kennels): The first video that they really got was Angela coming down to work in the morning.

Dustin Henningsen (pointing to monitor in his office): And right up here you're going to see Angela start to pull down … to the entrance at the … Mississippi Ridge Boarding Kennels.

Dustin Henningsen (at kennels): Pulling up to the kennel at 7:34. You can see her get out of her vehicle and she's gathering her belongings, and then walking into the kennel itself.

Angela Prichard had less than six minutes to live.

Dustin Henningsen (looking at monitor in office) : At 7:39 and 43 seconds, we hear a gunshot go off in the video.

Jonathan Vigliotti (at the kennels): At any point do you clearly see Chris on any of these surveillance cameras?

Dustin Henningsen: Yes. We believe we see him leaving.

About two minutes after the gunshot, at 7:41 a.m., the man they now suspected to be her killer, Chris Prichard, appeared.

Dustin Henningsen (at kennels with Vigliotti): Actually walking from the kennel area down to the fence area …  That makes us believe that this is the first area that we need to check.

Outside the kennels, miles of thick woods stretch to the horizon — an area of northeastern Iowa locals call, "The Wilderness."  It was rugged terrain Chris Prichard knew well, says Budde.

Wendy Budde: He knows the outdoors. … I knew that he could probably survive out there for quite a while in hiding.

Dustin Henningsen: We have every resource at our disposal to try and do this manhunt. We have canines, we have airplanes, we have drones ...

Jonathan Vigliotti: This is your worst nightmare.

Wendy Budde (crying): Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Vigliotti: Everything you've been trying to prevent come true.

Wendy Budde: Everything I've been trying so hard to protect her and to keep her safe, and he got her. (crying) He got to her.

SEARCHING FOR CHRISTOPHER PRICHARD

The manhunt for Chris Prichard was widening.

Ryan Kedley: You've got a fugitive out there on the run, potentially armed …

TWO HOURS ON THE RUN

Dustin Henningsen: There's hundreds of acres here of farmland and woods, and we have the Mississippi River not far away, so knowing that he could have went any direction really makes the search difficult …

Fanning out from the kennels, heavily armed officers searched nearby neighborhoods — house to house, barn to barn.

Jonathan Vigliotti: Angela was a mother and grandmother.

Wendy Budde: She was.

Jonathan Vigliotti: What kind of mother and grandmother was she?

Wendy Budde: I don't know that you would find somebody better than her. You hear a lot of people say, people put their kids in front of themselves. That was truly her.

Angela Prichard's world revolved around family, especially her two sons and six grandchildren.

Wendy Budde: They were the loves of her life — her kids and her grandkids.

And, with almost equal billing, Angela's five Huskies.

Wendy Budde: She always was an animal lover.

Joshua Close and CJ Hancock are Angela's sons.

CJ Hancock  She was beautiful inside and out. She liked to make everybody happy, especially her family.

Wendy Budde: She loved you so much, yeah —

CJ Hancock: She loved to spoil the grandkids rotten (laughs) and they could do no wrong in her eyes.

Joshua Close: She loved doing arts and crafts. … She still decorated her tree with the ones we made when we were kids.

And making memories with their mom later in life was Chris Prichard – the very man investigators were now chasing. Wendy Budde and her husband Jim had known Prichard for years.

Wendy Budde: I would've trusted him with our children. … He was nice, friendly, sincere, a hard worker, fun to be around.

Chris Prichard, a longtime Bellevue resident, was an established electrician in town. Soon Angela found her calling.

Wendy Budde: To be a kennel owner, to do something with animals. … I was thrilled for her. It really seemed like everything was falling into place.

After dating for nearly two years, they moved into a home in Bellevue, and even got married there in March 2019. The newlyweds were over the moon for about eight months.

Jonathan Vigliotti: When did things change?

Wendy Budde: I truly think that things started to change when he lost his job. He got fired.

Fired and charged with first-degree theft, a felony, after he allegedly stole $36,000 worth of supplies from the electric company where he worked.

Wendy Budde:  She was just beside herself, what are we going to do now? We need that income.

Awaiting trial, Prichard was out on bail and out of work, says Budde.

Wendy Budde: He wasn't looking for work. He was definitely drinking more.

Wendy Budde: As the … months went on, it just was like, wow, he's really kind of changing.

Prichard finally took some odd job and helped Angela at the kennels, but in the summer of 2021, Budde says Angela discovered her husband was using methamphetamine.

Wendy Budde: And then I knew … that things are really getting bad.

The simmering tension reached a boiling point on April 18, 2022.

Wendy Budde:  She said, "Chris hit me."

CJ Hancock: She said … "he's drunk. He's on drugs." … So I told her, we're gonna call the cops.

Bellevue Police responded, and the call recorded on police bodycam:

ANGELA PRICHARD (bodycam): He hit me and then I just, I came in the house.

Wendy Budde: She was crying. She was … visibly shaking …  She had a mark on her face. And she said," I'm so scared."

Police didn't have far to go to find Chris Prichard. He was in the garage.

BELLVUE OFFICER (bodycam): State of Iowa law requires that somebody goes to jail …

CHRIS PRICHARD: I can't believe I'm going to jail.

BELLEVUE OFFICER: Well, she's got a mark on her face …

Chris Prichard was arrested and charged with domestic assault.

WENDY BUDDE (bodycam | in kitchen): He's very, very, very messed up on drugs.

WENDY BUDDE: We've seen him change right in front of our eyes. Haven't we?

Chris Prichard spent the night in jail and was released awaiting trial, staying with family. Angela Prichard sought and received a temporary no-contact order.

ANGELA PRICHARD (bodycam): So he can't come back here?

OFFICER: Nope.

Jonathan Vigliotti: The no-contact order now exists protecting your sister. But a few weeks later, it's lifted.

Wendy Budde: Even after it happened … she said, I — I don't want this. I want our marriage to work.

Each had been married before, but had hoped this would be their last marriage, says Budde. Angela withdrew the no-contact order.

Wendy Budde: I believe he said everything that needed to be said for her to drop that order. …The drinking will stop. He will be home more …

Promises he failed to keep, says Budde.

Wendy Budde: She said, I'm scared of him … especially if he's been drinking.

Budde says Angela was furious when she found a tracking device in her car, and two hidden cameras in the house.

Wendy Budde: I told her … you need to get a divorce. You need to be done with this, Ange.

FOUR HOURS ON THE RUN

Chris Prichard seemed to have vanished in the vast wilderness. Even the police dogs had lost his scent, says Henningsen.

Jonathan Vigliotti (outside at the kennels): How do you find somebody that doesn't want to be caught?

Dustin Henningsen: This is where our local resources really help us.

Right from the start, Henningsen had corralled state and local law enforcement agencies — even farmers and hunters — to help determine where he might be.

Dustin Henningsen: If we thought that Chris was going to make his way, say, back to Bellevue, what's the most likely path? … Where are his friends at?

Jeff Junk: It's a small town. Everybody talks.

Cattle farmer Jeff Junk and his girlfriend Kim Klein were once close friends with Chris Prichard. Neighbors called them about the rumor racing through town – Prichard had shot his wife, Angela.

Kim Klein: Get outta here! I — I didn't believe it.

A Jackson County chief deputy stopped by Junk's house to warn them Prichard was on the run and might be looking for help from his friends. Then, there was a knock on the door.

ANGELA PRICHARD'S DIARY OF DOMESTIC ABUSE

The knock on their front door — the one they'll always remember — came around 8:15 that October night, Kim Klein says. She and boyfriend Jeff Junk were not expecting company.

Kim Klein: When the second knock happened … I says, "I believe it's Chris and you need to answer the door."

Jonathan Vigliotti: So you open the door and what is it that you see on the other side?

Jeff Junk: I see Chris …

12 HOURS ON THE RUN

Chris Prichard, their old friend — now a hunted fugitive suspected of murder — was standing in the dim light holding a shotgun.

Kim Klein: Jeff goes, you need to hand that gun to me, and he did. No problem.

Junk and Klein knew they had to call the police, but until they could do that safely, Klein says, they were playing along.

Chris Prichard told them he'd been running all day from the cops and their dogs.

Kim Klein: Jeff said, "Hey dude, you know you shot your wife?" "Oh yeah, how's she doing?"

The couple told him Angela was dead.

Jonathan Vigliotti: Did he … express any remorse?

Kim Klein: No.

Jeff Junk: Nothing.

Kim Klein: Nothing. He was sitting here laughing and drinking, and they were talking about old times.

The moment felt so surreal, Klein says, she snapped a photo.

Kim Klein: Just to show that no, he wasn't having any remorse. He never talked about her the rest of the night. And then I took the one when he was passed out.

And the time was finally right, says Junk, to text the chief deputy who had stopped by earlier.

Jeff Junk: I said … "he's up here and he is passed out. Come — come get him."

When police arrived around midnight, Chris was still in the La-Z-Boy chair, out cold.

Dustin Henningsen: He didn't know what was coming.

CHRIS PRICHARD (bodycam | handcuffed, swears at officers):  "What the f***  is wrong with you guys? Jesus Christ, I was sleeping.

Ryan Kedley: He's verbally belligerent to officers that have arrested him.

Special Agent Henningsen collected the evidence Chris Prichard had left behind: a 20-gauge shotgun and his torn clothes.

Dustin Henningsen: He … took Angela's possessions, money, a cellphone with him.

Special Agent Kedley escorted Prichard to the Jackson County Jail.

OFFICER (bodycam): Do you want your seatbelt, Chris?

CHRIS PRICHARD: I want a bullet in the head.

Shortly after 1 a.m. on October 9, a despondent Chris Prichard was booked into the county jail, eventually charged with first-degree murder and robbery. After hours on the run through Iowa's wilderness, Prichard found himself surrounded by concrete and steel — largely put there by the weight of a single word.

ANGELA PRICHARD (911 call): Will you please get out of here! Chris!"

Wendy Budde says the day Prichard ended her sister's life followed months of increasingly erratic behavior and escalating rage, which Angela had documented.

Jonathan Vigliotti: Tell me about this journal and her words that lived on...

Wendy Budde: She was this "sticky note queen ..."

Dozens of Angela's brightly colored sticky notes told a dark story. The scribbled entries became Angela's diary of domestic abuse.

WENDY BUDDE (reading sticky notes):

Wendy Budde: Her words to me are, "I'm done. … This is it. We're not living in the same house."

Budde invited her sister to move in with her. Angela gratefully agreed.

Wendy Budde: I was like, you have a shadow now because I'm not leaving. … You're stuck with me.

The next day, Angela requested a second temporary no-contact order, granted Sept. 1, 2022. A no-contact order means just that: no contact of any kind with the protected person. In the State of Iowa, even a single violation requires a mandatory arrest.

Jonathan Vigliotti: But that doesn't stop Chris.

CJ Hancock: No. … Once that second no-contact order got put in place, I would say that's when things went really downhill.

And it was in place when Angela went back to the home she once shared with Chris Prichard to pick up a few things, says Budde.

Wendy Budde: I was with her.

Jonathan Vigliotti: You were with her along with police.

The Bellevue police were there just in case Prichard showed up. The court had ordered him to move out temporarily.

Wendy Budde: We walked in the front door. … The house was destroyed.

Wendy Budde: There was ink and paint thrown everywhere.

CJ Hancock: Picture frames broken …

Wendy Budde: … furniture was destroyed. … He had actually taken the mattress off her bed and rubbed it in dog feces.

Joshua Close: … guns he placed them all over the house … to intimidate her.

Wendy Budde: I mean, we both just started crying.

Jonathan Vigliotti:  This is in clear violation of the restraining order. What do the police do?

Wendy Budde: The police … said, there's nothing we can do. This is his house …

Jonathan Vigliotti: There's nothing we can do is what they say to you?

Wendy Budde: ... This is his house as well.

Under Iowa law, with a no-contact order in place, Bellevue police should have taken Chris Prichard's guns. But for reasons unknown, he was allowed to keep them. Angela's sister and sons say, throughout September, the frightening violations continued — not physical assaults, but psychological terror.

CJ Hancock: Sitting outside of her house, following her, texting her, stalking her, going and cutting the grass at the kennels while she wasn't there.

Bellevue police arrested Chris Prichard just once, on September 15, for sending Angela a text message, another violation of the no-contact order. He spent one night behind bars before posting bail. The next day, says Budde, he resumed his flurry of offenses.

Wendy Budde: He had been driving by our house multiple times.

One night, says Budde, Chris Prichard drove by six times in one hour.

WENDY BUDDE (reading sticky note): "I don't feel safe anymore anywhere – my sister's, my house, my sons, stores in town ..."

Jonathan Vigliotti: You have a ticking time bomb on your hands.

Wendy Budde: Yeah. … pretty much and that's what it felt like.

But instead of making arrests. the Bellevue police were making excuses, say Angela's sons, for not enforcing the law.

CJ Hancock: They said that they'd tell him to knock it off or have a talk with him. Nothing, nothing was done, and she was terrified.

Jonathan Vigliotti: You're reaching out to police … They're not doing anything. Are you running out of hope here?

Wendy Budde: Yes. … What do you do when nobody is willing to help you?

WENDY BUDDE (reading sticky note): I fear for my safety. Fear for my life. He has guns.

Wendy Budde: The fear… It consumed our life.

THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTOPHER PRICHARD

It was 5 a.m. at the Jackson County Jail. Twenty-one hours after Angela Prichard was found dead, Chris Prichard waived his Miranda rights and talked about the encounter at the dog kennels with special agents Dustin Henningsen and Ryan Kedley.

CHRIS PRICHARD (police interview): She said, "you gotta leave ... you gotta leave now or I'm gonna call the police." … I said "I just want to talk"  ...and she shoved me ... and I hit the cabinet. The gun — I don't know what the gun hit, but it went off.

Jonathan Vigliotti: So, in so many words, he says, "I shot Angela. It was an accident."

Ryan Kedley: Essentially, Yes.

Jonathan Vigliotti: Are you believing any of this?

Ryan Kedley: No. … I'm only believing the fact that he shot Angela.

Chris Prichard pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and robbery charges. His trial began on Feb. 7, 2024.

Nicole Leonard: We believed that Mr. Prichard … planned this all out and very meticulously for that matter.

To prove premeditated murder, prosecutors Nicole Leonard and John Kies told jurors Chris Prichard put his plan in motion on Oct. 7, 2022, the day before he shot his wife – the same day Angela's temporary restraining order became permanent.

Nicole Leonard: We believe that that was sort of the snapping point for the defendant.

Nicole Leonard: … he became more and more obsessed with the situation, and not letting her go.

CHRIS PRICHARD (police interview): … she wanted to drag me through the mud and make me a monster.

Before taking Angela's life, Chris Prichard took steps to cover his tracks, say the prosecutors. He borrowed a white pickup truck, to avoid using his own vehicle.

John Kies: So what we think was … he was setting up an alibi.

Prosecutors say Chris Prichard secretly parked the borrowed truck inside a barn belonging to Lori and Mike Blaser, just a few miles from the Mississippi Ridge Boarding Kennels.

Mike Blaser: We walk in, you know, notice this white pickup truck ...

With a note from Chris Prichard saying he had gone hunting: "Keys are in the truck if you need to move it. I'll be back. Chris."

Lori Blaser: We knew Chris. … He would … tell us how much he loved Angela, how devastated he was that there was a restraining order.

The Blasers would soon become crucial witnesses for the prosecution. Shortly after finding the truck and note, they heard the news about a shooting at the dog kennels.

Lori Blaser: We knew the minute that there was a shooting at the kennel … something had happened with Chris. …

Lori Blaser: We were concerned that this was a getaway vehicle for him in here because it was just so odd, it had no reason to be here. I called 911 immediately …

Lori Blaser: It was very intense because at that point, he was still missing ...

Lori Blaser: And we were scared to death.

Prosecutors later viewed home surveillance footage from a camera on the Blasers' property showing Chris Prichard entering the barn where the Blasers kept their horse trailer.

Lori Blaser (inside the horse trailer): The minute we came in the door, I knew that Chris Prichard had spent some time in here.

Lori Blaser: He certainly made himself at home here.

Chris Prichard left the horse trailer in the middle of the night, hiking through the dense woods to the kennels, says Leonard.

Nicole Leonard: We believe his next appearance is around 4:00 a.m. on October 8th at the dog kennels … in which the dogs start to go crazy.

Jonathan Vigliotti: And you believe from that point forward, he's inside the kennel?

Nicole Leonard: Correct.

John Kies: I think he always had the plan to murder her.

To prove it, the prosecutors played audio clips from Prichard's police interviews for the jury.

SPECIAL AGENT KEDLEY (police interview): You show up at a place where you know she's gonna be. You've got a gun with her. You know you've got a no contact order … An argument breaks out. … She calls 911. She winds up dead ... This wasn't just some accident.

Dustin Henningsen: If this was an accident, why are you taking her cellphone, which is her only means of survival? … Why aren't you calling for help yourself? Why aren't you rendering any type of aid for your wife?

And Prichard kept adding details to the story of the accidental shooting, say the special agents.

Dustin Henningsen: The gun was leaning up against the cupboards. … He went to retrieve a backpack and it fell and then that went off and shot her.

But at trial, an Iowa State medical examiner testified the gunshot had a downward trajectory – meaning Chris Prichard had the weapon in his hands and was standing when he fired, say prosecutors.

CHRIS PRICHARD (police interview): It looked like it hit her in the arm. … How would you die from that?

Angela was shot dead center in the chest, testified the medical examiner, and died in seconds.

CHRIS PRICHARD (police interview): I would've loved to have stuck around but Angie and her temper … I thought maybe it didn't even really hit her that bad 'cause … she was yelling at me, like she wasn't even hurt.

Ryan Kedley: And the fact that he's saying that, after the gun went off and it struck her – that she's yelling profanities back at him. Well, we have a 911 recording of that conversation. That did not take place.

Prosecutors say Chris Prichard's last words on the 911 call prove his actions were premeditated – a final explosion of violence.

Nicole Leonard: When you hear his statement standing over her dying body on that 911 call using profanity.

911 CALL: (Chris Prichard's voice in background): "F*** you."

Joshua Close: You definitely don't say what he said at the end of the phone call, after you accidentally shoot someone.

Prichard's defense attorneys – who declined "48 Hours"' request for an interview – maintained the shooting was accidental, and the case against Chris Prichard was a rush to judgement.

After four days of testimony, the case went to the jury.

Wendy Budde: We were outside the courthouse, just kind of stretching, and you know, the jury is back!

Dave O'Brien was also waiting for the verdict and already preparing for another trial – a federal lawsuit against the Bellevue Police Department. It failed Angela, he says, time and time again.

Jonathan Vigliotti: If police took action, would Angela be alive today?

Dave O'Brien: Absolutely.

COULD ANGELA PRICHARD HAVE BEEN SAVED?

In February 2024 – 16 months after Angela Prichard's death – her family's wait for a measure of justice was over.

Wendy Budde: That's got to be a good sign that they are back in less than an hour.

The jury found Chris Prichard guilty of first-degree murder and robbery.

Wendy Budde: When they said it, it was just a big sigh of relief.

In March, Prichard was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Wendy Budde: It will never bring her back. … But he is going to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Wendy Budde: I also gave a victim impact statement and … I said to him … I hope while you're behind bars … you always have to look over your shoulder and be scared for everything you do. …  How she felt. I hope you just feel a tiny bit of that, the way you tortured her.

Civil rights attorney Dave O'Brien represents Angela Prichard's family. She would be alive today, he says, if the Bellevue Police Department had enforced a judge's order of protection.

Jonathan Vigliotti: You filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Bellevue and three officers, why?

Dave O'Brien: Because they didn't do their job, and it's that simple.

That lawsuit lists multiple failures to arrest Chris Prichard. O'Brien says this led to what's called a "state-created danger," meaning the officers' alleged inaction and indifference actually increased the threat to Angela Prichard.

Jonathan Vigliotti: Can a police officer decide, should I arrest him or not? Is that up to their discretion?

Dave O'Brien: Absolutely not. … Here in Iowa … only a judge can show discretion not to enforce this restraining order.

Starting Sept. 1, 2022, when Angela's second protection order was issued — until her murder 37 days later — O'Brien says Chris Prichard continued to violate the no-contact order with no consequences.

Dave O'Brien: A dozen times during this relevant time period, Angela Prichard called the Bellevue Police Department, and they failed to follow that law, that judge's order.

That's because, O'Brien says, the Bellevue police officers showed Chris Prichard favoritism.

Dave O'Brien: We have reason to believe that he was friendly with law enforcement officers.

Jonathan Vigliotti: To prove this … you must prove that the police officer's failure to enforce the protection order was intentional and reckless. How can you do that?

Dave O'Brien: Well, just by the sheer number of times that it was not enforced.

In October 2024, Chief Federal Judge C.J. Williams dismissed the lawsuit in its entirety. The Bellevue Police Department, he ruled, "Did not put Angela in a more dangerous situation," and the three officers, "simply did not commit outrageous conduct."

The judge added there was no evidence of police favoritism: "The alleged facts, even taken as true … are a far cry from establishing that any of the defendants were friends with Christopher."

O'Brien was granted a hearing in December 2024 after learning, he says, the three Bellevue officers had withheld evidence and made false statements, allegedly concealing their friendships with Chris Prichard — accusations they deny.

O'Brien argued the officers were well aware Chris Prichard was a serious threat to his wife. Nine days before her murder, the Jackson County attorney warned the Bellevue Police Department in an email that Chris Prichard had 24 hours to turn himself in:

JACKSON COUNTY ATTORNEY EMAIL: "If he does not report I will be requesting a warrant. I wanted all of you to be aware as I'm afraid he might try to do something tonight."

The next day, when Prichard failed to appear at the county jail, the arrest warrant was issued. Seven days before her murder, O'Brien says  bodycam footage of a Bellevue police officer speaking with Wendy and Angela confirms police knew Angela was in danger.

CHIEF SCHROEDER (bodycam | to Angela Prichard and Wendy Budde): "Because right now I guarantee he's not thinking straight."

WENDY BUDDE: No, not at all.

CHIEF SCHROEDER: That's my biggest fear. That's my department's biggest fear is he's going to try to hurt you and then hurt himself.

CHIEF SCHROEDER: My job is to protect you at all costs.

During the final week of Angela's life, O'Brien says Bellevue police could have protected her by finding and arresting Chris Prichard. But they never did.

Jonathan Vigliotti: Is it hard to find Chris?

Joshua Close: Shouldn't be. …Everybody knew his Jeep – had a customized tag that says "0Dark30" on it. … So, you can't miss it.

Dave O'Brien: We have not been provided with any record showing there was any effort made to enforce the arrest warrant once it was issued on the 30th of September.

Jonathan Vigliotti: Had that arrest warrant been executed, would Angela be here today?

Dave O'Brien: Absolutely. … He should have been in jail.

At the December hearing, defense attorneys insisted the new information presented by O'Brien was …… "improper, should be stricken and not considered by the Court."

Dave O'Brien: Our ideal outcome would be just a complete reversal of the judge's decision.

In January 2025, Judge Williams refused to reverse his dismissal. Bellevue Police Chief Dennis Schroeder issued this statement to a local newspaper, which read in part : "We are pleased with the decision … … We continue to strengthen our services and response efforts to prevent domestic violence and provide support to those in need."

Dave O'Brien: I've heard people say that … no-contact orders aren't worth the paper they're written on. And in this case that was true. But I firmly believe that they are worth something, but they have to be enforced.

Wendy Budde: I still, to this day, I have a lot of, um, I guess it's guilt, because I think in my mind, what if I would've went with her that day? Maybe I could have saved her. …  But part of me was so proud of her for like being as strong as she was in that time. … She — she named her killer. And so, she helped them bring him to justice.

Chris Prichard's life sentence also helped bring her family some comfort, and the courage to move forward. They believe Angela would want them to make this public plea.

Joshua Close: Maybe other police departments that maybe are a little lenient on stuff, won't be so lenient next time.

According to the Violence Policy Center nearly three women in the U.S. are killed by an intimate partner each day. 

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-7233.

Produced by Mead Stone. Iris Carreras Toneatto is the field producer. Michelle Fanucci and Tami Weitzman are the development producers. Marcus Balsam, Diana DeCilio, and Mead Stone are the editors. Anthony Batson is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.

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