911 call led Iowa police to husband in kennel owner’s killing

Angela Prichard’s last call for help became the central piece of evidence against the man accused of killing her. Minutes after arriving at the Mississippi Ridge Boarding Kennels in Bellevue, Iowa, the 55-year-old wife and mother dialed 911, and the recording captured her saying, “Chris!” before a gunshot cut the call short.

Investigators said the audio did more than mark the moment of the attack. A faint male voice on the line was heard saying, “Fuck you,” while dogs barked in the background, an eerie soundtrack that helped prosecutors place Christopher Prichard at the scene and reconstruct the final seconds before Angela Prichard died from a gunshot wound to the center of her chest.

Court records show Angela Prichard’s fear had been building for months. She moved to her sister Wendy Budde’s home on Aug. 29, 2022, because she was increasingly afraid of Christopher Prichard. Four days later, a district court granted her a temporary no-contact order. In notes later quoted by the court, she wrote that she believed Chris was capable of anything, that he had put guns in three upstairs rooms, and that she did not feel safe at home, at her sister’s house or even in town.

The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed Christopher Prichard’s first-degree murder conviction on May 7, 2025, and the opinion laid out the timeline in detail. Angela arrived at the kennel at 7:34 a.m. on Oct. 8, 2022, then called 911 about five minutes later. Christopher Prichard had parked his truck in a pole barn the previous day, left a note saying he was going to kill coyotes, and spent the night there before the killing. He was later found the next day with the murder weapon and ammunition still in his possession.

The case reverberated beyond Jackson County, where Bellevue sits as a Mississippi River town of about 2,500 people that had not seen a homicide in nearly a decade. Investigators from six law enforcement agencies were brought in, underscoring the scale of the response to a killing that began with a domestic violence warning and ended with surveillance audio, a 911 recording and physical evidence that prosecutors say identified the killer in his victim’s final moments.

Angela Prichard’s family has argued the case exposed missed warning signs. In 2024, they sued Bellevue police, alleging officers failed to enforce the no-contact order and allowed Christopher Prichard to remain free despite a pattern of threatening behavior. A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit in October 2025, and the family has appealed. The case now stands as a blunt reminder of how much can hinge on whether emergency systems and domestic violence protections move fast enough when a victim signals imminent danger.