Dogs barking on surveillance help solve Iowa kennel killing case

A surveillance camera at a Bellevue kennel did not just record a killing. It captured the sound of dogs barking, and that ambient noise helped investigators place Christopher Prichard at Mississippi Ridge Boarding Kennels long before Angela Prichard walked in that morning.

Angela Prichard, 55, arrived at work at 7:34 a.m. on Oct. 8, 2022, and called 911 about five minutes later. In the call, she said, “Please ... get out of here ... I have customers coming in,” then shouted “Chris!” A gunshot followed, and a male voice faintly said “F*** you” as dogs barked in the background. Bellevue, a Mississippi River town of about 2,500 people, had not seen a homicide in nearly a decade.

The barking mattered because it helped authorities reconstruct what happened before the shooting. Investigators said Christopher Eugene Prichard had parked his truck in a pole barn at Michael and Lori Blaser’s farm the day before, after leaving a note saying he was going to kill coyotes and that the keys were in the truck. They said he spent the night there and used the bed and toilet in a horse trailer stored in the barn. Additional reporting tied him to the kennels at about 4 a.m. on Oct. 8, where he waited roughly three hours for Angela to arrive.

The killing capped months of fear inside the marriage. Angela had moved to her sister Wendy Budde’s house on Aug. 29, 2022, because she was growing more afraid of Prichard. A temporary no-contact order was granted on Sept. 2, and her handwritten notes said Chris was “capable of anything,” that he had guns “all over upstairs in 3 different rooms,” and that she did not feel safe anywhere anymore. Her family said she had been trying to leave him for months and feared he would kill her.

After Bellevue police asked state authorities to take over, special agents with the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation led the case. Christopher Prichard was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery in February 2024 and sentenced the next month to life in prison without parole. The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed the murder conviction on May 7, 2025, rejecting his challenge to evidence about Angela’s fear and the no-contact order. Angela’s family later sued the City of Bellevue and three officers, alleging police failed to enforce the protective order; a federal judge dismissed that case in January 2025, and the family appealed.

In this case, a barking kennel became more than a background sound. It became a timestamp, helping turn an overlooked audio trace into proof of when a husband waited for his estranged wife and, ultimately, how the murder unfolded.