- Angela Prichard called police screaming in October 2022
- Tragically, when officers reached her, she was already dead
- Police investigated her sticky notes, which led them to her killer
Stroking her fluffy huskies, Angela Prichard smiled.
Working at a dog kennel she was surrounded by puppies who needed her.
A natural nurturer, when she wasn’t caring for animals, Angela, 55, loved spending time with her two sons, Joshua and CJ, and six grandchildren.
In October 2022 police received an emergency call from the kennels. ‘Please get out of here,’ a woman could be heard screaming.
When a gunshot rang out, a team of officers was immediately despatched.
‘There was a trail of blood through the kennels.’
But when the police arrived, a gruesome scene confronted them. Angela was face down in the dog wash area, lying in a pool of blood. She had a single gunshot wound to her chest.
The trail of blood through the kennels and out the door convinced detectives that Angela’s killer had escaped into the dense bushland nearby.
Her mobile phone and purse were missing.
Police wondered if it was a burglary gone wrong. But the close-range shot indicated it was most likely someone Angela knew.
But who’d want to kill caring Angela?
When detectives informed her sister, Wendy Budde, she told them Angela had terrible relationship problems with her husband, Chris, and had moved in with her the previous month.
Chris was an electrician who’d married Angela in 2019. After he lost his job he began helping at the kennels. But in 2021 Angela discovered Chris was using methamphetamine and had begun drinking heavily.
The man Angela loved was changing before her eyes. And the following April, Angela told Wendy Chris had hit her.
‘I’m scared,’ she’d cried.
After a no contact order was placed on Chris, he began to stalk Angela and monitor her every move. She was horrified to discover a tracking device on her car and cameras in her home. Despite this, Chris convinced her to give him another chance, promising he’d change.
It didn’t last, and in September 2022, Angela took out another restraining order.
‘Angela was convinced something bad would happen.’
Ordered to move out, Chris threw paint everywhere, rubbed Angela’s mattress in dog faeces and left guns all over the house. He’d text her constantly and drove past her house sometimes up to six times an hour.
Angela had been convinced something bad was going to happen.
Now, as armed police went door to door desperately looking for Angela’s killer, they had one suspect in mind – Chris.
Sixteen hours after the shooting, police received a tip off from Chris’ friend Jim Junk. Chris had showed up at his home, reminiscing about old times while drinking, before he passed out in an armchair.
Police arrived and charged Chris with first-degree murder and robbery.
Wendy revealed Angela had kept a journal filled with brightly coloured sticky notes – a horrific diary of her harrowing domestic abuse.
He’s been stalking me and watching me, one read.
Always looking over my shoulder to see if he’s around, was on another.
I think Chris is capable of anything…
I fear for my life, she’d written.
Each painted a picture of the intimidating behaviour Angela had been subjected to. But could her own husband really be capable of killing her?
In police interviews Chris Prichard admitted he’d shot Angela, but claimed it’d been an accident. He said the gun, which was leaning against a cupboard, fell, causing it to fire.
But instead of phoning for help, he’d left the scene.
‘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,’ he said.
Police didn’t buy it. During his trial at Iowa District Court in February 2024, it was revealed Christopher Prichard had stalked and intimidated Angela for months and she’d lived in fear for her life – as she’d recorded on her sticky notes.
He’d been due to appear at jail for violating the restraining order and never arrived. Eight days later Angela was dead.
‘Chris Prichard was hunting his own wife.’
Prosecutors argued that, prior to taking Angela’s life, Chris Prichard had meticulously planned her murder. To create an alibi, he’d parked his rental car in his friend’s shed just kilometres from the kennels with a note saying he was going hunting.
But in fact he was hunting his own wife.
They claimed he hiked through dense scrub and knew how to gain entry to the kennels undetected.
A medical examiner testified the gunshot had a downward trajectory, proving the weapon had been in Chris Prichard’s hands when he fired into his wife’s chest.
‘There was no doubt the attack had been premeditated.’
But the most damning evidence came from the recording of the phone call to police. After the gun was fired, a muffled male voice could be heard saying, ‘F*** you.’ There was no doubt the attack had been premeditated.
It took the jury less than an hour to find him guilty of first-degree murder and robbery. In March 2024, Christopher Eugene Prichard, then 58, was given a life sentence plus 25 years for the robbery.
In her victim impact statement, Wendy said, ‘I hope you always have to look over your shoulder and be scared for everything you do… I hope you feel just a tiny bit of that, the way you tortured her.’
Prichard appealed the conviction but it was upheld in May this year.
