May 6, 2026 • 61 mins
The Piketon Massacre - 10 years later, Part 2. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss what has been called the "Pike County Murders" "The Piketon Massacre" and other names - It was the murders of 8 people at 4 crime scenes in one night. The Wagner family of killers arrested just over two years after the massacre. Jake Wagner pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, conspiracy, aggravated burglary, tampering with evidence and other charges. As part of the plea Jake had to testify against his brother and father. In exchange for this, Jake would be sentenced to life without parole. But that did not happen. Jake Wagner was sentenced to life with possibility of parole after 32 years. The mother, Angela Wagner, took a plea deal and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. George Wagner IV was found guilty at trial and sentenced to eight consecutive life sentences and another121 years for other offenses. 10 years after the murders of the Rhoden family, 8 years after being arrested and charged, Billy Wagner, the Patriarch of the Wagner family still hasn't been tried. A trial date isn't even set, yet.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00:07.67 Intro - Piketon Part 2
00:04:26.75 Billy Wagner "just killed my best friend"
00:10:10.10 Chris Rhoden setting example for sons to follow
00:15:28.93 Wear pattern on shoe
00:20:35.58 Splinters blasted into victims' face
00:25:32.73 Working multi-scene death investigation
00:30:01.14 Source of the blood
00:35:22.42 What conversation is taking place in the vehicle of killers
00:40:01.17 The finders
00:45:07.00 What more could there possible be
00:50:04.66 Kenneth grew a few pot plants
00:55:11.86 Suspects destroyed entire genetic line 01:01:12.22 Conclusion
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody dots with Joseph's gotten more. You ever had somebody
that owed your money and you gave it to them,
I guess initially because you saw them in need. They
promised you to repay you and it just never happened.
It's disappointing, and it's I don't know. I love forgiving debt,
(00:25):
you know, I think it's a cool thing to be
able to do that. Don't worry about it. You don't
have to pay me. But you know, there are just
some debts that have to be addressed. They are outstanding
balances and a lot of places and there is well
I'll put it to you this way, we're left wanting, and
(00:48):
certainly in the case of the Pikedon massacre, we are
in fact left wanting because did you know that, still,
to date, ten years after the there is still one
individual that, of course has been charged. They have pled
(01:08):
not guilty, but there's no trial, nothing. It's still hanging
out there in the ether like a bad smell that
just will not go away. Of course, I'm talking about
(01:28):
Billy Wagner. To date, he still has yet to go
to trial, and that's one of the reasons that makes
the tenure anniversary of this master it's poignant, as tragic
as it is, we still don't have a full accounting
(01:49):
from a legal perspective. But let's have a discussion about it.
Let's talk about it ten years on. This is part
two of our coverage of the ten year anniversary of
the piked In massacre. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
(02:10):
is body Bags. It does kind of leave a bad
taste in your mouth, doesn't it, Brother Dave. You know,
when you've got somebody that's out there and they have
just been the clock has been ticking, you know, whether
whether or not he goes to trial and is found
(02:32):
guilty or not guilty. It's just it's such a tragic
state of affairs that there's no there's no finality to it.
Twist your guts about it.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
This bothered me because of your because of your not
interest but involvement in the case. It bothered me that
you know, you were called as an expert and brought
out there and everybody has been dealt with. The arrests
all happened two years after the fact, two and a
(03:06):
half years. It was November of twenty eighteen when the
Wagners were all brought in in charge, and pretty quickly
they were because the evidence was all The police did
a good job. The investigators did a great job laying
out the case of what happened. And yet you went
up there, you walked the scene where you could still
(03:27):
see the remnants of family life. You mentioned the tricycle
on the deck and things like that, and yet Billy Wagner,
six foot six, two hundred and seventy five, mountain of
a man in quotes, has yet to stand for trial.
These people are dead ten years. They've had him in
(03:48):
custody eight years. How is that any kind of justice?
Speaker 1 (03:53):
You know? I got in a sort of quote here.
I'm glad you said something about this, because you have
a way day of prying information out of my subconscious
I had forgotten all about this. There was a quote
that was attributed to Billy, and I think this was
per Jake, if I'm not mistaken, you know, kind of
flipping back through my files, what Billy is alleged to
(04:17):
have said when leaving this slaughter that took place in
Chris Rodent's home, which is where all this kind of
kicked off. Is he he was heard to say and
something to this effect I just killed my best friend. Yeah,
(04:39):
I just killed my best friend. And you know, when
I when I visited these these sites, And keep in mind,
I want everybody to full, you know, full disclosure here
when I visited sites. You know, obviously the trailers had
long since been removed by that time. But you can
get a you get a sense of space there and
(05:03):
you know, to wax, I guess a bit spiritual here.
On one level, people always ask me, Uh, you know,
you've been around the dead so much. You know, how
many times have you encountered a ghost and you know,
like you have some kind of apparition, you know that
kind of appears before you. That's never happened to me,
(05:25):
you know, over the course of all these years of
being around all that dead. But Dave, I submit to
you that there are places and this has happened more
than just simply up and up in pat Kennty, Ohio.
There are places I believe that are haunted. You go
there and you just I don't know if you've ever
had this happen. I guess some people might call it
(05:45):
the willies or whatever you call it. But there's just
this kind of corkscrew sensation, you know that runs up
you back when I had that feeling while I was there.
You know, it feels like this environment you know, was
I don't know. I don't want a curse, evil haunted,
(06:07):
however you want to place it. There was that you could.
You could just feel it, you know, in the air there.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Well as you're walking on property that you knew victims
had walked on and lived on. This was their life,
this is where they lived. And you when you live
that close to your relatives, there is a real safety
in numbers kind of a thinking, you know, having family
around and that area, that land somewhat becomes hallowed ground
(06:39):
for them, and it does when you step into it,
it has to shake you. I will tell you that
there are areas since my wife passed in our backyard
that that I can't walk in and it's and that's
what I was thinking when you were talking about being
on that property. I was thinking about the living people
(07:00):
who were there, that they didn't do anything. You've got
to remember friends, Billy Whack and you're saying I just
killed my best friend, and he's talking about Chris Road
and Senior. These guys are all grown up together, you know,
is that who he's talking.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
About Yeah, yeah he was. And you know, not to
mention I'm thinking about you know, Chris, you know, in
life he could have well, I guess potentially he could
have been standing in his front yard at that location
and looked over into the yard of his son Frankie,
(07:33):
and you know, and I can just hear, hey, boy,
how's it going today? What ch'all doing for supper tonight?
You know that sort of thing? Yeah, all that stuff
is is gone, you know, in a vapor. You know,
it's just you know, like this all because of you know,
this thing and in this little bitty space Dave, in
this little I say little bitty, but you understand I'm saying,
(07:55):
you know, because we're talking about people you know that
are kith and Ken. They live with the exception one.
They all live in this one area, within a mile
or so of each other. And for good and for bad. Right,
we've got a couple here that minds you. And this
goes to I think to the character of Chris Road
(08:16):
when we look at Dana, who lived back up the
road from him, Dave. They were divorced. Now, I don't
know about most divorced situations, but there are not too
many people that would want to live on the same
road with the person that they were divorced from. And
not only that helped her with her house that was,
(08:37):
you know, a separate mobile home that got enclosed. It's
not you know, I'm not going to get into some
big thing here. It's not that you no longer love
the person. You know what I'm saying. Some people are
just not compatible. It just doesn't work out. The road
had been tough, and we've heard all of this about
the relationship, you know, between Dane and Chris Sor. But
(09:00):
yet here we are, you know, in spite of everything,
and that one night, you know, their their lives, you know,
are are gone, you know, in an instant, except for God,
and this this is the horror of it, Except for
those babies that were present at those in those environments.
You know again, Mommy and Daddy, they're they're playing zombie, right,
(09:23):
you know, you know, and that that very holding.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Let's get that broken down, Joe, okay, because you have
been there, and I didn't realize. I had read about
the rodents, you know, but I hadn't walked the path,
you know, I hadn't seen I knew that, I knew
that Chris had spent time and money to help Dana
have a beautiful home, and I always felt like he
did as an example to his sons, to show them
(09:49):
how you treat people that you have a relationship with,
that you go above beyond, because Chris didn't. He was
in a single white trailer with with junk in the
front yard fixing it, you know, but his ex wife,
she had a beautify landscape yard and a beautiful home
that he've helped work on. So I thought that he
was setting an example for his son to look at
(10:10):
and say, that's how you treat people. You know.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, yeah, I do is. And so now I think
that that goes to the DNA of I think it too.
And maybe you know, some people think, well more than
you're just being Pollyanna about all this, and that's not
the case. Well, if you took a jaded view of it,
I guess you could. But you know, look, I don't
know I can't recall off the top of my head
anybody else I know that's doing that. I'm sure that
(10:33):
there are people out there, but certainly not under these
circumstances where everybody winds up getting slaughtered. Yeah, you know,
and that certainly puts a real, you know, microscope on
the relationship, the familiar relationship, and I think that goes
to the perpetrators as well.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And it goes down to what you mentioned a minute
ago about I just killed my best friend Billy Wagner
and Chris Rodent and their children Jake Wagner, Billy Wagner's
son and Hannah now Gilly, but at the time Hannah
Rodin the thirteen year old Chris and they be That's
(11:10):
why that relationship seemed okay, the fact that southern Ohio
near Kentucky and all that. I've heard the jokes about
all that, but it's not it's pasted the joking phase
and into there was an established relationship between those two
that begot a child. And it wasn't a fight from
the Rodents standpoint. The fight was from Jake Wagner and
(11:33):
his mother. Yes, and based on everything we know now
that Jake and by the way, Jake Wagner has been
sent you know, he has admitted the murders. He has
copp to five murders, actually pulling the trigger on five.
That leaves three for Billy to cop to at some point.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
But yeah, and then you know, you've got you've got
another son too. Yeah, yeah, you've got George that's involved
with He was according to him, he was incapable of
pulling a trigger. You know, because when they showed up,
when they showed up at Chris's trailer that night, uh,
it was Billy, you know, operating the vehicle. They had
(12:15):
created actually a faux bottom in the back of the
pickup truck so that when they approached in the truck,
it you could not see these two let's call them
what they are, assassins.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
What I actually heard that that's the first timer that Okay, yeah,
so one second, can you tell me before we do
the truck let me go back to in the planning
stages of this assassination of the Rodent family. Yeah, Mama
Wagner going to Walmart and buying the shoes, right, talk
to me about how that came about.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Oh my god, well, you know, there's a bloody It
turns out there was a bloody footprint. It's a transfer
print that they found on the floor inside of Crew
Chris's domicile there and the tread pattern that they had,
and this goes there's a real hero that worked in
my estimation, you know, I don't know that she's gotten
(13:13):
the credit that she should, but she worked for the
State of Ohio and she was one of these forensic
scientists that was in their print section, and she felt
like she could she could solve this mystery. You know
about shoe You know what, how many patterns are there
out there and when you look at the wear patterns
(13:36):
on shoes. I was just having this discussion. We just
finished up our academic year at jack stateon one of
the last things I talked about is in print evidence.
As far as tire treads and shoe Prince God kind
of teach those two sections together. You and I can
go out and we can go to Walmart if you
(13:59):
want to, and we'll buy the same identical workshoe, right,
and you might wear yours. I've got mine sitting on
the shelf. Well, after just a day of you going
to work in your shoes, even if you're not working
on construction site, even if you're just I don't know,
you get an office job and you're walking down the
sidewalk from your driveway to your car, I mean from
(14:19):
your house to your car and the driveway, go to work,
get out of the car, walk into the office, did
you know that tread pattern on that shoe, even though
it's the same brand that I bought, is actually going
to change in that period of time. Wow, what they
were seeing was this tread pattern, was the fact that
this thing's fresh, that there's not you don't have distinctive
(14:41):
wear patterns like if you We talked about this the
other day with Nancy Grace about the Missy Beaver's case
with you know, she always uses term term on grain
used to use all the time, slew footed. You know,
the person that's caught on videoiography inside of that Church
(15:01):
of Christ, they're slew footed. So what that means is
that they're kind of duck footed. They pronate, which means
when you pronate, you roll over to the arches of
your feet and you walk in that particular manner. Well,
that person and any other person that you know, whether
you pronate or superinnate, you're going to impress on the
(15:24):
sole of that shoe the way you walk. Well, Dave,
this one print that they had there at that scene,
there was nowhere to it. And so you know she's
scratching her head this forensic sciences, God bless her man
where she is right now? She took it upon herself
because they didn't. I don't think they had this print
in the database. She went to wally World, we always
(15:48):
call it wally Wood. She went to Wallywood and started
looking at shoes. Man, you know, you talk about you
talk about old school detective work, and she's not even
a detective. She's a forensic science. So she's gonna she
don't solve this puzzle, and I'll be dog gone if
she didn't. She didn't come up with this with this
particular shoe that was manufactured for the Walmart company, whoever
(16:11):
the manufacturer is, and she was able to acquire those
shoes and marry up those patterns. Right. Well, you couple that,
you know when Mama, as you had mentioned earlier, the
rocket scientist that she is. You know, they're trying to
be real cool. We're going to be and this is
so comically stupid that you're going to go into a
(16:37):
store that has got cameras everywhere. They've got their own
security people that actually watch cameras that you never see.
You know that they're looking, you know, their lost prevention people.
They've got videography of her checking out at Walmart with
the shoes. Yeah, and I'm thinking, yeah, you're boy. I
(16:57):
tell you what, You're a real criminal genius here, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
But still, you know, Joe I thought, and this is me, Okay,
she had the wherewithal to know that if I let
those boys, the men of my house, go out on
a murdering spree and they wear their own shoes going in,
they're going to figure out something. But if I go
buy these new shoes at Walmart that have no tread
(17:22):
to have them wear them for just this killing spree, boom.
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, you're right. And that listen, that activity in and
of itself, not being a lawyer, yeah, but that activity
in and of itself kind of frames out a premeditative
event you're planning, that're planning planning. Yeah, and again I'm
going back to that kitchen table, you know, surrounded by
the wicker baskets right now.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
But Joe, yeah, now you're in the back of the truck. Okay,
she's already got them thinking the shoes, but the back
of the truck. I had not heard that until now.
So they actually went so far as to plan their arrival,
not just the shoe wear pattern that needed to be unique.
I mean, now it needed to be neutral because you
got brand new shoes on. They got no wear pattern.
(18:08):
These are all brand new shoes, so they're not going
to be able to pend it on you. But they
actually lowered the bed.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yeah. Well yeah, they built in a faux bottom that's
been described to me, and there's like a covering over
it so that you could not see, like you if
you stood on Chris's stoop, you know that those built
in stoops that, by the way, were still there. You know,
I talked about the tricycle earlier. So if you stood
(18:35):
on that stoop at at Chris's place and you looked
out at a vehicle that's parked in front of your house,
you're not going to see anybody other than Billy Wagner.
So he gets out of the vehicle in order to
go engage in conversation with Chris. Right, he goes up,
(18:56):
knocks on the door, and a conversation ensuit. And there's
been multiple you know, ideas put forward about you know,
what the conversation entailed was it did it have something
to do with you know, weed, you know, or we
going to transact something and whatnot. And the plan was
(19:18):
was that as soon as as soon as Billy stepped
away and got clear. That's when the other two, you know,
going to come out and blazing. Well, George never pulled
the trigger, according to him, all right, he never pulls trigger.
To give you an idea of the level of violence.
(19:40):
You remember we talked about how many times how many
times Chris shot, Well, he was adjacent to a frame,
you know, like the doorframe, which, by the way, you know,
you think about if you're trying to shure yourself up
relative to a doorframe or relative to being shot at
a door frame, aim is kind of you'd rather be
(20:02):
adjacent to a doorframe than than a wall, particularly in
a trailerhouse, because it's going to pass through the aluminum siding,
the insulation, and go through you know, the faux paneling
inside our drywall. At least well he had he had
splinters that had blasted into his face, you know, because
you've got an s KS round, which is it's not
(20:25):
it's not an AK forty seven, but there are Russian
and Chinese versions of an s KS. It's got an
indwelling magazine where you have to load this thing and
it's semi automatic, and they had one of these things
in rip you to shreds. You're uh, you're talking about
a very robust round. Uh that if you were trying
(20:47):
to think about it in American terms, it's really really
close to like a three or eight you know, high
powered rifle round, and it is high powered. Well, you know,
and all hell broke loose at that point, Tom and
that's when they you know, they did, in fact, you know,
enter enter the residence, and of course, uh, Chris is
(21:12):
is shot down and uh, you know he's he's riddled
u riddled with uh with rounds. He's got wounds to
his head, his torso you know.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Bullets that are that big.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Well, yeah, and uh you've got and and then you know,
on on top of that, Uh, the the person that
you know kind of gets left in the wake is Gary.
Gary Roaden was there. He's uh, he's you know, thirty
(21:51):
eight years old. He's staying with Chris. He works, you know,
works doing landscaping and whatnot. You know, they're they're you know,
kind of roused about guys you know that'll that'll do
anything scratch out of living. Well, he shot, you know,
Gary shot multiple times in the head as well. And
(22:11):
of course it's a it's a bloody mess. And so
you know, when I approached that sceneing day, when I
was walking up there. I went up there a couple
of times. When I walked up there, I tried to envision,
you know, what it would have been like walking in
to this spot and then making your way through, you know,
(22:32):
the main receiving area, which is kind of the living
room if you will, of the trailer back to your
right is going to be the kitchen area that's generally
on that end. And then you've got that narrow hallway
you know, that kind of leads down where the bedrooms
are off of and you know, you it's a weird
thing to do to go out there and try to,
(22:53):
you know, set yourself down in that place absent the structure. Now,
that's an odd thing when you think about it. You know,
I'm reflecting now back to Idaho, you know, where the
building no longer exists, you know, and that's a multi story.
There's no way in your mind that you you know
that I could go out there and conjured up. But
in my little mind, you know, I can do that,
(23:14):
you know, kind of with a trailer. And I'm beginning,
you know, thinking about the progression of an individual or
individuals entering into into this place, and you know, the shooting,
shooting takes place, and this masker takes place. What what really,
what really gets me about this is if if you
(23:35):
were standing in front of Chris's place and you're popping
off rounds with this sks, dude, if you could stand outside,
face this trailer and look back to your right, you
see the barn, which, by the way, they had electronic
surveillance equipment in there, the rodents did, and that had
(23:58):
been taken all right. There was an awareness of surveillance,
all right. Again that goes to people that are familiar,
you know, with this environment. You know you've been there.
You know, how do you know that this is there?
That's taken out and just on the other side of
that barn you can't see Frankie's trailer. Well you're doing
this in the middle of the night, and I don't care.
(24:20):
You're not in some big urban area, all right, where
Frankie and his fiancee, who by the way, is also
named Hannah, where they just sound asleep at that point
in time, with those babies in the house. They didn't
hear this, They didn't hear the sks go off or
(24:41):
the other weapons that may have been used at this site.
And so that's that's a real risk that you're taking.
And I here's one thought that I had about this.
I really wondered if at first and early on I
thought about this. I was wondering, now, did they get
(25:01):
in there and realize that there was so much confusion
that it was so loud. It's at that moment in time,
everybody else that's got to die. You know, we're just
going to run down the road here, we're going to
for a next stop. We're going to Frankie's house. We're
going to kill everybody there. Oh and by the bye,
we're going to go back up the road to Dana's
(25:22):
house and we're going to kill three people there. You know,
you never know, you know, kind of and I know
that they had this all planned out, but you know,
as an investigator, if you show up at a scene,
you're trying to understand the progression. And this is I
cannot put myself in the place of these investigators. I've
never worked a multi scene debt investigation where you've got
(25:45):
four homicide scenes with multiple victims. You know, you're trying
to do the arithmetic in your brain how does this
all work out? You know, what was kind of you know,
what was a spark that set this whole thing off?
You know, and when you're coming into a cold you know,
now we've got information after the fact, but you know,
(26:07):
I can just imagine, you know, these these investigators that
were tasked with working the scene at the moment. And
that's what I'm trying to capture here, the idea of
how do you how do you break all this down
in your brain from an investigative standpoint, because I think
that the you, there's part of you, even though initially
(26:29):
you cannot prove it scientifically, and you know, we always
on body backs, we try to reflect back to the science.
In the initial moments, you cannot prove it scientifically that
they're all connected. I think that we want to take
an intellectual leap here and say there's a high probability
that they're all connected, and we're going to have to
treat this as if they are. You know, we talked
(26:50):
about shoe prints. You would have been able to see something.
You certainly would have seen blood. The next thing I'm
looking at is I'm out in front of Chris's house
and I'm looking at tire tracks. I'm thinking, Okay, what's
fresh out here? Remember he's moving cars all over the place,
right what's fresh? Is there anything that pairs up here
(27:10):
that you might find a Frankie's house or is there
a way you can cut through the yard leaving the
vehicle right here and walking to Frankie's house. Is there
anything at Dana's house that connects that might have prints
or something you don't want to disrupt? This is a dave.
This is a nightmare scenario for any investigator that shows
(27:31):
up at the scene like this. It's going on inside
somebody's head. You've just participated in a multiple homicide. What
(27:57):
are you talking about. Let's go, let's saddle up, let's
walk over this direction. You all know where Frankie lives.
You know that he's got a girlfriend, Hannah, Hannah Gilly.
You know that there's kids. Do you do you just
(28:20):
go and barge in? Do you go and just eradicate everybody? Well,
apparently you know when the perpetrators made their way over
to Frankie's place, that's what happened. You there's one descriptor
(28:46):
that really stands out here. Uh there, they're murders. That
is the murders of Hannah and Frankie. One of the
one of the witnesses, you know, said that there was
just blood everywhere. And keep in mind, oh God, I
(29:09):
hate to talk about this, but we're going to there's
six months old laying in between mom and daddy in
a shared space. It's a little bedroom child six months old.
All right, child is alive. But when the child is
(29:29):
retrieved from the scene, Dave, that child is just saturated
in blood. As a matter of fact, one of the
you know, one of the things that kind of jumps
to mind for me is they were talking about and
this child's name is Ruger. Is Ruger. One of the
things that comes to mind for me is when you
(29:52):
have somebody that is covered with blood, particularly a child,
you're looking for an origin for blood, right, because one
of the things that EMTs and even even and certainly
us and within within the medical legal world, we're looking
for a source, right, you know, where where's this issuing
forth from? Because you know, people, people don't just spontaneously
(30:16):
start bleeding. You've got to have a defect in the
body somewhere. And the horror that must have crept over everyone,
particularly this poor woman that you know that and her
husband that that wind up, you know, making sure these
(30:40):
kids were safe. You begin to think about what what
you're bearing witness to, and and then it's hours later
when you begin to think about that the six month
old laid there and wallowed m in the blood of
(31:03):
their deceased parents, just back and over, I mean back
and forth, back and forth, maybe sleeping through the rest
of the night. Child was unharmed. We have another child,
the one that answered the door, You remember, the one
that said, mommy and daddy are playing zombie. How many
(31:24):
times had that child walked down the hallway? You know,
how does that child that in their child like mine?
How is that child able to make this assessment playing zombie?
Did the child in those moments walk up and place
their hands on the flesh of their parents, who had
(31:46):
loved them, who had soothed them, and their skin is
cold to the touch. You know what small child is
able to come up with the word zombie because zombie
eyes dead. And even even that child is able to
communicate that to the finder. In this particular case, the
(32:10):
horror that's involved here, You know, when you you you know,
you look at at Frankie and and Hannah. You know
in the bed there. They they haven't done anything, Dave.
They you know that it's not it's not like they're
some kind of malevolent force in the university. This this
(32:32):
mama Hannah who's got her six month old Leyden adjacent
to her, which one is. You know, people go on
and on about coat sleeping and all that. We're not
going down that road. There's something very sweet about having
your little child and you're able to comfort them in
the bed with mom and dad. I've done that. They
shot her multiple times in the head. Dave shot her
(32:55):
multiple multiple times. Frankie, he shot in the head, and
this would have been We've talked about this with head
injuries on body bags for a long time. Now. You
bleed so profusely, you know, and it's not just the
initial high velocity kind of blast that you get. It's
(33:19):
that kind of seeping that goes on because the head
is so vascular, and that's that's what the six month
old was was subjected to at this point. Because now
you begin to look at the forensic science behind this,
you know that you've got containment on the mattress and
the walls, because you've got deposition on the walls because
(33:41):
of this dynamic blood deposition from these blasts, and then
it's seeping through through the mattress. I've you know, and
I've had this happen with people that are killed in beds.
It's not just the mattress, it's the box springs as well,
it's the headboard, it goes at the pillows, it goes everywhere.
(34:02):
And so if you're looking, like if we're looking for
trace evidence on a surface like that, it gets very
very confusing. You've got comingled DNA blood here. You're trying
to sust this out. You don't see any evidence that
anybody remove themselves from this environment, like to try to
thwart an attack or anything like that. You've got them
(34:24):
laying here, contained in one area, and just trying to
take take in the totality of what you're what you're
viewing here. And here's the thing about it. After the
perpetrators left Frankie's home, I go back to conversation, what
(34:50):
kind of conversation you're going to have now between the
three of you, What exactly are you going to say?
You know what? What? What is it? Because you know
there was another vehicle that was there, and I think
I misspoke earlier, but you had there was a travel
(35:10):
along vehicle that they had brought with them as well.
Where what they had done is after they had perpetrated
these crumbs, they went back up the road to Dana's house. Okay,
So what's that conversation like in the truck? You know,
you know, it's like, you know, after the big game,
we're going to break it down and see where we
(35:31):
went where it's halftime. It's you know, right now, we're
only at halftime. We've made it to halftime with the
slaughter we're engaged in. We're going to break it down.
See how we do in the second half. Boys, what
kind of conversation do monsters have amongst themselves? Do they
ride there quietly? Is anybody showing any emotion at this
(35:51):
point in time? Weeping? Is anybody white knuckling the steering wheel?
Is there anybody that's saying this is too much? This
is too much, We can't go any further. But yet
here we are, here, we are to go back up
the road to Dana's home, which we had talked about
(36:15):
relative to what Chris had helped her build out, and
I would assume other members of the family, but Chris
in and of himself being the person that he was,
he wanted to make sure his ex wife and his
grand baby and his children had a roof over their head,
maybe the safest, most secure place that you can imagine.
(36:36):
That's the one thing that has always stuck with me
in covering the Packton Masacre Day is the idea of
what kind of conversations have taken place. And I'm not
talking about from a Gore standpoint or you know, just
I'm talking about in dwelling the moment relative to you
(36:58):
understand what you have just perpetrated. And there's day, there's
no pause, there's no pause.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Well, they're headed to the actual original source. The original
plan was to kill Hannah may Rodin. That was the
original plan of the Wagner family. If we kill her
she's the mother of baby Sophia, then Jake will get
baby Sophia and the Wagoners will have the baby. But
(37:28):
then they took it out. Well, if she's not there,
then her mama, her daddy, you know, and all these
other relatives they'll be in line to get custody and
have access to this child. Got to get rid of
all of them. So now, as you mentioned Billy has
already killed his best friend, his best friend's cousin. They've
killed two innocent people here. I mean, everybody in this
(37:51):
line is innocent. Nobody deserves what happened. And now after
four people are already dead, two children have already been
traumatized for life based on what they're going to be told,
the three year old son of Frankie and the six
month old child of the couple. Now they're headed to
Dana's to go and kill Hannah may Rodin because she
(38:12):
was the mother of baby Sophia.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yeah. Yeah, and you know you're back in mama's house.
She's young, she's very young now, obviously nineteen. Yeah, she's
already had the second one, Sophia. You know, she's already
had Sophia. She knows what it's like to be a mother.
She doesn't have means. She's going to live with her
(38:37):
mama in this nice little house.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
She's just a second child, Joe.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yeah. Yeah. And there's a there is a sixteen year
old boy that's involved in this too, because he still
loses This kid's This kid is in school, Dave. This
is Chris Junior. You know, he's in schools. He's loved
by his classmates. He's a good kid. From what we understand.
(39:04):
He's you know, you know, just think about when you
were sixteen years old. I'm saying that to everybody that's
listening to us right now. You know, you have cares,
but there you haven't gotten to that point in life
where they're where they're just absolutely crushing you about mortgages
and all the stuff you're thinking about. You know, the
next time you can get together with your friends. You're
(39:24):
thinking about the homework that you hate to do. You're
thinking about the girl that you want to have a
conversation with. You're thinking about the next ball season, or
when you're gonna go hunting, when you're going to go fishing.
Homeside was not on the menu in the sixteen year
old's mind. But there he is. He's he's in he's
in this home. He's in this home, in his mother's home.
(39:48):
And when you know, Dana is discovered. She's actually discovered
by her brother, who is a James Many. He had come,
you know, he and his wife had had gone to
you know, that's how the initial discovery with Chris. When
(40:12):
they get back down to Dana's house and they make
entry into there. You know. He he walks, he walks
back to Dana's bedroom and when he sees I'm sure
he calls out to her. No answer. She's actually, if
(40:34):
my memory is serving me correctly, Dave, she had a
pillow over her face. She had a pillover face, Dana
did in her bed. And he removes with some difficulty
to pillow and then see what's happened, and he's leaving.
Now imagine this. He's leaving walking out, mister Manley is
(40:58):
and he hears the cooing of a baby, and he
can't go back in. His wife has to go in.
She finds she finds Hannah dead, with her breast exposed
and the baby lying adjacent to her where she had
been left by the perpetrator, who, by the way, turns
(41:19):
out to be Jake, the kid that had impregnated her
and had fathered Sophia with her, you know, And I
guess some active humanity on his part or whatever it is,
he ends her life. But yet he takes the child
to place there to suckle at the deceased mother mother's
(41:44):
breast there, and you know, eradicated her in that environment.
And oh, by the way, yeah, we killed Chris Junior
as well. So you've got you've got these three environments
where multiple blood baths have taken place, and these are
I mean, this is this is the stuff of nightmares,
(42:09):
you know, thinking about how all of this went down,
and it went down to the point where nobody heard
it at all. And again, the farming community houses are
kind of spread out, but that sound had to be echoing,
(42:32):
you know, in the ears of the individuals that did this,
that there was even one one account, you know, where
you could where there was an awareness, I think on
Dana's Park. You know that Jake had related that Dana
she saw, she saw him, she recognized him, and and
(42:55):
she was on her phone. Actually her face was illuminated,
according to him, by her phone, and she laid in
bed Dana.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Mm hm. So Hannah may Rodin is shot five times
in the head, and then, in an act of compassion
and humanity, the person who shoots her five times in
the head, blowing her head off, pretty much lays the
baby at her breast. Yes, yeah, yeah, that's a class act.
(43:24):
Five times in the head is overkilled to the bought.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
I mean, come on, yeah, I know, you know one
you know, one one shot would have been sufficient. And
that's that's so so grotesque anyway, just a singular shot.
But you know, when you're thinking about and you're doing
this immediately adjacent to a newborn baby day, yeah, uh,
and it's it's hard to it's really hard to take
(43:48):
the measure of it. And I can again, reflecting back,
it's been ten years. You know, the investigators that that
had to process this, and I'm I don't just mean
processed this in a sense of their processing the scene.
I mean process this. You know, how do you take
the measure of it? How do you begin to understand it?
But you know, that's what separates good investigators from the
(44:11):
rest of them. You're able to disassociate yourself from the horror.
It's really really tough to pry yourself away from that
because the entire time you're looking at this massacre, but
yet you're trying to really dig into to how this happened.
You're looking for things like sequencing. You know, who was
(44:32):
killed first, who was who was not a target as
opposed you know, you look at Hannah and give me
that number one more time, refresh my memory.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Five times, five times in the head. The sixteen year
old brother was shot once in the head and Dana
was shot in the head and neck.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Yeah, so you're trying to piece this thing together, and
it's you're thinking that you're done, I guess is what
it comes down to. You're thinking that you're done as
an investigator. You know, what more can there possibly be? Well,
(45:16):
I got to tell you there was more. And the
more came down to the fact that there was still
another victim, a victim that lived on a location that
even the authorities had a difficult time trying to understand
where their jurisdiction ended. And another one began. David. The
(45:56):
first time I had gone up to piked In, I
had not. I had not visited every scene. I visited
all of the scenes on Union Hill Road, Dana's house,
uh Denis had the locations of Dana's home, Frankie's home
(46:18):
of course, chris Is home.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
But those are close together, right, I mean they were.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
They were, and I kept hearing with the first visit. Look,
there's it's seven miles away, well seven miles away for
you and I where we live, you know there, We've
got a lot of countryside around us, but pretty much
we seven miles is no big deal. Right when I
(46:44):
began to take a look around where we were, I'm thinking,
where do I go from here? Seven miles? Because the
road just seems like it got skinnier and skinnier everywhere
I looked. And sure enough, the second time I went up,
I went up with a film crew. We had drones
with us and all kinds of all manner of stuff
that was going on, and we drove what seemed like
(47:09):
forever to get to the location of the person that
was leading kind of the caravan that we were in
had already previously. You know, when you go out on
these these shoots for these television programs and whatnot, they
have these people, I know, you get them in like
fictionalized entertainment, but they scout this area out. You know,
you always hear about location scouts, you know that do
(47:31):
that in fictional You know, they're looking for the right
This is already set in stone. So they had gone
out and scouted the area to figure out where we
were going to set up. We knew where the house
was was being the functional word there, Dave. When I
finally got there, it was at it was like at
(47:52):
the intersection of one dirt road and another dirt road, okay.
And what was really weird is that when we pulled up,
When we pulled up at this final location, there's something
that was odd that really stood out to me. I
saw an old weather mailbox, and you know, you can
(48:17):
find those anywhere out through a rural America. But adjacent
to the to the mailbox, there was a busted up
old boat that just was kind of sitting there. Now
there's a stream that runs right behind it. But when
I say stream, I literally mean like a creek. It's
like a tiny little body of water. There's just this
(48:40):
arbitrarily like an old abandoned boat that was laying there.
If I remember correctly, it's inverted, and it actually had
a hole in it, you know, And that marked that
that actually marked the location of where Kenneth Roden lived.
(49:00):
Kenneth was the brother. He's forty four years old. He's
the older brother of Chris, and he again he had
knock around jobs. He had his own family, but he
lived day in. It's not a mobile home. It's like
(49:25):
a camper, all right. My friends in Great Britain would
call it a caravan. But he had taken this this
old camper. And when I say it's small. It's small.
It's not like a tear drop. But it had like
a little kitchenett in. It had a bed, had a
little you know, sitting area, and a laboratory place you
(49:46):
could go to the bathroom. But he had gotten this thing
backed up into the woods and he built a deck
around it. And the reason I know that there were
still remnants of the deck there.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Because they took the trailer. Yeah, okay, yeah, they.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Had to take the trailer out of there, so you
had this big space, but you could see, you know,
kind of the skeletal remains the framework of everything that
kind of endwell there. And Kenneth had jobs and had
a job, but he also grew weed. Now, when I
(50:20):
say grow weed again, I don't want you to think
that this is something unlike an industrial scale. All right,
this is the way it has been described to me.
He grew weed for like personal consumption, and there was
probably enough leftover so that he could share it with friends.
All Right, this guy is not he's not scarfaced. He's
not going to be living, you know in Miami.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Beachman trailer out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Yeah, exactly. You had to pump in sunshine to this location.
But the reason, the reason Kenneth's murder is so key
to all of this is this being one of these, uh,
you know, kind of events where they just knew that
(51:06):
they needed to eradicate everybody. He's the oldest. I guess
they felt like he could be a threat sometime in
the future, so they're going to go out to this
man's place and end him. When I remember talking to
the producers of the Piked and Masker documentary, they were
(51:30):
saying that when they were speaking to the police, the
police initially had a really hard time determining whose jurisdiction
this was going to fall in. Was it going to
be Pike County where Pikedon is or was it going
to be the adjacent county because you've they the county's
(51:51):
a butt in this area. We had no phone service
out there at all. I mean, it was just dead
as a hammer, right, and we had to you know,
do all of the shooting and the lighting and you know,
the lighting and the shooting and the interview and all
that sort of stuff that we did out there and
trying to point out the topography. The reason this is
so important, o' dave, is that if you're looking at
(52:15):
the profile of somebody that commits a homicide like this.
This is not the kind of location that you're going
to arbitrarily show up at. You have to be purposed
and you have to know because even even when you
get to the location where the old mailbox is, the
(52:36):
road is kind of deceiving. In there, there's like a
little bridge and it's kind of hidden, and it goes
over this creek. If you listen to either side of
where that bridge is, it's not well marked. You're you're
you're into the creek, you know, and you ain't getting
out all right, So you had to find a way.
We believe that, you know, they parked on the side
(52:59):
of the road, leaving their vehicle up there, and then
egressed up to the house. Kenneth, as it turned out,
was also shot. Now Kenneth is there's no there's no
indication that this is like an overkill thing. Perpetrators were
(53:21):
able to gain access through the door of his trailer.
They walked in. He's in bed, popped. They popped him
one time and killed him right there in the bed.
It's a single gunshot went to the head. They exits
place and going, you know, and he was kind of like, Ah,
(53:42):
he's kind of like a forgotten part of this. I
think as a matter of fact, when it seems to me,
if I'm remembering correctly, they were going to go try
to notify him. Wow, you know that his brother is dead.
And again, can you imagine being the investigators in this
(54:03):
case and you wind up we've got another one.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
Well, you've got to remember, Joe, that all the discoveries
started at seven point fifty one in the morning, and
as you said, they're going out, we've got to go
find Kenneth, and not everybody knew even though it was
there within seven miles, not everybody knew how to get
there or where it exactly was. They didn't they were
going to notify him. It was one twenty six in
the afternoon. Yeah, if they thought there was going to
(54:30):
be another crime scene, they'd been there at eight thirty.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
Yeah, And you know what what comes to mind. At
some point in tom one of these investigators had to
ask who who are the members the other members of
the extended road and family. Because we're seeing a pattern
developing here. I would imagine that pretty quickly the phone
(54:55):
started lighting up. You know, anybody that's remotely related you're thinking,
because you I mean, you're looking at somebody that's going
to eradicate an entire line, genetic line of people here.
And I would have to think that that's what is
at play, just the kind of terror that probably gripped
(55:17):
this whole rural area of southern Ohio. They're probably thinking, Oh,
my lord, where's the next victim going to be? Because
this is something that is concentrated on one family. You've
got an individual or individuals that have gone out and
(55:37):
targeted these people specifically and eradicated them. And I can
only imagine, you know, probably when they left Dana's house,
I would imagine, or when they were working Dana's house
and they're trying to put all this together. I'm sure
that there were seasoned investigators day out there that were
beginning to think, this is not drug related, This is
(55:59):
not you know, this is not some kind of cartel
that's come up from Central Americas or Mexico or South America,
whatever location you want to you want to name. This
is something that's very very personal because and again I
look to Hannah Rodin's injuries. You know, out of all
(56:21):
the people you know in this group, what why? Why
is their head gonna be blasted away. You know, why,
why would somebody do this? And as it turned out,
you know, uh, you know, with the the end game here,
it turned out that the perpetrators were much closer, I
(56:42):
think than anybody could have imagined. Wouldn't you agree that?
Speaker 2 (56:45):
You know, they got an arrest done in two and
a half years. So I'm basing on the information that
they started with, you know, coming up with the Wagner
family in two and a half years time and started
to get answers out of them fairly quickly. The reason
we're doing this is because ten years later, we know
(57:06):
that Jake Wagner, who shared the child at the center
of all of this. And I hate to say that
because it's not her fault, but baby Sophia was the reason.
Jake's mama, the grandma, wanted that baby and did not
want the Rodents to have it. She wanted it, and
so the initial was kill Hannah and take the baby.
They even, by the way, the Rodents have been trying
(57:27):
to get Hannah to sign her parental rights over to them,
they brought enough force to bear that Hannah stated in
writing they'd have to kill her because the Rodent family,
Mama Rodin. Actually they hacked Hannah's Facebook page. Yeah, and
(57:49):
the Wagner family. Rather, the Wagners hacked Hannah's Facebook page
and found out her actually writing that for the Wagners,
they're going to have to kill me. So that's what
they did. Bottom line is the bottom line, Joe. It's
been ten years. Everybody's been convicted is serving time except
Billy Wagner, who has been sitting in jail awaiting his term.
(58:10):
But they keep finding ways to change and kick it
down the road. We're now into eight years of waiting,
ten years after the murder. When will Billy Wagner face justice?
When will he see a judge in court? When will
a jury decide that. I don't know if the needle
is available, but by golly, if anybody deserves that kind
(58:31):
of punishment.
Speaker 1 (58:32):
Yeah, well, you know, I think about the status of
Billy Wagner. He said that he's not guilty of anything.
We've got statements from all members of this little you
know cabal that they had, primarily Jake, where the fingers
(58:54):
are all pointing at Billy and no, I still to
this day don't believe that that Billy is is He's
not the central force behind this. I will always hold
that it's Mama that's pulling the strings behind it. But
I don't really care. What I do care about, though,
(59:15):
is the fact that he still has yet to go
to court, and he deserves his day in court, whatever
form that's going to take. I know that there have
been multiple offers that have been made he has rejected.
He has not rolled over on anything. You know, Jake did,
in fact roll over. He testified against his brother in
(59:36):
open court, and he essentially did it to save his
own skin. And his mother did the same thing. She
was compelled. You know that if you make this agreement
with us, you will live, You will not be on
death row. But I think that the goal was was
(59:59):
to try to get everybody on the same page, and
for whatever reason, Billy Wagner has decided not to. Maybe
in his heart of hearts he believes that he is
not guilty. But I know this, it's a sad, sad commentary.
I think to this point that this has gone on
(01:00:21):
so long, and friends, I got to tell you something,
I don't know how much longer it will go on.
I'm hoping that you know, they talk about the wheels
of justice all the time, I'm hoping that they will
begin to move, But until that day, all we have
(01:00:43):
are the memories, the memories of a family that in
one night, in one night, were eradicated, and in addition
to that, a community was less scarred forever. I'm Joseph
(01:01:05):
Scott Morgan and this is Body Back
Quody dots with Joseph's gotten more. You ever had somebody
that owed your money and you gave it to them,
I guess initially because you saw them in need. They
promised you to repay you and it just never happened.
It's disappointing, and it's I don't know. I love forgiving debt,
(00:25):
you know, I think it's a cool thing to be
able to do that. Don't worry about it. You don't
have to pay me. But you know, there are just
some debts that have to be addressed. They are outstanding
balances and a lot of places and there is well
I'll put it to you this way, we're left wanting, and
(00:48):
certainly in the case of the Pikedon massacre, we are
in fact left wanting because did you know that, still,
to date, ten years after the there is still one
individual that, of course has been charged. They have pled
(01:08):
not guilty, but there's no trial, nothing. It's still hanging
out there in the ether like a bad smell that
just will not go away. Of course, I'm talking about
(01:28):
Billy Wagner. To date, he still has yet to go
to trial, and that's one of the reasons that makes
the tenure anniversary of this master it's poignant, as tragic
as it is, we still don't have a full accounting
(01:49):
from a legal perspective. But let's have a discussion about it.
Let's talk about it ten years on. This is part
two of our coverage of the ten year anniversary of
the piked In massacre. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
(02:10):
is body Bags. It does kind of leave a bad
taste in your mouth, doesn't it, Brother Dave. You know,
when you've got somebody that's out there and they have
just been the clock has been ticking, you know, whether
whether or not he goes to trial and is found
(02:32):
guilty or not guilty. It's just it's such a tragic
state of affairs that there's no there's no finality to it.
Twist your guts about it.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
This bothered me because of your because of your not
interest but involvement in the case. It bothered me that
you know, you were called as an expert and brought
out there and everybody has been dealt with. The arrests
all happened two years after the fact, two and a
(03:06):
half years. It was November of twenty eighteen when the
Wagners were all brought in in charge, and pretty quickly
they were because the evidence was all The police did
a good job. The investigators did a great job laying
out the case of what happened. And yet you went
up there, you walked the scene where you could still
(03:27):
see the remnants of family life. You mentioned the tricycle
on the deck and things like that, and yet Billy Wagner,
six foot six, two hundred and seventy five, mountain of
a man in quotes, has yet to stand for trial.
These people are dead ten years. They've had him in
(03:48):
custody eight years. How is that any kind of justice?
Speaker 1 (03:53):
You know? I got in a sort of quote here.
I'm glad you said something about this, because you have
a way day of prying information out of my subconscious
I had forgotten all about this. There was a quote
that was attributed to Billy, and I think this was
per Jake, if I'm not mistaken, you know, kind of
flipping back through my files, what Billy is alleged to
(04:17):
have said when leaving this slaughter that took place in
Chris Rodent's home, which is where all this kind of
kicked off. Is he he was heard to say and
something to this effect I just killed my best friend. Yeah,
(04:39):
I just killed my best friend. And you know, when
I when I visited these these sites, And keep in mind,
I want everybody to full, you know, full disclosure here
when I visited sites. You know, obviously the trailers had
long since been removed by that time. But you can
get a you get a sense of space there and
(05:03):
you know, to wax, I guess a bit spiritual here.
On one level, people always ask me, Uh, you know,
you've been around the dead so much. You know, how
many times have you encountered a ghost and you know,
like you have some kind of apparition, you know that
kind of appears before you. That's never happened to me,
(05:25):
you know, over the course of all these years of
being around all that dead. But Dave, I submit to
you that there are places and this has happened more
than just simply up and up in pat Kennty, Ohio.
There are places I believe that are haunted. You go
there and you just I don't know if you've ever
had this happen. I guess some people might call it
(05:45):
the willies or whatever you call it. But there's just
this kind of corkscrew sensation, you know that runs up
you back when I had that feeling while I was there.
You know, it feels like this environment you know, was
I don't know. I don't want a curse, evil haunted,
(06:07):
however you want to place it. There was that you could.
You could just feel it, you know, in the air there.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Well as you're walking on property that you knew victims
had walked on and lived on. This was their life,
this is where they lived. And you when you live
that close to your relatives, there is a real safety
in numbers kind of a thinking, you know, having family
around and that area, that land somewhat becomes hallowed ground
(06:39):
for them, and it does when you step into it,
it has to shake you. I will tell you that
there are areas since my wife passed in our backyard
that that I can't walk in and it's and that's
what I was thinking when you were talking about being
on that property. I was thinking about the living people
(07:00):
who were there, that they didn't do anything. You've got
to remember friends, Billy Whack and you're saying I just
killed my best friend, and he's talking about Chris Road
and Senior. These guys are all grown up together, you know,
is that who he's talking.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
About Yeah, yeah he was. And you know, not to
mention I'm thinking about you know, Chris, you know, in
life he could have well, I guess potentially he could
have been standing in his front yard at that location
and looked over into the yard of his son Frankie,
(07:33):
and you know, and I can just hear, hey, boy,
how's it going today? What ch'all doing for supper tonight?
You know that sort of thing? Yeah, all that stuff
is is gone, you know, in a vapor. You know,
it's just you know, like this all because of you know,
this thing and in this little bitty space Dave, in
this little I say little bitty, but you understand I'm saying,
(07:55):
you know, because we're talking about people you know that
are kith and Ken. They live with the exception one.
They all live in this one area, within a mile
or so of each other. And for good and for bad. Right,
we've got a couple here that minds you. And this
goes to I think to the character of Chris Road
(08:16):
when we look at Dana, who lived back up the
road from him, Dave. They were divorced. Now, I don't
know about most divorced situations, but there are not too
many people that would want to live on the same
road with the person that they were divorced from. And
not only that helped her with her house that was,
(08:37):
you know, a separate mobile home that got enclosed. It's
not you know, I'm not going to get into some
big thing here. It's not that you no longer love
the person. You know what I'm saying. Some people are
just not compatible. It just doesn't work out. The road
had been tough, and we've heard all of this about
the relationship, you know, between Dane and Chris Sor. But
(09:00):
yet here we are, you know, in spite of everything,
and that one night, you know, their their lives, you know,
are are gone, you know, in an instant, except for God,
and this this is the horror of it, Except for
those babies that were present at those in those environments.
You know again, Mommy and Daddy, they're they're playing zombie, right,
(09:23):
you know, you know, and that that very holding.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Let's get that broken down, Joe, okay, because you have
been there, and I didn't realize. I had read about
the rodents, you know, but I hadn't walked the path,
you know, I hadn't seen I knew that, I knew
that Chris had spent time and money to help Dana
have a beautiful home, and I always felt like he
did as an example to his sons, to show them
(09:49):
how you treat people that you have a relationship with,
that you go above beyond, because Chris didn't. He was
in a single white trailer with with junk in the
front yard fixing it, you know, but his ex wife,
she had a beautify landscape yard and a beautiful home
that he've helped work on. So I thought that he
was setting an example for his son to look at
(10:10):
and say, that's how you treat people. You know.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, yeah, I do is. And so now I think
that that goes to the DNA of I think it too.
And maybe you know, some people think, well more than
you're just being Pollyanna about all this, and that's not
the case. Well, if you took a jaded view of it,
I guess you could. But you know, look, I don't
know I can't recall off the top of my head
anybody else I know that's doing that. I'm sure that
(10:33):
there are people out there, but certainly not under these
circumstances where everybody winds up getting slaughtered. Yeah, you know,
and that certainly puts a real, you know, microscope on
the relationship, the familiar relationship, and I think that goes
to the perpetrators as well.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And it goes down to what you mentioned a minute
ago about I just killed my best friend Billy Wagner
and Chris Rodent and their children Jake Wagner, Billy Wagner's
son and Hannah now Gilly, but at the time Hannah
Rodin the thirteen year old Chris and they be That's
(11:10):
why that relationship seemed okay, the fact that southern Ohio
near Kentucky and all that. I've heard the jokes about
all that, but it's not it's pasted the joking phase
and into there was an established relationship between those two
that begot a child. And it wasn't a fight from
the Rodents standpoint. The fight was from Jake Wagner and
(11:33):
his mother. Yes, and based on everything we know now
that Jake and by the way, Jake Wagner has been
sent you know, he has admitted the murders. He has
copp to five murders, actually pulling the trigger on five.
That leaves three for Billy to cop to at some point.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
But yeah, and then you know, you've got you've got
another son too. Yeah, yeah, you've got George that's involved
with He was according to him, he was incapable of
pulling a trigger. You know, because when they showed up,
when they showed up at Chris's trailer that night, uh,
it was Billy, you know, operating the vehicle. They had
(12:15):
created actually a faux bottom in the back of the
pickup truck so that when they approached in the truck,
it you could not see these two let's call them
what they are, assassins.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
What I actually heard that that's the first timer that Okay, yeah,
so one second, can you tell me before we do
the truck let me go back to in the planning
stages of this assassination of the Rodent family. Yeah, Mama
Wagner going to Walmart and buying the shoes, right, talk
to me about how that came about.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Oh my god, well, you know, there's a bloody It
turns out there was a bloody footprint. It's a transfer
print that they found on the floor inside of Crew
Chris's domicile there and the tread pattern that they had,
and this goes there's a real hero that worked in
my estimation, you know, I don't know that she's gotten
(13:13):
the credit that she should, but she worked for the
State of Ohio and she was one of these forensic
scientists that was in their print section, and she felt
like she could she could solve this mystery. You know
about shoe You know what, how many patterns are there
out there and when you look at the wear patterns
(13:36):
on shoes. I was just having this discussion. We just
finished up our academic year at jack stateon one of
the last things I talked about is in print evidence.
As far as tire treads and shoe Prince God kind
of teach those two sections together. You and I can
go out and we can go to Walmart if you
(13:59):
want to, and we'll buy the same identical workshoe, right,
and you might wear yours. I've got mine sitting on
the shelf. Well, after just a day of you going
to work in your shoes, even if you're not working
on construction site, even if you're just I don't know,
you get an office job and you're walking down the
sidewalk from your driveway to your car, I mean from
(14:19):
your house to your car and the driveway, go to work,
get out of the car, walk into the office, did
you know that tread pattern on that shoe, even though
it's the same brand that I bought, is actually going
to change in that period of time. Wow, what they
were seeing was this tread pattern, was the fact that
this thing's fresh, that there's not you don't have distinctive
(14:41):
wear patterns like if you We talked about this the
other day with Nancy Grace about the Missy Beaver's case
with you know, she always uses term term on grain
used to use all the time, slew footed. You know,
the person that's caught on videoiography inside of that Church
(15:01):
of Christ, they're slew footed. So what that means is
that they're kind of duck footed. They pronate, which means
when you pronate, you roll over to the arches of
your feet and you walk in that particular manner. Well,
that person and any other person that you know, whether
you pronate or superinnate, you're going to impress on the
(15:24):
sole of that shoe the way you walk. Well, Dave,
this one print that they had there at that scene,
there was nowhere to it. And so you know she's
scratching her head this forensic sciences, God bless her man
where she is right now? She took it upon herself
because they didn't. I don't think they had this print
in the database. She went to wally World, we always
(15:48):
call it wally Wood. She went to Wallywood and started
looking at shoes. Man, you know, you talk about you
talk about old school detective work, and she's not even
a detective. She's a forensic science. So she's gonna she
don't solve this puzzle, and I'll be dog gone if
she didn't. She didn't come up with this with this
particular shoe that was manufactured for the Walmart company, whoever
(16:11):
the manufacturer is, and she was able to acquire those
shoes and marry up those patterns. Right. Well, you couple that,
you know when Mama, as you had mentioned earlier, the
rocket scientist that she is. You know, they're trying to
be real cool. We're going to be and this is
so comically stupid that you're going to go into a
(16:37):
store that has got cameras everywhere. They've got their own
security people that actually watch cameras that you never see.
You know that they're looking, you know, their lost prevention people.
They've got videography of her checking out at Walmart with
the shoes. Yeah, and I'm thinking, yeah, you're boy. I
(16:57):
tell you what, You're a real criminal genius here, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
But still, you know, Joe I thought, and this is me, Okay,
she had the wherewithal to know that if I let
those boys, the men of my house, go out on
a murdering spree and they wear their own shoes going in,
they're going to figure out something. But if I go
buy these new shoes at Walmart that have no tread
(17:22):
to have them wear them for just this killing spree, boom.
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, you're right. And that listen, that activity in and
of itself, not being a lawyer, yeah, but that activity
in and of itself kind of frames out a premeditative
event you're planning, that're planning planning. Yeah, and again I'm
going back to that kitchen table, you know, surrounded by
the wicker baskets right now.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
But Joe, yeah, now you're in the back of the truck. Okay,
she's already got them thinking the shoes, but the back
of the truck. I had not heard that until now.
So they actually went so far as to plan their arrival,
not just the shoe wear pattern that needed to be unique.
I mean, now it needed to be neutral because you
got brand new shoes on. They got no wear pattern.
(18:08):
These are all brand new shoes, so they're not going
to be able to pend it on you. But they
actually lowered the bed.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yeah. Well yeah, they built in a faux bottom that's
been described to me, and there's like a covering over
it so that you could not see, like you if
you stood on Chris's stoop, you know that those built
in stoops that, by the way, were still there. You know,
I talked about the tricycle earlier. So if you stood
(18:35):
on that stoop at at Chris's place and you looked
out at a vehicle that's parked in front of your house,
you're not going to see anybody other than Billy Wagner.
So he gets out of the vehicle in order to
go engage in conversation with Chris. Right, he goes up,
(18:56):
knocks on the door, and a conversation ensuit. And there's
been multiple you know, ideas put forward about you know,
what the conversation entailed was it did it have something
to do with you know, weed, you know, or we
going to transact something and whatnot. And the plan was
(19:18):
was that as soon as as soon as Billy stepped
away and got clear. That's when the other two, you know,
going to come out and blazing. Well, George never pulled
the trigger, according to him, all right, he never pulls trigger.
To give you an idea of the level of violence.
(19:40):
You remember we talked about how many times how many
times Chris shot, Well, he was adjacent to a frame,
you know, like the doorframe, which, by the way, you know,
you think about if you're trying to shure yourself up
relative to a doorframe or relative to being shot at
a door frame, aim is kind of you'd rather be
(20:02):
adjacent to a doorframe than than a wall, particularly in
a trailerhouse, because it's going to pass through the aluminum siding,
the insulation, and go through you know, the faux paneling
inside our drywall. At least well he had he had
splinters that had blasted into his face, you know, because
you've got an s KS round, which is it's not
(20:25):
it's not an AK forty seven, but there are Russian
and Chinese versions of an s KS. It's got an
indwelling magazine where you have to load this thing and
it's semi automatic, and they had one of these things
in rip you to shreds. You're uh, you're talking about
a very robust round. Uh that if you were trying
(20:47):
to think about it in American terms, it's really really
close to like a three or eight you know, high
powered rifle round, and it is high powered. Well, you know,
and all hell broke loose at that point, Tom and
that's when they you know, they did, in fact, you know,
enter enter the residence, and of course, uh, Chris is
(21:12):
is shot down and uh, you know he's he's riddled
u riddled with uh with rounds. He's got wounds to
his head, his torso you know.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Bullets that are that big.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Well, yeah, and uh you've got and and then you know,
on on top of that, Uh, the the person that
you know kind of gets left in the wake is Gary.
Gary Roaden was there. He's uh, he's you know, thirty
(21:51):
eight years old. He's staying with Chris. He works, you know,
works doing landscaping and whatnot. You know, they're they're you know,
kind of roused about guys you know that'll that'll do
anything scratch out of living. Well, he shot, you know,
Gary shot multiple times in the head as well. And
(22:11):
of course it's a it's a bloody mess. And so
you know, when I approached that sceneing day, when I
was walking up there. I went up there a couple
of times. When I walked up there, I tried to envision,
you know, what it would have been like walking in
to this spot and then making your way through, you know,
(22:32):
the main receiving area, which is kind of the living
room if you will, of the trailer back to your
right is going to be the kitchen area that's generally
on that end. And then you've got that narrow hallway
you know, that kind of leads down where the bedrooms
are off of and you know, you it's a weird
thing to do to go out there and try to,
(22:53):
you know, set yourself down in that place absent the structure. Now,
that's an odd thing when you think about it. You know,
I'm reflecting now back to Idaho, you know, where the
building no longer exists, you know, and that's a multi story.
There's no way in your mind that you you know
that I could go out there and conjured up. But
in my little mind, you know, I can do that,
(23:14):
you know, kind of with a trailer. And I'm beginning,
you know, thinking about the progression of an individual or
individuals entering into into this place, and you know, the shooting,
shooting takes place, and this masker takes place. What what really,
what really gets me about this is if if you
(23:35):
were standing in front of Chris's place and you're popping
off rounds with this sks, dude, if you could stand outside,
face this trailer and look back to your right, you
see the barn, which, by the way, they had electronic
surveillance equipment in there, the rodents did, and that had
(23:58):
been taken all right. There was an awareness of surveillance,
all right. Again that goes to people that are familiar,
you know, with this environment. You know you've been there.
You know, how do you know that this is there?
That's taken out and just on the other side of
that barn you can't see Frankie's trailer. Well you're doing
this in the middle of the night, and I don't care.
(24:20):
You're not in some big urban area, all right, where
Frankie and his fiancee, who by the way, is also
named Hannah, where they just sound asleep at that point
in time, with those babies in the house. They didn't
hear this, They didn't hear the sks go off or
(24:41):
the other weapons that may have been used at this site.
And so that's that's a real risk that you're taking.
And I here's one thought that I had about this.
I really wondered if at first and early on I
thought about this. I was wondering, now, did they get
(25:01):
in there and realize that there was so much confusion
that it was so loud. It's at that moment in time,
everybody else that's got to die. You know, we're just
going to run down the road here, we're going to
for a next stop. We're going to Frankie's house. We're
going to kill everybody there. Oh and by the bye,
we're going to go back up the road to Dana's
(25:22):
house and we're going to kill three people there. You know,
you never know, you know, kind of and I know
that they had this all planned out, but you know,
as an investigator, if you show up at a scene,
you're trying to understand the progression. And this is I
cannot put myself in the place of these investigators. I've
never worked a multi scene debt investigation where you've got
(25:45):
four homicide scenes with multiple victims. You know, you're trying
to do the arithmetic in your brain how does this
all work out? You know, what was kind of you know,
what was a spark that set this whole thing off?
You know, and when you're coming into a cold you know,
now we've got information after the fact, but you know,
(26:07):
I can just imagine, you know, these these investigators that
were tasked with working the scene at the moment. And
that's what I'm trying to capture here, the idea of
how do you how do you break all this down
in your brain from an investigative standpoint, because I think
that the you, there's part of you, even though initially
(26:29):
you cannot prove it scientifically, and you know, we always
on body backs, we try to reflect back to the science.
In the initial moments, you cannot prove it scientifically that
they're all connected. I think that we want to take
an intellectual leap here and say there's a high probability
that they're all connected, and we're going to have to
treat this as if they are. You know, we talked
(26:50):
about shoe prints. You would have been able to see something.
You certainly would have seen blood. The next thing I'm
looking at is I'm out in front of Chris's house
and I'm looking at tire tracks. I'm thinking, Okay, what's
fresh out here? Remember he's moving cars all over the place,
right what's fresh? Is there anything that pairs up here
(27:10):
that you might find a Frankie's house or is there
a way you can cut through the yard leaving the
vehicle right here and walking to Frankie's house. Is there
anything at Dana's house that connects that might have prints
or something you don't want to disrupt? This is a dave.
This is a nightmare scenario for any investigator that shows
(27:31):
up at the scene like this. It's going on inside
somebody's head. You've just participated in a multiple homicide. What
(27:57):
are you talking about. Let's go, let's saddle up, let's
walk over this direction. You all know where Frankie lives.
You know that he's got a girlfriend, Hannah, Hannah Gilly.
You know that there's kids. Do you do you just
(28:20):
go and barge in? Do you go and just eradicate everybody? Well,
apparently you know when the perpetrators made their way over
to Frankie's place, that's what happened. You there's one descriptor
(28:46):
that really stands out here. Uh there, they're murders. That
is the murders of Hannah and Frankie. One of the
one of the witnesses, you know, said that there was
just blood everywhere. And keep in mind, oh God, I
(29:09):
hate to talk about this, but we're going to there's
six months old laying in between mom and daddy in
a shared space. It's a little bedroom child six months old.
All right, child is alive. But when the child is
(29:29):
retrieved from the scene, Dave, that child is just saturated
in blood. As a matter of fact, one of the
you know, one of the things that kind of jumps
to mind for me is they were talking about and
this child's name is Ruger. Is Ruger. One of the
things that comes to mind for me is when you
(29:52):
have somebody that is covered with blood, particularly a child,
you're looking for an origin for blood, right, because one
of the things that EMTs and even even and certainly
us and within within the medical legal world, we're looking
for a source, right, you know, where where's this issuing
forth from? Because you know, people, people don't just spontaneously
(30:16):
start bleeding. You've got to have a defect in the
body somewhere. And the horror that must have crept over everyone,
particularly this poor woman that you know that and her
husband that that wind up, you know, making sure these
(30:40):
kids were safe. You begin to think about what what
you're bearing witness to, and and then it's hours later
when you begin to think about that the six month
old laid there and wallowed m in the blood of
(31:03):
their deceased parents, just back and over, I mean back
and forth, back and forth, maybe sleeping through the rest
of the night. Child was unharmed. We have another child,
the one that answered the door, You remember, the one
that said, mommy and daddy are playing zombie. How many
(31:24):
times had that child walked down the hallway? You know,
how does that child that in their child like mine?
How is that child able to make this assessment playing zombie?
Did the child in those moments walk up and place
their hands on the flesh of their parents, who had
(31:46):
loved them, who had soothed them, and their skin is
cold to the touch. You know what small child is
able to come up with the word zombie because zombie
eyes dead. And even even that child is able to
communicate that to the finder. In this particular case, the
(32:10):
horror that's involved here, You know, when you you you know,
you look at at Frankie and and Hannah. You know
in the bed there. They they haven't done anything, Dave.
They you know that it's not it's not like they're
some kind of malevolent force in the university. This this
(32:32):
mama Hannah who's got her six month old Leyden adjacent
to her, which one is. You know, people go on
and on about coat sleeping and all that. We're not
going down that road. There's something very sweet about having
your little child and you're able to comfort them in
the bed with mom and dad. I've done that. They
shot her multiple times in the head. Dave shot her
(32:55):
multiple multiple times. Frankie, he shot in the head, and
this would have been We've talked about this with head
injuries on body bags for a long time. Now. You
bleed so profusely, you know, and it's not just the
initial high velocity kind of blast that you get. It's
(33:19):
that kind of seeping that goes on because the head
is so vascular, and that's that's what the six month
old was was subjected to at this point. Because now
you begin to look at the forensic science behind this,
you know that you've got containment on the mattress and
the walls, because you've got deposition on the walls because
(33:41):
of this dynamic blood deposition from these blasts, and then
it's seeping through through the mattress. I've you know, and
I've had this happen with people that are killed in beds.
It's not just the mattress, it's the box springs as well,
it's the headboard, it goes at the pillows, it goes everywhere.
(34:02):
And so if you're looking, like if we're looking for
trace evidence on a surface like that, it gets very
very confusing. You've got comingled DNA blood here. You're trying
to sust this out. You don't see any evidence that
anybody remove themselves from this environment, like to try to
thwart an attack or anything like that. You've got them
(34:24):
laying here, contained in one area, and just trying to
take take in the totality of what you're what you're
viewing here. And here's the thing about it. After the
perpetrators left Frankie's home, I go back to conversation, what
(34:50):
kind of conversation you're going to have now between the
three of you, What exactly are you going to say?
You know what? What? What is it? Because you know
there was another vehicle that was there, and I think
I misspoke earlier, but you had there was a travel
(35:10):
along vehicle that they had brought with them as well.
Where what they had done is after they had perpetrated
these crumbs, they went back up the road to Dana's house. Okay,
So what's that conversation like in the truck? You know,
you know, it's like, you know, after the big game,
we're going to break it down and see where we
(35:31):
went where it's halftime. It's you know, right now, we're
only at halftime. We've made it to halftime with the
slaughter we're engaged in. We're going to break it down.
See how we do in the second half. Boys, what
kind of conversation do monsters have amongst themselves? Do they
ride there quietly? Is anybody showing any emotion at this
(35:51):
point in time? Weeping? Is anybody white knuckling the steering wheel?
Is there anybody that's saying this is too much? This
is too much, We can't go any further. But yet
here we are, here, we are to go back up
the road to Dana's home, which we had talked about
(36:15):
relative to what Chris had helped her build out, and
I would assume other members of the family, but Chris
in and of himself being the person that he was,
he wanted to make sure his ex wife and his
grand baby and his children had a roof over their head,
maybe the safest, most secure place that you can imagine.
(36:36):
That's the one thing that has always stuck with me
in covering the Packton Masacre Day is the idea of
what kind of conversations have taken place. And I'm not
talking about from a Gore standpoint or you know, just
I'm talking about in dwelling the moment relative to you
(36:58):
understand what you have just perpetrated. And there's day, there's
no pause, there's no pause.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Well, they're headed to the actual original source. The original
plan was to kill Hannah may Rodin. That was the
original plan of the Wagner family. If we kill her
she's the mother of baby Sophia, then Jake will get
baby Sophia and the Wagoners will have the baby. But
(37:28):
then they took it out. Well, if she's not there,
then her mama, her daddy, you know, and all these
other relatives they'll be in line to get custody and
have access to this child. Got to get rid of
all of them. So now, as you mentioned Billy has
already killed his best friend, his best friend's cousin. They've
killed two innocent people here. I mean, everybody in this
(37:51):
line is innocent. Nobody deserves what happened. And now after
four people are already dead, two children have already been
traumatized for life based on what they're going to be told,
the three year old son of Frankie and the six
month old child of the couple. Now they're headed to
Dana's to go and kill Hannah may Rodin because she
(38:12):
was the mother of baby Sophia.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yeah. Yeah, and you know you're back in mama's house.
She's young, she's very young now, obviously nineteen. Yeah, she's
already had the second one, Sophia. You know, she's already
had Sophia. She knows what it's like to be a mother.
She doesn't have means. She's going to live with her
(38:37):
mama in this nice little house.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
She's just a second child, Joe.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yeah. Yeah. And there's a there is a sixteen year
old boy that's involved in this too, because he still
loses This kid's This kid is in school, Dave. This
is Chris Junior. You know, he's in schools. He's loved
by his classmates. He's a good kid. From what we understand.
(39:04):
He's you know, you know, just think about when you
were sixteen years old. I'm saying that to everybody that's
listening to us right now. You know, you have cares,
but there you haven't gotten to that point in life
where they're where they're just absolutely crushing you about mortgages
and all the stuff you're thinking about. You know, the
next time you can get together with your friends. You're
(39:24):
thinking about the homework that you hate to do. You're
thinking about the girl that you want to have a
conversation with. You're thinking about the next ball season, or
when you're gonna go hunting, when you're going to go fishing.
Homeside was not on the menu in the sixteen year
old's mind. But there he is. He's he's in he's
in this home. He's in this home, in his mother's home.
(39:48):
And when you know, Dana is discovered. She's actually discovered
by her brother, who is a James Many. He had come,
you know, he and his wife had had gone to
you know, that's how the initial discovery with Chris. When
(40:12):
they get back down to Dana's house and they make
entry into there. You know. He he walks, he walks
back to Dana's bedroom and when he sees I'm sure
he calls out to her. No answer. She's actually, if
(40:34):
my memory is serving me correctly, Dave, she had a
pillow over her face. She had a pillover face, Dana
did in her bed. And he removes with some difficulty
to pillow and then see what's happened, and he's leaving.
Now imagine this. He's leaving walking out, mister Manley is
(40:58):
and he hears the cooing of a baby, and he
can't go back in. His wife has to go in.
She finds she finds Hannah dead, with her breast exposed
and the baby lying adjacent to her where she had
been left by the perpetrator, who, by the way, turns
(41:19):
out to be Jake, the kid that had impregnated her
and had fathered Sophia with her, you know, And I
guess some active humanity on his part or whatever it is,
he ends her life. But yet he takes the child
to place there to suckle at the deceased mother mother's
(41:44):
breast there, and you know, eradicated her in that environment.
And oh, by the way, yeah, we killed Chris Junior
as well. So you've got you've got these three environments
where multiple blood baths have taken place, and these are
I mean, this is this is the stuff of nightmares,
(42:09):
you know, thinking about how all of this went down,
and it went down to the point where nobody heard
it at all. And again, the farming community houses are
kind of spread out, but that sound had to be echoing,
(42:32):
you know, in the ears of the individuals that did this,
that there was even one one account, you know, where
you could where there was an awareness, I think on
Dana's Park. You know that Jake had related that Dana
she saw, she saw him, she recognized him, and and
(42:55):
she was on her phone. Actually her face was illuminated,
according to him, by her phone, and she laid in
bed Dana.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Mm hm. So Hannah may Rodin is shot five times
in the head, and then, in an act of compassion
and humanity, the person who shoots her five times in
the head, blowing her head off, pretty much lays the
baby at her breast. Yes, yeah, yeah, that's a class act.
(43:24):
Five times in the head is overkilled to the bought.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
I mean, come on, yeah, I know, you know one
you know, one one shot would have been sufficient. And
that's that's so so grotesque anyway, just a singular shot.
But you know, when you're thinking about and you're doing
this immediately adjacent to a newborn baby day, yeah, uh,
and it's it's hard to it's really hard to take
(43:48):
the measure of it. And I can again, reflecting back,
it's been ten years. You know, the investigators that that
had to process this, and I'm I don't just mean
processed this in a sense of their processing the scene.
I mean process this. You know, how do you take
the measure of it? How do you begin to understand it?
But you know, that's what separates good investigators from the
(44:11):
rest of them. You're able to disassociate yourself from the horror.
It's really really tough to pry yourself away from that
because the entire time you're looking at this massacre, but
yet you're trying to really dig into to how this happened.
You're looking for things like sequencing. You know, who was
(44:32):
killed first, who was who was not a target as
opposed you know, you look at Hannah and give me
that number one more time, refresh my memory.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Five times, five times in the head. The sixteen year
old brother was shot once in the head and Dana
was shot in the head and neck.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Yeah, so you're trying to piece this thing together, and
it's you're thinking that you're done, I guess is what
it comes down to. You're thinking that you're done as
an investigator. You know, what more can there possibly be? Well,
(45:16):
I got to tell you there was more. And the
more came down to the fact that there was still
another victim, a victim that lived on a location that
even the authorities had a difficult time trying to understand
where their jurisdiction ended. And another one began. David. The
(45:56):
first time I had gone up to piked In, I
had not. I had not visited every scene. I visited
all of the scenes on Union Hill Road, Dana's house,
uh Denis had the locations of Dana's home, Frankie's home
(46:18):
of course, chris Is home.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
But those are close together, right, I mean they were.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
They were, and I kept hearing with the first visit. Look,
there's it's seven miles away, well seven miles away for
you and I where we live, you know there, We've
got a lot of countryside around us, but pretty much
we seven miles is no big deal. Right when I
(46:44):
began to take a look around where we were, I'm thinking,
where do I go from here? Seven miles? Because the
road just seems like it got skinnier and skinnier everywhere
I looked. And sure enough, the second time I went up,
I went up with a film crew. We had drones
with us and all kinds of all manner of stuff
that was going on, and we drove what seemed like
(47:09):
forever to get to the location of the person that
was leading kind of the caravan that we were in
had already previously. You know, when you go out on
these these shoots for these television programs and whatnot, they
have these people, I know, you get them in like
fictionalized entertainment, but they scout this area out. You know,
you always hear about location scouts, you know that do
(47:31):
that in fictional You know, they're looking for the right
This is already set in stone. So they had gone
out and scouted the area to figure out where we
were going to set up. We knew where the house
was was being the functional word there, Dave. When I
finally got there, it was at it was like at
(47:52):
the intersection of one dirt road and another dirt road, okay.
And what was really weird is that when we pulled up,
When we pulled up at this final location, there's something
that was odd that really stood out to me. I
saw an old weather mailbox, and you know, you can
(48:17):
find those anywhere out through a rural America. But adjacent
to the to the mailbox, there was a busted up
old boat that just was kind of sitting there. Now
there's a stream that runs right behind it. But when
I say stream, I literally mean like a creek. It's
like a tiny little body of water. There's just this
(48:40):
arbitrarily like an old abandoned boat that was laying there.
If I remember correctly, it's inverted, and it actually had
a hole in it, you know, And that marked that
that actually marked the location of where Kenneth Roden lived.
(49:00):
Kenneth was the brother. He's forty four years old. He's
the older brother of Chris, and he again he had
knock around jobs. He had his own family, but he
lived day in. It's not a mobile home. It's like
(49:25):
a camper, all right. My friends in Great Britain would
call it a caravan. But he had taken this this
old camper. And when I say it's small. It's small.
It's not like a tear drop. But it had like
a little kitchenett in. It had a bed, had a
little you know, sitting area, and a laboratory place you
(49:46):
could go to the bathroom. But he had gotten this thing
backed up into the woods and he built a deck
around it. And the reason I know that there were
still remnants of the deck there.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Because they took the trailer. Yeah, okay, yeah, they.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Had to take the trailer out of there, so you
had this big space, but you could see, you know,
kind of the skeletal remains the framework of everything that
kind of endwell there. And Kenneth had jobs and had
a job, but he also grew weed. Now, when I
(50:20):
say grow weed again, I don't want you to think
that this is something unlike an industrial scale. All right,
this is the way it has been described to me.
He grew weed for like personal consumption, and there was
probably enough leftover so that he could share it with friends.
All Right, this guy is not he's not scarfaced. He's
not going to be living, you know in Miami.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Beachman trailer out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Yeah, exactly. You had to pump in sunshine to this location.
But the reason, the reason Kenneth's murder is so key
to all of this is this being one of these, uh,
you know, kind of events where they just knew that
(51:06):
they needed to eradicate everybody. He's the oldest. I guess
they felt like he could be a threat sometime in
the future, so they're going to go out to this
man's place and end him. When I remember talking to
the producers of the Piked and Masker documentary, they were
(51:30):
saying that when they were speaking to the police, the
police initially had a really hard time determining whose jurisdiction
this was going to fall in. Was it going to
be Pike County where Pikedon is or was it going
to be the adjacent county because you've they the county's
(51:51):
a butt in this area. We had no phone service
out there at all. I mean, it was just dead
as a hammer, right, and we had to you know,
do all of the shooting and the lighting and you know,
the lighting and the shooting and the interview and all
that sort of stuff that we did out there and
trying to point out the topography. The reason this is
so important, o' dave, is that if you're looking at
(52:15):
the profile of somebody that commits a homicide like this.
This is not the kind of location that you're going
to arbitrarily show up at. You have to be purposed
and you have to know because even even when you
get to the location where the old mailbox is, the
(52:36):
road is kind of deceiving. In there, there's like a
little bridge and it's kind of hidden, and it goes
over this creek. If you listen to either side of
where that bridge is, it's not well marked. You're you're
you're into the creek, you know, and you ain't getting
out all right, So you had to find a way.
We believe that, you know, they parked on the side
(52:59):
of the road, leaving their vehicle up there, and then
egressed up to the house. Kenneth, as it turned out,
was also shot. Now Kenneth is there's no there's no
indication that this is like an overkill thing. Perpetrators were
(53:21):
able to gain access through the door of his trailer.
They walked in. He's in bed, popped. They popped him
one time and killed him right there in the bed.
It's a single gunshot went to the head. They exits
place and going, you know, and he was kind of like, Ah,
(53:42):
he's kind of like a forgotten part of this. I
think as a matter of fact, when it seems to me,
if I'm remembering correctly, they were going to go try
to notify him. Wow, you know that his brother is dead.
And again, can you imagine being the investigators in this
(54:03):
case and you wind up we've got another one.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
Well, you've got to remember, Joe, that all the discoveries
started at seven point fifty one in the morning, and
as you said, they're going out, we've got to go
find Kenneth, and not everybody knew even though it was
there within seven miles, not everybody knew how to get
there or where it exactly was. They didn't they were
going to notify him. It was one twenty six in
the afternoon. Yeah, if they thought there was going to
(54:30):
be another crime scene, they'd been there at eight thirty.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
Yeah, And you know what what comes to mind. At
some point in tom one of these investigators had to
ask who who are the members the other members of
the extended road and family. Because we're seeing a pattern
developing here. I would imagine that pretty quickly the phone
(54:55):
started lighting up. You know, anybody that's remotely related you're thinking,
because you I mean, you're looking at somebody that's going
to eradicate an entire line, genetic line of people here.
And I would have to think that that's what is
at play, just the kind of terror that probably gripped
(55:17):
this whole rural area of southern Ohio. They're probably thinking, Oh,
my lord, where's the next victim going to be? Because
this is something that is concentrated on one family. You've
got an individual or individuals that have gone out and
(55:37):
targeted these people specifically and eradicated them. And I can
only imagine, you know, probably when they left Dana's house,
I would imagine, or when they were working Dana's house
and they're trying to put all this together. I'm sure
that there were seasoned investigators day out there that were
beginning to think, this is not drug related, This is
(55:59):
not you know, this is not some kind of cartel
that's come up from Central Americas or Mexico or South America,
whatever location you want to you want to name. This
is something that's very very personal because and again I
look to Hannah Rodin's injuries. You know, out of all
(56:21):
the people you know in this group, what why? Why
is their head gonna be blasted away. You know, why,
why would somebody do this? And as it turned out,
you know, uh, you know, with the the end game here,
it turned out that the perpetrators were much closer, I
(56:42):
think than anybody could have imagined. Wouldn't you agree that?
Speaker 2 (56:45):
You know, they got an arrest done in two and
a half years. So I'm basing on the information that
they started with, you know, coming up with the Wagner
family in two and a half years time and started
to get answers out of them fairly quickly. The reason
we're doing this is because ten years later, we know
(57:06):
that Jake Wagner, who shared the child at the center
of all of this. And I hate to say that
because it's not her fault, but baby Sophia was the reason.
Jake's mama, the grandma, wanted that baby and did not
want the Rodents to have it. She wanted it, and
so the initial was kill Hannah and take the baby.
They even, by the way, the Rodents have been trying
(57:27):
to get Hannah to sign her parental rights over to them,
they brought enough force to bear that Hannah stated in
writing they'd have to kill her because the Rodent family,
Mama Rodin. Actually they hacked Hannah's Facebook page. Yeah, and
(57:49):
the Wagner family. Rather, the Wagners hacked Hannah's Facebook page
and found out her actually writing that for the Wagners,
they're going to have to kill me. So that's what
they did. Bottom line is the bottom line, Joe. It's
been ten years. Everybody's been convicted is serving time except
Billy Wagner, who has been sitting in jail awaiting his term.
(58:10):
But they keep finding ways to change and kick it
down the road. We're now into eight years of waiting,
ten years after the murder. When will Billy Wagner face justice?
When will he see a judge in court? When will
a jury decide that. I don't know if the needle
is available, but by golly, if anybody deserves that kind
(58:31):
of punishment.
Speaker 1 (58:32):
Yeah, well, you know, I think about the status of
Billy Wagner. He said that he's not guilty of anything.
We've got statements from all members of this little you
know cabal that they had, primarily Jake, where the fingers
(58:54):
are all pointing at Billy and no, I still to
this day don't believe that that Billy is is He's
not the central force behind this. I will always hold
that it's Mama that's pulling the strings behind it. But
I don't really care. What I do care about, though,
(59:15):
is the fact that he still has yet to go
to court, and he deserves his day in court, whatever
form that's going to take. I know that there have
been multiple offers that have been made he has rejected.
He has not rolled over on anything. You know, Jake did,
in fact roll over. He testified against his brother in
(59:36):
open court, and he essentially did it to save his
own skin. And his mother did the same thing. She
was compelled. You know that if you make this agreement
with us, you will live, You will not be on
death row. But I think that the goal was was
(59:59):
to try to get everybody on the same page, and
for whatever reason, Billy Wagner has decided not to. Maybe
in his heart of hearts he believes that he is
not guilty. But I know this, it's a sad, sad commentary.
I think to this point that this has gone on
(01:00:21):
so long, and friends, I got to tell you something,
I don't know how much longer it will go on.
I'm hoping that you know, they talk about the wheels
of justice all the time, I'm hoping that they will
begin to move, But until that day, all we have
(01:00:43):
are the memories, the memories of a family that in
one night, in one night, were eradicated, and in addition
to that, a community was less scarred forever. I'm Joseph
(01:01:05):
Scott Morgan and this is Body Back
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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