September 9, 2020 • 35 mins
With the Wagner family attempting to start a new life in Alaska, the investigation into the Rhoden murders in Piketon, Ohio moves forward.
Episode seven tracks authorities’ moves as they narrow in on their suspects. We'll also explore another surprising move made by the Wagner family and the discovery of a key piece of evidence that leads to their arrests.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the piked In Massacre, A production of iHeartRadio
and KAT Studios, Episode seven, four thousand Miles Away. I'm
Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Kati's Studios, with Stephanie
Leidecker and Jeff Shane. After the Rodent family was brutally
gunned down in their homes, authorities embarked in what would
(00:22):
become the largest homicide investigation in Ohio's history. Over the
course of the case's first year, law enforcement officers began
compiling a staggering amount of clues that they hoped would
lead to the killers.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Ohio Attorney General Mike Dwine, giving an update in the
Pike County murders.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
You received eight hundred and eighty three tips. We have
conducted four hundred and sixty.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Five interviews, the Wine says.
Speaker 5 (00:44):
There have also been thirty eight search warns issued, but
so far new arrest.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I think that we've made significant progress.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
But by early twenty seventeen, the evidence that authorities had
collected was pointing them towards one group of people, in particular,
the Wagner family. That spring, with the case heating up,
the Wagners decided to leave the Piked in area with
Jake Wagner and Hannah Rodin's daughter Sophia until they sold
their farm, packed up their belongings, and drove four thousand
miles north to Keenei, Alaska, a city of about eight
(01:17):
thousand people southwest of Anchorage. It was a move that
Wagner relative Deray not only encouraged, but conceived of.
Speaker 6 (01:26):
They had been wanting to move to Alaska for a
while because the pastor of the church moved there. He's
very important headstone in their family. I'm the one that
told him go to Alaska. Number one, the state of
Ohio can not afford to extradite you from Alaska back home.
I just thought it was the griatest that they took off.
(01:48):
I said, that's the best thing in the world for
the kids, and it's the best thing in the world
for you, guys.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
The family quickly got settled in keen I. They lived
together in a double white trailer on a large piece
of property. Billy and Angela even registered to vote. Jeff
talked to one of the Wagner's family relatives who kept
in touch with them while they were in Alaska. She
asked us not to use her name, but told us
about their life once they arrived.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
What was their life like in Alaska?
Speaker 7 (02:14):
Well, Jake has got a job, it was a construction
type business. Angela didn't work. I think she might have
done some things from like home or the Annett or
something like that. And Bill, I'm not sure what he
did exactly, but they did have a very nice home
in Alaska that they were in the process of trying
to buy from what I understand anyways, and Jake he
(02:38):
had Sophia at the time, and they just kind of
work get in by.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
The Wagner's sudden departure left the whole town of piped
and bewildered and suspicious. Dana Roden's friend Stephanne remembers the
day she heard the news. She shared her thoughts with Jeff.
Speaker 8 (02:55):
Well, when they left for Alaska, I was like, Oh, wow,
they're gonna they're running, you know, they're running. And then
I thought they'll get away with it if they did this,
if they did this, they will get away with it.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Or people talking about the Wagners, like, was the feeling
that they might have been guilty or what were people
thinking or speculating in town.
Speaker 8 (03:18):
Yeah, they pretty much thought that, you know that was
the that was the deal.
Speaker 5 (03:26):
They were running from it.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
But the Wagner's relocation didn't hinder the investigation. According to
reporter James Pilcher, it only helped to move the case forward.
Speaker 9 (03:37):
They moved to Alaska, which raised even more suspicion. But
then the very following month, law enforcement actually finally searches
the properties where the Wagners lived. So that was really
the first public indication that the Wagners were possible suspects,
if not people of interest, So that started to tighten
the noose in terms of the Wagner's.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
On June sixth, twenty seventeen, as the investigation pressed on,
Attorney General Mike DeWine appealed to the public for information
connecting the Wagoners to the crime.
Speaker 10 (04:09):
Investigators want any information about the family, including information about vehicles, guns,
and ammunition. Anyone with information is asked.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
To call the past uns.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Investigative journalists Jodi Barr recalled the Attorney General's announcement.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Other than being on the ground in Tight County and
hearing the Waggers' names come up from time to time
and you had no verifiable leads, or you would exhaust
all leads, that was the first time that anything was
said in public from anybody with this investigation that they
may have people that they were looking at and who
potentially had something to do with this, and at that time,
(04:43):
no one knew the extent of the involvement that the
investigators believed the Waggers may have had. It was just
they were asking for help, and that seemed really strange.
But it also, on the other hand, it connected some
of the pieces that we had heard in the beginning,
you know, that maybe gave more weight to the custody
issues that we were trying to dig into before.
Speaker 9 (05:05):
But it was still just it was still.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Confusing that they would come out and say that and
no arrests made, no indictments made, but yet they were
asking for help to identify Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Is that unusual that they would just kind of like
blatantly say a name and be like, does anyone know
anything about this person who's not an official suspect or
someone we've arrested.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Even it's just confusing, and I would love to ask, now,
Governor Mike DeWine, you know why they played it the
way they played it, You know, did they know what
they needed to know?
Speaker 7 (05:36):
Then?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Were they trying to have the Wagners make a misstep
when they announced this to the world.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Mike Dewayne's press release prompted the Wagner's family attorney John K. Clark,
to accuse law enforcement of harassing his clients. Here's Jeff,
followed by Stephanie.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
In a statement to the Cincinnati inquire the lawyer said
that the authorities were clueless and competent where they themselves
were involved in a cover up. In short, his clients
were innocent.
Speaker 11 (06:06):
That's because, according to Clark, the Wagners were cooperating with
officials and had provided authorities with everything they had asked for,
including laptops, phones, and DNA willingly, and they also agreed
to repeated interviews with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
Clark even said that the Wagners told BCI agents that
they were in fact moving.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I spoke with former Ohio Prosecutor Mike Allen about the
legal implications of the Wagner's cooperation. What about the Wagners
and their compliance with authorities? I know their lawyer has
said they've cooperated one hundred and ten percent. Can you
talk through the details of.
Speaker 12 (06:42):
That, sure? I mean, from what I understand, they did
turn over some things laptops, phones that they submitted to DNA,
giving exemplars which they could be compelled to do anyway.
Some of them at least were interviewed by Ohio BCI agents,
and I guess they told those agents that they were
traveling and about to move to Atlaska, and they claimed
(07:04):
they had been thinking about that for a long time.
So yeah, I mean, from what I can see, there
was some cooperation. But whether it was one hundred and
ten percent, I don't know. And frankly I doubt because
that rarely happens.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Does that do anything when it comes to juries? You know?
Does that hold sway?
Speaker 12 (07:24):
It can? You know in closing argument and the defense
lawyer could stand up and say to the jury, my client,
you know, he cooperated one hundred and ten percent, you know,
meaning that he has nothing to hide.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
The Cincinnati Inquirer even tracked the family down in Alaska
in July of twenty seventeen. In a published article, Jake
Wagner said that he had moved to give Sophia a
better life. This is Jodi Barr again.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
The Cincinnati Inquirer obviously went there and they found them.
I mean, it was they didn't try to slip off
in the middle of the night. It didn't seem I mean,
if a reporter could find them, then obviously law enforcement
knew very much where they were at that point in time.
I mean, as far as a level of cooperation, we
haven't heard anything yet that said the Wagers weren't cooperating
(08:14):
with the law enforcement. Did they do it? We want
to know now. Obviously everybody wants to know right now,
and you don't let the process play out. But man,
if they're cooperating, as this attorney says, they're giving over
computers and laptop, you know, DNA, whatever it takes. You know,
people who aren't experts in criminology, we look at that
and go, well, man, that sounds like an innocent person.
(08:35):
An innocent person will be doing that.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Despite their involvement in a very large and very active
murder investigation. The Wagners were trying to start a new
life in Alaska and didn't seem to have any intention
of returning. Here's our anonymous Wagner family source.
Speaker 7 (08:52):
When I would ask interest how things going, You know, winter,
you can come back and visit, or so on and
so forth, she was kind of just really backwards about it.
She never would really tell me what they were doing.
She never really said when she would be back home
to visit, just that she misses us, you know, and
that she would love to be able to come home,
(09:12):
but right now she can't. And that she made the
comment on and said that if she did get to
come back, that she couldn't tell me over the phone,
that she would just basically have to show up, and
that once she made it here, then she would contact
me and let me know, but that she didn't, you know,
want a lot of people to find out about it.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
In Alaska, the family went about life as normal. They
tried to fit into the local community and became regular
parishioners at the local church. Their pastor even described them
to the Dayton Daily News as quote good country people.
We reached out to the pastor, who declined to speak
with us. It was at this same church that Jake
Wagner was introduced to another churchgoer, Elizabeth Armor. The couple
(09:59):
dated for several months, and then in March twenty eighteen,
they got married. This is Jodie Barr.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I've seen you know people I know lost of spouse.
You know they're married again.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Six months.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
If he's interested and he got remarried and wanted to
carry on with his life, then you know, maybe that's it.
But if he really is guilty of having a hand
and killing eight people and one of those being the
mother of his own child, and then he enters into
vows with another woman within months of that, ooh, I
don't know. I don't know what kind of person you're
(10:32):
dealing with.
Speaker 12 (10:33):
Here.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Here's Stephanie talking about what she learned by looking at
Elizabeth Armer's Facebook posts.
Speaker 11 (10:39):
She took to Facebook to let the world know just
how dangerous being involved with the Wagners could be. Elizabeth
said in one of her posts that God told her
to come forward about her relationship with Jake Wagner. According
to her posts, Elizabeth met Jake through the church and
then was encouraged to get to know him by her pastor.
But she maintained that she had no idea that the
(10:59):
Wagners were involved in such a large murder investigation, and
when that news of the road and massacre came up,
the pastor had vouched for the Wagners, telling her that
the charges were just slander against the family. However, in
another post, she said she wanted to just be a
mother to Sophia, but that she ended up marrying her
worst nightmare. All of those posts have since been taken down.
(11:21):
We've tried to find her and contact her directly, and
she's literally nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Then, in the spring of twenty eighteen, two years after
the Rodents were killed, the Wagner shocked everyone again, this
time by returning to the Pipedon area. Our Wagner family
relative explained why they decided.
Speaker 7 (11:42):
To come home from what I like, I said, I
have understood just some a little bit that I talked
to Angela and then our family and general talking. They
had came back home because built family, his father got
sick and they couldn't afford or they were losing what
the whole and everything that they had there in Alaska.
So I basically just like it was a handful of
(12:06):
that type of stuff. So they decided that they were
gonna come back down here and they were just gonna
get everything basically situated here. Once that happened, and once
they got back on their feet, basically, then they were
planning to go back. They wanted to go back. Angela
wanted to go back there. She made that clear to
her father multiple times that that was going to be,
(12:29):
you know, a place that they were. They were really
looking forward. She lived and just wanted to be there,
but they had a bunch of stuff that they still
had to take care of in order for that to happen.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
The move seemed to baffle everyone and piked In Here's
local resident Annie.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
If you think about it, the Wagoners were scott free.
They went to Alaska. They could have took off and
nobody could have ever seen them again ever, But they
came back here. They came back. Now, my the way
that I am, I would never do that. But if
I had pulled something off like that and got away
(13:06):
with it that long and went to Alastis, you know,
I'm packing my shit and I'm hitting the woods and
nobody's ever gonna see me again, I'm sure the hell
I'm not going to come back. The only way I
would come back is if I thought my ass covered.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Upon returning to piked In, the Wagoners tried to fly
under the radar and return to life as normal, but
our Wagner family relative told Jeff that their homecoming was
anything but welcome.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
When they came back, were people kind of like has
the story died down or were people like, oh, the
wagoners are back. It was probably.
Speaker 7 (13:36):
Quiet for about I don't know, two three weeks if that,
and then everybody found out that they were back in town,
and they just absolutely tortured. I mean daily. Everybody had
started basically attacking then the community, accusing them of murdering
(13:57):
those people, like if they were in town and people
identified their vehicle, they would throw pot bottles at him.
Angela had actually went into a store one day and
some woman had actually flewed up behind Angela. She was
coming back out of the store and threw a glass
key bottle after her and it busted her in the back.
(14:20):
She was constantly getting it was less and right, like
anybody that knew them or that knew our family. Like
where we lived, there was a handful of people that
had drop on my house and then they were throwing stuff.
Because I lived kind of right on the highway and
my house is very easy to spot. I have no privacy,
so when they I was getting trash, people were throwing
their trash out in my yard, in my driveway. They
(14:42):
were trying to hit us while we were me and
my son at the time. You know, they were just
doing my workplace. My vehicle was parked outside and my
vehicle got keyed. They had, of course through ends on
it all that type of stuff, wrote murderer on it
when I had app nothing to do with any of that.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
As things began to unravel for the Wagner's law enforcement
was tightening up the case against the family. It seemed
like it was only a matter of time before they
were arrested.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Investigators now believe there were multiple attackers, as according to
information from the Ohio Attorney General's office.
Speaker 12 (15:18):
The Ohio Attorney General says the investigation is progressing.
Speaker 7 (15:22):
Wine adds his office knows a lot more about what
goes on in those Pike County hills.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Now we know a lot more today.
Speaker 12 (15:28):
Have we cracked the cage?
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Have we come up with enough evidence to arrest someone
and get them convicted?
Speaker 7 (15:33):
No, we have not.
Speaker 12 (15:34):
But if we made the progress, oh, yeah, we made
a lot of progress.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
On Halloween of twenty eighteen, authorities conducted yet another search
on a Wagner family property, this time a farm formerly
owned by Jake and George Wagner. During that raid, investigators
uncovered a homemade silencer at the bottom of a well,
it would seem to be the final piece of the
puzzle for investigators. As we discussed in great detail in
(16:05):
episode two. On November thirteenth, Angela and Billy Wagner and
their two sons, Jake and George Wagner, were arrested for
the murders of eight members of the Rodent family and everyone.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
We have major developments tonight in a bizarre and tragic
murder case.
Speaker 12 (16:18):
He took two and a half years, but arrests have
finally been made in the Pike County massacre.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
George Billy Wagner the third, he's forty seven.
Speaker 8 (16:25):
Also forty eight year old Angela Wagner.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Twenty seven year old George Wagner the fourth, and twenty
six year old Edward Jake Wagner are now facing charges.
Speaker 13 (16:34):
The Attorney General announced two more arrests of people accused
of being involved.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Angela's mother, Rita Knugal and Billy's mother, Fredrika Wangner. We're
also arrested today in conjunction with the cover up of
these crimes.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
We're going to take a quick break here. We'll be
back in a moment. Angela, Billy, Jake, and George Wagner
were charged with aggravated murder. Angela Wagner's mother Rita Joe Nucom,
and Billy Wagner's mother, Frederica were both charged with obstruction
(17:16):
of justice and perjury. Nucom was also charged with forgery.
All six of them pled not guilty, and our justice
system presumes innocence until guilt is proven at first blush,
it seems far fetched to believe that these two grandmothers
had a part in conspiring to pull off Ohio's largest
mass murder. Jeff spoke with Mike Allen about the charges
(17:37):
against Frederica Wagner.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Frederica has been charged with obstruction of justice and perjury.
So how do you explain that to someone who you know,
like me, who's never been to law school or doesn't
know what it means.
Speaker 12 (17:47):
Well, perjury is pretty simple under Ohio law. It just
basically says that you cannot knowingly make a false statement
in an efficient proceeding while you are under oath. It's
real simple, and the constructing justice is pretty simple as well.
Ohiolall provides that you can't, with purpose to hinder the discovery, apprehension,
(18:08):
or prosecution of a person, do anything that would assist
someone in doing that and that's one that that's charged
pretty frequently. You don't see perjury charged a lot because
it's so difficult to prove, but but convicted of both,
she would be facing four years max.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Plainly stated, prosecutors think Frederica was lying to them and
trying to hinder the investigation to cover up for her family.
We'll get into the specifics of her charges later. For
now here, Stephanie, followed by Jeff.
Speaker 11 (18:40):
We wondered if there was anything in Frederica Wagner's past
that could have indicated that she would be involved in
something as gruesome as mass murder.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
As we know, the Wagners were a well known and
well to do family in the Pecton area, and Frederica
Wagner was at the helm of this. A self described entrepreneur,
she owned properties oliver Pie County that spanned over seventeen
hundred acres and were valued at more than four million dollars.
She'd also founded two nonprofits, Lucasville Mission, a church that
helps underprivileged children, and the Crystal Springs Home, a facility
(19:10):
that provides services to developmentally disabled adults. As we've learned
throughout the series, Frederica had her detractors as well as
her supporters in the community. Growing up, Christina Howard spent
a lot of time with Frederica. In fact, her mom
worked at the Crystal Springs Home.
Speaker 14 (19:25):
She was pretty well known by everybody, and if she
wasn't doing a charity or something outside of church, since
she was doing one in church. She owned over two
hundred acres of land and a lot of people that
lived on her property that she rented out to. She
(19:46):
would say, hey, you know, if you come to church,
then I won't charge you a diamond root. And all
she ever asked of was for them to go to church.
She was always nice to be growing up. She's never
yelled at me. She's never really told me no. There
would be times that I would go to work with
mom and I would just hang out at Freddy's all
(20:09):
day long while my mom was working, you know, I
would just hang out feed the horses, the maths, brush them.
She was literally like a grandma to me growing up.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Deray Paint's a similar portrait of Frederica. She told us
about the pastoral surroundings of her grandmother's Flying w farms
and her family's legacy in the area.
Speaker 6 (20:31):
If you go to their house.
Speaker 10 (20:33):
You go eighty eight miles out of Cincinnati east on
thirty three, and I'm telling you you were in the hills,
the Appalachian.
Speaker 6 (20:41):
Hills of Ohio at this time.
Speaker 10 (20:44):
Then all of a sudden, you'll see something to the right.
It looks like a real nice entryway. It's flying w
farms on it. And you look and you see a
trailer sitting right next to the entrance, a nice entrance
with wrought iron gates. It's got blind w's on it.
Speaker 14 (21:01):
Then you look.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
Aways up you see all these little.
Speaker 10 (21:04):
Houses, some of them were catteries. And then she's got
the pig house, and then she's got the old walking
horse barn, and then she's got the shop. Then you
come to her her colonial style on home, and it's
a very homey feeling. When you walk into the home,
you feel like you're going home. And I see all
(21:26):
my grandmother's Catholic little statues around and pictures of the
kids on the horses, pictures of all their famous horses.
Speaker 6 (21:34):
She developed a breed of horse called the Georgian Grande
she named after my uncle, which she takes no credits for.
The horses is what the driving passion was for Frederica
involve to be together, stay together, work together, because that's
the problem I think with people who get married today.
Speaker 10 (21:54):
Okay, so it's natural to want to have relationships, it's
natural to want to have kids when you're young, all
those hormones in your head.
Speaker 9 (22:01):
But to keep you.
Speaker 10 (22:02):
Together, you'd better have something solid and common that you
have to work with together to keep your family, leading
them a legacy. And that's what Frederica Wagner did for
her kids. Her and Bob developed a breed a horse.
Over years, they have a two thousand acre farm. They
(22:24):
had three kids, and they left them a legacy.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
You know, we're not talking about people who are trained murderers.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
We're talking about real people.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
Here who had real, honest and goodness, god fearing lives.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Frederica Wagner's attorney described her as a god fearing woman
who taught Sunday school for nearly half a century and
lived about as close to the cross as anyone can.
We all struggled with this contradiction in Frederica Wagner. How
could this sweet grandmother who was charitable and kind be
involved in any capacity with the murder of eight people.
So we decided to look a little deeper into Pikedon's
(23:00):
most giving resident, and what we found was not all virtuous.
Jody Barfield us in.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
After the world became familiar with the Wagner family. You know,
of course, reporters start digging into their backgrounds, and it's
just some of the things that come out. You learn
about the business dealings, and you know what Frederica, you know,
is accused of doing in the past. This is good
background information to have when you're trying to understand who
(23:28):
these people are. But I have to say, when I
was on the ground in Pike County, Ohio, when I
was hearing their names, when I went by Flying W Farm,
I mean, it is a peaceful, quaint farm tucked into
the rolling hills of eastern Ohio. When you drive by there,
nothing on the surface points to anything that's been a
ledge now that any of the people involved in any
(23:49):
of this could have been involved in the killing of
eight people. That's the beauty of investigations, I guess, is
that you just don't know the whole story until you
know the whole story.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back
in a moment. Let's start with Flying W farms. The
farm breeds horses as well as dogs and pigs typically
found in New Zealand. In the nineteen nineties, Frederica got
(24:32):
into legal trouble with a group of customers surrounding the
sale of these pigs. Here's Mike Gallon again.
Speaker 12 (24:37):
She was sued by a group of customers. I guess
the allegation was that her place, I think it was
the Flying W it didn't meet the standards promise for
the sale of exotic animals, which is interesting. I guess
the group said that she defrauded them in the sales.
They gave them some animals that didn't match the advertised description.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Dana Roden's friend Becky told Jeff that Flying W Farms
had been whispered about and piked in for years.
Speaker 13 (25:05):
At one point in time, you know, for Erika was
a person to be feared in the county because there
was always rumors. I don't know exactly what all the
rumors was, but everybody's like, oh, you don't want to
go back there. Bad things happen to people that go
back here. So you know, I stayed away from my
area way back where Fredrika's farm because I've always heard
a bad things about it. So, yeah, somewhere I would never.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Go piked in local Barbara told Jeff about one rumor
in particular, they.
Speaker 8 (25:34):
Made their money in horses and miniature horses, and there's
some shady dealings that I've heard about going on there,
like them stuffing the horses with drugs and sending them
back and forth to Mexico, and you know, just awful
things like that.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Now, we obviously can't prove that, but it's worth mentioning
because it's this type of thing that people in Pike
didn't like to whisper about. One thing we should talk
about is this quote unquote life changing rent to own
operation Frederica Wagner, designed to help lower income residents.
Speaker 11 (26:08):
Over the decades, Frederica Wagner entered into at least one
hundred and thirty two land installment contracts. Now, these contracts
basically allowed the Wagners to retain deeds on land as
buyers attempted to pay off the principle and the interest.
The idea was that if the buyers made all of
their payments, they'd eventually become landowners, but it rarely played
(26:29):
out that way. In fact, as it turns out, only
twelve of those contracts were actually satisfied, twelve out of
one hundred and thirty two. And in looking into all
of the deals, nearly eighty percent of them were ultimately
terminated without a corresponding d transfer, And that basically indicates
despite somebody making payments, at the end of the day,
(26:50):
the land stayed in Frederica Wagner's possession. There are countless
examples of sour deals just like that, where people really
did feel that Frederica Wagner took advantage of them. And again,
does that mean that she was involved with a mass murder.
Of course not, but it does point to character, which
I do think is valuable.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Yeah, there was one tenant quoted in the story saying
that Frederica had raised her rent by twenty five percent
following the murders in twenty sixteen, and another described his
rental property as a one room home with an exposed
toilet standing just a few feet from the foot of
his bed. Again, this doesn't prove their guilt, but it
does speak to the type of woman Frederica was, or
(27:31):
at least how the public perceived her at the time.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
I spoke to attorney Mike Gallon about Frederica's land deal contracts.
When I was npiped and I spoke to some people
and these are just personal accounts, but saying, you know,
my family rented land and did it for years and
years and years and then had it pulled out, which
I mean, the court seems to.
Speaker 7 (27:54):
Back that up.
Speaker 12 (27:55):
But yeah, land contracts are tough, and you know, for
the person who is you know, not the owner of
the property, but the person trying to buy it, there
are a lot of pitfalls with it, and someone smart,
which apparently Frederica was, they can take advantage of people
in a land contract situation.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Frederica also runs a nonprofit called Crystal Springs, a group
home that provides housing and rehabilitation services to developmentally disabled adults.
And according to some when her son Billy married Angela Nucombe,
who we now know as Angela Wagner, Frederica wasn't happy
about it. Christina Howard told us that the relationship between
(28:34):
Frederica Wagner and her daughter in law always seemed contentious.
Speaker 14 (28:38):
She never really had much to do with Angela unless
it come to Billy and grown up by her Freddie
call Angela like an evil woman or Tom or two
like a nasty woman. One time, Angela tried to keep
Freddie from seeing her grandkids George and Jake because they
(29:00):
was talking about moving away and all this. And I
never heard Freddy say that she hated anybody, but she said,
you know, like, oh, I really dislike this woman. She's
just a nasty woman.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Perhaps Frederica Wagner has reason to be suspicious of Angela.
Christina Howard gave Stephanie her thoughts on Angela Wagner.
Speaker 14 (29:19):
Angela, she does have a little bit of a shady
forsad tour, Like you feel like there's more tour than
Mintsi I and stuff. Like on the outside she's all
happy thoughts with anybody and everything else. But you just
get a vibe from her, you know that there's more
to it.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
It turns out that this seemingly devoted, hard working mother
had a bit of a checkered past. In two thousand
and one, Angela Wagner, along with Billy Wagner, we're charged
with improperly handling a firearm, and in twenty twelve they
were both charged with receiving stolen property, which is a
fifth grade felony. Jody Barr put the Wagner family's criminal
(30:03):
history into context for us.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
You're looking at and properly handling a firearm charges. When
you look at those two charges and even the details
that were reported to support those charges, I'm back to
where I was in the rest of the Wagner's background
when you look at this as a whole, across the
course of their lives. The charges of improperly handling a firearm,
(30:27):
I mean, those charges came fifteen years before these murders.
It was an alleged road rage. You know, there was
a gun pulled out, but the charges are dismissed. No
one got hurt. I mean that is something that I
see multiple times a week, alleged police reports. The charge
of receiving still in property came four years before these murders.
(30:48):
When you look at the criminal record, nothing in this
says to me that you've got murderers in the hills
of Pike County, Ohio. I mean, this could be your
neighbor now door with these charges.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Here again is Frederica's niece Deray, reading a news article
about her aunt's involvement in the Rodent murders.
Speaker 6 (31:10):
So let me summarize it for you. On November thirteenth,
twenty eighteen, the Ohio Governor elect Mike d Wine held
an internationally broadcast news conference and announced the arrest of
Frederica Wagner and several of her family members. Governor d
Wine accused Frederica's family members of the Rodents homicides, and
(31:33):
he specifically accused Frederica of masterminding the Kava Rock. When
I heard that, I wanted to call him up and
tell him that there was no way and that someday
you will have to apologize to my aunt.
Speaker 10 (31:48):
I do not know who came up with that theory
and tried to put it out there, but that is
someone with an evil mind. I think that that it's
that it's the devil trying trying to test us, because
there's no way possible that Frederica could ever.
Speaker 7 (32:10):
Do something like that.
Speaker 10 (32:12):
Ever, she is not that kind of person. She carries
the light of Jesus with her everywhere she goes, and
I am, I am, I am convicted on that there's
no way she would have ever done something like that.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Ever, the idea that the entire Wagner family allegedly conspired
to kill the Rodents and cold blood still baffles Jodie
Barr to this day.
Speaker 7 (32:40):
Now.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
I think that is the common theme of this entire
story about Pike County and about this rodent massacre, is
it seems just too far fetched now when you try
to connect the dots through the histories of you know,
how the Wagners conducted their business, how they live their lives.
I don't know that I have seen any report, any
fact brought out about the Wagoners that would say, Yep,
(33:03):
there you go, mass murderers. I think that is the
draw that continues to keep people interested in this story,
is that you would have never seen any of this coming.
I don't know what a family capable of a mass
murder would look like or how they would conduct her business.
(33:24):
But this was out of nowhere. It's still just hard
to believe.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
On June twenty sixth, twenty nineteen, Frederica Wagner headed into
a Pike County courtroom for a pre trial hearing, with
Frederica sitting in the defendant's chair. There was a stunning
courtroom revelation.
Speaker 6 (33:41):
Charges against the grandmother connected to the road and family
massacre have been dismissed.
Speaker 14 (33:45):
It was dismissed because I was innocent.
Speaker 10 (33:47):
They had no evidence against me.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Well, grandmother Frederica Wagner might be out of the woods.
The rest of her family await their day in court,
where a stunning number of truths promised to be exposed.
Speaker 12 (34:00):
For the truth, I believe that as it applies to
this case, the mystery will be solved. The truth will
eventually be discovered.
Speaker 14 (34:07):
Hannah was struggling to keep custody of Sophia Pavey. Straight up.
Tolderisay presenting with papers, do not sign them because they
will sure you over.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
You've got to wonder who is this informant, because if
it's a member of the Wager family, I think that's
a twist no one saw coming.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
More on that next week. Reach out to us on
our social media outlets with questions. We're on Instagram, Facebook,
and Twitter at pichon Massacre. We look forward to answering
your questions and upcoming bonus episodes. Pikedon Massacre is executive
produced by Stephanie Leidecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and
(34:52):
sound designed by executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing by
Jeff Shane and Andrew Becker. The piked In Massacre is
production of iHeartRadio and KAT Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to the piked In Massacre, A production of iHeartRadio
and KAT Studios, Episode seven, four thousand Miles Away. I'm
Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Kati's Studios, with Stephanie
Leidecker and Jeff Shane. After the Rodent family was brutally
gunned down in their homes, authorities embarked in what would
(00:22):
become the largest homicide investigation in Ohio's history. Over the
course of the case's first year, law enforcement officers began
compiling a staggering amount of clues that they hoped would
lead to the killers.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Ohio Attorney General Mike Dwine, giving an update in the
Pike County murders.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
You received eight hundred and eighty three tips. We have
conducted four hundred and sixty.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Five interviews, the Wine says.
Speaker 5 (00:44):
There have also been thirty eight search warns issued, but
so far new arrest.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I think that we've made significant progress.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
But by early twenty seventeen, the evidence that authorities had
collected was pointing them towards one group of people, in particular,
the Wagner family. That spring, with the case heating up,
the Wagners decided to leave the Piked in area with
Jake Wagner and Hannah Rodin's daughter Sophia until they sold
their farm, packed up their belongings, and drove four thousand
miles north to Keenei, Alaska, a city of about eight
(01:17):
thousand people southwest of Anchorage. It was a move that
Wagner relative Deray not only encouraged, but conceived of.
Speaker 6 (01:26):
They had been wanting to move to Alaska for a
while because the pastor of the church moved there. He's
very important headstone in their family. I'm the one that
told him go to Alaska. Number one, the state of
Ohio can not afford to extradite you from Alaska back home.
I just thought it was the griatest that they took off.
(01:48):
I said, that's the best thing in the world for
the kids, and it's the best thing in the world
for you, guys.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
The family quickly got settled in keen I. They lived
together in a double white trailer on a large piece
of property. Billy and Angela even registered to vote. Jeff
talked to one of the Wagner's family relatives who kept
in touch with them while they were in Alaska. She
asked us not to use her name, but told us
about their life once they arrived.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
What was their life like in Alaska?
Speaker 7 (02:14):
Well, Jake has got a job, it was a construction
type business. Angela didn't work. I think she might have
done some things from like home or the Annett or
something like that. And Bill, I'm not sure what he
did exactly, but they did have a very nice home
in Alaska that they were in the process of trying
to buy from what I understand anyways, and Jake he
(02:38):
had Sophia at the time, and they just kind of
work get in by.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
The Wagner's sudden departure left the whole town of piped
and bewildered and suspicious. Dana Roden's friend Stephanne remembers the
day she heard the news. She shared her thoughts with Jeff.
Speaker 8 (02:55):
Well, when they left for Alaska, I was like, Oh, wow,
they're gonna they're running, you know, they're running. And then
I thought they'll get away with it if they did this,
if they did this, they will get away with it.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Or people talking about the Wagners, like, was the feeling
that they might have been guilty or what were people
thinking or speculating in town.
Speaker 8 (03:18):
Yeah, they pretty much thought that, you know that was
the that was the deal.
Speaker 5 (03:26):
They were running from it.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
But the Wagner's relocation didn't hinder the investigation. According to
reporter James Pilcher, it only helped to move the case forward.
Speaker 9 (03:37):
They moved to Alaska, which raised even more suspicion. But
then the very following month, law enforcement actually finally searches
the properties where the Wagners lived. So that was really
the first public indication that the Wagners were possible suspects,
if not people of interest, So that started to tighten
the noose in terms of the Wagner's.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
On June sixth, twenty seventeen, as the investigation pressed on,
Attorney General Mike DeWine appealed to the public for information
connecting the Wagoners to the crime.
Speaker 10 (04:09):
Investigators want any information about the family, including information about vehicles, guns,
and ammunition. Anyone with information is asked.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
To call the past uns.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Investigative journalists Jodi Barr recalled the Attorney General's announcement.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Other than being on the ground in Tight County and
hearing the Waggers' names come up from time to time
and you had no verifiable leads, or you would exhaust
all leads, that was the first time that anything was
said in public from anybody with this investigation that they
may have people that they were looking at and who
potentially had something to do with this, and at that time,
(04:43):
no one knew the extent of the involvement that the
investigators believed the Waggers may have had. It was just
they were asking for help, and that seemed really strange.
But it also, on the other hand, it connected some
of the pieces that we had heard in the beginning,
you know, that maybe gave more weight to the custody
issues that we were trying to dig into before.
Speaker 9 (05:05):
But it was still just it was still.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Confusing that they would come out and say that and
no arrests made, no indictments made, but yet they were
asking for help to identify Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Is that unusual that they would just kind of like
blatantly say a name and be like, does anyone know
anything about this person who's not an official suspect or
someone we've arrested.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Even it's just confusing, and I would love to ask, now,
Governor Mike DeWine, you know why they played it the
way they played it, You know, did they know what
they needed to know?
Speaker 7 (05:36):
Then?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Were they trying to have the Wagners make a misstep
when they announced this to the world.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Mike Dewayne's press release prompted the Wagner's family attorney John K. Clark,
to accuse law enforcement of harassing his clients. Here's Jeff,
followed by Stephanie.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
In a statement to the Cincinnati inquire the lawyer said
that the authorities were clueless and competent where they themselves
were involved in a cover up. In short, his clients
were innocent.
Speaker 11 (06:06):
That's because, according to Clark, the Wagners were cooperating with
officials and had provided authorities with everything they had asked for,
including laptops, phones, and DNA willingly, and they also agreed
to repeated interviews with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
Clark even said that the Wagners told BCI agents that
they were in fact moving.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I spoke with former Ohio Prosecutor Mike Allen about the
legal implications of the Wagner's cooperation. What about the Wagners
and their compliance with authorities? I know their lawyer has
said they've cooperated one hundred and ten percent. Can you
talk through the details of.
Speaker 12 (06:42):
That, sure? I mean, from what I understand, they did
turn over some things laptops, phones that they submitted to DNA,
giving exemplars which they could be compelled to do anyway.
Some of them at least were interviewed by Ohio BCI agents,
and I guess they told those agents that they were
traveling and about to move to Atlaska, and they claimed
(07:04):
they had been thinking about that for a long time.
So yeah, I mean, from what I can see, there
was some cooperation. But whether it was one hundred and
ten percent, I don't know. And frankly I doubt because
that rarely happens.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Does that do anything when it comes to juries? You know?
Does that hold sway?
Speaker 12 (07:24):
It can? You know in closing argument and the defense
lawyer could stand up and say to the jury, my client,
you know, he cooperated one hundred and ten percent, you know,
meaning that he has nothing to hide.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
The Cincinnati Inquirer even tracked the family down in Alaska
in July of twenty seventeen. In a published article, Jake
Wagner said that he had moved to give Sophia a
better life. This is Jodi Barr again.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
The Cincinnati Inquirer obviously went there and they found them.
I mean, it was they didn't try to slip off
in the middle of the night. It didn't seem I mean,
if a reporter could find them, then obviously law enforcement
knew very much where they were at that point in time.
I mean, as far as a level of cooperation, we
haven't heard anything yet that said the Wagers weren't cooperating
(08:14):
with the law enforcement. Did they do it? We want
to know now. Obviously everybody wants to know right now,
and you don't let the process play out. But man,
if they're cooperating, as this attorney says, they're giving over
computers and laptop, you know, DNA, whatever it takes. You know,
people who aren't experts in criminology, we look at that
and go, well, man, that sounds like an innocent person.
(08:35):
An innocent person will be doing that.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Despite their involvement in a very large and very active
murder investigation. The Wagners were trying to start a new
life in Alaska and didn't seem to have any intention
of returning. Here's our anonymous Wagner family source.
Speaker 7 (08:52):
When I would ask interest how things going, You know, winter,
you can come back and visit, or so on and
so forth, she was kind of just really backwards about it.
She never would really tell me what they were doing.
She never really said when she would be back home
to visit, just that she misses us, you know, and
that she would love to be able to come home,
(09:12):
but right now she can't. And that she made the
comment on and said that if she did get to
come back, that she couldn't tell me over the phone,
that she would just basically have to show up, and
that once she made it here, then she would contact
me and let me know, but that she didn't, you know,
want a lot of people to find out about it.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
In Alaska, the family went about life as normal. They
tried to fit into the local community and became regular
parishioners at the local church. Their pastor even described them
to the Dayton Daily News as quote good country people.
We reached out to the pastor, who declined to speak
with us. It was at this same church that Jake
Wagner was introduced to another churchgoer, Elizabeth Armor. The couple
(09:59):
dated for several months, and then in March twenty eighteen,
they got married. This is Jodie Barr.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I've seen you know people I know lost of spouse.
You know they're married again.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Six months.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
If he's interested and he got remarried and wanted to
carry on with his life, then you know, maybe that's it.
But if he really is guilty of having a hand
and killing eight people and one of those being the
mother of his own child, and then he enters into
vows with another woman within months of that, ooh, I
don't know. I don't know what kind of person you're
(10:32):
dealing with.
Speaker 12 (10:33):
Here.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Here's Stephanie talking about what she learned by looking at
Elizabeth Armer's Facebook posts.
Speaker 11 (10:39):
She took to Facebook to let the world know just
how dangerous being involved with the Wagners could be. Elizabeth
said in one of her posts that God told her
to come forward about her relationship with Jake Wagner. According
to her posts, Elizabeth met Jake through the church and
then was encouraged to get to know him by her pastor.
But she maintained that she had no idea that the
(10:59):
Wagners were involved in such a large murder investigation, and
when that news of the road and massacre came up,
the pastor had vouched for the Wagners, telling her that
the charges were just slander against the family. However, in
another post, she said she wanted to just be a
mother to Sophia, but that she ended up marrying her
worst nightmare. All of those posts have since been taken down.
(11:21):
We've tried to find her and contact her directly, and
she's literally nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Then, in the spring of twenty eighteen, two years after
the Rodents were killed, the Wagner shocked everyone again, this
time by returning to the Pipedon area. Our Wagner family
relative explained why they decided.
Speaker 7 (11:42):
To come home from what I like, I said, I
have understood just some a little bit that I talked
to Angela and then our family and general talking. They
had came back home because built family, his father got
sick and they couldn't afford or they were losing what
the whole and everything that they had there in Alaska.
So I basically just like it was a handful of
(12:06):
that type of stuff. So they decided that they were
gonna come back down here and they were just gonna
get everything basically situated here. Once that happened, and once
they got back on their feet, basically, then they were
planning to go back. They wanted to go back. Angela
wanted to go back there. She made that clear to
her father multiple times that that was going to be,
(12:29):
you know, a place that they were. They were really
looking forward. She lived and just wanted to be there,
but they had a bunch of stuff that they still
had to take care of in order for that to happen.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
The move seemed to baffle everyone and piked In Here's
local resident Annie.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
If you think about it, the Wagoners were scott free.
They went to Alaska. They could have took off and
nobody could have ever seen them again ever, But they
came back here. They came back. Now, my the way
that I am, I would never do that. But if
I had pulled something off like that and got away
(13:06):
with it that long and went to Alastis, you know,
I'm packing my shit and I'm hitting the woods and
nobody's ever gonna see me again, I'm sure the hell
I'm not going to come back. The only way I
would come back is if I thought my ass covered.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Upon returning to piked In, the Wagoners tried to fly
under the radar and return to life as normal, but
our Wagner family relative told Jeff that their homecoming was
anything but welcome.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
When they came back, were people kind of like has
the story died down or were people like, oh, the
wagoners are back. It was probably.
Speaker 7 (13:36):
Quiet for about I don't know, two three weeks if that,
and then everybody found out that they were back in town,
and they just absolutely tortured. I mean daily. Everybody had
started basically attacking then the community, accusing them of murdering
(13:57):
those people, like if they were in town and people
identified their vehicle, they would throw pot bottles at him.
Angela had actually went into a store one day and
some woman had actually flewed up behind Angela. She was
coming back out of the store and threw a glass
key bottle after her and it busted her in the back.
(14:20):
She was constantly getting it was less and right, like
anybody that knew them or that knew our family. Like
where we lived, there was a handful of people that
had drop on my house and then they were throwing stuff.
Because I lived kind of right on the highway and
my house is very easy to spot. I have no privacy,
so when they I was getting trash, people were throwing
their trash out in my yard, in my driveway. They
(14:42):
were trying to hit us while we were me and
my son at the time. You know, they were just
doing my workplace. My vehicle was parked outside and my
vehicle got keyed. They had, of course through ends on
it all that type of stuff, wrote murderer on it
when I had app nothing to do with any of that.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
As things began to unravel for the Wagner's law enforcement
was tightening up the case against the family. It seemed
like it was only a matter of time before they
were arrested.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Investigators now believe there were multiple attackers, as according to
information from the Ohio Attorney General's office.
Speaker 12 (15:18):
The Ohio Attorney General says the investigation is progressing.
Speaker 7 (15:22):
Wine adds his office knows a lot more about what
goes on in those Pike County hills.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Now we know a lot more today.
Speaker 12 (15:28):
Have we cracked the cage?
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Have we come up with enough evidence to arrest someone
and get them convicted?
Speaker 7 (15:33):
No, we have not.
Speaker 12 (15:34):
But if we made the progress, oh, yeah, we made
a lot of progress.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
On Halloween of twenty eighteen, authorities conducted yet another search
on a Wagner family property, this time a farm formerly
owned by Jake and George Wagner. During that raid, investigators
uncovered a homemade silencer at the bottom of a well,
it would seem to be the final piece of the
puzzle for investigators. As we discussed in great detail in
(16:05):
episode two. On November thirteenth, Angela and Billy Wagner and
their two sons, Jake and George Wagner, were arrested for
the murders of eight members of the Rodent family and everyone.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
We have major developments tonight in a bizarre and tragic
murder case.
Speaker 12 (16:18):
He took two and a half years, but arrests have
finally been made in the Pike County massacre.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
George Billy Wagner the third, he's forty seven.
Speaker 8 (16:25):
Also forty eight year old Angela Wagner.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Twenty seven year old George Wagner the fourth, and twenty
six year old Edward Jake Wagner are now facing charges.
Speaker 13 (16:34):
The Attorney General announced two more arrests of people accused
of being involved.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Angela's mother, Rita Knugal and Billy's mother, Fredrika Wangner. We're
also arrested today in conjunction with the cover up of
these crimes.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
We're going to take a quick break here. We'll be
back in a moment. Angela, Billy, Jake, and George Wagner
were charged with aggravated murder. Angela Wagner's mother Rita Joe Nucom,
and Billy Wagner's mother, Frederica were both charged with obstruction
(17:16):
of justice and perjury. Nucom was also charged with forgery.
All six of them pled not guilty, and our justice
system presumes innocence until guilt is proven at first blush,
it seems far fetched to believe that these two grandmothers
had a part in conspiring to pull off Ohio's largest
mass murder. Jeff spoke with Mike Allen about the charges
(17:37):
against Frederica Wagner.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Frederica has been charged with obstruction of justice and perjury.
So how do you explain that to someone who you know,
like me, who's never been to law school or doesn't
know what it means.
Speaker 12 (17:47):
Well, perjury is pretty simple under Ohio law. It just
basically says that you cannot knowingly make a false statement
in an efficient proceeding while you are under oath. It's
real simple, and the constructing justice is pretty simple as well.
Ohiolall provides that you can't, with purpose to hinder the discovery, apprehension,
(18:08):
or prosecution of a person, do anything that would assist
someone in doing that and that's one that that's charged
pretty frequently. You don't see perjury charged a lot because
it's so difficult to prove, but but convicted of both,
she would be facing four years max.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Plainly stated, prosecutors think Frederica was lying to them and
trying to hinder the investigation to cover up for her family.
We'll get into the specifics of her charges later. For
now here, Stephanie, followed by Jeff.
Speaker 11 (18:40):
We wondered if there was anything in Frederica Wagner's past
that could have indicated that she would be involved in
something as gruesome as mass murder.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
As we know, the Wagners were a well known and
well to do family in the Pecton area, and Frederica
Wagner was at the helm of this. A self described entrepreneur,
she owned properties oliver Pie County that spanned over seventeen
hundred acres and were valued at more than four million dollars.
She'd also founded two nonprofits, Lucasville Mission, a church that
helps underprivileged children, and the Crystal Springs Home, a facility
(19:10):
that provides services to developmentally disabled adults. As we've learned
throughout the series, Frederica had her detractors as well as
her supporters in the community. Growing up, Christina Howard spent
a lot of time with Frederica. In fact, her mom
worked at the Crystal Springs Home.
Speaker 14 (19:25):
She was pretty well known by everybody, and if she
wasn't doing a charity or something outside of church, since
she was doing one in church. She owned over two
hundred acres of land and a lot of people that
lived on her property that she rented out to. She
(19:46):
would say, hey, you know, if you come to church,
then I won't charge you a diamond root. And all
she ever asked of was for them to go to church.
She was always nice to be growing up. She's never
yelled at me. She's never really told me no. There
would be times that I would go to work with
mom and I would just hang out at Freddy's all
(20:09):
day long while my mom was working, you know, I
would just hang out feed the horses, the maths, brush them.
She was literally like a grandma to me growing up.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Deray Paint's a similar portrait of Frederica. She told us
about the pastoral surroundings of her grandmother's Flying w farms
and her family's legacy in the area.
Speaker 6 (20:31):
If you go to their house.
Speaker 10 (20:33):
You go eighty eight miles out of Cincinnati east on
thirty three, and I'm telling you you were in the hills,
the Appalachian.
Speaker 6 (20:41):
Hills of Ohio at this time.
Speaker 10 (20:44):
Then all of a sudden, you'll see something to the right.
It looks like a real nice entryway. It's flying w
farms on it. And you look and you see a
trailer sitting right next to the entrance, a nice entrance
with wrought iron gates. It's got blind w's on it.
Speaker 14 (21:01):
Then you look.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
Aways up you see all these little.
Speaker 10 (21:04):
Houses, some of them were catteries. And then she's got
the pig house, and then she's got the old walking
horse barn, and then she's got the shop. Then you
come to her her colonial style on home, and it's
a very homey feeling. When you walk into the home,
you feel like you're going home. And I see all
(21:26):
my grandmother's Catholic little statues around and pictures of the
kids on the horses, pictures of all their famous horses.
Speaker 6 (21:34):
She developed a breed of horse called the Georgian Grande
she named after my uncle, which she takes no credits for.
The horses is what the driving passion was for Frederica
involve to be together, stay together, work together, because that's
the problem I think with people who get married today.
Speaker 10 (21:54):
Okay, so it's natural to want to have relationships, it's
natural to want to have kids when you're young, all
those hormones in your head.
Speaker 9 (22:01):
But to keep you.
Speaker 10 (22:02):
Together, you'd better have something solid and common that you
have to work with together to keep your family, leading
them a legacy. And that's what Frederica Wagner did for
her kids. Her and Bob developed a breed a horse.
Over years, they have a two thousand acre farm. They
(22:24):
had three kids, and they left them a legacy.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
You know, we're not talking about people who are trained murderers.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
We're talking about real people.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
Here who had real, honest and goodness, god fearing lives.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Frederica Wagner's attorney described her as a god fearing woman
who taught Sunday school for nearly half a century and
lived about as close to the cross as anyone can.
We all struggled with this contradiction in Frederica Wagner. How
could this sweet grandmother who was charitable and kind be
involved in any capacity with the murder of eight people.
So we decided to look a little deeper into Pikedon's
(23:00):
most giving resident, and what we found was not all virtuous.
Jody Barfield us in.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
After the world became familiar with the Wagner family. You know,
of course, reporters start digging into their backgrounds, and it's
just some of the things that come out. You learn
about the business dealings, and you know what Frederica, you know,
is accused of doing in the past. This is good
background information to have when you're trying to understand who
(23:28):
these people are. But I have to say, when I
was on the ground in Pike County, Ohio, when I
was hearing their names, when I went by Flying W Farm,
I mean, it is a peaceful, quaint farm tucked into
the rolling hills of eastern Ohio. When you drive by there,
nothing on the surface points to anything that's been a
ledge now that any of the people involved in any
(23:49):
of this could have been involved in the killing of
eight people. That's the beauty of investigations, I guess, is
that you just don't know the whole story until you
know the whole story.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back
in a moment. Let's start with Flying W farms. The
farm breeds horses as well as dogs and pigs typically
found in New Zealand. In the nineteen nineties, Frederica got
(24:32):
into legal trouble with a group of customers surrounding the
sale of these pigs. Here's Mike Gallon again.
Speaker 12 (24:37):
She was sued by a group of customers. I guess
the allegation was that her place, I think it was
the Flying W it didn't meet the standards promise for
the sale of exotic animals, which is interesting. I guess
the group said that she defrauded them in the sales.
They gave them some animals that didn't match the advertised description.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Dana Roden's friend Becky told Jeff that Flying W Farms
had been whispered about and piked in for years.
Speaker 13 (25:05):
At one point in time, you know, for Erika was
a person to be feared in the county because there
was always rumors. I don't know exactly what all the
rumors was, but everybody's like, oh, you don't want to
go back there. Bad things happen to people that go
back here. So you know, I stayed away from my
area way back where Fredrika's farm because I've always heard
a bad things about it. So, yeah, somewhere I would never.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Go piked in local Barbara told Jeff about one rumor
in particular, they.
Speaker 8 (25:34):
Made their money in horses and miniature horses, and there's
some shady dealings that I've heard about going on there,
like them stuffing the horses with drugs and sending them
back and forth to Mexico, and you know, just awful
things like that.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Now, we obviously can't prove that, but it's worth mentioning
because it's this type of thing that people in Pike
didn't like to whisper about. One thing we should talk
about is this quote unquote life changing rent to own
operation Frederica Wagner, designed to help lower income residents.
Speaker 11 (26:08):
Over the decades, Frederica Wagner entered into at least one
hundred and thirty two land installment contracts. Now, these contracts
basically allowed the Wagners to retain deeds on land as
buyers attempted to pay off the principle and the interest.
The idea was that if the buyers made all of
their payments, they'd eventually become landowners, but it rarely played
(26:29):
out that way. In fact, as it turns out, only
twelve of those contracts were actually satisfied, twelve out of
one hundred and thirty two. And in looking into all
of the deals, nearly eighty percent of them were ultimately
terminated without a corresponding d transfer, And that basically indicates
despite somebody making payments, at the end of the day,
(26:50):
the land stayed in Frederica Wagner's possession. There are countless
examples of sour deals just like that, where people really
did feel that Frederica Wagner took advantage of them. And again,
does that mean that she was involved with a mass murder.
Of course not, but it does point to character, which
I do think is valuable.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Yeah, there was one tenant quoted in the story saying
that Frederica had raised her rent by twenty five percent
following the murders in twenty sixteen, and another described his
rental property as a one room home with an exposed
toilet standing just a few feet from the foot of
his bed. Again, this doesn't prove their guilt, but it
does speak to the type of woman Frederica was, or
(27:31):
at least how the public perceived her at the time.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
I spoke to attorney Mike Gallon about Frederica's land deal contracts.
When I was npiped and I spoke to some people
and these are just personal accounts, but saying, you know,
my family rented land and did it for years and
years and years and then had it pulled out, which
I mean, the court seems to.
Speaker 7 (27:54):
Back that up.
Speaker 12 (27:55):
But yeah, land contracts are tough, and you know, for
the person who is you know, not the owner of
the property, but the person trying to buy it, there
are a lot of pitfalls with it, and someone smart,
which apparently Frederica was, they can take advantage of people
in a land contract situation.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Frederica also runs a nonprofit called Crystal Springs, a group
home that provides housing and rehabilitation services to developmentally disabled adults.
And according to some when her son Billy married Angela Nucombe,
who we now know as Angela Wagner, Frederica wasn't happy
about it. Christina Howard told us that the relationship between
(28:34):
Frederica Wagner and her daughter in law always seemed contentious.
Speaker 14 (28:38):
She never really had much to do with Angela unless
it come to Billy and grown up by her Freddie
call Angela like an evil woman or Tom or two
like a nasty woman. One time, Angela tried to keep
Freddie from seeing her grandkids George and Jake because they
(29:00):
was talking about moving away and all this. And I
never heard Freddy say that she hated anybody, but she said,
you know, like, oh, I really dislike this woman. She's
just a nasty woman.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Perhaps Frederica Wagner has reason to be suspicious of Angela.
Christina Howard gave Stephanie her thoughts on Angela Wagner.
Speaker 14 (29:19):
Angela, she does have a little bit of a shady
forsad tour, Like you feel like there's more tour than
Mintsi I and stuff. Like on the outside she's all
happy thoughts with anybody and everything else. But you just
get a vibe from her, you know that there's more
to it.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
It turns out that this seemingly devoted, hard working mother
had a bit of a checkered past. In two thousand
and one, Angela Wagner, along with Billy Wagner, we're charged
with improperly handling a firearm, and in twenty twelve they
were both charged with receiving stolen property, which is a
fifth grade felony. Jody Barr put the Wagner family's criminal
(30:03):
history into context for us.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
You're looking at and properly handling a firearm charges. When
you look at those two charges and even the details
that were reported to support those charges, I'm back to
where I was in the rest of the Wagner's background
when you look at this as a whole, across the
course of their lives. The charges of improperly handling a firearm,
(30:27):
I mean, those charges came fifteen years before these murders.
It was an alleged road rage. You know, there was
a gun pulled out, but the charges are dismissed. No
one got hurt. I mean that is something that I
see multiple times a week, alleged police reports. The charge
of receiving still in property came four years before these murders.
(30:48):
When you look at the criminal record, nothing in this
says to me that you've got murderers in the hills
of Pike County, Ohio. I mean, this could be your
neighbor now door with these charges.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Here again is Frederica's niece Deray, reading a news article
about her aunt's involvement in the Rodent murders.
Speaker 6 (31:10):
So let me summarize it for you. On November thirteenth,
twenty eighteen, the Ohio Governor elect Mike d Wine held
an internationally broadcast news conference and announced the arrest of
Frederica Wagner and several of her family members. Governor d
Wine accused Frederica's family members of the Rodents homicides, and
(31:33):
he specifically accused Frederica of masterminding the Kava Rock. When
I heard that, I wanted to call him up and
tell him that there was no way and that someday
you will have to apologize to my aunt.
Speaker 10 (31:48):
I do not know who came up with that theory
and tried to put it out there, but that is
someone with an evil mind. I think that that it's
that it's the devil trying trying to test us, because
there's no way possible that Frederica could ever.
Speaker 7 (32:10):
Do something like that.
Speaker 10 (32:12):
Ever, she is not that kind of person. She carries
the light of Jesus with her everywhere she goes, and
I am, I am, I am convicted on that there's
no way she would have ever done something like that.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Ever, the idea that the entire Wagner family allegedly conspired
to kill the Rodents and cold blood still baffles Jodie
Barr to this day.
Speaker 7 (32:40):
Now.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
I think that is the common theme of this entire
story about Pike County and about this rodent massacre, is
it seems just too far fetched now when you try
to connect the dots through the histories of you know,
how the Wagners conducted their business, how they live their lives.
I don't know that I have seen any report, any
fact brought out about the Wagoners that would say, Yep,
(33:03):
there you go, mass murderers. I think that is the
draw that continues to keep people interested in this story,
is that you would have never seen any of this coming.
I don't know what a family capable of a mass
murder would look like or how they would conduct her business.
(33:24):
But this was out of nowhere. It's still just hard
to believe.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
On June twenty sixth, twenty nineteen, Frederica Wagner headed into
a Pike County courtroom for a pre trial hearing, with
Frederica sitting in the defendant's chair. There was a stunning
courtroom revelation.
Speaker 6 (33:41):
Charges against the grandmother connected to the road and family
massacre have been dismissed.
Speaker 14 (33:45):
It was dismissed because I was innocent.
Speaker 10 (33:47):
They had no evidence against me.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Well, grandmother Frederica Wagner might be out of the woods.
The rest of her family await their day in court,
where a stunning number of truths promised to be exposed.
Speaker 12 (34:00):
For the truth, I believe that as it applies to
this case, the mystery will be solved. The truth will
eventually be discovered.
Speaker 14 (34:07):
Hannah was struggling to keep custody of Sophia Pavey. Straight up.
Tolderisay presenting with papers, do not sign them because they
will sure you over.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
You've got to wonder who is this informant, because if
it's a member of the Wager family, I think that's
a twist no one saw coming.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
More on that next week. Reach out to us on
our social media outlets with questions. We're on Instagram, Facebook,
and Twitter at pichon Massacre. We look forward to answering
your questions and upcoming bonus episodes. Pikedon Massacre is executive
produced by Stephanie Leidecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and
(34:52):
sound designed by executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing by
Jeff Shane and Andrew Becker. The piked In Massacre is
production of iHeartRadio and KAT Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Stephanie Lydecker
Courtney Armstrong
Jeff Shane
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