September 30, 2020 • 28 mins
The most infamous crime that occurred in South Eastern Ohio is the murder of eight members of the Rhoden family. While four members of the Wagner family have been arrested and charged with the murders, the community knows all too well that in this area, there are often more questions than answers.
In episode 10, we dive deeper into subjects we’ve only previously touched on such as the relationship between Angela and Billy Wagner and Sheriff Reader’s involvement in the case. Finally, we explore how a neighboring town harbors its own dark secrets.
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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 Katie's Studios. This is episode ten Wild Country. In
this episode, we're going to be answering a bunch of
questions we've received over social media. We are also going
to be going deeper into some subjects we've only touched
on and talking about some stories we haven't been able
to tell. I'm Courtney Armstrong. I work at Katie's Studios
(00:22):
with Stephanie Leidecker and Jeff Sheen. Just as a legal reminder, Angela,
Billy Jake, and George Wagner were charged with aggravated murder.
Angela Wagner's mother Rita Joe Neucomb and Billy Wagner's mother,
Frederica were both charged with obstruction of justice and perjury.
Nucom was also charged with forgery. All six of them
pled not guilty, and our justice system presumes innocence until
(00:44):
guilt is proven.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Ali from Ormond Beach, Florida asked us about the drugs
and how they relate to the case and if there's
anything else in the piked In area that pertains to
drugs that we should know.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So. One of the big theories behind the murders. We
explored was drugs and the fact that the Rodents did
have a pretty large marijuana grow operation on their property.
But it's not just specific to the Rodent or even
specific to Piked. In the immediate area is kind of
a hotbed that's been affected by drugs in myriad ways.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
For starters, there's not a ton of jobs, and that
has really taken a toll on the town. And just
generally speaking, Ohio.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
And the southern part of the state has been devastated
by drug abuse, mostly prescription painkillers and heroin. In Pike County,
the drug overdose mortality rate from twenty fourteen to twenty
eighteen was more than seventy one deaths per one hundred
thousand population. The rate for the rest of the country
was twenty seven deaths per one hundred thousand. That's nearly
three times the mortality rate of the rest of the country.
(01:55):
A lot of these drugs come in from Portsmouth.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Portsmouth, Ohio, is the neighboring town to Pike and so
about a fifteen minute drive I spoke to investigative reporter
James Pilcher, who did an incredibly deep dive into Portsmouth
into the larger picture of what's happening in southeastern Ohio.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Sportsmith, which is in the next county over on the
river south of Pike County in Piketon, is known as
ground zero for the pill mill epidemic. That's where pill
mills and the opioid epidemic is known to have had
a major hotspot way early on in the late nineteen
nineties early two thousands, when the oxycon first hit the market.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And tell me what a pill mill is.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
A pill mill is where a doctor who for whatever
reason isn't there to see clients, somebody just shows up
and you just hands some prescription for money, and then
they get the prescription there and then right next door
is a pharmacy and then they just put it in
and then those people get the pills because it's legal
(02:55):
in that state. They might drive them home to Florida
and then sell them for ten times the price or
trade them or whatever. But it was unregulated in Ohio
at the time, and Kentucky was bad too. Kentucky had
the same issues. So right there enforcements right there on
the Ohio River bordering Kentucky, so you had both sides
of the river. So there were cars lined up from
(03:18):
Florida and West Virginia and Georgia up and down all
over town for a decade, and it just ravaged the city,
which had already been decimated by you know, the pullout
of industrialization, and so all of that kind of flooded in.
You have all of these, you know, an economically depressed area,
(03:42):
all of a sudden, addiction becomes a major major issue.
People are driving from all over the country because it's
easy to get the pills there.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
And then of course there's also the people who get
into kind of the illicit activities to make money, right.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Absolutely, absolutely, a cottage industry of crime and drug associated
kind of sprung up, and you know, started to do
my own reporting on it. So one of our editors
worked as the managing editor of the Portsmouth Daily Times,
which is the daily newspaper there in the early twenty ten,
(04:16):
and so he was very familiar with the rumors that
had been circulating around about Michael Moran. Moran had already
been a city council but he wasn't on city council anymore,
but he was still well known within the legal circles
and chamber of commerce, and he did some work pro
bono work about legal defense, but he always seemed to
(04:38):
have a pretty girl in his army. In December of
twenty eighteen, a now former reporter with that newspaper put
out on Facebook segments of a federal affidavits from the
Drug Enforcement Administration, which basically laid there and put out
for public viewing. That's the federal law enforcement was investigating
(05:03):
the very same rumors that have been following Moran around
for years, that he was running girls and running drugs,
and that this was who he was.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
It's important to note that Michael Moran has not been
arrested or charged with any crimes. Also that Moran has
categorically denied all of this.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
My editor at the time, and I was working as
an investigative reporter at the Cincinnati Enquirer, said would James
be interested in taking a look at this? And I'll
be honest, I thought, I didn't think it was real
at first. I thought there was no way that this
is as bad as they say it is and whatever.
So I took a drive out there. The partnered me
with a woman photographer whom we went out there a
couple of times, and I'll never forget it. We were
(05:46):
doing some b roll shoot shots in front of a
pseudo abandoned shoe factory with graffiti about hookers and things
like that, and a guy comes running up and says,
what are you doing? And I told him and I said,
by the way, ever heard of Michael Moran. He says, oh, yeah,
that guy runs women. So this was not a secret
in Portsmouth. Everybody knew the rumors and had known somebody
(06:11):
that knew somebody that had worked for him. It was
going on that he was running women all over the country.
He was promising women drugs for sex. He had relationships
with judges and with members of law enforcement, all of it.
So you know, all of this is in a federal
document we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
It's like human trafficking, right, yes.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
So so you know, some people this is an interesting distinction.
Some people will say, oh, well, these women knew what
they were doing, they were just trying to make money. Well,
if you talk to the experts, it went one step
beyond that. It went into trafficking because Moran was holding
over them a the fact that they were drug addicts,
and he would withhold their money or withhold their wherewithal
(06:56):
to get drugs, which under federal statute and Ohio statute
is a form of trafficking B. He was intensively promising
more lenient sentences because he had friends in the legal system.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
I'd like to point out here that we reached out
to Michael Moran as well as the prosecutors involved. Neither
side got back to us with comment.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
So I talked to some folks, but getting those first
initial people to talk, that was their big fear, is
they these women just weren't afraid to go to jail.
They were afraid for their lives. And the reason they
were afraid for their lives is the name of one woman,
and that's Megan Lancaster. Meghan was a known prostitute in
the late two thousands in Sciotra County. If you talk
(07:40):
to her sister in law and you talk to other
people who knew her, she worked for Mike Moran. Meghan
got hooked on drugs early on in high school. Shortly
out after high school. If you talk to her sister
in law, who has led the charge, he started partying
later in high school and out of high school, and
(08:01):
that led her, according to our sources, into the circle
of Morane. So Moran would hire her out for bachelor parties,
and you know Katie Lancaster, her sister in law, even
tells the story about her running into Megan wearing Christmas
lingerie in a Walmart picking something up on her way
(08:25):
to a Christmas party where she was the entertainment for
a bunch of Moran's friends. And she mysteriously disappeared, so
we can't even say she was murdered. Her car was
found of blood on it, the door was left wide open,
half parked in a local fast food joint there in
downtown Portsmouth, and they have not found hide nor hair
(08:49):
of her. And I can tell you there are a
lot of places in Sciota County where you can hide
a body. It's full of hollers and dips and forests,
and it's wild country. It really is wild country. The
glaciers came through and cut a bunch of stuff, and
it's it's beautiful, but it's also wild country. And a
(09:14):
flew of women went missing or got killed that were
addicted prostitutes, sex workers up in Ross County, in Chilcoffee,
which is two counties to the north. Since twenty ten,
more than a dozen women have either been killed or
gone missing in Ross County which is the county north
(09:34):
of Pike County, which is probably an hour forty five
minutes north of pikedn in Chilicothee. So Megan, A lot
of people theorized that Meghan might have been wrapped up
in something that got those women killed. But there's a
lot of thought and there's a lot of theory or
rumor that now that that was separate from what happened
(09:55):
to her, and what happened to her points back to
possibly Michael Marine that he.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Would want to silence her for some reason.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Yeah, these are powerful men taking advantage of addicted, unempowered women.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
And so how would you say, like Michael Moran in
tying this back to the road in case Michael Moran
and the situation in Portsmouth, I think just speaks to
this community, which I think includes Piked In as people.
You know, these men in power are kind of doing
what they want. And you know, when you look at
Sheriff Rider, who handled the investigation for the road and murder,
(10:31):
he was also doing what he wanted. You know, now
he's indicted on all these charges of you know, theft
from the county.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
Yeah, and so you know, you can the parallel if
you're wanting to make a parallel to the road in
cases absolutely either a you had ineffectual or corrupt or
both law enforcements, right you had a community or a
culture of lawlessness that has descended on upon many play
(11:00):
in rural America. I will also say there's a major
issue in small town America with the quality and quantity
of law enforcement that happens there and the lack of accountability.
Because nobody's watching, you might.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Be wondering how the crimes in Portsmith fit into the
Road and Family case. While we probably know that Michael
Moran and what's happening in Portsmouth is not directly related
to the Road and murders, it does speak to the
distrust and lack of accountability in law enforcement. It's this
idea that all these men in power, from judges to
attorneys are involved in these crimes and their cover ups.
It raises a pretty unnerving question who do you trust
(11:44):
if you can't trust elected officials and law enforcement. Furthermore,
this influx of drugs and lack of accountability from law
enforcement and the haphazard way piked and authorities tried to
recover some seemingly very important evidence is basically exactly what
reporter James Pilcher outlined so well in his work.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah, it seems really systemic in the area and specifically
too piked in and that impacts everything from the top down.
Let's stop here for a quick commercial break. We'll be
back in a moment. Mike Land from Hoboken, New Jersey,
(12:28):
asked if there were any other personal stories we'd heard
from people along the way that hadn't made it into
the podcast, and here are a few that stand out
to us.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
The relationship between Frederica Wagner and Angela Wagner, her daughter
in law, has been the basis of a lot of
conversation that it was a troubled relationship and that Angela
and her husband were vicious fighters. And we even have
heard from a very close source that Angela would actually
have to put a little sedative in Billy Wagner's shakes
(12:58):
every day because that would lower his temper and that's
how she would survive the day. It just paints a picture,
whether this is true or not. Here Angela enters the
Wagner family. She's feuding with her now mother in law,
the matriarch of the family, Frederica, her husband I don't
know how tall he actually is, but he's a tall
presence of a man, and you know, allegedly hot tempered.
(13:21):
So Angela is trying to survive this new dynamic homeschooling
her boys and sedating her husband and feuding with her
mother in law. It just paints a very complicated picture.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
It does. And because I can be pedantic of allegedly
drugging her, but other stuff we did here because I
spoke to the same person who was a family member,
it was someone who was a family.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
They were there.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
This is apparently first hand account correct.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
And part of that which I thought also painted such
an interesting picture was, like you said, the Wagners were
known really widely to have get into it with the fights.
And what this source said to us was that she
was at the family home, at the Wagner family home,
and she commented that Angela had very many decorative baskets
(14:14):
all over and she said those are very beautiful. And
Angela allegedly said, well, every time we get into a
fight and Billy needs to apologize, he buys me another
basket because I like him. And so just picturing this
house filled with decorative baskets, each one emblematic of an argument,
just an interesting picture. Here's a rich question and it
(14:41):
comes from Aaron from Malvern, New York, and she asks
how to Sheriff Reader play into the investigations and how
mighty play into the upcoming court trials. He complicates this,
I mean, he's been accused of many things. In court
documents filed just last month, they alleged Reader of misappropriating
(15:03):
about fifteen thousand dollars and SEES funds and borrowing six
thousand dollars from employees, which can be seen as coercion.
The records also accuse him of circumventing rules at auctions
to improperly get impounded vehicles for his family, so to
his benefit. Additionally, the court alleges that Reader on June
(15:26):
twenty seventeen, seized seven thousand dollars that prosecutors call quote
possible proceeds of drug trafficking. So these are charges that
have gone for several years, and there's even new allegations
that charge him and engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity,
which is a first degree felony, and prosecutors have long
(15:47):
used the charge as a way to attack organized crime
figures and major drug dealers by seeking long prison sentences.
So the fact that they're using this against a sheriff
is interesting strategy.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
You know. The issue is now that his character is
being called into question, and according to sources we've talked to,
the criminal justice experts agree that if Reader is found
of any wrongdoing, it could pose obstacles for the prosecution
in the trials against the Wagners.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
You know, Reader was the frontman of making everybody feel
at ease that the investigation was being handled, but frankly
was kind of doing a messy job from the jump.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
I mean, in theory, you could look at every single
case Sheriff Reader took the lead on and wonder what
he was doing behind the scenes in order to make
an arrest, which would include the rodent investigation. On the
other side of that, though, you know, what experts are
saying is that the prosecution might argue to the judge
on the case that Reader's criminal history isn't relevant to
(16:48):
the Wagner trials and thus shouldn't be heard by a jury,
and they'll do that by downplaying his role in the investigation.
And if that becomes the case, then it won't necessarily
be a death blow to the state case. Another expert
was quoted as saying in the press, officers are human
beings like everybody else, and so sometimes juries can weigh
in on that and decide what kind of credence they
(17:10):
want to give to his behavior.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Shriff Frieder also potentially jeopardized the investigation by having the
Rodents cars and mobile homes moved off site, which Attorney
Mike Allen an investigative reporter Jodi Barr talked about in
episode five. So Shriffrieder's involvement is far reaching and it
has the potential to effect in multiple ways, not only
during the investigation but moving forward with the trials.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, there was something else early on in the investigation
that happened that really did cause a stir and that's
the road in autopsy reports, And for some reason these
were held up in being released to the media outlets,
which is something that happens occasionally in criminal cases, but
it garnered a lot of attention specifically with the road
in case.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Probably the reason why is oftentimes autopsies are not released
to the public because there might be a hell or
something very significant in those autopsy reports. For example, this
is just top of head not related to the Wagner
or Roding case at all. If somebody had a certain
tattoo marking or had been cut in a certain way
(18:14):
that only the perpetrator slash killer would know, then authorities
don't want that information to be wildly known because it's
something that would be helpful to know if there was
a confession, for example, So if somebody confessed, they would
know that information. So that is not entirely uncommon, although
in this case it seems that was not the reason why.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah, it's speculated that it's not the reason why. And
this is this one actually all the way up to
the Ohio Supreme Court. Two outlets, the Columbus Dispatch and
the Cincinnati Inquirer, sued the state for the right to
the autopsies. The suit was filed against the Pike County Coroner,
David Kessler, and that came after the Dispatch was denied
three separate times officially asking for the final autops reports.
(19:00):
And what the Dispatch's claim was was that the final
autopsy reports are of great public interest and quote significant
value to the Dispatch and our news gathering activities.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
The authorities really were apprehensive to release the autopsy information,
arguing that the release could hinder the investigation. I wonder,
just to harp on this a little longer, like what
was the city, like what was Pike County really trying
to protect?
Speaker 1 (19:25):
You know?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Four times, three times seems like a lot of times
to continue to fight the release of this, and now
that we know what they say, like what in there
was so damning to the investigation? You know, it's just
like seems like a lot.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Well. I actually spoke with attorney Jack Grenier, and he
was one of the lawyers who filed the suit on
behalf of the dispatch, and he had some really compelling thoughts.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
You have to kind of wonder, in light of the
trouble that the sheriff ultimately got into, what was motivating
the desire to keep things kind of quiet, Because is
a pretty good example of, in my view, law enforcement overreacting.
And I say that kind of cautiously because you know,
(20:13):
it's say it was multiple murders in a gruesome situation.
But I think the.
Speaker 6 (20:18):
Idea of you know, you just have to withhold as
much information as you possibly can.
Speaker 5 (20:25):
From the public, and even maybe more information than you're
allowed to withhold, is to me an overreaction and I
think we saw that in this case. You know that somehow, you.
Speaker 6 (20:38):
Know, if any piece of information got out.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
There would somehow derail the whole investigation.
Speaker 6 (20:44):
I just I just don't buy into that.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
The Inquirer really argued that it was in the public's
best interest to know what the autopsy said and to review.
I meant, what we learned from the autopsies is pretty
important in terms of what happened to the rod Ends.
We learned how many times they were shot, where they
were shot, which really did speak to how personal the
crimes were. Some of these family members were shot multiple
times in the face with a shotgun, and so if
(21:10):
this was a drug cartel hit, you know, it wasn't
once and quick. It was personal and it was an overkill,
which is what we learned from the autopsies.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Once these autopsies would be released, here we go again,
more questions with few answers, and sure enough, that's exactly
what happened. Thankfully we have this information and we could
actually really look at these autopsy reports in great detail,
and I can speak for myself saying it was really
dark and twisted when you really do see just how
(21:40):
much to your point, Chef of an overkill.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
This really was.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yeah, it made me think like what releasing this autopsy
would do to the town of piked In and speaking
to a fair amount of the residents and just the
feeling of uncertainty. I don't know how it would if
it was a good thing or a bad thing, because
the people in piked In were thinking it was a
drug cartel who did this prior to the autopsy release,
and that created a sense of fear. But then I
think after the autopsies were released, people started circling in
(22:06):
on the Wagners and really thinking they did it, which
created a whole other set of problems in terms of
this kind of small town justice that the Wagner's faced,
whether they deserve it or not, creates a whole new
problem for the sheriff's office.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back
in a moment. So we were talking about the informant,
which we've covered in the past, but I know there's
been some other questions out there.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Yeah, so Woody from Comack, New York asked us on
social media about the likelihood that the informant is in
fact one of the Wagner four.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I'm obsessed with understanding more about the informant personally, So
you definitely think it must be a family member.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Who must is a strong statement. I think the likelihood,
I think it seems likely only because if this family
allegedly did commit this careful, careful, planned out murders that
they spent months planning, why would they then be so
careless and have someone else involved enough with the information
(23:21):
that they could turn state's evidence. So to me, it
says that if they kept it all within the family,
then necessarily it would have to be someone in the family.
It's unknowable at this point, but that's what makes sense
to me.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Is it possible that it's Rita Angela Wagner's mother because
she would have maybe been witnessed of some of these conversations.
I mean, it's possible that it's any of them, assuming
it's one of the four. Let's just play this out
for a second. If Courtney, if you're correct, and it's
one of the four of the Wagners that are the accused.
To me, if one of them was going to fold, George,
(23:55):
the eldest son, seems the most likely, And for that
I say simply because he had the least amount of
skin in the game. If he wasn't fighting for his
niece solely, you know, he wasn't you know, maybe supercharged
by love the way Jake was. He wasn't supercharged about
protecting his children the way Angela maybe was about her
(24:15):
son Jake and her granddaughter. We know the dads potentially
had some sort of a confrontation leading up that could
be you know, charged by emotion. But that said, he
turns now he's the one asking for solitary confinement in
a bible. The fact that they were trying to get
George Wagner off on bail very recently, that would speak
(24:37):
to this as well. That A, he's the informant b
just through the basic ways that you would be released
from prison on bail. They made that attempt. It was
unsuccessful on the behalf of the defense, but that is
interesting strategy. By the way, how shocking would this be
if George Wagner, the eldest son, had to actually appear
(24:58):
in court and testify against his mother and his father
and his younger brother Jake.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
That would be shocking. So while it is all speculation,
it is all possible, and several reputable sources have said
it's not the most unlikely thing. Just as a legal reminder, Angela,
Billy Jake, and George Wagner were charged with aggravated murder.
Angela Wagner's mother Rita Joe Nukomb and Billy Wagner's mother
Frederica were both charged with obstruction of justice and perjury.
(25:27):
Nucomb was also charged with forgery. All six of them
pled not guilty, and our justice system presumes innocence until
guilt is proven. Jody Barr, who we heard from throughout
the course of this podcast, has summed up pretty well
how the three of us feel about this case.
Speaker 7 (25:47):
Soby this is a case that I think about it.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
I'm pretty sure every day.
Speaker 7 (25:52):
And you know again, that's why I'm very eager to
hear from Yeah, I just want to see this trial.
I want to know more about what happened here and
if they really do have the right people. Sounds like
they do. I mean, these indictments are.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
Very linked in very detailed, but that's only.
Speaker 7 (26:09):
One side of this. I want to hear from the
Wagoners and see if they have an explanation because at
the end of the day, when the last trial is
held and the last jury, if it gets to that point,
you know, I would hope that the Rodent family can
walk out of that courtroom and know for sure that
the people who did this are the people who go
(26:30):
to prison for it. I can't think of a better
way to hand down justice.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
We've talked about this a lot, and people ask us,
you know why we work in crime investigations in general,
and I think their truth is victims have a voice
even after death, and for us, we really do want
to share our deepest sympathy with the Rodent family.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I think the point of this podcast is to really
angle towards shining light on the injustices that the Rodent
family faced and help bring a sense of closure and
answers to the surviving Rodin family.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
Well.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
I think also when the Wagners finally do have their
day in court, our hope is that the Rodents finally
see justice.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Piked In Massacre is executive produced by Stephanie Leidecker and
me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by executive producer
Jared Aston. Additional producing by Jeff Shane and Andrew Becker.
The Piked In Massacre is a 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 Katie's Studios. This is episode ten Wild Country. In
this episode, we're going to be answering a bunch of
questions we've received over social media. We are also going
to be going deeper into some subjects we've only touched
on and talking about some stories we haven't been able
to tell. I'm Courtney Armstrong. I work at Katie's Studios
(00:22):
with Stephanie Leidecker and Jeff Sheen. Just as a legal reminder, Angela,
Billy Jake, and George Wagner were charged with aggravated murder.
Angela Wagner's mother Rita Joe Neucomb and Billy Wagner's mother,
Frederica were both charged with obstruction of justice and perjury.
Nucom was also charged with forgery. All six of them
pled not guilty, and our justice system presumes innocence until
(00:44):
guilt is proven.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Ali from Ormond Beach, Florida asked us about the drugs
and how they relate to the case and if there's
anything else in the piked In area that pertains to
drugs that we should know.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So. One of the big theories behind the murders. We
explored was drugs and the fact that the Rodents did
have a pretty large marijuana grow operation on their property.
But it's not just specific to the Rodent or even
specific to Piked. In the immediate area is kind of
a hotbed that's been affected by drugs in myriad ways.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
For starters, there's not a ton of jobs, and that
has really taken a toll on the town. And just
generally speaking, Ohio.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
And the southern part of the state has been devastated
by drug abuse, mostly prescription painkillers and heroin. In Pike County,
the drug overdose mortality rate from twenty fourteen to twenty
eighteen was more than seventy one deaths per one hundred
thousand population. The rate for the rest of the country
was twenty seven deaths per one hundred thousand. That's nearly
three times the mortality rate of the rest of the country.
(01:55):
A lot of these drugs come in from Portsmouth.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Portsmouth, Ohio, is the neighboring town to Pike and so
about a fifteen minute drive I spoke to investigative reporter
James Pilcher, who did an incredibly deep dive into Portsmouth
into the larger picture of what's happening in southeastern Ohio.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Sportsmith, which is in the next county over on the
river south of Pike County in Piketon, is known as
ground zero for the pill mill epidemic. That's where pill
mills and the opioid epidemic is known to have had
a major hotspot way early on in the late nineteen
nineties early two thousands, when the oxycon first hit the market.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And tell me what a pill mill is.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
A pill mill is where a doctor who for whatever
reason isn't there to see clients, somebody just shows up
and you just hands some prescription for money, and then
they get the prescription there and then right next door
is a pharmacy and then they just put it in
and then those people get the pills because it's legal
(02:55):
in that state. They might drive them home to Florida
and then sell them for ten times the price or
trade them or whatever. But it was unregulated in Ohio
at the time, and Kentucky was bad too. Kentucky had
the same issues. So right there enforcements right there on
the Ohio River bordering Kentucky, so you had both sides
of the river. So there were cars lined up from
(03:18):
Florida and West Virginia and Georgia up and down all
over town for a decade, and it just ravaged the city,
which had already been decimated by you know, the pullout
of industrialization, and so all of that kind of flooded in.
You have all of these, you know, an economically depressed area,
(03:42):
all of a sudden, addiction becomes a major major issue.
People are driving from all over the country because it's
easy to get the pills there.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
And then of course there's also the people who get
into kind of the illicit activities to make money, right.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Absolutely, absolutely, a cottage industry of crime and drug associated
kind of sprung up, and you know, started to do
my own reporting on it. So one of our editors
worked as the managing editor of the Portsmouth Daily Times,
which is the daily newspaper there in the early twenty ten,
(04:16):
and so he was very familiar with the rumors that
had been circulating around about Michael Moran. Moran had already
been a city council but he wasn't on city council anymore,
but he was still well known within the legal circles
and chamber of commerce, and he did some work pro
bono work about legal defense, but he always seemed to
(04:38):
have a pretty girl in his army. In December of
twenty eighteen, a now former reporter with that newspaper put
out on Facebook segments of a federal affidavits from the
Drug Enforcement Administration, which basically laid there and put out
for public viewing. That's the federal law enforcement was investigating
(05:03):
the very same rumors that have been following Moran around
for years, that he was running girls and running drugs,
and that this was who he was.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
It's important to note that Michael Moran has not been
arrested or charged with any crimes. Also that Moran has
categorically denied all of this.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
My editor at the time, and I was working as
an investigative reporter at the Cincinnati Enquirer, said would James
be interested in taking a look at this? And I'll
be honest, I thought, I didn't think it was real
at first. I thought there was no way that this
is as bad as they say it is and whatever.
So I took a drive out there. The partnered me
with a woman photographer whom we went out there a
couple of times, and I'll never forget it. We were
(05:46):
doing some b roll shoot shots in front of a
pseudo abandoned shoe factory with graffiti about hookers and things
like that, and a guy comes running up and says,
what are you doing? And I told him and I said,
by the way, ever heard of Michael Moran. He says, oh, yeah,
that guy runs women. So this was not a secret
in Portsmouth. Everybody knew the rumors and had known somebody
(06:11):
that knew somebody that had worked for him. It was
going on that he was running women all over the country.
He was promising women drugs for sex. He had relationships
with judges and with members of law enforcement, all of it.
So you know, all of this is in a federal
document we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
It's like human trafficking, right, yes.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
So so you know, some people this is an interesting distinction.
Some people will say, oh, well, these women knew what
they were doing, they were just trying to make money. Well,
if you talk to the experts, it went one step
beyond that. It went into trafficking because Moran was holding
over them a the fact that they were drug addicts,
and he would withhold their money or withhold their wherewithal
(06:56):
to get drugs, which under federal statute and Ohio statute
is a form of trafficking B. He was intensively promising
more lenient sentences because he had friends in the legal system.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
I'd like to point out here that we reached out
to Michael Moran as well as the prosecutors involved. Neither
side got back to us with comment.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
So I talked to some folks, but getting those first
initial people to talk, that was their big fear, is
they these women just weren't afraid to go to jail.
They were afraid for their lives. And the reason they
were afraid for their lives is the name of one woman,
and that's Megan Lancaster. Meghan was a known prostitute in
the late two thousands in Sciotra County. If you talk
(07:40):
to her sister in law and you talk to other
people who knew her, she worked for Mike Moran. Meghan
got hooked on drugs early on in high school. Shortly
out after high school. If you talk to her sister
in law, who has led the charge, he started partying
later in high school and out of high school, and
(08:01):
that led her, according to our sources, into the circle
of Morane. So Moran would hire her out for bachelor parties,
and you know Katie Lancaster, her sister in law, even
tells the story about her running into Megan wearing Christmas
lingerie in a Walmart picking something up on her way
(08:25):
to a Christmas party where she was the entertainment for
a bunch of Moran's friends. And she mysteriously disappeared, so
we can't even say she was murdered. Her car was
found of blood on it, the door was left wide open,
half parked in a local fast food joint there in
downtown Portsmouth, and they have not found hide nor hair
(08:49):
of her. And I can tell you there are a
lot of places in Sciota County where you can hide
a body. It's full of hollers and dips and forests,
and it's wild country. It really is wild country. The
glaciers came through and cut a bunch of stuff, and
it's it's beautiful, but it's also wild country. And a
(09:14):
flew of women went missing or got killed that were
addicted prostitutes, sex workers up in Ross County, in Chilcoffee,
which is two counties to the north. Since twenty ten,
more than a dozen women have either been killed or
gone missing in Ross County which is the county north
(09:34):
of Pike County, which is probably an hour forty five
minutes north of pikedn in Chilicothee. So Megan, A lot
of people theorized that Meghan might have been wrapped up
in something that got those women killed. But there's a
lot of thought and there's a lot of theory or
rumor that now that that was separate from what happened
(09:55):
to her, and what happened to her points back to
possibly Michael Marine that he.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Would want to silence her for some reason.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Yeah, these are powerful men taking advantage of addicted, unempowered women.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
And so how would you say, like Michael Moran in
tying this back to the road in case Michael Moran
and the situation in Portsmouth, I think just speaks to
this community, which I think includes Piked In as people.
You know, these men in power are kind of doing
what they want. And you know, when you look at
Sheriff Rider, who handled the investigation for the road and murder,
(10:31):
he was also doing what he wanted. You know, now
he's indicted on all these charges of you know, theft
from the county.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
Yeah, and so you know, you can the parallel if
you're wanting to make a parallel to the road in
cases absolutely either a you had ineffectual or corrupt or
both law enforcements, right you had a community or a
culture of lawlessness that has descended on upon many play
(11:00):
in rural America. I will also say there's a major
issue in small town America with the quality and quantity
of law enforcement that happens there and the lack of accountability.
Because nobody's watching, you might.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Be wondering how the crimes in Portsmith fit into the
Road and Family case. While we probably know that Michael
Moran and what's happening in Portsmouth is not directly related
to the Road and murders, it does speak to the
distrust and lack of accountability in law enforcement. It's this
idea that all these men in power, from judges to
attorneys are involved in these crimes and their cover ups.
It raises a pretty unnerving question who do you trust
(11:44):
if you can't trust elected officials and law enforcement. Furthermore,
this influx of drugs and lack of accountability from law
enforcement and the haphazard way piked and authorities tried to
recover some seemingly very important evidence is basically exactly what
reporter James Pilcher outlined so well in his work.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah, it seems really systemic in the area and specifically
too piked in and that impacts everything from the top down.
Let's stop here for a quick commercial break. We'll be
back in a moment. Mike Land from Hoboken, New Jersey,
(12:28):
asked if there were any other personal stories we'd heard
from people along the way that hadn't made it into
the podcast, and here are a few that stand out
to us.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
The relationship between Frederica Wagner and Angela Wagner, her daughter
in law, has been the basis of a lot of
conversation that it was a troubled relationship and that Angela
and her husband were vicious fighters. And we even have
heard from a very close source that Angela would actually
have to put a little sedative in Billy Wagner's shakes
(12:58):
every day because that would lower his temper and that's
how she would survive the day. It just paints a picture,
whether this is true or not. Here Angela enters the
Wagner family. She's feuding with her now mother in law,
the matriarch of the family, Frederica, her husband I don't
know how tall he actually is, but he's a tall
presence of a man, and you know, allegedly hot tempered.
(13:21):
So Angela is trying to survive this new dynamic homeschooling
her boys and sedating her husband and feuding with her
mother in law. It just paints a very complicated picture.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
It does. And because I can be pedantic of allegedly
drugging her, but other stuff we did here because I
spoke to the same person who was a family member,
it was someone who was a family.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
They were there.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
This is apparently first hand account correct.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
And part of that which I thought also painted such
an interesting picture was, like you said, the Wagners were
known really widely to have get into it with the fights.
And what this source said to us was that she
was at the family home, at the Wagner family home,
and she commented that Angela had very many decorative baskets
(14:14):
all over and she said those are very beautiful. And
Angela allegedly said, well, every time we get into a
fight and Billy needs to apologize, he buys me another
basket because I like him. And so just picturing this
house filled with decorative baskets, each one emblematic of an argument,
just an interesting picture. Here's a rich question and it
(14:41):
comes from Aaron from Malvern, New York, and she asks
how to Sheriff Reader play into the investigations and how
mighty play into the upcoming court trials. He complicates this,
I mean, he's been accused of many things. In court
documents filed just last month, they alleged Reader of misappropriating
(15:03):
about fifteen thousand dollars and SEES funds and borrowing six
thousand dollars from employees, which can be seen as coercion.
The records also accuse him of circumventing rules at auctions
to improperly get impounded vehicles for his family, so to
his benefit. Additionally, the court alleges that Reader on June
(15:26):
twenty seventeen, seized seven thousand dollars that prosecutors call quote
possible proceeds of drug trafficking. So these are charges that
have gone for several years, and there's even new allegations
that charge him and engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity,
which is a first degree felony, and prosecutors have long
(15:47):
used the charge as a way to attack organized crime
figures and major drug dealers by seeking long prison sentences.
So the fact that they're using this against a sheriff
is interesting strategy.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
You know. The issue is now that his character is
being called into question, and according to sources we've talked to,
the criminal justice experts agree that if Reader is found
of any wrongdoing, it could pose obstacles for the prosecution
in the trials against the Wagners.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
You know, Reader was the frontman of making everybody feel
at ease that the investigation was being handled, but frankly
was kind of doing a messy job from the jump.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
I mean, in theory, you could look at every single
case Sheriff Reader took the lead on and wonder what
he was doing behind the scenes in order to make
an arrest, which would include the rodent investigation. On the
other side of that, though, you know, what experts are
saying is that the prosecution might argue to the judge
on the case that Reader's criminal history isn't relevant to
(16:48):
the Wagner trials and thus shouldn't be heard by a jury,
and they'll do that by downplaying his role in the investigation.
And if that becomes the case, then it won't necessarily
be a death blow to the state case. Another expert
was quoted as saying in the press, officers are human
beings like everybody else, and so sometimes juries can weigh
in on that and decide what kind of credence they
(17:10):
want to give to his behavior.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Shriff Frieder also potentially jeopardized the investigation by having the
Rodents cars and mobile homes moved off site, which Attorney
Mike Allen an investigative reporter Jodi Barr talked about in
episode five. So Shriffrieder's involvement is far reaching and it
has the potential to effect in multiple ways, not only
during the investigation but moving forward with the trials.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, there was something else early on in the investigation
that happened that really did cause a stir and that's
the road in autopsy reports, And for some reason these
were held up in being released to the media outlets,
which is something that happens occasionally in criminal cases, but
it garnered a lot of attention specifically with the road
in case.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Probably the reason why is oftentimes autopsies are not released
to the public because there might be a hell or
something very significant in those autopsy reports. For example, this
is just top of head not related to the Wagner
or Roding case at all. If somebody had a certain
tattoo marking or had been cut in a certain way
(18:14):
that only the perpetrator slash killer would know, then authorities
don't want that information to be wildly known because it's
something that would be helpful to know if there was
a confession, for example, So if somebody confessed, they would
know that information. So that is not entirely uncommon, although
in this case it seems that was not the reason why.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah, it's speculated that it's not the reason why. And
this is this one actually all the way up to
the Ohio Supreme Court. Two outlets, the Columbus Dispatch and
the Cincinnati Inquirer, sued the state for the right to
the autopsies. The suit was filed against the Pike County Coroner,
David Kessler, and that came after the Dispatch was denied
three separate times officially asking for the final autops reports.
(19:00):
And what the Dispatch's claim was was that the final
autopsy reports are of great public interest and quote significant
value to the Dispatch and our news gathering activities.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
The authorities really were apprehensive to release the autopsy information,
arguing that the release could hinder the investigation. I wonder,
just to harp on this a little longer, like what
was the city, like what was Pike County really trying
to protect?
Speaker 1 (19:25):
You know?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Four times, three times seems like a lot of times
to continue to fight the release of this, and now
that we know what they say, like what in there
was so damning to the investigation? You know, it's just
like seems like a lot.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Well. I actually spoke with attorney Jack Grenier, and he
was one of the lawyers who filed the suit on
behalf of the dispatch, and he had some really compelling thoughts.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
You have to kind of wonder, in light of the
trouble that the sheriff ultimately got into, what was motivating
the desire to keep things kind of quiet, Because is
a pretty good example of, in my view, law enforcement overreacting.
And I say that kind of cautiously because you know,
(20:13):
it's say it was multiple murders in a gruesome situation.
But I think the.
Speaker 6 (20:18):
Idea of you know, you just have to withhold as
much information as you possibly can.
Speaker 5 (20:25):
From the public, and even maybe more information than you're
allowed to withhold, is to me an overreaction and I
think we saw that in this case. You know that somehow, you.
Speaker 6 (20:38):
Know, if any piece of information got out.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
There would somehow derail the whole investigation.
Speaker 6 (20:44):
I just I just don't buy into that.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
The Inquirer really argued that it was in the public's
best interest to know what the autopsy said and to review.
I meant, what we learned from the autopsies is pretty
important in terms of what happened to the rod Ends.
We learned how many times they were shot, where they
were shot, which really did speak to how personal the
crimes were. Some of these family members were shot multiple
times in the face with a shotgun, and so if
(21:10):
this was a drug cartel hit, you know, it wasn't
once and quick. It was personal and it was an overkill,
which is what we learned from the autopsies.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Once these autopsies would be released, here we go again,
more questions with few answers, and sure enough, that's exactly
what happened. Thankfully we have this information and we could
actually really look at these autopsy reports in great detail,
and I can speak for myself saying it was really
dark and twisted when you really do see just how
(21:40):
much to your point, Chef of an overkill.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
This really was.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yeah, it made me think like what releasing this autopsy
would do to the town of piked In and speaking
to a fair amount of the residents and just the
feeling of uncertainty. I don't know how it would if
it was a good thing or a bad thing, because
the people in piked In were thinking it was a
drug cartel who did this prior to the autopsy release,
and that created a sense of fear. But then I
think after the autopsies were released, people started circling in
(22:06):
on the Wagners and really thinking they did it, which
created a whole other set of problems in terms of
this kind of small town justice that the Wagner's faced,
whether they deserve it or not, creates a whole new
problem for the sheriff's office.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back
in a moment. So we were talking about the informant,
which we've covered in the past, but I know there's
been some other questions out there.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Yeah, so Woody from Comack, New York asked us on
social media about the likelihood that the informant is in
fact one of the Wagner four.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I'm obsessed with understanding more about the informant personally, So
you definitely think it must be a family member.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Who must is a strong statement. I think the likelihood,
I think it seems likely only because if this family
allegedly did commit this careful, careful, planned out murders that
they spent months planning, why would they then be so
careless and have someone else involved enough with the information
(23:21):
that they could turn state's evidence. So to me, it
says that if they kept it all within the family,
then necessarily it would have to be someone in the family.
It's unknowable at this point, but that's what makes sense
to me.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Is it possible that it's Rita Angela Wagner's mother because
she would have maybe been witnessed of some of these conversations.
I mean, it's possible that it's any of them, assuming
it's one of the four. Let's just play this out
for a second. If Courtney, if you're correct, and it's
one of the four of the Wagners that are the accused.
To me, if one of them was going to fold, George,
(23:55):
the eldest son, seems the most likely, And for that
I say simply because he had the least amount of
skin in the game. If he wasn't fighting for his
niece solely, you know, he wasn't you know, maybe supercharged
by love the way Jake was. He wasn't supercharged about
protecting his children the way Angela maybe was about her
(24:15):
son Jake and her granddaughter. We know the dads potentially
had some sort of a confrontation leading up that could
be you know, charged by emotion. But that said, he
turns now he's the one asking for solitary confinement in
a bible. The fact that they were trying to get
George Wagner off on bail very recently, that would speak
(24:37):
to this as well. That A, he's the informant b
just through the basic ways that you would be released
from prison on bail. They made that attempt. It was
unsuccessful on the behalf of the defense, but that is
interesting strategy. By the way, how shocking would this be
if George Wagner, the eldest son, had to actually appear
(24:58):
in court and testify against his mother and his father
and his younger brother Jake.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
That would be shocking. So while it is all speculation,
it is all possible, and several reputable sources have said
it's not the most unlikely thing. Just as a legal reminder, Angela,
Billy Jake, and George Wagner were charged with aggravated murder.
Angela Wagner's mother Rita Joe Nukomb and Billy Wagner's mother
Frederica were both charged with obstruction of justice and perjury.
(25:27):
Nucomb was also charged with forgery. All six of them
pled not guilty, and our justice system presumes innocence until
guilt is proven. Jody Barr, who we heard from throughout
the course of this podcast, has summed up pretty well
how the three of us feel about this case.
Speaker 7 (25:47):
Soby this is a case that I think about it.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
I'm pretty sure every day.
Speaker 7 (25:52):
And you know again, that's why I'm very eager to
hear from Yeah, I just want to see this trial.
I want to know more about what happened here and
if they really do have the right people. Sounds like
they do. I mean, these indictments are.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
Very linked in very detailed, but that's only.
Speaker 7 (26:09):
One side of this. I want to hear from the
Wagoners and see if they have an explanation because at
the end of the day, when the last trial is
held and the last jury, if it gets to that point,
you know, I would hope that the Rodent family can
walk out of that courtroom and know for sure that
the people who did this are the people who go
(26:30):
to prison for it. I can't think of a better
way to hand down justice.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
We've talked about this a lot, and people ask us,
you know why we work in crime investigations in general,
and I think their truth is victims have a voice
even after death, and for us, we really do want
to share our deepest sympathy with the Rodent family.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I think the point of this podcast is to really
angle towards shining light on the injustices that the Rodent
family faced and help bring a sense of closure and
answers to the surviving Rodin family.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
Well.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
I think also when the Wagners finally do have their
day in court, our hope is that the Rodents finally
see justice.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Piked In Massacre is executive produced by Stephanie Leidecker and
me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by executive producer
Jared Aston. Additional producing by Jeff Shane and Andrew Becker.
The Piked In Massacre is a 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.
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