June 9, 2021 • 30 mins
The man who helped lead Ohio’s largest criminal investigation, Sheriff Charlie Reader went from being a well-liked public figure to finding himself at the center of a very different crime- one that placed him on the other side of the law. In episode 5, we look at the once beloved sheriff’s career, his involvement in the Rhoden case and his shocking fall from grace.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to The Piketon Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and
Katie Studios. We are here today for the kase State
of Ohio versus Charles Reader, case numbers twenty nineteen CR.
Sixty eight the cornel now here from mister Reader. I
stand here before you today to take accountability for my actions.
To accept responsibility for my conduct, I said, Sheriff of Ohio.
(00:22):
I should excuse me. Everything that I've worked for professionally,
in honorably for twenty five years was stripped to me
with nobody good pointing but myself. If I could go
back and change it, I would a million times. This
(00:43):
is not who I am. Never ever did I imagine
myself on the defense side of this court route that
I've spent twenty five years of my life in this
county in law enforcement. I am a good person, make
bad decisions and choices I have, and I'm out pray
(01:08):
that the work will find mercy on me. This is
the Piked and Massacre returned to Pike County season two,
episode five, To Protect and Serve. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a
television producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane.
On the morning of April twenty second, twenty sixteen, the
(01:31):
Pike County Sheriff's Office responded to calls of multiple homicides
in what would soon be considered Ohio's most notorious mass murder.
The bodies of seven adults and one sixteen year old
boy were found in four different locations along a country
road in Pike County. We know all of these victims
all members of the Roden family. The shooting ste left
(01:51):
the town of Piked and numb a lot of unanswered
questions as to how this unfolded and who is responsible
for that. As news of the tragedy emerged, the nation
turned to the area's top law enforcement official for answers.
Pike County Sheriff Charlie Reader to give a brief update
on what we are doing at this time. I have
deputies from my county and other counties that are keeping
(02:15):
the scenes secured. Here's reporter James Pilcher. He's the one
updating the media. He's the one who is available. He's
the one when you wanted to ask how things are going,
he was the one that you call. So he began
the face of the investigation early on. This investigation is
very large, one, probably the largest in Pike County that
(02:36):
we've ever had and been a part of. It's very tragic.
I want everybody to be patient, but understand that we
are working around the clock, twenty four hours a day,
but this is going to be a very lengthy process.
Reporter angeinet Levy covered many of Reader's briefings during the
course of the road and murder investigation. You know, he
was out in front of this standing next to the
(02:56):
Attorney General at the time, doing press conferences with him,
and he often became very emotional and people there were
a lot of people in Pike County who really really
liked him. You came in like thieves in the night
and took eight lives, some being children. We are getting closer.
The family and the victims will have justice one day.
(03:19):
Charlie Reader, by all accounts, as somebody who grew up
in Pike County. He did not come from a well
to do family or anything like that. A lot of
people out in Pike County or poor. He worked for
many years for the Pike County Prosecutor, Rob junk He
was his investigator, and at some point Charlie Reader was
appointed the sheriff by the Democratic Party in Pike County.
(03:43):
Criminal defense attorney Mike Allen remembered Readers twenty and sixteen
landslide election. He got seventy five percent. Approbably got twenty
five percent. It's pretty unheard of in any kind of election.
So at one point he was pretty popular sheriff. There
were a lot of people in the community who felt
that he did some good things at the Sheriff's office
when he first took over. They felt like he was
(04:05):
clean up crime in the streets. Southern Ohio has a
very major brug problem with hopioids in methemphetamine, and fenton
al in all of it, and a couple members of
the community claimed that Reader really was there for the
family after one of their members that died from a
drug overdose and helped plan a memorial three in his honor.
(04:26):
So he was very approachable. He was out and about
in the community much more. Charlie Reader branded himself as
the people's sheriff during the height of the road and
murder investigation. Sheriff Reader's passionate pleas for justice earned him
the trust of his community. As a sheriff of Pike County,
or a three hundred and fifty six days into this investigation,
(04:49):
I've got a message for the killers. We will find you,
we will arrest you, and you will be prosecuted. As
this case moved forward, the spotlight grew brighter and brighter
in that area because of this case, and I think
he enjoyed the spotlight to a degree, and I think
he had greater political aspirations as well. Here's producer Chris
(05:14):
Graves speaking with investigative reporter Jodi Barr. He covered the
road and murder case for Foxnews nineteen and Cincinnati. What
kind of power does a sheriff wield in a community
like Pike County. He was the closest to the people
of Pike County, and you see that with a lot
of elected officials in more rural areas that you know,
the sheriff is literally the top dog in the county.
(05:36):
He is the face of law enforcement. He controls what
happens with law enforcement, where patrols happened. So as far
as an elected official, as far as a person holding power,
your sheriff in these areas, he is the man. Can
something like that go to someone's head? You've worked in
law enforcement, yourself for quite a while. Oh yeah, you
(05:57):
see it a lot police chiefs or sheriffs or somebody
who's recently promoted to a supervisory position. I mean, thank goodness,
it doesn't happen to a lot of them, but some
of them does. Now. Whether that happened here or not,
I don't know, but yeah, that very much could happen.
As the Road and investigation moved into its second year,
some disquieting rumors about Sheriff Frieder began to surface. As
(06:21):
we began to spend more time out there, we started
hearing the rumblings that there was some corruption out there.
We had heard rumors about him intimidating people and possibly
taking money from people who were in the drug dealing business.
I know, I for one, was told by some of
(06:42):
my law enforcement sources in the Cincinnati area, Hey, you
need to be careful around him. He's dirty. And these
were just people that were my sources who said, you know, look,
I just want you to be aware, be careful. Was
it because they were afraid they didn't trust him? They
did not trust Charlie Reader. There was a rumor that
(07:03):
he was sexually harassing some female employees when he worked
at the Ross County Juvenile Detention Center. Records from his
personnel file said that he wasn't the right fit and
there were too many questions. He had a lawsuit in
small claims court in nineteen ninety five and Galli Police
four not paying a debt and there was a warrant
(07:25):
issued for him, but he ended up paying it. So,
I mean, there were some things out there. There appears
to be two sides of Charlie Reader. One that you know,
the public sees, and they saw it in these naturally
televised broadcast press conferences where a reader is very emotional
talking about these Rodent murders very early on. And then
(07:46):
there's something you see in Charlie Reader where when reader
is challenged, you see another side of Reader. So he's
got a very public face and a very private face.
Then oh yeah. Investigators recently too vehicles that had been
parked at the homes where eight members of the Rodent
family were found shot to death in Pike County, Ohio
last month. The four mobile homes themselves where the bodies
(08:08):
were found, will be removed from the scene to be
stored at a location in nearby Waverley. Going to get
out to investigative reporter Jodi Barr live in Pike County.
While I was in Pike County, I started seeing things
that I had to question. What we found at that
evidence ware a house where the trailers, the vehicles, the
equipment that all belonged to the rodents where the Sheriff's
(08:30):
office in BCI took that. So we found problems with
the security of that evidence and the security of that warehouse.
I'm not an attorney. I've never prosecuted the case, I've
never collected evidence. But what I do know is that
evidence that is collected has to be secured. I've seen
prosecutions lost in court rooms in the states I've covered
because someone failed to secure one piece of evidence. And
(08:53):
of course Charlie Reader was so central to what we
were looking at. He is the man in charge that
we had to go find him. We scheduled the interview
and we sat down and we had this conversation with
Charlie Reader, and I want to say it last it's
maybe forty five minutes to an hour, and again, back
to watching the two sides of Charlie Reader. You had
the emotional Charlie Reader early on in the interview where
(09:15):
he's talking about, you know, the rodents and you know
what this is done to Pike County. And then I
broke out an iPad, and on that iPad I had
visuals the images that I had taken from that warehouse
with the gate standing wide open, another gate secured with
a piece of thin wire. You know, days and nights
of no law enforcement at that warehouse. And I think
(09:38):
Reader knew during the middle of that interview that this
was not going to look good when we reported it,
that what we found there looked terrible and it reflected
on the job he did. So I saw Charlie Reader change,
but he changed into very defensive and red face. But
(09:59):
Reader find admitted that they did not have a deputy
posted at that warehouse. Watching that avidage twenty four to seven,
what Sheriff Reader did next struck seasoned reporter Jodi barrs troubling.
Here is JODI's first hand account of the interaction. So
the interview ends and my photographer and I are tearing
down the equipment and Charlie Reader walks us out the
(10:21):
front door of the old Sheriff's office in Waverley, and
we're standing on the ports of that Sheriff's office, and
Reader wants to make a deal, and he says, if
we'll just hold off on airing the report of the
evidence warehouse and wait until they could return property to
the family, that Reader would let us in and give
us full access to him and Charlie Reader's story of
(10:45):
the first one hundred hours after the road and murders.
And I just told him, no, we don't make deals.
Several months after that report aired, I got messages from
people in Pike County, one after the other telling me
that there was a raid underway at this road and
evidence warehouse in Waverley. Well, I dropped everything I was
(11:08):
doing at Cincinnati and drove the two hours east to
this warehouse. And when I got there there they were
Sheriff Charlie Reader, deputies with the Pike County Sheriff's Office
carrying things in and out of this warehouse. And you know,
I'm standing there wondering what is going on here. This
shouldn't be happening unless if something's happened, we don't know
about evolving the murders. This was a great public concern,
(11:31):
but that night Reader would not return my phone calls.
It was very contentious trying to get information out of
Pike County, out of the sheriffs office at that point,
but after that we were never able to access him again.
Despite Scharff Reader's apparent mishandling of aspects of the road
and murder investigation, authorities were able to put the Wagner
(11:51):
family behind bars in twenty eighteen. However, just weeks later,
area journalists got word at a different investigation, unrelated to
the road murders was underway, one that placed Sheriff Charlie
Reader on the other side of the law. The State
Auditor's office released a document to all of us that
stated an anonymous tip had come into the Auditor's office
(12:14):
in which someone stated that everyone was scared to death
a Reader, that he was basically a monster, and investigators
needed to look into a safe that was in his
office that contained money season in drug deals and it
also said something about him possibly gambling and is this
(12:35):
really wore on? The investigation continued, and then words started
spreading around Pike County. It really took what was going
on with Charlie Reader to a whole new level. In
June of twenty nineteen, a grand jury brought forth sixteen
charges against Sheriff Charlie Reader. As a result, he was
suspended from office, bringing his three year ten yere a
(12:56):
sheriff to a close. The indictment laid out detailed of
the investigation and his crimes. Reader originally faced several counts
of theft in office, which is a felony in ohiole
as well as tampering with evidence, which is also a
felony in Ohio. So what happens is that Charlie Reader
has a pretty sizeable amount of money that he's taken
(13:17):
from alleged drug dealers in Pike County. Every sheriff, every
law enforcement agency in the entire country, much less than
including Ohio, is allowed to seize money from suspects if
they think that that money or those goods are being
used in the commission of a crime. Money that was
(13:37):
seized in drug cases is supposed to be secured in
a safe or in a bank account or something, and
you can use them for education purposes for the sheriff's department,
you can contribute it to appropriate charities. But in these cases,
at least on two occasions, the allegation was that he
(13:58):
took cash and can hearded it to his own use,
so the state auditor does their annual review of the book.
On the first past, the state auditors find some money
missing out of the seizure account, and then they go
back to reader and apparently he tries to put it back,
(14:20):
but these that leads to the state auditors office then
diving into getting warrants and diving into his personal finance records.
They find multiple extenses and multiple trips to casinos both
in the area and out of state, and tens of
thousands of dollars spent to casinos impossible debts. The records
(14:40):
are pretty clear that showed some pretty big losses at
the racetrack, and also they found that he withdrew more
than twenty eight hundred dollars from machines at the Atlantic Casino,
so it was pretty clear it was from gambling. Some
of the other allegations were that a lot of times
in drug cases, cars are forfeited, and in a couple
(15:03):
of the charges, the allegations are that at the auction
he rigged it and engineered it that either he or
friends of his would get those vehicles and then turn
around and sell them, So they were very serious charges.
On September twenty fourth, twenty twenty, Sheriff Charles Reader pled
(15:24):
guilty to five charges filed against him. They included two
counts of theft in office, two counts of tampering with evidence,
and one count of conflict of interest. A few months later,
he appeared in court for sentencing. It was a day
that Anteinette Levy would not soon forget. What was the
mood like through all of this? I couldn't believe it.
When I got out there that morning, the street was
(15:46):
blocked off. There were members of the US Marshals Service there,
The US Marshalls Service bomb squad was there, there were
Sheriff's deputies there. I mean, this was quite the operation.
They were sniper's own bread. I actually have a photograph
of a sniper on a roof. And there had been
some rumblings online apparently, people encouraging people to show up
(16:11):
at the courthouse to protest this sentence. There was some
fear that people who were really hardcore supporters of his
might show up and try to do something dangerous in
order to keep him from being sentenced to prison. It
was crazy. It had never even been like that for
a Wagner Court hearing. We're going to take a quick
(16:37):
break here. We'll be back in a moment. Inside the courtroom.
The mood was much different here today for sentencing in
the case stat of Ohio versus Charles Reader. Okay, his
(16:59):
numbers twenty nine TEENCR. Sixty eight. Reader got his sentencing
in front of a visiting judge, Patricia Cosgrove, who had
actually sentenced three previous Ohio sheriffs on corruption charges. There
were five charges, and all of those could have gotten
him more than twelve years in prison. You see Charlie Reader.
(17:19):
He's sitting in court, sitting beside his defense attorney at
a table to the left, and at the table to
the right, the prosecutor who went to the grand jury
got the indictments against Reader, who got the guilty plea
from Reader months before. And you see these two tables
in opposition to one another, and the judges in the center,
and there's an empty podium in the center, and then
(17:41):
you see people walk up to that podium and then
they start telling these stories of the good deeds Charlie
Reader did in certain instances around that county. He went
through one of the most horrendous crimes ever committed in
our counties. To my memory, what he went through. I
can't take him him the nights that he went sleepless,
(18:04):
what his family went through, what it does to his health.
But I believe in his heart Charlie Reader is a
good man. As Charlie made mistakes, yes, ma'am, he probably has,
But in the Bible it says you who are without saying,
cast the first stone. I couldn't throw many rocks at
him because I've made mistakes. To the one fact, I know,
(18:27):
Charlie was a man you could count on when you
needed him, and I would vote for him today just
as sure as I am standing here as God is
my witness. After these people have said what they said,
you see a Reader walk up to the podium and
the courting now here from mister Reader. You know he's
instantly emotional. He's in tears, and he's asking the judge
(18:50):
for mercy to be lenient with him. In sinacy. This
is where he is laying it all out and asking
the state of Ohio for mercy. I said I had
light on the office of sheriff. I can only ask
that my staff, their families, the community, and my family
(19:18):
who is here today, we'll forgive me for the undue
stress I call stim I have, and I now pray
that the quirk will find mercy on me. I have
no words for the shame that I have and that
(19:38):
I feel in the regret that I have betrayed just
playing the trust if I had with my staff in
the community. Please do not send me to prison. I
have rung, but I'm not run. I still have a
lot of good left in me. During the proceedings, details
(19:59):
of readers crimes were illuminated. The state would note that
the defendant was an elected county sheriff who committed these
crimes in his position as a county sheriff. He used
his position to obtain control over the evidence bags and
then use that control to remove the funds and use
them for his own benefit. The majority of the funds
(20:20):
involved were removed from the four evidence bags cut open
by defendant. Fourteen thousand and seven hundred and seventy five
dollars was removed prior to the defendant and his attorney
turning those bags over to investigators for the Oddit States Office.
The different currency knew in many cases uncirculated bills were
(20:44):
put into the currency bags so that restitution would have
been taken care of at that point. Additionally, there's a
total of four thousand, eight hundred and fifty dollars outstanding,
three thousand, five hundred from the purchase of the Nithan
divers which was the profit made by the sheriff on
that transaction, three hundred and fifty dollars owed the people
(21:06):
who purchased the Chevy Silverado, and one thousand dollars which
the state says never made it into the evidence bag.
So Judge Patricia Cosgrove, she has a reputation for being
very tough on sheriffs in Ohio who have been engaged
in corruption, and she has no nonsense, and she questioned
(21:29):
reader from the bench. During the judge's questioning, Sheriff Rider
did his best to explain his moral motivation behind his actions.
Why did you cut open these evidence envelopes and take
the money out and then in some cases you put
it back although you were caught because the envelopes had
(21:50):
been unsealed and sealed again improperly and the denominations did
not match what was taken at the crime scene. Up
from those individuals, I guess why did you take the money?
I took the money, and mind you, this does not
(22:11):
excuse it, but from drug dealers that took it from
parents of very poor people. In this count that money,
regardless of what the state and what the media has
claimed in the past years of a gambling problem, and
that money being used for gambling, was used. When there
(22:33):
was a tree planted in the name of the Shelton Boy.
It's at the entrance of Western High School to the left.
As soon as you pull in. Nobody could pay for
that tree. Nobody offered to pay for that tree. A
drug dealer did. When schools had cheerleading or peewee that
(22:55):
had car washes and such, I would have our cruisers
taken down there. My men and women did not make
good money, so some of them would give them two dollars,
five dollars. I took money from that and I provided
it to those people. In the PSI the prec ends investigation,
(23:17):
the PSI officer notes, there's no documentation that you used
it for those things, right, I did not document those things.
He didn't produce any receipts to back these claims up.
And there's a very strict process by which those siments
are tracked, and you have to produce an accounting of
(23:39):
all of that money. So he claimed that he was
essentially a robin hood. The judge certainly didn't believe it,
But then the judge started asking him questions about gambling.
There were a couple of times that Judge Cosgrove all
the condimental line, and she sounded very, very skeptical. Let's
(24:04):
stop here for another quick break. We'll be back in
a moment. Did you lose three thousand dollars gambling at
the Sciota downs Rocino between June two thousand and seventeen
(24:28):
in September two thousand and seventeen. Yes, not by myself.
They have cards, and of course, begainning your honor, I'll
pl guilty to this, but they have cards that you
put in a machine. I can have a card in
my name, and I can have a card in my
name that my wife possesses, so I can be at
(24:50):
one machine and she can be at the other, and
the money that she spends and the money that I
spend they count on the same card and calculating the
money as one well, obviously, and that doesn't answer the
question where did the money and then checking account come from? Okay,
also want to ask you in late June two thousand
(25:12):
and seventeen, you took a trip to Reno, Nevada for
the Sheriff's conference, and then you withdrew twenty eight hundred
dollarsand a ATM. The state believes that some of this
is due to gambling. I mean, you're talking like over
or almost six thousand dollars and a couple months that
you lost are extended on gambling. And at that point
(25:36):
we were making almost eleven thousand dollars a month. And
that again was from my checking account where it should
show my direct deposits, my wife direct deposits, and that
it came from our devot cards where I retrieved that money.
I don't doubt it came from a debit cards. The
question is where did the money come that when to
(25:59):
your check can account? And that's I guess that's that's
that's where that's where the media reported that I had
numrible problems because it came from our joint bank account.
My wife made very good money at the time, and
I took that money and I gambled. Okay, all right, Um,
(26:22):
that's all the questions of court. Has she really let
him have it? She took no grief from him whatsoever?
It cannot be underestimated the damage that you have paused
to the citizens of Pike County, to law enforcement who
every day get up face the same sort of stresses
that you do. They go all home at night, they
(26:45):
get up in the morning, they don't know if they're
going to come home. The sacrifices that these men and
women at make um, I think you made a mockery
of them. I couldn't have imposed a much greater sentencement
than I have. As I said, I've taken a consideration
some of the mitigating factors, but punishment is appropriate to
(27:05):
sentence you to. I considered the minimum. However, to sends
you to anything less than three years in prison would
demean the seriousness of the offense and not adequately protects
society for future criminal conduct by yourself and honors. The
judge handed him three years, and Reader walked out of
(27:27):
that courtroom and into a jail cell to pay for
throwing away his career, embarrassing himself, and embarrassing his family.
Do you think he became a victim of his own power,
he said, of sheriff in that county, like that is
top dog, right. Maybe he started feeling he was above
the law. You know, in fifteen years of doing this job,
(27:50):
looking at people like Charlie Reader in multiple states with
multiple different schemes of crimes being committed, there's a trend
with just sheriffs in general where a lot of them
get in trouble. Is it because they feel so powerful
and untouchable? I don't know, But man, when you look
at it in the final analysis, what we have here
(28:12):
is a guy in Pike County who had the county
by a string, who had the trust of people who
live in that county. So is it power? I don't know.
All that I know at this point is you had
an elected official who makes them pretty bad decisions and
he's paying for it. Now, have you gotten a sense
(28:36):
what the implications might be for the Wagner cases that
Readers now going to jail. Their early face of the
investigation is now in prison for corruption. Whether or not
that had anything to do with the actual investigation, no
one knows. But if I'm a defense attorney, all I
gotta do is throw up that smokescreen at some point
and see what happens. And if I'm a prosecutor, I'm thinking, okay,
(28:56):
I need to have a contingency plan. To how to
answer this. If you're the fence, I'm assuming you will
bring it up and court you'll point to that if
the judge allows it and say, you know, how can
you trust this investigation. This man was out there on
the scene that morning. I think it makes people in
the county question what's really going on there? Well, we
(29:21):
wait to see how Sheriff Frieder's conviction will impact the
Wagner trials. One journalist continues to grapple with the legacy
of the Rodent family murders, a story that forever changed
her life more than five years ago. More on that
next time. For more information on the case and relevant photos,
(29:42):
follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. The Pikedon
Massacre Returned to Pike County is executive produced by Stephanie
Lydecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by
executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing by Jeff Shane, Andrew
Becker and Chris Graves. The iked In Massacre Returned to
Pike County is a production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios.
(30:04):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to The Piketon Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and
Katie Studios. We are here today for the kase State
of Ohio versus Charles Reader, case numbers twenty nineteen CR.
Sixty eight the cornel now here from mister Reader. I
stand here before you today to take accountability for my actions.
To accept responsibility for my conduct, I said, Sheriff of Ohio.
(00:22):
I should excuse me. Everything that I've worked for professionally,
in honorably for twenty five years was stripped to me
with nobody good pointing but myself. If I could go
back and change it, I would a million times. This
(00:43):
is not who I am. Never ever did I imagine
myself on the defense side of this court route that
I've spent twenty five years of my life in this
county in law enforcement. I am a good person, make
bad decisions and choices I have, and I'm out pray
(01:08):
that the work will find mercy on me. This is
the Piked and Massacre returned to Pike County season two,
episode five, To Protect and Serve. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a
television producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane.
On the morning of April twenty second, twenty sixteen, the
(01:31):
Pike County Sheriff's Office responded to calls of multiple homicides
in what would soon be considered Ohio's most notorious mass murder.
The bodies of seven adults and one sixteen year old
boy were found in four different locations along a country
road in Pike County. We know all of these victims
all members of the Roden family. The shooting ste left
(01:51):
the town of Piked and numb a lot of unanswered
questions as to how this unfolded and who is responsible
for that. As news of the tragedy emerged, the nation
turned to the area's top law enforcement official for answers.
Pike County Sheriff Charlie Reader to give a brief update
on what we are doing at this time. I have
deputies from my county and other counties that are keeping
(02:15):
the scenes secured. Here's reporter James Pilcher. He's the one
updating the media. He's the one who is available. He's
the one when you wanted to ask how things are going,
he was the one that you call. So he began
the face of the investigation early on. This investigation is
very large, one, probably the largest in Pike County that
(02:36):
we've ever had and been a part of. It's very tragic.
I want everybody to be patient, but understand that we
are working around the clock, twenty four hours a day,
but this is going to be a very lengthy process.
Reporter angeinet Levy covered many of Reader's briefings during the
course of the road and murder investigation. You know, he
was out in front of this standing next to the
(02:56):
Attorney General at the time, doing press conferences with him,
and he often became very emotional and people there were
a lot of people in Pike County who really really
liked him. You came in like thieves in the night
and took eight lives, some being children. We are getting closer.
The family and the victims will have justice one day.
(03:19):
Charlie Reader, by all accounts, as somebody who grew up
in Pike County. He did not come from a well
to do family or anything like that. A lot of
people out in Pike County or poor. He worked for
many years for the Pike County Prosecutor, Rob junk He
was his investigator, and at some point Charlie Reader was
appointed the sheriff by the Democratic Party in Pike County.
(03:43):
Criminal defense attorney Mike Allen remembered Readers twenty and sixteen
landslide election. He got seventy five percent. Approbably got twenty
five percent. It's pretty unheard of in any kind of election.
So at one point he was pretty popular sheriff. There
were a lot of people in the community who felt
that he did some good things at the Sheriff's office
when he first took over. They felt like he was
(04:05):
clean up crime in the streets. Southern Ohio has a
very major brug problem with hopioids in methemphetamine, and fenton
al in all of it, and a couple members of
the community claimed that Reader really was there for the
family after one of their members that died from a
drug overdose and helped plan a memorial three in his honor.
(04:26):
So he was very approachable. He was out and about
in the community much more. Charlie Reader branded himself as
the people's sheriff during the height of the road and
murder investigation. Sheriff Reader's passionate pleas for justice earned him
the trust of his community. As a sheriff of Pike County,
or a three hundred and fifty six days into this investigation,
(04:49):
I've got a message for the killers. We will find you,
we will arrest you, and you will be prosecuted. As
this case moved forward, the spotlight grew brighter and brighter
in that area because of this case, and I think
he enjoyed the spotlight to a degree, and I think
he had greater political aspirations as well. Here's producer Chris
(05:14):
Graves speaking with investigative reporter Jodi Barr. He covered the
road and murder case for Foxnews nineteen and Cincinnati. What
kind of power does a sheriff wield in a community
like Pike County. He was the closest to the people
of Pike County, and you see that with a lot
of elected officials in more rural areas that you know,
the sheriff is literally the top dog in the county.
(05:36):
He is the face of law enforcement. He controls what
happens with law enforcement, where patrols happened. So as far
as an elected official, as far as a person holding power,
your sheriff in these areas, he is the man. Can
something like that go to someone's head? You've worked in
law enforcement, yourself for quite a while. Oh yeah, you
(05:57):
see it a lot police chiefs or sheriffs or somebody
who's recently promoted to a supervisory position. I mean, thank goodness,
it doesn't happen to a lot of them, but some
of them does. Now. Whether that happened here or not,
I don't know, but yeah, that very much could happen.
As the Road and investigation moved into its second year,
some disquieting rumors about Sheriff Frieder began to surface. As
(06:21):
we began to spend more time out there, we started
hearing the rumblings that there was some corruption out there.
We had heard rumors about him intimidating people and possibly
taking money from people who were in the drug dealing business.
I know, I for one, was told by some of
(06:42):
my law enforcement sources in the Cincinnati area, Hey, you
need to be careful around him. He's dirty. And these
were just people that were my sources who said, you know, look,
I just want you to be aware, be careful. Was
it because they were afraid they didn't trust him? They
did not trust Charlie Reader. There was a rumor that
(07:03):
he was sexually harassing some female employees when he worked
at the Ross County Juvenile Detention Center. Records from his
personnel file said that he wasn't the right fit and
there were too many questions. He had a lawsuit in
small claims court in nineteen ninety five and Galli Police
four not paying a debt and there was a warrant
(07:25):
issued for him, but he ended up paying it. So,
I mean, there were some things out there. There appears
to be two sides of Charlie Reader. One that you know,
the public sees, and they saw it in these naturally
televised broadcast press conferences where a reader is very emotional
talking about these Rodent murders very early on. And then
(07:46):
there's something you see in Charlie Reader where when reader
is challenged, you see another side of Reader. So he's
got a very public face and a very private face.
Then oh yeah. Investigators recently too vehicles that had been
parked at the homes where eight members of the Rodent
family were found shot to death in Pike County, Ohio
last month. The four mobile homes themselves where the bodies
(08:08):
were found, will be removed from the scene to be
stored at a location in nearby Waverley. Going to get
out to investigative reporter Jodi Barr live in Pike County.
While I was in Pike County, I started seeing things
that I had to question. What we found at that
evidence ware a house where the trailers, the vehicles, the
equipment that all belonged to the rodents where the Sheriff's
(08:30):
office in BCI took that. So we found problems with
the security of that evidence and the security of that warehouse.
I'm not an attorney. I've never prosecuted the case, I've
never collected evidence. But what I do know is that
evidence that is collected has to be secured. I've seen
prosecutions lost in court rooms in the states I've covered
because someone failed to secure one piece of evidence. And
(08:53):
of course Charlie Reader was so central to what we
were looking at. He is the man in charge that
we had to go find him. We scheduled the interview
and we sat down and we had this conversation with
Charlie Reader, and I want to say it last it's
maybe forty five minutes to an hour, and again, back
to watching the two sides of Charlie Reader. You had
the emotional Charlie Reader early on in the interview where
(09:15):
he's talking about, you know, the rodents and you know
what this is done to Pike County. And then I
broke out an iPad, and on that iPad I had
visuals the images that I had taken from that warehouse
with the gate standing wide open, another gate secured with
a piece of thin wire. You know, days and nights
of no law enforcement at that warehouse. And I think
(09:38):
Reader knew during the middle of that interview that this
was not going to look good when we reported it,
that what we found there looked terrible and it reflected
on the job he did. So I saw Charlie Reader change,
but he changed into very defensive and red face. But
(09:59):
Reader find admitted that they did not have a deputy
posted at that warehouse. Watching that avidage twenty four to seven,
what Sheriff Reader did next struck seasoned reporter Jodi barrs troubling.
Here is JODI's first hand account of the interaction. So
the interview ends and my photographer and I are tearing
down the equipment and Charlie Reader walks us out the
(10:21):
front door of the old Sheriff's office in Waverley, and
we're standing on the ports of that Sheriff's office, and
Reader wants to make a deal, and he says, if
we'll just hold off on airing the report of the
evidence warehouse and wait until they could return property to
the family, that Reader would let us in and give
us full access to him and Charlie Reader's story of
(10:45):
the first one hundred hours after the road and murders.
And I just told him, no, we don't make deals.
Several months after that report aired, I got messages from
people in Pike County, one after the other telling me
that there was a raid underway at this road and
evidence warehouse in Waverley. Well, I dropped everything I was
(11:08):
doing at Cincinnati and drove the two hours east to
this warehouse. And when I got there there they were
Sheriff Charlie Reader, deputies with the Pike County Sheriff's Office
carrying things in and out of this warehouse. And you know,
I'm standing there wondering what is going on here. This
shouldn't be happening unless if something's happened, we don't know
about evolving the murders. This was a great public concern,
(11:31):
but that night Reader would not return my phone calls.
It was very contentious trying to get information out of
Pike County, out of the sheriffs office at that point,
but after that we were never able to access him again.
Despite Scharff Reader's apparent mishandling of aspects of the road
and murder investigation, authorities were able to put the Wagner
(11:51):
family behind bars in twenty eighteen. However, just weeks later,
area journalists got word at a different investigation, unrelated to
the road murders was underway, one that placed Sheriff Charlie
Reader on the other side of the law. The State
Auditor's office released a document to all of us that
stated an anonymous tip had come into the Auditor's office
(12:14):
in which someone stated that everyone was scared to death
a Reader, that he was basically a monster, and investigators
needed to look into a safe that was in his
office that contained money season in drug deals and it
also said something about him possibly gambling and is this
(12:35):
really wore on? The investigation continued, and then words started
spreading around Pike County. It really took what was going
on with Charlie Reader to a whole new level. In
June of twenty nineteen, a grand jury brought forth sixteen
charges against Sheriff Charlie Reader. As a result, he was
suspended from office, bringing his three year ten yere a
(12:56):
sheriff to a close. The indictment laid out detailed of
the investigation and his crimes. Reader originally faced several counts
of theft in office, which is a felony in ohiole
as well as tampering with evidence, which is also a
felony in Ohio. So what happens is that Charlie Reader
has a pretty sizeable amount of money that he's taken
(13:17):
from alleged drug dealers in Pike County. Every sheriff, every
law enforcement agency in the entire country, much less than
including Ohio, is allowed to seize money from suspects if
they think that that money or those goods are being
used in the commission of a crime. Money that was
(13:37):
seized in drug cases is supposed to be secured in
a safe or in a bank account or something, and
you can use them for education purposes for the sheriff's department,
you can contribute it to appropriate charities. But in these cases,
at least on two occasions, the allegation was that he
(13:58):
took cash and can hearded it to his own use,
so the state auditor does their annual review of the book.
On the first past, the state auditors find some money
missing out of the seizure account, and then they go
back to reader and apparently he tries to put it back,
(14:20):
but these that leads to the state auditors office then
diving into getting warrants and diving into his personal finance records.
They find multiple extenses and multiple trips to casinos both
in the area and out of state, and tens of
thousands of dollars spent to casinos impossible debts. The records
(14:40):
are pretty clear that showed some pretty big losses at
the racetrack, and also they found that he withdrew more
than twenty eight hundred dollars from machines at the Atlantic Casino,
so it was pretty clear it was from gambling. Some
of the other allegations were that a lot of times
in drug cases, cars are forfeited, and in a couple
(15:03):
of the charges, the allegations are that at the auction
he rigged it and engineered it that either he or
friends of his would get those vehicles and then turn
around and sell them, So they were very serious charges.
On September twenty fourth, twenty twenty, Sheriff Charles Reader pled
(15:24):
guilty to five charges filed against him. They included two
counts of theft in office, two counts of tampering with evidence,
and one count of conflict of interest. A few months later,
he appeared in court for sentencing. It was a day
that Anteinette Levy would not soon forget. What was the
mood like through all of this? I couldn't believe it.
When I got out there that morning, the street was
(15:46):
blocked off. There were members of the US Marshals Service there,
The US Marshalls Service bomb squad was there, there were
Sheriff's deputies there. I mean, this was quite the operation.
They were sniper's own bread. I actually have a photograph
of a sniper on a roof. And there had been
some rumblings online apparently, people encouraging people to show up
(16:11):
at the courthouse to protest this sentence. There was some
fear that people who were really hardcore supporters of his
might show up and try to do something dangerous in
order to keep him from being sentenced to prison. It
was crazy. It had never even been like that for
a Wagner Court hearing. We're going to take a quick
(16:37):
break here. We'll be back in a moment. Inside the courtroom.
The mood was much different here today for sentencing in
the case stat of Ohio versus Charles Reader. Okay, his
(16:59):
numbers twenty nine TEENCR. Sixty eight. Reader got his sentencing
in front of a visiting judge, Patricia Cosgrove, who had
actually sentenced three previous Ohio sheriffs on corruption charges. There
were five charges, and all of those could have gotten
him more than twelve years in prison. You see Charlie Reader.
(17:19):
He's sitting in court, sitting beside his defense attorney at
a table to the left, and at the table to
the right, the prosecutor who went to the grand jury
got the indictments against Reader, who got the guilty plea
from Reader months before. And you see these two tables
in opposition to one another, and the judges in the center,
and there's an empty podium in the center, and then
(17:41):
you see people walk up to that podium and then
they start telling these stories of the good deeds Charlie
Reader did in certain instances around that county. He went
through one of the most horrendous crimes ever committed in
our counties. To my memory, what he went through. I
can't take him him the nights that he went sleepless,
(18:04):
what his family went through, what it does to his health.
But I believe in his heart Charlie Reader is a
good man. As Charlie made mistakes, yes, ma'am, he probably has,
But in the Bible it says you who are without saying,
cast the first stone. I couldn't throw many rocks at
him because I've made mistakes. To the one fact, I know,
(18:27):
Charlie was a man you could count on when you
needed him, and I would vote for him today just
as sure as I am standing here as God is
my witness. After these people have said what they said,
you see a Reader walk up to the podium and
the courting now here from mister Reader. You know he's
instantly emotional. He's in tears, and he's asking the judge
(18:50):
for mercy to be lenient with him. In sinacy. This
is where he is laying it all out and asking
the state of Ohio for mercy. I said I had
light on the office of sheriff. I can only ask
that my staff, their families, the community, and my family
(19:18):
who is here today, we'll forgive me for the undue
stress I call stim I have, and I now pray
that the quirk will find mercy on me. I have
no words for the shame that I have and that
(19:38):
I feel in the regret that I have betrayed just
playing the trust if I had with my staff in
the community. Please do not send me to prison. I
have rung, but I'm not run. I still have a
lot of good left in me. During the proceedings, details
(19:59):
of readers crimes were illuminated. The state would note that
the defendant was an elected county sheriff who committed these
crimes in his position as a county sheriff. He used
his position to obtain control over the evidence bags and
then use that control to remove the funds and use
them for his own benefit. The majority of the funds
(20:20):
involved were removed from the four evidence bags cut open
by defendant. Fourteen thousand and seven hundred and seventy five
dollars was removed prior to the defendant and his attorney
turning those bags over to investigators for the Oddit States Office.
The different currency knew in many cases uncirculated bills were
(20:44):
put into the currency bags so that restitution would have
been taken care of at that point. Additionally, there's a
total of four thousand, eight hundred and fifty dollars outstanding,
three thousand, five hundred from the purchase of the Nithan
divers which was the profit made by the sheriff on
that transaction, three hundred and fifty dollars owed the people
(21:06):
who purchased the Chevy Silverado, and one thousand dollars which
the state says never made it into the evidence bag.
So Judge Patricia Cosgrove, she has a reputation for being
very tough on sheriffs in Ohio who have been engaged
in corruption, and she has no nonsense, and she questioned
(21:29):
reader from the bench. During the judge's questioning, Sheriff Rider
did his best to explain his moral motivation behind his actions.
Why did you cut open these evidence envelopes and take
the money out and then in some cases you put
it back although you were caught because the envelopes had
(21:50):
been unsealed and sealed again improperly and the denominations did
not match what was taken at the crime scene. Up
from those individuals, I guess why did you take the money?
I took the money, and mind you, this does not
(22:11):
excuse it, but from drug dealers that took it from
parents of very poor people. In this count that money,
regardless of what the state and what the media has
claimed in the past years of a gambling problem, and
that money being used for gambling, was used. When there
(22:33):
was a tree planted in the name of the Shelton Boy.
It's at the entrance of Western High School to the left.
As soon as you pull in. Nobody could pay for
that tree. Nobody offered to pay for that tree. A
drug dealer did. When schools had cheerleading or peewee that
(22:55):
had car washes and such, I would have our cruisers
taken down there. My men and women did not make
good money, so some of them would give them two dollars,
five dollars. I took money from that and I provided
it to those people. In the PSI the prec ends investigation,
(23:17):
the PSI officer notes, there's no documentation that you used
it for those things, right, I did not document those things.
He didn't produce any receipts to back these claims up.
And there's a very strict process by which those siments
are tracked, and you have to produce an accounting of
(23:39):
all of that money. So he claimed that he was
essentially a robin hood. The judge certainly didn't believe it,
But then the judge started asking him questions about gambling.
There were a couple of times that Judge Cosgrove all
the condimental line, and she sounded very, very skeptical. Let's
(24:04):
stop here for another quick break. We'll be back in
a moment. Did you lose three thousand dollars gambling at
the Sciota downs Rocino between June two thousand and seventeen
(24:28):
in September two thousand and seventeen. Yes, not by myself.
They have cards, and of course, begainning your honor, I'll
pl guilty to this, but they have cards that you
put in a machine. I can have a card in
my name, and I can have a card in my
name that my wife possesses, so I can be at
(24:50):
one machine and she can be at the other, and
the money that she spends and the money that I
spend they count on the same card and calculating the
money as one well, obviously, and that doesn't answer the
question where did the money and then checking account come from? Okay,
also want to ask you in late June two thousand
(25:12):
and seventeen, you took a trip to Reno, Nevada for
the Sheriff's conference, and then you withdrew twenty eight hundred
dollarsand a ATM. The state believes that some of this
is due to gambling. I mean, you're talking like over
or almost six thousand dollars and a couple months that
you lost are extended on gambling. And at that point
(25:36):
we were making almost eleven thousand dollars a month. And
that again was from my checking account where it should
show my direct deposits, my wife direct deposits, and that
it came from our devot cards where I retrieved that money.
I don't doubt it came from a debit cards. The
question is where did the money come that when to
(25:59):
your check can account? And that's I guess that's that's
that's where that's where the media reported that I had
numrible problems because it came from our joint bank account.
My wife made very good money at the time, and
I took that money and I gambled. Okay, all right, Um,
(26:22):
that's all the questions of court. Has she really let
him have it? She took no grief from him whatsoever?
It cannot be underestimated the damage that you have paused
to the citizens of Pike County, to law enforcement who
every day get up face the same sort of stresses
that you do. They go all home at night, they
(26:45):
get up in the morning, they don't know if they're
going to come home. The sacrifices that these men and
women at make um, I think you made a mockery
of them. I couldn't have imposed a much greater sentencement
than I have. As I said, I've taken a consideration
some of the mitigating factors, but punishment is appropriate to
(27:05):
sentence you to. I considered the minimum. However, to sends
you to anything less than three years in prison would
demean the seriousness of the offense and not adequately protects
society for future criminal conduct by yourself and honors. The
judge handed him three years, and Reader walked out of
(27:27):
that courtroom and into a jail cell to pay for
throwing away his career, embarrassing himself, and embarrassing his family.
Do you think he became a victim of his own power,
he said, of sheriff in that county, like that is
top dog, right. Maybe he started feeling he was above
the law. You know, in fifteen years of doing this job,
(27:50):
looking at people like Charlie Reader in multiple states with
multiple different schemes of crimes being committed, there's a trend
with just sheriffs in general where a lot of them
get in trouble. Is it because they feel so powerful
and untouchable? I don't know, But man, when you look
at it in the final analysis, what we have here
(28:12):
is a guy in Pike County who had the county
by a string, who had the trust of people who
live in that county. So is it power? I don't know.
All that I know at this point is you had
an elected official who makes them pretty bad decisions and
he's paying for it. Now, have you gotten a sense
(28:36):
what the implications might be for the Wagner cases that
Readers now going to jail. Their early face of the
investigation is now in prison for corruption. Whether or not
that had anything to do with the actual investigation, no
one knows. But if I'm a defense attorney, all I
gotta do is throw up that smokescreen at some point
and see what happens. And if I'm a prosecutor, I'm thinking, okay,
(28:56):
I need to have a contingency plan. To how to
answer this. If you're the fence, I'm assuming you will
bring it up and court you'll point to that if
the judge allows it and say, you know, how can
you trust this investigation. This man was out there on
the scene that morning. I think it makes people in
the county question what's really going on there? Well, we
(29:21):
wait to see how Sheriff Frieder's conviction will impact the
Wagner trials. One journalist continues to grapple with the legacy
of the Rodent family murders, a story that forever changed
her life more than five years ago. More on that
next time. For more information on the case and relevant photos,
(29:42):
follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. The Pikedon
Massacre Returned to Pike County is executive produced by Stephanie
Lydecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by
executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing by Jeff Shane, Andrew
Becker and Chris Graves. The iked In Massacre Returned to
Pike County is a production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios.
(30:04):
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