August 26, 2020 • 44 mins
In the aftermath of the arrest of six members of the Wagner family in connection with the Rhoden murders, many people across the country were shocked by the brutality of the massacre. But, for the Piketon, Ohio area, this grisly crime wasn’t exactly an anomaly.
In episode five, we take a dive into the dark history of the Piketon, Ohio community. We investigate a wave of murders that were eerily similar to the Rhoden case, a spate of unsolved violent crimes and take a look into the underhanded tactics of one prominent, law enforcement official entrusted to bring the killers of the Rhoden family to justice.
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Find one for you at curiosity stream dot com. Welcome
to the Piketon Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios.
In April twenty sixteen, when eight members of the Roden
(02:11):
family were murdered in their homes. The media descended on
the sleepy town of Piketon, Ohio, the community clearly shaken
after this morning's multiple homicide. People in this small community
being told to me on alert tonight. As news of
the unthinkable and gruesome killing spread, the small rural community
is left reeling and rumors begin swelling. Discoveries of the
(02:33):
murder scenes are now advancing the theory the killings could
be related to a drug cartel. Authorities aren't commenting on
whether they have any potential suspects. Everybody thinks all the
bad stuff happens in the big cities, but the devil
works at it everywhere. But in the aftermath of the
arrests of six members of the Wagner family, attention turns
to the very people responsible for the investigation. There was
(02:55):
this belief among almost everybody I talked to about the
incompetence came to law enforcement in that county. There's nobody
watching the watchers in these small communities, and in many
cases that can lead to major corruption and the dark
secrets of a once quiet town are slowly brought to light.
There's been a lot of murders here that have not
(03:18):
been solved. But if I say what I think, I
could probably end up in the river. This is the
Piked and Massacre Episode five, air and Opportunity. In the
days after the killings, the road and murders became an
international headline and it was a sensational story, a series
(03:41):
of murders, multiple potential motives, all taking place in a
small town in Ohio. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a TV producer
at Katy Studios, where I work with Stephanie Lydecker and
Jeff Shane. We've been following the case for a long
time and through the course of our investigation learned that
the town of Piked in Ohio has its own story
to tell. Journalist Jeff Winkler wrote about the story for
(04:04):
the website The Outline. He told me about his impressions
of the initial reporting coming out of Piketon. It was
a big media story for about two weeks, and you know,
everybody from all over came to cover it, all over
the world, and a lot of people have been summarily
executed in the middle of Appalachia and no one knew
(04:25):
what was going on. I mean, I grew up in
the Ozarks in Arkansas, and these are people I feel
familiar with, you know, when I go up to New York,
California and that's like a Disneyland, and it's a strange
people are in place these areas and folks like this
and not feel wildering to me in the same way
(04:45):
that they were to the people who came down and
covered the story. Originally, you get a lot of talk
of book at these people smoking and you know, wearing camo,
and you know, a lot of gawking. You know, it
was just these sort of quotes from ads sort of
backwoods people is how they're perceived, and that's that's just
not where I come from. But I think this thing
(05:07):
that stood up for me was just how human everyone was.
Piked In Resident Angie Montgomery shared her view of the
media coverage with producer Jeff Sheen. How do you think
like piked In and the sort like Pike County in general,
I guess has been portrayed in the media. I don't
think they've been very kind to us. I've seen a
lot of reports where they called us uneducated, m hil
(05:33):
Billy just dumb. I think we're dumb. They think we're
a bunch of inbread. I've actually seen that in some reports,
and it's sad. Well, it's easy for some to view
the town of piked In through this kind of provincial,
(05:53):
almost stereotypical lens. It's not what we found when we
visited the area. It's pretty faring from the big cities
of Ohio. It's about an hour and a half south
from Columbus, an hour and a half east of Cincinnati,
and just under thirty minutes from the Ohio River, which
basically separates southern Ohio from northeastern Kentucky. There's a walmart,
(06:15):
there's a restaurant. There used to be this great dive
bar that is since closed, I believe, and look for
the twenty two hundred residents piked In his home Native
Barbara and Jeff actually spoke a bit about that when
we were there. Piked In's considered a village and it
is a small just a small little town that has
a grocery store and a pizza shop, and gas stations
(06:39):
and there's a tire shop. People sit and talk to
the gas station wherever they go. They people know each
other and they just sit and talk. You know, at
the tire shop, you're waiting for an an oil change
or whatever. You used to sit there and chat with
your neighbor or whoever happens to come in. You probably
know who it is. You know somebody everywhere, or you
(07:03):
know somebody that knows somebody everywhere anywhere you go. I
imagine that it's probably like sometimes kind of enjoyable, and
then other times it's probably pretty maddening. Yeah, sometimes people
know when I spend the day in my pool, or
when when I skip a day. If there's a day
goes by, I don't get in my pool. Next time
(07:24):
I see someone else, I'll say, how come you weren't
in your pool the other day. So it's crazy. The
majority of people we spoke with depicted piked in this way.
Small town USA, everyone knows everyone, nobody ever locked their
doors growing up. But when we started to pull back
(07:46):
the curtain, it was clear that Piked in Harvard some
dark secrets, secrets that didn't start with the Rodents. It
seems like there's like two sides of piked in, which
is one is like the blue collar hard workers who
you know, want to raise their family's the right way,
and yet somehow something horrible still did happen. To this town.
I think it's like every town, you're gonna find that
(08:07):
wherever you go, there's going to be the ugly part,
and piked In has it. Jeff spoke to Stefane, a
former piked In resident who had recently left town. She
shared Barbara's sentiments about the community. I want to ask you,
so you now you're in Florida and you're away from
piked In and all of this, but it still seems
(08:28):
like it's very much a part of your DNA, right.
I haven't been home since July a year before last,
since twenty eighteen, and I just I don't know if
I'll ever really liked go back and live there ever.
You know, if you look back through the history of
piked and you know, there's there's quite a bit of
(08:49):
things that just happened that you know, there's no explanation
for get swept under the rug. I don't know. I
think there's just more evil there than than just what
happened to those eight. Stefan's remarks left us unsettled, but
when we followed up with investigative reporter Jodi Barr, he
(09:11):
seemed to corroborate her thoughts with some troubling stories he
had heard during his time covering the road in case.
This was national news the day, the day after, a
few days after it happened. But you know, as it
typically happens with the new cycles, you know, the national
folks move on to the next big story. We were
left with that, and we would get emails and constant
(09:34):
questions or phone calls about new information. Is there anything
to know? And there was nothing to know. So my
boss came to me and said, hey, can you go
over and start digging into this and see if there's
anything at all that we could find out. I was
in Pike County a lot, and I kept getting stories
about other homicides in Pike County, and I thought, man,
if there were that many homicides in a county, this
(09:56):
small man, there could be something here that we don't
yet know. Worth taken a look through his research, Jodie
discovered that there have been at least three recent cases
in By County involving multiple homicides. Cases like the January
twenty sixteen murders of Candice Newsom and her teenage daughter Christina.
They were both shot execution style in their home. Police
(10:21):
finally did arrest the Newsom's neighbor for their murders. In
twenty nineteen, neighbor Christian R. Davis was indicted by a
grand jury, but did not please nor has he been convicted,
but there was plenty of chatter on social media, none
of which can be confirmed, mentioning the possibility of an
accomplice to the murders still at large. Candice Newsome's sister,
(10:42):
Darla has even spoken publicly she thinks that her sister
and niece's murder may be related to the Rodents, stating
that they ran in the same circles. What struck me
about Candice and Christina and was just the fact the
similarities between, Like just the idea that in the middle
of the night these people were gunned down in their
homes while they slept. Just it's it is striking, you know,
(11:06):
before even reading any other details, just hearing Matt when
you're research trying rod in case, We're like, well, that's weird.
You know, that's fifteen minutes away. It's the same exact
style of murder. Yes, and it was just so odd
that you had that type of crime and happening in
a place like that. Then in April twenty sixteen, just
weeks before the Rodents were killed, Douglas Eatman and Carolyn
(11:27):
and Tomlinson were shot execution style in their home. According
to Jody Barr, one detail of the crime struck a
familiar chord, a double homicide, four children left alive. This
is very similar to the Rodent case. I mean again,
it's a striking coincidence that in the same area this
(11:48):
is happening in the same month, you know, the same
month and year that the Rodents were murdered, this has
also happened. That's what led us down the path of
even looking at these cases, because we had heard that
there were other people who were shot Noel and I
executa style in their homes. When you're looking at the
Rodent case and then you see these other cases in
a county that small, you start asking yourself what the
(12:11):
hell is going on because it doesn't make sense that
this is happening there unless there is some sort of
common denominator. And it's still hard to believe today that
there were these types of murders that took place in
a county so small, with so few people living in it.
I mean, you don't hear about that in big cities.
And you sit back and you wonder to yourself, what
(12:34):
is going on? I mean, why is this happening. Fortunately,
police arrested Douglas Eatman's uncle Charles and his cousin James Allen,
on suspicion of Douglas and Caroline's murder. Each phase is
twenty to fifty years or life in prison, with enhanced
sentencing for capital offenses also a possibility. The pair we're
(12:55):
indated but have not pled or been convicted. The case
is ongoing. According to investigators, it was a drug related killing.
The motive for Candice and Christina Newsome's murders, however, remains unclear.
But beyond the methods of these killings, there's another thing
that Jody told us about that ties them all together.
Then in some cases people get away with it for
(13:17):
extended periods of time. Candice Newsome and her teenage daughter Christina,
it took four years before investigators charged a neighbor and
family friend with murder. And that and that's four years
and the alleged perpetrator in that case is what a
nextdoor neighbor, And it took four years to piece that together.
(13:40):
It's just you wonder if Pike County if people were
getting good at committing crimes and potentially getting away with it.
One case that remains unsolved is a two thousand and
six murder of thirty four year old Curtis Francis and
thirty year old Jennifer Prigette. Urt Francis and Jennifer Burgett.
(14:02):
You know, they were both shot and killed in their beds,
in their homes in the middle of the night. And
you know, when I'm looking through these incident reports of
these murders, I go, WHOA, this sounds very similar to
the road case. You know, two people shot in their
bed in their homes in the middle of the night,
and I thought, this is this is one we need
to pursue. But no one would talk. We couldn't find
(14:28):
out any information. All the search warrants were sealed at
the courthouse, and there's absolutely no arrest. Ten years later,
there's nothing here. We are today still nothing. We're in
a dead end and it may never be solved. And
unfortunately there are other cases like that Dare that just
didn't get the attention. We're going to take a quick
(14:55):
break here, we'll be back in a moment. Like many
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knowledgeable guests, highly entertaining and informative words that describe CNN's
podcast Chasing Life with Doctor Sanjay Gupta. As I talked
to doctor Rich, what really stood out to me was
his approach to treating his patients. The therapeutic goal of
treatment for problematic interactive media use cannot be abstinates. This
is an essential tool and essential skill of our time.
(16:26):
Listen to Chasing Life with Sanjay Gupta on the iHeartRadio app.
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(17:54):
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(18:39):
Let's take one quick step back for a minute and
really look at the Curtis Francis and Jennifer Burgett case.
That's the couple who was also shot in their home
while they slept in two thousand and six. They only
lived about fifteen minutes down the road from the road
in property fifteen minutes into this day. That case remains unsolved.
(19:00):
Angie Montgomery, Curtis Francis's cousin. It remains a devastating memory
without closure. She spoke to Jeff about it. I was
shocked that I had never even heard of Curtis and
Jennifer's case, because it's a pretty it's egregious that this
happened and it's unsolved, and it just seems crazy that
another in such a small community that's something like this
could happen again. And so what I would love to do,
(19:22):
and maybe it would kind of be to like walk
through kurt and Jenny's case and kind of like explain
who they were and any of the facts that you
know about the case. Well, Curtis was a very hard working,
good guy, lovedy Stanley, lived hunting and animals and fishing
and all that stuff, and he would help anybody. And
he was very protective. That's one word I like to
(19:44):
use to describe him. Very protective. As the people we loved,
Jeanie was a good girls, always taking care of others.
I think they just got messed up with the wrong people,
the wrong people. Angie's referring to our local drug dealers.
The most to the crime that happens around here, like
(20:06):
um cartaffs and breaking and enterings and things like that
is from drugs. There's a huge problem with opoids and
uh nothingn fhetamine here, huge and that probably does play
a part and every almost every murder of that's happened,
probably in the past ten years. I think the people
(20:27):
that killed my cousin lived I think four or five
minutes up the road from Curtain Jenny. They were big
drug dealers, and Curtis Oh didn't some money supposedly for marijuana.
So you feel like you know who did at Oh. Yes,
(20:47):
I don't want to be that person, but I'm I'm
pretty blunt and upfront. And the law enforcement here they
have mishandled Curtain Jenny's case from the rip when Angie
says lawn forceman. She's talking about the Pike County Sheriff's Office,
the same agency heavily involved in conducting the Rodent murder investigation.
(21:09):
In twenty sixteen, a plumber discovered a well that had
seemed to have been mysteriously hidden with rocks and dirt.
It was on a property that, according to eyewitness statements,
was the last place Curtis Francis was seen on the
night of his murder. The Pike County Sheriff's Office was
called in to investigate. Officers lowered a plumber's drain camera
into the well and discovered what appeared to be burned
(21:30):
clothes and a gun. It was a thirty OT six
was at the bottom of the well in Curtis's pistol
that was taken the night of the murders, and that's
what they were shot with, a thirty out six. Both
of them curtain Jenny with a potential murder weapon line
just thirty feet down a well. The Pike County Sheriff's
Office decided to use a curious tactic to recover the gun.
(21:53):
They called in a fire truck to pump water into
the well to try and push the firearm back up
out of the well shaft so invest gators could get
their hands on it. It did not go as planned.
They blew the water down the well, which in turn
made the ground break because of the force of you know,
a fire hose can blow the skin off of so
(22:14):
when they did that, this is what they told us
that happened. When they did that, it busted the ground loose.
The guns went down into the ground, and that they
don't have the money or the equipment to get them out,
so they hired a guy to seal the well shut.
He's a welder. He welded the well shut and that
(22:37):
was it. I think after this fiasco with the guns
in the well, when the guns were found, and how
they handled that situation and handled the possible murder weapons,
I think they're ashamed, and they should be. They took
probably the only hope we have of any type of
(23:00):
physical evidence and blew it to Snoggerens basically, and nothing's
been done with it since. With Curtis and Jennifer's case
going cold, Angie decided to pursue the killers herself. I've
spent years and years. I've got file after file after
(23:21):
file of things I've done. I've actually went and got names,
I've went and talked to people. Well, I'm just going
to be honest with you. I've done what the police.
I've tried to do what the police haven't done, which
is talked to people, get information, you know, get date,
get time, get people talking. You know all you've seen
(23:43):
Kurt that day, Okay, who was with him? What was
his demeanor? Things like that. There's eyewitness statement and I've
tried my best to get somebody or anybody just to listen.
It's pretty cut and dry. I've had a few people
(24:03):
out of state that are like retired homicide investigators and
stuff look at the case and tell me that they can't,
for the life of them, figure out why there hasn't
been an arrest made for the town that we you know,
the size of our town, there's been a lot of
murders here that have not been solved. It's ridiculous. But
(24:24):
if I say what I think, I could probably end
up in the river. According to Jodi, barr Angie's thoughts
about the Pike County Sheriff's Office are shared by many
in the community. The oppression I got from the people
in Pike County. When I was working there covering the
road and murders, there was this belief among almost everybody
(24:46):
I talked to you about incompetence when it came to
law enforcement in that county and the lack of that
sheriff's office ability to do a large scale murder investigation
and carry that through to a prosecution. And the man
at the head of the Pike County Sheriff's office is
none other than Sheriff Charles Reader. You've heard about Sheriff
(25:09):
Reader before. He's the officer who stated he would stop
at nothing to solve the Rodent's case. I've got a
message for the killers. We will find you, the family
and the victims. We'll have justice one day. To a
lot of people watching these news conferences, Reader's passionate campaign
for justice was admirable, but to journalist like Jeff Winkler,
(25:32):
Reader's determination belied his mishandling of the Rodent investigation from
the very start. It was the largest mass murder in
Ohio's history, and the law enforcement at the beginning. The
local law enforcement was almost comically inept to handle such
a large and bloody incident. They were just they weren't
equipped to handle it from the very beginning of the investigation,
(25:55):
and they bungled a lot of stuff right from the
get go. It was one all them after another. Nearly
a month after the bodies were found, Sheriff Frieder had
key pieces of evidence, including the Rodents, mobile homes and automobiles,
moved to a warehouse in the nearby town of Waverley.
(26:16):
Jodi Barr was on the scene and told Jeff what
he saw. So I'm out of the warehouse where they
moved these vehicles, the equipment from all the Rodent properties
where they moved the four mobile homes where these murders happened.
There's a large fence around this huge outdoor lot and
it is full of cars and ATVs farming equipment, back
(26:38):
hosed huge tractor trailers. So, as a reporter with you know,
at least a small knowledge of the chain of custody
of evidence. I know that with all this evidence just
you know, fifty yards away from me, that you've got
to have it's secured somehow. There's got to be a
peace officer someone there with a gun and swore who
(27:01):
swear an oath to uphold the laws in the constitutions
of the State of Ohio. They're guarding that that was
not the case. Yeah. So it's the largest in criminal
investigation in state history, right, and the main evidence is
not getting watched. There was no one in that parking
lot watching that evidence. So when you drive up to
a warehouse and you look and there's nothing between you
(27:24):
and hundreds of pieces of evidence except air and opportunity,
if that doesn't raise a red flag, I don't think
you're doing your job. I knew at that point in
time that there was something to explore here because potentially
this evidence, if it's unguarded, they can't establish a chain
of custody. This entire investigation could be jeopardized. So that's
(27:46):
why we took them. We took Mike Allen, the former
Hamilton County District Attorney. We took them to Pike County.
I called him, I said, hey, I want to take
you to Pike County. Here's what I found. I don't
want to show you what I found yet, I just
want to take you to this way house and you
give me your impressions of what we see there. Through
the eyes of a prosecutor. Here's Mike Allen. Jody was
(28:09):
on this thing like white on Rice and I went
up there with him, and that's what I noticed. It
two and you know, you've got it. Seems to me
it was close to thirty forty, maybe even fifty vehicles
that had a fence around them. Well that's fine, but
it would have taken an old man like me about
ten seconds to climb over that fence and take something
(28:32):
out of one of those vehicles, plant something, put something
in one of the vehicles. It just was not done right.
I mean, anybody involved in law enforcement, from that first
week that you're at the police academy, you learned that
you must preserve the evidence, and you must preserve that
chain of custody of the evidence. And I don't know what,
(28:54):
if anything, they pulled out of any of those cars,
but if I were defending this and they tried to
introduce any of that evidence, I would be all over
and I would move to have the evidence excluded because
it just was not properly secured. So Jody began preparing
(29:15):
a report about the evidence fiasco for a new station
Fox nineteen in Cincinnati. Soon after, Jody and his crew
were approached by Sheriff Charles Reader, who presented them with
a curious offer. The Sheriff's office declined to comment, but
here is Jody's side of the story. He tried to
make a deal with us to not hear that that
warehouse story. Yeah, and the deal was that he was
(29:35):
going to give us this unfettered access where we could
do this first hundred hours with Charlie Reader after he
learned the murders. If we wouldn't do this, that always
That still sits for me today. It pissed me off
then because I'm like, you know, what do you think
we are? We don't make deals. Well, photographer, now we're
you know, we got back in the car after then
we're going, what the hell just happened here? Never have
(29:58):
we ever experienced that. Let's stop here for another quick break.
We'll be back in a moment. Only on CNN. See
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available at meaningful beauty dot com. In June twenty nineteen,
Reader was indicted on eight felonies and eight misdemeanors. These
felony charges are not directly related to the road and investigation.
He was accused of conflict of interest, deft in office,
(34:00):
and tampering with evidence, among other nefarious activities. According to reports,
we are also allegedly still cash sees from drug arrest
to fund a gambling problem. Here's investigative journalist James Pilcher. Yeah,
he had a gambling addiction and he decided I'll just
use my own forces money to feed it. Yeah. Man,
(34:25):
in places like this, and I'm not going to say
it's necessarily a lack of journalistic outlets keeping tabs or whatever,
but there's no accountability. There's nobody watching the watchers in
these small communities, and in many cases that can lead
to major corruption. It's definitely worth noting that Sheriff Reader
(34:49):
has pled not guilty to all of these charges. However,
to Jody Barr, it's just another surreal event to what
seems like a never ending bizarre story. Reader was, you know,
shoulder to shoulder with Mike DeWine, the now governor who
was then the attorney general when these murders happened, that
they together were updating the nation about what happened here
(35:11):
in those days after the murders and where you going?
Is this real? Then you read what the indictments alleged,
and you read what the grand jury handed up, and
then you know, you just have to assume if a
grand jury is handing up an indictment, that there's been
an investigation conducted, there have been facts gathered, a prosecutor
has reviewed that, I mean evidence tampering and tampering with records.
(35:37):
You're talking about a guy who led the sheriff's office
and who for a time, a moment in time when
this first happened, these murders first happened, who was also
leading that investigation until the state came in and took
it over. You just sit back and go, man, let's
see where this ends. I mean, Pike County has been
a crazy ride ever since the end of April of
twenty sixteen, and it's still right now. You've got people
(36:00):
awaiting trial facing the death penalty on eight murders. The
sheriff and diedd removed from office. It has been an
absolutely crazy half a decade. There still the people of
pikes and are torn about Chaiff Reader. He put this
town before him. He cared about Pike County. Here's road
(36:21):
and family friend Brittany talking to Stephanie Lydecker. If it
wasn't for him, he for Charlie Reader, they wouldn't have
came close to even finding out about the Wagners. Honestly,
that's my opinion. How come because he worked his ass
off to find like that's all he did was to
(36:42):
investigate all of that. He didn't like, he didn't like
he had done his job. Like he went and you know,
like he was doomed really well in Pike County, like
keeping this like getting the drugs off the streets and whatnot.
But he still made effort a lot of effort into
(37:02):
the rod In case. Charlie had dedicated himself to getting
justice for the Roden family and then he was booted,
not that that long ago. Apparently he was taking the
money from the rod In case for gambling. But honestly,
I don't believe it because I don't know. I just
don't believe that they just were finding reasons to get
(37:23):
him out of office. Aie Montgomery holds a much different
view of Saraff Reeder. You know, now he's blaming his
gambling habits on because what he's seen is the crime
scenes have haunted him so much he couldn't sleep, so
(37:43):
he would go gamble. Well, I've known Charlie for thirty
years and he's been gambling way before this happened. And
that's just that, just to me shows you his character.
You know, I'm going to I'm gonna use the death
of eight people to try to smooth over, and I'm
still in money off my county and gambling and that
(38:04):
is disgusting to me. I just think there's a lot
of dirty deeds that going around here, and I think
that they will do anything they can keep them covered up.
Do we have a lot of crime here? Yeah, because
of drugs. Do we have a lot of drug activity here? Yes,
(38:27):
way more than there was fifteen years ago. Is it
safe here? I'm more scared of law enforcement than I
am of the people that killed my cousin. You're afraid
to say anything when in all reality, yeah, some things
are out there that you think because you go down
a ton of rabbit holes. When when you talk to
(38:50):
two and three hundred people like I have over the
course of two and two years, you find out a
lot of crap and it does take you down those
rabbit holes. Is it true? You don't know, but by god,
it looks like something isn't right. Pike County isn't It's beautiful,
(39:12):
it's far as landscape. It's a beautiful place. You know.
We're full of farmers and just down to earth people.
But there's a lot of dirty people here too, and
most of them are in power So with Sheriff Reader's
ethics being brought into question, does this impact the charges
(39:33):
brought against the Wagners. Here's Jeff Weinlair again. I would assume,
you know, the charges against Reader, the felonies and the
misdemeanors about being you know, through and through corrupt and
when it came to both law enforcement and financial dealings. Yeah,
I would assume this is going to affect a lot
of things. In fact, the prosecutor for the Pikedon area
(39:57):
also just resigned. This just sort of makes you start
thinking about everything that happened at beginning. Now you're seeing
these charges and these resignations, and you know, it doesn't
speak well about finding any answers to this thing. Every
(40:17):
answer we get about what happened to the road and
seems to leave more questions. So how through all of
these other crimes did official zero went on the Wagoners?
Police received over eleven hundred tips, They conducted over five
hundred interviews, tested about seven hundred pieces of evidence, served
close to two hundred church warrants, subpoenas and other things.
(40:38):
So this was something that was huge. So when you
read these indictments, you know they were talking about the
Wagner's movements, even months before these murders happened. Four months
to plan this out. I mean that's every day for
four months. That's the full time job. You know, they're
hacking computers and there was surveillance cameras on those properties.
(40:58):
If we are to believe the prosecution as alleged, you know,
this paint tap a very dark picture. Everybody had started
basically attacking them, the community, accusing them of murdering those people.
One day, she because I can't believe that they just
(41:18):
won't leave us alone. They just will not leave us alone.
We're starting to get really worried that we're going to
be arrested. Where to come next week? Pikedon Massacre is
executive produced by Stephanie Lydecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing
(41:41):
and sound designed by executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing
by Jeff Shane and Andrew Becker. The Pikedon Massacre is
a production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Smart journalism, fascinating topics.
(42:06):
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Interesting and relatable topics, knowledgeable guests, highly entertaining, and informative.
Words that describe CNN's podcast Chasing Life with Doctor Sanjay Gupta.
Because I talked to doctor Rich what really stood out
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to me was his approach to treating his patients. The
therapeutic goal of treatment for problematic interactive media use cannot
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on the iHeartRadio app. He'll forget about the video game
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Find one for you at curiosity stream dot com. Welcome
to the Piketon Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios.
In April twenty sixteen, when eight members of the Roden
(02:11):
family were murdered in their homes. The media descended on
the sleepy town of Piketon, Ohio, the community clearly shaken
after this morning's multiple homicide. People in this small community
being told to me on alert tonight. As news of
the unthinkable and gruesome killing spread, the small rural community
is left reeling and rumors begin swelling. Discoveries of the
(02:33):
murder scenes are now advancing the theory the killings could
be related to a drug cartel. Authorities aren't commenting on
whether they have any potential suspects. Everybody thinks all the
bad stuff happens in the big cities, but the devil
works at it everywhere. But in the aftermath of the
arrests of six members of the Wagner family, attention turns
to the very people responsible for the investigation. There was
(02:55):
this belief among almost everybody I talked to about the
incompetence came to law enforcement in that county. There's nobody
watching the watchers in these small communities, and in many
cases that can lead to major corruption and the dark
secrets of a once quiet town are slowly brought to light.
There's been a lot of murders here that have not
(03:18):
been solved. But if I say what I think, I
could probably end up in the river. This is the
Piked and Massacre Episode five, air and Opportunity. In the
days after the killings, the road and murders became an
international headline and it was a sensational story, a series
(03:41):
of murders, multiple potential motives, all taking place in a
small town in Ohio. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a TV producer
at Katy Studios, where I work with Stephanie Lydecker and
Jeff Shane. We've been following the case for a long
time and through the course of our investigation learned that
the town of Piked in Ohio has its own story
to tell. Journalist Jeff Winkler wrote about the story for
(04:04):
the website The Outline. He told me about his impressions
of the initial reporting coming out of Piketon. It was
a big media story for about two weeks, and you know,
everybody from all over came to cover it, all over
the world, and a lot of people have been summarily
executed in the middle of Appalachia and no one knew
(04:25):
what was going on. I mean, I grew up in
the Ozarks in Arkansas, and these are people I feel
familiar with, you know, when I go up to New York,
California and that's like a Disneyland, and it's a strange
people are in place these areas and folks like this
and not feel wildering to me in the same way
(04:45):
that they were to the people who came down and
covered the story. Originally, you get a lot of talk
of book at these people smoking and you know, wearing camo,
and you know, a lot of gawking. You know, it
was just these sort of quotes from ads sort of
backwoods people is how they're perceived, and that's that's just
not where I come from. But I think this thing
(05:07):
that stood up for me was just how human everyone was.
Piked In Resident Angie Montgomery shared her view of the
media coverage with producer Jeff Sheen. How do you think
like piked In and the sort like Pike County in general,
I guess has been portrayed in the media. I don't
think they've been very kind to us. I've seen a
lot of reports where they called us uneducated, m hil
(05:33):
Billy just dumb. I think we're dumb. They think we're
a bunch of inbread. I've actually seen that in some reports,
and it's sad. Well, it's easy for some to view
the town of piked In through this kind of provincial,
(05:53):
almost stereotypical lens. It's not what we found when we
visited the area. It's pretty faring from the big cities
of Ohio. It's about an hour and a half south
from Columbus, an hour and a half east of Cincinnati,
and just under thirty minutes from the Ohio River, which
basically separates southern Ohio from northeastern Kentucky. There's a walmart,
(06:15):
there's a restaurant. There used to be this great dive
bar that is since closed, I believe, and look for
the twenty two hundred residents piked In his home Native
Barbara and Jeff actually spoke a bit about that when
we were there. Piked In's considered a village and it
is a small just a small little town that has
a grocery store and a pizza shop, and gas stations
(06:39):
and there's a tire shop. People sit and talk to
the gas station wherever they go. They people know each
other and they just sit and talk. You know, at
the tire shop, you're waiting for an an oil change
or whatever. You used to sit there and chat with
your neighbor or whoever happens to come in. You probably
know who it is. You know somebody everywhere, or you
(07:03):
know somebody that knows somebody everywhere anywhere you go. I
imagine that it's probably like sometimes kind of enjoyable, and
then other times it's probably pretty maddening. Yeah, sometimes people
know when I spend the day in my pool, or
when when I skip a day. If there's a day
goes by, I don't get in my pool. Next time
(07:24):
I see someone else, I'll say, how come you weren't
in your pool the other day. So it's crazy. The
majority of people we spoke with depicted piked in this way.
Small town USA, everyone knows everyone, nobody ever locked their
doors growing up. But when we started to pull back
(07:46):
the curtain, it was clear that Piked in Harvard some
dark secrets, secrets that didn't start with the Rodents. It
seems like there's like two sides of piked in, which
is one is like the blue collar hard workers who
you know, want to raise their family's the right way,
and yet somehow something horrible still did happen. To this town.
I think it's like every town, you're gonna find that
(08:07):
wherever you go, there's going to be the ugly part,
and piked In has it. Jeff spoke to Stefane, a
former piked In resident who had recently left town. She
shared Barbara's sentiments about the community. I want to ask you,
so you now you're in Florida and you're away from
piked In and all of this, but it still seems
(08:28):
like it's very much a part of your DNA, right.
I haven't been home since July a year before last,
since twenty eighteen, and I just I don't know if
I'll ever really liked go back and live there ever.
You know, if you look back through the history of
piked and you know, there's there's quite a bit of
(08:49):
things that just happened that you know, there's no explanation
for get swept under the rug. I don't know. I
think there's just more evil there than than just what
happened to those eight. Stefan's remarks left us unsettled, but
when we followed up with investigative reporter Jodi Barr, he
(09:11):
seemed to corroborate her thoughts with some troubling stories he
had heard during his time covering the road in case.
This was national news the day, the day after, a
few days after it happened. But you know, as it
typically happens with the new cycles, you know, the national
folks move on to the next big story. We were
left with that, and we would get emails and constant
(09:34):
questions or phone calls about new information. Is there anything
to know? And there was nothing to know. So my
boss came to me and said, hey, can you go
over and start digging into this and see if there's
anything at all that we could find out. I was
in Pike County a lot, and I kept getting stories
about other homicides in Pike County, and I thought, man,
if there were that many homicides in a county, this
(09:56):
small man, there could be something here that we don't
yet know. Worth taken a look through his research, Jodie
discovered that there have been at least three recent cases
in By County involving multiple homicides. Cases like the January
twenty sixteen murders of Candice Newsom and her teenage daughter Christina.
They were both shot execution style in their home. Police
(10:21):
finally did arrest the Newsom's neighbor for their murders. In
twenty nineteen, neighbor Christian R. Davis was indicted by a
grand jury, but did not please nor has he been convicted,
but there was plenty of chatter on social media, none
of which can be confirmed, mentioning the possibility of an
accomplice to the murders still at large. Candice Newsome's sister,
(10:42):
Darla has even spoken publicly she thinks that her sister
and niece's murder may be related to the Rodents, stating
that they ran in the same circles. What struck me
about Candice and Christina and was just the fact the
similarities between, Like just the idea that in the middle
of the night these people were gunned down in their
homes while they slept. Just it's it is striking, you know,
(11:06):
before even reading any other details, just hearing Matt when
you're research trying rod in case, We're like, well, that's weird.
You know, that's fifteen minutes away. It's the same exact
style of murder. Yes, and it was just so odd
that you had that type of crime and happening in
a place like that. Then in April twenty sixteen, just
weeks before the Rodents were killed, Douglas Eatman and Carolyn
(11:27):
and Tomlinson were shot execution style in their home. According
to Jody Barr, one detail of the crime struck a
familiar chord, a double homicide, four children left alive. This
is very similar to the Rodent case. I mean again,
it's a striking coincidence that in the same area this
(11:48):
is happening in the same month, you know, the same
month and year that the Rodents were murdered, this has
also happened. That's what led us down the path of
even looking at these cases, because we had heard that
there were other people who were shot Noel and I
executa style in their homes. When you're looking at the
Rodent case and then you see these other cases in
a county that small, you start asking yourself what the
(12:11):
hell is going on because it doesn't make sense that
this is happening there unless there is some sort of
common denominator. And it's still hard to believe today that
there were these types of murders that took place in
a county so small, with so few people living in it.
I mean, you don't hear about that in big cities.
And you sit back and you wonder to yourself, what
(12:34):
is going on? I mean, why is this happening. Fortunately,
police arrested Douglas Eatman's uncle Charles and his cousin James Allen,
on suspicion of Douglas and Caroline's murder. Each phase is
twenty to fifty years or life in prison, with enhanced
sentencing for capital offenses also a possibility. The pair we're
(12:55):
indated but have not pled or been convicted. The case
is ongoing. According to investigators, it was a drug related killing.
The motive for Candice and Christina Newsome's murders, however, remains unclear.
But beyond the methods of these killings, there's another thing
that Jody told us about that ties them all together.
Then in some cases people get away with it for
(13:17):
extended periods of time. Candice Newsome and her teenage daughter Christina,
it took four years before investigators charged a neighbor and
family friend with murder. And that and that's four years
and the alleged perpetrator in that case is what a
nextdoor neighbor, And it took four years to piece that together.
(13:40):
It's just you wonder if Pike County if people were
getting good at committing crimes and potentially getting away with it.
One case that remains unsolved is a two thousand and
six murder of thirty four year old Curtis Francis and
thirty year old Jennifer Prigette. Urt Francis and Jennifer Burgett.
(14:02):
You know, they were both shot and killed in their beds,
in their homes in the middle of the night. And
you know, when I'm looking through these incident reports of
these murders, I go, WHOA, this sounds very similar to
the road case. You know, two people shot in their
bed in their homes in the middle of the night,
and I thought, this is this is one we need
to pursue. But no one would talk. We couldn't find
(14:28):
out any information. All the search warrants were sealed at
the courthouse, and there's absolutely no arrest. Ten years later,
there's nothing here. We are today still nothing. We're in
a dead end and it may never be solved. And
unfortunately there are other cases like that Dare that just
didn't get the attention. We're going to take a quick
(14:55):
break here, we'll be back in a moment. Like many
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(16:03):
knowledgeable guests, highly entertaining and informative words that describe CNN's
podcast Chasing Life with Doctor Sanjay Gupta. As I talked
to doctor Rich, what really stood out to me was
his approach to treating his patients. The therapeutic goal of
treatment for problematic interactive media use cannot be abstinates. This
is an essential tool and essential skill of our time.
(16:26):
Listen to Chasing Life with Sanjay Gupta on the iHeartRadio app.
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(18:39):
Let's take one quick step back for a minute and
really look at the Curtis Francis and Jennifer Burgett case.
That's the couple who was also shot in their home
while they slept in two thousand and six. They only
lived about fifteen minutes down the road from the road
in property fifteen minutes into this day. That case remains unsolved.
(19:00):
Angie Montgomery, Curtis Francis's cousin. It remains a devastating memory
without closure. She spoke to Jeff about it. I was
shocked that I had never even heard of Curtis and
Jennifer's case, because it's a pretty it's egregious that this
happened and it's unsolved, and it just seems crazy that
another in such a small community that's something like this
could happen again. And so what I would love to do,
(19:22):
and maybe it would kind of be to like walk
through kurt and Jenny's case and kind of like explain
who they were and any of the facts that you
know about the case. Well, Curtis was a very hard working,
good guy, lovedy Stanley, lived hunting and animals and fishing
and all that stuff, and he would help anybody. And
he was very protective. That's one word I like to
(19:44):
use to describe him. Very protective. As the people we loved,
Jeanie was a good girls, always taking care of others.
I think they just got messed up with the wrong people,
the wrong people. Angie's referring to our local drug dealers.
The most to the crime that happens around here, like
(20:06):
um cartaffs and breaking and enterings and things like that
is from drugs. There's a huge problem with opoids and
uh nothingn fhetamine here, huge and that probably does play
a part and every almost every murder of that's happened,
probably in the past ten years. I think the people
(20:27):
that killed my cousin lived I think four or five
minutes up the road from Curtain Jenny. They were big
drug dealers, and Curtis Oh didn't some money supposedly for marijuana.
So you feel like you know who did at Oh. Yes,
(20:47):
I don't want to be that person, but I'm I'm
pretty blunt and upfront. And the law enforcement here they
have mishandled Curtain Jenny's case from the rip when Angie
says lawn forceman. She's talking about the Pike County Sheriff's Office,
the same agency heavily involved in conducting the Rodent murder investigation.
(21:09):
In twenty sixteen, a plumber discovered a well that had
seemed to have been mysteriously hidden with rocks and dirt.
It was on a property that, according to eyewitness statements,
was the last place Curtis Francis was seen on the
night of his murder. The Pike County Sheriff's Office was
called in to investigate. Officers lowered a plumber's drain camera
into the well and discovered what appeared to be burned
(21:30):
clothes and a gun. It was a thirty OT six
was at the bottom of the well in Curtis's pistol
that was taken the night of the murders, and that's
what they were shot with, a thirty out six. Both
of them curtain Jenny with a potential murder weapon line
just thirty feet down a well. The Pike County Sheriff's
Office decided to use a curious tactic to recover the gun.
(21:53):
They called in a fire truck to pump water into
the well to try and push the firearm back up
out of the well shaft so invest gators could get
their hands on it. It did not go as planned.
They blew the water down the well, which in turn
made the ground break because of the force of you know,
a fire hose can blow the skin off of so
(22:14):
when they did that, this is what they told us
that happened. When they did that, it busted the ground loose.
The guns went down into the ground, and that they
don't have the money or the equipment to get them out,
so they hired a guy to seal the well shut.
He's a welder. He welded the well shut and that
(22:37):
was it. I think after this fiasco with the guns
in the well, when the guns were found, and how
they handled that situation and handled the possible murder weapons,
I think they're ashamed, and they should be. They took
probably the only hope we have of any type of
(23:00):
physical evidence and blew it to Snoggerens basically, and nothing's
been done with it since. With Curtis and Jennifer's case
going cold, Angie decided to pursue the killers herself. I've
spent years and years. I've got file after file after
(23:21):
file of things I've done. I've actually went and got names,
I've went and talked to people. Well, I'm just going
to be honest with you. I've done what the police.
I've tried to do what the police haven't done, which
is talked to people, get information, you know, get date,
get time, get people talking. You know all you've seen
(23:43):
Kurt that day, Okay, who was with him? What was
his demeanor? Things like that. There's eyewitness statement and I've
tried my best to get somebody or anybody just to listen.
It's pretty cut and dry. I've had a few people
(24:03):
out of state that are like retired homicide investigators and
stuff look at the case and tell me that they can't,
for the life of them, figure out why there hasn't
been an arrest made for the town that we you know,
the size of our town, there's been a lot of
murders here that have not been solved. It's ridiculous. But
(24:24):
if I say what I think, I could probably end
up in the river. According to Jodi, barr Angie's thoughts
about the Pike County Sheriff's Office are shared by many
in the community. The oppression I got from the people
in Pike County. When I was working there covering the
road and murders, there was this belief among almost everybody
(24:46):
I talked to you about incompetence when it came to
law enforcement in that county and the lack of that
sheriff's office ability to do a large scale murder investigation
and carry that through to a prosecution. And the man
at the head of the Pike County Sheriff's office is
none other than Sheriff Charles Reader. You've heard about Sheriff
(25:09):
Reader before. He's the officer who stated he would stop
at nothing to solve the Rodent's case. I've got a
message for the killers. We will find you, the family
and the victims. We'll have justice one day. To a
lot of people watching these news conferences, Reader's passionate campaign
for justice was admirable, but to journalist like Jeff Winkler,
(25:32):
Reader's determination belied his mishandling of the Rodent investigation from
the very start. It was the largest mass murder in
Ohio's history, and the law enforcement at the beginning. The
local law enforcement was almost comically inept to handle such
a large and bloody incident. They were just they weren't
equipped to handle it from the very beginning of the investigation,
(25:55):
and they bungled a lot of stuff right from the
get go. It was one all them after another. Nearly
a month after the bodies were found, Sheriff Frieder had
key pieces of evidence, including the Rodents, mobile homes and automobiles,
moved to a warehouse in the nearby town of Waverley.
(26:16):
Jodi Barr was on the scene and told Jeff what
he saw. So I'm out of the warehouse where they
moved these vehicles, the equipment from all the Rodent properties
where they moved the four mobile homes where these murders happened.
There's a large fence around this huge outdoor lot and
it is full of cars and ATVs farming equipment, back
(26:38):
hosed huge tractor trailers. So, as a reporter with you know,
at least a small knowledge of the chain of custody
of evidence. I know that with all this evidence just
you know, fifty yards away from me, that you've got
to have it's secured somehow. There's got to be a
peace officer someone there with a gun and swore who
(27:01):
swear an oath to uphold the laws in the constitutions
of the State of Ohio. They're guarding that that was
not the case. Yeah. So it's the largest in criminal
investigation in state history, right, and the main evidence is
not getting watched. There was no one in that parking
lot watching that evidence. So when you drive up to
a warehouse and you look and there's nothing between you
(27:24):
and hundreds of pieces of evidence except air and opportunity,
if that doesn't raise a red flag, I don't think
you're doing your job. I knew at that point in
time that there was something to explore here because potentially
this evidence, if it's unguarded, they can't establish a chain
of custody. This entire investigation could be jeopardized. So that's
(27:46):
why we took them. We took Mike Allen, the former
Hamilton County District Attorney. We took them to Pike County.
I called him, I said, hey, I want to take
you to Pike County. Here's what I found. I don't
want to show you what I found yet, I just
want to take you to this way house and you
give me your impressions of what we see there. Through
the eyes of a prosecutor. Here's Mike Allen. Jody was
(28:09):
on this thing like white on Rice and I went
up there with him, and that's what I noticed. It
two and you know, you've got it. Seems to me
it was close to thirty forty, maybe even fifty vehicles
that had a fence around them. Well that's fine, but
it would have taken an old man like me about
ten seconds to climb over that fence and take something
(28:32):
out of one of those vehicles, plant something, put something
in one of the vehicles. It just was not done right.
I mean, anybody involved in law enforcement, from that first
week that you're at the police academy, you learned that
you must preserve the evidence, and you must preserve that
chain of custody of the evidence. And I don't know what,
(28:54):
if anything, they pulled out of any of those cars,
but if I were defending this and they tried to
introduce any of that evidence, I would be all over
and I would move to have the evidence excluded because
it just was not properly secured. So Jody began preparing
(29:15):
a report about the evidence fiasco for a new station
Fox nineteen in Cincinnati. Soon after, Jody and his crew
were approached by Sheriff Charles Reader, who presented them with
a curious offer. The Sheriff's office declined to comment, but
here is Jody's side of the story. He tried to
make a deal with us to not hear that that
warehouse story. Yeah, and the deal was that he was
(29:35):
going to give us this unfettered access where we could
do this first hundred hours with Charlie Reader after he
learned the murders. If we wouldn't do this, that always
That still sits for me today. It pissed me off
then because I'm like, you know, what do you think
we are? We don't make deals. Well, photographer, now we're
you know, we got back in the car after then
we're going, what the hell just happened here? Never have
(29:58):
we ever experienced that. Let's stop here for another quick break.
We'll be back in a moment. Only on CNN. See
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available at meaningful beauty dot com. In June twenty nineteen,
Reader was indicted on eight felonies and eight misdemeanors. These
felony charges are not directly related to the road and investigation.
He was accused of conflict of interest, deft in office,
(34:00):
and tampering with evidence, among other nefarious activities. According to reports,
we are also allegedly still cash sees from drug arrest
to fund a gambling problem. Here's investigative journalist James Pilcher. Yeah,
he had a gambling addiction and he decided I'll just
use my own forces money to feed it. Yeah. Man,
(34:25):
in places like this, and I'm not going to say
it's necessarily a lack of journalistic outlets keeping tabs or whatever,
but there's no accountability. There's nobody watching the watchers in
these small communities, and in many cases that can lead
to major corruption. It's definitely worth noting that Sheriff Reader
(34:49):
has pled not guilty to all of these charges. However,
to Jody Barr, it's just another surreal event to what
seems like a never ending bizarre story. Reader was, you know,
shoulder to shoulder with Mike DeWine, the now governor who
was then the attorney general when these murders happened, that
they together were updating the nation about what happened here
(35:11):
in those days after the murders and where you going?
Is this real? Then you read what the indictments alleged,
and you read what the grand jury handed up, and
then you know, you just have to assume if a
grand jury is handing up an indictment, that there's been
an investigation conducted, there have been facts gathered, a prosecutor
has reviewed that, I mean evidence tampering and tampering with records.
(35:37):
You're talking about a guy who led the sheriff's office
and who for a time, a moment in time when
this first happened, these murders first happened, who was also
leading that investigation until the state came in and took
it over. You just sit back and go, man, let's
see where this ends. I mean, Pike County has been
a crazy ride ever since the end of April of
twenty sixteen, and it's still right now. You've got people
(36:00):
awaiting trial facing the death penalty on eight murders. The
sheriff and diedd removed from office. It has been an
absolutely crazy half a decade. There still the people of
pikes and are torn about Chaiff Reader. He put this
town before him. He cared about Pike County. Here's road
(36:21):
and family friend Brittany talking to Stephanie Lydecker. If it
wasn't for him, he for Charlie Reader, they wouldn't have
came close to even finding out about the Wagners. Honestly,
that's my opinion. How come because he worked his ass
off to find like that's all he did was to
(36:42):
investigate all of that. He didn't like, he didn't like
he had done his job. Like he went and you know,
like he was doomed really well in Pike County, like
keeping this like getting the drugs off the streets and whatnot.
But he still made effort a lot of effort into
(37:02):
the rod In case. Charlie had dedicated himself to getting
justice for the Roden family and then he was booted,
not that that long ago. Apparently he was taking the
money from the rod In case for gambling. But honestly,
I don't believe it because I don't know. I just
don't believe that they just were finding reasons to get
(37:23):
him out of office. Aie Montgomery holds a much different
view of Saraff Reeder. You know, now he's blaming his
gambling habits on because what he's seen is the crime
scenes have haunted him so much he couldn't sleep, so
(37:43):
he would go gamble. Well, I've known Charlie for thirty
years and he's been gambling way before this happened. And
that's just that, just to me shows you his character.
You know, I'm going to I'm gonna use the death
of eight people to try to smooth over, and I'm
still in money off my county and gambling and that
(38:04):
is disgusting to me. I just think there's a lot
of dirty deeds that going around here, and I think
that they will do anything they can keep them covered up.
Do we have a lot of crime here? Yeah, because
of drugs. Do we have a lot of drug activity here? Yes,
(38:27):
way more than there was fifteen years ago. Is it
safe here? I'm more scared of law enforcement than I
am of the people that killed my cousin. You're afraid
to say anything when in all reality, yeah, some things
are out there that you think because you go down
a ton of rabbit holes. When when you talk to
(38:50):
two and three hundred people like I have over the
course of two and two years, you find out a
lot of crap and it does take you down those
rabbit holes. Is it true? You don't know, but by god,
it looks like something isn't right. Pike County isn't It's beautiful,
(39:12):
it's far as landscape. It's a beautiful place. You know.
We're full of farmers and just down to earth people.
But there's a lot of dirty people here too, and
most of them are in power So with Sheriff Reader's
ethics being brought into question, does this impact the charges
(39:33):
brought against the Wagners. Here's Jeff Weinlair again. I would assume,
you know, the charges against Reader, the felonies and the
misdemeanors about being you know, through and through corrupt and
when it came to both law enforcement and financial dealings. Yeah,
I would assume this is going to affect a lot
of things. In fact, the prosecutor for the Pikedon area
(39:57):
also just resigned. This just sort of makes you start
thinking about everything that happened at beginning. Now you're seeing
these charges and these resignations, and you know, it doesn't
speak well about finding any answers to this thing. Every
(40:17):
answer we get about what happened to the road and
seems to leave more questions. So how through all of
these other crimes did official zero went on the Wagoners?
Police received over eleven hundred tips, They conducted over five
hundred interviews, tested about seven hundred pieces of evidence, served
close to two hundred church warrants, subpoenas and other things.
(40:38):
So this was something that was huge. So when you
read these indictments, you know they were talking about the
Wagner's movements, even months before these murders happened. Four months
to plan this out. I mean that's every day for
four months. That's the full time job. You know, they're
hacking computers and there was surveillance cameras on those properties.
(40:58):
If we are to believe the prosecution as alleged, you know,
this paint tap a very dark picture. Everybody had started
basically attacking them, the community, accusing them of murdering those people.
One day, she because I can't believe that they just
(41:18):
won't leave us alone. They just will not leave us alone.
We're starting to get really worried that we're going to
be arrested. Where to come next week? Pikedon Massacre is
executive produced by Stephanie Lydecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing
(41:41):
and sound designed by executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing
by Jeff Shane and Andrew Becker. The Pikedon Massacre is
a production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Smart journalism, fascinating topics.
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