June 2, 2021 • 46 mins
It’s been described as the most gruesome, complicated and long-lingering homicide cases the state of Ohio has ever seen. In episode four, alongside forensic expert, Joseph Morgan we look at the varying evidence that is sure to shape the upcoming trials. As we attempt to piece together what transpired in the Rhoden homes, the complicated forensics and crime scenes begin to make sense.
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at curiosity stream dot com. Welcome to the Piketon Massacre,
A production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. The only way
(02:12):
I can really describe it is this is orchestrated. If
you orchestrate something that goes to planning, everybody understands their
position in the orchestra. They understand what notes to hit.
They have a specific purpose and a job. They know
the area and they know the prey. They know the
(02:35):
nature of these individuals. Hell, they know where their homes are.
They know where security cameras are. They know what they
have to defeat to get past these and whether it
be locked timing well to to bedtime. They know all this.
That's why this is so shocking when you begin to
think about it, is the level of orchestration involved to
pull this thing off. This is the Piketon Massacre. Returned
(03:00):
to Pike County season two, episode four, The Houses on
Union Hill Road. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at
Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane. Over two
hundred investigators and police officers have contributed so far to
this ongoing investigations. Today, they say they received eight hundred
(03:21):
eighty three tips, conducted four hundred sixty five interviews, did
thirty eight search horrens and sixty cyber extractions. Without question,
this has been by four of the longest most complex
and labor intensive investigation the Ohio Attorney General's Office has
ever undertaken. As an investigator, I've worked any number of
(03:41):
mass killings. I've never covered anything autists. That's corner distinguished
professor and criminal forensics expert Joseph Morgan. It is not
a normal thing to walk into a house and seeing
blood mass It's something that borders only the apocalyptic. From
the outset the year magnet of the case post huge
investigative hurdles for the Pike County Sheriff's Office. Pike County,
(04:05):
it's a rural county. Of course, they don't have a
lot of money. It's not a judgment, it's just a
reality of them. When you begin to think about those
detectives that were from this little area there for Pike,
you know, from Pike County Shaff's apartment, it's something they'd
never been born witness too. It leads to limitations in
your ability to processing. So it is a herculean undertaking
(04:30):
for for these investigators, and less than a month into
the investigation, authorities made would seem to many like an
unusual decision. Work has already begun to move the homes
where eight members of the Rodent family were found shot
to death last month in Pike County, Ohio. The judge
has authorized his people to load the four mobile homes
and transport them about four and a half miles north
(04:50):
to the investigation command center in Waverley to preserve the
crime scenes. Well, we talked with Joseph Morgan. We looked
over aerial photos of the crime scenes before the mobile
homes were removed. They're all we have to go on
as no crime scene photos have been released. There's a
mock up showing the placement of the properties on our Instagram.
The first few images were of the property where Chris
(05:12):
Senior and Frankie Roden's trailers were located. Jeff got Morgan's
thoughts on Pike County's relocation strategy. Looking at these aerial
photos while we're talking about it. What really struck me
They lived in trailers, but these look more like homes
that are in the ground that aren't going anywhere. To me,
that like the crime scene is the most important part,
and moving them like that seems like this was that
(05:33):
would not be so easy. After the termination of this
case and when it's finally these cases are all adjudicated,
I'm going to want to study this from a crime
scene perspective because I want to learn how they did this.
I want to teach this because if they did it effectively,
it's something that somebody could write an academic paper on.
I mean, it's that big a deal. If you look
(05:54):
at this image, you would have to detach that mobile
home completely, and it's probably a foundational structure, so it's
it's at least has a cinder block foundation that has
built around the things that they can build a stick,
build a structure around it, and then attach it to
the mobile home. Just the sheer logistics of detaching this
(06:18):
thing from the ground. I've certainly, you know, never worked
a case that involved multiple mobile homes that where people
had been in dwelling for years, that are plumbed and
have electricity run to them and have foundations, and that
they're just lifted up off the ground and taken from there.
(06:38):
This is a monumental task. In order facilitate this, you've
got to make sure that nothing is going to be
disrupted in transit, because everything is relative. It's relative. There's
distance relationships, there's time relationships. Because things degrade, they change.
We've got bullet holes. Well, this is not like going
(07:00):
to a static home. It's moving back and forth as
it's kind of going down the road. So it's shifting. Well,
what if it shifts just a few millimeters relative to
if you're trying to pull trajectories on these bullets. So
to that end, it really gives you pause to think,
why was it that you wanted to move it from
(07:20):
this location by any measure. Investigating the Rodent murders was
a massive undertaking. Eight bodies spread out across four bloody
crime scenes, and soon after the victims were found, Ohio
Bureau of Criminal Investigation and FBI agents were called in
to help lead the charge. But according to Joseph Morgan,
before the Rodent's mobile homes were moved, it was imperative
(07:42):
that authorities analyze the scenes in their original states, viewing
that body in the context of the environment in which
it is found. That's where the tale is told at
that point, and you have to allow the body to
tell you that story. Maybe the person was face down,
so'll face down in bed. They're in a prominent position.
Someone walked up behind them, maybe when they were unaware,
(08:04):
maybe they were sleeping in a close range, they put
a single round into the back of their head. Well,
I don't want to move or manipulate the body until
it's time to remove it from the scene, after it's
been measured and examined for things like postmortem changes and
documented photographically. I don't want to change the body at all.
(08:26):
I want to see what the body is telling the current.
The body is the biggest piece of evidence that you have,
because that is, obviously, in this case, the target of
what the individuals were striving for. That's where the most
forces brought to bear. That's where the most violence takes place.
That's where you have the most transference. It's going to
take place from one object to the body, or from
(08:49):
one body to another body. The violence perpetrated by the
alleged assailants, the Wagners in the road In case was
unusually brutal. Thirty two gunshot wounds between the eight victims,
all but one shot in the head, and the evidence
collected on the scene and in the lab will all
contribute to chronicling what transpired on the night of April
(09:09):
twenty first, twenty sixteen. In light of Jake Wagner's plea deal,
this story will be integral for the prosecution's case against
the other three Wagners accused in the murders. Exactly five
years after the Rodent murders in Pike County, one of
the four defendants, Jake Wagner, is pleading guilty to all
counts in exchange, he avoids the death penalty and will
serve multiple life sentences with no chance at parole. His father, mother,
(09:32):
and brother are similarly charged, and they've pleaded not guilty
to help them avoid a possible death sentence. Prosecutors say
that Jake will testify against them. I spoke with Joseph
Markin about how Jake Wagner's plea will impact upcoming trials.
You need to understand the larger narrative here. He's now
on the outside. Jake is on the outside. He's no longer,
(09:54):
for all intents and purposes, part of the family. He
is going to be a state's witness at this in time.
So you're going to have defense counsel. They want to
prevent the state from validating anything that this young man
has to say. So Jake's already pled guilty, He's already
implicated his family. Why is how these murders happened important? Now?
(10:16):
They want to try to either put all of the
blame on him and say that our defendants had nothing
to do with this whatsoever. It's all on him. He
suddenly got a guilty conscience, had you know what we say,
come to Jesus moment and decided to roll over on everything.
And it's all him, all by himself. It doesn't matter
what we think. What's going to matter is what the
(10:37):
jury thinks moving forward. At the end of the day,
everybody else will be able to draw their own conclusions.
But how in the world is this going to be
presented to the jury? And you're going to need a
playbill to keep up with all of the all of
the various permutations here, because if you've got you know,
four different parties here. I'm including Jake and what he's
(11:01):
saying to the prosecution, you got four different parties here
that are giving you different scenarios. It's going to be
tasked to someone to try to make sense of all
of this, and that's someone That group of people are
going to be the jury. It will be explained before
the court and the people in that jury box and
(11:22):
before the judge. They will say, well, we know that
at this hour on the twenty first, this occurred. And
then moving forward, this is when the bodies were found.
Well what occurred between these moments? In top studying the
aerial photos of the crime scenes, Stephanie put into perspective
(11:42):
just how overwhelming a task it is putting the story
of the road and murders together. Just seeing these photos
now firsthand, in walking through them with you, only offers
up more questions for us. This is not a small operation.
This was huge. The volume of this case is one
of the most striking things for me. I think, you know,
out of every case that I cover, I don't recall
(12:04):
a case like this that's blood suked and it is
spread far and wide. There's so many pieces that have
to be put into place. With this, you're leap frogging
from this blood bath to another blood bath. The forensics
alone were highly complicated just from a geographic distribution standpoint.
(12:29):
It's like a beautiful mirror, okay, that someone had hanging
on their wall, and somebody with specific intent went in
and destroyed this mirror and crashed it down into thousands
and thousands of pieces, and then it is your job
to make sense of these broken pieces and try to
put it back together, not necessarily to make it usable again,
(12:50):
but to try to understand what happened, what affected its destruction,
to what degree is it destroyed, what instrumentality may have
destroyed it, and what the timming was like on this
How long has this thing been destroyed. We spoke with
Joseph Morgan about the importance of timeline in a multiple
(13:12):
homicide case. Tomline is essential here because you know, we
just have these bits and pieces coming out about the
order of death. They're going to be really focused on
the body and the changes in the body and the
traumas the body is sustained and all those sorts of things.
I think that that's that's something that's critical. As we
(13:33):
studied the aerial images of the crime scenes along with
the autopsy reports, Morgan tried to piece together the chronology
for us because his body was in a more advanced
state of decomposition. It's been speculated that victim Chris Roden Senior,
was the killer's first victim, so we started by looking
at the layout of his trailer Joseph points it out
(13:53):
what could have been the killer's way in here he
is talking to Stephanie. They have a poored parking pad
right there, and there's like a sidewalk that extends up
to that's a ramp. Yeah, walking up into this little
walkway into the porch area and therefore into the front door.
There's this entire runway, which was likely where the assailants entered. Correct.
(14:17):
So that brings me to this point. How many locks
would have had to have been defeated on that door
in order to gain entrance, And how can you gain
entrance to that door without making noise? But if you're
going into that porch, it also speaks to the fact
that they did have multiple trained attack dogs surveiling this area.
Why didn't those attack dogs attack because there's quite a
(14:38):
bit of a runway for you to get up to
that porch. And is it possible that they knocked on
the door? They knew one another, their family was very
close or had very close bonds. Angela Wagner, was there
a woman, a mom? So wouldn't you go to the
door a little more? Even if you were at odds?
If the dads, for example, Chris Senior and maybe Billy
(14:59):
Wagner odds over something. We've heard this, but you know
his wife is there, Angela, You're like, oh, what's happening.
You'd be more likely to open your door. It seems
implausible that they would draw them to the door. You know,
it makes me, It really makes me think, why would
they be in the bedroom and how did the perpetrators
get into the bedroom without these guys knowing it. That
(15:19):
tells me that maybe there was a hidden key. It
does make sense about perhaps a hidden key. Certainly, we
don't know this is fact, this is speculation, but we
do know that they were running serious surveillance on the family.
They have cameras at each of the locations in the homes,
really doing some top level surveillance on the family. And
at Jake, the youngest son, was there quite a bit
(15:41):
because he was sharing custody with the youngest daughter, and
for a long period of time they would TikTok between homes.
You get to know the location in the area very
very well. Joseph speculated about why Chris Senior may have
been targeted first. He apparently was identified as primary target,
or at least as a primary threat in our language,
(16:05):
and you hear this in the news media quite a
bit and on television shows and what not, but there
really is truly something that is referred to as overkilled.
You know, in Chris Senior's case, he was shot nine times.
What do you make of the brutality of that? It
kind of begs that question, Well, either you view that
person as a threat, maybe you see that they're going
to charge you, maybe you have an awareness of what
(16:27):
their potential for violence is and that you want to
prevent that. There's evidence that he attempted or reacted at
least to the point where he raised his arm. He's
taken one round in his right forum. But this is
the part that is very very curious. It says that
(16:47):
around passed through a door. I don't know which door.
He was in a bedroom, maybe it was the door
to his bedroom, or maybe he was hiding behind the door.
But then it goes on to say that at that
round in turn passed into his body. So you know,
we're learning, just in the sequencing with the Senior among
(17:13):
the road and Clan, that there was a lot of
firepower that was essentially directed toward him. You know, he
resided in the trailer was Gary. So we can surmise
that if Chris Senior was first, then Gary would have
had to have been second because they occupied the same
(17:36):
essentially the same space, you know, I guess they have
separate bedrooms. But Gary didn't receive the same amount of
tention that Chris Senior. He was only shot three times,
but these three gunshot ones he sustained. Two were to
the head, and it's kind of non specific in the descriptor,
but we know that one was in the face. And
(17:56):
this is kind of a theme that that you see
running through the nature of all of these killings. And
I found that kind of interesting because anytime someone has
shot an individual in the face from a profile standpoint,
that gives you the attitude that the individual is looking
at down at the shooter when they're fired upon. We're
(18:25):
going to take a quick break here, we'll be back
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Code Podcast fifty. Together we can make a difference. That's
credomobile dot com Code Podcast fifty. He'll forget about the
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video game you gave him on his birthday. Wow, thanks Grandpa,
But he'll never forget how you invested in his future.
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at UNEs dot coo. I'm Katie Lows. I am an actor,
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(21:38):
most of the time. And I'm Adam Shapiro, an actor,
a pretzel maker, a dad, and Katie's husband. And we're
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Sleep on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Victims Chris Senior and Gary Roden's crime
scene potentially held a cash of clues for investigators. We
(22:46):
know that the scene in particular was very bloody, okay,
because we know that Chris Senior was shot multiple tim
So when we examine a scene, that is a treasure
trove of evidence collection there. If someone has tried to
clean themselves, clean their hands, washed down a weapon, maybe
(23:07):
try to repair an injury of their own, you've got
evidence sitting in the drain and this is something they
would have had to have accounted for. So all of
the drain traps, everything within there would have had to
have been secured. What if something got flushed down the toilet, well,
you know, because now that's going to go into a
septic tank. Since this is so isolated, they're not going
(23:28):
to be on city sewer system. Logistically, it's a freaking nightmare.
I mean for a crime scene person, it is an
absolute nightmare. You have to make sure that all of
your bases are covered. Outside Chris Roden Senior's home was
potentially even more evidence. Here comes the big part that
port right there, which is a point of egress. You
(23:52):
need to keep that in mind. That is a point
through which somebody entered this damned dwelling. Just let that
sink in for a second. That's got to be detached
and moved. Now it looks like they have a concrete
slab parking area that's actually very nice. It's got a
trailer or a red truck, a great truck and a
(24:14):
small car that sparked by the sidewalk, and that sidewalk
is poured concrete as well. That's all going to contain
potential evidence. We know that that is an important piece
of It's almost like a footprint, right that has so
much potential DNA or blood or something that seeps into it. Yeah,
(24:35):
potentially blood evidence more than likely. If they trapes out
of that house, this would have required a herculean effort
upon the authorities there. As we mentioned, crime scene photos
were never released. There were also very few on the
ground photos of the surrounding area because the entire road
(24:56):
was closed to the public. However, the aerial shots provide
val you put insight into the crime scenes. Most likely,
the killers then moved to the trailer just a few
hundred yards away, where Frankie Rodin and his fiance Hannah
Gilly were living with Frankie's toddler and the couple six
month old baby boy. I always pictured it much further
apart from one another. It looks as though, and again
this is an aerial shot, you could on foot run
(25:19):
from Chris Senior's home to Frankie where he and Hannah
were sleeping. Making it up to Frankie and Hannah would
be that's no effort whatsoever. And if you've been surveilling
the area and keeping detailed notes on movements of people
and this sort of thing, it wouldn't be a problem
at all. In order to facilitate that, the proximity of
(25:42):
the homes most likely forced the killers to utilize some
critical tools silencers. We know from courtroom testimony that a
homemade silencer was found at a property owned by the Wagner's.
Having silencers when these crime scenes are so close together
seems like they would have to. And it does sound
as though from what we've researched that Frankie wrote in
(26:05):
and his fiance Hannah Gilly, and their three year old son,
Frankie's three year old son, they were sleeping at the time. Absolutely.
And the other thing is this is not something that
you would do in the dark. You want to make
sure because you're going there to specifically execute these people,
to kill them, you want to make sure that you're
(26:26):
going to shoot them. So unless you've got flashlights in
your hand, which they very well might have, you're gonna
flip the switch as soon as you walk through the door.
Light switch is right there. The element of surprise allowed
the killers to get with an intimate range of their victims.
A gunshot wound, you don't think about that as being intimate,
but if you start scoring headshots, particularly multiple headshots, you
(26:48):
know that there is kind of a close approximation of
the perpetrator to the victim in that particular case, So
it tells a different tale. And you know what gunshot
wos to head particularly multiple ones. You want to think about, well,
where are they shot in the head? If it is
an execution style to the back of the head, that's
(27:10):
one thing that I'm not saying that the person is
being humane that's doing it, but they want it over
with and done. It's quickly as possible. When you start
talking about shooting people in the face, this is something different,
particularly if it's multiple times. First off, the individual has
potential to visualize you as you're doing it, and you're
visualizing them. That brings it up to another level. Execution
(27:35):
style means from the back of the head, so you
don't have to make eye contact with your victim, which
makes sense. Yeah, that's a classic interpretation of it. When
I'm talking to somebody, a fellow death investigator or a
fellow forensic science person, if I say, yeah, it was
an execution style shooting automatically for me, and I would
(27:57):
assume for most of my colleagues, we're gonna think, Okay,
they're probably in the occiput, which if you put your hand,
you know, your fingers on the back side of your
head and you feel that big knot in the back
of your skull, that's your occiput. That's where your cerebellum dwells,
where your primal brain dwells, and there's mercy. There's mercy
(28:17):
in docks. Put back there, you know, while there's mercy
because if you fire into that area, it's almost an
instantaneous death. But if you start shooting people all over
their body, and you do it multiple times, and particularly
if you approach them and shoot them in the face,
there's no guarantee they're dead instantly, no guarantee whatsoever. According
(28:37):
to Morgan, the killers then likely traveled a mile and
a half up the road where victim's DNA, Chris Junior
and Hannah Rodin lived. You know, I can't imagine that
Dana poses the same threat level, Say, for instance, as
Chris Senior. Chris pretty robust kind of guy, big guy,
you know, worked outdoors with cars and whatnot. He's familiar
(28:58):
with weapons. I would have imagine he could pose a threat.
But this mother living in her trailer with her kids.
What threat did did she pose? Is she the focus
of a tremendous amount of anger. Well, when you combine
the fact that they have committed overkill here with the
(29:20):
shooting of her in her skull so many times, and
then they moved to shoot her in a manner in
which could potentially disfigure her. This seems to me almost
a messaging that sent out the people that are perpetrating
as have purpose to them. We have the other Hannah. Now,
what kind of person could stand over a young woman
(29:44):
and fire around into her face while staring at her
and her baby? You're visualizing this. This is not something
that's done in abstract. You're not a long long distance away.
You're up close and personal in these rooms, are there?
You know? It's not the taj from the hall here.
I mean, it's they're not rural tiny, but they're pretty small. Um,
(30:06):
you're gonna be on top of her when you're doing this.
Jeff wondered how the brutal precision executed by the killers
could play into the prosecution's case. Does that come into
play that they shoot a mother holding her baby twice
in the head? Does that make it worse than shooting
her once? This is a prosecutor's dream if you're talking
about a narrative, all right. It takes such savagery on
(30:30):
the part of an individual to do this. You look
at Chris Junior, who is in dwelling this place and
he's he's shot. It's kind of non specific. We do
know that that he was actually shot multiple times in
the head. And he's a sixteen year old kid. You
(30:51):
know what, what what threat does does he pose? Why?
Why would you take the life of a sixteen year
old boy? There? I don't I don't understand that. I
think at the end of the day, when we analyze
all of these these shootings, there's a thread. Obviously I've
talked about about the overkill that goes into all of this,
(31:11):
but there's a proximal issue here too, that is that
you're getting into the space of these victims. Then it's
likely the killers targeted their last victim, Kenneth Roden, who
is sleeping a trailer a few miles away on Left
Fork Road. However, Kenneth's crime scene was strikingly different from
(31:35):
the other Roaden victims. This is the end the big
Finaley and they shoot this guy in the eye. Now
you know this idea that he is shot in the
eye again, this goes to another level of violence here.
Literally did he see this coming at that moment in time?
And then to kind of you know, put the ice
on the cake. You you know, you drop dollar bills around. Again,
(31:56):
that goes to motive. You're you're trying to put the
police on the scent that this is something other than
what it appears. I've worked cartel related homicides before. Yeah,
there's messaging that goes along with this sort of thing.
But again, is that what they were going for. This
is a different type of staging. You're not trying to
(32:17):
mitigate the idea that it's something other than a homicide.
It's still a homicide. You're trying. This goes to the
motivation behind the home side to put them off sent
And that's a very very interesting narrative when you begin
to kind of think about it. I believe in your
professional experience, have you ever heard of a family that
(32:39):
operates as a foursome two different locations in this manner.
That's pretty uncommon. I would assume never did work into
major metropolitan areas as corner medical examiner investigator. I've never
encountered it. The sheer barbarity of the rodent murders will
be a critical part of the story, but one in
(33:00):
particular will be crucial to convey to the jury. Jeff
asked Joseph Morgan about it I'm just curious, like how
the prosecutors we're going to want to talk about the
question of whether or not the victims were aware or
their life was going to end, and how that might
impact the jury. It's going to be critical for the
prosecutor to be able to take the information that the
(33:21):
investigators have developed in the field and you know, working
these scenes in particular the time, these little markers and
time along the way, how well were they able to
document the actions that took place within the environment. If
they can get that information out into open court, then
(33:42):
they'll begin to talk about I can envision a closing
statement in particular, prosecutor would stand up there and say,
they took their time. We have them document as being
in this location where this particular time, and you as
a jury have to consider this, what were they saying,
what were they doing while they were in there? Did
these people know that they were about to die? And
(34:04):
of course the prosecutor, it's their job to put, as
horrible as it is, put the jury members in the
place of the victims to help them understand, because everybody
has been in fear of their life, the end of
their life at some point in time, So you have
to make that almost You can't do it, but you
want to make it as almost tactile as you possibly can.
So the people in the jury, they feel that stirring
(34:27):
within their soul where they understand, Okay, these people were
at a critical mask and they knew that it was
about to happen. What would I do in that moment,
tom where I realized that my life was actually coming
to an end. Let's stop here for another quick break.
(34:48):
We'll be back in a moment. At times, it is
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Code Podcast fifty. He'll forget about the video game you
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a dad, and Katie's husband. And we're so excited because
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a trained assassin would find it foolhardy to go about
(39:07):
trying to kill eight people on the same evening covering
this much territory there are too many things that can
go wrong unless you have somebody watching your back. You're
going to have to have a person that potentially is
a lookout or a transporter. You're going to have to
have somebody that can muscle or control the intended victims,
(39:28):
and then you have to have a shooter and an
ideally you would in fact need somebody that's doing overall
coordination because this logistically, it's a daunting task. I think,
to say the very least, you know in this particular case,
there are too many variables involved. But even after you plan.
(39:50):
Perpetrators are not crime scene investigators. They don't think like
crime scene investigators. They're so very rare most of the
cases that we work investigators. There is a huge opportunity
for these people to screw up along the way, to
leave something behind that is a direct indicator of their
involvement or at the presence when these deaths occurred, and
(40:14):
in this case, what was left behind included three young children.
According to Morgan, these spared lives go directly to the
heart of the presiding motive of the case, the singular
driver behind this. It has to those children. Whole value,
the attachment to the children is the driver behind this.
(40:36):
When you get overkilled, in my experience at least, it
goes to a lot of anger, it goes to a
lot of passion. And you'll see it in domestics. You
go to all this trouble, but yet you leave these
three babies alive, and you have to you know, you
begin to kind of question this, and it has an investigator.
(40:57):
It takes you down a specific direction. Who attach value
to these children? Who would want to see them continue
to live and still exist among the land of the
living up there and Pike can what accused killers Billy
Angela and George Wagner had to trial. Prosecutors will paint
them as the main characters in a gruesome, multilayered horror story.
(41:19):
Good prosecutors are great storytellers. That's their heartbeat. If they
are affective. They take all these little pieces of evidence,
all this stuff we've been talking about, and they tighten
that thing down and they walk in the courtroom and
they start talking about mamas, and they start talking about babies,
and they start talking about these familial ties. And it
(41:40):
will be powerful in court. It will be very powerful.
And I can almost see it now, envisioning right now,
when he starts talking about this, and you can see
that jury there will be a slow turn of their
heads toward that defendant's table, no matter who's on all
that particular tom because they will talk about Mama, and
(42:02):
they will talk about those babies, and they're going to
stare that individual town and they're gonna think who in
the hills in the courtroom with us right now? Well,
we wait to see if Billy Angela and George Wagner
will head to trial. There's one man intimately involved in
the road and murder case who has already seen his
day in court, Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader. After the
(42:27):
Road murders, he became front and center of all of
the coverage. She was giving information alongside the Ohio Attorney
General at that time. People were looking to him for
information and they wanted Reader, along with the state of Ohio,
to solve these murders. From all of the coverage that
went into Pike County in the months after these murders,
(42:49):
I mean, Charlie Reader was a central figure in that.
But Sheriff Reader had a quick fall from grace. In
June twenty nineteen, he was indicted on eight felonies and
eight miss demeanors. His charges included thefton office and tampering
with evidence. That was huge news, not only because of
his involvement in the road and murderers, but I mean,
you're talking about the sitting sheriff, the high Sheriff of
(43:12):
Pike County is now the subject of an investigation. Evidence
of misconduct, evidence of corruption by a politician. You're going, man,
I don't know what may happen with this. On March
twenty four, twenty one, Sheriff Fraterer appeared in court to
face the charges leveled against him. A guilty verdict would
(43:34):
have major consequences if you're a defense attorney working on
this case and the sheriff, if the county gets indicted,
I would think, you know, if you're a Wagner attorney,
you would look to have a field day with that.
That might be part of your defense. More on that
(44:01):
next time. For more information on the case and relevant photos,
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
(44:22):
Becker and Chris Graves. The Piked and Massacre Returned to
Pike County is a production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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He'll forget about the video game you gave him on
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Watch The Real Wild West now on Curiosity Stream with monthly, annual,
and bundled plans. Find the one that works for you
at curiosity stream dot com. Welcome to the Piketon Massacre,
A production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. The only way
(02:12):
I can really describe it is this is orchestrated. If
you orchestrate something that goes to planning, everybody understands their
position in the orchestra. They understand what notes to hit.
They have a specific purpose and a job. They know
the area and they know the prey. They know the
(02:35):
nature of these individuals. Hell, they know where their homes are.
They know where security cameras are. They know what they
have to defeat to get past these and whether it
be locked timing well to to bedtime. They know all this.
That's why this is so shocking when you begin to
think about it, is the level of orchestration involved to
pull this thing off. This is the Piketon Massacre. Returned
(03:00):
to Pike County season two, episode four, The Houses on
Union Hill Road. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at
Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane. Over two
hundred investigators and police officers have contributed so far to
this ongoing investigations. Today, they say they received eight hundred
(03:21):
eighty three tips, conducted four hundred sixty five interviews, did
thirty eight search horrens and sixty cyber extractions. Without question,
this has been by four of the longest most complex
and labor intensive investigation the Ohio Attorney General's Office has
ever undertaken. As an investigator, I've worked any number of
(03:41):
mass killings. I've never covered anything autists. That's corner distinguished
professor and criminal forensics expert Joseph Morgan. It is not
a normal thing to walk into a house and seeing
blood mass It's something that borders only the apocalyptic. From
the outset the year magnet of the case post huge
investigative hurdles for the Pike County Sheriff's Office. Pike County,
(04:05):
it's a rural county. Of course, they don't have a
lot of money. It's not a judgment, it's just a
reality of them. When you begin to think about those
detectives that were from this little area there for Pike,
you know, from Pike County Shaff's apartment, it's something they'd
never been born witness too. It leads to limitations in
your ability to processing. So it is a herculean undertaking
(04:30):
for for these investigators, and less than a month into
the investigation, authorities made would seem to many like an
unusual decision. Work has already begun to move the homes
where eight members of the Rodent family were found shot
to death last month in Pike County, Ohio. The judge
has authorized his people to load the four mobile homes
and transport them about four and a half miles north
(04:50):
to the investigation command center in Waverley to preserve the
crime scenes. Well, we talked with Joseph Morgan. We looked
over aerial photos of the crime scenes before the mobile
homes were removed. They're all we have to go on
as no crime scene photos have been released. There's a
mock up showing the placement of the properties on our Instagram.
The first few images were of the property where Chris
(05:12):
Senior and Frankie Roden's trailers were located. Jeff got Morgan's
thoughts on Pike County's relocation strategy. Looking at these aerial
photos while we're talking about it. What really struck me
They lived in trailers, but these look more like homes
that are in the ground that aren't going anywhere. To me,
that like the crime scene is the most important part,
and moving them like that seems like this was that
(05:33):
would not be so easy. After the termination of this
case and when it's finally these cases are all adjudicated,
I'm going to want to study this from a crime
scene perspective because I want to learn how they did this.
I want to teach this because if they did it effectively,
it's something that somebody could write an academic paper on.
I mean, it's that big a deal. If you look
(05:54):
at this image, you would have to detach that mobile
home completely, and it's probably a foundational structure, so it's
it's at least has a cinder block foundation that has
built around the things that they can build a stick,
build a structure around it, and then attach it to
the mobile home. Just the sheer logistics of detaching this
(06:18):
thing from the ground. I've certainly, you know, never worked
a case that involved multiple mobile homes that where people
had been in dwelling for years, that are plumbed and
have electricity run to them and have foundations, and that
they're just lifted up off the ground and taken from there.
(06:38):
This is a monumental task. In order facilitate this, you've
got to make sure that nothing is going to be
disrupted in transit, because everything is relative. It's relative. There's
distance relationships, there's time relationships. Because things degrade, they change.
We've got bullet holes. Well, this is not like going
(07:00):
to a static home. It's moving back and forth as
it's kind of going down the road. So it's shifting. Well,
what if it shifts just a few millimeters relative to
if you're trying to pull trajectories on these bullets. So
to that end, it really gives you pause to think,
why was it that you wanted to move it from
(07:20):
this location by any measure. Investigating the Rodent murders was
a massive undertaking. Eight bodies spread out across four bloody
crime scenes, and soon after the victims were found, Ohio
Bureau of Criminal Investigation and FBI agents were called in
to help lead the charge. But according to Joseph Morgan,
before the Rodent's mobile homes were moved, it was imperative
(07:42):
that authorities analyze the scenes in their original states, viewing
that body in the context of the environment in which
it is found. That's where the tale is told at
that point, and you have to allow the body to
tell you that story. Maybe the person was face down,
so'll face down in bed. They're in a prominent position.
Someone walked up behind them, maybe when they were unaware,
(08:04):
maybe they were sleeping in a close range, they put
a single round into the back of their head. Well,
I don't want to move or manipulate the body until
it's time to remove it from the scene, after it's
been measured and examined for things like postmortem changes and
documented photographically. I don't want to change the body at all.
(08:26):
I want to see what the body is telling the current.
The body is the biggest piece of evidence that you have,
because that is, obviously, in this case, the target of
what the individuals were striving for. That's where the most
forces brought to bear. That's where the most violence takes place.
That's where you have the most transference. It's going to
take place from one object to the body, or from
(08:49):
one body to another body. The violence perpetrated by the
alleged assailants, the Wagners in the road In case was
unusually brutal. Thirty two gunshot wounds between the eight victims,
all but one shot in the head, and the evidence
collected on the scene and in the lab will all
contribute to chronicling what transpired on the night of April
(09:09):
twenty first, twenty sixteen. In light of Jake Wagner's plea deal,
this story will be integral for the prosecution's case against
the other three Wagners accused in the murders. Exactly five
years after the Rodent murders in Pike County, one of
the four defendants, Jake Wagner, is pleading guilty to all
counts in exchange, he avoids the death penalty and will
serve multiple life sentences with no chance at parole. His father, mother,
(09:32):
and brother are similarly charged, and they've pleaded not guilty
to help them avoid a possible death sentence. Prosecutors say
that Jake will testify against them. I spoke with Joseph
Markin about how Jake Wagner's plea will impact upcoming trials.
You need to understand the larger narrative here. He's now
on the outside. Jake is on the outside. He's no longer,
(09:54):
for all intents and purposes, part of the family. He
is going to be a state's witness at this in time.
So you're going to have defense counsel. They want to
prevent the state from validating anything that this young man
has to say. So Jake's already pled guilty, He's already
implicated his family. Why is how these murders happened important? Now?
(10:16):
They want to try to either put all of the
blame on him and say that our defendants had nothing
to do with this whatsoever. It's all on him. He
suddenly got a guilty conscience, had you know what we say,
come to Jesus moment and decided to roll over on everything.
And it's all him, all by himself. It doesn't matter
what we think. What's going to matter is what the
(10:37):
jury thinks moving forward. At the end of the day,
everybody else will be able to draw their own conclusions.
But how in the world is this going to be
presented to the jury? And you're going to need a
playbill to keep up with all of the all of
the various permutations here, because if you've got you know,
four different parties here. I'm including Jake and what he's
(11:01):
saying to the prosecution, you got four different parties here
that are giving you different scenarios. It's going to be
tasked to someone to try to make sense of all
of this, and that's someone That group of people are
going to be the jury. It will be explained before
the court and the people in that jury box and
(11:22):
before the judge. They will say, well, we know that
at this hour on the twenty first, this occurred. And
then moving forward, this is when the bodies were found.
Well what occurred between these moments? In top studying the
aerial photos of the crime scenes, Stephanie put into perspective
(11:42):
just how overwhelming a task it is putting the story
of the road and murders together. Just seeing these photos
now firsthand, in walking through them with you, only offers
up more questions for us. This is not a small operation.
This was huge. The volume of this case is one
of the most striking things for me. I think, you know,
out of every case that I cover, I don't recall
(12:04):
a case like this that's blood suked and it is
spread far and wide. There's so many pieces that have
to be put into place. With this, you're leap frogging
from this blood bath to another blood bath. The forensics
alone were highly complicated just from a geographic distribution standpoint.
(12:29):
It's like a beautiful mirror, okay, that someone had hanging
on their wall, and somebody with specific intent went in
and destroyed this mirror and crashed it down into thousands
and thousands of pieces, and then it is your job
to make sense of these broken pieces and try to
put it back together, not necessarily to make it usable again,
(12:50):
but to try to understand what happened, what affected its destruction,
to what degree is it destroyed, what instrumentality may have
destroyed it, and what the timming was like on this
How long has this thing been destroyed. We spoke with
Joseph Morgan about the importance of timeline in a multiple
(13:12):
homicide case. Tomline is essential here because you know, we
just have these bits and pieces coming out about the
order of death. They're going to be really focused on
the body and the changes in the body and the
traumas the body is sustained and all those sorts of things.
I think that that's that's something that's critical. As we
(13:33):
studied the aerial images of the crime scenes along with
the autopsy reports, Morgan tried to piece together the chronology
for us because his body was in a more advanced
state of decomposition. It's been speculated that victim Chris Roden Senior,
was the killer's first victim, so we started by looking
at the layout of his trailer Joseph points it out
(13:53):
what could have been the killer's way in here he
is talking to Stephanie. They have a poored parking pad
right there, and there's like a sidewalk that extends up
to that's a ramp. Yeah, walking up into this little
walkway into the porch area and therefore into the front door.
There's this entire runway, which was likely where the assailants entered. Correct.
(14:17):
So that brings me to this point. How many locks
would have had to have been defeated on that door
in order to gain entrance, And how can you gain
entrance to that door without making noise? But if you're
going into that porch, it also speaks to the fact
that they did have multiple trained attack dogs surveiling this area.
Why didn't those attack dogs attack because there's quite a
(14:38):
bit of a runway for you to get up to
that porch. And is it possible that they knocked on
the door? They knew one another, their family was very
close or had very close bonds. Angela Wagner, was there
a woman, a mom? So wouldn't you go to the
door a little more? Even if you were at odds?
If the dads, for example, Chris Senior and maybe Billy
(14:59):
Wagner odds over something. We've heard this, but you know
his wife is there, Angela, You're like, oh, what's happening.
You'd be more likely to open your door. It seems
implausible that they would draw them to the door. You know,
it makes me, It really makes me think, why would
they be in the bedroom and how did the perpetrators
get into the bedroom without these guys knowing it. That
(15:19):
tells me that maybe there was a hidden key. It
does make sense about perhaps a hidden key. Certainly, we
don't know this is fact, this is speculation, but we
do know that they were running serious surveillance on the family.
They have cameras at each of the locations in the homes,
really doing some top level surveillance on the family. And
at Jake, the youngest son, was there quite a bit
(15:41):
because he was sharing custody with the youngest daughter, and
for a long period of time they would TikTok between homes.
You get to know the location in the area very
very well. Joseph speculated about why Chris Senior may have
been targeted first. He apparently was identified as primary target,
or at least as a primary threat in our language,
(16:05):
and you hear this in the news media quite a
bit and on television shows and what not, but there
really is truly something that is referred to as overkilled.
You know, in Chris Senior's case, he was shot nine times.
What do you make of the brutality of that? It
kind of begs that question, Well, either you view that
person as a threat, maybe you see that they're going
to charge you, maybe you have an awareness of what
(16:27):
their potential for violence is and that you want to
prevent that. There's evidence that he attempted or reacted at
least to the point where he raised his arm. He's
taken one round in his right forum. But this is
the part that is very very curious. It says that
(16:47):
around passed through a door. I don't know which door.
He was in a bedroom, maybe it was the door
to his bedroom, or maybe he was hiding behind the door.
But then it goes on to say that at that
round in turn passed into his body. So you know,
we're learning, just in the sequencing with the Senior among
(17:13):
the road and Clan, that there was a lot of
firepower that was essentially directed toward him. You know, he
resided in the trailer was Gary. So we can surmise
that if Chris Senior was first, then Gary would have
had to have been second because they occupied the same
(17:36):
essentially the same space, you know, I guess they have
separate bedrooms. But Gary didn't receive the same amount of
tention that Chris Senior. He was only shot three times,
but these three gunshot ones he sustained. Two were to
the head, and it's kind of non specific in the descriptor,
but we know that one was in the face. And
(17:56):
this is kind of a theme that that you see
running through the nature of all of these killings. And
I found that kind of interesting because anytime someone has
shot an individual in the face from a profile standpoint,
that gives you the attitude that the individual is looking
at down at the shooter when they're fired upon. We're
(18:25):
going to take a quick break here, we'll be back
in a moment. Like many of us, you might think
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company that's better for all people and the planet. Just
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care most about at no extra cost to you. Learn
more at credomobile dot com. And right now, when you
switch your phone to Credo, you can get a two
hundred and fifty dollars prepaid card and they'll donate fifty
dollars to the Transgender Law Center when you use the
Code Podcast fifty. Together we can make a difference. That's
credomobile dot com Code Podcast fifty. He'll forget about the
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video game you gave him on his birthday. Wow, thanks Grandpa,
But he'll never forget how you invested in his future.
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at UNEs dot coo. I'm Katie Lows. I am an actor,
a podcast host, a mom, and an honestly very tired
(21:38):
most of the time. And I'm Adam Shapiro, an actor,
a pretzel maker, a dad, and Katie's husband. And we're
so excited because we're the new hosts of Chasing Sleep,
the production of Ruby Studios from iHeartMedia in partnership with
Mattress Firm. Sleep affects your physical and mental performance, your
family dynamics, and your quality of life as you grow older.
Sleep can even affect parenting. Sleep does change very rapidly
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are not able to get enough sleep and get up
at six am to go to school. That's just literally
not possible. So we have to start high schools later.
That's one of the biggest public health things we can,
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(22:23):
experts who will help every day people like us explore
the mysteries behind our own sleep. So listen to Chasing
Sleep on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Victims Chris Senior and Gary Roden's crime
scene potentially held a cash of clues for investigators. We
(22:46):
know that the scene in particular was very bloody, okay,
because we know that Chris Senior was shot multiple tim
So when we examine a scene, that is a treasure
trove of evidence collection there. If someone has tried to
clean themselves, clean their hands, washed down a weapon, maybe
(23:07):
try to repair an injury of their own, you've got
evidence sitting in the drain and this is something they
would have had to have accounted for. So all of
the drain traps, everything within there would have had to
have been secured. What if something got flushed down the toilet, well,
you know, because now that's going to go into a
septic tank. Since this is so isolated, they're not going
(23:28):
to be on city sewer system. Logistically, it's a freaking nightmare.
I mean for a crime scene person, it is an
absolute nightmare. You have to make sure that all of
your bases are covered. Outside Chris Roden Senior's home was
potentially even more evidence. Here comes the big part that
port right there, which is a point of egress. You
(23:52):
need to keep that in mind. That is a point
through which somebody entered this damned dwelling. Just let that
sink in for a second. That's got to be detached
and moved. Now it looks like they have a concrete
slab parking area that's actually very nice. It's got a
trailer or a red truck, a great truck and a
(24:14):
small car that sparked by the sidewalk, and that sidewalk
is poured concrete as well. That's all going to contain
potential evidence. We know that that is an important piece
of It's almost like a footprint, right that has so
much potential DNA or blood or something that seeps into it. Yeah,
(24:35):
potentially blood evidence more than likely. If they trapes out
of that house, this would have required a herculean effort
upon the authorities there. As we mentioned, crime scene photos
were never released. There were also very few on the
ground photos of the surrounding area because the entire road
(24:56):
was closed to the public. However, the aerial shots provide
val you put insight into the crime scenes. Most likely,
the killers then moved to the trailer just a few
hundred yards away, where Frankie Rodin and his fiance Hannah
Gilly were living with Frankie's toddler and the couple six
month old baby boy. I always pictured it much further
apart from one another. It looks as though, and again
this is an aerial shot, you could on foot run
(25:19):
from Chris Senior's home to Frankie where he and Hannah
were sleeping. Making it up to Frankie and Hannah would
be that's no effort whatsoever. And if you've been surveilling
the area and keeping detailed notes on movements of people
and this sort of thing, it wouldn't be a problem
at all. In order to facilitate that, the proximity of
(25:42):
the homes most likely forced the killers to utilize some
critical tools silencers. We know from courtroom testimony that a
homemade silencer was found at a property owned by the Wagner's.
Having silencers when these crime scenes are so close together
seems like they would have to. And it does sound
as though from what we've researched that Frankie wrote in
(26:05):
and his fiance Hannah Gilly, and their three year old son,
Frankie's three year old son, they were sleeping at the time. Absolutely.
And the other thing is this is not something that
you would do in the dark. You want to make
sure because you're going there to specifically execute these people,
to kill them, you want to make sure that you're
(26:26):
going to shoot them. So unless you've got flashlights in
your hand, which they very well might have, you're gonna
flip the switch as soon as you walk through the door.
Light switch is right there. The element of surprise allowed
the killers to get with an intimate range of their victims.
A gunshot wound, you don't think about that as being intimate,
but if you start scoring headshots, particularly multiple headshots, you
(26:48):
know that there is kind of a close approximation of
the perpetrator to the victim in that particular case, So
it tells a different tale. And you know what gunshot
wos to head particularly multiple ones. You want to think about, well,
where are they shot in the head? If it is
an execution style to the back of the head, that's
(27:10):
one thing that I'm not saying that the person is
being humane that's doing it, but they want it over
with and done. It's quickly as possible. When you start
talking about shooting people in the face, this is something different,
particularly if it's multiple times. First off, the individual has
potential to visualize you as you're doing it, and you're
visualizing them. That brings it up to another level. Execution
(27:35):
style means from the back of the head, so you
don't have to make eye contact with your victim, which
makes sense. Yeah, that's a classic interpretation of it. When
I'm talking to somebody, a fellow death investigator or a
fellow forensic science person, if I say, yeah, it was
an execution style shooting automatically for me, and I would
(27:57):
assume for most of my colleagues, we're gonna think, Okay,
they're probably in the occiput, which if you put your hand,
you know, your fingers on the back side of your
head and you feel that big knot in the back
of your skull, that's your occiput. That's where your cerebellum dwells,
where your primal brain dwells, and there's mercy. There's mercy
(28:17):
in docks. Put back there, you know, while there's mercy
because if you fire into that area, it's almost an
instantaneous death. But if you start shooting people all over
their body, and you do it multiple times, and particularly
if you approach them and shoot them in the face,
there's no guarantee they're dead instantly, no guarantee whatsoever. According
(28:37):
to Morgan, the killers then likely traveled a mile and
a half up the road where victim's DNA, Chris Junior
and Hannah Rodin lived. You know, I can't imagine that
Dana poses the same threat level, Say, for instance, as
Chris Senior. Chris pretty robust kind of guy, big guy,
you know, worked outdoors with cars and whatnot. He's familiar
(28:58):
with weapons. I would have imagine he could pose a threat.
But this mother living in her trailer with her kids.
What threat did did she pose? Is she the focus
of a tremendous amount of anger. Well, when you combine
the fact that they have committed overkill here with the
(29:20):
shooting of her in her skull so many times, and
then they moved to shoot her in a manner in
which could potentially disfigure her. This seems to me almost
a messaging that sent out the people that are perpetrating
as have purpose to them. We have the other Hannah. Now,
what kind of person could stand over a young woman
(29:44):
and fire around into her face while staring at her
and her baby? You're visualizing this. This is not something
that's done in abstract. You're not a long long distance away.
You're up close and personal in these rooms, are there?
You know? It's not the taj from the hall here.
I mean, it's they're not rural tiny, but they're pretty small. Um,
(30:06):
you're gonna be on top of her when you're doing this.
Jeff wondered how the brutal precision executed by the killers
could play into the prosecution's case. Does that come into
play that they shoot a mother holding her baby twice
in the head? Does that make it worse than shooting
her once? This is a prosecutor's dream if you're talking
about a narrative, all right. It takes such savagery on
(30:30):
the part of an individual to do this. You look
at Chris Junior, who is in dwelling this place and
he's he's shot. It's kind of non specific. We do
know that that he was actually shot multiple times in
the head. And he's a sixteen year old kid. You
(30:51):
know what, what what threat does does he pose? Why?
Why would you take the life of a sixteen year
old boy? There? I don't I don't understand that. I
think at the end of the day, when we analyze
all of these these shootings, there's a thread. Obviously I've
talked about about the overkill that goes into all of this,
(31:11):
but there's a proximal issue here too, that is that
you're getting into the space of these victims. Then it's
likely the killers targeted their last victim, Kenneth Roden, who
is sleeping a trailer a few miles away on Left
Fork Road. However, Kenneth's crime scene was strikingly different from
(31:35):
the other Roaden victims. This is the end the big
Finaley and they shoot this guy in the eye. Now
you know this idea that he is shot in the
eye again, this goes to another level of violence here.
Literally did he see this coming at that moment in time?
And then to kind of you know, put the ice
on the cake. You you know, you drop dollar bills around. Again,
(31:56):
that goes to motive. You're you're trying to put the
police on the scent that this is something other than
what it appears. I've worked cartel related homicides before. Yeah,
there's messaging that goes along with this sort of thing.
But again, is that what they were going for. This
is a different type of staging. You're not trying to
(32:17):
mitigate the idea that it's something other than a homicide.
It's still a homicide. You're trying. This goes to the
motivation behind the home side to put them off sent
And that's a very very interesting narrative when you begin
to kind of think about it. I believe in your
professional experience, have you ever heard of a family that
(32:39):
operates as a foursome two different locations in this manner.
That's pretty uncommon. I would assume never did work into
major metropolitan areas as corner medical examiner investigator. I've never
encountered it. The sheer barbarity of the rodent murders will
be a critical part of the story, but one in
(33:00):
particular will be crucial to convey to the jury. Jeff
asked Joseph Morgan about it I'm just curious, like how
the prosecutors we're going to want to talk about the
question of whether or not the victims were aware or
their life was going to end, and how that might
impact the jury. It's going to be critical for the
prosecutor to be able to take the information that the
(33:21):
investigators have developed in the field and you know, working
these scenes in particular the time, these little markers and
time along the way, how well were they able to
document the actions that took place within the environment. If
they can get that information out into open court, then
(33:42):
they'll begin to talk about I can envision a closing
statement in particular, prosecutor would stand up there and say,
they took their time. We have them document as being
in this location where this particular time, and you as
a jury have to consider this, what were they saying,
what were they doing while they were in there? Did
these people know that they were about to die? And
(34:04):
of course the prosecutor, it's their job to put, as
horrible as it is, put the jury members in the
place of the victims to help them understand, because everybody
has been in fear of their life, the end of
their life at some point in time, So you have
to make that almost You can't do it, but you
want to make it as almost tactile as you possibly can.
So the people in the jury, they feel that stirring
(34:27):
within their soul where they understand, Okay, these people were
at a critical mask and they knew that it was
about to happen. What would I do in that moment,
tom where I realized that my life was actually coming
to an end. Let's stop here for another quick break.
(34:48):
We'll be back in a moment. At times, it is
hard to not be discouraged climate change, abortion bands, rising inequality,
attacks on the LGTBQ plus community. That's why you march, vote,
write your congress person, and try to do your part.
One small thing you can do is switch your mobile
(35:10):
phone to Credo Mobile. Credomobile is America's only progressive mobile
phone company, and they donate a portion of their proceeds
to progressive nonprofit groups each month like March for Our Lives,
Plans Parenthood, the Transgender Law Center, and so many more.
When you join Credomobile, you're not just getting service on
the nation's best network. You're joining the phone company that's
better for all people and the planet. Just by using
(35:32):
your phone. You are funding the causes you care most
about at no extra cost to you. Learn more at
credomobile dot com. And right now, when you switch your
phone to Credo, you can get a two hundred and
fifty dollars prepaid card and they'll donate fifty dollars to
the Transgender Law Center when you use the Code podcast fifty.
Together we can make a difference. That's credomobile dot com
Code Podcast fifty. He'll forget about the video game you
(35:56):
gave him on his birthday. Wow, Thanks Grandpa, but he'll
never forget how you invested in his future. What the
unst app? Wow, thanks Grandpa. Don't just give them any gift,
give them a gift that can grow with them. Invite
grandparents and family friends to contribute to your child's future
(36:18):
with the unstapp. Unst is an investment account for kids
that makes it easy to gift funds that can be
used for college tuition, their first home, and more. Just
by sharing the link or include a UNSQR code on
party invitations for birthdays and holidays. For a limited time,
download the unst stapp and use the code I Heart
(36:38):
fifty at sign up to receive a fifty dollars bonus
when you fund your account. That's code I Heart fifty
when you sign up at une st dot coo for
a fifty dollars bonus. See terms and conditions at unest
dot coo. I'm Katie Lows. I am an actor, a
podcast host, a mom, and honestly very tired most of
(37:01):
the time. And I'm Adam Shapiro, an actor, a pretzel maker,
a dad, and Katie's husband. And we're so excited because
we're the new hosts of Chasing Sleep, the production of
Ruby Studios from iHeartMedia in partnership with Mattress Firm. Sleep
affects your physical and mental performance, your family dynamics, and
your quality of life as you grow older. Sleep can
(37:21):
even affect dreaming life. The dreams come to us naturally,
but we have to provide the action as individuals. So
the first question that I always ask the dreamer is
how are you feeling in the dream? The maths sad,
glad or afraid. If we can narrow our emotions down
to that, then we can take some action. We're going
(37:44):
to talk to the experts who will help everyday people
like us explore the mysteries behind our own sleep, So
listen to Chasing Sleep on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Curiosity Stream is the
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your budget. Go to curiosity stream dot com to satisfy
your curiosity and sign up today. I think that even
a trained assassin would find it foolhardy to go about
(39:07):
trying to kill eight people on the same evening covering
this much territory there are too many things that can
go wrong unless you have somebody watching your back. You're
going to have to have a person that potentially is
a lookout or a transporter. You're going to have to
have somebody that can muscle or control the intended victims,
(39:28):
and then you have to have a shooter and an
ideally you would in fact need somebody that's doing overall
coordination because this logistically, it's a daunting task. I think,
to say the very least, you know in this particular case,
there are too many variables involved. But even after you plan.
(39:50):
Perpetrators are not crime scene investigators. They don't think like
crime scene investigators. They're so very rare most of the
cases that we work investigators. There is a huge opportunity
for these people to screw up along the way, to
leave something behind that is a direct indicator of their
involvement or at the presence when these deaths occurred, and
(40:14):
in this case, what was left behind included three young children.
According to Morgan, these spared lives go directly to the
heart of the presiding motive of the case, the singular
driver behind this. It has to those children. Whole value,
the attachment to the children is the driver behind this.
(40:36):
When you get overkilled, in my experience at least, it
goes to a lot of anger, it goes to a
lot of passion. And you'll see it in domestics. You
go to all this trouble, but yet you leave these
three babies alive, and you have to you know, you
begin to kind of question this, and it has an investigator.
(40:57):
It takes you down a specific direction. Who attach value
to these children? Who would want to see them continue
to live and still exist among the land of the
living up there and Pike can what accused killers Billy
Angela and George Wagner had to trial. Prosecutors will paint
them as the main characters in a gruesome, multilayered horror story.
(41:19):
Good prosecutors are great storytellers. That's their heartbeat. If they
are affective. They take all these little pieces of evidence,
all this stuff we've been talking about, and they tighten
that thing down and they walk in the courtroom and
they start talking about mamas, and they start talking about babies,
and they start talking about these familial ties. And it
(41:40):
will be powerful in court. It will be very powerful.
And I can almost see it now, envisioning right now,
when he starts talking about this, and you can see
that jury there will be a slow turn of their
heads toward that defendant's table, no matter who's on all
that particular tom because they will talk about Mama, and
(42:02):
they will talk about those babies, and they're going to
stare that individual town and they're gonna think who in
the hills in the courtroom with us right now? Well,
we wait to see if Billy Angela and George Wagner
will head to trial. There's one man intimately involved in
the road and murder case who has already seen his
day in court, Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader. After the
(42:27):
Road murders, he became front and center of all of
the coverage. She was giving information alongside the Ohio Attorney
General at that time. People were looking to him for
information and they wanted Reader, along with the state of Ohio,
to solve these murders. From all of the coverage that
went into Pike County in the months after these murders,
(42:49):
I mean, Charlie Reader was a central figure in that.
But Sheriff Reader had a quick fall from grace. In
June twenty nineteen, he was indicted on eight felonies and
eight miss demeanors. His charges included thefton office and tampering
with evidence. That was huge news, not only because of
his involvement in the road and murderers, but I mean,
you're talking about the sitting sheriff, the high Sheriff of
(43:12):
Pike County is now the subject of an investigation. Evidence
of misconduct, evidence of corruption by a politician. You're going, man,
I don't know what may happen with this. On March
twenty four, twenty one, Sheriff Fraterer appeared in court to
face the charges leveled against him. A guilty verdict would
(43:34):
have major consequences if you're a defense attorney working on
this case and the sheriff, if the county gets indicted,
I would think, you know, if you're a Wagner attorney,
you would look to have a field day with that.
That might be part of your defense. More on that
(44:01):
next time. For more information on the case and relevant photos,
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
(44:22):
Becker and Chris Graves. The Piked and Massacre Returned to
Pike County 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. Have you
cut the chord and are feeling bored with your streaming services?
(44:43):
Curiosity stream can help. With thousands of documentary films and
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dot com. Wendosis from the San Diego Zoo wild Lefe Alliance,
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Diego Zoo Safari Park. Hear incredible stories and learn more
about the science behind the creatures that we love and
our conservation efforts around the globe. Listen to Amazing Wildlife
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
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com for details. The Children of Hero's Charity Fund needs
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A monthly donation of just twelve dollars can provide medical
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.