June 9, 2021 • 42 mins
The man who helped lead Ohio’s largest criminal investigation, Sheriff Charlie Reader went from being a well-liked public figure to finding himself at the center of a very different crime- one that placed him on the other side of the law. In episode 5, we look at the once beloved sheriff’s career, his involvement in the Rhoden case and his shocking fall from grace.
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dot com. Welcome to the Piketon Massacre, a production of
iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. We are here today for the
kase stand of Ohio versus Charles Reader. Case numbers twenty
nineteen CR sixty eight The Coroner now Here from mister
Reer I stand here before you today to take accountability
for my actions. To accept responsibility for my conduct, I said,
(02:34):
Sheriff of Ohio, I should excuse me. Everything that I'd
worked for professionally, in honorably for twenty five years was
stripped to me with nobody good pointing but myself. If
I could go back and change it, I would a
million times. This. This is not who I am. Never
(02:59):
ever did I imagine myself on the defense side of
this court route that I've spent twenty five years of
my life in this county in law enforcement. I am
a good person, make bad decisions and choices I have,
(03:20):
and I'm out pray that the work will find mercy
on me. This is the Piketon Massacre. Returned to Pike
County season two, episode five, To Protect and Serve. I'm
Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie
Laidecker and Jeff Shane. On the morning of April twenty second,
(03:42):
twenty sixteen, the Pike County Sheriff's Office responded to calls
of multiple homicides in what would soon be considered Ohio's
most notorious mass murder. The bodies of seven adults and
one sixteen year old boy were found in four different
locations along a country road in Pike County. We know
all of these victims all members of the Rodent family.
(04:03):
The shootings have left the town of Pike and numb
a lot of unanswered questions as to how this unfolded
and who is responsible for that. As news of the
tragedy emerged, the nation turned to the area's top law
enforcement official for answers, Pike County Sheriff Charlie Reader, to
give a brief update on what we are doing at
this time. I have deputies from my county and other
(04:25):
counties that are keeping the scenes secured. Here's reporter James Pilcher.
He's the one updating the media. He's the one who
is available. He's the one when you wanted to ask
how things are going. He was the one that you call,
so he began the face of the investigation early on.
This investigation is very large, one probably the largest in
(04:47):
Pike County that we've ever had and been a part of.
It's very tragic. I want everybody to be patient, but
understand that we are working around the clock, twenty four
hours a day. But this is going to be a
very lengthy reporter. Angeinette Levy covered many of readers briefings
during the course of the road and murder investigation. You know,
he was out in front of us, standing next to
(05:08):
the Attorney General at the time, doing press conferences with him,
and he often became very emotional and people there were
a lot of people in Pike County who really really
liked him. You came in like thieves in the night
and took eight lives, some being children. We are getting closer.
The family and the victims will have justice one day.
(05:31):
Charlie Reader, by all accounts, is somebody who grew up
in Pike County. He did not come from a well
to do family or anything like that. A lot of
people out in Pike County or poor. He worked for
many years for the Pike County Prosecutor, Rob Junk. He
was his investigator, and at some point Charlie Reader was
appointed the sheriff by the Democratic Party in Pike County.
(05:55):
Criminal defense attorney Mike Allen remembered Readers twenty and sixteen
flight election. He got seventy five percent. It probably got
twenty five percent. It's pretty unheard of in any kind
of election, so at one point he was pretty popular sheriff.
There were a lot of people in the community who
felt that he did some good things at the sheriff's
office when he first took over. They felt like he
(06:17):
was cleaned up crime in the streets. Southern Ohio has
a very major rug problem with hopioids in methamphetamine and
fenton al in all of it, and a couple members
of the community claimed that Reader really was there for
the family after one of their members that died from
a drug over those and helped plan a memorial three
(06:37):
in his honor. So he was very approachable. He was
out and about in the community much more. Charlie Reader
branded himself as the people's sheriff. During the height of
the road and murder investigation, Sheriff Reader's passionate pleas for
justice earned him the trust of his community as a
sheriff of Pike County or A three hundred and fifty
(06:59):
six days into this investigation, I've got a message for
the killers. We will find you, we will arrest you,
and you will be prosecuted. As this case moved forward,
the spotlight grew brighter and brighter in that area because
of this case. And I think he enjoyed the spotlight
(07:20):
to a degree, and I think he had greater political
aspirations as well. Here's producer Chris Graves speaking with investigative
reporter Jodi Barr. He covered the road and murder case
for Fox News nineteen and Cincinnati. What kind of power
does a sheriff wield in a community like Pike County.
He was the closest to the people of Pike County,
(07:40):
and you see that with a lot of elected officials
in more rural areas that you know, the sheriff is
literally the top dog in the county. He is the
face of law enforcement. He controls what happens with law enforcement,
where patrols happened. So as far as an elected official,
as far as a person holding power, your sheriff in
(08:00):
these areas, he is the man. Can something like that
go to someone's head? You've worked in law enforcement yourself
for quite a while. Oh yeah, you see it a
lot police chiefs or sheriffs, or somebody who's recently promoted
to a supervisory position. I mean, thank goodness, it doesn't
happen to a lot of them, but some of them
it does. Now, whether that happened here or not. I
(08:22):
don't know, but yeah, that very much could happen. As
the Road and investigation moved into its second years, some
disquieting rumors about Sheriff Frieder began to surface. As we
began to spend more time out there, we started hearing
the rumblings that there was some corruption out there. We
had heard rumors about him intimidating people and possibly taking
(08:47):
money from people who were in the drug dealing business.
I know, I for one, was told by some of
my law enforcement sources in the Cincinnati area, Hey, you
need to be careful around him. He's dirty. And these
were just people that were my sources who said, you know, look,
I just want you to be aware, be careful. Was
(09:08):
it because they were afraid they didn't trust him? They
did not trust Charlie Reader. There was a rumor that
he was sexually harassing some female employees when he worked
at the Ross County Juvenile Detention Center. Records from his
personnel file said that he wasn't the right fit and
there were too many questions. He had a lawsuit in
(09:31):
small claims court in nineteen ninety five and Gallant Police
for not paying a debt, and there was a warrant
issued for him, but he ended up paying it. So
I mean there were some things out there. There appears
to be two sides of Charlie Reader. One that you know,
the public sees, and they saw it in these naturally
televised broadcast press conferences where a reader is very emotional
(09:55):
talking about these Rodent murders very early on. And then
there's something you see and Charlie or reader where when
reader is challenged, you see another side of reader. So
he's got a very public face and a very private face.
Then oh yeah. Investigators recently towed vehicles that had been
parked at the homes where eight members of the Rodent
(10:15):
family were found shot to death in Pike County, Ohio
last month. The four mobile homes themselves where the bodies
were found will be removed from the scene to be
stored at a location in nearby Waverley. We're going to
get right out to investigative reporter Jodi Barr live in
Pike County. While I was in Pike County, I started
seeing things that I had the question what we found
(10:36):
at that evidence ware a house where the trailers, the vehicles,
the equipment that all belonged to the Rodens where the
Sheriff's Office in BCI took that. So we found problems
with the security of that evidence and the security of
that warehouse. I'm not an attorney. I've never prosecuted the case.
I've never collected evidence. But what I do know is
that evidence that is collected has to be secured. I've
(10:58):
seen prosecutions lost in court rooms in the States I've
covered because someone failed to secure one piece of evidence.
And of course Charlie Reader was so central to what
we were looking at. He is the man in charge
that we had to go find him. We scheduled the
interview and we sat down and we had this conversation
with Charlie Reader. And I want to say it last
(11:19):
it's maybe forty five minutes to an hour. And again
back to watching the two sides of Charlie Reader. You
had the emotional Charlie Reader early on in the interview
where he's talking about you know, the Rodents and you
know what this is done to Pike County. And then
I broke out an iPad, and on that iPad I
had visuals the images that I had taken from that
(11:40):
warehouse of the gate standing wide open, another gate secured
with a piece of thin wire. You know, days and
nights of no law enforcement at that warehouse. And I
think Reader knew during the middle of that interview that
this was not going to look good when we reported it,
that what we found there look terrible and it reflected
(12:03):
on the job he did. So I solved Charlie Reader change,
but he changed into very defensive and red face. But
Reader finally admitted that they did not have a deputy
posted at that warehouse. Watching that avidage twenty four to seven,
what Schriff Reader did next struck seasoned reporter Jodi barrs troubling.
(12:24):
Here is Jodie's first hand account of the interaction. So
the interview ends, and my photographer and I are tearing
down the equipment and Charlie Reader walks us out the
front door of the old Sheriff's office in Waverley, and
we're standing on the port of that Sheriff's office and
Reader wants to make a deal, and he says, if
we'll just hold off on airing the report of the
(12:46):
evidence warehouse and wait until they could return property to
the family, that Reader would let us in and give
us full access to him and Charlie Reader's story of
the first one hundred hours after the Road and murders,
and I just told him, no, we don't make deals.
(13:06):
Several months after that report aired, I got messages from
people in Pike County, one after the other telling me
that there was a raid underway at this Road and
Evidence warehouse in Waverley. Well. I dropped everything I was
doing at Cincinnati and drove the two hours east to
this warehouse. And when I got there, there they were
(13:26):
Sheriff Charlie Reader, deputy was with the Pike County Sheriff's
Office carrying things in and out of this warehouse. And
you know, I'm standing there wondering what is going on here.
This shouldn't be happening unless if something's happened, we don't
know about evolving the murders. This was a great public concern,
but that night Reader would not return my phone calls.
(13:47):
It was very contentious trying to get information out of
Pike County, out of the sheriffs office at that point.
But after that we were never able to access him again.
Despite Sheriff readers apparent handling of aspects of the Road
and murder investigation, authorities were able to put the Wagner
family behind bars in twenty eighteen. However, just weeks later,
(14:08):
area journalists got word that a different investigation, unrelated to
the road and murders was underway, one that placed Sheriff
Charlie Reader on the other side of the law. The
State Auditor's Office released a document to all of us
that stated an anonymous tip had come into the Auditor's
office in which someone stated that everyone was scared to
(14:31):
death of Reader, that he was basically a monster, and
investigators needed to look into a safe that was in
his office that contained money seized in drug deals, and
it also said something about him possibly gambling and is
this really wore on? The investigation continued, and then words
(14:51):
started spreading around Pike County. It really took what was
going on with Charlie Reader to a whole new level.
In June of twenty nineteen, a grand jury brought forth
sixteen charges against Sheriff Charlie Reader. As a result, he
was suspended from office, bringing his three year ten year
a sheriff to a close. The indictment laid out details
(15:12):
of the investigation and his crimes. Reader originally faced several
counts of theft in office, which is a felony in Ohio,
as well as tampering with evidence, which is also a
felony in Ohio. So what happens is that Charlie Reader
has a pretty sizeable amount of money that he's taken
from alleged drug dealers in Pike County. Every sheriff, every
(15:33):
law enforcement agency in the entire country, much less than
including Ohio, is allowed to seize money from suspects if
they think that that money or those goods are being
used in the commission of a crime. Money that was
seized in drug cases is supposed to be secured in
(15:54):
a safe or in a bank account or something, and
you can use him for education and purposes for the
sheriff's department. You can contribute it to appropriate charities. But
in these cases, at least on two occasions, the allegation
was that he took cash and converted it to his
own use. So the state auditor does their annual review
(16:20):
of the book. On the first past, the state auditors
find some money missing out of the seizure account, and
then they go back the Reader, and apparently he tries
to put it back, but these that leads to the
state auditor's office, then diving into getting warrants and diving
into his personal finance records, they find multiple expenses and
(16:43):
multiple trips to casinos, both in the area and out
of state, and tens of thousands of dollars spent to
casinos impossible debts. The records are pretty clear that showed
some pretty big losses at the racetrack, and also they
found that he withdrew more than twenty eight hundred dollars
from machines at the Atlantic Casino, so it was pretty
(17:07):
clear it was from gambling. Some of the other allegations
were that a lot of times in drug cases, cars
are forfeited, and in a couple of the charges, the
allegations are that at the auction he rigged it and
engineered it that either he or friends of his would
get those vehicles and then turn around and sell them,
(17:30):
So they were very serious charges. On September twenty fourth,
twenty twenty, Sheriff Charles Reader pled guilty to five charges
filed against him. They included two counts of theft in office,
two counts of tampering with evidence, and one count of
conflict of interest. A few months later, he appeared in
court for sentencing. It was a day that Anteinette Levy
(17:51):
would not soon forget. What was the mood like through
all of this? I couldn't believe it. When I got
out there that morning, the street was blocked off. Are
members of the US Marshal Service there. The US Marshalls
Service bomb squad was there. There were sheriff's deputy there.
I mean, this was quite the operation. There were sniper's
(18:11):
own roofs. I actually have a photograph of a sniper
on a roof. And there had been some rumblings online, apparently,
people encouraging people to show up at the courthouse to
protest this sentence. There was some fear that people who
were really hardcore supporters of his might show up and
try to do something dangerous in order to keep him
(18:34):
from being sentenced to prison. It was crazy. It had
never even been like that for a Wagner Court hearing.
We're going to take a quick break here, we'll be
back in a moment. Like many of us, you might
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your curiosity and sign up today. Inside the courtroom, the
mood was much different. We're here today for starting in
(23:07):
the case State of Ohio versus Charles Reader, case numbers
twenty nineteen CR. Sixty eight. Reader had his sentencing in
front of a visiting judge, Patricia Cosgrove, who had actually
sentenced three previous Ohio sheriffs on corruption charges. There were
five charges, and all of those could have gotten him
(23:28):
more than twelve years in prison. You see Charlie Reader.
He's sitting in court, sitting beside his defense attorney at
a table to the left, and at the table to
the right, the prosecutor who went to the grand jury
got the indictments against Reader, who got the guilty plea
from Reader months before. And you see these two tables
in opposition to one another, and the judges in the center,
(23:51):
and there's an empty podium in the center, and then
you see people walk up to that podium, and then
they start telling these stories of the good deeds Charlie
Reader did in certain instances around that county. He went
through one of the most horrendous crimes ever committed in
our counties. To my memory, what he went through, I
(24:11):
can't take you, ma'am, the knights, that he went sleepless,
what his family went through, what it done to his health.
But I believe in his heart Charlie Reader is a
good man. As Charlie made mistakes, yes, ma'am, he probably has,
But in the Bible it says you who are without saying,
(24:32):
cast the first stone. I couldn't throw many rocks at
it because I've made mistakes. To the one fact, I know,
Charlie was a man you could count on when you
needed him, and I would vote for him today just
as sure as I'm standing here as God is my witness.
After these people have said what they said, you see
(24:53):
a Reader walk up to the podium and including now
here fon mister Reader. You know he's a emotional, he's
in tears, and he's asking the judge for mercy to
be lenient with him in finacy. This is where he
is laying it all out and asking the State of
Ohio for mercy. I said, bad light on the office
(25:13):
of sheriff. I can only ask that my staff, their families,
the community, and my family who is here today, we'll
(25:35):
forgive me for the undooced dress I callstim I have
and I'm out prayed that the quirk will lay mercy
on me. I have no words for the shame that
I have and that I feel in the regret that
I have betrayed and just playing the trust if I
(25:57):
had with my staff in the community. Please do not
send me to prison. I have rolled, but I'm not runned.
I still have a lot of good left, did me.
During the proceedings, details of readers crimes were illuminated. The
state would note that the defendant was an elected county
(26:18):
sheriff who committed these crimes in his position as a
county sheriff. He used his position to obtain control over
the evidence bags and then use that control to remove
the funds and use them for his own benefit. The
majority of the funds involved were removed from the four
evidence bags cut open by defendant fourteen thousand seven hundred
(26:40):
and seventy five dollars was removed prior to the defendant
and his attorney turning those bags over to investigators for
the Auditor States Office. The different currency new in many
cases uncirculated bills were put into the currency bags, so
that restitution would have been taken care of at that point. Additionally,
(27:04):
there's a total of four thousand, eight hundred and fifty
dollars outstanding, three thousand, five hundred from the purchase of
the Nissan Diversa, which was the profit made by the
sheriff on that transaction, three hundred and fifty dollars owed
to the purchase people who purchased the Chevy Silverado, and
one thousand dollars which the state says never made it
(27:25):
into the evidence bag. So Judge Patricia Cosgrove, she has
a reputation for being very tough on sheriffs in Ohio
who have been engaged in corruption, and she has no nonsense,
and she questioned reader from the bench. During the judges questioning,
(27:45):
Sheriff Rider did his best to explain his moral motivation
behind his actions. Why did you cut open these evidence
envelopes and take the money out? And then in some
cases you put it back, although you were caught because
the envelopes had been unsealed and sealed again improperly, and
(28:07):
the denominations did not match what was taken at the
crime scene or from those individuals. I guess why did
you take the money. I took the money, and mind you,
this does not excuse it, but from drug dealers that
took it from parents, very poor people in this count.
(28:31):
That money, regardless of what the state and what the
media has claimed in the past years of a gambling problem,
and that money being used for gambling, was used. When
there was a tree planted in the name of the
shopman Boy. It's at the entrance of Western High School
(28:53):
to the left. As soon as you pull in. Nobody
can pay for that tree. Nobody offered to pay for
that tree. A drug diller did. When schools had cheerleading
or peewee that had car washes and such, I would
have our cruisers taken down there. My men and women
(29:15):
did not make good money, so some of them would
give them two dollars five dollars. I took money from
that and I provided it to those people. In the PSI,
the prec Ends Investigation, the PSI officer notes, there's no
documentation that you used it for those things, right, I
(29:37):
did not document those things. He didn't produce any receipts
to back these claims up, and there's a really strict
process by which those sements are tracked, and you have
to produce an accounting of all of that money. So
he claimed that he was essentially a robin hood. The
judge certainly didn't believe it. But then the judge started
(30:01):
asking and questions about gambling. There were a couple of
times that Judge Cosgrove all the econom in a line,
and she sounded very, very skeptical. Let's stop here for
another quick break. We'll be back in a moment. At times,
(30:25):
it is hard to not be discouraged climate change, abortion bans,
rising inequality, attacks on the LGTBQ plus community. That's why
you march, vote, write your congress person, and try to
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switch your mobile phone to Credo Mobile. Credo Mobile is
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(30:45):
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You're joining the phone company that's better for all people
and the planet. Just by using your phone, you are
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(31:05):
cost to you. Learn more at credomobile dot com. And
right now, when you switch your phone to Creto, you
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the Hunday two. Soon it's your journey. Did you lose
three thousand dollars gambling at the Sciota downs Rocino between
(34:41):
June two thousand and seventeen in September two thousand and seventeen, Yes,
not by myself. They have cards and of course, beginning
your honor of guilty to this, but they have cards
that you put in a machine. I can have a
card in my name, and I can have a card
(35:04):
in my name that my wife possesses, so I could
be at one machine and she can be at the other,
and the money that she spends and the money that
I spend they count on the same card and calculating
the money as one well, obviously, and that doesn't answer
the question where did the money and the checking account
come from. Okay. Also, I want to ask you, in
(35:27):
late June two and seventeen, you took a trip to Reno,
Nevada for the Sheriff's conference, and then you withdrew twenty
eight hundred dollars a ATM. The state believes that some
of this shouldue to gambling. I mean you're talking like
over or almost six thousand dollars and a couple months
that you lost are expended on gambling. And at that
(35:52):
point we were making almost eleven thousand dollars a month.
And that again was from my checking account where it
should show my direct deposits, my wife direct deposits, and
that it came from our devot cards where I retrieved
that money. I don't doubt it came from debit cards.
The question is where did the money come when to
(36:15):
your checking account? And that's I guess that's that's that's
where that's where the media reported that I had marital
problems because it came from our joint bank account. My
wife made very good money at the time, and I
took that money and I gambled. Okay, all right, um,
(36:38):
that's all the questions of court. Has she really let
him have it? She took no grief from him whatsoever.
It cannot be underestimated the damage that you have paused
to the citizens of Pike County, to law enforcement who
every day get up face the same sort of stresses
that you do. They go all home and night, they
(37:01):
get up in the morning, they don't know if they're
going to come home. The sacrifices that these men and
women at make, I think you've made a mockery of them.
I couldn't have imposed a much greater sentence than I have.
As I said, I've taken a consideration some of the
mitigating factors, but punishment is appropriate. To sentence you to
(37:23):
I considered the minimum. However, to sentence you to anything
less than three years in prison would demean the seriousness
of the offense and not adequately protects society from future
criminal conduct by yourself and honors. The judge handed him
three years, and Reader walked out of that courtroom and
(37:45):
into a jail cell to pay for throwing away his career,
embarrassing himself, and embarrassing his family. Do you think he
became a victim of his own power? He said, A
sheriff in that county like that is top dog right,
maybe he started feeling he was above the law. You know,
in fifteen years of doing this job, looking at people
(38:08):
like Charlie Reader in multiple states with multiple different schemes
of crimes being committed, there's a trend with just sheriffs
in general where a lot of them get in trouble.
Is it because they feel so powerful and untouchable? I
don't know, But man, when you look at it in
the final analysis, what we have here is a guy
(38:29):
in Pike County who had the county by a string,
who had the trust of people who live in that county.
So is it power? I don't know. All that I
know at this point is you had an elected official
who makes them pretty bad decisions and he's paying for it. Now,
(38:50):
have you gotten a sense what the implications might be
for the Wagner cases. That Reader is now going to
jail their early facing the investigation is now in prison.
For whether or not that had anything to do with
the actual investigation, no one knows. But if I'm a
defense attorney, all I gotta do is throw up that
smokescreen at some point and see what happens. And if
I'm a prosecutor, I'm thinking Okay, I need to have
(39:13):
a contingency plan to how to answer this. If you're
the defense, I'm assuming you will bring it up in court.
You'll point to that if the judge allows it and say,
you know, how can you trust this investigation. This man
was out there on the scene that morning. I think
it makes people in the county question what's really going
(39:34):
on there? Well, we wait to see how Sheriff Freeder's
conviction will impact the Wagner trials. One journalist continues to
grapple with the legacy of the Rodent family murders, a
story that forever changed her life more than five years ago.
More on that next time. For more information on the
(39:56):
case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kat
Underscore Studios. The Pikedon Massacre Return to Pike County is
executive produced by Stephanie Lydecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing
and sound designed by executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing
by Jeff Shane, Andrew Becker and Chris Graves. The Pikedon
Massacre Returned to Pike County is a production of iHeartRadio
(40:19):
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dot com. Welcome to the Piketon Massacre, a production of
iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. We are here today for the
kase stand of Ohio versus Charles Reader. Case numbers twenty
nineteen CR sixty eight The Coroner now Here from mister
Reer I stand here before you today to take accountability
for my actions. To accept responsibility for my conduct, I said,
(02:34):
Sheriff of Ohio, I should excuse me. Everything that I'd
worked for professionally, in honorably for twenty five years was
stripped to me with nobody good pointing but myself. If
I could go back and change it, I would a
million times. This. This is not who I am. Never
(02:59):
ever did I imagine myself on the defense side of
this court route that I've spent twenty five years of
my life in this county in law enforcement. I am
a good person, make bad decisions and choices I have,
(03:20):
and I'm out pray that the work will find mercy
on me. This is the Piketon Massacre. Returned to Pike
County season two, episode five, To Protect and Serve. I'm
Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie
Laidecker and Jeff Shane. On the morning of April twenty second,
(03:42):
twenty sixteen, the Pike County Sheriff's Office responded to calls
of multiple homicides in what would soon be considered Ohio's
most notorious mass murder. The bodies of seven adults and
one sixteen year old boy were found in four different
locations along a country road in Pike County. We know
all of these victims all members of the Rodent family.
(04:03):
The shootings have left the town of Pike and numb
a lot of unanswered questions as to how this unfolded
and who is responsible for that. As news of the
tragedy emerged, the nation turned to the area's top law
enforcement official for answers, Pike County Sheriff Charlie Reader, to
give a brief update on what we are doing at
this time. I have deputies from my county and other
(04:25):
counties that are keeping the scenes secured. Here's reporter James Pilcher.
He's the one updating the media. He's the one who
is available. He's the one when you wanted to ask
how things are going. He was the one that you call,
so he began the face of the investigation early on.
This investigation is very large, one probably the largest in
(04:47):
Pike County that we've ever had and been a part of.
It's very tragic. I want everybody to be patient, but
understand that we are working around the clock, twenty four
hours a day. But this is going to be a
very lengthy reporter. Angeinette Levy covered many of readers briefings
during the course of the road and murder investigation. You know,
he was out in front of us, standing next to
(05:08):
the Attorney General at the time, doing press conferences with him,
and he often became very emotional and people there were
a lot of people in Pike County who really really
liked him. You came in like thieves in the night
and took eight lives, some being children. We are getting closer.
The family and the victims will have justice one day.
(05:31):
Charlie Reader, by all accounts, is somebody who grew up
in Pike County. He did not come from a well
to do family or anything like that. A lot of
people out in Pike County or poor. He worked for
many years for the Pike County Prosecutor, Rob Junk. He
was his investigator, and at some point Charlie Reader was
appointed the sheriff by the Democratic Party in Pike County.
(05:55):
Criminal defense attorney Mike Allen remembered Readers twenty and sixteen
flight election. He got seventy five percent. It probably got
twenty five percent. It's pretty unheard of in any kind
of election, so at one point he was pretty popular sheriff.
There were a lot of people in the community who
felt that he did some good things at the sheriff's
office when he first took over. They felt like he
(06:17):
was cleaned up crime in the streets. Southern Ohio has
a very major rug problem with hopioids in methamphetamine and
fenton al in all of it, and a couple members
of the community claimed that Reader really was there for
the family after one of their members that died from
a drug over those and helped plan a memorial three
(06:37):
in his honor. So he was very approachable. He was
out and about in the community much more. Charlie Reader
branded himself as the people's sheriff. During the height of
the road and murder investigation, Sheriff Reader's passionate pleas for
justice earned him the trust of his community as a
sheriff of Pike County or A three hundred and fifty
(06:59):
six days into this investigation, I've got a message for
the killers. We will find you, we will arrest you,
and you will be prosecuted. As this case moved forward,
the spotlight grew brighter and brighter in that area because
of this case. And I think he enjoyed the spotlight
(07:20):
to a degree, and I think he had greater political
aspirations as well. Here's producer Chris Graves speaking with investigative
reporter Jodi Barr. He covered the road and murder case
for Fox News nineteen and Cincinnati. What kind of power
does a sheriff wield in a community like Pike County.
He was the closest to the people of Pike County,
(07:40):
and you see that with a lot of elected officials
in more rural areas that you know, the sheriff is
literally the top dog in the county. He is the
face of law enforcement. He controls what happens with law enforcement,
where patrols happened. So as far as an elected official,
as far as a person holding power, your sheriff in
(08:00):
these areas, he is the man. Can something like that
go to someone's head? You've worked in law enforcement yourself
for quite a while. Oh yeah, you see it a
lot police chiefs or sheriffs, or somebody who's recently promoted
to a supervisory position. I mean, thank goodness, it doesn't
happen to a lot of them, but some of them
it does. Now, whether that happened here or not. I
(08:22):
don't know, but yeah, that very much could happen. As
the Road and investigation moved into its second years, some
disquieting rumors about Sheriff Frieder began to surface. As we
began to spend more time out there, we started hearing
the rumblings that there was some corruption out there. We
had heard rumors about him intimidating people and possibly taking
(08:47):
money from people who were in the drug dealing business.
I know, I for one, was told by some of
my law enforcement sources in the Cincinnati area, Hey, you
need to be careful around him. He's dirty. And these
were just people that were my sources who said, you know, look,
I just want you to be aware, be careful. Was
(09:08):
it because they were afraid they didn't trust him? They
did not trust Charlie Reader. There was a rumor that
he was sexually harassing some female employees when he worked
at the Ross County Juvenile Detention Center. Records from his
personnel file said that he wasn't the right fit and
there were too many questions. He had a lawsuit in
(09:31):
small claims court in nineteen ninety five and Gallant Police
for not paying a debt, and there was a warrant
issued for him, but he ended up paying it. So
I mean there were some things out there. There appears
to be two sides of Charlie Reader. One that you know,
the public sees, and they saw it in these naturally
televised broadcast press conferences where a reader is very emotional
(09:55):
talking about these Rodent murders very early on. And then
there's something you see and Charlie or reader where when
reader is challenged, you see another side of reader. So
he's got a very public face and a very private face.
Then oh yeah. Investigators recently towed vehicles that had been
parked at the homes where eight members of the Rodent
(10:15):
family were found shot to death in Pike County, Ohio
last month. The four mobile homes themselves where the bodies
were found will be removed from the scene to be
stored at a location in nearby Waverley. We're going to
get right out to investigative reporter Jodi Barr live in
Pike County. While I was in Pike County, I started
seeing things that I had the question what we found
(10:36):
at that evidence ware a house where the trailers, the vehicles,
the equipment that all belonged to the Rodens where the
Sheriff's Office in BCI took that. So we found problems
with the security of that evidence and the security of
that warehouse. I'm not an attorney. I've never prosecuted the case.
I've never collected evidence. But what I do know is
that evidence that is collected has to be secured. I've
(10:58):
seen prosecutions lost in court rooms in the States I've
covered because someone failed to secure one piece of evidence.
And of course Charlie Reader was so central to what
we were looking at. He is the man in charge
that we had to go find him. We scheduled the
interview and we sat down and we had this conversation
with Charlie Reader. And I want to say it last
(11:19):
it's maybe forty five minutes to an hour. And again
back to watching the two sides of Charlie Reader. You
had the emotional Charlie Reader early on in the interview
where he's talking about you know, the Rodents and you
know what this is done to Pike County. And then
I broke out an iPad, and on that iPad I
had visuals the images that I had taken from that
(11:40):
warehouse of the gate standing wide open, another gate secured
with a piece of thin wire. You know, days and
nights of no law enforcement at that warehouse. And I
think Reader knew during the middle of that interview that
this was not going to look good when we reported it,
that what we found there look terrible and it reflected
(12:03):
on the job he did. So I solved Charlie Reader change,
but he changed into very defensive and red face. But
Reader finally admitted that they did not have a deputy
posted at that warehouse. Watching that avidage twenty four to seven,
what Schriff Reader did next struck seasoned reporter Jodi barrs troubling.
(12:24):
Here is Jodie's first hand account of the interaction. So
the interview ends, and my photographer and I are tearing
down the equipment and Charlie Reader walks us out the
front door of the old Sheriff's office in Waverley, and
we're standing on the port of that Sheriff's office and
Reader wants to make a deal, and he says, if
we'll just hold off on airing the report of the
(12:46):
evidence warehouse and wait until they could return property to
the family, that Reader would let us in and give
us full access to him and Charlie Reader's story of
the first one hundred hours after the Road and murders,
and I just told him, no, we don't make deals.
(13:06):
Several months after that report aired, I got messages from
people in Pike County, one after the other telling me
that there was a raid underway at this Road and
Evidence warehouse in Waverley. Well. I dropped everything I was
doing at Cincinnati and drove the two hours east to
this warehouse. And when I got there, there they were
(13:26):
Sheriff Charlie Reader, deputy was with the Pike County Sheriff's
Office carrying things in and out of this warehouse. And
you know, I'm standing there wondering what is going on here.
This shouldn't be happening unless if something's happened, we don't
know about evolving the murders. This was a great public concern,
but that night Reader would not return my phone calls.
(13:47):
It was very contentious trying to get information out of
Pike County, out of the sheriffs office at that point.
But after that we were never able to access him again.
Despite Sheriff readers apparent handling of aspects of the Road
and murder investigation, authorities were able to put the Wagner
family behind bars in twenty eighteen. However, just weeks later,
(14:08):
area journalists got word that a different investigation, unrelated to
the road and murders was underway, one that placed Sheriff
Charlie Reader on the other side of the law. The
State Auditor's Office released a document to all of us
that stated an anonymous tip had come into the Auditor's
office in which someone stated that everyone was scared to
(14:31):
death of Reader, that he was basically a monster, and
investigators needed to look into a safe that was in
his office that contained money seized in drug deals, and
it also said something about him possibly gambling and is
this really wore on? The investigation continued, and then words
(14:51):
started spreading around Pike County. It really took what was
going on with Charlie Reader to a whole new level.
In June of twenty nineteen, a grand jury brought forth
sixteen charges against Sheriff Charlie Reader. As a result, he
was suspended from office, bringing his three year ten year
a sheriff to a close. The indictment laid out details
(15:12):
of the investigation and his crimes. Reader originally faced several
counts of theft in office, which is a felony in Ohio,
as well as tampering with evidence, which is also a
felony in Ohio. So what happens is that Charlie Reader
has a pretty sizeable amount of money that he's taken
from alleged drug dealers in Pike County. Every sheriff, every
(15:33):
law enforcement agency in the entire country, much less than
including Ohio, is allowed to seize money from suspects if
they think that that money or those goods are being
used in the commission of a crime. Money that was
seized in drug cases is supposed to be secured in
(15:54):
a safe or in a bank account or something, and
you can use him for education and purposes for the
sheriff's department. You can contribute it to appropriate charities. But
in these cases, at least on two occasions, the allegation
was that he took cash and converted it to his
own use. So the state auditor does their annual review
(16:20):
of the book. On the first past, the state auditors
find some money missing out of the seizure account, and
then they go back the Reader, and apparently he tries
to put it back, but these that leads to the
state auditor's office, then diving into getting warrants and diving
into his personal finance records, they find multiple expenses and
(16:43):
multiple trips to casinos, both in the area and out
of state, and tens of thousands of dollars spent to
casinos impossible debts. The records are pretty clear that showed
some pretty big losses at the racetrack, and also they
found that he withdrew more than twenty eight hundred dollars
from machines at the Atlantic Casino, so it was pretty
(17:07):
clear it was from gambling. Some of the other allegations
were that a lot of times in drug cases, cars
are forfeited, and in a couple of the charges, the
allegations are that at the auction he rigged it and
engineered it that either he or friends of his would
get those vehicles and then turn around and sell them,
(17:30):
So they were very serious charges. On September twenty fourth,
twenty twenty, Sheriff Charles Reader pled guilty to five charges
filed against him. They included two counts of theft in office,
two counts of tampering with evidence, and one count of
conflict of interest. A few months later, he appeared in
court for sentencing. It was a day that Anteinette Levy
(17:51):
would not soon forget. What was the mood like through
all of this? I couldn't believe it. When I got
out there that morning, the street was blocked off. Are
members of the US Marshal Service there. The US Marshalls
Service bomb squad was there. There were sheriff's deputy there.
I mean, this was quite the operation. There were sniper's
(18:11):
own roofs. I actually have a photograph of a sniper
on a roof. And there had been some rumblings online, apparently,
people encouraging people to show up at the courthouse to
protest this sentence. There was some fear that people who
were really hardcore supporters of his might show up and
try to do something dangerous in order to keep him
(18:34):
from being sentenced to prison. It was crazy. It had
never even been like that for a Wagner Court hearing.
We're going to take a quick break here, we'll be
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your curiosity and sign up today. Inside the courtroom, the
mood was much different. We're here today for starting in
(23:07):
the case State of Ohio versus Charles Reader, case numbers
twenty nineteen CR. Sixty eight. Reader had his sentencing in
front of a visiting judge, Patricia Cosgrove, who had actually
sentenced three previous Ohio sheriffs on corruption charges. There were
five charges, and all of those could have gotten him
(23:28):
more than twelve years in prison. You see Charlie Reader.
He's sitting in court, sitting beside his defense attorney at
a table to the left, and at the table to
the right, the prosecutor who went to the grand jury
got the indictments against Reader, who got the guilty plea
from Reader months before. And you see these two tables
in opposition to one another, and the judges in the center,
(23:51):
and there's an empty podium in the center, and then
you see people walk up to that podium, and then
they start telling these stories of the good deeds Charlie
Reader did in certain instances around that county. He went
through one of the most horrendous crimes ever committed in
our counties. To my memory, what he went through, I
(24:11):
can't take you, ma'am, the knights, that he went sleepless,
what his family went through, what it done to his health.
But I believe in his heart Charlie Reader is a
good man. As Charlie made mistakes, yes, ma'am, he probably has,
But in the Bible it says you who are without saying,
(24:32):
cast the first stone. I couldn't throw many rocks at
it because I've made mistakes. To the one fact, I know,
Charlie was a man you could count on when you
needed him, and I would vote for him today just
as sure as I'm standing here as God is my witness.
After these people have said what they said, you see
(24:53):
a Reader walk up to the podium and including now
here fon mister Reader. You know he's a emotional, he's
in tears, and he's asking the judge for mercy to
be lenient with him in finacy. This is where he
is laying it all out and asking the State of
Ohio for mercy. I said, bad light on the office
(25:13):
of sheriff. I can only ask that my staff, their families,
the community, and my family who is here today, we'll
(25:35):
forgive me for the undooced dress I callstim I have
and I'm out prayed that the quirk will lay mercy
on me. I have no words for the shame that
I have and that I feel in the regret that
I have betrayed and just playing the trust if I
(25:57):
had with my staff in the community. Please do not
send me to prison. I have rolled, but I'm not runned.
I still have a lot of good left, did me.
During the proceedings, details of readers crimes were illuminated. The
state would note that the defendant was an elected county
(26:18):
sheriff who committed these crimes in his position as a
county sheriff. He used his position to obtain control over
the evidence bags and then use that control to remove
the funds and use them for his own benefit. The
majority of the funds involved were removed from the four
evidence bags cut open by defendant fourteen thousand seven hundred
(26:40):
and seventy five dollars was removed prior to the defendant
and his attorney turning those bags over to investigators for
the Auditor States Office. The different currency new in many
cases uncirculated bills were put into the currency bags, so
that restitution would have been taken care of at that point. Additionally,
(27:04):
there's a total of four thousand, eight hundred and fifty
dollars outstanding, three thousand, five hundred from the purchase of
the Nissan Diversa, which was the profit made by the
sheriff on that transaction, three hundred and fifty dollars owed
to the purchase people who purchased the Chevy Silverado, and
one thousand dollars which the state says never made it
(27:25):
into the evidence bag. So Judge Patricia Cosgrove, she has
a reputation for being very tough on sheriffs in Ohio
who have been engaged in corruption, and she has no nonsense,
and she questioned reader from the bench. During the judges questioning,
(27:45):
Sheriff Rider did his best to explain his moral motivation
behind his actions. Why did you cut open these evidence
envelopes and take the money out? And then in some
cases you put it back, although you were caught because
the envelopes had been unsealed and sealed again improperly, and
(28:07):
the denominations did not match what was taken at the
crime scene or from those individuals. I guess why did
you take the money. I took the money, and mind you,
this does not excuse it, but from drug dealers that
took it from parents, very poor people in this count.
(28:31):
That money, regardless of what the state and what the
media has claimed in the past years of a gambling problem,
and that money being used for gambling, was used. When
there was a tree planted in the name of the
shopman Boy. It's at the entrance of Western High School
(28:53):
to the left. As soon as you pull in. Nobody
can pay for that tree. Nobody offered to pay for
that tree. A drug diller did. When schools had cheerleading
or peewee that had car washes and such, I would
have our cruisers taken down there. My men and women
(29:15):
did not make good money, so some of them would
give them two dollars five dollars. I took money from
that and I provided it to those people. In the PSI,
the prec Ends Investigation, the PSI officer notes, there's no
documentation that you used it for those things, right, I
(29:37):
did not document those things. He didn't produce any receipts
to back these claims up, and there's a really strict
process by which those sements are tracked, and you have
to produce an accounting of all of that money. So
he claimed that he was essentially a robin hood. The
judge certainly didn't believe it. But then the judge started
(30:01):
asking and questions about gambling. There were a couple of
times that Judge Cosgrove all the econom in a line,
and she sounded very, very skeptical. Let's stop here for
another quick break. We'll be back in a moment. At times,
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or wherever you get your podcasts, brought to you by
the Hunday two. Soon it's your journey. Did you lose
three thousand dollars gambling at the Sciota downs Rocino between
(34:41):
June two thousand and seventeen in September two thousand and seventeen, Yes,
not by myself. They have cards and of course, beginning
your honor of guilty to this, but they have cards
that you put in a machine. I can have a
card in my name, and I can have a card
(35:04):
in my name that my wife possesses, so I could
be at one machine and she can be at the other,
and the money that she spends and the money that
I spend they count on the same card and calculating
the money as one well, obviously, and that doesn't answer
the question where did the money and the checking account
come from. Okay. Also, I want to ask you, in
(35:27):
late June two and seventeen, you took a trip to Reno,
Nevada for the Sheriff's conference, and then you withdrew twenty
eight hundred dollars a ATM. The state believes that some
of this shouldue to gambling. I mean you're talking like
over or almost six thousand dollars and a couple months
that you lost are expended on gambling. And at that
(35:52):
point we were making almost eleven thousand dollars a month.
And that again was from my checking account where it
should show my direct deposits, my wife direct deposits, and
that it came from our devot cards where I retrieved
that money. I don't doubt it came from debit cards.
The question is where did the money come when to
(36:15):
your checking account? And that's I guess that's that's that's
where that's where the media reported that I had marital
problems because it came from our joint bank account. My
wife made very good money at the time, and I
took that money and I gambled. Okay, all right, um,
(36:38):
that's all the questions of court. Has she really let
him have it? She took no grief from him whatsoever.
It cannot be underestimated the damage that you have paused
to the citizens of Pike County, to law enforcement who
every day get up face the same sort of stresses
that you do. They go all home and night, they
(37:01):
get up in the morning, they don't know if they're
going to come home. The sacrifices that these men and
women at make, I think you've made a mockery of them.
I couldn't have imposed a much greater sentence than I have.
As I said, I've taken a consideration some of the
mitigating factors, but punishment is appropriate. To sentence you to
(37:23):
I considered the minimum. However, to sentence you to anything
less than three years in prison would demean the seriousness
of the offense and not adequately protects society from future
criminal conduct by yourself and honors. The judge handed him
three years, and Reader walked out of that courtroom and
(37:45):
into a jail cell to pay for throwing away his career,
embarrassing himself, and embarrassing his family. Do you think he
became a victim of his own power? He said, A
sheriff in that county like that is top dog right,
maybe he started feeling he was above the law. You know,
in fifteen years of doing this job, looking at people
(38:08):
like Charlie Reader in multiple states with multiple different schemes
of crimes being committed, there's a trend with just sheriffs
in general where a lot of them get in trouble.
Is it because they feel so powerful and untouchable? I
don't know, But man, when you look at it in
the final analysis, what we have here is a guy
(38:29):
in Pike County who had the county by a string,
who had the trust of people who live in that county.
So is it power? I don't know. All that I
know at this point is you had an elected official
who makes them pretty bad decisions and he's paying for it. Now,
(38:50):
have you gotten a sense what the implications might be
for the Wagner cases. That Reader is now going to
jail their early facing the investigation is now in prison.
For whether or not that had anything to do with
the actual investigation, no one knows. But if I'm a
defense attorney, all I gotta do is throw up that
smokescreen at some point and see what happens. And if
I'm a prosecutor, I'm thinking Okay, I need to have
(39:13):
a contingency plan to how to answer this. If you're
the defense, I'm assuming you will bring it up in court.
You'll point to that if the judge allows it and say,
you know, how can you trust this investigation. This man
was out there on the scene that morning. I think
it makes people in the county question what's really going
(39:34):
on there? Well, we wait to see how Sheriff Freeder's
conviction will impact the Wagner trials. One journalist continues to
grapple with the legacy of the Rodent family murders, a
story that forever changed her life more than five years ago.
More on that next time. For more information on the
(39:56):
case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kat
Underscore Studios. The Pikedon Massacre Return to Pike County is
executive produced by Stephanie Lydecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing
and sound designed by executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing
by Jeff Shane, Andrew Becker and Chris Graves. The Pikedon
Massacre Returned to Pike County is a production of iHeartRadio
(40:19):
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