June 2, 2021 • 34 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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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to The piked In Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio
and Katie Studios. The only way 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
(00:21):
purpose and a job. They know the area and they
know the prey. They know the 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 locks timing well
if at the bedtime. They know all of this. That's
(00:41):
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 piked In Massacre. Returned
to Pike County, Season two, Episode four, The Houses on
Union Hill Road. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at
(01:03):
Katie Studios with Stephanie Ledecker and Jeff Shane. Over two
hundred investigators and police officers have contributed so far to
this ongoing investigation. Today, they say they received eight hundred
eighty three tips conducted four hundred sixty five interviews, did
thirty eight search warrants, and sixty cyber extractions. Without question,
this has been by four of the longest most complex
(01:25):
and labor intensive investigation the Ohio Attorney General's Office has
ever undertaken. As an investigator, I've worked any number of
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 seeablood
(01:47):
mass It's something that borders only apocalyptic from the outset.
The year magnitude of the case posed huge investigative hurdles
for the Pike County Sheriff's Office. Pike County, it's a
rural county. Of course, they don't have a lot of money.
It's not a judgment, it's just the reality of it.
When you begin to think about those detectives that were
(02:08):
from this little area there for Pike, you know, from
Pike County Shaf's apartment, it's something they'd never be more
on witness too. It leads to limitations and your ability
to processing. So it is a herculean undertaking for police investigators.
And less than a month into the investigation, authorities made
(02:28):
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 to the investigation command
center in Waverley to preserve the crime scenes. Well, we
(02:48):
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 ups showing the
placement of the properties on our Instagram. The first few
images were of the property where Chris Senior and Frankie
Roden's trailers were located. Jeff got Morgan's thoughts on Pike
(03:10):
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 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
(03:33):
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 it's that big a deal. If you look at
this image, you would have to detach that mobile home completely,
and it's probably a foundational structure, so it's at least
(03:57):
has a cinder block foundation that is built around the
things that they can build a stick, build the structure
around it, and then attach it to the mobile home.
Just the sheer logistics of detaching this thing from the ground.
I've certainly you never worked a case that involved multiple
(04:17):
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. This is a monumental task
in or facilitate this. You've got to make sure that
nothing is going to be disrupted in transit because everything
(04:40):
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 into 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
(05:01):
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 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
(05:24):
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 that authorities analyze the scenes
in their original states, viewing that body in the context
and the environment in which it is found. That's where
the tale is told at that point, and you have
(05:47):
to allow the body to tell you that story. Maybe
the person was face down they'll face down in bed
there in a prom position. Someone walked up behind them,
maybe when they were unaware, maybe they were sleeping, and
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
(06:08):
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. 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,
(06:29):
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 one body to
another body. The violence perpetrated by the alleged assailants, the
Wagners in the road In case was unusually brutal, thirty
(06:51):
two gunshot wounds between eight victims, all but one shot
in the head, and the evidence collected on the scene
and in the lab will all con tribute to chronicling
what transpired on the night of April 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
(07:14):
road and 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, 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
(07:36):
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,
for all intents and purposes, part of the family. He
is going to be a state's witness at this point
in tom So you're going to have defense counsel. They
want to prevent the state from validating anything that this
(08:00):
man has to say. So, Jake's already pled guilty, He's
already implicated his family. Why is how these murders happened important? Now?
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,
(08:21):
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
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
(08:42):
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 this and
what he's saying to the prosecution, you've got four different
parties here that are giving you difference in areas. It's
going to be tass to someone to try to make
(09:04):
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 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
(09:25):
bodies were found. Well what occurred between these moments? In
top studying the aerial photos of the crime scenes, Stephanie
put into perspective 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
(09:47):
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 case like this that's blood suked and
it is spread far and wide. There are so many
pieces that have to be put into place with this,
(10:10):
you're leap frogging from this blood bath to another blood bath.
The forensics alone were highly complicated just from a geographic
distribution standpoint. 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
(10:33):
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, 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 timing
(10:58):
was like on this How long has this thing men destroyed?
We spoke with Joseph Morgan about the importance of timeline
in a multiple 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
(11:18):
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 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 Sor was the killer's first victim.
(11:42):
So we started by looking at the layout of his trailer.
Joseph points it out what could have been the killer's
way in here he is talking to Stephanie. They have
a poor 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
(12:03):
therefore into the front door. There's this entire runway, which
was likely where the assailants entered. Correct. 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
(12:25):
multiple trained attack dogs surveiling this area. Why didn't those
attack dogs attack because there's quite a 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 so or
had very close bonds. Angela Wagner was there a woman,
a mom? So wouldn't you go to the door a
(12:47):
little more? Even if you were at odds? If the dads,
for example, Chris Senior and maybe Billy Wagner at 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
(13:08):
be in the bedroom? How did the perpetrators get into
the bedroom without these guys knowing it. That tells me
that maybe there was a hidden key. It does make
sense about perhaps a hidden key. Certainly, we don't know
this as fact, it's a 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,
(13:28):
really doing some top level surveillance on the family end.
At Jake, the youngest son, was there quite a bit
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
(13:49):
been targeted first. He apparently was identified as a primary
target or at least as a primary threat in our language.
And you hear this in the news mea quite a
bit and on television shows and all 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.
(14:09):
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
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
(14:32):
taken one round in his right forum. But this is
the part that is very very curious. It says that
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 that round
(14:55):
in turn passed into his body. So you know, we're learning,
just in the sequencing with the Senior among the road
and Clan, that there was a lot of firepower that
was essentially directed toward him. You know he resided in
(15:17):
the trailer with 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 essentially the
same space, you know, I guess they have separate bedrooms.
But Gary didn't receive the same amount of tention that
(15:37):
Chris Senior. He was only shot at 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 this
is kind of a theme that that you see running
through the nature of all of these killings. And I
find that kind of interesting because anytime someone has shot
(16:02):
an individual in the face from a profile standpoint, that
gives you the attitude that the individual is looking at
them at the shooter when they're fired upon. We're going
to take a quick break here, we'll be back in
a moment. Victims Chris Senior and Gary Roden's crime scene
(16:34):
potentially held a cash of clues for investigators. We know
that the scene in particular was very bloody, okay, because
we know that Chris Senior was shot multiple time. So
when we examine a scene. That is a treasure trove
of evidence collection there. If someone has tried to clean themselves,
(16:55):
clean their hands, washed down a weapon, maybe 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.
(17:16):
Since this is so isolated, they're not going 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
(17:36):
more evidence. Here comes the big part that port right there,
which is a point of egress. You 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.
(18:00):
This is actually very nice. It's got a trailer or
a red truck, a great truck and a small car
that sparked right 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 Footprinton, right, that has so much potential
(18:23):
DNA or blood or something that seeps into it. Yeah,
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
(18:44):
ground photos of the surrounding area because the entire road
was closed to the public. However, the aerial shots provide
valuable 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
(19:05):
one another. It looks as though, and again this is
an aerial shot, you could on foot run 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
(19:27):
sort of thing, it wouldn't be a problem at all.
In order to facilitate that, the proximity of 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
(19:50):
they would have to. And it does sound as though
from what we've researched that Frankie wrote in and his
fiance Hannah Gilly in their three year old on 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,
(20:10):
because you're going there to specifically execute these people, to
kill them, you want to make sure that you're going
to shoot them. So unless you've got flashlights in your hand,
which they bear one might have, you're going to 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.
(20:33):
The gunshot wound. You don't think about that it's being intimate.
But if you start scoring headshots, particularly multiple headshots, you
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
ones to the head, particularly multiple ones, you want to
think about, well, where are they shot in the head?
(20:56):
If it is an execution style to the back of
the head, that's 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 as 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,
(21:16):
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 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.
(21:37):
Like when I'm talking to somebody, a fellow death investigator,
a fellow forensic science person, if I say, yeah, it
was an execution style shooting automatically for me, and I
would assume for most of my colleagues, we're gonna think, Okay,
they're probably shot in the oxiput, which if you put
your hand, your fingers on the back side of your
head and you feel that big not in the back
(21:59):
of your skull, that's your occiput. I swear your cerebellum
dwells where your primal brain dwells, and there's mercy. There's
mercy in the ox 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,
(22:20):
and particularly if you approach them and shoot them in
the face, there's no guarantee they're dead instantly, no guarantee whatsoever.
According to Morgan, the killers then likely traveled a mile
and a half up the road where victims Dina Chris Junior,
and Hannah Rodin lived. You know, I can't imagine that
Dana poses the same threat level. Say, for instance, as
(22:41):
Chris Senior, Chris pre robust kind of guy, big guy,
you know, worked outdoors with cars and whatnot. He's familiar
with weapons. I would imagine he could pose a threat.
But this mother living in her trailer with her kids,
what threat did she that she pose? Is she the
(23:02):
focus of a tremendous amount of anger? Well, when you
combine the fact that they have committed overkill here with
the 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
(23:22):
almost a messaging that's sent out the people that are
perpetrating as have purpose to them. We have the other Hannah,
And what kind of person could stand over a young
woman and fire around into her face while staring at
her and her baby? You're visualizing this. This is not
(23:42):
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 real tiny, but
they're pretty small. You're gonna be on top of her
when you're doing this. Jeff wondered how the brutal precision
(24:03):
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 the part of an individual to
(24:23):
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 he was actually shot
multiple times in the head, and he's a sixteen year
old kid. You know what, what threat does he pose? Why?
(24:46):
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,
but there's a proximal issue here too, that is that
(25:07):
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
the other roaden victims. This is the end, the big finale,
(25:29):
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 icing on
the cake. You you know, you drop dollar bills around Again,
that goes to motive. You're you're trying to put the
police on the scent that this is something other than
(25:53):
what it appears. I've worked cartel related homicides before. Yeah,
there's messaging didn't go 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
mitigate the idea that it's something other than homside is
still a hom side you're trying. This goes to the
(26:15):
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
operates as a foursome two different locations in this manner.
That's pretty uncommon. I would assume never did work into
(26:39):
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 element
in 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
(27:00):
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 investigators have developed in the field and working these scenes,
in particular the time, these little markers and time along
(27:22):
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 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 or
(27:44):
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 of course the prosecutor,
it's their job to put this horrible as it is,
put the jury members in the place of the victims
to help them understand, because everybody has been in fear
(28:05):
of their life at 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 it stirring 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
(28:29):
realized that my life was actually coming to an end.
Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back
in a moment. I think that even a trained assassin
(28:55):
would find it foolhardy to go about 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, are
a transporter. You're going to have to have somebody that
can muscle or control the intended victims, and then you
(29:19):
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. Perpetrators
(29:41):
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 as investigators, there is a huge opportunity
for these people to screw up along the way, to
leave something behind that is a direct indicator there involvement
are at the presence when these deaths occurred, and in
(30:05):
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.
(30:26):
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.
(30:47):
It takes you down a specific direction. Who would attach
value to these children, who would want to see them
continue to live and still exist among the land of
the living up their pip can what accused killers Billy
Angela and George Wagner head to trial. Prosecutors will paint
them as the main characters in a gruesome, multilayered horror story.
(31:10):
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 mama's and they start talking about babies,
and they start talking about these familial ties. And it
(31:30):
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 trial
at that particular time, because they will talk about mama,
(31:52):
and they will talk about those babies, and they're going
to stare that individual town and they're gonna think, who
in the hell is in the courtroom with us. 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 murders,
(32:18):
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, I mean,
(32:40):
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 misdemeanors. His
charges included thefton office and tampering with evidence. That was
huge news, not only because of his involvement in the
road and murders, but you're talking about the sitting sheriff,
(33:01):
the high Sheriff of Pike County is now the subjects
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
Freder appeared in court to face the charges leveled against him.
(33:23):
A guilty verdict would 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.
(33:50):
More on that next time. For more information on the
case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at Katie
Underscores Studios. The piked In 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
(34:11):
producing by Jeff Shane, Andrew Becker and Chris Graves. The
piked In 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.
Welcome to The piked In Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio
and Katie Studios. The only way 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
(00:21):
purpose and a job. They know the area and they
know the prey. They know the 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 locks timing well
if at the bedtime. They know all of this. That's
(00:41):
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 piked In Massacre. Returned
to Pike County, Season two, Episode four, The Houses on
Union Hill Road. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at
(01:03):
Katie Studios with Stephanie Ledecker and Jeff Shane. Over two
hundred investigators and police officers have contributed so far to
this ongoing investigation. Today, they say they received eight hundred
eighty three tips conducted four hundred sixty five interviews, did
thirty eight search warrants, and sixty cyber extractions. Without question,
this has been by four of the longest most complex
(01:25):
and labor intensive investigation the Ohio Attorney General's Office has
ever undertaken. As an investigator, I've worked any number of
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 seeablood
(01:47):
mass It's something that borders only apocalyptic from the outset.
The year magnitude of the case posed huge investigative hurdles
for the Pike County Sheriff's Office. Pike County, it's a
rural county. Of course, they don't have a lot of money.
It's not a judgment, it's just the reality of it.
When you begin to think about those detectives that were
(02:08):
from this little area there for Pike, you know, from
Pike County Shaf's apartment, it's something they'd never be more
on witness too. It leads to limitations and your ability
to processing. So it is a herculean undertaking for police investigators.
And less than a month into the investigation, authorities made
(02:28):
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 to the investigation command
center in Waverley to preserve the crime scenes. Well, we
(02:48):
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 ups showing the
placement of the properties on our Instagram. The first few
images were of the property where Chris Senior and Frankie
Roden's trailers were located. Jeff got Morgan's thoughts on Pike
(03:10):
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 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
(03:33):
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 it's that big a deal. If you look at
this image, you would have to detach that mobile home completely,
and it's probably a foundational structure, so it's at least
(03:57):
has a cinder block foundation that is built around the
things that they can build a stick, build the structure
around it, and then attach it to the mobile home.
Just the sheer logistics of detaching this thing from the ground.
I've certainly you never worked a case that involved multiple
(04:17):
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. This is a monumental task
in or facilitate this. You've got to make sure that
nothing is going to be disrupted in transit because everything
(04:40):
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 into 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
(05:01):
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 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
(05:24):
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 that authorities analyze the scenes
in their original states, viewing that body in the context
and the environment in which it is found. That's where
the tale is told at that point, and you have
(05:47):
to allow the body to tell you that story. Maybe
the person was face down they'll face down in bed
there in a prom position. Someone walked up behind them,
maybe when they were unaware, maybe they were sleeping, and
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
(06:08):
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. 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,
(06:29):
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 one body to
another body. The violence perpetrated by the alleged assailants, the
Wagners in the road In case was unusually brutal, thirty
(06:51):
two gunshot wounds between eight victims, all but one shot
in the head, and the evidence collected on the scene
and in the lab will all con tribute to chronicling
what transpired on the night of April 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
(07:14):
road and 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, 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
(07:36):
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,
for all intents and purposes, part of the family. He
is going to be a state's witness at this point
in tom So you're going to have defense counsel. They
want to prevent the state from validating anything that this
(08:00):
man has to say. So, Jake's already pled guilty, He's
already implicated his family. Why is how these murders happened important? Now?
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,
(08:21):
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
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
(08:42):
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 this and
what he's saying to the prosecution, you've got four different
parties here that are giving you difference in areas. It's
going to be tass to someone to try to make
(09:04):
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 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
(09:25):
bodies were found. Well what occurred between these moments? In
top studying the aerial photos of the crime scenes, Stephanie
put into perspective 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
(09:47):
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 case like this that's blood suked and
it is spread far and wide. There are so many
pieces that have to be put into place with this,
(10:10):
you're leap frogging from this blood bath to another blood bath.
The forensics alone were highly complicated just from a geographic
distribution standpoint. 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
(10:33):
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, 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 timing
(10:58):
was like on this How long has this thing men destroyed?
We spoke with Joseph Morgan about the importance of timeline
in a multiple 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
(11:18):
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 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 Sor was the killer's first victim.
(11:42):
So we started by looking at the layout of his trailer.
Joseph points it out what could have been the killer's
way in here he is talking to Stephanie. They have
a poor 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
(12:03):
therefore into the front door. There's this entire runway, which
was likely where the assailants entered. Correct. 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
(12:25):
multiple trained attack dogs surveiling this area. Why didn't those
attack dogs attack because there's quite a 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 so or
had very close bonds. Angela Wagner was there a woman,
a mom? So wouldn't you go to the door a
(12:47):
little more? Even if you were at odds? If the dads,
for example, Chris Senior and maybe Billy Wagner at 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
(13:08):
be in the bedroom? How did the perpetrators get into
the bedroom without these guys knowing it. That tells me
that maybe there was a hidden key. It does make
sense about perhaps a hidden key. Certainly, we don't know
this as fact, it's a 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,
(13:28):
really doing some top level surveillance on the family end.
At Jake, the youngest son, was there quite a bit
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
(13:49):
been targeted first. He apparently was identified as a primary
target or at least as a primary threat in our language.
And you hear this in the news mea quite a
bit and on television shows and all 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.
(14:09):
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
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
(14:32):
taken one round in his right forum. But this is
the part that is very very curious. It says that
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 that round
(14:55):
in turn passed into his body. So you know, we're learning,
just in the sequencing with the Senior among the road
and Clan, that there was a lot of firepower that
was essentially directed toward him. You know he resided in
(15:17):
the trailer with 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 essentially the
same space, you know, I guess they have separate bedrooms.
But Gary didn't receive the same amount of tention that
(15:37):
Chris Senior. He was only shot at 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 this
is kind of a theme that that you see running
through the nature of all of these killings. And I
find that kind of interesting because anytime someone has shot
(16:02):
an individual in the face from a profile standpoint, that
gives you the attitude that the individual is looking at
them at the shooter when they're fired upon. We're going
to take a quick break here, we'll be back in
a moment. Victims Chris Senior and Gary Roden's crime scene
(16:34):
potentially held a cash of clues for investigators. We know
that the scene in particular was very bloody, okay, because
we know that Chris Senior was shot multiple time. So
when we examine a scene. That is a treasure trove
of evidence collection there. If someone has tried to clean themselves,
(16:55):
clean their hands, washed down a weapon, maybe 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.
(17:16):
Since this is so isolated, they're not going 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
(17:36):
more evidence. Here comes the big part that port right there,
which is a point of egress. You 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.
(18:00):
This is actually very nice. It's got a trailer or
a red truck, a great truck and a small car
that sparked right 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 Footprinton, right, that has so much potential
(18:23):
DNA or blood or something that seeps into it. Yeah,
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
(18:44):
ground photos of the surrounding area because the entire road
was closed to the public. However, the aerial shots provide
valuable 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
(19:05):
one another. It looks as though, and again this is
an aerial shot, you could on foot run 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
(19:27):
sort of thing, it wouldn't be a problem at all.
In order to facilitate that, the proximity of 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
(19:50):
they would have to. And it does sound as though
from what we've researched that Frankie wrote in and his
fiance Hannah Gilly in their three year old on 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,
(20:10):
because you're going there to specifically execute these people, to
kill them, you want to make sure that you're going
to shoot them. So unless you've got flashlights in your hand,
which they bear one might have, you're going to 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.
(20:33):
The gunshot wound. You don't think about that it's being intimate.
But if you start scoring headshots, particularly multiple headshots, you
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
ones to the head, particularly multiple ones, you want to
think about, well, where are they shot in the head?
(20:56):
If it is an execution style to the back of
the head, that's 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 as 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,
(21:16):
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 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.
(21:37):
Like when I'm talking to somebody, a fellow death investigator,
a fellow forensic science person, if I say, yeah, it
was an execution style shooting automatically for me, and I
would assume for most of my colleagues, we're gonna think, Okay,
they're probably shot in the oxiput, which if you put
your hand, your fingers on the back side of your
head and you feel that big not in the back
(21:59):
of your skull, that's your occiput. I swear your cerebellum
dwells where your primal brain dwells, and there's mercy. There's
mercy in the ox 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,
(22:20):
and particularly if you approach them and shoot them in
the face, there's no guarantee they're dead instantly, no guarantee whatsoever.
According to Morgan, the killers then likely traveled a mile
and a half up the road where victims Dina Chris Junior,
and Hannah Rodin lived. You know, I can't imagine that
Dana poses the same threat level. Say, for instance, as
(22:41):
Chris Senior, Chris pre robust kind of guy, big guy,
you know, worked outdoors with cars and whatnot. He's familiar
with weapons. I would imagine he could pose a threat.
But this mother living in her trailer with her kids,
what threat did she that she pose? Is she the
(23:02):
focus of a tremendous amount of anger? Well, when you
combine the fact that they have committed overkill here with
the 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
(23:22):
almost a messaging that's sent out the people that are
perpetrating as have purpose to them. We have the other Hannah,
And what kind of person could stand over a young
woman and fire around into her face while staring at
her and her baby? You're visualizing this. This is not
(23:42):
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 real tiny, but
they're pretty small. You're gonna be on top of her
when you're doing this. Jeff wondered how the brutal precision
(24:03):
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 the part of an individual to
(24:23):
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 he was actually shot
multiple times in the head, and he's a sixteen year
old kid. You know what, what threat does he pose? Why?
(24:46):
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,
but there's a proximal issue here too, that is that
(25:07):
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
the other roaden victims. This is the end, the big finale,
(25:29):
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 icing on
the cake. You you know, you drop dollar bills around Again,
that goes to motive. You're you're trying to put the
police on the scent that this is something other than
(25:53):
what it appears. I've worked cartel related homicides before. Yeah,
there's messaging didn't go 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
mitigate the idea that it's something other than homside is
still a hom side you're trying. This goes to the
(26:15):
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
operates as a foursome two different locations in this manner.
That's pretty uncommon. I would assume never did work into
(26:39):
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 element
in 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
(27:00):
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 investigators have developed in the field and working these scenes,
in particular the time, these little markers and time along
(27:22):
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 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 or
(27:44):
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 of course the prosecutor,
it's their job to put this horrible as it is,
put the jury members in the place of the victims
to help them understand, because everybody has been in fear
(28:05):
of their life at 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 it stirring 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
(28:29):
realized that my life was actually coming to an end.
Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back
in a moment. I think that even a trained assassin
(28:55):
would find it foolhardy to go about 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, are
a transporter. You're going to have to have somebody that
can muscle or control the intended victims, and then you
(29:19):
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. Perpetrators
(29:41):
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 as investigators, there is a huge opportunity
for these people to screw up along the way, to
leave something behind that is a direct indicator there involvement
are at the presence when these deaths occurred, and in
(30:05):
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.
(30:26):
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.
(30:47):
It takes you down a specific direction. Who would attach
value to these children, who would want to see them
continue to live and still exist among the land of
the living up their pip can what accused killers Billy
Angela and George Wagner head to trial. Prosecutors will paint
them as the main characters in a gruesome, multilayered horror story.
(31:10):
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 mama's and they start talking about babies,
and they start talking about these familial ties. And it
(31:30):
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 trial
at that particular time, because they will talk about mama,
(31:52):
and they will talk about those babies, and they're going
to stare that individual town and they're gonna think, who
in the hell is in the courtroom with us. 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 murders,
(32:18):
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, I mean,
(32:40):
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 misdemeanors. His
charges included thefton office and tampering with evidence. That was
huge news, not only because of his involvement in the
road and murders, but you're talking about the sitting sheriff,
(33:01):
the high Sheriff of Pike County is now the subjects
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
Freder appeared in court to face the charges leveled against him.
(33:23):
A guilty verdict would 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.
(33:50):
More on that next time. For more information on the
case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at Katie
Underscores Studios. The piked In 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
(34:11):
producing by Jeff Shane, Andrew Becker and Chris Graves. The
piked In 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.
Hosts And Creators
Stephanie Lydecker
Courtney Armstrong
Jeff Shane
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