June 29, 2025 • 41 mins
We continue trial coverage and the testimony of Jake Wagner. Jake goes into details about the homicides and we get first hand knowledge of what happened that night in 2016.
Sources for episode:
https://www.scribd.com/document/686257537/Jake-Wagner-Court-Docs-Hearing-Excerpts
https://sciotovalleyguardian.com/2022/10/24/day-29-jake-wagner-takes-the-stand-against-his-brother-in-the-rhoden-slaying-trial/
https://sciotovalleyguardian.com/2022/10/25/day-30-jake-wagner-walks-jury-through-how-he-disposed-of-murder-weapons/
Sources for episode:
https://www.scribd.com/document/686257537/Jake-Wagner-Court-Docs-Hearing-Excerpts
https://sciotovalleyguardian.com/2022/10/24/day-29-jake-wagner-takes-the-stand-against-his-brother-in-the-rhoden-slaying-trial/
https://sciotovalleyguardian.com/2022/10/25/day-30-jake-wagner-walks-jury-through-how-he-disposed-of-murder-weapons/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Summer Series twenty twenty five, The Roden Family Murders,
also known as the Pike County Massacre. We're going to
be discussing the murders of Dana Roden, Christopher Roden Senior,
Kenneth Roden, Gary Roden, Frankie Rodin, Hannah Hazel Gilly, Hannah Roden,
and Christopher Roden Junior. Let's go ahead and dive right
(00:22):
into Summer Series twenty twenty five. Welcome to Part five
of the Pike County Massacre, the Rodin Family Murders. We
are going to continue on today going through Jake Wagner's testimony. Now,
if you guys recall you have been following along with
this series, Jake Wagner testified against his brother, George Wagner
(00:44):
the fourth for a lesser sentence essentially, so he is
laying everything out. And when we left off last episode,
it was at the point where Jake Wagner had agreed
that the only way that they were going to be
able to keep custody of Sophia would be to kill Hannah.
(01:06):
So they asked that when Jake told Billy Wagner that
he agreed to this, did they start immediately making plans,
or if they did, what were the plans, And he said,
I'm not sure if it was immediate or not, but
he was saying essentially that he was going to try
(01:27):
to think of something, and his initial suggestion was to
make it look like Corey had killed Hannah and then
committed suicide after. So his initial plan was basically just
to kill Hannah and Corey and to frame Corey for
her death. And he had also thought about possibly just
(01:48):
killing Hannah, but he knew if he just killed Hannah
that the finger would immediately be pointed at him, and
that Chris Senior, Frankie, and Kenneth would immediately know that
he was involved and would be down on him, and
the only way to avoid that was pretty much to
kill them all. And then he went on to say
that the other individuals, Dana Rodin, Gary Roden, Chris Junior,
(02:13):
and Hannah, Hazel Gilly were pretty much just there and
that is the reason that they had to die because
they were in the same households and it was impossible
to get in and kill Chris Senior, to kill Frankie,
and to kill Hannah, and to kill Kenneth without taking
the others out as well. So that is how this
plan evolved into what it became, which was a eight
(02:38):
person massive homicide. And I can't even imagine the rationale
that went into all of this, how they plotted and
planned and meticulously tried to figure all of this out,
and not one of them along the way came up
and said, Hey, this is a horrible idea. We shouldn't
do this. These are eight separate people we're going to
(03:00):
in their family. I can't even imagine doing anything like
this ever, ever, ever, in my life. Ever. The next
bit of testimony is about the guns that were used
in the killings and how Jake got those guns, and
how they planned on which guns they were going to use.
It talks about them making the silencers and everything that
(03:23):
went into that. It is a lot of testimony. It
is a lot of gun talk, not really, in my opinion,
anything I super need to go into here, because we've
already kind of laid out the basics of what investigators
believed the guns were that were used in the eighth
person homicide. So this is just Jake reiterating what they used,
(03:46):
why they decided to use what they used, the making
of the silencers, how they went about that and how
they planned all of that out. So I'm not going
to go into all the details of that. The transcript
is available online if you want to read through a
thousand and seventy seven pages like I have of this transcript,
So I will link that below in the show notes
(04:06):
for you guys, so that way, if you do want
to read it word for word, you can. But I
cannot go through pages and pages of testimony talking about
guns and all the things. It's just not in my wheelhouse.
The next bit of testimony is about the Walmart shoes
and how that kind of came to be, where the
shoes came from, who bought the shoes, all the things
(04:30):
about the shoes. So Jake said that he and George
and Sophia all went with her and the nephew to Walmart,
and they were inside of the car when she went
and bought the shoes. He had basically told her to
just buy ugly tennis shoes, two size ten tennis shoes,
(04:52):
and she went into Walmart and bought the shoes. There
is other talk about different items that were purchased to
carry out the mur There was stuff from bass Pro,
there was stuff to make the silencers for the guns.
There was winter masks, there was so on and so forth,
a lot of items that this family purchased to execute
(05:16):
their plan. The next bit of questioning is about the
custody documents that Hannah allegedly signed, which Hannah did not sign,
and Jake said that that was not Hannah's signature, that
was his mother's signature forging as Hannah, and this was
a document, of course, referencing custody of Sophia if something
(05:36):
should happen to Hannah. Jake then goes on to talk
about some of the modifications he made to the truck
that he had purchased from his uncle, and this was
one of the vehicles that was used to carry out
the heinous axe against the Rodent family, and there was
different things he did. One of them had to do
with something with the lights illuminating and thing with the
(06:00):
tail lights us headlights, and he basically did this to
make the vehicle more stealth. Jake then goes on to
talk about how he and George dyed his hair shortly
before the murders. They had picked a brown color, but
it turned out to be black, and they both dyed
(06:20):
their hair. The reason he dyed his hair is because
he wanted the color and style of the main character
in The Walking Dead, and that is Darryl Dixon, who
is played by Norman Ritas. I have said that, for
whatever reason, Jake has this obsession with Norman Ritas. Jake
then goes on to say that his dad was very
much behind the scenes kind of planning things out a
(06:42):
little bit more, looking at weather forecasts because he wanted
the murders to take place on an overcast night. And
the reason for that, according to Jake, was because the
satellites cannot video through an overcast a sky, so that
is why he wanted the murders to take place on
this overcast night. Now, shortly before the murders, Hannah had
(07:04):
given birth to her baby, so there was also some
thought and planning as far as when they were going
to hit because obviously Hannah had been in the hospital
having her baby, and they needed to make sure that
Hannah was back home and settled in, So there was
some thought and plan and process to that as far
(07:24):
as when they were going to execute this family. They
asked Jake if there was any thought in his mind
that this child could be his, and he said no,
and they asked if you would want her to be
yours and he said yes. So none of that makes
any sense to me, because you're already in a vicious
custody battle with Hannah and you want another child with her.
(07:47):
It just doesn't make any sense to me. This thought
process and how these people rationalize all of the crazy
thoughts that come into their head makes no sense. They
then go back to some of the modifications that were
made to the truck that was used that night, and
Jake said that he put a false bed cover on it.
And he said, I had made a plywood cover that
(08:09):
just set below the bedrails to stack hay or straw
or something on top of the vehicle to make it
look like the bed was fully loaded with hay. And
they asked what the purpose was of making the false
bed and he said it was to have a compartment
underneath the hay to where myself and my brother could
hide in it while my dad drove to Chris's property. So, again,
(08:29):
this is just another step in the right direction to
proving that George Wagner the fourth was part of this.
They had a plan, he was involved, and this is
helping the state very much proved their case against George Wagner.
The fourth they continue to talk about different truck modifications
and stuff at the family's property and just different types
(08:53):
of barns and storage units and all the things, and
then they talk about what they were going to wear
that night, if they had talked and prepared about what
they were gonna wear, and he said sche mask, gloves, hoodies,
dark baggy clothes, and the shoes that his mom bought
at Walmart. He goes on to say that the shoes
were size ten and a half and eleven and they asked,
(09:15):
you recall which size shoe you wore that night, and
he said ten and a half and he said that
George wore the other pair. They asked if they had
any other weapons on them that night besides the guns
that they used to commit the crimes, and Jake said
that he had a large hunting knife on him, and
they asked if his dad or George had any other weapons,
(09:38):
and he said not that he knew of. They then
talk about Jake watching a clip from the Boone Doc
Saints movie that night, and he said that he did,
and he goes on to describe the scene for the
attorneys and the jury. He said he watched it that
night at his home and his brother and mother were present,
and they asked why he chose to watch them specific clip,
(10:01):
and he said, in a sense. I'm not completely sure,
but I think it was due to a sense of
trying to I think the word is to psych myself
into the gumption of doing what I was about to do.
So the plan that night was for Billy Wagner to
be driving the pickup truck and George and Jake would
be hiding in the false bed so nobody would see them.
(10:24):
And this is where we really get into the nitty gritty.
So they say, what was the first location that you
were going to be going to, and he said Chris Senior.
So they asked, okay, what was the plan once you
got to Chris Senior's house and he said, Dad was
to get the attention of Chris. I think he said
he was going to walk out of the garage or
the growroom, and when he would come back, as he
(10:47):
was walking in first he would let us out of
the vehicle and once we was in position, then he
would take Chris to the barn or the grow room,
and on his way back is when he was supposed
to be shot. Didn't feel anything or see anything coming.
Jake said they left around nine o'clock that evening to
go carry out their plan, and he left his phone
(11:09):
at home and had told his mom to use the
phone go on Facebook a couple of times, basically to
throw off the track of where Jake actually was and
make it look like he was home and scrolling social media.
Jake said it is about fifteen miles from their property
to Chris Senior's home, and he lays out what happened.
(11:30):
He said, my dad parked the vehicle out front, and
I can't quite remember if he did this immediately or
maybe come back out a very very short period of time.
I think he did immediately. When he got out, he
came to the back of the truck and said something
about waiting for a signal of some kind or something
like that he'd be back or something, and then went
(11:51):
inside Chris's house and they said, at this point in time,
you and your brother are still completely enclosed in that bed,
and he said, yeah, yes. He said. They remained in
the bed for about ten minutes, and then Dad came
back out. He had lowered the tailgate, had told my
brother and I to get in position. So basically Billy
had Gary and Chris. They had gone out to the
(12:13):
grow room, which was behind a barn that Chris Senior
had built, and at this point in time, Billy is
kind of leading the charge. His two sons, Jake and
George Wagner the Fourth, are in a prone position on
their bellies ready to take a shot at Chris and
Gary as they are exiting the grow room and coming
(12:33):
back towards the area where the house is now. George
Wagner the Fourth did have an open shot, but he
did not take the shot, so Jake said at that
point he had reached over and grabbed the gun from him.
And then at some point in time, Billy comes back
out to the truck and he is searching, pretending to
search for his cell phone. And the whole reason that
(12:56):
the cell phone was left behind was essentially to trick
Chris into calling it. And meanwhile, the phone is at
home with Angela Wagner. So therefore Billy has an alibi
because the phone never left the Wagner family residence that night.
And when Billy goes out to the car to pretend
to look for his phone, he asked George what happened,
(13:18):
and basically was trying to figure out why didn't Chris
get shot, what happened in the whole situation, So he
ends up going back inside. At this point, Chris is
still trying to call Billy's phone so Billy can find
his phone and thinking he left it in the truck.
(13:39):
I'm sure Chris just was innocently trying to help his friend.
And in all of this, Jake Wagner took a shot
and he missed. He missed Chris, and then he panicked.
He closed his eyes and he just pointed and fired randomly.
So Billy comes out of the house and is essentially
(14:01):
having a nervous breakdown because he just cold bloodedly murdered
his best friend, somebody he refers to as his brother.
He's having a nervous breakdown. Jake is trying to calm
his dad down. And then Jake said he went into
Chris's house and he got the keys out of his
pocket and then went outside into the grow room above
the motorcycle garage to get any hard drive he could
(14:22):
from the security system because he wanted to make sure
that there was no proof or evidence that they were
there that night, So he said, after he got the
security camera tapes, he went back into the house and
went to the bedroom and got him and Gary's cell
phones out of their pocket, and he said, at this
point in time, Chris and Gary were located in Chris's bedroom.
(14:43):
They asked if he helped move the bodies. He said no,
but the bodies were drug from the front of the
house back to the bedroom. And he said that there
was blood on the floor. He kind of tried to
wipe it up. He pulled a blanket down over Chris
and Gary and then he tried to wipe the floor
with the rug to get rid of some of the blood.
(15:05):
Jake said, after he retrieved their phones, he went back
outside to meet up with his brother and his dad
and then they walked up to Frankie's house. So they
asked if they had walked or driven to Frankie's house,
and he said that they walked. He said before they
got there, that they stopped at the corner by a
(15:27):
telephone pole and that his dad had gone to the
front of the trailer to see if the door was
locked or unlocked, and it was locked, So then they
went back to the telephone pole and he then walked
to the opposite side to see if the back door
was locked, and it was locked, and they kind of
had a little bit of conversation and said that it
(15:49):
might have to be a kick the door in type
of situation. But then they decided to go back to
Chris's house and they got Chris's truck, and he said
after that he thinks they went to Dana's house to
see if she was home. And they asked if when
they were at Frankie's house if they noticed any lights
on or any activity inside, and he said, I think
(16:10):
Dad had said something about the TV being on, but
all of the lights were off. So they went to
Dana's house and Dana wasn't home because she worked at
a nursing home and she worked kind of funky hours,
so Dana was not home, and they turned around and
decided to go swing by Kenneth's home to see if
he was home. Now at that point, it is the
(16:31):
three boys in the truck. It is Jake, it is
George Wagner at the fourth and Billy Wagner. They did
discover that Kenneth was home, but they went ahead and
went back to Chris's house, and then when they got
back there they went to Frankie's. They walked back around
the same way, went to the back of the house,
tried to open the back door. He used his hunting
(16:53):
knife to try to probably open the back door, and
it broke, so the door wouldn't open because they didn't
have that knife anymore. And then he said that he
had noticed that the window was opened under the middle bedroom,
so they walked past it. He passed his dad the
gun that he was holding, and he boosted himself into
the home, up and down in through the open window.
(17:15):
He said. He reached back out and had his dad
hand him the gun, and then he went into the
hallway and took a glance into Frankie's room. He could
tell that somebody, seemingly Frankie was in the bed and asleep.
And then he noticed that Frankie's son, Brentley was on
the couch asleep. So Jake is now inside. He opened
(17:36):
the back door, he let Billy Wagner in and then
he walked back into Frankie's room and he shot Frankie.
And then he saw that Hannah Hazel Gilly was there
and he shot her as well. And he said, because
of the nature of the room. He didn't search for
their cell phones or for different shellcasings. And then after
(17:57):
that he said they had walked back out to the
living room and went outside, and that he locked the
door behind him. They asked if he realized that there
was an infant in the bed with Frankie and Hannah
Hazel Gilly, and he said no, he didn't realize that
until after he had leaned over to shoot her, and
that is when he realized that there was a kid there.
(18:20):
Oh my god, this really just actually turns my stomach.
How evil of a person you can be to do
this to people when their children are right there. I
cannot even handle this, and it makes me even more
frustrated knowing the outcome of all this, and knowing Jake
(18:42):
Wagner's sentence, which we'll get to in a later episode,
but wow, it really astonishes me that he got up
there and told everything that happened in such detail, and
what these poor people went through I can't even imagine.
So then after they finished at Frankie's house, they went
(19:02):
back to Chris Senior's house and decided they were going
to go back to Dana's. These people were so dumb
to go back and forth between the crime scenes. I
don't understand why they did what they did. So they
ended up going back to Dana's house, and he said
they pulled up in the driveway and at this point
in time it was raining and thundering, and they ended
(19:23):
up getting out of the vehicle. They walked up to
the front door, checked to see if the door was locked,
and it was not, so he said, he went ahead
and opened it and went in the house and went in,
didn't see anybody in the front room, and then ended
up walking into another area of the home that was
behind the kitchen, and there was a hallway that connected
(19:45):
Dana and Hannah's bedrooms and there was no doorway in
that hallway, so he said, as he got to that point,
he looked into Hannah's room to see if she was asleep,
and it did appear that Hannah was sleep and then
he looked into Dana's room and realized that she was
still awake and on her phone. And he said, in
(20:07):
that moment that he kind of froze and didn't really
know what to do. He doesn't know how long he
froze for, but then he heard baby Kylie cry, and
that kind of jarred him to do something and to move.
But he doesn't really even know how to describe his
state of mind. He doesn't know if he was in
shock or what it was. But he said, once he
(20:28):
came out of his state, he moved to the left
and took a couple of strides, maybe one or two
towards Dana. And as he did that, she looked up
and made a gasping noise before he shot her once
or twice. And then he said, he immediately turned around
and did the same motion, but at that point in time,
(20:49):
Hannah had kind of awoken and was looking directly at him.
He said, he entered the bedroom, he was still in
the hallway, and he went ahead and shot her, and
then he said, he turned around, went back to Dana,
shot her a second time, and then went back to
Hannah and shot her a second time. Then he said,
after that, he kind of went back to the door
(21:11):
of Dana's bedroom. He opened the door, and when he
opened the door, his dad and brother were standing right there,
and then he walked past them, walked over to Christopher
Junior's room, opened Chris's door and he was asleep, and
he walked over and shot him. Once or twice, and
he said he did kind of make a noise, kind
(21:32):
of like a grunt, and he said he panicked and
shot him a few more times, and then he started
picking up shell casings. He went back to Dana and
Hannah's rooms and picked up shell casings, and he said
that Hannah had slightly fallen off the bed, so he
put her back on the bed to position her for Kylie.
(21:53):
And then they left. And it was really hard for
me to read all of that. That is actually the
most disturbing thing. I feel like I've ever heard, word
for word. I can't even fathom doing that. Three people
making the decision to go through with something so horrifically brutal.
(22:16):
They then talk to him about why he repositioned Hannah,
and he said that he did that to help Kylie
because he was concerned that she would starve to death.
So you brutally murder the mother of your child, her mother,
and her brother, and you've already killed four other people,
(22:38):
that's besides the point. And then all of a sudden
you decide that you're going to have a soul and
are concerned about a baby starving to death. That makes
actually no sense to me, but I guess if nothing else,
the baby was not harmed. Frankie and Hannah Hazel Gilly's
kids were not harmed, at least not physically harmed, And
they very much are trying to figure out out in
(23:00):
all of this where George Wagner the fourth is, because
he is obviously the one who's on trial for murder,
so they're trying to figure out where he was, if
he was directly involved in any way, shape or form,
or if he basically just stood there while Jake did
all of the bad things. But honestly, at the end
(23:20):
of the day, it doesn't really matter because they all partook,
and they were all part of this horrific plan, and
not one of them decided to put a stop to it.
So they ended up leaving Dana's house. They got back
in to the truck that they took from Chris's house.
They drove past Chris's house and they ended up stopping
(23:40):
and then George got their truck and they went down
to Kenneth's house. He said. They pulled in right up
to the front of Kenneth's camper and Dad told him
to wait there, and then Billy got out, walked up
to the door, beat on the door a few times,
nobody answered, and then Billy opened the door, walked in,
(24:04):
shut the door behind him. Jake says he saw a
muzzle flash a second, maybe two seconds, and then Billy
walked out, and Jake said at that point he turned
the headlights off to the truck. He ended up getting out,
and he said they went over to Kennisquaw Room and
once they went inside, they were looking for the security
(24:25):
hard drive to take it, and they couldn't find anything.
They did find a trail camera in one of the
trees and they were able to get that camera, and
then they all got back in their vehicle and they
drove home. And that was all of the murders that
they had all just committed. So once they got home,
(24:47):
they parked in the new barn that they had built,
and they had pretty much gotten out. They removed all
of their clothing and all the floor mats from the vehicle,
and he said he put all of that into a
burn barrel, and the unburnable items he took elsewhere, and
he took the firearms. He used a grinder, a portable
(25:10):
grinder to cut up into smaller pieces, and then proceeded
to use a cutting torch to melt the firearms, and
he said he did not have enough material supplies to
finish the job, so they were only partially destroyed, and
he put them into a Duffel bag. And he said,
as this was happening, his dad had taken the Chevy
(25:31):
truck and had taken it to another location, and he
was not aware of where they had taken it at
the time. And he said that he had proceeded to
dig a hole inside of the barn to bury the
Duffel bag for a later date. And once they removed
their clothes, they went to the house, they changed into
new clothes, and then that's when he said his dad
(25:54):
had taken the truck to another location and he went
to dig the hole. And he said his brother George
was helping him with all of this, and they talk
about the continuation of destroying the firearms and the digging
of the holes to hide the Duffel bag, and they
went on and on and on about that, and he
said when they were doing all of the stuff, concealing
(26:16):
the evidence and burning things and destroying things and all
of that, it was still nigh time, so they were
essentially trying to do what they could while it was
still dark out to hide as much evidence as they
possibly could. By the time they finished with everything, it
was morning, and he said while he was doing all
the bearing and the burning, his brother had gone to
(26:37):
do the morning feed routes for the livestock that they
had and gathered tools, and they just pretty much carried
on with life as usual, went about their normal routines
and did what they normally do. So then he said,
they are back at the house. They entered the house,
they watched the news broadcast and they asked who was
(26:57):
present during the news broadcast, and he said himself, George Wagner,
Angela Wagner, Billy Wagner, and the kids were awake at
the house, but they were watching cartoons in another room,
and he said they saw the news report about the homicides.
(27:17):
They asked, do they report how many people had been
killed or who had been killed? And he said, I
can't remember quite exactly what it was reporting. I do
remember a helicopter image of Chris Senior's home. And they
asked if it was common for them to watch the news,
and he said, not for myself. And there was some
conversation bits in pieces between the four of them, and
(27:40):
he remembers Billy Wagner saying something about there being homicides,
and they said something about it being the Rodents or
one of the Rodents or something like that, which is
just asinine behavior, knowing that you committed these murders and
then you're talking about it like you have no idea
what happened or who it was. What is wrong with
(28:00):
these people? They then go on to ask Jake what
the situation was with Sophia when she was with her
mom versus when she was with him, and he clarified
that Sophia was not present with Hannah that night, and
he said generally the visitation arrangement was Saturday to Saturday,
(28:21):
seven weeks on, seven weeks off. And he said, oh,
I mean seven days, not seven weeks. So, following hearing
about the homicides on the news, he called Chelsea, who
was Brantley's mother and that is Frankie Rodin's son, and
he wanted to find out what happened, if the kids
were okay, when he knew very well that they were.
(28:44):
So they had a whole conversation and she had said
something about them being at the hospital, and he said
he ended up going back into the house and told
Angela to watch Sophia and that he was going to
go to the hospital to check on the children. And
he went there. He went to the Adams County Hospital.
(29:07):
He said all that he could really remember is when
he got there that he talked to April, April Manly,
who is Dana's sister, And he really can't remember in
full what the conversation was, but it was something along
the line as to what happened, and he said the
hospital would not let him see the kids or even
tell any information about them, so he was just kind
(29:30):
of speaking with April about that. They asked him if
somebody had come over in the following days to check
on Sofia, and he said that somebody did, and he
had contacted a lawyer about custody and eventually was granted
custody of Sophia full custody of Sophia. And they asked
him about the funerals if he attended the funerals, and
(29:54):
he said he did, along with his dad and his brother.
They had a joint funeral for all of them Roden family,
and then Gary Roden had his separate funeral and they
attended both of those, which, wow, I don't even know.
They asked if they knew Gary, if they had met
Gary previously, and Jake said yes, they had all gone
(30:15):
on a hunting trip prior. They asked about his relationship
with Chris Senior, and Jake said that he looked at
Chris Senior like a second father and hoped that one
day he would be his father in law. They asked
Jake Wagner if after the homicides, in the days following
the homicides, if they talked about what had happened, and
(30:36):
Jake said no, and he said that he couldn't and
he could not bear to think about what he was
doing at the time, and he couldn't bear to think
about what had happened without having immense guilt. They then
talk about the guns and hiding guns and hiding them
in these concrete blocks, and that goes on for a while.
(30:58):
They go and they talk indeed detail about these different
concrete blocks, how they made them, and all the details
of that. So there was a lot of information there,
but essentially they disposed of and got rid of all
of the weapons that they needed to in order to
cover their tracks. They then go on to ask Jake
about Tabitha and the situation that happened between Tabitha and George,
(31:22):
and he goes into detail about that. I'm not going
to go into detail about it because we've already kind
of discussed it, but he goes into detail about the
fight that they got into and that Tabitha tried to
take her son from the high chair and it turned
into a big thing. She had gone outside to hide
(31:42):
on the property. Angela Wagner was after her and it
turned into a whole convoluted, hot mess of a situation
and that ultimately ended in them getting divorced and a
custody battle ensuing between Tabitha and George Wagner the fourth
and then asked Jake about the house and where everybody
(32:03):
stayed in the house, who stayed in his bedroom, and
Jake said that Angela Wagner's bedroom was upstairs and sometimes
Billy Wagner would stay there, sometimes he didn't, and there
were times when Tabitha and George Wagner the fourth son
would stay in the room with Angela. They then talked
(32:26):
about how George and Tabitha got married in July twenty twelve,
and they asked if there was ever a time that
he or anyone else in the house believed that Tabitha
had poisoned someone in the house, and he said yes.
So he goes on to say he doesn't remember the
incident very well, but Tabitha had had an argument of
(32:47):
some kind earlier in the week, and then George had
come home from being on the road, and then George
and Angela and Tabitha and George's son ended up having
some type of snavirus which they thought might have been
food poisoning, and they thought that Tabitha had possibly poisoned
food because she ended up not sick with the virus
(33:11):
and maybe she had prepared some food. And the basis
of that was basically George telling Jake that they suspected
that Tabitha had poisoned them, which I personally think is
unfound information. And I think if anybody in that house
was doing anything, it was the Wagner's to Tabitha. Just
my personal opinion, So I think it was probably merely
(33:34):
a coincidence that they ended up getting food poisoning from
something they ate, and Tabitha just didn't partake in whatever
they ate. Because one of the people that got sick
was her son, and there's no way that I think
she would have intentionally harmed her child. They then talk
about moving to Alaska and why they decided to move
to Alaska. Jake said that they had been to Alaska
(33:57):
in August of two thousand and seven and they had
some interest in going back to Alaska, and then they
decided to go ahead and move. And they asked him
if he learned of them searching the Peterson Road property
while they were on their way to Alaska, and he
said yes, he learned about it because his grandfather had
contacted them and said that they were searching the property.
(34:20):
And then they asked Jake if they had any discussions
as a family following the announcement that they had been
searching the Peterson Family Road, and he said there was
only a couple of times that they had family discussions.
Only two times. One of them was before the homicides,
and it was basically for them to try and agree
(34:41):
on an alibi, and it was going to be that
they were all home and they were all watching TV together.
They then asked Jake about what he did once he
got to Alaska. He talks about his job that he had,
and they also had established a family church where they
would all go to church from time to time. He
would take Sophia to church regular and they had kind
of established this new church as their family church, basically
(35:05):
to show that they had moved to Alaska. They were
kind of starting anew starting this new life and trying
to put the horrificness of what they had done behind them.
They then talk about a girl that Jake met who
he started dating and he proposed to her after seven
months of knowing her. Her name was Elizabeth. Her and
(35:26):
Sophia got along really well, and Jake was ready to
make this girl his next wife, or I guess he
wasn't technically married to Hannah, so I guess I should
say his first wife. So Jake and Elizabeth had decided
that they were going to have a longer engagement. But
then pretty shortly after that, Billy Wagner and Angela Wagner
(35:47):
decided that they were going to move back and get
out of Alaska. There were some job opportunities that they
thought they were going to be able to get in Alaska,
and they weren't able to. And the kids really did
enjoy the snow and all in Alaska, but they had
essentially been raised as farm children, and they very much
wanted to get back to that. So that's why they
(36:07):
decided that they were going to leave Alaska and they
settled on Missouri, and with that to not have a
long distance engagement, Jake and Elizabeth ended up getting married,
and they got married, Jake says he thinks on March
twenty third or twenty fourth of twenty eighteen. They asked
if they had a honeymoon, and he said no, but
(36:28):
they did have a wedding night, and the next day
he left to go to Missouri. They all left to
go to Missouri, and then they talked about the home
that they had in Missouri. Who stayed there, and again
it's Angela, Billy, George Wagner, the fourth George, his son, Jake,
new wife, Elizabeth, and Sophia. So they're all crammed into
(36:49):
this three bedroom home in Missouri. Then, of course, as
with all Wagner relationships, things started to crumble and there
was allegedly a thing where Angela told Jake that Sophia
had alleged that Elizabeth had touched her, and eventually he
confronted her over this. Now they also call her Beth
(37:11):
Ann throughout this, So I'm going to use Elizabeth and
beth Ann interchangeably. So he confronted her and they asked
if he believed her when she said she didn't do anything,
and he says that he cannot say that he did
believe her, but he wanted to believe her, but he
was really concerned with the sensitivity of the situation. Elizabeth
(37:33):
had confided in somebody that she was close with in
Alaska and basically said that there's no way that this
is true, and that she was concerned about this even
being brought up, and the premise and the reason for
it being brought up. And it just very much seems
that every woman that comes into a Wagner Son's life
(37:56):
ends up with some type of accusations thrown at them
in some way, shape or form. And I can only
think of one person and one reason that this is happening.
And in my opinion, again my personal opinion, I think
Angela Wagner is driving the bus behind all of these
(38:16):
accusations because she has a very odd obsession with her
children and her grandchildren and she wants to have that control,
and any other woman that comes in that threatens that
control is a problem, and hence why she creates these
narratives of abuse and them being bad people so that
(38:37):
way she can regain her power and regain her control.
So she basically turns everyone against them in order to
keep that control, and that is a really, really sick
person allegedly in my opinion. So then it ends up
coming out that Sophia came forward and said that she
made up the allegations because she thought that death in
(38:59):
was a sense taking her father from her and giving
her more attention. Now, again, Sophia was young, so there's
no part of me that thinks that Sophia came up
with this on her own and made up these allegations
by herself. There's absolutely no way. There has to be
someone behind the scenes pulling the strings. Again, that is
(39:22):
just my opinion. So from there, they came up with
the plan, and the plan was for Elizabeth to move
to Nashville with a friend and they would basically get
a fake divorce so that Elizabeth could get grants provided
from the state because she wanted to go to med school.
And then while she was in college in Nashville, they
(39:45):
would occasionally meet up during the week and try to
get to know each other better, like you got married,
you don't know each other. I'm so confused by this.
These people are so bizarre. But he said his plan
was for her to go to Nashville and then they
would play like they would continue the relationship, but then
he would just ultimately break it off. And honestly, Elizabeth
(40:06):
dodged a bullet with all of this transpiring the way
it transpired, because she was eight thousand percent going to
be the next victim of the Wagner family and you
cannot convince me otherwise. So we are about halfway through
Jake Wagner's testimony. I have about five hundred more pages
to go, and I wish I was kidding. So we
are going to call that good for episode five and
(40:29):
next week, I hope that we are going to finish
up the testimony of Jake Wagner and then we will
get on to the next witness. We still have a
lot to go. We still have to go through all
of George's testimony as well, so we have a lot,
a lot, a lot more to go on. So thank
you guys for joining me for part five of Summer Series.
(40:49):
I will see you next week for part six, and
I will also see you later this week for a
brand new unsolved cold case. You guys have a good
one and I will see you then. Bye, don't you
Cott
Welcome to Summer Series twenty twenty five, The Roden Family Murders,
also known as the Pike County Massacre. We're going to
be discussing the murders of Dana Roden, Christopher Roden Senior,
Kenneth Roden, Gary Roden, Frankie Rodin, Hannah Hazel Gilly, Hannah Roden,
and Christopher Roden Junior. Let's go ahead and dive right
(00:22):
into Summer Series twenty twenty five. Welcome to Part five
of the Pike County Massacre, the Rodin Family Murders. We
are going to continue on today going through Jake Wagner's testimony. Now,
if you guys recall you have been following along with
this series, Jake Wagner testified against his brother, George Wagner
(00:44):
the fourth for a lesser sentence essentially, so he is
laying everything out. And when we left off last episode,
it was at the point where Jake Wagner had agreed
that the only way that they were going to be
able to keep custody of Sophia would be to kill Hannah.
(01:06):
So they asked that when Jake told Billy Wagner that
he agreed to this, did they start immediately making plans,
or if they did, what were the plans, And he said,
I'm not sure if it was immediate or not, but
he was saying essentially that he was going to try
(01:27):
to think of something, and his initial suggestion was to
make it look like Corey had killed Hannah and then
committed suicide after. So his initial plan was basically just
to kill Hannah and Corey and to frame Corey for
her death. And he had also thought about possibly just
(01:48):
killing Hannah, but he knew if he just killed Hannah
that the finger would immediately be pointed at him, and
that Chris Senior, Frankie, and Kenneth would immediately know that
he was involved and would be down on him, and
the only way to avoid that was pretty much to
kill them all. And then he went on to say
that the other individuals, Dana Rodin, Gary Roden, Chris Junior,
(02:13):
and Hannah, Hazel Gilly were pretty much just there and
that is the reason that they had to die because
they were in the same households and it was impossible
to get in and kill Chris Senior, to kill Frankie,
and to kill Hannah, and to kill Kenneth without taking
the others out as well. So that is how this
plan evolved into what it became, which was a eight
(02:38):
person massive homicide. And I can't even imagine the rationale
that went into all of this, how they plotted and
planned and meticulously tried to figure all of this out,
and not one of them along the way came up
and said, Hey, this is a horrible idea. We shouldn't
do this. These are eight separate people we're going to
(03:00):
in their family. I can't even imagine doing anything like
this ever, ever, ever, in my life. Ever. The next
bit of testimony is about the guns that were used
in the killings and how Jake got those guns, and
how they planned on which guns they were going to use.
It talks about them making the silencers and everything that
(03:23):
went into that. It is a lot of testimony. It
is a lot of gun talk, not really, in my opinion,
anything I super need to go into here, because we've
already kind of laid out the basics of what investigators
believed the guns were that were used in the eighth
person homicide. So this is just Jake reiterating what they used,
(03:46):
why they decided to use what they used, the making
of the silencers, how they went about that and how
they planned all of that out. So I'm not going
to go into all the details of that. The transcript
is available online if you want to read through a
thousand and seventy seven pages like I have of this transcript,
So I will link that below in the show notes
(04:06):
for you guys, so that way, if you do want
to read it word for word, you can. But I
cannot go through pages and pages of testimony talking about
guns and all the things. It's just not in my wheelhouse.
The next bit of testimony is about the Walmart shoes
and how that kind of came to be, where the
shoes came from, who bought the shoes, all the things
(04:30):
about the shoes. So Jake said that he and George
and Sophia all went with her and the nephew to Walmart,
and they were inside of the car when she went
and bought the shoes. He had basically told her to
just buy ugly tennis shoes, two size ten tennis shoes,
(04:52):
and she went into Walmart and bought the shoes. There
is other talk about different items that were purchased to
carry out the mur There was stuff from bass Pro,
there was stuff to make the silencers for the guns.
There was winter masks, there was so on and so forth,
a lot of items that this family purchased to execute
(05:16):
their plan. The next bit of questioning is about the
custody documents that Hannah allegedly signed, which Hannah did not sign,
and Jake said that that was not Hannah's signature, that
was his mother's signature forging as Hannah, and this was
a document, of course, referencing custody of Sophia if something
(05:36):
should happen to Hannah. Jake then goes on to talk
about some of the modifications he made to the truck
that he had purchased from his uncle, and this was
one of the vehicles that was used to carry out
the heinous axe against the Rodent family, and there was
different things he did. One of them had to do
with something with the lights illuminating and thing with the
(06:00):
tail lights us headlights, and he basically did this to
make the vehicle more stealth. Jake then goes on to
talk about how he and George dyed his hair shortly
before the murders. They had picked a brown color, but
it turned out to be black, and they both dyed
(06:20):
their hair. The reason he dyed his hair is because
he wanted the color and style of the main character
in The Walking Dead, and that is Darryl Dixon, who
is played by Norman Ritas. I have said that, for
whatever reason, Jake has this obsession with Norman Ritas. Jake
then goes on to say that his dad was very
much behind the scenes kind of planning things out a
(06:42):
little bit more, looking at weather forecasts because he wanted
the murders to take place on an overcast night. And
the reason for that, according to Jake, was because the
satellites cannot video through an overcast a sky, so that
is why he wanted the murders to take place on
this overcast night. Now, shortly before the murders, Hannah had
(07:04):
given birth to her baby, so there was also some
thought and planning as far as when they were going
to hit because obviously Hannah had been in the hospital
having her baby, and they needed to make sure that
Hannah was back home and settled in, So there was
some thought and plan and process to that as far
(07:24):
as when they were going to execute this family. They
asked Jake if there was any thought in his mind
that this child could be his, and he said no,
and they asked if you would want her to be
yours and he said yes. So none of that makes
any sense to me, because you're already in a vicious
custody battle with Hannah and you want another child with her.
(07:47):
It just doesn't make any sense to me. This thought
process and how these people rationalize all of the crazy
thoughts that come into their head makes no sense. They
then go back to some of the modifications that were
made to the truck that was used that night, and
Jake said that he put a false bed cover on it.
And he said, I had made a plywood cover that
(08:09):
just set below the bedrails to stack hay or straw
or something on top of the vehicle to make it
look like the bed was fully loaded with hay. And
they asked what the purpose was of making the false
bed and he said it was to have a compartment
underneath the hay to where myself and my brother could
hide in it while my dad drove to Chris's property. So, again,
(08:29):
this is just another step in the right direction to
proving that George Wagner the fourth was part of this.
They had a plan, he was involved, and this is
helping the state very much proved their case against George Wagner.
The fourth they continue to talk about different truck modifications
and stuff at the family's property and just different types
(08:53):
of barns and storage units and all the things, and
then they talk about what they were going to wear
that night, if they had talked and prepared about what
they were gonna wear, and he said sche mask, gloves, hoodies,
dark baggy clothes, and the shoes that his mom bought
at Walmart. He goes on to say that the shoes
were size ten and a half and eleven and they asked,
(09:15):
you recall which size shoe you wore that night, and
he said ten and a half and he said that
George wore the other pair. They asked if they had
any other weapons on them that night besides the guns
that they used to commit the crimes, and Jake said
that he had a large hunting knife on him, and
they asked if his dad or George had any other weapons,
(09:38):
and he said not that he knew of. They then
talk about Jake watching a clip from the Boone Doc
Saints movie that night, and he said that he did,
and he goes on to describe the scene for the
attorneys and the jury. He said he watched it that
night at his home and his brother and mother were present,
and they asked why he chose to watch them specific clip,
(10:01):
and he said, in a sense. I'm not completely sure,
but I think it was due to a sense of
trying to I think the word is to psych myself
into the gumption of doing what I was about to do.
So the plan that night was for Billy Wagner to
be driving the pickup truck and George and Jake would
be hiding in the false bed so nobody would see them.
(10:24):
And this is where we really get into the nitty gritty.
So they say, what was the first location that you
were going to be going to, and he said Chris Senior.
So they asked, okay, what was the plan once you
got to Chris Senior's house and he said, Dad was
to get the attention of Chris. I think he said
he was going to walk out of the garage or
the growroom, and when he would come back, as he
(10:47):
was walking in first he would let us out of
the vehicle and once we was in position, then he
would take Chris to the barn or the grow room,
and on his way back is when he was supposed
to be shot. Didn't feel anything or see anything coming.
Jake said they left around nine o'clock that evening to
go carry out their plan, and he left his phone
(11:09):
at home and had told his mom to use the
phone go on Facebook a couple of times, basically to
throw off the track of where Jake actually was and
make it look like he was home and scrolling social media.
Jake said it is about fifteen miles from their property
to Chris Senior's home, and he lays out what happened.
(11:30):
He said, my dad parked the vehicle out front, and
I can't quite remember if he did this immediately or
maybe come back out a very very short period of time.
I think he did immediately. When he got out, he
came to the back of the truck and said something
about waiting for a signal of some kind or something
like that he'd be back or something, and then went
(11:51):
inside Chris's house and they said, at this point in time,
you and your brother are still completely enclosed in that bed,
and he said, yeah, yes. He said. They remained in
the bed for about ten minutes, and then Dad came
back out. He had lowered the tailgate, had told my
brother and I to get in position. So basically Billy
had Gary and Chris. They had gone out to the
(12:13):
grow room, which was behind a barn that Chris Senior
had built, and at this point in time, Billy is
kind of leading the charge. His two sons, Jake and
George Wagner the Fourth, are in a prone position on
their bellies ready to take a shot at Chris and
Gary as they are exiting the grow room and coming
(12:33):
back towards the area where the house is now. George
Wagner the Fourth did have an open shot, but he
did not take the shot, so Jake said at that
point he had reached over and grabbed the gun from him.
And then at some point in time, Billy comes back
out to the truck and he is searching, pretending to
search for his cell phone. And the whole reason that
(12:56):
the cell phone was left behind was essentially to trick
Chris into calling it. And meanwhile, the phone is at
home with Angela Wagner. So therefore Billy has an alibi
because the phone never left the Wagner family residence that night.
And when Billy goes out to the car to pretend
to look for his phone, he asked George what happened,
(13:18):
and basically was trying to figure out why didn't Chris
get shot, what happened in the whole situation, So he
ends up going back inside. At this point, Chris is
still trying to call Billy's phone so Billy can find
his phone and thinking he left it in the truck.
(13:39):
I'm sure Chris just was innocently trying to help his friend.
And in all of this, Jake Wagner took a shot
and he missed. He missed Chris, and then he panicked.
He closed his eyes and he just pointed and fired randomly.
So Billy comes out of the house and is essentially
(14:01):
having a nervous breakdown because he just cold bloodedly murdered
his best friend, somebody he refers to as his brother.
He's having a nervous breakdown. Jake is trying to calm
his dad down. And then Jake said he went into
Chris's house and he got the keys out of his
pocket and then went outside into the grow room above
the motorcycle garage to get any hard drive he could
(14:22):
from the security system because he wanted to make sure
that there was no proof or evidence that they were
there that night, So he said, after he got the
security camera tapes, he went back into the house and
went to the bedroom and got him and Gary's cell
phones out of their pocket, and he said, at this
point in time, Chris and Gary were located in Chris's bedroom.
(14:43):
They asked if he helped move the bodies. He said no,
but the bodies were drug from the front of the
house back to the bedroom. And he said that there
was blood on the floor. He kind of tried to
wipe it up. He pulled a blanket down over Chris
and Gary and then he tried to wipe the floor
with the rug to get rid of some of the blood.
(15:05):
Jake said, after he retrieved their phones, he went back
outside to meet up with his brother and his dad
and then they walked up to Frankie's house. So they
asked if they had walked or driven to Frankie's house,
and he said that they walked. He said before they
got there, that they stopped at the corner by a
(15:27):
telephone pole and that his dad had gone to the
front of the trailer to see if the door was
locked or unlocked, and it was locked, So then they
went back to the telephone pole and he then walked
to the opposite side to see if the back door
was locked, and it was locked, and they kind of
had a little bit of conversation and said that it
(15:49):
might have to be a kick the door in type
of situation. But then they decided to go back to
Chris's house and they got Chris's truck, and he said
after that he thinks they went to Dana's house to
see if she was home. And they asked if when
they were at Frankie's house if they noticed any lights
on or any activity inside, and he said, I think
(16:10):
Dad had said something about the TV being on, but
all of the lights were off. So they went to
Dana's house and Dana wasn't home because she worked at
a nursing home and she worked kind of funky hours,
so Dana was not home, and they turned around and
decided to go swing by Kenneth's home to see if
he was home. Now at that point, it is the
(16:31):
three boys in the truck. It is Jake, it is
George Wagner at the fourth and Billy Wagner. They did
discover that Kenneth was home, but they went ahead and
went back to Chris's house, and then when they got
back there they went to Frankie's. They walked back around
the same way, went to the back of the house,
tried to open the back door. He used his hunting
(16:53):
knife to try to probably open the back door, and
it broke, so the door wouldn't open because they didn't
have that knife anymore. And then he said that he
had noticed that the window was opened under the middle bedroom,
so they walked past it. He passed his dad the
gun that he was holding, and he boosted himself into
the home, up and down in through the open window.
(17:15):
He said. He reached back out and had his dad
hand him the gun, and then he went into the
hallway and took a glance into Frankie's room. He could
tell that somebody, seemingly Frankie was in the bed and asleep.
And then he noticed that Frankie's son, Brentley was on
the couch asleep. So Jake is now inside. He opened
(17:36):
the back door, he let Billy Wagner in and then
he walked back into Frankie's room and he shot Frankie.
And then he saw that Hannah Hazel Gilly was there
and he shot her as well. And he said, because
of the nature of the room. He didn't search for
their cell phones or for different shellcasings. And then after
(17:57):
that he said they had walked back out to the
living room and went outside, and that he locked the
door behind him. They asked if he realized that there
was an infant in the bed with Frankie and Hannah
Hazel Gilly, and he said no, he didn't realize that
until after he had leaned over to shoot her, and
that is when he realized that there was a kid there.
(18:20):
Oh my god, this really just actually turns my stomach.
How evil of a person you can be to do
this to people when their children are right there. I
cannot even handle this, and it makes me even more
frustrated knowing the outcome of all this, and knowing Jake
(18:42):
Wagner's sentence, which we'll get to in a later episode,
but wow, it really astonishes me that he got up
there and told everything that happened in such detail, and
what these poor people went through I can't even imagine.
So then after they finished at Frankie's house, they went
(19:02):
back to Chris Senior's house and decided they were going
to go back to Dana's. These people were so dumb
to go back and forth between the crime scenes. I
don't understand why they did what they did. So they
ended up going back to Dana's house, and he said
they pulled up in the driveway and at this point
in time it was raining and thundering, and they ended
(19:23):
up getting out of the vehicle. They walked up to
the front door, checked to see if the door was locked,
and it was not, so he said, he went ahead
and opened it and went in the house and went in,
didn't see anybody in the front room, and then ended
up walking into another area of the home that was
behind the kitchen, and there was a hallway that connected
(19:45):
Dana and Hannah's bedrooms and there was no doorway in
that hallway, so he said, as he got to that point,
he looked into Hannah's room to see if she was asleep,
and it did appear that Hannah was sleep and then
he looked into Dana's room and realized that she was
still awake and on her phone. And he said, in
(20:07):
that moment that he kind of froze and didn't really
know what to do. He doesn't know how long he
froze for, but then he heard baby Kylie cry, and
that kind of jarred him to do something and to move.
But he doesn't really even know how to describe his
state of mind. He doesn't know if he was in
shock or what it was. But he said, once he
(20:28):
came out of his state, he moved to the left
and took a couple of strides, maybe one or two
towards Dana. And as he did that, she looked up
and made a gasping noise before he shot her once
or twice. And then he said, he immediately turned around
and did the same motion, but at that point in time,
(20:49):
Hannah had kind of awoken and was looking directly at him.
He said, he entered the bedroom, he was still in
the hallway, and he went ahead and shot her, and
then he said, he turned around, went back to Dana,
shot her a second time, and then went back to
Hannah and shot her a second time. Then he said,
after that, he kind of went back to the door
(21:11):
of Dana's bedroom. He opened the door, and when he
opened the door, his dad and brother were standing right there,
and then he walked past them, walked over to Christopher
Junior's room, opened Chris's door and he was asleep, and
he walked over and shot him. Once or twice, and
he said he did kind of make a noise, kind
(21:32):
of like a grunt, and he said he panicked and
shot him a few more times, and then he started
picking up shell casings. He went back to Dana and
Hannah's rooms and picked up shell casings, and he said
that Hannah had slightly fallen off the bed, so he
put her back on the bed to position her for Kylie.
(21:53):
And then they left. And it was really hard for
me to read all of that. That is actually the
most disturbing thing. I feel like I've ever heard, word
for word. I can't even fathom doing that. Three people
making the decision to go through with something so horrifically brutal.
(22:16):
They then talk to him about why he repositioned Hannah,
and he said that he did that to help Kylie
because he was concerned that she would starve to death.
So you brutally murder the mother of your child, her mother,
and her brother, and you've already killed four other people,
(22:38):
that's besides the point. And then all of a sudden
you decide that you're going to have a soul and
are concerned about a baby starving to death. That makes
actually no sense to me, but I guess if nothing else,
the baby was not harmed. Frankie and Hannah Hazel Gilly's
kids were not harmed, at least not physically harmed, And
they very much are trying to figure out out in
(23:00):
all of this where George Wagner the fourth is, because
he is obviously the one who's on trial for murder,
so they're trying to figure out where he was, if
he was directly involved in any way, shape or form,
or if he basically just stood there while Jake did
all of the bad things. But honestly, at the end
(23:20):
of the day, it doesn't really matter because they all partook,
and they were all part of this horrific plan, and
not one of them decided to put a stop to it.
So they ended up leaving Dana's house. They got back
in to the truck that they took from Chris's house.
They drove past Chris's house and they ended up stopping
(23:40):
and then George got their truck and they went down
to Kenneth's house. He said. They pulled in right up
to the front of Kenneth's camper and Dad told him
to wait there, and then Billy got out, walked up
to the door, beat on the door a few times,
nobody answered, and then Billy opened the door, walked in,
(24:04):
shut the door behind him. Jake says he saw a
muzzle flash a second, maybe two seconds, and then Billy
walked out, and Jake said at that point he turned
the headlights off to the truck. He ended up getting out,
and he said they went over to Kennisquaw Room and
once they went inside, they were looking for the security
(24:25):
hard drive to take it, and they couldn't find anything.
They did find a trail camera in one of the
trees and they were able to get that camera, and
then they all got back in their vehicle and they
drove home. And that was all of the murders that
they had all just committed. So once they got home,
(24:47):
they parked in the new barn that they had built,
and they had pretty much gotten out. They removed all
of their clothing and all the floor mats from the vehicle,
and he said he put all of that into a
burn barrel, and the unburnable items he took elsewhere, and
he took the firearms. He used a grinder, a portable
(25:10):
grinder to cut up into smaller pieces, and then proceeded
to use a cutting torch to melt the firearms, and
he said he did not have enough material supplies to
finish the job, so they were only partially destroyed, and
he put them into a Duffel bag. And he said,
as this was happening, his dad had taken the Chevy
(25:31):
truck and had taken it to another location, and he
was not aware of where they had taken it at
the time. And he said that he had proceeded to
dig a hole inside of the barn to bury the
Duffel bag for a later date. And once they removed
their clothes, they went to the house, they changed into
new clothes, and then that's when he said his dad
(25:54):
had taken the truck to another location and he went
to dig the hole. And he said his brother George
was helping him with all of this, and they talk
about the continuation of destroying the firearms and the digging
of the holes to hide the Duffel bag, and they
went on and on and on about that, and he
said when they were doing all of the stuff, concealing
(26:16):
the evidence and burning things and destroying things and all
of that, it was still nigh time, so they were
essentially trying to do what they could while it was
still dark out to hide as much evidence as they
possibly could. By the time they finished with everything, it
was morning, and he said while he was doing all
the bearing and the burning, his brother had gone to
(26:37):
do the morning feed routes for the livestock that they
had and gathered tools, and they just pretty much carried
on with life as usual, went about their normal routines
and did what they normally do. So then he said,
they are back at the house. They entered the house,
they watched the news broadcast and they asked who was
(26:57):
present during the news broadcast, and he said himself, George Wagner,
Angela Wagner, Billy Wagner, and the kids were awake at
the house, but they were watching cartoons in another room,
and he said they saw the news report about the homicides.
(27:17):
They asked, do they report how many people had been
killed or who had been killed? And he said, I
can't remember quite exactly what it was reporting. I do
remember a helicopter image of Chris Senior's home. And they
asked if it was common for them to watch the news,
and he said, not for myself. And there was some
conversation bits in pieces between the four of them, and
(27:40):
he remembers Billy Wagner saying something about there being homicides,
and they said something about it being the Rodents or
one of the Rodents or something like that, which is
just asinine behavior, knowing that you committed these murders and
then you're talking about it like you have no idea
what happened or who it was. What is wrong with
(28:00):
these people? They then go on to ask Jake what
the situation was with Sophia when she was with her
mom versus when she was with him, and he clarified
that Sophia was not present with Hannah that night, and
he said generally the visitation arrangement was Saturday to Saturday,
(28:21):
seven weeks on, seven weeks off. And he said, oh,
I mean seven days, not seven weeks. So, following hearing
about the homicides on the news, he called Chelsea, who
was Brantley's mother and that is Frankie Rodin's son, and
he wanted to find out what happened, if the kids
were okay, when he knew very well that they were.
(28:44):
So they had a whole conversation and she had said
something about them being at the hospital, and he said
he ended up going back into the house and told
Angela to watch Sophia and that he was going to
go to the hospital to check on the children. And
he went there. He went to the Adams County Hospital.
(29:07):
He said all that he could really remember is when
he got there that he talked to April, April Manly,
who is Dana's sister, And he really can't remember in
full what the conversation was, but it was something along
the line as to what happened, and he said the
hospital would not let him see the kids or even
tell any information about them, so he was just kind
(29:30):
of speaking with April about that. They asked him if
somebody had come over in the following days to check
on Sofia, and he said that somebody did, and he
had contacted a lawyer about custody and eventually was granted
custody of Sophia full custody of Sophia. And they asked
him about the funerals if he attended the funerals, and
(29:54):
he said he did, along with his dad and his brother.
They had a joint funeral for all of them Roden family,
and then Gary Roden had his separate funeral and they
attended both of those, which, wow, I don't even know.
They asked if they knew Gary, if they had met
Gary previously, and Jake said yes, they had all gone
(30:15):
on a hunting trip prior. They asked about his relationship
with Chris Senior, and Jake said that he looked at
Chris Senior like a second father and hoped that one
day he would be his father in law. They asked
Jake Wagner if after the homicides, in the days following
the homicides, if they talked about what had happened, and
(30:36):
Jake said no, and he said that he couldn't and
he could not bear to think about what he was
doing at the time, and he couldn't bear to think
about what had happened without having immense guilt. They then
talk about the guns and hiding guns and hiding them
in these concrete blocks, and that goes on for a while.
(30:58):
They go and they talk indeed detail about these different
concrete blocks, how they made them, and all the details
of that. So there was a lot of information there,
but essentially they disposed of and got rid of all
of the weapons that they needed to in order to
cover their tracks. They then go on to ask Jake
about Tabitha and the situation that happened between Tabitha and George,
(31:22):
and he goes into detail about that. I'm not going
to go into detail about it because we've already kind
of discussed it, but he goes into detail about the
fight that they got into and that Tabitha tried to
take her son from the high chair and it turned
into a big thing. She had gone outside to hide
(31:42):
on the property. Angela Wagner was after her and it
turned into a whole convoluted, hot mess of a situation
and that ultimately ended in them getting divorced and a
custody battle ensuing between Tabitha and George Wagner the fourth
and then asked Jake about the house and where everybody
(32:03):
stayed in the house, who stayed in his bedroom, and
Jake said that Angela Wagner's bedroom was upstairs and sometimes
Billy Wagner would stay there, sometimes he didn't, and there
were times when Tabitha and George Wagner the fourth son
would stay in the room with Angela. They then talked
(32:26):
about how George and Tabitha got married in July twenty twelve,
and they asked if there was ever a time that
he or anyone else in the house believed that Tabitha
had poisoned someone in the house, and he said yes.
So he goes on to say he doesn't remember the
incident very well, but Tabitha had had an argument of
(32:47):
some kind earlier in the week, and then George had
come home from being on the road, and then George
and Angela and Tabitha and George's son ended up having
some type of snavirus which they thought might have been
food poisoning, and they thought that Tabitha had possibly poisoned
food because she ended up not sick with the virus
(33:11):
and maybe she had prepared some food. And the basis
of that was basically George telling Jake that they suspected
that Tabitha had poisoned them, which I personally think is
unfound information. And I think if anybody in that house
was doing anything, it was the Wagner's to Tabitha. Just
my personal opinion, So I think it was probably merely
(33:34):
a coincidence that they ended up getting food poisoning from
something they ate, and Tabitha just didn't partake in whatever
they ate. Because one of the people that got sick
was her son, and there's no way that I think
she would have intentionally harmed her child. They then talk
about moving to Alaska and why they decided to move
to Alaska. Jake said that they had been to Alaska
(33:57):
in August of two thousand and seven and they had
some interest in going back to Alaska, and then they
decided to go ahead and move. And they asked him
if he learned of them searching the Peterson Road property
while they were on their way to Alaska, and he
said yes, he learned about it because his grandfather had
contacted them and said that they were searching the property.
(34:20):
And then they asked Jake if they had any discussions
as a family following the announcement that they had been
searching the Peterson Family Road, and he said there was
only a couple of times that they had family discussions.
Only two times. One of them was before the homicides,
and it was basically for them to try and agree
(34:41):
on an alibi, and it was going to be that
they were all home and they were all watching TV together.
They then asked Jake about what he did once he
got to Alaska. He talks about his job that he had,
and they also had established a family church where they
would all go to church from time to time. He
would take Sophia to church regular and they had kind
of established this new church as their family church, basically
(35:05):
to show that they had moved to Alaska. They were
kind of starting anew starting this new life and trying
to put the horrificness of what they had done behind them.
They then talk about a girl that Jake met who
he started dating and he proposed to her after seven
months of knowing her. Her name was Elizabeth. Her and
(35:26):
Sophia got along really well, and Jake was ready to
make this girl his next wife, or I guess he
wasn't technically married to Hannah, so I guess I should
say his first wife. So Jake and Elizabeth had decided
that they were going to have a longer engagement. But
then pretty shortly after that, Billy Wagner and Angela Wagner
(35:47):
decided that they were going to move back and get
out of Alaska. There were some job opportunities that they
thought they were going to be able to get in Alaska,
and they weren't able to. And the kids really did
enjoy the snow and all in Alaska, but they had
essentially been raised as farm children, and they very much
wanted to get back to that. So that's why they
(36:07):
decided that they were going to leave Alaska and they
settled on Missouri, and with that to not have a
long distance engagement, Jake and Elizabeth ended up getting married,
and they got married, Jake says he thinks on March
twenty third or twenty fourth of twenty eighteen. They asked
if they had a honeymoon, and he said no, but
(36:28):
they did have a wedding night, and the next day
he left to go to Missouri. They all left to
go to Missouri, and then they talked about the home
that they had in Missouri. Who stayed there, and again
it's Angela, Billy, George Wagner, the fourth George, his son, Jake,
new wife, Elizabeth, and Sophia. So they're all crammed into
(36:49):
this three bedroom home in Missouri. Then, of course, as
with all Wagner relationships, things started to crumble and there
was allegedly a thing where Angela told Jake that Sophia
had alleged that Elizabeth had touched her, and eventually he
confronted her over this. Now they also call her Beth
(37:11):
Ann throughout this, So I'm going to use Elizabeth and
beth Ann interchangeably. So he confronted her and they asked
if he believed her when she said she didn't do anything,
and he says that he cannot say that he did
believe her, but he wanted to believe her, but he
was really concerned with the sensitivity of the situation. Elizabeth
(37:33):
had confided in somebody that she was close with in
Alaska and basically said that there's no way that this
is true, and that she was concerned about this even
being brought up, and the premise and the reason for
it being brought up. And it just very much seems
that every woman that comes into a Wagner Son's life
(37:56):
ends up with some type of accusations thrown at them
in some way, shape or form. And I can only
think of one person and one reason that this is happening.
And in my opinion, again my personal opinion, I think
Angela Wagner is driving the bus behind all of these
(38:16):
accusations because she has a very odd obsession with her
children and her grandchildren and she wants to have that control,
and any other woman that comes in that threatens that
control is a problem, and hence why she creates these
narratives of abuse and them being bad people so that
(38:37):
way she can regain her power and regain her control.
So she basically turns everyone against them in order to
keep that control, and that is a really, really sick
person allegedly in my opinion. So then it ends up
coming out that Sophia came forward and said that she
made up the allegations because she thought that death in
(38:59):
was a sense taking her father from her and giving
her more attention. Now, again, Sophia was young, so there's
no part of me that thinks that Sophia came up
with this on her own and made up these allegations
by herself. There's absolutely no way. There has to be
someone behind the scenes pulling the strings. Again, that is
(39:22):
just my opinion. So from there, they came up with
the plan, and the plan was for Elizabeth to move
to Nashville with a friend and they would basically get
a fake divorce so that Elizabeth could get grants provided
from the state because she wanted to go to med school.
And then while she was in college in Nashville, they
(39:45):
would occasionally meet up during the week and try to
get to know each other better, like you got married,
you don't know each other. I'm so confused by this.
These people are so bizarre. But he said his plan
was for her to go to Nashville and then they
would play like they would continue the relationship, but then
he would just ultimately break it off. And honestly, Elizabeth
(40:06):
dodged a bullet with all of this transpiring the way
it transpired, because she was eight thousand percent going to
be the next victim of the Wagner family and you
cannot convince me otherwise. So we are about halfway through
Jake Wagner's testimony. I have about five hundred more pages
to go, and I wish I was kidding. So we
are going to call that good for episode five and
(40:29):
next week, I hope that we are going to finish
up the testimony of Jake Wagner and then we will
get on to the next witness. We still have a
lot to go. We still have to go through all
of George's testimony as well, so we have a lot,
a lot, a lot more to go on. So thank
you guys for joining me for part five of Summer Series.
(40:49):
I will see you next week for part six, and
I will also see you later this week for a
brand new unsolved cold case. You guys have a good
one and I will see you then. Bye, don't you
Cott
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