July 6, 2025 • 40 mins
In today’s episode, we are going to finish the prosecutions questioning of Jake Wagner and we will also get into the defenses cross examination of Jake and we will go ahead and finish out Jake Wagner’s testimony.
Sources for episode:
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/
https://www.scribd.com/document/686257537/Jake-Wagner-Court-Docs-Hearing-Excerpts
Sources for episode:
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/
https://www.scribd.com/document/686257537/Jake-Wagner-Court-Docs-Hearing-Excerpts
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 Masker. We're going to
be discussing the murders of Dana Roden, Christopher Roden Senior,
Kenneth Roden, Gary Roden, Frankie Rodin, Hannah Hazel Gilly, Hannah Rodin,
and Christopher Roden Junior. Let's go ahead and dive right
(00:22):
into Summer Series twenty twenty five. All right, guys, welcome
to Part six of the Pike County Massacer Summer Series
twenty twenty five. We are going to pick up where
we left off with the testimony of Jake Wagner in
the trial of his brother George Wagner the fourth. So
the next thing that they asked Jake is all about
(00:44):
the document that was allegedly notarized by Rita Newcom who
is Angela Wagner's mother, And they talk all about how
that came to be, if they had had discussions with
Rita that she was going to say that she was
the one who knows vorized it, and so on and
so forth, because these documents were in fact faked by
(01:05):
Angela Wagner, and these were the documents that basically said
if something were to happen to Hannah, that Jake and
his family.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Would get full custody of their daughter Sophia.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
So this whole thing, the whole reason that all of
this happened, is because the Wagner family wanted.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Full custody of Sophia.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So they ask about the documents and talk about did
reed and know about it, did you guys communicate about it,
did you and your brother talk about it? Did you
and your mother talk about it? It goes on and
on and on. There's a lot of objections because of
the way that things were being worded and asked to Jake,
but ultimately he talks about it, and then they talk
(01:48):
about how after the Wagner family had already moved to.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Alaska, they then are asked.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
To come in to give handwriting samples and different fingerprint samples,
and they have to do palm prints and get their
feet measured as well, because they're all, of course at
this point, trying to piece together all of the different
clues that were left behind at the different crime scenes.
They then ask about different photos of Jake holding different
(02:16):
guns and how there was a lot of talk about
this one particular photo that there was a gun being
held and you couldn't see the person who was holding it,
and there was talk about if it was Jake holding
the gun, and so on and so forth. There was
a lot of back and forth about these different photos
of these different guns and this wish list that the
(02:38):
Wagners had about different guns that they wanted, So that
went on for quite a while. I'm not going to
go into all of that because there's a lot of questions,
there's a lot of back and forth, but they did
speak on these photos of these guns and trying to
pinpoint if this one particular photo was in fact Jake's
hands holding this one particular gun. They then asked Jake if,
(03:01):
prior to him being arrested, if they as a family
discussed what would happen if one or more of them
were arrested in connection with the Road and family murders,
and he said, yes, we did have a discussion about that,
and then they kind of go off in a different
direction and they say that before they go into that,
they want to talk about a couple of other things,
(03:22):
and one of them was, did your dad ever have
a problem with abusing.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Pills and Jake says, yes, he did.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Billy Wagner had chronic pain because he had broken a
lot of bones over the course of his life, so
he did have a time when he would take prescription pills.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And they also asked about.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Other members of the family taking weight loss pills or
other type of pills, and he said that he did
know that his family different members had taken different weight
loss pills over the years, and other than his father,
he didn't know of anyone else in the family that
had any issues with being addicted to pills or abusing
prescription drugs. Then they kind of go back in to
(04:04):
the marijuana growing business of it all, and talking about
his father's involvement in all of Chris Senior's different growings
and all the information that they had about it, who
knew about it, so on and so forth. They then
talk about Jake being arrested, and then they talk about
Rita Newcom also being arrested and charged for forgery about
(04:27):
the custody documents. And he said, at some point, did
you learn that Rita had decided to cooperate with the
prosecution in this case, And he said yes, his lawyers
had told him that, and the reason that she decided
to do that, Jake said, was something about her not
being able to lie anymore and lying wasn't the Christian.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Thing to do.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And they asked him how he felt about that, and
he said that he felt like it was the answer
he was looking for. It was the answer from God.
He knew that he also couldn't lie anymore and this
was a sign that he needed to also tell the
truth and be honest.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
About what happened.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
He said that everything had been heavily weighing on him
and he was struggling with everything, and as soon as
Rita decided that she was going to tell the truth
and be honest, he knew that that was the answer
that he needed.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
And we'll get into it, but Jake is.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Very much a quote unquote reformed guy now and he
has found Jesus since he's been in prison, and he
goes on and on and on about that during the
whole sentencing phase of things, which we'll get into later.
But I am a huge action, speak, way louder than
words kind of girl, and I think, if nothing else,
(05:45):
everything that we've seen thus far from Jake Wagner tells
us that he is the exact opposite of somebody who
is godly and has compassion and remorse. But that is
just my personal opinion. He could be an entire life
new man and has changed his ways, and now that
he's out from the grips of his mother, be a
(06:06):
completely different person.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I really don't know.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I also really don't care because he took the lives
of eight people, But that is kind of what's going
on now, a little preview of what's to come. But
I just had to speak my truth on that because
it just absolutely drives me insane. So they talk about
Rita taking a plea in December of twenty nineteen, and
he said shortly after that, pretty much within a few weeks,
(06:32):
late December, he confessed everything to his attorneys. He said,
he told them everything, all of the different homes he entered,
all of the people he shot, his father's involvement, his
brother's involvement, his mother's involvement. He pretty much said everything.
And some of the agreements that they agreed upon was
that he was going to be testifying against anybody that
(06:54):
went to trial, so he would testify against his brother,
he would testify against his father if he ultimately went
to trial. They then go in to all of the
different weapons and photos of the weapons, and Jake describes
one by one what the photos are of how they
were used. They talk about all of the different type
(07:15):
of silencers and photos of the silencers and how they
were used. There's a lot of technical back and forth
gun talk, and Jake is just going into detail about
all of these items how they were used in the
homicides of the Rodent family, and he's describing them all
in detail. They also talk about different ammunition and the
type of ammunition use. He describes that in detail. It
(07:37):
is very monotonous and there's a lot of information that's
being presented, but it is all very important for the case,
of course, for the prosecution. So Jake goes into detail
about all of that and then they break, and then
when we come back from break, it's the defense's turn
to cross examine Jake Wagner. So the first thing they
(07:57):
ask is they show a doc document that was the
type of custody document that Jake had typed up about
custody of Sophia. And they show him that and ask
him if he recognizes it, and he says he does
recognize it, and then they take a photo that is
of Jake at the Peterson Rode Home and ask him
(08:20):
if he recognizes it, and he says he does, and
they said, do you know when this photo was taken
and he says, considering the length of my hair, I
think sometime after the homicides. And they ask if there's
anything else in that picture that makes him believe that
it was taken after the homicides, and he talks about
(08:40):
his tattoo. He said, he has this one tattoo that
he got in three parts, and he said, at least
one of the parts of the tattoo was done after
the homicide, so that tattoo is in this picture that
they're presenting to him. They then go through all of
the charges that Jake Wagner pled guilty too, and there's
(09:01):
a crap ton of course, including the homicides, burglary, all
of the conspiracy to commit murder, unlawful possession of a
firearm and silencer, and so on and so forth. They
go through all of the different charges and he said
he plugged guilty to every single one of them, and
they said, just to clarify, you plug guilty to all
(09:25):
eight aggravated murders, even though you said you only personally
killed five of those people, and he said yes. They
talked about him pleading guilty to all four of the
aggravated burglaries even though he never even entered Kenneth Roden's property,
and he said yes. They then talk about the agreement
to take death off the table if he plugged guilty,
(09:46):
and he says yes. They reap through all of the
different agreements. I think basically what the defense is very
much trying to do here is that Jake is doing
everything he can to save himself and therefore earning on
the defendant his brother, and he's basically just in it
to save himself plead guilty to things that maybe he
(10:08):
necessarily wasn't involved in. They then talk about that night
and they ask if all four of them knew that
there was intent to kill Chris, Dana, Frankie, Hannah Kenneth,
and he said that to certain extents.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yes, they all knew that those people would be killed.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And by the four of them, I mean Jake, George Wagner,
the fourth, Billy Wagner, and Angela Wagner.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
He said that the kid stayed.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Back with Angela Wagner that night at the Peterson Road
home and that after the fact. They asked if they
all conspired in a cover up, and he said yes
to a certain extent. Yes. They then go on to
ask about medicines that Jake Wagner is on, and he
says he's on two allergy medications, he's on a multi vitamin,
(10:58):
he's on something for a sigh, and he's on an
antidepressant and an anti anxiety medicine. They ask if he
has been diagnosed with depression and he said not necessarily,
mostly insomnia. They then review everything again. You pled guilty
to killing the mother of your child. You snuck into
her house in the middle of the night, and then
(11:20):
you shot her in the back of the head, and
he said no, I shot her in the front of
the head, which is just horrible to even even say that.
And then they said you also then went and shot
her mom as she laid in bed looking at Facebook,
and he said yes. Then they asked him about going
into little Chris's room and shooting him in the back
(11:44):
of the head, and he said, he didn't shoot him
in the back of the head. Everything else is correct,
but I shot him in the side of the head.
And then they asked about the homicides of Hannah Hazel
Gilly and Frankie Rodin, and he described how that went.
They asked about if Jake saw the baby lying between
Frankie and Hannah Hazel Gilly, and he said no, he didn't.
(12:07):
He said he didn't notice that the baby was there
until after the murderers had already transpired. And they talk
about the killing of Chris Roden Senior and how he
shot him while he was standing in his doorway and
your intention was to kill him. And they asked if
he looked at Chris Roden Senior like a father figure
and he said yes. And did you look at Dana
(12:29):
Roden as a mother figure? And he said yes for
the most part, and then you shot her in the
head and went on about your business. So they are
very much trying to paint the picture of even though
George Wagner the fourth was there, he was involved, he
didn't actually kill anybody. A lot of these homicides occurred
(12:53):
via the hands of Jake Wagner and then Billy Wagner.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
They then talked about Gary being shot and he said
he's not the one that shot Gary.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
It was his father.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
And then following that his father was hysterical and Jake
is the one that basically had to calm him down.
After that, they then talk about all of the different
deaths and how many times each person was shot. And
then they said, you killed all of these people in
the middle of the night, went into their homes and
(13:26):
killed them while they were sleeping.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
And with all of this, you're.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Not facing the death penalty, and you don't consider that
the greatest plea bargain in the history of Ohio. He
says that he was not aware that it was the
greatest plea bargain in the history of Ohio. And they said,
you don't need to be told. You know, you were
facing the death penalty for killing eight absolutely innocent people
and you're not facing death, but your brother is. And
(13:53):
he didn't fire any shots, did he? And Jake Wagner
says no. He said that George basically tried to talk
him out of it. He didn't like the idea because
he thought of Hannah as a sister and he didn't
want any part of it at all, and had said
that he didn't want Jake.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
To do it.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
It was a bad idea, not to trust Dad. Similar
stuff to all of that, and Jake said. Ultimately, George
decided to go because he felt like Billy Wagner was
going to try to set Jake up, which I just
think is so interesting of a dynamic. The way that
this family operates and thinks about things is just so
(14:36):
odd to me. That George obviously didn't really trust his dad,
but he also decided to go to this eight person
killing spree basically because he felt like his dad was
going to set Jake up, and then he ended up
being roped into everything while Jake and Angela took play
(14:58):
deals and are testifying it against the family. It is
just such an interesting dynamic. This whole thing is so
interesting to me, and I guess for some reason along
the lines, Jake thought that he and his father might
also lose their lives in this whole murder spree. And
I don't know quite where that idea came from, if
(15:19):
George thought that something might happen, But Billy Wagner planned
all of this, And I have my own thoughts and
opinions about the different dynamics in that family because there's
a lot going on there. Of course, we've talked about
it with Angela Wagner and her odd obsession with her
grandkids and her sons, and just the different power struggles
(15:42):
between all the women that came into her son's lives.
It's a very interesting dynamic. So, although Billy Wagner is
the one that approached Jake with this idea to kill Hannah,
I don't entirely think that it was Sully him that
came up with the idea. I think it was kind
of everybody that just kind of had their own little
(16:06):
narrative to spend and their own.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Role in all of this.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Nobody is innocent in the situation, because anybody that ever
came to me and said, hey, we want to kill
so and so, I would immediately turn them into the cops.
Even if they were my very best friend or a
member of my family. There's absolutely no way that I
would ever, ever ever go along with it. So even
though they might not be directly involved in the planning
(16:33):
and the actual homicide, they're complicit in the fact that
they were involved because they didn't say anything. Then they
talked about the sexual assault allegations that Jake and his
family had made against somebody that Hannah I guess had
been dating at some point in time that he was
worried that this person was being sexually inappropriate with Sophia,
(16:57):
and when he confronted Hannah about it, her response wasn't what.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
He felt it should have been.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Basically said, if it happens, they're just going to have
to deal with it. And he didn't like that because
he didn't feel like she was taking the appropriate cautions
to protect his daughter. And I get that. I think
that's valid, but there was no proof that this was happening.
I don't even know where these allegations came from. To me,
(17:25):
it very much just reminds me of everything that happened
in Tabitha's case with beth Anne, and how all of
the women that basically are involved with Wagner family brothers
are at some point in time accused of being sexually
inappropriate or having sexual inappropriateness around their children, and they're
(17:49):
all unfound claims. So I'm not saying that that wasn't
the case, but I don't see any evidence in any
of this that there was ever any issue shoes with
Sophia being sexually molested or anything of that matter. And
I honestly think that if that had been the case,
if there was really a real possibility of that happening.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Hannah would not have stood for that.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
She was a good mother and she loved her daughter,
and I think she would have done anything in her
power to protect her daughter. So I just don't believe
that any of what Jake is saying here is true.
I don't think that Hannah ever said if that happens,
we're just going to have to deal with it. I
don't think that that is what happened, and that might
(18:38):
not be true, but that is my opinion. Now. They
talked about originally the plan was for Jake to strangle
Hannah or something along those lines, and that they very
much want to try to pen it on Corey, who
was dating Hannah at that time, and then they were
going to try to kill Corey to make it look
like Corey killed hand and then committed suicide. And he
(19:03):
said that that was the plan, but his dad said
no to it. But that was the original plan. It
was going to be a murder suicide type of situation.
And then it kind of transformed into Plan B, which
was to kill Hannah and to kill everyone else. And
that basically was what Billy Wagner's plan was because it
(19:26):
would be better that way. They then bring up Angela
Wagner and they said that you've described your mother as
an angel is that right? And he said yes, Is
that still your opinion of her on this date? And
he said it is. And they asked if she loved Hannah,
and Jake said yes, she very much loved Hannah, and
(19:49):
then they talked about her role in carrying out the murders.
He then confessed that he had asked Angela to go
to Walmart to buy those shoes and said that Angela
actually tried to talk him out of the murders, but
ultimately Angela would lie to help protect her sons and
her husband and was involved in the whole conspiracy to
(20:12):
commit these murders. Then they talked about Hannah and her
being pregnant with Kylie, and Jake said he knew that
Kylie wasn't his baby, but he very much wanted it
to be his baby. And they talked about him going
as far as going to get a DNA test to
(20:35):
prove that Kylie was his baby, and they asked him
if that was all just a fraud, and he said yes,
it was.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
He knew that Kylie was not his baby.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
They then again go through the timeline and the way
that everything transpired the night of the murders, from the
plywood in the truck bed and lying down in the
truck bed, how long they were in the truck.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Bed, all of that detail. They rehashed that again.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Then he's asked to describe his dad's demeanor after Gary
Roden was killed, and he says he had come out
with a look of shock on his face. His hands
were on his head, kind of like like if you'd
walk into a place and see a horror and oh
my god type of thing, hands on your head type
of thing. I can remember him like half turned and
(21:22):
looking forward, walking down the concrete walkway to where I was,
and I had confronted at the time. I had walked
forward to the area, met him pretty much halfway, and
I think I had either grabbed his wrist or the
side of each of his shoulder, something along the lines
and basically telling Dad that he had to calm down,
it's too late to check back out, get it together
(21:42):
type of stuff. I'm not sure of the words I used,
but something along the lines. So they asked Jake if
he was calm, cool and collected at that point in time,
and he said that he wasn't going to say that
he was calm, cool and collected, but he thinks that
he was able to kind of gather himself and try
(22:03):
to shield himself with resolve throughout his shock. They then
go into detail about all the other murders and going
through the pockets of all the victims, taking their cell phones,
taking their keys, so on and so forth. But I
think it's interesting that Billy Wagner had this visceral reaction,
and given the fact that he's the one that planned this,
(22:26):
I don't really know if he understood what he was
getting himself into with this. Actually going up to somebody
who you, at one point in time considered a friend
and taking their lives is such a big deal. To
take one life is a big deal, but knowing that
they were about to embark on taking eight lives of
(22:49):
people that they considered best friends, family friends, they shared grandchildren,
It is just such a insane concept that this whole
thing transpired.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
The way it did.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
And even though he planned it, Billy Wagner was the
one that had a horrible reaction to actually taking a life,
and basically he needed to be rained back in by
his son. So they could carry on the rest of
these homicides. I just have such a hard time grasping
(23:24):
any of this. This is just allso mind blowing. Still
to this day, with all the research I've done on
this case, all of the testimony I've reviewed and listened to,
it is just something that I cannot wrap my head around.
Jake goes in to detail again about all of the
different homicides, and yeah, George Wagner was there, but he
(23:45):
never killed anybody. So that is very much what the
cross examination of Jake is trying to prove is that
although Jake Wagner is on trial for murder, he didn't
actually kill anybody. So they go into a ton of
different detail. We've already kind of talked about the details
of all of the murders as told by Jake, so
(24:08):
I'm not going to rehash all of that, but it's
a very interesting dynamic that they're kind of questioning him
again about everything, having him go through everything, because they're
very much trying to prove that George was there, but.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
He didn't actually kill anybody.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
The next day of cross examination, they are questioning Jake
about his childhood and how his dad had shown him
how to pick locks, and there was an emphasis on
stealing and shoplifting, and then it eventually turned into Billy
showing him how to steal a vehicle, and he said
(24:47):
he never really personally stole a vehicle, but he would
serve as lookout and he said all of this was
kind of going on when he was a teenager, about
fourteen or fifteen years old. And there's just a ton
testimony from Jake about how Billy Wagner taught both he
and his brother all of these different mechanisms how to steal,
(25:08):
how to shoplift, how to steal money from a vending machine,
all of these super dishonest things that they were basically
brought up around, like they really did not have a
choice in becoming not great people as adults because they
were raised by a shyster and a guy who wanted
to take things that weren't his. And he basically always
(25:32):
said that he did the things he did and lived
the life he lived so that his kids wouldn't have.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
To do that.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
But in that he very much turned his kids into
what he was, and that is a dishonest person. And
it's horrible to see the patterns kind of laid out
here in this trial, they also talk some about the
childhood that the boys had, what their mother did, their
(26:00):
father did. Their father, of course, was a truck driver,
and he did this forever. He was known as what
was called a super trucker, meeting somebody that could just
drive and drive and drive and drive. Angela mostly stayed home,
but there was a period of time where she worked
at Walmart, and then there was a brief period of
time where the boys were or Jake was enrolled in
(26:22):
public school, and that only lasted a very short time,
and then Angela Wagner decided that she was going to
homeschool her sons. So again, I think they're very much
trying to set the precedent of the boys were raised
in probably the not greatest of environments, and they basically
became a product of who they were raised by and
(26:46):
the type of unlawful stuff that their father was up to.
They basically ended up just being roped into that. So
I think that is what the defense is doing here,
is very much for the jury trying to paint a
picture of George Wagner just basically being a victim in
all of this and being along for the ride and
not really having a choice in who he was surrounded
(27:10):
by and who his family was. They then asked about
the family moving to Alaska, and they had been kind
of keeping up with different news reports that were coming
out about the murders of the road and family and
the investigation, and they were kind of keeping tabs on
everything that was going on. But Jake had lined up
a job in Alaska, so he was there. He had
(27:33):
kind of started going to church. He was going multiple
times a week, and it was a church that he
met beth Ann or Elizabeth and ended up eventually marrying her.
And they kind of talk about the different dynamics of
how they kind of got together, how they started their relationship,
and he very much said that he was on the
(27:53):
search for somebody to be a mother figure to Sophia,
and of course somebody to be his wife.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
They got engaged and.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Married shortly after they met, and he said that she
very much presented herself as a good Christian woman and
that's who he thought she was, but he said that
he later learned through his observations that she was not
who he thought she was.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
He said that while beth.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Ann was living in Alaska, she was living with a
family of missionaries, and she was very involved in the church.
She worked at the church nursery, and she did a
lot of community service. She was supporting the fire department
and the police department. On certain days she would bake cookies.
She was just that girl who kind of did everything.
(28:43):
And he thought that she was the ideal Christian woman.
And he said he didn't think at all that she
was a liar or whatever else, but throughout their marriage
he found out differently, which I think this is such
an interesting observation that Jake Wagner met man who killed
eight people, brutally killed the mother of his child brutally
(29:05):
while her newborn slept next to her. Is judging other
people and their behavior. It's very interesting to me. Like
I said, I've said it so many times already this episode.
The dynamic of this family and the way that they
think and process things, it's very interesting to me. It
really should be studied. He said that at one point
(29:26):
in time he had discovered some searches on her cell
phone about being a witch and witch spells and all
the different witchcraft kind of stuff, and he was just
absolutely taken aback by this and had no idea that
that was the kind.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Of person that she was.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
He said it was shocking because naturally nobody wants to
marry a witch. I mean, it's pretty serious stuff. It
is serious stuff. But you also killed eight people, So
I'm really confused about how you're throwing stones when you
literally live in a glasshouse.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Is that the same? I think that's the same.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
He then talks about how by the time they came
back to Ohio from Alaska that she had just changed
so much and she wasn't really doing all of the
things that they had previously done in Alaska, and she
just wasn't the same person. They then kind of switched
gears to Hannah and Hannah getting pregnant with Sophia and
(30:27):
how that kind of all came to be. He said
that Hannah very much wanted to be pregnant because there
were a lot of other people that were around that
were also pregnant, and he just kind of went along
with it. He and Hannah had discussed the future of
their children and if their children would go to public
or private school or homeschool, and he said, you know,
(30:50):
the reason that his family and his parents chose to
homeschool him is because there was a lot of drug
use going on in the public school system, and they
didn't want him around that. He didn't want his kids
subjected to drug use or even know about premarital sex
or be subjected to it. And he said, you know,
possibly getting pregnant as a teenager. But he said, granted,
(31:14):
that kind of thing happened to me, but it was
kind of the pure pressure from the people that surrounded
him that kind of made all of this stuff happen.
He just doesn't take accountability, is basically what it comes
down to, and that's fine.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
He doesn't want to take accountability. That is on him.
But this whole conversation is just so wild to me.
I will never stop saying it.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
He said that he doesn't want to make Hannah look
like a bad parent, but they very much had different
ideas as to what they wanted for their daughter, and
when they separated, Jake allegedly was the favorite parent and
Sophia liked Jake better than she liked Hannah, which I
(31:58):
don't know if that's true. That's just what Jake is
saying in his testimony. But Jake said after Hannah and
he broke up, she started smoking again, and he didn't
want to believe that she was sleeping around, but he
had been told by multiple people that she was sleeping around,
and he says he really doesn't even believe it, not even.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
To this day.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
But there was a time when he believed that she
was talking to Charlie Gilly, who is Hannah Hazelgilly's brother.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
She was talking to him before he and Hannah.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Broke up allegedly, but he still to this day doesn't
believe that Hannah cheated on him. And then they talked
about baby Kylie, and Charlie Gilly was the father of Kylie,
even though at the time of her death, she was
in a relationship with Corey, who Jake said he had
met Corey in the midst of he and Hannah's relationship,
(32:55):
and they asked if he was jealous and wanted Hannah back,
and he said, to an extent, he think he was jealous,
but he was really more concerned about the type of
people that were going to be hanging around Sophia. And again,
I think that is a valid concern for a father
to be worried about the type of men that are
going to be around his daughter, a super super valid concern.
(33:17):
So I understand his thought process on that he seems
like he was a good dad. I'll give him that,
but at the same time, it's also not an excuse
to brutally murder the mother of your child and seven
other people because you have a hunch about a certain
situation happening that maybe wasn't even happening to begin with.
(33:38):
They then talked about the GoFundMe that was started, and
it was Angela Wagner's idea, but Jake went along with it,
and he said he did get some money out of it.
And they talked about what was put up there on
the GoFundMe describing what had happened, and they asked for
him to read it.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
So this is it.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
I'm going to read it word for word. This is
our story, my daughter, Sophia Wagner. She is also the
daughter of Hannah Rodin. Unfortunately, Hannah Rodin was one of
the victims of the Rodin family in Pike County, Ohio,
where eight members of the same family were murdered before
the death of Sophia's mom. I only had my daughters. Sorry,
I only had my daughter half of the time. I
(34:23):
wish I could have had her more, but Hannah and
I were separated now I need help financially with all
of the attorney fees and expenses and extra to help
her cope with the loss of her mommy and to
acquire full custody of her. She is only two and
a half years old. These were not expenses.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I was supposed to have.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
I was just supposed to be able to spend time
with her and give her a happy childhood. Now I
have to work extra hours and do not get to
see her as much. She is asleep when I leave
for work and usually asleep when I get home. Weekends
are all we have. Basically, Sophia and I are just
asking enough to settle fees that we acquired the horrific
tragedy of her mommy. We want to get our lives back,
(35:03):
and I hate seeing my daughter cry. And he said
he did get some money from that GoFundMe. I don't
know exactly how much. But writing that out, editing it
and posting it is just wild behavior. Knowing that you're
the one that killed her mom that's insane behavior.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
But what do I know.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
They then kind of switch gears to talk about the
different family dynamics between Angela and Billy and Jake and George.
And there was something that whenever one of the siblings
would celebrate their birthdays, of course the birthday child would
get gifts, but the other child would also get presents.
And that was kind of a dynamic that they just had.
(35:44):
I don't know if it lasted up until dulhood, I'm
not really sure. And then they kind of switched gears
and said, didn't your mom have a saying that she
always used to say to George, basically, why can't you
be like Jake? And Jake said that he believed that
she had heard her say that a couple of times,
maybe once or twice, which is just a horrible thing
(36:06):
to say to a child, especially when they have a sibling.
You need to be more like your sibling, or I
wish you were more like your sibling.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
That's just horrible to do that. Don't do that to
your kids. It's just not nice.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
He then talks about his childhood and how he was
raised Baptist, but he has become a lot more religious
since he has been arrested, and he's read the Bible
for front to back nearly twenty three times now, that
was at the time of his testimony. I'm sure he's
probably read it a heck of a lot more since then,
because he has been in jail for a while since
(36:39):
this trial, and he said that he has a nickname
in jail, and that is Pastor Jake or Pastor Wagner,
and that just makes my skin crawl.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
But I'll digress.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
The rest of the testimony is just about the different
dynamics between the family and all of the happenings following
the murders. We've already very much talked about it. It's
just a defense going through and questioning him on everything
to try to insinuate and prove that although George Wagner
(37:14):
was present, but he was just along for the ride basically,
and he did.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Not murder anybody. He was just there.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
He was supporting his family and doing as he was told,
and he was not directly part of it and should
not be convicted of murder. So that is Jake Wagner's testimony,
all one thousand and seventy seven.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Pages of it.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
There was a lot that I trimmed down and cut
out or this series would literally last the rest of
the year, but that file is available online. I am
going to link it below in the show notes, so
if you do want to go through it and look
at it. You can go look at it.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
But that was a lot.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
That's a big hunk of this trial was Jake wagg
Your testimony, because he is essentially laying everything out that happened,
and it was a huge, huge, huge part of this case.
So that is going to be it for part six
of Summer Series twenty twenty five. Next week we're going
to get into more trial happenings and we are slowly
(38:19):
but surely turning our way through the Summer series.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
I hope you.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Guys are intrigued by the story and find it interesting.
I still to this day find this case so fascinating.
The different facets of it and the different key players
and the way that they all kind of intermingle with
each other. It's very interesting, and like I said, I
feel like the dynamics of this family need to be studied.
(38:46):
It's just so so interesting because when you think about
the loyalty of the Wagner family and how they seemed
like such a cohesive loyal unit and then they are
all charged in this eight person homicide and slowly but
surely they all start to kind of crack and things
(39:06):
are coming out that we never even would have ever
imagined coming out about just the different dynamics of the
family and.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
All of it.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
It's just very, very interesting. It is a wild dynamic.
And next week we have more trial happenings to come,
and we have a lot more to cover, not just
in the trial, but in what's going on with this case. Today,
we hear from Jake Wagner at some point in time,
we get victim impact statements from Hannah Hazel, Gilly's mother,
(39:40):
which was one of the most powerful victim impact statements
I think I've heard in a long time. I'm going
to be playing all of that for you guys in
the subsequent episodes, and we're going to get to everything
where everything stands today. George Wagner is still awaiting trial,
so we're going to talk about that. We have a
lot more to get to. So we're gonna call it
(40:01):
good for episode six. I will see you next week
for episode seven, more trial happenings. We are churning our
way through this trial, slowly but surely. I will see
you next week for that, and I will see you
later this week for a brand new unsolved case. Have
a great week ahead, and I will see you then bye,
Welcome to Summer Series twenty twenty five, The Roden Family Murders,
also known as the Pike County Masker. We're going to
be discussing the murders of Dana Roden, Christopher Roden Senior,
Kenneth Roden, Gary Roden, Frankie Rodin, Hannah Hazel Gilly, Hannah Rodin,
and Christopher Roden Junior. Let's go ahead and dive right
(00:22):
into Summer Series twenty twenty five. All right, guys, welcome
to Part six of the Pike County Massacer Summer Series
twenty twenty five. We are going to pick up where
we left off with the testimony of Jake Wagner in
the trial of his brother George Wagner the fourth. So
the next thing that they asked Jake is all about
(00:44):
the document that was allegedly notarized by Rita Newcom who
is Angela Wagner's mother, And they talk all about how
that came to be, if they had had discussions with
Rita that she was going to say that she was
the one who knows vorized it, and so on and
so forth, because these documents were in fact faked by
(01:05):
Angela Wagner, and these were the documents that basically said
if something were to happen to Hannah, that Jake and
his family.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Would get full custody of their daughter Sophia.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
So this whole thing, the whole reason that all of
this happened, is because the Wagner family wanted.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Full custody of Sophia.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So they ask about the documents and talk about did
reed and know about it, did you guys communicate about it,
did you and your brother talk about it? Did you
and your mother talk about it? It goes on and
on and on. There's a lot of objections because of
the way that things were being worded and asked to Jake,
but ultimately he talks about it, and then they talk
(01:48):
about how after the Wagner family had already moved to.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Alaska, they then are asked.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
To come in to give handwriting samples and different fingerprint samples,
and they have to do palm prints and get their
feet measured as well, because they're all, of course at
this point, trying to piece together all of the different
clues that were left behind at the different crime scenes.
They then ask about different photos of Jake holding different
(02:16):
guns and how there was a lot of talk about
this one particular photo that there was a gun being
held and you couldn't see the person who was holding it,
and there was talk about if it was Jake holding
the gun, and so on and so forth. There was
a lot of back and forth about these different photos
of these different guns and this wish list that the
(02:38):
Wagners had about different guns that they wanted, So that
went on for quite a while. I'm not going to
go into all of that because there's a lot of questions,
there's a lot of back and forth, but they did
speak on these photos of these guns and trying to
pinpoint if this one particular photo was in fact Jake's
hands holding this one particular gun. They then asked Jake if,
(03:01):
prior to him being arrested, if they as a family
discussed what would happen if one or more of them
were arrested in connection with the Road and family murders,
and he said, yes, we did have a discussion about that,
and then they kind of go off in a different
direction and they say that before they go into that,
they want to talk about a couple of other things,
(03:22):
and one of them was, did your dad ever have
a problem with abusing.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Pills and Jake says, yes, he did.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Billy Wagner had chronic pain because he had broken a
lot of bones over the course of his life, so
he did have a time when he would take prescription pills.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And they also asked about.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Other members of the family taking weight loss pills or
other type of pills, and he said that he did
know that his family different members had taken different weight
loss pills over the years, and other than his father,
he didn't know of anyone else in the family that
had any issues with being addicted to pills or abusing
prescription drugs. Then they kind of go back in to
(04:04):
the marijuana growing business of it all, and talking about
his father's involvement in all of Chris Senior's different growings
and all the information that they had about it, who
knew about it, so on and so forth. They then
talk about Jake being arrested, and then they talk about
Rita Newcom also being arrested and charged for forgery about
(04:27):
the custody documents. And he said, at some point, did
you learn that Rita had decided to cooperate with the
prosecution in this case, And he said yes, his lawyers
had told him that, and the reason that she decided
to do that, Jake said, was something about her not
being able to lie anymore and lying wasn't the Christian.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Thing to do.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And they asked him how he felt about that, and
he said that he felt like it was the answer
he was looking for. It was the answer from God.
He knew that he also couldn't lie anymore and this
was a sign that he needed to also tell the
truth and be honest.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
About what happened.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
He said that everything had been heavily weighing on him
and he was struggling with everything, and as soon as
Rita decided that she was going to tell the truth
and be honest, he knew that that was the answer
that he needed.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
And we'll get into it, but Jake is.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Very much a quote unquote reformed guy now and he
has found Jesus since he's been in prison, and he
goes on and on and on about that during the
whole sentencing phase of things, which we'll get into later.
But I am a huge action, speak, way louder than
words kind of girl, and I think, if nothing else,
(05:45):
everything that we've seen thus far from Jake Wagner tells
us that he is the exact opposite of somebody who
is godly and has compassion and remorse. But that is
just my personal opinion. He could be an entire life
new man and has changed his ways, and now that
he's out from the grips of his mother, be a
(06:06):
completely different person.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I really don't know.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I also really don't care because he took the lives
of eight people, But that is kind of what's going
on now, a little preview of what's to come. But
I just had to speak my truth on that because
it just absolutely drives me insane. So they talk about
Rita taking a plea in December of twenty nineteen, and
he said shortly after that, pretty much within a few weeks,
(06:32):
late December, he confessed everything to his attorneys. He said,
he told them everything, all of the different homes he entered,
all of the people he shot, his father's involvement, his
brother's involvement, his mother's involvement. He pretty much said everything.
And some of the agreements that they agreed upon was
that he was going to be testifying against anybody that
(06:54):
went to trial, so he would testify against his brother,
he would testify against his father if he ultimately went
to trial. They then go in to all of the
different weapons and photos of the weapons, and Jake describes
one by one what the photos are of how they
were used. They talk about all of the different type
(07:15):
of silencers and photos of the silencers and how they
were used. There's a lot of technical back and forth
gun talk, and Jake is just going into detail about
all of these items how they were used in the
homicides of the Rodent family, and he's describing them all
in detail. They also talk about different ammunition and the
type of ammunition use. He describes that in detail. It
(07:37):
is very monotonous and there's a lot of information that's
being presented, but it is all very important for the case,
of course, for the prosecution. So Jake goes into detail
about all of that and then they break, and then
when we come back from break, it's the defense's turn
to cross examine Jake Wagner. So the first thing they
(07:57):
ask is they show a doc document that was the
type of custody document that Jake had typed up about
custody of Sophia. And they show him that and ask
him if he recognizes it, and he says he does
recognize it, and then they take a photo that is
of Jake at the Peterson Rode Home and ask him
(08:20):
if he recognizes it, and he says he does, and
they said, do you know when this photo was taken
and he says, considering the length of my hair, I
think sometime after the homicides. And they ask if there's
anything else in that picture that makes him believe that
it was taken after the homicides, and he talks about
(08:40):
his tattoo. He said, he has this one tattoo that
he got in three parts, and he said, at least
one of the parts of the tattoo was done after
the homicide, so that tattoo is in this picture that
they're presenting to him. They then go through all of
the charges that Jake Wagner pled guilty too, and there's
(09:01):
a crap ton of course, including the homicides, burglary, all
of the conspiracy to commit murder, unlawful possession of a
firearm and silencer, and so on and so forth. They
go through all of the different charges and he said
he plugged guilty to every single one of them, and
they said, just to clarify, you plug guilty to all
(09:25):
eight aggravated murders, even though you said you only personally
killed five of those people, and he said yes. They
talked about him pleading guilty to all four of the
aggravated burglaries even though he never even entered Kenneth Roden's property,
and he said yes. They then talk about the agreement
to take death off the table if he plugged guilty,
(09:46):
and he says yes. They reap through all of the
different agreements. I think basically what the defense is very
much trying to do here is that Jake is doing
everything he can to save himself and therefore earning on
the defendant his brother, and he's basically just in it
to save himself plead guilty to things that maybe he
(10:08):
necessarily wasn't involved in. They then talk about that night
and they ask if all four of them knew that
there was intent to kill Chris, Dana, Frankie, Hannah Kenneth,
and he said that to certain extents.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yes, they all knew that those people would be killed.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And by the four of them, I mean Jake, George Wagner,
the fourth, Billy Wagner, and Angela Wagner.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
He said that the kid stayed.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Back with Angela Wagner that night at the Peterson Road
home and that after the fact. They asked if they
all conspired in a cover up, and he said yes
to a certain extent. Yes. They then go on to
ask about medicines that Jake Wagner is on, and he
says he's on two allergy medications, he's on a multi vitamin,
(10:58):
he's on something for a sigh, and he's on an
antidepressant and an anti anxiety medicine. They ask if he
has been diagnosed with depression and he said not necessarily,
mostly insomnia. They then review everything again. You pled guilty
to killing the mother of your child. You snuck into
her house in the middle of the night, and then
(11:20):
you shot her in the back of the head, and
he said no, I shot her in the front of
the head, which is just horrible to even even say that.
And then they said you also then went and shot
her mom as she laid in bed looking at Facebook,
and he said yes. Then they asked him about going
into little Chris's room and shooting him in the back
(11:44):
of the head, and he said, he didn't shoot him
in the back of the head. Everything else is correct,
but I shot him in the side of the head.
And then they asked about the homicides of Hannah Hazel
Gilly and Frankie Rodin, and he described how that went.
They asked about if Jake saw the baby lying between
Frankie and Hannah Hazel Gilly, and he said no, he didn't.
(12:07):
He said he didn't notice that the baby was there
until after the murderers had already transpired. And they talk
about the killing of Chris Roden Senior and how he
shot him while he was standing in his doorway and
your intention was to kill him. And they asked if
he looked at Chris Roden Senior like a father figure
and he said yes. And did you look at Dana
(12:29):
Roden as a mother figure? And he said yes for
the most part, and then you shot her in the
head and went on about your business. So they are
very much trying to paint the picture of even though
George Wagner the fourth was there, he was involved, he
didn't actually kill anybody. A lot of these homicides occurred
(12:53):
via the hands of Jake Wagner and then Billy Wagner.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
They then talked about Gary being shot and he said
he's not the one that shot Gary.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
It was his father.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
And then following that his father was hysterical and Jake
is the one that basically had to calm him down.
After that, they then talk about all of the different
deaths and how many times each person was shot. And
then they said, you killed all of these people in
the middle of the night, went into their homes and
(13:26):
killed them while they were sleeping.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
And with all of this, you're.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Not facing the death penalty, and you don't consider that
the greatest plea bargain in the history of Ohio. He
says that he was not aware that it was the
greatest plea bargain in the history of Ohio. And they said,
you don't need to be told. You know, you were
facing the death penalty for killing eight absolutely innocent people
and you're not facing death, but your brother is. And
(13:53):
he didn't fire any shots, did he? And Jake Wagner
says no. He said that George basically tried to talk
him out of it. He didn't like the idea because
he thought of Hannah as a sister and he didn't
want any part of it at all, and had said
that he didn't want Jake.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
To do it.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
It was a bad idea, not to trust Dad. Similar
stuff to all of that, and Jake said. Ultimately, George
decided to go because he felt like Billy Wagner was
going to try to set Jake up, which I just
think is so interesting of a dynamic. The way that
this family operates and thinks about things is just so
(14:36):
odd to me. That George obviously didn't really trust his dad,
but he also decided to go to this eight person
killing spree basically because he felt like his dad was
going to set Jake up, and then he ended up
being roped into everything while Jake and Angela took play
(14:58):
deals and are testifying it against the family. It is
just such an interesting dynamic. This whole thing is so
interesting to me, and I guess for some reason along
the lines, Jake thought that he and his father might
also lose their lives in this whole murder spree. And
I don't know quite where that idea came from, if
(15:19):
George thought that something might happen, But Billy Wagner planned
all of this, And I have my own thoughts and
opinions about the different dynamics in that family because there's
a lot going on there. Of course, we've talked about
it with Angela Wagner and her odd obsession with her
grandkids and her sons, and just the different power struggles
(15:42):
between all the women that came into her son's lives.
It's a very interesting dynamic. So, although Billy Wagner is
the one that approached Jake with this idea to kill Hannah,
I don't entirely think that it was Sully him that
came up with the idea. I think it was kind
of everybody that just kind of had their own little
(16:06):
narrative to spend and their own.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Role in all of this.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Nobody is innocent in the situation, because anybody that ever
came to me and said, hey, we want to kill
so and so, I would immediately turn them into the cops.
Even if they were my very best friend or a
member of my family. There's absolutely no way that I
would ever, ever ever go along with it. So even
though they might not be directly involved in the planning
(16:33):
and the actual homicide, they're complicit in the fact that
they were involved because they didn't say anything. Then they
talked about the sexual assault allegations that Jake and his
family had made against somebody that Hannah I guess had
been dating at some point in time that he was
worried that this person was being sexually inappropriate with Sophia,
(16:57):
and when he confronted Hannah about it, her response wasn't what.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
He felt it should have been.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Basically said, if it happens, they're just going to have
to deal with it. And he didn't like that because
he didn't feel like she was taking the appropriate cautions
to protect his daughter. And I get that. I think
that's valid, but there was no proof that this was happening.
I don't even know where these allegations came from. To me,
(17:25):
it very much just reminds me of everything that happened
in Tabitha's case with beth Anne, and how all of
the women that basically are involved with Wagner family brothers
are at some point in time accused of being sexually
inappropriate or having sexual inappropriateness around their children, and they're
(17:49):
all unfound claims. So I'm not saying that that wasn't
the case, but I don't see any evidence in any
of this that there was ever any issue shoes with
Sophia being sexually molested or anything of that matter. And
I honestly think that if that had been the case,
if there was really a real possibility of that happening.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Hannah would not have stood for that.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
She was a good mother and she loved her daughter,
and I think she would have done anything in her
power to protect her daughter. So I just don't believe
that any of what Jake is saying here is true.
I don't think that Hannah ever said if that happens,
we're just going to have to deal with it. I
don't think that that is what happened, and that might
(18:38):
not be true, but that is my opinion. Now. They
talked about originally the plan was for Jake to strangle
Hannah or something along those lines, and that they very
much want to try to pen it on Corey, who
was dating Hannah at that time, and then they were
going to try to kill Corey to make it look
like Corey killed hand and then committed suicide. And he
(19:03):
said that that was the plan, but his dad said
no to it. But that was the original plan. It
was going to be a murder suicide type of situation.
And then it kind of transformed into Plan B, which
was to kill Hannah and to kill everyone else. And
that basically was what Billy Wagner's plan was because it
(19:26):
would be better that way. They then bring up Angela
Wagner and they said that you've described your mother as
an angel is that right? And he said yes, Is
that still your opinion of her on this date? And
he said it is. And they asked if she loved Hannah,
and Jake said yes, she very much loved Hannah, and
(19:49):
then they talked about her role in carrying out the murders.
He then confessed that he had asked Angela to go
to Walmart to buy those shoes and said that Angela
actually tried to talk him out of the murders, but
ultimately Angela would lie to help protect her sons and
her husband and was involved in the whole conspiracy to
(20:12):
commit these murders. Then they talked about Hannah and her
being pregnant with Kylie, and Jake said he knew that
Kylie wasn't his baby, but he very much wanted it
to be his baby. And they talked about him going
as far as going to get a DNA test to
(20:35):
prove that Kylie was his baby, and they asked him
if that was all just a fraud, and he said yes,
it was.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
He knew that Kylie was not his baby.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
They then again go through the timeline and the way
that everything transpired the night of the murders, from the
plywood in the truck bed and lying down in the
truck bed, how long they were in the truck.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Bed, all of that detail. They rehashed that again.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Then he's asked to describe his dad's demeanor after Gary
Roden was killed, and he says he had come out
with a look of shock on his face. His hands
were on his head, kind of like like if you'd
walk into a place and see a horror and oh
my god type of thing, hands on your head type
of thing. I can remember him like half turned and
(21:22):
looking forward, walking down the concrete walkway to where I was,
and I had confronted at the time. I had walked
forward to the area, met him pretty much halfway, and
I think I had either grabbed his wrist or the
side of each of his shoulder, something along the lines
and basically telling Dad that he had to calm down,
it's too late to check back out, get it together
(21:42):
type of stuff. I'm not sure of the words I used,
but something along the lines. So they asked Jake if
he was calm, cool and collected at that point in time,
and he said that he wasn't going to say that
he was calm, cool and collected, but he thinks that
he was able to kind of gather himself and try
(22:03):
to shield himself with resolve throughout his shock. They then
go into detail about all the other murders and going
through the pockets of all the victims, taking their cell phones,
taking their keys, so on and so forth. But I
think it's interesting that Billy Wagner had this visceral reaction,
and given the fact that he's the one that planned this,
(22:26):
I don't really know if he understood what he was
getting himself into with this. Actually going up to somebody
who you, at one point in time considered a friend
and taking their lives is such a big deal. To
take one life is a big deal, but knowing that
they were about to embark on taking eight lives of
(22:49):
people that they considered best friends, family friends, they shared grandchildren,
It is just such a insane concept that this whole
thing transpired.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
The way it did.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
And even though he planned it, Billy Wagner was the
one that had a horrible reaction to actually taking a life,
and basically he needed to be rained back in by
his son. So they could carry on the rest of
these homicides. I just have such a hard time grasping
(23:24):
any of this. This is just allso mind blowing. Still
to this day, with all the research I've done on
this case, all of the testimony I've reviewed and listened to,
it is just something that I cannot wrap my head around.
Jake goes in to detail again about all of the
different homicides, and yeah, George Wagner was there, but he
(23:45):
never killed anybody. So that is very much what the
cross examination of Jake is trying to prove is that
although Jake Wagner is on trial for murder, he didn't
actually kill anybody. So they go into a ton of
different detail. We've already kind of talked about the details
of all of the murders as told by Jake, so
(24:08):
I'm not going to rehash all of that, but it's
a very interesting dynamic that they're kind of questioning him
again about everything, having him go through everything, because they're
very much trying to prove that George was there, but.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
He didn't actually kill anybody.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
The next day of cross examination, they are questioning Jake
about his childhood and how his dad had shown him
how to pick locks, and there was an emphasis on
stealing and shoplifting, and then it eventually turned into Billy
showing him how to steal a vehicle, and he said
(24:47):
he never really personally stole a vehicle, but he would
serve as lookout and he said all of this was
kind of going on when he was a teenager, about
fourteen or fifteen years old. And there's just a ton
testimony from Jake about how Billy Wagner taught both he
and his brother all of these different mechanisms how to steal,
(25:08):
how to shoplift, how to steal money from a vending machine,
all of these super dishonest things that they were basically
brought up around, like they really did not have a
choice in becoming not great people as adults because they
were raised by a shyster and a guy who wanted
to take things that weren't his. And he basically always
(25:32):
said that he did the things he did and lived
the life he lived so that his kids wouldn't have.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
To do that.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
But in that he very much turned his kids into
what he was, and that is a dishonest person. And
it's horrible to see the patterns kind of laid out
here in this trial, they also talk some about the
childhood that the boys had, what their mother did, their
(26:00):
father did. Their father, of course, was a truck driver,
and he did this forever. He was known as what
was called a super trucker, meeting somebody that could just
drive and drive and drive and drive. Angela mostly stayed home,
but there was a period of time where she worked
at Walmart, and then there was a brief period of
time where the boys were or Jake was enrolled in
(26:22):
public school, and that only lasted a very short time,
and then Angela Wagner decided that she was going to
homeschool her sons. So again, I think they're very much
trying to set the precedent of the boys were raised
in probably the not greatest of environments, and they basically
became a product of who they were raised by and
(26:46):
the type of unlawful stuff that their father was up to.
They basically ended up just being roped into that. So
I think that is what the defense is doing here,
is very much for the jury trying to paint a
picture of George Wagner just basically being a victim in
all of this and being along for the ride and
not really having a choice in who he was surrounded
(27:10):
by and who his family was. They then asked about
the family moving to Alaska, and they had been kind
of keeping up with different news reports that were coming
out about the murders of the road and family and
the investigation, and they were kind of keeping tabs on
everything that was going on. But Jake had lined up
a job in Alaska, so he was there. He had
(27:33):
kind of started going to church. He was going multiple
times a week, and it was a church that he
met beth Ann or Elizabeth and ended up eventually marrying her.
And they kind of talk about the different dynamics of
how they kind of got together, how they started their relationship,
and he very much said that he was on the
(27:53):
search for somebody to be a mother figure to Sophia,
and of course somebody to be his wife.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
They got engaged and.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Married shortly after they met, and he said that she
very much presented herself as a good Christian woman and
that's who he thought she was, but he said that
he later learned through his observations that she was not
who he thought she was.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
He said that while beth.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Ann was living in Alaska, she was living with a
family of missionaries, and she was very involved in the church.
She worked at the church nursery, and she did a
lot of community service. She was supporting the fire department
and the police department. On certain days she would bake cookies.
She was just that girl who kind of did everything.
(28:43):
And he thought that she was the ideal Christian woman.
And he said he didn't think at all that she
was a liar or whatever else, but throughout their marriage
he found out differently, which I think this is such
an interesting observation that Jake Wagner met man who killed
eight people, brutally killed the mother of his child brutally
(29:05):
while her newborn slept next to her. Is judging other
people and their behavior. It's very interesting to me. Like
I said, I've said it so many times already this episode.
The dynamic of this family and the way that they
think and process things, it's very interesting to me. It
really should be studied. He said that at one point
(29:26):
in time he had discovered some searches on her cell
phone about being a witch and witch spells and all
the different witchcraft kind of stuff, and he was just
absolutely taken aback by this and had no idea that
that was the kind.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Of person that she was.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
He said it was shocking because naturally nobody wants to
marry a witch. I mean, it's pretty serious stuff. It
is serious stuff. But you also killed eight people, So
I'm really confused about how you're throwing stones when you
literally live in a glasshouse.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Is that the same? I think that's the same.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
He then talks about how by the time they came
back to Ohio from Alaska that she had just changed
so much and she wasn't really doing all of the
things that they had previously done in Alaska, and she
just wasn't the same person. They then kind of switched
gears to Hannah and Hannah getting pregnant with Sophia and
(30:27):
how that kind of all came to be. He said
that Hannah very much wanted to be pregnant because there
were a lot of other people that were around that
were also pregnant, and he just kind of went along
with it. He and Hannah had discussed the future of
their children and if their children would go to public
or private school or homeschool, and he said, you know,
(30:50):
the reason that his family and his parents chose to
homeschool him is because there was a lot of drug
use going on in the public school system, and they
didn't want him around that. He didn't want his kids
subjected to drug use or even know about premarital sex
or be subjected to it. And he said, you know,
possibly getting pregnant as a teenager. But he said, granted,
(31:14):
that kind of thing happened to me, but it was
kind of the pure pressure from the people that surrounded
him that kind of made all of this stuff happen.
He just doesn't take accountability, is basically what it comes
down to, and that's fine.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
He doesn't want to take accountability. That is on him.
But this whole conversation is just so wild to me.
I will never stop saying it.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
He said that he doesn't want to make Hannah look
like a bad parent, but they very much had different
ideas as to what they wanted for their daughter, and
when they separated, Jake allegedly was the favorite parent and
Sophia liked Jake better than she liked Hannah, which I
(31:58):
don't know if that's true. That's just what Jake is
saying in his testimony. But Jake said after Hannah and
he broke up, she started smoking again, and he didn't
want to believe that she was sleeping around, but he
had been told by multiple people that she was sleeping around,
and he says he really doesn't even believe it, not even.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
To this day.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
But there was a time when he believed that she
was talking to Charlie Gilly, who is Hannah Hazelgilly's brother.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
She was talking to him before he and Hannah.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Broke up allegedly, but he still to this day doesn't
believe that Hannah cheated on him. And then they talked
about baby Kylie, and Charlie Gilly was the father of Kylie,
even though at the time of her death, she was
in a relationship with Corey, who Jake said he had
met Corey in the midst of he and Hannah's relationship,
(32:55):
and they asked if he was jealous and wanted Hannah back,
and he said, to an extent, he think he was jealous,
but he was really more concerned about the type of
people that were going to be hanging around Sophia. And again,
I think that is a valid concern for a father
to be worried about the type of men that are
going to be around his daughter, a super super valid concern.
(33:17):
So I understand his thought process on that he seems
like he was a good dad. I'll give him that,
but at the same time, it's also not an excuse
to brutally murder the mother of your child and seven
other people because you have a hunch about a certain
situation happening that maybe wasn't even happening to begin with.
(33:38):
They then talked about the GoFundMe that was started, and
it was Angela Wagner's idea, but Jake went along with it,
and he said he did get some money out of it.
And they talked about what was put up there on
the GoFundMe describing what had happened, and they asked for
him to read it.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
So this is it.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
I'm going to read it word for word. This is
our story, my daughter, Sophia Wagner. She is also the
daughter of Hannah Rodin. Unfortunately, Hannah Rodin was one of
the victims of the Rodin family in Pike County, Ohio,
where eight members of the same family were murdered before
the death of Sophia's mom. I only had my daughters. Sorry,
I only had my daughter half of the time. I
(34:23):
wish I could have had her more, but Hannah and
I were separated now I need help financially with all
of the attorney fees and expenses and extra to help
her cope with the loss of her mommy and to
acquire full custody of her. She is only two and
a half years old. These were not expenses.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I was supposed to have.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
I was just supposed to be able to spend time
with her and give her a happy childhood. Now I
have to work extra hours and do not get to
see her as much. She is asleep when I leave
for work and usually asleep when I get home. Weekends
are all we have. Basically, Sophia and I are just
asking enough to settle fees that we acquired the horrific
tragedy of her mommy. We want to get our lives back,
(35:03):
and I hate seeing my daughter cry. And he said
he did get some money from that GoFundMe. I don't
know exactly how much. But writing that out, editing it
and posting it is just wild behavior. Knowing that you're
the one that killed her mom that's insane behavior.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
But what do I know.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
They then kind of switch gears to talk about the
different family dynamics between Angela and Billy and Jake and George.
And there was something that whenever one of the siblings
would celebrate their birthdays, of course the birthday child would
get gifts, but the other child would also get presents.
And that was kind of a dynamic that they just had.
(35:44):
I don't know if it lasted up until dulhood, I'm
not really sure. And then they kind of switched gears
and said, didn't your mom have a saying that she
always used to say to George, basically, why can't you
be like Jake? And Jake said that he believed that
she had heard her say that a couple of times,
maybe once or twice, which is just a horrible thing
(36:06):
to say to a child, especially when they have a sibling.
You need to be more like your sibling, or I
wish you were more like your sibling.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
That's just horrible to do that. Don't do that to
your kids. It's just not nice.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
He then talks about his childhood and how he was
raised Baptist, but he has become a lot more religious
since he has been arrested, and he's read the Bible
for front to back nearly twenty three times now, that
was at the time of his testimony. I'm sure he's
probably read it a heck of a lot more since then,
because he has been in jail for a while since
(36:39):
this trial, and he said that he has a nickname
in jail, and that is Pastor Jake or Pastor Wagner,
and that just makes my skin crawl.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
But I'll digress.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
The rest of the testimony is just about the different
dynamics between the family and all of the happenings following
the murders. We've already very much talked about it. It's
just a defense going through and questioning him on everything
to try to insinuate and prove that although George Wagner
(37:14):
was present, but he was just along for the ride basically,
and he did.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Not murder anybody. He was just there.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
He was supporting his family and doing as he was told,
and he was not directly part of it and should
not be convicted of murder. So that is Jake Wagner's testimony,
all one thousand and seventy seven.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Pages of it.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
There was a lot that I trimmed down and cut
out or this series would literally last the rest of
the year, but that file is available online. I am
going to link it below in the show notes, so
if you do want to go through it and look
at it. You can go look at it.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
But that was a lot.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
That's a big hunk of this trial was Jake wagg
Your testimony, because he is essentially laying everything out that happened,
and it was a huge, huge, huge part of this case.
So that is going to be it for part six
of Summer Series twenty twenty five. Next week we're going
to get into more trial happenings and we are slowly
(38:19):
but surely turning our way through the Summer series.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
I hope you.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Guys are intrigued by the story and find it interesting.
I still to this day find this case so fascinating.
The different facets of it and the different key players
and the way that they all kind of intermingle with
each other. It's very interesting, and like I said, I
feel like the dynamics of this family need to be studied.
(38:46):
It's just so so interesting because when you think about
the loyalty of the Wagner family and how they seemed
like such a cohesive loyal unit and then they are
all charged in this eight person homicide and slowly but
surely they all start to kind of crack and things
(39:06):
are coming out that we never even would have ever
imagined coming out about just the different dynamics of the
family and.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
All of it.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
It's just very, very interesting. It is a wild dynamic.
And next week we have more trial happenings to come,
and we have a lot more to cover, not just
in the trial, but in what's going on with this case. Today,
we hear from Jake Wagner at some point in time,
we get victim impact statements from Hannah Hazel, Gilly's mother,
(39:40):
which was one of the most powerful victim impact statements
I think I've heard in a long time. I'm going
to be playing all of that for you guys in
the subsequent episodes, and we're going to get to everything
where everything stands today. George Wagner is still awaiting trial,
so we're going to talk about that. We have a
lot more to get to. So we're gonna call it
(40:01):
good for episode six. I will see you next week
for episode seven, more trial happenings. We are churning our
way through this trial, slowly but surely. I will see
you next week for that, and I will see you
later this week for a brand new unsolved case. Have
a great week ahead, and I will see you then bye,
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