July 13, 2025 • 47 mins
.
Angela Wagner takes the stand during part 7 of Summer Series 2025 where we are covering the trial of George Wagner IV. Buckle up cause Angela is a very interesting character in all of this.
Sources for episode:
https://www.fox19.com/2022/11/02/angela-wagner-you-never-get-away-with-it-you-live-with-it/?outputType=amp
https://www.fox19.com/2022/11/03/angela-wagner-back-stand-cross-examination-pike-county-massacre-trial/?outputType=amp
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pretty-lies-and-alibis/id1519114534?i=1000584727683
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pretty-lies-and-alibis/id1519114534?i=1000584858715
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pretty-lies-and-alibis/id1519114534?i=1000584982558
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pretty-lies-and-alibis/id1519114534?i=1000585007353
Angela Wagner takes the stand during part 7 of Summer Series 2025 where we are covering the trial of George Wagner IV. Buckle up cause Angela is a very interesting character in all of this.
Sources for episode:
https://www.fox19.com/2022/11/02/angela-wagner-you-never-get-away-with-it-you-live-with-it/?outputType=amp
https://www.fox19.com/2022/11/03/angela-wagner-back-stand-cross-examination-pike-county-massacre-trial/?outputType=amp
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pretty-lies-and-alibis/id1519114534?i=1000584727683
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pretty-lies-and-alibis/id1519114534?i=1000584858715
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pretty-lies-and-alibis/id1519114534?i=1000584982558
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pretty-lies-and-alibis/id1519114534?i=1000585007353
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 Masscer. 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, we
are jumping into part seven of the Pike County Massacre.
We are still in the trial of George Wagner, the
fourth There is a lot more to go. We just
went through all of Jake Wagner's testimony and we are
going to start today with the following days of the
(00:43):
trial and the different people that they had testifying. The
next up witness is a man named William Bosdiak, and
he is a shoe expert. He is a forensic consultant
and examiner and he examines footwear and tire impression. He
has a lot of experience. He has been doing this
job since nineteen seventy three and he's also written different
(01:07):
books about footwear impressions and He actually testified as well
at the Oklahoma City bombing trial as well as the
OJ Simpson trial. So this guy has a lot of
really good experience, a lot of first hand knowledge. He
knows his stuff when it comes to shoes and impressions
and all of that. So he goes into detail about
how he kind of approaches looking at different shoe prints,
(01:31):
and there's a lot of things that go into this.
This is definitely its own type of science. It of
course takes into account the shoe itself, the soul itself,
the person that's wearing the shoe, because the difference in
the way that people walk, the way that people might
pronate or overpronate. I myself am an overpronator. I'm going
(01:55):
to leave a different impression in a shoe than somebody
else will. So all of that is really really important
in the way that he goes about his business. And
then he also says that a little stone or rock
or a piece of gum can completely change the imprint
that a shoe leaves at a scene. There are two
(02:15):
different types of impressions you can get, and those are
two D and three D impressions. So the three D
prints is like a print in the soil, in the
sand or in the snow, and two D can be
from a print in dust or in blood or different dirt.
(02:35):
So he then talks about the different techniques that they
use to enhance these prints. Whether it's two D or
three D, they use different methods. One of them uses
a chemical that has hydrogen peroxide and it turns the
impression purple, and that really enhances the characteristics of the impression.
So they can dig in deep and try to figure
(02:56):
out what type of shoe, this is, how the person walks,
size of the shoe, all of that kind of stuff
can be determined from the print enhancement. And there is
a database for all of this. For people that do
this for a living, there's a database. So they are
able to go in to this database where you can
see a bunch of different shoes and the unique tread patterns,
(03:21):
and that way you can figure out what brand the
shoe is and so on and so forth. So once
they figure out what the brand is, they are able
to get samples of that shoe, so that way they
can do a side by side comparison to the actual
prints that were left behind at the crime scene. And
they very much go back and forth testing all of that.
That is so interesting to me that there is an
(03:43):
actual job where you're looking at footprints and shoeprints all day,
comparing and contrasting to try to come up with the match.
That is such a cool job. So he was of
course brought in on this case and he was given
the different lift impressions floor cutouts with the footprints that
were left at the crime scenes, specifically at Chris Senior's
(04:05):
home and Dana's house. So he ended up taking a
photo of the impressions. He reviewed the different images, and
then he went to a local Walmart and they still
had the exact shoe in a size ten and a
half and a size eleven, and he talks about how
even though the shoe is the exact same, the sizing
(04:27):
matters when it comes to the tread. So that to me,
again is so interesting. It is such a specific type
of science and analysis that it's really cool that there
are people out there that are able to do this
and are able to tie all of this back to
the scene. Now, on cross examination, they questioned him, of course,
(04:50):
because they are defending George Wagner the fourth and they
asked him, do you believe that George Wagner was wearing
these shoes at the crime scene, and he says he
can't for sure. There was some slippage noted in some
of the prince meaning that their foot could have slid
in the blood, so he really isn't able to tell
(05:10):
if George Wagner the fourth was or was not wearing
these shoes at the scene. The defense does go pretty
hard on him, and I don't really know why they're
going so hard on him with their cross examination because
Angela Wagner admitted to buying the shoes for the boys,
so there's no discrepancy that these shoes were in fact
(05:33):
used at the scene. So I really don't know why
the defense is going so hard. But they are questioning him,
and he is holding his own He knows exactly what
he is there to say, exactly what he found during
his investigation, so he holds true to everything he is saying.
The next witness up again is agent Schnyder. We have
(05:55):
heard from him before and he talked about meeting with
the victims' families for working with Jake on the plea deal.
And they go into how on April seventeenth and April nineteenth.
This individual participated in the profit with Jake and he
was one of the ones that was there when Jake
(06:15):
Wagner confessed to everything, and based on the information that
came out during the meeting on the seventeenth, that's when
they executed the search warrant at the Flying w Farms
and that is where Jake told them all of the
different firearms were located. And they went into details about
the truck that was used the night of the murders
(06:36):
and how they modified and altered the bed of the
truck and all of that. Jake went into all the
detail regarding all of that on this particular date with
this agent. They then go back into all the ballistics
and bullet fragments and residue and shotgunshells and all of that,
all the different ballistics that this case so heavily heavily
(06:58):
relies on. They went all over all of that with
Adrin Schneider and that is pretty much it for the day.
So we are now on day thirty four and Angela
Wagner herself takes the stand. So they start the testimony
flat out asking Angela if she is guilty of being
involved in the murder of these eight people, and she
(07:19):
said that yes, they planned and prepared for the murders together.
She said that although she wasn't present, she helped kind
of cover things up afterwards, and they asked her who
all was involved, and she said Billy, Jake, and George
and herself, and then they kind of go down the
rabbit hole of her and Billy's history together. She said
(07:40):
that they have been married since January twelfth of nineteen
ninety one. At that point in time, that was thirty
one years. And she talked about their first home that
they lived at from nineteen ninety three to twenty fourteen,
and she said that Jake was around six months old
when they moved in to that first house and the
(08:01):
boys had gone to public school for two or three
weeks when they were in earlier grades, and then they
decided to homeschool. And she basically just said that she
thought the schools were overcrowded and that George and Jake
would not get the one on one type of attention
and help that they needed. So that's kind of how
it became that they were going to be homeschooled. And
(08:24):
she said that both of the boys were very close.
They would go fish hunt do farming stuff together, and
she said that they were closer to her than they
were to Billy. And she said that Billy taught them
survivalist skills, basically how to steal, how to destroy different
properties for insurance payouts, and how to keep things afloat
(08:48):
in that way. She said between two thousand and seven
and eight, Billy would go and steal couches and they
would basically pull up at night and take the couches.
I don't really know where they took these couches from,
if they took them from stores or people's homes, front porches,
if the couches were left outside. I don't really know
(09:10):
the details of this. But Angela ended up being arrested
for shoplifting, and they were both arrested Angela and Billy
for receiving stolen property, so they were no strangers to
the law. Angela said she would often be the lookout
driver when Billy was going around and stealing things. She
(09:31):
said that she would often steal from Walmart tract or
supply and she would just put things in her cart
and then leave the store, which is such a bold move.
People do that all the time, and I can't even
imagine having the nerve and the balls to do that.
She said she had been to Chris Senior's home a
few times for different family gatherings and parties, and she
(09:54):
had also been to data Roden's house at some point
when she lived in the trailer that she had lived
in previously before she went to the new one. And
she also talked about how she knew that Billy was
learning some different things from Chris Senior about the drug
trade and had a girl marijuana, and at one point
(10:16):
in time, Billy Wagner had told her that she wasn't
allowed to talk to Christenior. So I think that's really interesting,
Like what exactly were you hiding. She then talks about
how George had gone and Jake had gone to a
decent mechanic school and they both got their CDLs, And
(10:37):
then they questioned her about the arson at their home
that they previously lived in, and she said that it
was an intentional fire. They burned the house down on purpose.
They also burned a trailer and a semi truck and
a garage, and she said that Billy, Jake, and George
(10:58):
all knew about this and they were all kind of
in on things together. And she said that she admitted
that they ended up moving things out of the house,
stuff that they wanted to keep and stuff that they
wanted to protect before they actually set the fire, so
this was all part of their plan for insurance money.
She also says that she doesn't know how the fires
(11:19):
were started, but they knew that they were going to
happen and they were sent intentionally. So she said after this,
they bought a semi and then they moved to the
Peterson Road house in March of twenty fourteen, and they
did put the house in Jake and George's names, and
she said the reason for this was to help them
build up some credit. She did say that Billy Wagner
(11:41):
kind of intermittently would live there at the Peterson Road Home,
and there was also times that he would live over
at the Flying w because his dad had gotten sick
and he wanted to be there to help take care
of him because his dad was very very special to him.
So Angela said for that reason she was okay with
him kind of intermittently living at the Peterson Road home.
(12:04):
She said that they ended up burning the semi for
insurance money because they needed to pay some bills and
she doesn't remember exactly what all they paid off with it,
but she does remember that they use some of the
money that they got to pay off Billy's truck. She
admitted that Billy had addiction problems trouble with pills. He
(12:26):
was always willing to try anything he struggled with taking
these diet pills and he would use them to help
stay awake while he was doing his trucking, and she
said that she and George also took them occasionally as well.
And the pill that he took was called at apects,
which is basically a stimulant. It can be abused, and
(12:49):
it's definitely not something that you should be taking because
it is dangerous and if you abuse it, it could
harm you. They then ask about Tabitha, and Angela says
that Tabitha was around ten and George was thirteen when
they first met, and they kind of would they were friends,
(13:10):
and then eventually they kind of lost contact, and then
they reunited as teenagers when tab was still in high school,
and then she came to live at the Wagner House.
George at this point in time was eighteen, and Angela
had found out that Tabby was molested as a child
and it wasn't reported, and Tabitha because of this, decided
(13:34):
not to have a relationship with her family. And Angela
said that at one point Tabitha had cheated on George,
and I guess at that point, Angela said that George
gave her an ultimatum and made Tabitha choose between her
family and his, and she picked his. Tabitha started to
(13:56):
become worried after her and George got married because it
was taken her so long to get pregnant, so she
thought something was wrong. But they eventually did have their
son in twenty and thirteen, and then Sophia, Jake and
Hannah's baby came along four months later. She talks about
thinking that Tabitha tried to poison them, including her own son,
(14:19):
meaning Tabitha tried to poison her own son. This is
what Angela thinks. And there's also reports of Angela thinking
that Tabitha put dog hair in her coffee, and basically
she recounts what happened where Angela said, oh my god, Jake,
there's dog hair in my coffee, and she said Tabitha
(14:39):
laughed about it, which, honestly, if that happened, I'm also
going to laugh too, because Angela is just straight up
not a nice person. She also talked about how she
suspected Tabitha of stealing from them. She then talks about
the final night, the night that Tabitha finally left the
home for good. And we've heard different versions of the story,
(15:03):
but according to Angela, Tabitha had a episode. She was screaming,
she was yelling, she was basically going crazy. This is
what Angela is saying, and George was trying to calm
her down. Angela was holding the baby and Tabitha was
very much asking Angela give me my son. I want
(15:23):
you to give me my child, and Angela had told
her that I'm not going to give him to you
until you calm down. And then Angela said the baby
was crying. She said she threw a piece of wood
at Tabitha and then Tabitha left. She mentioned getting a gun,
and Angela said that she only mentioned getting her gun
(15:44):
out basically to snap Tabitha out of whatever she was
going through. But she said she never planned on harming
her or doing anything with it, and she never actually
went and got the gun. So then Tabitha runs out
of the house and Jake and Angela are out there
trying to find her, and then they saw her pushing
(16:08):
her bike up the hill, and then Jake and George
went to find her and try to calm her down.
They then end up getting divorced from there, and George
gets awarded full custody and Tabitha only has supervised visits,
and she said that Tabitha only came to visit their
son three times after their divorce was final. Angela then
(16:30):
goes into the relationship between Jake and Hannah May and
she said they had started seeing each other and then
they got serious about a year after that, and she
said that the relationship with Hannah was pretty good. It
wasn't perfect, but overall it was pretty good. Angela said
that Hannah always wanted a baby and always wanted to
(16:53):
be with Jake. She said that Hannah was fifteen or
so when she got pregnant with Jake's baby. Angela said
one day she came home from work and Jake asked
his mom to go buy a pregnancy test. And Jake
had asked his mom to go buy a pregnancy test
for Hannah and was initially really concerned about Hannah being
(17:16):
pregnant but eventually ended up going to the clinic with Hannah.
She actually brought her there and then there was a
mutual friend of theirs that saw Hannah may at the clinic,
and Hannah freaked out because she was worried that her
parents were going to find out and that they would
also panic because she was young when she got pregnant.
(17:37):
Angela said that after the baby was born, if Jake
was home, Hannah and Sophia would stay with them, and
then one Jake was out on the road, Hannah would
stay with her mom and dad. She did say that
Sophia had a good relationship with Dana, but it would
eventually get to the point where, according to what Angela says,
(18:00):
didn't want to go over there. And she said she
didn't really have an opinion on Charlie Gilly or Corey Holdron,
who were both men that Hannah may Roden had dated
after her breakup with Jake. So at this point in time,
when Jake and Hannah break up, Jake starts recording the
pickup and drop offs that he does with their daughter
(18:24):
Sophia to Hannah, so he's recording these recording their interactions essentially,
and Angela said she didn't know that he was recording them,
which I don't believe for a hot second that she
didn't know and she wasn't listening to the recordings. I'm
sure she was listening to the recordings. And she also
(18:44):
had gone with Jake a couple of times to actually
pick Sophia up, so it would just make sense that
she knew about these recordings. Because this is where stuff
gets complicated, because Sophia eventually starts acting out anytime she
has to go over to her mom's house and they
start to question why. And there was a time that
(19:05):
she said George went with Jake to pick up Sophia
and Sophia was filthy. She doesn't remember the exact interaction
or if it really happened, but it was previously testified
too that that did happen. She then goes on to
say that Billy, George, and Jake all knew that she
was monitoring the different social media accounts. She had Tabby's password,
(19:30):
she ended up getting Hannah May's password. She was wild.
She said. She took hundreds, if not thousands, of screenshots,
and she would monitor the different accounts for months and
months and months on end. She would take the screenshot.
She would show them to George any information she could
get that she could use against Tabitha in the possible
(19:54):
custody battle. She screenshot at it. She did all of
that in her evening time on her iPhone or her iPad.
She was literally stalking their social media. She also admitted
that she saw the message from Hannah May about they'll
have to kill me first. She said she took a
(20:14):
screenshot of it, and she also admits that she had
first asked Hannah to spy on Tabitha when they were
both living at the Wagner family property. She then said
that she first started to become concerned when Sophia would
come home from the Rodent family's home and she would
(20:35):
start hitting her cousin Bulvine, and she was just acting
not herself. She wasn't sleeping well, she was grouchy, and
she just said that she started acting differently, and then
she said, Jake Woold bade Sophia. He noticed that she
was puffy in some of her more delicate areas, and
(20:58):
that she had a smell to her and there was
some redness that she had that would come and go,
and they thought maybe that she was being abandoned a
little bit, and her diaper wasn't being changed frequently, leading
to the type of diaper rash and redness that they
were seeing now. Following this, according to Angela, Sophia had
(21:20):
made some claims against a family member of the Rodent
family that basically caused Angela to start looking up some
child abuse stuff online. Sophia apparently did not like going there,
and she kept every time she would go and come back,
she would have the whole diaper rash problem, and so
on and so forth. I do not know if this
(21:43):
is true, if she did come back dirty, if she
had an odor. This is all what the Wagner family
has said, and there's been nothing to substantiate these claims,
so this could all just be them adding fuel to
the fire for doing what they did. There's never a
reason in life to kill eight people. If you think
(22:04):
that there is something severely going on with child abuse,
you go to the cops. You don't take it into
your own hands. And I really don't think in any
of this that any of this stuff has been proven
to be true. So it's all just really really interesting.
Angela had told Billy about all of this stuff, and
of course had told him you know, if you're ever
(22:26):
around the Rodent family, just kind of keep an eye out.
When you go to Chris Senior's house, kind of keep
an eye out. And Billy had said that he didn't
really see anything suspicious from anybody, except one time he
saw Frankie kiss Sophia on the mouth. And Sophia was
a little girl and that is her uncle. So little
kids do like the open mouth kind of kiss. They're
(22:49):
affectionate with their loved ones. He thought that that was
a red flag, but I don't necessarily think that that's
a red flag. But to each their own, I guess.
There was also another incident where Sophia had put her
finger into a muffler of a four wheeler and it
ended up burning her finger. So they just used all
(23:12):
of this as adding fuel to the fire to kind
of hatch this plan to murder these eight people. Instead
of going to the police, instead of taking Sophia to
a doctor, they just decided that they were going to
brutally kill eight whole people to solve their problems. So,
(23:33):
in my opinion, if you really thought something was wrong,
you would have gone the opposite direction. You would have
gone to the police. You would have gone to a
doctor and said, you know, she's having all of this redness.
We're concerned that she might not be getting her diaper
change frequently. We're concerned that there might be some type
(23:55):
of abuse going on. That is what you do in
those type of situations. You don't decide to brutally murder
a family of eight people. So she said that's kind
of what led to them coming up with the murder
plan in January of twenty sixteen to basically murder Hannah.
(24:16):
And she said that Billy is the first one that
suggested it, and Angela had suggested that they turn Christenior
in for the grow operations, thinking that that might give
Jake a little more leverage on the whole situation with Sophia,
and Billy said, we're not going to do that. We're
(24:36):
not going to throw him under the bus. Instead, we're
going to brutally murder him and his whole family. These
people make absolutely no freaking sense. He didn't want to
turn his quote unquote best friend in for growing marijuana,
but he was okay with murdering him. I cannot wrap
(24:57):
my head around that sense of thought. I just do
not understand these people, Angela said, that Billy very much
convinced her that they all needed to be murdered because
if they left some people alive, they would know that
it was the Wagner family and they would come and
(25:17):
shoot them. So they knew that more than just Hannah
needed to be murdered. She then said that Jake and
George were basically told about the plan, and they all
talked about how they would never talk about the murders afterwards,
they would do it and they would go on with
their lives. And she said they also talked in great
(25:38):
detail about how they were going to cover up the murders.
They were going to get rid of all of the
things that they used in the murders, the mask, the gun,
the gloves, anything else that they used in the murders.
How they were going to dispose of it. Billy basically
told her everything to buy. They were very paranoid about
talking about the murders beforehand. When they would discuss it,
(26:03):
they would always turn on background noise to kind of
drown out anything that they were talking about. They basically
were paranoid from the beginning that people were going to
catch on to what they were up to and be
like eavesdropping on them, and they were right because right
after everything transpired, they got the heck out of Dodge
(26:24):
and moved to Alaska, and they were bugged the entire
time being listened to, and that is how we are
here today telling the story. She talks about going to
the Walmart to buy the shoes and how she used
George credit card to purchase it. They have video of
her going into the parking lot and she claimed that, yes,
(26:47):
that is my car going in and out of the
parking lot. She talks about forging the custody agreement document.
She talks about using her mom's notary stamp to sign
it and for Hannah may Road in signature on it,
and all of that, which I don't even know why
you go as far as to do something like that.
(27:11):
You are just so complicit in all of this, when
you involve yourself in such a horrific way. All it
would take for all of this to not have happened,
for one person in the Wagner family who knew the
plan and knew what was going on, to say, guys,
this is wild and insane. We need to not do this.
(27:34):
And not one of them, not Jake, not Billy, not Angela,
not George stood up and said, we can't do this.
This is not a normal thought. We shouldn't be doing this.
Not one of them had the common decency to realize
what a bad idea this whole thing was. She talks
about the truck that they use the night of the murders.
(27:56):
She said that the reason that they wanted to use
a different truck is because the diesel truck that they
had would have been too loud. At least that's what
Billy Wagner said, and she said the night of the murders,
she asked Jake and George if they really wanted to
go through with it, and Jake said yes. She does
(28:16):
say that at some point that she said, everyone's heart
wasn't necessarily in it, but they decided that they had
to do it. They had to do to protect Sophia.
So they very much just were in this mindset that
all of these bad, horrible things were happening to Sophia,
and in order to protect Sophia, they had to kill
these eight people. Unfortunately, Angela said that Billy basically made
(28:39):
up his mind and it was going to happen. He
was super bossy, and none of them were doing things
fast enough for his liking. He basically was telling Angela
everything that she needed to do to make it look
like Billy's phone was at home so that way they
wouldn't be tipped off to the fact that Billy was
really at the Road family home, killing eight members of
(29:02):
the Rodin family. So it's just insane that this all
kind of transpired the way it did. Angela then said
she had a lot of emotions the night that the
murders transpired, and she even had a thought in her
mind to try to jump in her car to try
and go stop them. And she said she very much
(29:27):
was surprised that it all went down the way it did,
that they went through with it. And Angela said she
didn't ask who was killed, who killed two, and she
said that they didn't tell her. So she claims that
she didn't know how many of the Roden family members
were killed until she saw it on the news. And
(29:48):
there were also a couple other people that potentially could
have been present that night that could have also been
victims if they were there. Corey might have been staying
there that night with Hannah Chris Junior. There was going
to be somebody potentially there that was a friend of
his spending the night, and there was also a potential
cousin that might have been staying with Hannah that night.
(30:09):
But for whatever reason, those three things didn't pan out
and those people were in present. So instead of an
eleven person homicide, we had an eight person homicide, which
is still just so tragic and horrible. She said she
personally didn't go to the funerals, and they did have
a conversation with Sophia about how her mommy had gone
(30:31):
to heaven to be with Jesus, and that conversation occurred
about the week after the murders, and she said Billy
was very adamant about certain things after the murders. He
would constantly tell them what to do, what to say,
and it was just exhausting. He ended up getting frustrated
being at the house and ended up going back to
(30:51):
his mom's house to stay. So we are now on
day two of Angelo Wagner's testimony, and the day starts
off with her talking about how she very much regretted
the fact that Jake and George got involved in the homicides,
but she didn't express any personal regret for the homicides themselves,
(31:12):
but she very much said that she regretted involving her
sons in all of this. She then kind of reflects
on after the fact, when they had left and Jake
and Beth had gotten together, Beth Anne and they were
going back and forth, and she thought that they would
maybe potentially be arrested for the homicides. The prosecution then
(31:38):
asked if they had any plans for what would happen
to the kids if they were to get arrested, meaning
the grandkids, and the plan was for Billy's mom and
sister to take the kids and raise them. And then
she goes on to say that Billy Wagner never should
have been a father and he really wasn't the best,
(32:00):
and he taught his kids how to steal and commit crimes,
and she also said that he taught her those things
as well. Now, you guys know how I feel about
Angela Wagner. I feel like her testimony, all that she
is saying right now is very much painting herself in
that kind of victim mentality. I personally think Angela Wagner
(32:23):
is pulling the strings behind the scenes a lot more
than she is saying. I think she is very much
placing the blame on Billy Wagner. Now, there could be
a world where she enters into a relationship with Billy
Wagner and he is a horrible person, and he's manipulative,
and he is maybe abuser of some sort in some way,
(32:45):
shape or form, maybe mentally, verbally, we don't really know,
and she just kind of falls under his trap and
she's kind of isolated. She ends up having children with him,
and then they end up becoming a product of what
their father is. But there's also a world where Angela
Wagner on her own isn't a great person, and she
(33:07):
marries Billy Wagner, also not a great person, and they
come together and they're just not good people, raising two
people that they turn in to also not good people.
There is a world where both things can be true.
And I personally believe my own opinion that that is
the fact here because the way Angela Wagner treated the
(33:30):
women that came into her son's lives and the relationship
she had with her sons and the relationship she had
with her grandchildren, it's just interesting. It's different. It's borderline obsessive,
and it just doesn't strike me as a normal type
of mother son relationship where you're rubbing your son's back
(33:52):
when he has a wife and a baby. It just
doesn't make any sense to me, and I fully believe
that testimony from Kabitha that that stuff would happen on
the regular. Back to the testimony, she then talked about
when she saw a news alert on the TV that
Jake was going to plete guilty to the charges, and
(34:13):
that is when she officially kind of sort of decided
that she also was going to go ahead and Fleete
guilty as well. Now, at this point in time, she
doesn't know what Jake has told law enforcement. She doesn't
know what he has said, but she did agree to
talk to the state and she talked to them for
about four hours. She agreed to thirty years in prison
(34:35):
and to testify against George Wagner the fourth and her husband,
Billy Wagner. She understands that there will be no early
release for her and she will be eighty two by
the time she gets out of prison. She talks about
how much she does love her son George and hopes
that he loves her too, even though she's testifying against him.
She says she very much regrets involving him in all
(34:58):
of this stuff, and she said it's extremely hard to
testify against him. So that is it for the prosecutions
questioning of Angela Wagner, and we are now going to
get into the cross examination. And I really do want
to say, I think the defense does a really good
job in their cross examination of all of the witnesses. Honestly,
(35:20):
I think considering the topic of who they were defending,
I think they did do a pretty good job overall.
I mean, they very much had their work cut out
for them, for sure. So they talk about her mom's
involvement and how she basically pulled her mom into an
eight person homicide, and she said, yes, I did do that.
(35:42):
They also touched on the fact that she didn't really
agree to plead guilty until Jake decided he was going
to plead guilty. So she was very much willing to
kind of throw her mom under the bus in all
of this and not take a plea deal until Jake
decided he is going to take a plea deal. So
they were kind of, I think, trying to get in
(36:05):
the kind of mindset that Angela Wagner was in where
she was willing for her mom to go down for
something that she involved her in and not really say anything.
But the only reason she decided to come forward and
accept a plea deal was so that Jake didn't have
to testify against her in a trial. So this is
(36:25):
a very convoluted, hot mess web of family dynamics that
I just cannot even fathom or understand at this point
in time, because none of this computes for me. None
of it computes at all. These people are just a
wild breed. They then talk to her about her upbringing,
which I find so interesting because I always think that
(36:49):
someone's childhood truly forms who they become as an adult.
What kind of situations they get themselves into as an adult,
I think are a direct reflection of how they are raised.
So she moved out of her house that she lived
in with her parents at the age of seventeen. She
had graduated high school, she had a job, and she
(37:12):
had received a scholarship for college. She claimed that her
dad was mentally and physically abusive to her and her mother,
and she said at fifteen years old, she ran away
and after she graduated from high school, she had sex
for the first time and her dad found out and
he was pissed because she was not married, and I
(37:34):
guess that was a big no no in the Wagner
family back in the day. So she ended up kind
of trying to get her life on track, and her
dad suggested that she joined the military. So she enlisted
in the Air Force, and she was in the Air
Force for over a year, and she was unfortunately sexually
(37:56):
assaulted twice while she was in the Air Force, and
she ended up believing because of this. And I do
want to be clear, I do not think Angela Wagner
is a saint, but nobody deserves to be sexually assaulted
once twice anytime at all. So for that, I do
deeply feel very very badly for her. And who knows
(38:19):
if this is why all of this other stuff that
transpired triggered her the way it did, even if the
claims were unfound, Even if they were untrue, we do
not know how those two sexual assaults that she went
through shaped her as a person and formed her into
the adult that she is today. We do not know
(38:42):
her trauma. So after she left the Air Force, she
came back to Ohio, where she met up with Billy,
who was somebody that she had previously known because her
parents had done business with Billy's parents farm, and they
ended up getting married and they end up having children
and so on and so forth. We know the story
(39:02):
about that. They talk more about the homeschooling and just
kind of the general upbringing of Jake and George and
the dynamics. And there was also at one point a
time when the family took in a baby, and the
baby was named Jordan, and they basically took this baby
in because the mom was trying to get her life
(39:22):
in order, and they were basically taking the baby to
help aid this mom in her getting her life together.
But once all of that transpired and the mom was
finally in a position to take her baby back, Angela
didn't want to give the baby back, which is just
so odd. So Angela ended up basically being told that
she needed to give the child back and if she didn't,
(39:44):
that police or CPS was going to be brought in
and involved. Now she denies this, but there has to
be some type of truth to it. Then they asked
about how the family was essentially trying to profit off
of the murders following everything and creating the GoFundMe, talking
about how Hannah had been viciously taken and they were
(40:08):
the ones behind the GoFundMe, and they were also the
ones behind the murders. Angela said it wasn't a scheme
to get money or profit. It was just kind of
the thing you did after a tragedy. You would set
up a GoFundMe and people would send you money. They
then asked her about the different hacking and Facebook stocking
that she would do of everyone's accounts, and she had
(40:28):
a whole password book with other people's passwords in it.
She is wild. She is truly wild. I can't even
remember my own passwords, much less anybody else's. She also
admits to having George Wagner the Force plenty of fish
dating website account and password, which again is so so bizarre.
(40:50):
They even asked her at the end of this testimony
why if she had all of these concerns about Sophia
possibly being neglected or abuse, they didn't take her to
a doctor, and she says she really doesn't know why.
I personally think that because a lot of this was
unfound and they were just kind of creating these scenarios
(41:11):
and these things in their head. I'm sure there might
have been a time or two that Sophia came back
to their home and had diaper rash because she was
a toddler. But I really don't think that it was
all that they made it out to be, and I
think their paranoia really just got the best of them.
(41:31):
Another thing they very much liked to focus on during
this questioning of Angela is that they had a favorite son,
which was Jake Wagner. Now Angela says that this was
not true. They did bring up some certain instances. There
was a particular instance where Billy Wagner had choked George
for one reason or another. And then they also brought
(41:54):
up the fact that George got a truck when he
turned of a certain age and it was four thousand dollars,
and when Jake turned of that age he got one,
but it was sixteen thousand dollars. And they claimed that essentially,
Angela Wagner decided to take a plea deal so Jake
Wagner would not have to testify against her after he
(42:14):
took his plea deal. So again, this is such a
tangled web of family dynamics. I don't even know what
to think about it. So they then go in to
if Angela feels like they should have gone through with
the murders, and she says yes, because Billy told her
it was the only way. So again she's very much
(42:35):
putting the blame on Billy. Now, interestingly enough, a lot
of the times that Sophia would come home and she
would be dirty and they would be kind of concerned
about her hygiene and her cleanliness, they were already in
the midst of planning the murders of the Rodent family,
or at least the murder of Hannah. So that really
(42:55):
doesn't jive with the reason that they did this, because
it was the culmination of her being dirty, her having
the diaper rash constantly, and the potential alleged sexual abuse
that they thought was happening. That is why they decided
to go through with the murders. And the dirtiness on
(43:17):
all was happening in the midst of the murder. So
did that just add fuel to the fire, I'm not
really sure. She then says that the family did not
escape Ohio and moved to Alaska because of the murders
because they were trying to run from anything. She completely
denies those claims. They then go back and forth about
some of the details of the murders and how Billy
(43:41):
didn't use a silencer when he was first at Chris's house,
and there was some concern about that because Frankie lived very,
very close and likely possibly maybe could have heard the
shots that rang out, because we know Frankie was awake
at the time that he was killed. So there is
(44:01):
really no telling what Frankie really heard or knew about
or any of that. But they asked her how she
slept the night of the murders, knowing that this was happening.
How did she sleep, and she said she had a
really busy day, she worked, and then she took a
sleeping pill and went to sleep, so she slept great. Essentially,
(44:22):
I cannot even imagine, ever, ever, ever, knowing something like
this was going to be transpiring and just going to sleep,
drugging myself with a sleeping pill and just going to sleep.
I just cannot. She said she does regret involving her mother, Rita,
and she does in general feel bad about taking the
(44:45):
lives or being complicit in taking the lives of eight people,
and she knows that there are no words that can
make that better and bring those people back, but she
still claims that they never talk details about the homicides,
who killed two, who who who was involved, any of
that kind of stuff. She claims she has no idea
(45:07):
about any of that, which I'm not entirely sure is true.
She talks again about how difficult it has been to
testify against your son, George Wagner Befourth, and this whole
thing just stemmed from helping her family. Billy said, they
really had no other choice, And I really I would
love to see really what went on behind closed doors,
(45:31):
what conversations really happened. I do believe a big chunk
of Jake's testimony because I feel like he offers up
a lot of information, So I do feel like he
is honest. But I also half wonder if he's protecting
his mom in a lot of this and they just
decided that they were gonna make Billy the fall man. Essentially,
(45:55):
I don't know. I can't even fathom any of this
doing this as a family going through with this. And
although George did not kill anybody, he was present throughout
the whole thing. He was part of the cover up,
part of the conspiracy, And it's just insane to me
(46:17):
that all of this transpired the way it did. I
will never stop saying it. This family has the most
interesting dynamics I think of any family I've ever covered
during Summer series. And that says a heck of a
lot considering my other summer series where Lori Valo and
Dan Markel and the crazy, crazy crazy Adlson's I don't
(46:39):
even know. This is a whole new ballgame. But that
is Episode seven. We officially got through all of Angela
Wagner's testimony. She testified for about three days and that
is what she had to say. Next episode, we're going
to get into some of the following witnesses. We are
slowly but surely trucking through this trial. We have George
(47:01):
Wagner the forest testimony coming up as well, so that
is going to be oh so interesting. So I will
see you guys later this week for a brand new
unsolved cold case, and then I will also see you
next week the same time for the next part of
the summer series, which I am confident is going to
last the entire summer long. So I hope you guys
(47:22):
have a great week and I will see you then. Bye.
Welcome to Summer Series twenty twenty five The Roden Family Murders,
also known as the Pike County Masscer. 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, we
are jumping into part seven of the Pike County Massacre.
We are still in the trial of George Wagner, the
fourth There is a lot more to go. We just
went through all of Jake Wagner's testimony and we are
going to start today with the following days of the
(00:43):
trial and the different people that they had testifying. The
next up witness is a man named William Bosdiak, and
he is a shoe expert. He is a forensic consultant
and examiner and he examines footwear and tire impression. He
has a lot of experience. He has been doing this
job since nineteen seventy three and he's also written different
(01:07):
books about footwear impressions and He actually testified as well
at the Oklahoma City bombing trial as well as the
OJ Simpson trial. So this guy has a lot of
really good experience, a lot of first hand knowledge. He
knows his stuff when it comes to shoes and impressions
and all of that. So he goes into detail about
how he kind of approaches looking at different shoe prints,
(01:31):
and there's a lot of things that go into this.
This is definitely its own type of science. It of
course takes into account the shoe itself, the soul itself,
the person that's wearing the shoe, because the difference in
the way that people walk, the way that people might
pronate or overpronate. I myself am an overpronator. I'm going
(01:55):
to leave a different impression in a shoe than somebody
else will. So all of that is really really important
in the way that he goes about his business. And
then he also says that a little stone or rock
or a piece of gum can completely change the imprint
that a shoe leaves at a scene. There are two
(02:15):
different types of impressions you can get, and those are
two D and three D impressions. So the three D
prints is like a print in the soil, in the
sand or in the snow, and two D can be
from a print in dust or in blood or different dirt.
(02:35):
So he then talks about the different techniques that they
use to enhance these prints. Whether it's two D or
three D, they use different methods. One of them uses
a chemical that has hydrogen peroxide and it turns the
impression purple, and that really enhances the characteristics of the impression.
So they can dig in deep and try to figure
(02:56):
out what type of shoe, this is, how the person walks,
size of the shoe, all of that kind of stuff
can be determined from the print enhancement. And there is
a database for all of this. For people that do
this for a living, there's a database. So they are
able to go in to this database where you can
see a bunch of different shoes and the unique tread patterns,
(03:21):
and that way you can figure out what brand the
shoe is and so on and so forth. So once
they figure out what the brand is, they are able
to get samples of that shoe, so that way they
can do a side by side comparison to the actual
prints that were left behind at the crime scene. And
they very much go back and forth testing all of that.
That is so interesting to me that there is an
(03:43):
actual job where you're looking at footprints and shoeprints all day,
comparing and contrasting to try to come up with the match.
That is such a cool job. So he was of
course brought in on this case and he was given
the different lift impressions floor cutouts with the footprints that
were left at the crime scenes, specifically at Chris Senior's
(04:05):
home and Dana's house. So he ended up taking a
photo of the impressions. He reviewed the different images, and
then he went to a local Walmart and they still
had the exact shoe in a size ten and a
half and a size eleven, and he talks about how
even though the shoe is the exact same, the sizing
(04:27):
matters when it comes to the tread. So that to me,
again is so interesting. It is such a specific type
of science and analysis that it's really cool that there
are people out there that are able to do this
and are able to tie all of this back to
the scene. Now, on cross examination, they questioned him, of course,
(04:50):
because they are defending George Wagner the fourth and they
asked him, do you believe that George Wagner was wearing
these shoes at the crime scene, and he says he
can't for sure. There was some slippage noted in some
of the prince meaning that their foot could have slid
in the blood, so he really isn't able to tell
(05:10):
if George Wagner the fourth was or was not wearing
these shoes at the scene. The defense does go pretty
hard on him, and I don't really know why they're
going so hard on him with their cross examination because
Angela Wagner admitted to buying the shoes for the boys,
so there's no discrepancy that these shoes were in fact
(05:33):
used at the scene. So I really don't know why
the defense is going so hard. But they are questioning him,
and he is holding his own He knows exactly what
he is there to say, exactly what he found during
his investigation, so he holds true to everything he is saying.
The next witness up again is agent Schnyder. We have
(05:55):
heard from him before and he talked about meeting with
the victims' families for working with Jake on the plea deal.
And they go into how on April seventeenth and April nineteenth.
This individual participated in the profit with Jake and he
was one of the ones that was there when Jake
(06:15):
Wagner confessed to everything, and based on the information that
came out during the meeting on the seventeenth, that's when
they executed the search warrant at the Flying w Farms
and that is where Jake told them all of the
different firearms were located. And they went into details about
the truck that was used the night of the murders
(06:36):
and how they modified and altered the bed of the
truck and all of that. Jake went into all the
detail regarding all of that on this particular date with
this agent. They then go back into all the ballistics
and bullet fragments and residue and shotgunshells and all of that,
all the different ballistics that this case so heavily heavily
(06:58):
relies on. They went all over all of that with
Adrin Schneider and that is pretty much it for the day.
So we are now on day thirty four and Angela
Wagner herself takes the stand. So they start the testimony
flat out asking Angela if she is guilty of being
involved in the murder of these eight people, and she
(07:19):
said that yes, they planned and prepared for the murders together.
She said that although she wasn't present, she helped kind
of cover things up afterwards, and they asked her who
all was involved, and she said Billy, Jake, and George
and herself, and then they kind of go down the
rabbit hole of her and Billy's history together. She said
(07:40):
that they have been married since January twelfth of nineteen
ninety one. At that point in time, that was thirty
one years. And she talked about their first home that
they lived at from nineteen ninety three to twenty fourteen,
and she said that Jake was around six months old
when they moved in to that first house and the
(08:01):
boys had gone to public school for two or three
weeks when they were in earlier grades, and then they
decided to homeschool. And she basically just said that she
thought the schools were overcrowded and that George and Jake
would not get the one on one type of attention
and help that they needed. So that's kind of how
it became that they were going to be homeschooled. And
(08:24):
she said that both of the boys were very close.
They would go fish hunt do farming stuff together, and
she said that they were closer to her than they
were to Billy. And she said that Billy taught them
survivalist skills, basically how to steal, how to destroy different
properties for insurance payouts, and how to keep things afloat
(08:48):
in that way. She said between two thousand and seven
and eight, Billy would go and steal couches and they
would basically pull up at night and take the couches.
I don't really know where they took these couches from,
if they took them from stores or people's homes, front porches,
if the couches were left outside. I don't really know
(09:10):
the details of this. But Angela ended up being arrested
for shoplifting, and they were both arrested Angela and Billy
for receiving stolen property, so they were no strangers to
the law. Angela said she would often be the lookout
driver when Billy was going around and stealing things. She
(09:31):
said that she would often steal from Walmart tract or
supply and she would just put things in her cart
and then leave the store, which is such a bold move.
People do that all the time, and I can't even
imagine having the nerve and the balls to do that.
She said she had been to Chris Senior's home a
few times for different family gatherings and parties, and she
(09:54):
had also been to data Roden's house at some point
when she lived in the trailer that she had lived
in previously before she went to the new one. And
she also talked about how she knew that Billy was
learning some different things from Chris Senior about the drug
trade and had a girl marijuana, and at one point
(10:16):
in time, Billy Wagner had told her that she wasn't
allowed to talk to Christenior. So I think that's really interesting,
Like what exactly were you hiding. She then talks about
how George had gone and Jake had gone to a
decent mechanic school and they both got their CDLs, And
(10:37):
then they questioned her about the arson at their home
that they previously lived in, and she said that it
was an intentional fire. They burned the house down on purpose.
They also burned a trailer and a semi truck and
a garage, and she said that Billy, Jake, and George
(10:58):
all knew about this and they were all kind of
in on things together. And she said that she admitted
that they ended up moving things out of the house,
stuff that they wanted to keep and stuff that they
wanted to protect before they actually set the fire, so
this was all part of their plan for insurance money.
She also says that she doesn't know how the fires
(11:19):
were started, but they knew that they were going to
happen and they were sent intentionally. So she said after this,
they bought a semi and then they moved to the
Peterson Road house in March of twenty fourteen, and they
did put the house in Jake and George's names, and
she said the reason for this was to help them
build up some credit. She did say that Billy Wagner
(11:41):
kind of intermittently would live there at the Peterson Road Home,
and there was also times that he would live over
at the Flying w because his dad had gotten sick
and he wanted to be there to help take care
of him because his dad was very very special to him.
So Angela said for that reason she was okay with
him kind of intermittently living at the Peterson Road home.
(12:04):
She said that they ended up burning the semi for
insurance money because they needed to pay some bills and
she doesn't remember exactly what all they paid off with it,
but she does remember that they use some of the
money that they got to pay off Billy's truck. She
admitted that Billy had addiction problems trouble with pills. He
(12:26):
was always willing to try anything he struggled with taking
these diet pills and he would use them to help
stay awake while he was doing his trucking, and she
said that she and George also took them occasionally as well.
And the pill that he took was called at apects,
which is basically a stimulant. It can be abused, and
(12:49):
it's definitely not something that you should be taking because
it is dangerous and if you abuse it, it could
harm you. They then ask about Tabitha, and Angela says
that Tabitha was around ten and George was thirteen when
they first met, and they kind of would they were friends,
(13:10):
and then eventually they kind of lost contact, and then
they reunited as teenagers when tab was still in high school,
and then she came to live at the Wagner House.
George at this point in time was eighteen, and Angela
had found out that Tabby was molested as a child
and it wasn't reported, and Tabitha because of this, decided
(13:34):
not to have a relationship with her family. And Angela
said that at one point Tabitha had cheated on George,
and I guess at that point, Angela said that George
gave her an ultimatum and made Tabitha choose between her
family and his, and she picked his. Tabitha started to
(13:56):
become worried after her and George got married because it
was taken her so long to get pregnant, so she
thought something was wrong. But they eventually did have their
son in twenty and thirteen, and then Sophia, Jake and
Hannah's baby came along four months later. She talks about
thinking that Tabitha tried to poison them, including her own son,
(14:19):
meaning Tabitha tried to poison her own son. This is
what Angela thinks. And there's also reports of Angela thinking
that Tabitha put dog hair in her coffee, and basically
she recounts what happened where Angela said, oh my god, Jake,
there's dog hair in my coffee, and she said Tabitha
(14:39):
laughed about it, which, honestly, if that happened, I'm also
going to laugh too, because Angela is just straight up
not a nice person. She also talked about how she
suspected Tabitha of stealing from them. She then talks about
the final night, the night that Tabitha finally left the
home for good. And we've heard different versions of the story,
(15:03):
but according to Angela, Tabitha had a episode. She was screaming,
she was yelling, she was basically going crazy. This is
what Angela is saying, and George was trying to calm
her down. Angela was holding the baby and Tabitha was
very much asking Angela give me my son. I want
(15:23):
you to give me my child, and Angela had told
her that I'm not going to give him to you
until you calm down. And then Angela said the baby
was crying. She said she threw a piece of wood
at Tabitha and then Tabitha left. She mentioned getting a gun,
and Angela said that she only mentioned getting her gun
(15:44):
out basically to snap Tabitha out of whatever she was
going through. But she said she never planned on harming
her or doing anything with it, and she never actually
went and got the gun. So then Tabitha runs out
of the house and Jake and Angela are out there
trying to find her, and then they saw her pushing
(16:08):
her bike up the hill, and then Jake and George
went to find her and try to calm her down.
They then end up getting divorced from there, and George
gets awarded full custody and Tabitha only has supervised visits,
and she said that Tabitha only came to visit their
son three times after their divorce was final. Angela then
(16:30):
goes into the relationship between Jake and Hannah May and
she said they had started seeing each other and then
they got serious about a year after that, and she
said that the relationship with Hannah was pretty good. It
wasn't perfect, but overall it was pretty good. Angela said
that Hannah always wanted a baby and always wanted to
(16:53):
be with Jake. She said that Hannah was fifteen or
so when she got pregnant with Jake's baby. Angela said
one day she came home from work and Jake asked
his mom to go buy a pregnancy test. And Jake
had asked his mom to go buy a pregnancy test
for Hannah and was initially really concerned about Hannah being
(17:16):
pregnant but eventually ended up going to the clinic with Hannah.
She actually brought her there and then there was a
mutual friend of theirs that saw Hannah may at the clinic,
and Hannah freaked out because she was worried that her
parents were going to find out and that they would
also panic because she was young when she got pregnant.
(17:37):
Angela said that after the baby was born, if Jake
was home, Hannah and Sophia would stay with them, and
then one Jake was out on the road, Hannah would
stay with her mom and dad. She did say that
Sophia had a good relationship with Dana, but it would
eventually get to the point where, according to what Angela says,
(18:00):
didn't want to go over there. And she said she
didn't really have an opinion on Charlie Gilly or Corey Holdron,
who were both men that Hannah may Roden had dated
after her breakup with Jake. So at this point in time,
when Jake and Hannah break up, Jake starts recording the
pickup and drop offs that he does with their daughter
(18:24):
Sophia to Hannah, so he's recording these recording their interactions essentially,
and Angela said she didn't know that he was recording them,
which I don't believe for a hot second that she
didn't know and she wasn't listening to the recordings. I'm
sure she was listening to the recordings. And she also
(18:44):
had gone with Jake a couple of times to actually
pick Sophia up, so it would just make sense that
she knew about these recordings. Because this is where stuff
gets complicated, because Sophia eventually starts acting out anytime she
has to go over to her mom's house and they
start to question why. And there was a time that
(19:05):
she said George went with Jake to pick up Sophia
and Sophia was filthy. She doesn't remember the exact interaction
or if it really happened, but it was previously testified
too that that did happen. She then goes on to
say that Billy, George, and Jake all knew that she
was monitoring the different social media accounts. She had Tabby's password,
(19:30):
she ended up getting Hannah May's password. She was wild.
She said. She took hundreds, if not thousands, of screenshots,
and she would monitor the different accounts for months and
months and months on end. She would take the screenshot.
She would show them to George any information she could
get that she could use against Tabitha in the possible
(19:54):
custody battle. She screenshot at it. She did all of
that in her evening time on her iPhone or her iPad.
She was literally stalking their social media. She also admitted
that she saw the message from Hannah May about they'll
have to kill me first. She said she took a
(20:14):
screenshot of it, and she also admits that she had
first asked Hannah to spy on Tabitha when they were
both living at the Wagner family property. She then said
that she first started to become concerned when Sophia would
come home from the Rodent family's home and she would
(20:35):
start hitting her cousin Bulvine, and she was just acting
not herself. She wasn't sleeping well, she was grouchy, and
she just said that she started acting differently, and then
she said, Jake Woold bade Sophia. He noticed that she
was puffy in some of her more delicate areas, and
(20:58):
that she had a smell to her and there was
some redness that she had that would come and go,
and they thought maybe that she was being abandoned a
little bit, and her diaper wasn't being changed frequently, leading
to the type of diaper rash and redness that they
were seeing now. Following this, according to Angela, Sophia had
(21:20):
made some claims against a family member of the Rodent
family that basically caused Angela to start looking up some
child abuse stuff online. Sophia apparently did not like going there,
and she kept every time she would go and come back,
she would have the whole diaper rash problem, and so
on and so forth. I do not know if this
(21:43):
is true, if she did come back dirty, if she
had an odor. This is all what the Wagner family
has said, and there's been nothing to substantiate these claims,
so this could all just be them adding fuel to
the fire for doing what they did. There's never a
reason in life to kill eight people. If you think
(22:04):
that there is something severely going on with child abuse,
you go to the cops. You don't take it into
your own hands. And I really don't think in any
of this that any of this stuff has been proven
to be true. So it's all just really really interesting.
Angela had told Billy about all of this stuff, and
of course had told him you know, if you're ever
(22:26):
around the Rodent family, just kind of keep an eye out.
When you go to Chris Senior's house, kind of keep
an eye out. And Billy had said that he didn't
really see anything suspicious from anybody, except one time he
saw Frankie kiss Sophia on the mouth. And Sophia was
a little girl and that is her uncle. So little
kids do like the open mouth kind of kiss. They're
(22:49):
affectionate with their loved ones. He thought that that was
a red flag, but I don't necessarily think that that's
a red flag. But to each their own, I guess.
There was also another incident where Sophia had put her
finger into a muffler of a four wheeler and it
ended up burning her finger. So they just used all
(23:12):
of this as adding fuel to the fire to kind
of hatch this plan to murder these eight people. Instead
of going to the police, instead of taking Sophia to
a doctor, they just decided that they were going to
brutally kill eight whole people to solve their problems. So,
(23:33):
in my opinion, if you really thought something was wrong,
you would have gone the opposite direction. You would have
gone to the police. You would have gone to a
doctor and said, you know, she's having all of this redness.
We're concerned that she might not be getting her diaper
change frequently. We're concerned that there might be some type
(23:55):
of abuse going on. That is what you do in
those type of situations. You don't decide to brutally murder
a family of eight people. So she said that's kind
of what led to them coming up with the murder
plan in January of twenty sixteen to basically murder Hannah.
(24:16):
And she said that Billy is the first one that
suggested it, and Angela had suggested that they turn Christenior
in for the grow operations, thinking that that might give
Jake a little more leverage on the whole situation with Sophia,
and Billy said, we're not going to do that. We're
(24:36):
not going to throw him under the bus. Instead, we're
going to brutally murder him and his whole family. These
people make absolutely no freaking sense. He didn't want to
turn his quote unquote best friend in for growing marijuana,
but he was okay with murdering him. I cannot wrap
(24:57):
my head around that sense of thought. I just do
not understand these people, Angela said, that Billy very much
convinced her that they all needed to be murdered because
if they left some people alive, they would know that
it was the Wagner family and they would come and
(25:17):
shoot them. So they knew that more than just Hannah
needed to be murdered. She then said that Jake and
George were basically told about the plan, and they all
talked about how they would never talk about the murders afterwards,
they would do it and they would go on with
their lives. And she said they also talked in great
(25:38):
detail about how they were going to cover up the murders.
They were going to get rid of all of the
things that they used in the murders, the mask, the gun,
the gloves, anything else that they used in the murders.
How they were going to dispose of it. Billy basically
told her everything to buy. They were very paranoid about
talking about the murders beforehand. When they would discuss it,
(26:03):
they would always turn on background noise to kind of
drown out anything that they were talking about. They basically
were paranoid from the beginning that people were going to
catch on to what they were up to and be
like eavesdropping on them, and they were right because right
after everything transpired, they got the heck out of Dodge
(26:24):
and moved to Alaska, and they were bugged the entire
time being listened to, and that is how we are
here today telling the story. She talks about going to
the Walmart to buy the shoes and how she used
George credit card to purchase it. They have video of
her going into the parking lot and she claimed that, yes,
(26:47):
that is my car going in and out of the
parking lot. She talks about forging the custody agreement document.
She talks about using her mom's notary stamp to sign
it and for Hannah may Road in signature on it,
and all of that, which I don't even know why
you go as far as to do something like that.
(27:11):
You are just so complicit in all of this, when
you involve yourself in such a horrific way. All it
would take for all of this to not have happened,
for one person in the Wagner family who knew the
plan and knew what was going on, to say, guys,
this is wild and insane. We need to not do this.
(27:34):
And not one of them, not Jake, not Billy, not Angela,
not George stood up and said, we can't do this.
This is not a normal thought. We shouldn't be doing this.
Not one of them had the common decency to realize
what a bad idea this whole thing was. She talks
about the truck that they use the night of the murders.
(27:56):
She said that the reason that they wanted to use
a different truck is because the diesel truck that they
had would have been too loud. At least that's what
Billy Wagner said, and she said the night of the murders,
she asked Jake and George if they really wanted to
go through with it, and Jake said yes. She does
(28:16):
say that at some point that she said, everyone's heart
wasn't necessarily in it, but they decided that they had
to do it. They had to do to protect Sophia.
So they very much just were in this mindset that
all of these bad, horrible things were happening to Sophia,
and in order to protect Sophia, they had to kill
these eight people. Unfortunately, Angela said that Billy basically made
(28:39):
up his mind and it was going to happen. He
was super bossy, and none of them were doing things
fast enough for his liking. He basically was telling Angela
everything that she needed to do to make it look
like Billy's phone was at home so that way they
wouldn't be tipped off to the fact that Billy was
really at the Road family home, killing eight members of
(29:02):
the Rodin family. So it's just insane that this all
kind of transpired the way it did. Angela then said
she had a lot of emotions the night that the
murders transpired, and she even had a thought in her
mind to try to jump in her car to try
and go stop them. And she said she very much
(29:27):
was surprised that it all went down the way it did,
that they went through with it. And Angela said she
didn't ask who was killed, who killed two, and she
said that they didn't tell her. So she claims that
she didn't know how many of the Roden family members
were killed until she saw it on the news. And
(29:48):
there were also a couple other people that potentially could
have been present that night that could have also been
victims if they were there. Corey might have been staying
there that night with Hannah Chris Junior. There was going
to be somebody potentially there that was a friend of
his spending the night, and there was also a potential
cousin that might have been staying with Hannah that night.
(30:09):
But for whatever reason, those three things didn't pan out
and those people were in present. So instead of an
eleven person homicide, we had an eight person homicide, which
is still just so tragic and horrible. She said she
personally didn't go to the funerals, and they did have
a conversation with Sophia about how her mommy had gone
(30:31):
to heaven to be with Jesus, and that conversation occurred
about the week after the murders, and she said Billy
was very adamant about certain things after the murders. He
would constantly tell them what to do, what to say,
and it was just exhausting. He ended up getting frustrated
being at the house and ended up going back to
(30:51):
his mom's house to stay. So we are now on
day two of Angelo Wagner's testimony, and the day starts
off with her talking about how she very much regretted
the fact that Jake and George got involved in the homicides,
but she didn't express any personal regret for the homicides themselves,
(31:12):
but she very much said that she regretted involving her
sons in all of this. She then kind of reflects
on after the fact, when they had left and Jake
and Beth had gotten together, Beth Anne and they were
going back and forth, and she thought that they would
maybe potentially be arrested for the homicides. The prosecution then
(31:38):
asked if they had any plans for what would happen
to the kids if they were to get arrested, meaning
the grandkids, and the plan was for Billy's mom and
sister to take the kids and raise them. And then
she goes on to say that Billy Wagner never should
have been a father and he really wasn't the best,
(32:00):
and he taught his kids how to steal and commit crimes,
and she also said that he taught her those things
as well. Now, you guys know how I feel about
Angela Wagner. I feel like her testimony, all that she
is saying right now is very much painting herself in
that kind of victim mentality. I personally think Angela Wagner
(32:23):
is pulling the strings behind the scenes a lot more
than she is saying. I think she is very much
placing the blame on Billy Wagner. Now, there could be
a world where she enters into a relationship with Billy
Wagner and he is a horrible person, and he's manipulative,
and he is maybe abuser of some sort in some way,
(32:45):
shape or form, maybe mentally, verbally, we don't really know,
and she just kind of falls under his trap and
she's kind of isolated. She ends up having children with him,
and then they end up becoming a product of what
their father is. But there's also a world where Angela
Wagner on her own isn't a great person, and she
(33:07):
marries Billy Wagner, also not a great person, and they
come together and they're just not good people, raising two
people that they turn in to also not good people.
There is a world where both things can be true.
And I personally believe my own opinion that that is
the fact here because the way Angela Wagner treated the
(33:30):
women that came into her son's lives and the relationship
she had with her sons and the relationship she had
with her grandchildren, it's just interesting. It's different. It's borderline obsessive,
and it just doesn't strike me as a normal type
of mother son relationship where you're rubbing your son's back
(33:52):
when he has a wife and a baby. It just
doesn't make any sense to me, and I fully believe
that testimony from Kabitha that that stuff would happen on
the regular. Back to the testimony, she then talked about
when she saw a news alert on the TV that
Jake was going to plete guilty to the charges, and
(34:13):
that is when she officially kind of sort of decided
that she also was going to go ahead and Fleete
guilty as well. Now, at this point in time, she
doesn't know what Jake has told law enforcement. She doesn't
know what he has said, but she did agree to
talk to the state and she talked to them for
about four hours. She agreed to thirty years in prison
(34:35):
and to testify against George Wagner the fourth and her husband,
Billy Wagner. She understands that there will be no early
release for her and she will be eighty two by
the time she gets out of prison. She talks about
how much she does love her son George and hopes
that he loves her too, even though she's testifying against him.
She says she very much regrets involving him in all
(34:58):
of this stuff, and she said it's extremely hard to
testify against him. So that is it for the prosecutions
questioning of Angela Wagner, and we are now going to
get into the cross examination. And I really do want
to say, I think the defense does a really good
job in their cross examination of all of the witnesses. Honestly,
(35:20):
I think considering the topic of who they were defending,
I think they did do a pretty good job overall.
I mean, they very much had their work cut out
for them, for sure. So they talk about her mom's
involvement and how she basically pulled her mom into an
eight person homicide, and she said, yes, I did do that.
(35:42):
They also touched on the fact that she didn't really
agree to plead guilty until Jake decided he was going
to plead guilty. So she was very much willing to
kind of throw her mom under the bus in all
of this and not take a plea deal until Jake
decided he is going to take a plea deal. So
they were kind of, I think, trying to get in
(36:05):
the kind of mindset that Angela Wagner was in where
she was willing for her mom to go down for
something that she involved her in and not really say anything.
But the only reason she decided to come forward and
accept a plea deal was so that Jake didn't have
to testify against her in a trial. So this is
(36:25):
a very convoluted, hot mess web of family dynamics that
I just cannot even fathom or understand at this point
in time, because none of this computes for me. None
of it computes at all. These people are just a
wild breed. They then talk to her about her upbringing,
which I find so interesting because I always think that
(36:49):
someone's childhood truly forms who they become as an adult.
What kind of situations they get themselves into as an adult,
I think are a direct reflection of how they are raised.
So she moved out of her house that she lived
in with her parents at the age of seventeen. She
had graduated high school, she had a job, and she
(37:12):
had received a scholarship for college. She claimed that her
dad was mentally and physically abusive to her and her mother,
and she said at fifteen years old, she ran away
and after she graduated from high school, she had sex
for the first time and her dad found out and
he was pissed because she was not married, and I
(37:34):
guess that was a big no no in the Wagner
family back in the day. So she ended up kind
of trying to get her life on track, and her
dad suggested that she joined the military. So she enlisted
in the Air Force, and she was in the Air
Force for over a year, and she was unfortunately sexually
(37:56):
assaulted twice while she was in the Air Force, and
she ended up believing because of this. And I do
want to be clear, I do not think Angela Wagner
is a saint, but nobody deserves to be sexually assaulted
once twice anytime at all. So for that, I do
deeply feel very very badly for her. And who knows
(38:19):
if this is why all of this other stuff that
transpired triggered her the way it did, even if the
claims were unfound, Even if they were untrue, we do
not know how those two sexual assaults that she went
through shaped her as a person and formed her into
the adult that she is today. We do not know
(38:42):
her trauma. So after she left the Air Force, she
came back to Ohio, where she met up with Billy,
who was somebody that she had previously known because her
parents had done business with Billy's parents farm, and they
ended up getting married and they end up having children
and so on and so forth. We know the story
(39:02):
about that. They talk more about the homeschooling and just
kind of the general upbringing of Jake and George and
the dynamics. And there was also at one point a
time when the family took in a baby, and the
baby was named Jordan, and they basically took this baby
in because the mom was trying to get her life
(39:22):
in order, and they were basically taking the baby to
help aid this mom in her getting her life together.
But once all of that transpired and the mom was
finally in a position to take her baby back, Angela
didn't want to give the baby back, which is just
so odd. So Angela ended up basically being told that
she needed to give the child back and if she didn't,
(39:44):
that police or CPS was going to be brought in
and involved. Now she denies this, but there has to
be some type of truth to it. Then they asked
about how the family was essentially trying to profit off
of the murders following everything and creating the GoFundMe, talking
about how Hannah had been viciously taken and they were
(40:08):
the ones behind the GoFundMe, and they were also the
ones behind the murders. Angela said it wasn't a scheme
to get money or profit. It was just kind of
the thing you did after a tragedy. You would set
up a GoFundMe and people would send you money. They
then asked her about the different hacking and Facebook stocking
that she would do of everyone's accounts, and she had
(40:28):
a whole password book with other people's passwords in it.
She is wild. She is truly wild. I can't even
remember my own passwords, much less anybody else's. She also
admits to having George Wagner the Force plenty of fish
dating website account and password, which again is so so bizarre.
(40:50):
They even asked her at the end of this testimony
why if she had all of these concerns about Sophia
possibly being neglected or abuse, they didn't take her to
a doctor, and she says she really doesn't know why.
I personally think that because a lot of this was
unfound and they were just kind of creating these scenarios
(41:11):
and these things in their head. I'm sure there might
have been a time or two that Sophia came back
to their home and had diaper rash because she was
a toddler. But I really don't think that it was
all that they made it out to be, and I
think their paranoia really just got the best of them.
(41:31):
Another thing they very much liked to focus on during
this questioning of Angela is that they had a favorite son,
which was Jake Wagner. Now Angela says that this was
not true. They did bring up some certain instances. There
was a particular instance where Billy Wagner had choked George
for one reason or another. And then they also brought
(41:54):
up the fact that George got a truck when he
turned of a certain age and it was four thousand dollars,
and when Jake turned of that age he got one,
but it was sixteen thousand dollars. And they claimed that essentially,
Angela Wagner decided to take a plea deal so Jake
Wagner would not have to testify against her after he
(42:14):
took his plea deal. So again, this is such a
tangled web of family dynamics. I don't even know what
to think about it. So they then go in to
if Angela feels like they should have gone through with
the murders, and she says yes, because Billy told her
it was the only way. So again she's very much
(42:35):
putting the blame on Billy. Now, interestingly enough, a lot
of the times that Sophia would come home and she
would be dirty and they would be kind of concerned
about her hygiene and her cleanliness, they were already in
the midst of planning the murders of the Rodent family,
or at least the murder of Hannah. So that really
(42:55):
doesn't jive with the reason that they did this, because
it was the culmination of her being dirty, her having
the diaper rash constantly, and the potential alleged sexual abuse
that they thought was happening. That is why they decided
to go through with the murders. And the dirtiness on
(43:17):
all was happening in the midst of the murder. So
did that just add fuel to the fire, I'm not
really sure. She then says that the family did not
escape Ohio and moved to Alaska because of the murders
because they were trying to run from anything. She completely
denies those claims. They then go back and forth about
some of the details of the murders and how Billy
(43:41):
didn't use a silencer when he was first at Chris's house,
and there was some concern about that because Frankie lived very,
very close and likely possibly maybe could have heard the
shots that rang out, because we know Frankie was awake
at the time that he was killed. So there is
(44:01):
really no telling what Frankie really heard or knew about
or any of that. But they asked her how she
slept the night of the murders, knowing that this was happening.
How did she sleep, and she said she had a
really busy day, she worked, and then she took a
sleeping pill and went to sleep, so she slept great. Essentially,
(44:22):
I cannot even imagine, ever, ever, ever, knowing something like
this was going to be transpiring and just going to sleep,
drugging myself with a sleeping pill and just going to sleep.
I just cannot. She said she does regret involving her mother, Rita,
and she does in general feel bad about taking the
(44:45):
lives or being complicit in taking the lives of eight people,
and she knows that there are no words that can
make that better and bring those people back, but she
still claims that they never talk details about the homicides,
who killed two, who who who was involved, any of
that kind of stuff. She claims she has no idea
(45:07):
about any of that, which I'm not entirely sure is true.
She talks again about how difficult it has been to
testify against your son, George Wagner Befourth, and this whole
thing just stemmed from helping her family. Billy said, they
really had no other choice, And I really I would
love to see really what went on behind closed doors,
(45:31):
what conversations really happened. I do believe a big chunk
of Jake's testimony because I feel like he offers up
a lot of information, So I do feel like he
is honest. But I also half wonder if he's protecting
his mom in a lot of this and they just
decided that they were gonna make Billy the fall man. Essentially,
(45:55):
I don't know. I can't even fathom any of this
doing this as a family going through with this. And
although George did not kill anybody, he was present throughout
the whole thing. He was part of the cover up,
part of the conspiracy, And it's just insane to me
(46:17):
that all of this transpired the way it did. I
will never stop saying it. This family has the most
interesting dynamics I think of any family I've ever covered
during Summer series. And that says a heck of a
lot considering my other summer series where Lori Valo and
Dan Markel and the crazy, crazy crazy Adlson's I don't
(46:39):
even know. This is a whole new ballgame. But that
is Episode seven. We officially got through all of Angela
Wagner's testimony. She testified for about three days and that
is what she had to say. Next episode, we're going
to get into some of the following witnesses. We are
slowly but surely trucking through this trial. We have George
(47:01):
Wagner the forest testimony coming up as well, so that
is going to be oh so interesting. So I will
see you guys later this week for a brand new
unsolved cold case, and then I will also see you
next week the same time for the next part of
the summer series, which I am confident is going to
last the entire summer long. So I hope you guys
(47:22):
have a great week and I will see you then. Bye.
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