Summer Series 2025: Pike County Massacre: Part 12

We are winding up the last few days of the trial against George Wagner IV and we finally get to hear from George Wagner himself.


Sources for episode: 

https://www.youtube.com/live/Z9CediJKQHQ?si=H5vigl_3I7Ia9reQ

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Summer Series twenty twenty five. The Roden Family Murders,
also known as the Pike County Massacre. We're going to
be discussing the murders of Dana Roden, Christopher Roden Senior,
Kenneth Roden, Gary Roden, Frankie Rodin, Hannah Hazel Gilly, Hannah 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 twelve of Summer Series twenty twenty five.
We are officially on Dave forty in the trial of
George Wagner the fourth and I'm going to quickly talk
about a couple of witnesses and what they said. There
was a man named Menard Brown who he opted out

(00:45):
of being on camera, and he was somebody who the
Wagners had used to store their trailers on his property
when they moved to Alaska, and he kind of went
into the backstory of how he knew the Wagners. He said,
in twenty fourteen he was diagnosed with cancer and that
at that point in time, the Wagners would help him
do chores on his farm and his property, and he

(01:08):
said that George was a hard worker and very trustworthy
and very dependable. He said that George helped him out
for about a year a year and a half while
he was sick. And he said that once the Wagners
wanted to move to Alaska, they asked him if he
could store their trailers, and he of course said yes
because they were friends. He then said, in the midst

(01:30):
of that the search warrants happened, and of course he
had to give them permission to search the property. And
he said after the search warrants everything was a mess.
Everything was laid out all over the place and it
had also been rating, so he attempted to clean everything
up after the search warrants happened. He said that George

(01:51):
and Jake were great and he never heard as much
as a swear word come from either of them in
the time that they were around one Another witness was
a man named Alex Stanley, and he was the separated
husband of a woman named Samantha who had dated Frankie
Rodin in middle and high school. Alex said he was
familiar with the Roden family, although he didn't know them

(02:14):
very well, but he was friends with George. At one point,
George had assisted him with fixing up a car he had.
He was having issues with it and George helped him.
About two weeks after the murders, he and George had
gone fishing and they were talking about the Roden family murders,
and he said George was pretty upset and teared up
a little bit, and he didn't really think much of

(02:37):
it because he knew that George and Frankie had been friends.
This was very simple and basic testimony. But we are
going to get in to the next witness because it
is none other than George Wagner getting on the stand
in his own defense. So we're going to dig into
his testimony a little bit, lay it all out. If

(02:57):
you're interested, you can go listen to all of george
Just testimony, which I do feel like went on for
quite a while, but there's a lot to it. I'm
going to do my best to summarize all of it
and make it as clear and to the point as possible.
There are some times that he goes over things that
we've already kind of talked about, but I do think
George's testimony overall was very sincere and it's all interesting

(03:21):
because we definitely see a whole different human coming through
on the wire taps, and it really, in my opinion,
shows you that he was really just caught up in
such a horrible mess that his family is. And yes,
he very much could have made a decision to stop
all of this and made better choices. But I think

(03:42):
so far in this trial they have done a really
good job proving that he was involved in the conspiracy.
But I do feel bad for George a little bit,
which I don't want to feel bad for somebody that
took part in eight murders. But I honestly just think
that George was a product of his vironment. He was
raised to think a certain way. He didn't have the

(04:03):
capabilities or the tools to make the right choices because
he was raised in such a poor environment, and all
of that's going to come out in his testimony. I
could see very much at this point in trial listening
to George's testimony being a little conflicted as a juror.
But he is on trial for being part of the
conspiracy to commit murder, So that's very much what you

(04:25):
have to look at here and kind of put your
feelings aside. So we are going to go ahead and
get into it. So they start off by showing George
a photo of himself in twenty eighteen when he first
had his feet measured. He said he is six feet tall,
and he said at the time that the photo was taken,
he was around two hundred and eighty pounds. He said

(04:45):
that most of his life he has been overweight and
average two hundred and eighty to three hundred and fifteen pounds.
He goes on to say that he has dropped some
weight since being in prison, but he said he hasn't
been the size that he is now in many, many years.
They did show him a photo of Billy Wagner and
he said Billy is about sixty six. He then talked
about where he was born and where he lived when

(05:07):
he was younger, which was the Bethel Hill House that
he lived at until he was twenty three. They moved
there when he was one years old. They talked about
his schooling and he said he went to public school
for just a few weeks and then Angela ended up
homeschooling him and Jake. Jake and George are one year
and one month apart. He said that Angela would teach

(05:28):
them in the morning until around noon, and he said
he did enjoy math and history and that Billy taught
him his history because Billy really enjoyed the history of
it all. George then said he quit school when he
was fourteen, and he did have some aspirations. At one
point he wanted to be a game warden, but then
as he got older, Billy had kind of encouraged him

(05:50):
to be a mechanic or a truck driver. He said
that he was taught from a very young age that
all cops were crooked and that Billy did not want
his wearing the badge, hence why he didn't want him
to become a game warden. He said that he did
have a good relationship with his dad when he was younger,
and they would do all of the normal fathers and

(06:11):
things such as hunting and fishing. He then talked about
the Flying w farm and his relationship and growing up
with his grandfather as well. After the morning in school,
after they did their homeschooling, they would work on the
farm and do whatever was needed. There was a lot
of animals and George and Jake would help take care
of the animals on the farm and basically whatever Angela

(06:34):
Wagner wanted got done. He said it was about five
to six hours a day that they would do these
different chores on their farm. He then talked about Billy
teaching him to steal tractor trailer loads and pick locks
and how to steal fuel. Billy even bought he and
Jake a lock pick set to practice, and he would
have them sit there for hours until they can master it.

(06:56):
Jake mastered it very quickly and became very good at
it and could pick a lock in three to four seconds,
where it took George a little longer and his time
was about three to four minutes. But this is literally
what they did in their pastime. They would sit there
and they would practice picking locks. So around fourteen years
old is when Billy would take them to the truck
stops to break into tractor trailers and Angela was always

(07:19):
with them during all of this. It was a family affair.
They did this every weekend, and they would also steal
diesel fuel from these different spots, and somehow or another
they were able to steal the fuel and then they
were able to store at the home on Bethel Hull.
And this, like I said, was very much a family affair.

(07:41):
George said that he was taught to be a lookout
during all of these events, and he was really just
taught to be a lookout just in general. Billy would
tell them that you need to spot the cameras and
the cops before they spot you, and George recalls when
he was little that they would get a dollar for
every cop that they spotted, and they essentially made again
aim out of this. This is just odd behavior. And

(08:03):
the same goes for security cameras. They were essentially trained
to look out for these different security cameras and if
they were out and about and they missed one, they
would lose their four wheeler privileges for a week. This
is deranged behavior that Angela and Billy were teaching their kids.
I don't even have words for this. And I really

(08:24):
think that this sets the groundwork for the Night of
the murders, because it was obvious from a very young
age that George and Jake were taught these certain things,
and all of this would come into play during the
murders of the Rodent family and it did help them
go and detective for quite a long time. They did
not get caught for this crime right away, so it

(08:45):
really puts it into perspective that they were training for
this eight person homicide long before they even knew who
the Rodent family was. George said that he started drinking
when he was around twelve years old and would start
partarying when he was around sixteen, and he would hang
out quite a bit with Chris Newcomb and some other friends,

(09:06):
and he would also sometimes hang out with Frankie Rodin.
He said that he knew Hannah May Rodin through Jake,
but he didn't know that Hannah and Frankie were brother
and sister when they all first met. Frankie and George
would hang out almost daily and would hunt and fish,
and he said that he considered Frankie one of his
best friends. Angela very much didn't like that they would

(09:26):
all hang out together because George would end up leaving
and he would leave Jake alone to do all of
the chores. But George was older and of course he
wanted to hang out with his friends. This is nothing
out of the ordinary for a typical teenage boy. George
said that once he got his driver's license, he was
able to kind of go off on his own and
do more stuff on his own with his friends and

(09:48):
wasn't always stuck at home doing chores for Angela. He
talked about Jake actually getting a truck before he did,
and although the trucks were the same price, his parents
didn't want to buy both. They wanted to get Jake
his truck and George didn't get one for one reason
or another. And I think this very much paints the
picture that Jake is the baby, Jake is the favorite,

(10:08):
and that George very well knows it, and I think
he felt this, And this is kind of why I do,
in some way, shape or form, feel a little bad
for George, because I think he just wanted his family
to love and accept him, and he was always trying
to live up to not being the favorite, not being
the youngest, and I think he was just doing everything

(10:30):
he could to try to conform to what his family
wanted him to be, which I think is just sad
in a deep seated psychological way. So, like I said,
George gets his license and he very much begins to
hang out more often with Frankie Rodin, And there was
a group of about fifteen people that would all hang out.
They would all go down to the lake, they would

(10:52):
go fishing, and all hang out together, and of course
Angela Wagner did not like this at all. She constantly
told him that this was not the right type of
crowd that he needed to be hanging out with, and
that it was going to lead to him getting in trouble.
Jake would sometimes come with them, and sometimes Hannah May
would also come. They then talked about this Bethel Hill

(11:14):
home and how Angela had attempted to burn it down
initially but failed and only part of it burned down,
and then they ended up remodeling it, making it bigger,
and then it ended up burning down in two thousand
after the remodel, and in order to burn it down,
they stuffed newspapers into the fuse box, which these people

(11:35):
are just so odd. I don't even know why you're
so hell bent on burning your house down. Fredrika Wagner
then ended up buying them a new single wide, and
they stayed on the same property, and eventually they would
add more rooms and more parts of this house. And
with this, George said he pretty much had his own
space in the house, and he even had his own

(11:56):
mudroom and could enter and exit without the others in
the house knowing, so he very much liked this. Now
around the same time, Angela Wagner was running the dog
reading business and wanted Jake and George to help out
and work eight to ten hours a day. Of course,
they were not getting paid for this. George, of course
didn't want any part of this and wanted to hang

(12:16):
out with his friends because he was a typical teenage
boy and he would leave to go hunt and fish
and hang out. And this made Angela mad because she
would leave Jake alone to tend to the dogs by himself.
And let me tell you, guys that this dog breeding
business that Angela Wagner was running was wild as well.
So she would have different types of dogs and she

(12:37):
would breed them, and whenever the dogs would have their puppies,
she would say, maybe there's five puppies. She would then
go to local pet stores and find dogs that look
like they could also be part of that same litter.
She would buy them, and then she would sell them
as part of this litter. So she might have five
regular puppies from the litter, she would go buy three

(13:00):
more that looked semi similar and sell them as like
pure bread puppies. And even if one of the puppies
she bought at the pet store had like a different
type of fur. She would die their fur. This is
delusional behavior. Who dyes puppies fur? It reminds me of

(13:20):
Lori Valo dyeing baby Tyleye's hair when she was like
two and her hair wasn't blonde enough. This is delusional behavior.
If you're out there dying your puppi's hair because you're
trying to sell them as part of a litter and
they're not pure bread like you say they are, then
you have problems and you should probably just get yourself

(13:41):
checked out. But anyways, this was a huge scam for
her to buy these puppies and then sell them at
a greater value. She had about eighty two one hundred
dogs at this time, and obviously she was doing shady stuff.
Is very puppy mill like vibes. So one night they
came back from Columbus, Ohio, and the area where the

(14:05):
puppies were and the house had burned down. Riddled me
that how could that have happened? And they don't know
how that happened. But you will never convince me that
they didn't burn down all of that on their own.
But that's just my opinion because they constantly, constantly, constantly
arsened their own place for the insurance money. So following that,

(14:27):
George is now seventeen years old and the Wagoners went
to visit their pastor friends in Alaska and they stayed
there for about a week and George said that he
loved it there in Alaska and thought that it was beautiful.
They as a family decided they wanted to move to Alaska,
and they of course decided to arsen their home again
so that way they could have an excuse to move

(14:49):
to Alaska, which doesn't make any sense to me. If
you want to move, just pack your bags and leave,
don't burn it down. These people were a delude usual
bunch if I've ever seen so in all of that,
they burned this house down and then they decide, JK,
we don't want to move to Alaska. So they ended

(15:09):
up staying and rebuilding the house. But it makes you
think what would have happened if they actually had moved
to Alaska. Would we even be here telling the story
or would we be telling an entirely different story. So
they asked George about some of the other thefts that
he was a part of, and he said he could

(15:31):
go on and on for days about the different ones.
He then talks again about how he dropped out of
school in twenty fourteen, but he did eventually decide he
wanted to get some type of degree, so in typical
Wagner fashion, instead of letting him take the test to
get this degree, Angela took it for him. And he
then goes on to talk about one point in time

(15:53):
Billy started driving a truck. He became a truck driver,
and at this point he started kind of taking on
the personality of the people that he was driving with
and hanging out with. This is when he started taking
pills pretty much regularly, and he would take these pills
to try and stay awake. George said at this point

(16:13):
in time he didn't really have a lot of interaction
with his dad because of what was going on with
the pill habit, and anytime they were around each other,
it would just break out into a fight. George recalled
a particular time when he was sixteen when Jake ran
him over with a truck while he was hooking up
a trailer, and instead of being concerned and worried about George,

(16:34):
Billy took this out on George and not on Jake.
George was not hurt by this, but him and Billy
ended up getting into a fistfight, and this whole interaction
went on for a good five minutes of them fistfighting
before Angela came out and broke them up. So, as
you can see here, George is very much painting the
relationship with his father as a not great relationship. And

(16:57):
I think this is all very interesting because the direction
that all of this went, given that George is now
behind bars not just because of his poor life choices,
but because of his family's poor life choices, and the
fact that he went along with all of this even
though he obviously didn't have a great relationship with his

(17:18):
father in general, it just makes you realize how deep
that the Wagner family loyalties did lie at the time.
And it's just interesting that, in my opinion, it seems
like George was trying to do anything he could to
get his family to love and accept him, and it
just goes back to his childhood and how he always

(17:41):
viewed Jake as the favorite, and it's just very very interesting.
George then goes on to say that he and Billy
had more fistfights and arguments over the years, and this
was all in the midst of him being addicted to
these pills and driving the truck and all of that.
He was obviously in a cycle of abuse. And yeah,

(18:06):
when George was around him, I'm sure that they butted
heads because George was probably a hot head himself, and
when two hot heads butt heads, it's not pretty. He
then talked about how Billy was pretty hard of hearing,
so once Billy started taking the pills and George would
try to talk to him, he would obviously have to

(18:26):
yell at him because he was hard of hearing, and
for whatever reason, once he started taking the pills, Billy
was like ultra paranoid and thought that George was just
yelling at him in general. So he said once he
started taking the pills, he didn't really talk to his
dad very much. The last fight that George and Billy
had was in twenty sixteen during them moving from the

(18:47):
Betha Hull House to the Peterson Roadhouse, because it took
them literal years to move their stuff from one property
to the other, and there was an altercation between George
and Billy over somebody who was renting the out the
whole property and Billy ended up getting upset and punching
a window out of the passenger side of George's truck,

(19:07):
and then Billy ended up grabbing a rifle and slinging
it across the yard, and then they started to fight,
and then Billy tied George up, and they ended up
not talking for two months following this fight. So obviously
there was no lost love between George and his father,
which again I say at time and time again, I

(19:28):
think it's so interesting that George got essentially roped into
all of this and didn't try to put a stop
to it, even though he wasn't on the best of
terms with anybody in his family. We will learn that
in this testimony that he was not really in a
great place with Jake, with George, or with his mother Angela.
George said that Billy didn't really even live at the

(19:50):
Peterson Road home because he was helping take care of
his dad, who lived at the Flying w Ranch. He
also didn't really want to be around Angela. They weren't
really getting along, and I can understand why he didn't
want to be around Angela, but I digress. So he
then said that Billy and Angela were pretty much even

(20:11):
though they were still technically married, they were kind of
like a divorced couple. They lived separately. They didn't really
agree on anything. They fought a lot, but Billy would
come over to the home to visit the grandkids from
time to time. George then goes into when he met Tabitha.
Get Ready guys, Okay, get ready, So he says that

(20:32):
he first met her when he was younger and when
he lived at the Bethel Hill Home. George's aunt Robin
had set up their first meeting, and initially she had
wanted George to meet Tabitha's sister, who is named Trish,
and for Jake to meet Tabitha. They were eleven and
twelve years old when they first met, which is a

(20:52):
weird age to be setting two people up. But again
I digress. So, for whatever reason, instead of George hanging
out with Trish, he did end up hanging out with
Tabitha that day, and then they basically just spent some
time together hunting and fishing, and then they would hang
out for weeks at a time, and there was a
point in time when they would all eventually stay at

(21:13):
the Wagner family property four weeks at a time. So
Trish and Tabby would sleep in Jake's bedroom and Jake
would sleep in George's room, and eventually Trish decided she
didn't want to stay there anymore. So Angela had wanted
Jake to get his room back and offered for Tabitha
to sleep on the couch, and George was like, no,

(21:35):
that's not right. You can take my room and I'll
take the couch, but Angela was not for it, but
Billy Wagner had a better idea and said, just let
Tabby sleep in George's room with him, which no, he
was only thirteen years old, Like, absolutely not, Billy, absolutely not.
But anyways, they were officially dating at this point. What

(21:56):
a hot mess, but it would be a cold day.
And before I ever let my child stay with their
boyfriend and his crazy family for weeks at a time
at only twelve years old. That is insane behavior, absolutely insane.
But that is just my opinion on the matter. So eventually,
in this relationship, George and Tabitha ended up breaking up
and George ended up pursuing somebody else that ended up

(22:19):
not working out, and then they got back together, only
to break up again, and this time they were officially
broken up for a few years. George said that when
he first met Hannah May, it was at bear Lake
when he was around eighteen years old, and this was
before she started to date Jake. He talked about how
Hannah and Jake met, and again, Jake was seventeen and

(22:41):
Hannah was thirteen at this time, which is just weird
and bizarre, and he said he very much looked at
Hannah May like a baby sister. He said that they
would often go fishing and four wheeling, and they would
make Buckeyes together during the holidays. He said that they
were close and they would also share with one another
if they were having issues in their relationship. George said

(23:03):
that Jake didn't like that they were so close, but
George said it was nothing more than a little sister,
big brother type of relationship, and honestly, listening to him
talk about Hannah May and their relationship, it was really
interesting because I really do believe that he loved her
and cared for her, but at the end of the day,
he didn't stop her murder. So again, here we are.

(23:24):
George said that growing up, Angela would often talk to
the kids about going to Hell and basically said if
they did anything wrong, they were going to go to hell.
And Jake was always terrified of going to hell. And
George said, you know, as much as Angela talked, I
really didn't take it very seriously, but Jake did so

(23:46):
Angela would tell them even cursing could make them go
to hell. While Angela and Jake Wagner, I have news
for you. You killed eight people. I don't think it's
going to go well for you guys when you get
to the other side. George said that he and Jake,
although they were brothers, were not very close and they
didn't really have a normal brother type of relationship. He

(24:08):
said that they were very opposite in general, and Jake
was very much the type of person that was very
blunt and honest and would tell people like it was
and oftentimes would lead George's friends to not want to
be around Jake. So often George would just kind of
go off and do his own thing. Angela would always
tell George to be more like Jake, which, honestly, no wonder.

(24:30):
George is so freaking messed up because he was constantly
being compared to his brother, even though his brother sucks.
And I say that in present tense because Jake Wagner sucks.
George said that when he was nineteen, he ended up
getting engaged to Tabitha on July first to twenty eleven,
and then they got married a year to the day,

(24:51):
and he said it was happy. They had a really
good wedding. There was some stuff that didn't necessarily go right,
but they still had a great day and they got
married at the church that was on the farm, and
they were married by Kelly, the church pastor who testified earlier.
George said that once they got married, it wasn't that
much different. He ended up helping Tabitha get a job,

(25:13):
and then George goes into talking about some of Tabitha's issues,
saying that she would cry often, and there were times
that she would scream and get upset and George would
essentially have to try to calm her down and try
to hug her to get her to relax. However, he
said oftentimes it would progress and get worse, and there
would be times that Tabitha would get angry and throw

(25:34):
things at him. George said that this behavior wasn't her
fault because she very much had a rough life and
sometimes this is how she would act out. They did
try to get pregnant for about a year with no luck,
and then they did end up getting pregnant with their son, Bulvine.
George said a few months after she got pregnant, Tabitha
told him that she had an STD and that the

(25:56):
doctor had called her and said sometimes these s TD's
can lay dormant and gave her meds and moved on. Well.
George didn't really think anything of this and believed her.
He didn't think that she was not being faithful to him.
But then they were on vacation a few months later
and then another call came in and it was again

(26:18):
about the same type of STD situation, and that's when
George realized that Tabitha had been having an affair, and
she admitted to having an affair with her best friend's dad.
George was obviously upset by this. He felt betrayed, but
Tabitha said that the baby for sure was his, and
they decided to kind of stay together and work the
way through it. Now. I'm not sure the context of this,

(26:40):
but there was one point in time when Tabitha was
in the hospital and George attempted to break up with her.
I don't know if this was when she was in
labor having their son, I'm not really sure, but of
course she ended up being upset and crying and he
ended up just deciding to stay. The day that Bulvine

(27:00):
was born, George said was great, but of course he
had those lingering feelings in the back of his mind
that Bulevine might not be his. So they did run
a paternity test and it was confirmed that Bulevine was
George Wagner's baby. So September twenty thirteen is when they
were getting ready to move from the Bethel Hill property

(27:22):
to the Peterson Road property, and Angela had burned the
house down because she didn't want anyone living in their
old home, so she decided to burn it down. Now,
this property had a ton of different buildings on it.
It was all part of the Flying w property, so
there was like a lot of different buildings. So her
burning down their primary residence doesn't mean that the other

(27:43):
buildings on the property that were owned by them were
burned down as well. So it was just the part
that they had been living in. So Angela was just
that person. She didn't want someone to have it, she
was going to burn it down. George said that they
all lived on Peterson Road except for Billy, who would
just visit the grandkids. Again, we've already kind of gone

(28:03):
over this, and he said that Billy didn't really get
along with Angela because Angela wanted things done her way.
And he said again, Billy and Angela may have will
been divorced at this time because they fought, although they
were cordial around the grandkids. Again, some of that is
repeat testimony, but I'm just bringing it all back in

(28:24):
because I'm going literally hour by hour in this trial
and just kind of taking notes on everything. George talked
about all of the different chores that he had to
do while he lived on Peterson Road, and he said
he did things his way, although Angela had her way
of wanting things done. She would always say that it
was her house and she was paying the bills and
she wanted things done a certain way, despite that not

(28:46):
being the truth. George and Jake were the ones who
were paying the bills. They were splitting things half and half,
and George didn't really think of this as weird because
it was just kind of the way they always did things.
Same goes with the credit card and all of the
other stuff that were in George's name, although Angela was
actively charging stuff on the cards and all, so George

(29:09):
said that mostly it was himself an Angela that took
care of Bulvine at that time, and anytime that Tabitha
would end up taking care of Bulvine, he would end
up with more injuries, and they didn't really think that
she was capable of being a good parent. George straight
up at one point in time just called Angela a babysitter,
which I'm sure actually ruined her life because in her

(29:32):
mind that was her child. She thought that she was
Bullvine's mom. There was one point in time on the
wiretaps where she was like, don't call me his grandmother.
That's exactly what you are. But in this testimony he's
calling her the babysitter, which we love for her. George
also recalled another time in twenty fourteen when Angela and
Hannah May were basically having a fight and they ended

(29:55):
up pulling Tabitha into it, and at this point in time,
George decided he wanted to leave because he was just
tired of being around Angela, and he said that she
would always start stuff and that she always acted like
she was better than everyone. Now there was a time
that he came home one day and found Tabitha bloody
and was trying to take her own life with the

(30:15):
Pari scissors. And this was following an altercation with Angela.
What is the common denominator here, It's Angela, So George said,
at this point he just wanted to take Tabitha and
their son and moved to Alaska to get away. He
talked again about him and Jake's relationship and how it
wasn't great and Jake would often tell George that he

(30:36):
was going to end up going to hell. George then
talks about him and Tabitha's last night together, where Tabitha
ended up leaving, and how everything kind of transpired and
so on and so forth. It became a whole thing.
We've already talked about that in previous episodes. But of course,
as we know, Angela ends up getting involved and it

(30:56):
just became a whole thing. So they ended up, of
course breaking up. He filed from divorce and Tabitha basically
said she wasn't going to fight the custody and was
going to leave Bulvine with George. They ended up going
to parenting classes, and George said, despite everything that was
going on. The relationship was pretty normal. She would come

(31:18):
for Thanksgiving and Christmas that year and spend it with
the family. He said that they would have supervised visits
because of Tabitha's fits, and sometimes she would get violent
when these fits would happen, and she didn't really have
control of herself when she was in one of these states.
And he said that from the time Tabitha was little,

(31:39):
her mom would hold her down while her stepdad would
assault her. And he really did look very emotional and
upset during this testimony, and he said that this was
the reason that he didn't want Bullvine around Tabitha's family,
which I would say is probably pretty fair. I think
he probably did deal with a lot from her, and

(32:00):
he sounded like he was trying to be a good
husband and a good partner to her, but he was
just very limited because of Angela Wagner's influence and the
things that I think Angelo was filling his head with.
So I do think in a perfect situation away from
his family, that George Wagner could be a good guy.
I really really believe that if he had just gone

(32:23):
to Alaska and gotten the heck out of Dodge from
the rest of the wacky Wagners. I think he really
could be a good guy and a good dad, but
unfortunately that's not where we're at right now. George said,
during his divorce with Tabitha, he didn't really want to
be vindictive and try to trick her at all about
custody of Bulvine, because she flat out said that she

(32:45):
wasn't stable enough to take care of Bulvine. They then
show a wedding photo of George and Tabitha's wedding day,
which I've already posted on my social media a couple
of weeks ago. It's really chilling because it is the
Wagner and Roden family together in this photo. They then
talk about a family who rented out the property at

(33:07):
times during hunting season and there named the Rotans, so
Rodents and Rotens. George talks about the dad who was
named Rick, and he got very close with George, and
George said he looked at him like a father figure,
and Rick would often talk to him about not going

(33:27):
down the same path as his father, and he said
it took him a long time, but he eventually did
take this advice, and it was around the time that
he married Tabitha. That he decided to straighten up, and
once Bulvine was born, he stopped going and partying like
he used to. He kind of gave that lifestyle up.
George said he visited the Roton family in Virginia at

(33:49):
times and he would go up there and hunt and fish.
George said he was a dear addict. He loved to
hunt and he ate, slept and breathed here. He said
he'd often spend all day in a deerstand, and of
course this caused a lot of issues with Angela. He
said that he would flat out abandon his work on
the farm at home and would go hunting with the rotents. Angela,

(34:11):
of course, very much played this up and would whine
and complain that Jake was the one having to do
everything by himself. Again, another prime example of Angela obviously
having a favorite child and wanting George to feel bad
about Jake having to be left alone doing the chores
on his own. I think somewhere along the way George

(34:32):
started to kind of develop where he would feel bad
about some of the stuff he was doing, as far
as stealing from truckers and stuff. And he said that
his dad would always tell him that nothing that they
did as a family. Stealing items from these truckers really
did anything to hurt the trucker himself, just the company
and the big corporation, and George very much started to

(34:53):
realize that that wasn't the case. And often he would
hear stories of some truckers who would have issues getting
jobs because had different loads and stuff that were lost
or stolen along the way. And I think this is
really where George was starting to see that his family
was not the greatest and really had some really bad

(35:13):
things that they had involved him in. But I think
at the same time, he was also in too deep
because this was his life. He had been doing this
literally his whole life. He had been raised to do this.
So although I think he kind of had those thoughts
of this isn't right, we shouldn't be doing this, he
also was in way too deep. They then asked where
Bulvine slept, and George said that sometimes he would sleep

(35:36):
in the room with him, and sometimes he would sleep
in the room with Angela. It really just depended on
Bulvine's mood and what he wanted, George said. Initially, Jake
and Hannah were hanging out a lot more, and eventually
they were together, and George was glad about this because
he looked at Hannah may like a little sister. Billy
and Hannah got along really well, as did Angela and Hannah,

(35:58):
and he said that they would often be together and
Hannah followed Angela around like a love sick puppy, which
I think is interesting because obviously their relationship shifted at
some point in time, but this is a really interesting
dynamic of Hannah and Angela really getting along very well
and Hannah seemingly looking up to Angela. Jake and Hannah's

(36:21):
relationship would eventually go south, and he said that they
would argue a lot because Hannah wanted to do regular
teenage stuff and Jake didn't want her to do that.
And this is very much the same type of control
we see from Angela with her kids, and then we
see it with Jake and Hannah. George talked about how
Angela and Billy at one point in TI were running

(36:41):
pills and they would go to Florida for X rays
and then they would go get a script for these pills,
and they basically did this whole charade for years, and
at the time they would leave Jake and George on
the farm alone. This is when they were maybe like
thirteen and fourteen years old, and George said that he
really liked when they would do that and when they
would leave because he was alone and he was able

(37:02):
to do his own thing without Angela in his ear
yelling at him about trying to go hunting or go fishing.
George recalls a couple of times when Jake would do
something wrong and George would get blamed for it. They
asked George to describe Jake, and he said over opinionated, greedy, selfish,
and jealous. He said. Angela was described as over opinionated,

(37:26):
thinks she's better than everybody else, and very manipulative. They
asked for an example of this manipulation, and he said
that once Bulvine was born and in the picture, when
Bulvine was about three, Angela would tell Bulvine that George
was choosing hunting or girls over his own son, which
obviously is totally manipulative. You don't want to use a

(37:48):
kid to make a parent feel guilty. That's not cool.
George then goes on to say that Angela treated Sophia
and Bulvine pretty well to a point, but he very
much that Angela was kind of using the grandkids, especially Bulvine,
to kind of start over, because in George's mind, she

(38:09):
was constantly telling George that he was a disappointment and
he was technically the worst Angela's words, not mine, and
he very much thought that Bulvine was the favorite grandchild.
And we also heard Jake testify to this as well,
and that Angela was basically trying to start over and
start anew with Bulvine. Basically, I'm going to try to

(38:31):
manipulate this child to grow up to follow in my footsteps,
versus George, who kind of even though he did follow
in Angela's footsteps, he also was a little more difficult
for her to manage and wrangle, which I think made
her mad, which I think is why she treated him
the way she did. The family dynamics on this case

(38:52):
are something that needs to be studied, because Holy Molly,
and this is why I do feel bad for George
Wagner inside way, shape or form. I really go back
and forth on all of this. It's when you look
at the deep seated psychologicalness of it all, it really
is just so telling that George was very much a

(39:15):
product of his own environment and like what surrounded him
as a child he became as an adult. So at
one point in time, Angela had attempted to have George
sign custody of Bulvine over to her. She gave George
the impression that he wasn't any good and not a
good father, and basically wanted him to leave so she
could raise Bulvine herself. They asked about the Wagner family dynamic,

(39:40):
and he said there were good times, but mostly they
were all constantly yelling at one another, and this was
very normal for the family. They never got along. They
were always screaming at each other. And I think we
saw this when we think back to the episodes of
the wire taps, where it's just a bunch of yelling
and screaming. And I can't even imagine living behind the

(40:01):
doors of the Wagner family home with all of them
there together. Oh my god, no wonder Billy moved out. Honestly,
really insane. So George was then asked about Angela being
in the military, and he said that he knew she was,
but he never once saw her handle or shoot a gun.
There was a lot of gun talk, gun storage talk,

(40:24):
and talk about George and Chris Newcomb's selling guns, and
it went on and on and on. We've had a
lot of gun talk in this trial. We know that
George is very, very knowledgeable about guns. He knows the
ins and outs of guns like the back of his hand.
So he had basically said that between him and Chris Newcom,
they had sold thousands of guns and they would often

(40:44):
trade them at times. Like I said, he really knew
his stuff. I don't think it's super important for me
to go into all of the detail about all of
this because it's already kind of been talked about. But
basically this is establishing that George knew his stuff when
it came to guns. They asked George about his different
tattoos because he does have one tattoo that is a

(41:06):
magic eight ball and it also has the dead Man's
Hand card on it, which is aces and eights, and
they asked him about this. Now he said he got
his first tattoo when he was thirteen years old and
it ended up not being a great tattoo because it
was done by a tattoo artist's son, so it was
kind of janki and he eventually ended up getting it

(41:29):
covered up, and they decided to cover it up with
a skull and eight ball, but then the tattoo artist
just started adding more things on. He added on the
cards the dead man's hand and a spider and a web,
and basically, before he knew it, this tattoo had turned

(41:49):
into something that he didn't really plan on it. But
overall he was okay with it because he wanted it
to cover up that first tattoo, So that was kind
of the story behind it. They very much we're trying
to say that he had that dead man's hand tattoo
and that had some significance in him essentially becoming a
eight person killer. Even though he didn't technically pull the

(42:10):
trigger or kill anybody, he was there. He was involved.
That's why we're here on trial. So they asked him
about his different relationships with everybody. He was asked about
Gary Rhoden, and he said he did talk with Gary
some and they had been hunting together at some point
in time, which Jake had also testified to. George said,

(42:31):
once he and Frankie started having children, they didn't really
hang out as much like they used to or as
much as they wanted to, but he still did consider
him one of his best friends. And my theme of
this series is with friends like the Wagner family. Who
needs enemies? Holy crap. He then talked about his different
relationships with other members of the Rodent family. He said

(42:53):
that he had been to Dana Roden's house a few times.
He said that he knew the house that Frankie rod
In lived in very well. He obviously went there a lot.
He knew that sometimes Frankie would spend the night at
his dad's house. George then testified to the fact that
he knew nothing of the Wagner family wanting to kill
the Rodent family, and he doesn't know of any reason

(43:15):
why they would actually plan to do that. He said
that Jake never told him anything or asked him to
help him in any way, shape or form. He said,
if they had, he would have not believed it at first.
And they asked him, well, if they're capable of robbery
and stealing and arson, why do you think that they

(43:36):
would stop short of murder? And he just said, you know,
robbery is one thing, but murder is a whole different
can of worms, which he's not wrong. And they asked him,
you know, what would you have done if you had
been asked to help in this, and he said he
doesn't really have an answer to that, but he would

(43:57):
have done whatever he could have to stop it. And
oh my god, I just don't know about all of this,
Like I'm trying to think as a juror what I
would be thinking right now, because I have been very
back and forth on this whole thing. I did follow
all of this during the trial, and I remember thinking,

(44:17):
obviously he was involved. He was there during the murders.
He didn't technically pull the trigger on anyone, but he
was there, which means that he was part of it.
And I still very much believe that. But some of
his testimony I can see it swaying some of the jurors.
Now spoiler alert, he has found guilty, so it obviously

(44:39):
did not do him any favors. But I do believe
there is some truth in some way, shape or form
to what he is saying, and knowing the Wagoners and
how they are, how Angela is, how Jake is. I'm
not even going to include Billy and this we I
don't even know about. Billy's an outlier for me. I

(45:01):
know they blame the whole thing on him, but he's
very much an outlier for me. I do think that
George knew what was going on, but I don't think
he thought that they would actually go through with it,
and I think he was way in over his head.
He again had to basically go along with what his
family wanted because they were constantly putting him down and

(45:25):
making him feel less, and I think maybe in his
head he thought if he went along with it, maybe
they would finally accept him. Again, we get into all
of the deep seated psychology of it all, where you
really wonder what was going through George's head in all
of this and why he did go through with going

(45:46):
Because if anybody told me that we were going on
a secret mission, I would obviously be on board for
the secret mission. But the second that the secret mission
involved murdering eight people, I would be out so quickly,
and then I obviously wouldn't help try to cover it
up after the fact. So it's interesting this whole dynamic,

(46:08):
all of it about George being involved, and you know,
George being involved in the conspiracy to commit these murders.
So that is where I'm going to leave you guys
offer today we still have quite a bit of George
Wagner testimony to go through. I don't want to overwhelm
the episodes with all of this stuff, because there is
a lot of information being shoved at us via this

(46:30):
testimony from George. So we are almost there, though. We
are so close to the end of this trial and
the verdict, and once I go through the rest of
this testimony, We're going to quickly summarize closings, which I'm
not going to take a long time on, and then
we're going to get to the verdict, which I already
told you he was found guilty spoiler alert. But we're

(46:52):
then going to talk about the sentencing, and then we'll
talk a little bit about where everybody else in the
family stands today and talk about some of the victim
impact statements and go from there. We are getting close,
we really are. We're getting close. So I'm hoping to
have this series wrapped up in about two more episodes probably,

(47:14):
and I will see you next week for the rest
of George Wagner's testimony, and then we're going to get
to the end of this trial. We are getting there,
slowly but surely. This has been such a crazy summer series.
And yeah, I'm in way over my head with all
of this stuff, but I'm glad we got through the wiretaps,
and we are now nearing the end of this forty

(47:36):
plus day trial. So I will see you guys next week,
and I hope you have a great week ahead. And
I will see you Thursday for a brand new unsolved case. Bye.