We are revisiting one of the most brutal and complex crimes we have ever covered: The Pike County Massacre, also known as the Rhoden Family Murders.

Six years ago, we first discussed the shocking event where eight members of the Rhoden family—four adults, three young men, and a teenage boy—were executed at four different homes in rural Ohio on the same night. At the time of our original episode in 2019, the Wagner family had just been arrested.

Now, years later, the trials and sentencing of the four members of the Wagner family are complete, and we are bringing you a comprehensive update on the fate of George Wagner IV, Jake Wagner, Angela Wagner, and Billy Wagner.

In this update, we detail the chilling motive that led to the execution-style murders:

  • Custody and Obsession: The motive was centered on a heated custody battle over a young child shared by killer Jake Wagner and victim Hanna May Rhoden.

  • The Plea Deals: We discuss the shocking plea deal struck by Jake Wagner, who pled guilty to all eight murders to spare his mother and father from the death penalty.

  • The Sentences: We cover the emotional and tense courtroom proceedings that led to the sentences for all four family members, including the life without parole sentences handed down.

  • The Unanswered Questions: While justice has been served in the eyes of the law, we still explore the lingering questions surrounding the planning, the execution, and the sheer ruthlessness required to wipe out an entire family.

Join us as we close the chapter on this dark episode in Ohio's history, examining the convictions, the sentences, and the final search for peace for the surviving Rhoden family members.

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[00:00:00] Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I am doing well. How are you this week? Doing wonderful. It's beautiful. Haven't been happier. Couldn't be happier. Really enjoying it, and I'm not being sarcastic.

Okay. Well when you say haven't been happier, I mean like in your whole life or just week. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna take it back. It's been a nice day. How about that? There you go. There you go. I'll at least give you that. I'm very excited this week because we are revisiting an case that we covered a while back, but at the time we covered it, it was kind of just starting and we did say we're gonna keep an eye on this one and find out what happens.

And uh, here we are coming back to it and doing that six years later. Yeah. So if you've been listening to us for a while, you might remember when we covered the story of the Rodin family murders back in July of 2019, also known as the Pike County Massacre. And at that time, the Wagner family had just been arrested for the murders of [00:01:00] eight members of the Rodin family.

This was that big story, and it was like. Not only was an entire family murdered, but an entire family was behind murdering them, right? So it was really just a wild, wild story. But the case was just beginning when we recorded that episode, and the arrest had happened in November of 2018, and we were kind of all still waiting to see what was gonna happen next.

And a lot has happened since then. Yeah, so if you're new here and you've never heard this story, buckle up because it is so wild. And if you listen to our original episode back in 2019, definitely stick around to the end because we have so much to tell you about what happened after we hit stop on that recording.

So here's our original episode on the Rodin Family Murders from July, 2019, and we'll see you at the end with the update.[00:02:00] 

Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Murder podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi Mandy. How are you? I'm doing well this week. How are you doing? Pretty good. We're just finishing up summer around these parts and getting ready to get into school and I think we said that last week, but the pressure is mounting more and more every week, so that's where I'm at.

It is, I know, it's so hard to believe, although I don't think you can say summer is ending. We have a lot of summer left here in central Florida, so we've got to like mid-November of summer. Yeah, so we, we, we've got a ways to go, but school, it is almost back to school time. Right. That's exciting, right? Are you excited?

Yeah, I'm really excited and totally prepared. This isn't going to be difficult at all. Yes. We'll get it though. We'll figure it out. All right, so this week's story [00:03:00] is super, super fascinating, but this is one of those ones where you're gonna want to get out your pen and paper and probably take notes because there's so many names in this story, and.

I know we've said that before, but this time I really mean it. There are so many people involved in this story. It's a little bit hard to keep track, but hopefully we will tell the story in the least confusing way possible. Well, actually that's hilarious because we will find a way to make it very confusing.

Your notes are a beautiful and make total sense, but I feel like the interjections is where it's really gonna be complicated to keep people on the right track. But we'll do it. We'll do it. I believe in us. We can. We can do it. So the story this week is coming out of Piketon, Ohio. And Melissa, have you Googled Piketon, Ohio?

Mandy? I have. And there wasn't a lot of information, but here is what I did find. Piketon, as you learn in this story, is really a very small area with just over about 2100 residents. So I wasn't able to find a, a whole [00:04:00] lot meaning like. Basically nothing except for square mileage. So I went out to the next biggest city, which is Cincinnati.

Cincinnati is actually the first major inland city in the country and was commonly referred to as the Paris of America because of its ambitious architectural projects like the Music Hall and Cincinnati Hotel, Paris of America. So fancy. So Cincinnati's been called, and here's where it gets less fancy.

The chili capital of America and even the world, because it has more chili restaurants per capita than any other city in the nation or world. Hold on. So not chilies, but just No, no, exactly. Chili. I didn't know there was even. I have to be honest, one chili restaurant, we're not talking Chili's that Pam Beasley got kicked out of.

We're talking about actual restaurants that serve chili as like a main course. I would be That's amazing. So down for that, right? It sounds amazing. So they have a famous chain restaurant there called Skyline Chili. Well, [00:05:00] now that I'm saying it back to myself, if it's a chain, there's definitely more than one.

They serve up their signature brand of chili, which is really thinner and sweeter. And some of them include nutmeg, all spice. Cinnamon or even chocolate. I have heard of people putting cinnamon in. I have too chili. I've done it once. I didn't like it. I probably put too much. I don't know. I'm terrible with spices one time.

Called, something called, this was very early in my marriage. It called for curry and like mayonnaise, and I didn't have curry, and so my next logical thought was cinnamon, and it did not. My husband always talks about the time I tried to make Indian food and added cinnamon. It was terrible. But we were married not very long, so we kind of went along with it.

So Cincinnatians, which is what they're called, and it's not a mouthful at all, eat over 2 million pounds of chili each year. I feel like I could do pretty well in Cincinnati. Yeah, I'm really enjoying it. Yeah. Except I think, don't they put it on pasta? You wouldn't like that? Oh [00:06:00] no. That's where you'd lose me.

But I could do it every other way except for pasta or with coffee. I would be over all of that. And lastly, in 1850, Cincinnati became the first US city to publish greeting cards. And in honor of this, Mandy, I present to you the three worst greeting cards Mandy could ever receive. Number three.

Congratulations, your child has been accepted to Florida State University. Number two. This one's a condolence card. This one is, sorry. Your meme about Chipotle got down voted by a hundred people. That's a Reddit joke for you. Thank you Stacy, the third mom, for helping me with that one. I was like, I have to get around joke.

Okay. And lastly, number one, the number one worst card that Mandy could ever receive is get well Zoom card and the inside would just read. Feel better soon. Who knew you could develop an allergy to chickens at your age? Oh, no.

I love those. There [00:07:00] you go. I mean, they're terrible, but I love them. So as Melissa just got done explaining, Piketon is an extremely rural and small, small village. It is very, very close knit community and it's really the kind of place where outsiders aren't exactly welcomed with a warm hug or they're really not welcome at all.

The people who have lived there have lived there for. Generations Really. They have just laid down their roots there and that's where they stay. There's lots of farming in the area. There's lumber and sawmills, and the village's economy kind of has its highs and lows. It swings a little bit and usually have a very high unemployment rate, so some people will move away and others will stay because as I said, that's where their home is.

That's where their roots are. One of the well-known families in Piketon was the Rodin family. They were relatively new to the village with the first rodents moving to Piketon a little more than 50 years ago and producing eight children. When the rodent patriarch died, each of his eight children got an equal share of the property that was owned by the family.[00:08:00] 

Some of the siblings moved away. While others stayed put. One of the siblings that stayed in Piketon was Chris Rod. He settled down with Dana Manley in 1994 and the couple built a nice small town life producing three children of their own named Frankie, Chris Junior, and Hannah. Chris Senior was resourceful and provided for his family by working construction jobs and also flipping cars when the construction work was slow.

Dana was a very nurturing and kind nursing assistant at a local nursing home, and she was really this kind of woman that everyone described as just being the mother, the mother of the group. So whenever her kids' friends would come over, you know, she would mother them and you know, it was just fun to hang out with.

And I think growing up, everybody has a friend who's parents were just like, not the cool parents, but they were just the ones who, they were always, they would give you stuff, they would give you food, they'd give you. They would be there to talk to you if you needed someone to talk to. So that was, that was Dana and Chris Sr.

That was how they were. That's they were known around town as kind of being [00:09:00] everybody's parent, everybody's best friend. So Chris and Dana eventually grew apart and they eventually got divorced in 2007, but they remained close and they maintained a co-parenting relationship for their three kids. After the split from Dana, Chris Roden Sr.

Shared a home with his cousin named Gary. While Dana and the kids moved into another home that was also on the Roadin property. As I mentioned before, they have a lot of land this family has owned for years and years. So there's many different, it's not just one house on a property. There's lots of different homes that are on property that is owned by the Rodin family.

At the time of this story, Chris and Dana's children were mostly grown up. Frankie was 20 and he loved to be outdoors hunting or fishing, and loved to hang with his friends and family. He was also very popular among the girls who were attracted to his handsome looks and his mischievous personality.

Frankie was also big into demolition derby and loved cars in general, which was a passion that he shared with his 16-year-old brother Chris Roden, [00:10:00] Jr. Chris Jr. Was affectionately known as Little Chris, and he was full of personality and really was not bothered by what anyone's opinion of him was. He had a tight knit circle of friends that he loved to drive around since he was the first to get his driver's license.

He just seemed like a really happy go lucky kid. Chris Jr. Was rugged and lived in jeans, boots and a camo jacket, and he was just really like what you would expect of a, of a country boy who grew up living this country, living life. Dana and Chris Sr. Also had one daughter named Hannah Rodin, who aspired to be a nurse just like her mom.

She became a mother to a daughter named Sophia when she was just 17 years old, but she loved being a mom and she absolutely doted on her little girl. Sophia's father was a boy named Jake Wagner, who was from another well-known family in the community. And even though their relationship did not work out, they shared custody of the child and these two families stayed very closely knit.

As Mandy mentioned earlier in the story, there were many members and [00:11:00] extended members of the Rodin family living in Piketon. Some that we're gonna talk about a little bit later in the story, but the rodents were also very close with Dana's family, the Manley. So Chris and Dana were married, and her side of the family was also close.

My dad has this kind of in his family in this one area in Georgia. Everybody lives on the same road or like the same property. I could totally picture this, my dad's sister, and then. Her husband's family. So it's like these two sides of the family. Everyone's completely close and always has been, and you kind of don't know who you're related to, which gets a little confusing after a while.

So these families literally worked and lived together and they almost had their own little commune, and it wasn't uncommon for anyone to show up at each other's houses and help out with chores and other daily tasks. But on April 22nd, 2016, this rural community was changed forever when a horrifying crime was discovered in the early morning hours.

Bobby Jo Manley, who was Dana Rodin's sister, headed over to the trailer where Chris Roaded Sr. Lived with his cousin Gary. She was there on a routine visit to feed the animals, including chickens and several dogs that lived on the property. [00:12:00] When Bobby Jo arrived around seven o'clock that morning, she realized that the dogs were nowhere to be found, and when she knocked on the door of the trailer and got no answer, she proceeded to use a key to let herself in.

And that's when she realized that something terrible had happened overnight. Both Chris Roden Sr. And his cousin Gary, were found lifeless inside the home. Bobby Jo was shocked and horrified at what she was seeing, and she ran from the home to another trailer on the rodent property where Frankie Roden and his fiance, Hannah Gilly, lived with her six month old son.

So Frankie is. Chris and Dana's son, one of her, one of their sons. Right. And Hannah is his girlfriend. Right? Right. Yeah. It gets, it gets a little bit confusing because there's actually two Hannah's in this story. So there's Hannah Rodin, who was the daughter of Dana and Chris Sr. And then Hannah Gilly is Frankie Rodin's fiance.

So. I know that's a little bit confusing just 'cause they have the same name. But yeah, Hannah Gilly was with her fiance, Frankie Rodin, at their, at their trailer. And then one tragedy turned into a terrifying nightmare [00:13:00] when Bobby Jo discovered that both Frankie and Hannah had also been shot to death in their home with the baby left completely unharmed.

Which is amazing because you know, that's like when you find out there's a baby there, you think, oh my gosh, everybody's gone at this point. A very distraught Bobby Jo called 9 1 1 and deputies quickly rushed to the road and property. In the meantime, Bobby Jo called her brother James Manley to tell him what she had discovered and to have him go to Dana's home to check on her and to give her the heartbreaking news that her ex-husband, as well as her son and daughter-in-law had been killed.

But that's when things got even worse for these families. When James arrived at Dana's home where she lived with her daughter Hannah, he discovered that the two of them had also been murdered sometime in the night. Hannah, who we mentioned, was a mother to a 2-year-old daughter named Sophia, had just given birth to a second child.

The four day old newborn was unharmed. That is so heartbreaking. It is. It is. Her 2-year-old Sophia was actually with her father at that time. Six different family members of the same family had all been executed in their beds [00:14:00] all at three different locations. So clearly there's something, there's something going on.

You don't just. It's not six people in the same house. Somebody knows where these people live and it, this seems very targeted at this point. So a crime of this magnitude was truly baffling to local authorities. Not to mention bizarre. It was clear that this crime was very well thought out, well planned and well executed, and that whoever was responsible must have had a strong motive, as I was saying, to want so many members of the Rodin family dead.

Almost immediately, the local police knew that they were in way over their heads with this case. This community rarely dealt with any kind of violent crime, let alone the massacre of several members of one family. Word traveled very fast, and in just a few hours, the story had made its way to Cincinnati, and then it took off and spread like wildfire.

Within hours of discovering the bodies, the entire rodent property was blocked off, and there were scores of investigators and media crews on the scene. So far, the confirmed victims in the murders were Chris Rodin [00:15:00] Sr. His ex-wife Dana, their 19-year-old daughter Hannah, their 20-year-old son, Frankie and his fiance, Hannah Gilley and Chris sr's cousin Gary Rodin.

Police quickly realized that Chris and Dana's youngest son, Chris Jr. Had not been accounted for. And of course there was some speculation in the very beginning that he could have somehow been involved in, in this murder. It became their top priority to locate the teen boy and question him. As the morning went on, word of the murder spread through the community.

The Rodin family had attended church at Union Hill Church for years, and their pastor arrived at the scene to speak with investigators. He told them that this family was very well known and was very well loved throughout the county, and that people loved being around them. He also said that he did not believe for one second that little Chris had anything to do with the murders of his family.

Just as investigators were settling in at the three known crime scenes, another nine one one call came in and it was a man stating that he had found his cousin Kenneth Rodin, dead with a [00:16:00] gunshot wound at his home, which was miles away from where these other six murders had taken place. A short time later, a police search resulted in locating Chris Rodin Jr.

But unfortunately, he was moved from the suspect list to the victim list when he was found to have also been shot to death. He was the final victim of a horrific mass murder that had wiped out nearly an entire family in one night. And we're going to get into a lot more details of this story after a quick break for award from this week's sponsors.

So in this small town where violent crime is virtually unheard of, the murder of eight people at four different crime scenes was a massive undertaking for the Pike County Sheriff's Office. The sheriff quickly realized that there was no way that he had the manpower or resources to tackle an investigation this massive on his own.

And he called in help for multiple other agencies. Mandy and I were just kind of talking about this off mic, how smart this was and how this could have really been a disaster had they taken this on their own. Just like, I hate to say a pride thing, but you know, not wanting to involve other offices. And we've heard of that before where.[00:17:00] 

Really some somebody should have called in the FBI, somebody else, and they don't. And really the investigation suffers for it. So I was pretty impressed at the Pike County Sheriff's Office right away was like, let's get other people involved in this. Yeah, for sure. There was a huge media circus surrounding this case, and reporters were like vultures trying to get the story and to be the first to release new information.

Students were being harassed at the high school where Chris Junior attended, and since these murders were executed so well, there was really no evidence left at the crime scene, and nobody that was questioned had any idea who would want to hurt this family. This, of course, leaves the door open for lots of speculation and rumors.

Police received over 1000 tips, including one about a recent road rage incident, as well as tips that Chris Jr was being threatened and harassed on Facebook, but none of the tips turned into solid leads. While searching the rodent properties, investigators located several roosters and cages that they determined to be consistent with cog fighting and wondered whether or not that had anything to do with the murders.

[00:18:00] Another theory that was heavily investigative was the possibility that the Rodin family was involved in a major marijuana growing and selling operation. It was announced just two days after the murders that three of the rodent properties were found to have large amounts of marijuana growing on them.

Enough that the sheriff called it commercial in scale. Friends and neighbors of the rodents were extremely surprised to learn about the rodents pot growing operation. And this was really because none of the family members had ever been in trouble with the police for anything drug related. And only one of them even had anything on their records at all, which was Frankie Rodin.

And he had an assault charge after a fight where he had punched somebody. People in the town had no idea that this family was into growing marijuana, and they were shocked to learn that there was over half a million dollars worth of it growing on their property. Large pot growing operations. Were not something new to Pike County.

However, in 2012, police uncovered a very sophisticated 1200 plant marijuana grow site in Pike County that was suspected to be tied to a Mexican drug [00:19:00] cartel. The Pike County Sheriff Charles Reeder was well known for his efforts to crack down on drugs, and he was also involved in the interception of 28 pounds of marijuana, which was allegedly headed for a THC extraction lab.

So the theory that they had was that the rodents may have been working with a drug cartel and could have run into some troubled waters, which led to their executions. Even though this seemed like a pretty promising lead, there were still some characteristics of the murders that didn't quite fit the typical MO of a cartel hit since there were three children that were spared on the night of the murders.

They were Hannah Rodin's, four day old baby, Frankie Rodin's, toddler son, as well as the six month old son that he had with his fiance, Hannah Gilly. Because these children were left unharmed police felt that the killer had some kind of moral compass and that a cartel killing would have ended with everybody in the house being dead, whether they were children or not.

Another thing that police were hung up on was the fact that the killer or killers had managed to make it past the [00:20:00] rodent security cameras and past their numerous dogs that they all had, which lends itself to the idea that the murders were committed by somebody that was pretty well known to the Rodin family.

So the cartel theory was set aside for the time being, and police focused on other leads, most of which were just a lot more dead ends. The police were really stumped and still kind of at Square one with this investigation. So they decided to take it back to the basics and interview the other family members.

Since Bobby Jo Manley was the one who discovered the first bodies, she was questioned and put under a microscope. They really wanted to know, you know, what was she doing there at her brother-in-law's trailer? Was her nine one one call sincere, or was she kind of putting on an act? So Bobby Jo's parents who of course are also Dana's parents, and you know they've lost their daughter, they've lost their grandchildren.

Their names are Judy and Leonard Manley, and they were really upset that the police were even looking into family members as potential suspects. Bobby Jo eventually agreed to take a polygraph to clear her name, and once her results came in, the police agreed that she really [00:21:00] did not have anything to do with the murder.

She passed all the tests that they gave her. The next person they focused their attention on was James Manley, who also showed up at the crime scene. We mentioned that this is Dana Rodin's brother, who is the one who found her and his niece Hannah. So the investigators were desperate at this point to find answers, and they secretly put a GPS tracking device on James' truck and followed him.

And one day while James was working on his truck, he found the tracker and he removed it from his vehicle, which. Ended up landing him in quite a bit of trouble. He was actually charged with two felonies over that. One was a count of tampering with evidence, and there was one count of vandalism because he actually destroyed this tracker, which I know people can say whatever they wanna say, but I mean, I guess if you're in the middle of this murder investigation and you're, you're very closely connected with the victims.

If you find a tracker on your car, of course you're gonna know that the police put it there. But also, if I find something like that on my car, I'm taking it off like, you know. Yeah, nobody, nobody asked if they could put it on there. I didn't know it was there. Like I'm, I would do the same thing, honestly. I would take it off.

Here's the thing, [00:22:00] here's a surprising turn of events. I think I might take it off too, or at least I would consider it because Yeah, I would, I. I wouldn't even know it was a tracker. To be totally honest. I would've thought something magnetized got attached to my car and I needed to get it off. But I guess it makes sense.

I mean, they had a warrant to put it on there, so obviously a judge thought there was enough evidence, or you know, enough, whatever. I don't know what I'm trying to say, but you see what I'm saying? Right. But still, yeah, no, I, I can see, I I, it's amazing that you could get a felony for that. That's, that's pretty amazing.

Yeah, so as we said already, this was an absolutely huge investigation, and I read in one article that this was actually the largest investigation that the whole state of Ohio has ever seen. Oh, wow. They were really, really grasping at straws, trying to put the pieces together and figure out who committed this crime and an effort to preserve the crime scenes, which were mostly trailer homes.

Police actually moved them to a warehouse for storing where they could comb through them thoroughly. Months passed and police still [00:23:00] had no answers or suspects despite their very, very detailed investigation. In July of 2016, about three months after the murders, the inquirers sued the Pike County Coroner's Office for the autopsy reports on the victims.

So the coroner had allegedly done a press release that stated that all eight of the autopsy reports had been completed, but he denied any media request for copies, and he claimed that they were confidential law enforcement investigatory records. The inquirer disagreed and said that autopsy reports are public records.

So the case actually made it all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court, and eventually the coroner released heavily redacted versions of the reports to the media. The public soon learned the horrifying truth that Christopher Roden Sr was likely awake and trying to fight off the attack before he was shot.

Nine times in total, the most of any of the victims, Hannah Gilly, the report said was shot five times. Life around piketon slowly returned to normal, but the remaining members of the Rodin, manly [00:24:00] and Gilly families were left without closure or justice for the family that they had lost. The local church where the rodents attended, held a memorial on the one year anniversary, and suddenly there was really a little bit of renewed media attention on the case.

And you see that a lot where they do these memorial things, obviously for a memorial, but it does generate new interest in the case. People are talking about it, it's back in the news, and sometimes this can be really helpful. About three weeks after the anniversary, there was a new buzz around town.

Dozens of law enforcement agents swarmed a 71 acre farm in peoples Ohio and announced that it was in connection with the road and murder investigation. The farm had been sold several months prior, but was previously owned by a man named Billy Wagner and his wife Angela. A separate search warrant was executed on another property owned by the Wagner family, but the warrants were sealed and police weren't talking about what they found in their searches.

The Wagner family, much like the rodents were very well known around Piketon, except they were really more a well-to-do family and had a reputation of being wealthy and also [00:25:00] giving to others. The matriarch of the Wagner family was Billy's mother Freda, whose claim to fame was the $4 million worth of property she owned was actually 1700 acres of land.

Frederica also owned a 300 acre horse farm, which raised special breeded horses, and she sold them for profit. Freda was like everyone's mom or grandma and even had the kids from church over every Sunday and Thursday for a meal. It's possible that Bill Wagner and Chris Roden Sr. Had some sour dealings that could have led to the massacre, but police thought that a different Wagner had a more important connection to the rodents.

Jake Wagner, who was the son of Billy, and Angela was the father of Hannah Rodin's, oldest daughter, Sophia. Hannah Rodin was the woman with a four day old newborn at home when she was killed, and her daughter, Sophia, was with the father Jake, but Jake was not the father of this newborn baby. Police began to zero in on the Wagner family and really started to look at all of them under a microscope.

They wondered if there was a deeper resentment between Jake and Hannah over the custody of [00:26:00] Sophia. They learned that Jake and Hannah had been in a serious relationship, but eventually they went their separate ways and had shared custody of the child. Just as the heat was turning up on the Wagners, they made a shockingly suspicious move all the way to Alaska.

Of course, this move came as a bit of a shock to those in the community, and as we were talking about before, people really don't leave Piketon. They just don't pack up and go. But the Wagners claim that they had already been planning this move to Alaska for some time, and that since Sophia was getting older, they didn't want her to be raised where she would constantly be hearing about the terrible thing that happened to her mom and family.

Makes a lot of sense. Like that's gonna be around you all the time, but at this point everyone's suspicious of the Wagners and things we're about to get even more stressful for them as the investigation continues and we will be right back to talk more about that after one last break from this week's sponsors.

Okay, so before we took the last break there, we talked about how Billy and Angela Wagner, along with their sons, Jake and George and Jake's daughter Sophia, packed up everything they owned into a [00:27:00] truck and a horse trailer, and drove from Ohio to Kenai, Alaska, where they lived in a double wide trailer, in a pretty remote location outside of town.

The Wagner family kept a pretty low profile in their new home in Alaska. They registered to vote. They applied for hunting and fishing licenses, and they paid minor fees for things like speeding and failure to have enough life jackets onboard a boat. But after less than a year of living in Alaska, the Wagners randomly decided to return to Piketon where the murder investigation had been going full speed ahead since the day they had left.

Yeah. And they had, and they had sold their property there, right? Like they, it wasn't like they were renting it out and came back. They had sold it, did something new in Alaska and then decided to come back. Yeah, they had sold their home, but Frederica, the grandmother in the family, she had the big horse farm in the 1700 acres and stuff, so I'm sure they still had somewhere to come back to.

You know, they were a very well-known family around Piketon. Yeah. Surely they could just come back. But yeah, it [00:28:00] does seem, it does seem a little weird that they had sold their own personal property and, and then just came back just a year later. Yeah, yeah. When they returned, it was just shortly after the second anniversary of the Rodin family slayings and their returned to town really caused things to heat up.

We said that that kind of happened after the one year anniversary as well. So they really chose a bad time to come back if they were trying to avoid any of this that's going on at that time. Investigators returned to the Wagner property and conducted a search of the well in which they found an item.

They did not release what information about what this item was to begin with, but they'd said that they did pull an item from a well that was on the Wagner family property on November 13th, 2018. Billy Angela and their sons, Jake and George were suddenly arrested. Billy was picked up in Kentucky while Angela and her sons were arrested in Ohio and all four were being charged with [00:29:00] eight counts of capital murder.

So this was really quite a shock to everybody 'cause they, they knew that the police were looking into the Wagners. They knew that they had made some visits and served some search warrants on these properties. But the police were very tight-lipped about what they were doing or what they had found, if they had found anything.

So these arrests were really, they came as quite a shock, and especially from the Wagner family who is known around town for their generosity and their, you know, their wealth and their very popular family in town. Everybody was shocked and being this husband, wife, and their sons, like that's a, that's a combination you don't hear all the time.

Like all of them being involved in something like this. I remember seeing this and seeing, it was like a mother and you know, father and stuff, and you're thinking, oh my gosh, what on earth happened here? How on earth did these people get involved? Right? So little did anyone know, but investigators had been focused on the Wagners for really quite some time.

Police had received over 1100 tips, conducted 500 interviews, [00:30:00] tested 700 pieces of evidence, and served over 200 search warrants in connection to this case. They learned through all of that that Angela had purchased specific types of shoes, ammunition, a magazine clip, and numerous materials used to build a homemade gun silencer, which happens to be what the item was that was retrieved from the well.

They actually made a gun silencer out of parts that they took out of a lawnmower. So this was all like a homemade thing. Whoa. Yeah. Angela also purchased what's called brass catchers, which is a tool that goes on a gun and it catches the shell casings so that they don't fly all over the, all over the place.

Here's a question I don't wanna give to murderers. Why don't more people use that? That seemed like, how often do we hear like Anna shell casing was found. Anna shell casing was found. Two additional members of the Wagner family were also arrested in connection with this case, both Billy and Angela's mothers, the grandmothers of this family were also arrested.

Frederika Wagner, who was 76 years old at this [00:31:00] time, was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice, and she was accused of lying to cover up the crime and to protect her family. Angela's mom, Rita Newcomb, who was 65, was charged with forgery after it came to light that she had falsified documents pertaining to the custody of Sophia Wagner.

Police learned that the custody battle over Sophia had been ongoing and began when Hannah Rodin ended her relationship with Jake Wagner and got full custody of their daughter. According to the custody documents, Hannah was just 16 years old when she became pregnant with this little girl. While Jake, the father was 20 in March, 2015, Hannah ended their relationship and they lived separately, but they still maintained a casual romantic relationship as well as shared the parenting responsibilities for Little Sophia.

By September of 2015, the two had completely ended any romantic involvement, but Hannah had full-time custody of the little girl. Police believed that just four months later, the Wagner family began to carefully plan the execution of the Rodin family. After they [00:32:00] became the, in the police's words, they became obsessed with this custody battle.

The logic behind murdering so many members of the family was that with all of them gone custody of Sophia would be granted solely to Jake, which actually worked because six days after the massacre, Jake actually filed for custody of Sophia and it was granted. Sophia remained in the care of her father and the Wagner family for two years traveling to Alaska and back, and she was with the Wagners until they were all arrested and the little girl was sadly then placed into the care of child services.

Billy Angela George and Jake Wagner are all charged with eight counts of murder. Each member of the family waived their right to a speedy trial to give their defense teams enough time to prepare this defense. And I did read one source that said that they had waived time until July 31st, which. When this episode comes out, that will be the next day, but they actually have set some of the trial dates I found out.

So Jake Wagner has a pretrial hearing in the middle of [00:33:00] September where he is going to find out the date of his murder trial. His brother, George Wagner, is going to go on trial on September 4th and a date for Billy and Angela's trials has not been set. So the charges against Frederica Wagner ended up being dropped.

I guess they didn't really have the evidence. She was really being charged with, as we said, lying under oath and, you know, lying to protect her family. I guess her attorneys said that. It was kind of one of those things where she didn't really know she was lying, the subject that she was lying about sh.

It was like it wasn't intentional, so she ended up having her charges dropped. The other Grandma Rita Newcomb is charged with three counts of forgery, perjury, and obstructing justice, and she has a pretrial hearing on July 25th, which is just in a couple of days. It will have already happened by the time you hear this.

Her trial is currently scheduled for October 21st, 2019. So this is a story that I will be following very closely for updates on. On what is happening. Yeah, for sure. And of course, none of [00:34:00] these trials have happened, so this is all just alleged, their alleged involvement. We don't know, you know, nothing has actually happened.

They're innocent until proven guilty. Wanna get that out there? But that's kind of where they are with the trials and, and who is being accused at this point and the reasons they're being accused. But what a sad, sad, sad story. Really? Yeah, that's a lot of sad, but it's a lot of loss of life and especially within one family.

Right. Uh, it's just devastating. It really is. And then you think of the kids that were involved, you know, that that survived and you know, you know, you're so thankful that the kids did survive, but oh my gosh, yeah, the four day old baby and the six month old and, and now Sophia, I tried looking for information on Sophia, but that's another thing that the family is pretty.

Tight lipped about. Yeah. They are not talking about where Sophia or the other kids are. I assume that the other babies are with, you know, their other side of their families. Yeah. So, yeah, it's really, really sad to even [00:35:00] think about, and I really do wish I knew what happened to Sophia and where she is now and who is she with, but.

Hopefully she's with family now. I know she was with child services for a while. I found some sources that were as recent as like December, January. Mm-hmm. That said that she was still with child services. So I hope they found some family for her. Yeah, for sure. This reminds me of, um, I don't know if you're familiar with this story.

It was on Dateline a couple months ago. There was a guy who was married, who's married and separated, has a baby, and his wife becomes obsessed with getting custody, doesn't want him to have custody. She gets her parents in on killing him. And so now all three of them are in jail. The one thing they wanted was this little girl, and now they don't have the little girl, you know, just where you're like, oh my gosh.

Like, you know, if this is truly what happened, and this is all again, allegedly right now, but if this is truly what happened, nobody wins. So many people have died. So many people's lives are ruined. Your life's ruined. I just. I don't understand it. Yeah, it [00:36:00] doesn't really make a lot of sense logically to say, to go about the, you know, to go about getting custody of your child in this manner For sure.

Because if it doesn't work out, which most likely it's not going to, then your daughter's not gonna have anyone. Right. You know her. Both sides of her family are just completely ruined. Right? So it is really, really sad because of that, and of course, because so many people lost their lives. But yeah, it's a very sad story, but really an interesting one.

Well, I'm so glad that they have, you know, that they're, you know, they. Think they've caught the people that have done it though. Because I do remember whenever this first happened, 'cause it's this huge thing, the eight people in one family in Ohio have died and it was all in the news. And you just think, oh my gosh, when they don't arrest somebody the next day, you think this isn't a good sign.

You know, typically on these kind of big things, it's either they've catch them tomorrow or they don't catch them for 30 years. There's not a lot of, you know, people leave clues and in this case they've got all this right. Whoever did this, has all this, you know, ways to not get caught and you know, they, they put forth a lot of effort into that.

So [00:37:00] anyway, this was, yeah, I'll be interested in hearing what happens in these trials for sure. Alright, so that was our original episode from July of 2019. And listening back to that, knowing what we know now, it is a lot because. I remember back when we recorded that episode, the Wagner family had just been arrested and everyone was wondering what was gonna happen.

Were they gonna go to trial? Would anyone take a plea deal? Which I didn't think anyone in that family was gonna take a plea deal. And most importantly of course, will we finally get answers about why this happened? Yeah. So let's get into the update then. There's a lot to cover and. I love that because sometimes the updates, sometimes we get a really nice update, a big update, and sometimes we just hear like a little bit here and there with different stories.

Blurb. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there is a lot to kind of cover here. So where we left off in the original episode, Billy Wagner, Angela Wagner, and their two sons, Jake and George had all been arrested and charged with eight counts of aggravated murder. The two [00:38:00] grandmothers, Freda Wagner and Rita Newcomb had also been arrested on lesser charges for helping to cover up the crime.

And at that point, all four of the main suspects, Billy, Angela, Jake, and George, were facing the death penalty. So the stakes really couldn't have been any higher for about a year and a half after the arrests. Things were pretty quiet. The case was just moving through the court system, but there wasn't really a whole lot of news until April of 2021 when everything changed.

On April 22nd, 2021, which if you remember from the original episode, April 22nd was when the murders took place, so it was five years later, Jake Wagner stood up in court and pleaded guilty to all charges, and this of course was huge. Jake pleaded guilty to eight counts of aggravated murder, plus 15 other charges, including conspiracy, aggravated burglary, tampering with evidence, and unlawful possession of dangerous ordinance.

In exchange for this guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to take the death penalty off the [00:39:00] table, and so Jake agreed to testify against the rest of his family. So basically, Jake totally flipped. He basically said to them, I'll tell you everything, but you can't execute me. And the prosecution took that deal because they needed his testimony to convict the others.

And as part of his plea deal, Jake had to give a full confession. So what he said in court was absolutely chilling. He admitted to personally shooting five of the eight victims, and he said that he shot Chris Rodin Sr. Dana Rodin, Hannah Rodin, who was the mother of his child, Hannah Gilley and Chris Rodin Jr.

And the reason he gave for killing the mother of his daughter, Sophia, is that he believed Hannah was going to let their daughter be sexually abused. Which by the way, there was never any evidence of that. Never. And it just seems like something the whole Wagner family convinced themselves of, or maybe just like.

Used as an excuse to justify what they were planning on doing. Who knows? But there was no evidence that there was anything like that going [00:40:00] on. Right. And so Jake also testified that his whole family was involved in planning the murders. He said his dad was really the mastermind and his mom, Angela helped plan everything and bought.

A lot of the supplies they needed, like the materials to build homemade silencers and those brass catchers to collect the shell casings. His brother George was also there that night and participated in the murders as well. And so Jake's guilty plea was a huge turning point in this case. But the other three, Billy, Angela, and George all maintain their innocence.

They said they had nothing to do with it. So. Color me Shocked when in September of 2021, Angela Wagner, Jake's mother also decided to plead guilty. She pleaded guilty to eight counts of aggravated murder and several other charges. And just like Jake, she agreed to testify against the remaining family members in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.

And by the way, her testifying means she's testifying against not only her husband, but [00:41:00] one of her sons. Honestly, your literal life being on the line will change a lot of people's opinions on what they're willing to do, I feel like. Totally. But at the same time, she was willing to kill for those people.

Right. So, you know, it's like a total 180. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. So we've got both Jake and Angela now who have pleaded guilty and they're cooperating with the prosecutors, and that left Billy Wagner and George Wagner iv, who were both still saying that they didn't do it. So George Wagner IV was the first one to go to trial.

His trial started in September of 2022 and lasted almost three months. It was a huge trial with a ton of evidence. They had a lot of expert testimony, and of course the star witness, which was his own brother Jake, and Jake's testimony was very brutal. Although the judge allowed both Jake and Angela to decide whether or not they wanted their testimony to be videotaped or recorded, they both said no, because.

Of course they would. If you ask me if I wanna be recorded nine times outta [00:42:00] 10, I'm gonna say no. Which is really hard when we have a podcast. Yes, exactly. Uh, but Jake got up on the stand and described in Vivid, absolutely horrifying detail how the murders happened. He said that on the night of April 21st, 2016, the four of them, that would be Jake, George, Billy, and Angela, all drove to the road and properties.

They had everything planned out meticulously. They knew where everyone would be sleeping. They had homemade silencers on their guns. They had walkie talkies to communicate with each other. They even had like this scrambling thing for phones. So if anyone tried to make a call out, they wouldn't be able to do it.

And Jake testified that he and George went into the homes and shot the victims while Billy and Angela stayed outside his lookouts. He said that his brother George was with him when they killed some of the victims. And that George. Absolutely knew what was happening and participated in it, but George's defense team argued that Jake was lying to save himself.

They said Jake was the killer and he was trying to pin [00:43:00] it on George to get a lighter sentence In a shocking twist, George even took the stand in his own defense and said he had no idea this was going to happen. He said he really didn't believe his brother was capable of something like this. The jury didn't buy it.

After hearing nearly three months of testimony, they deliberated for less than eight hours and came back with a verdict. On November 30th, 2022, George IV was found guilty on all 22 counts, eight counts of aggravated murder, plus conspiracy, burglary, tampering with evidence, just everything, and the courtroom was described as being incredibly emotional.

Members of the Rodin family were crying and hugging each other, and George Wagner IV just sat there completely stoic and showed no emotion at all. Then in December of 2022, George was sentenced. Judge Randy Dearing sentenced him to eight consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Was one for each victim, plus an additional 81 [00:44:00] years on firearm specifications.

So George Wagner IV will never, ever see the outside of a prison again. He will die there. And during the sentencing hearing, family members of the victims got to speak and their statements were absolutely heartbreaking. Hannah Gilley's mother said. I pray for you not to live. I want you to die just like you and your evil family did.

My baby girl, Kindra Rodin, the daughter of Kenneth Rodin, ended her statement by saying, I hope you burn in hell, George. It was gut-wrenching, and these families had waited more than six years for justice, and finally they were getting some answers. So that brings us to where the case stands now. George Wagner IV is serving life without parole.

Jake and Angela are both serving life sentences as well, but because they cooperated, they'll be eligible for parole. After serving a certain number of years, Jake will actually be eligible for parole after 32 years and Angela after 30. That makes me so mad that he could even have a chance [00:45:00] of being eligible for parole.

Same. It's really his relationship and, and his whole mess is what started this, not because of the rodents at all, but because he perceived it to be a problem. So Billy Wagner. Is still awaiting trial. His trial has been delayed multiple times, but it is expected to happen in the near future and prosecutors are still seeking the death penalty for him.

And as for Sophia, and that's the little girl who was at the center of all of this, really the custody battle that allegedly sparked this entire massacre. Sophia was eventually returned to the rodent family. After the arrests, she was placed with members of the Rodin family, and that's where she remains today.

So that's really the update that we have for you on the Pike County Massacre. It has been a very long road to justice, but George Wagner the fourth is behind Bars for Life. And the other family members are either serving life sentences or awaiting trial. And the biggest takeaway really is just how senseless all of this was.

Uh, this was such a shocking story because eight people. [00:46:00] From one family were all murdered as they slept because of a custody dispute. And, and in different homes, different, it's not like it was eight in one place. They had, they went per, or you know, they went house by house to get them. Yes. Yeah. Um, really just an entire family, parents, cousins, children, um, a young mother.

Like it's just so senseless and so tragic, especially over something that. There was really no evidence that anything was even going on. You know, the, the little girl was totally fine and safe and, um, yeah, I just, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I don't think, I believe that they, that that was their reasoning.

I think they were just evil and had this plan, and that was their excuse. The fact that they wanted this little girl to stay with them after they're doing all of this and they were the right family for her to be with is absolutely mind blowing. Um, this weekend I watched the Piketon family murders on Peacock, and it's one that's definitely worth checking out.

One of the things that really stood out to me was, um, in Jake's [00:47:00] testimony, again, that was not recorded, but you know. They have the transcripts that one of the babies was nursing from its mom when he came in to shoot her, and he made sure the baby was positioned next to her so the baby could continue nursing and not starve to death when they left, like.

I can't sick understand that. Sick. Yeah. It's so disgusting, so sick and I, I, I hope every day he's there is the worst day of his life. Yeah. Alright guys, thank you so much for listening. That is our update on the road in family Murders, and we will be back next Thursday with a new story for you guys. Have a great week.

Bye.

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