Speaker 1: Welcome to the piked In Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Katie's Studios. This is episode ten Wild Country. In
Speaker 1: this episode, we're going to be answering a bunch of
Speaker 1: questions we've received over social media. We are also going
Speaker 1: to be going deeper into some subjects we've only touched
Speaker 1: on and talking about some stories we haven't been able
Speaker 1: to tell. I'm Courtney Armstrong. I work at Katie's Studios
Speaker 1: with Stephanie Leidecker and Jeff Sheen. Just as a legal reminder, Angela,
Speaker 1: Billy Jake, and George Wagner were charged with aggravated murder.
Speaker 1: Angela Wagner's mother Rita Joe Neucomb and Billy Wagner's mother,
Speaker 1: Frederica were both charged with obstruction of justice and perjury.
Speaker 1: Nucom was also charged with forgery. All six of them
Speaker 1: pled not guilty, and our justice system presumes innocence until
Speaker 1: guilt is proven.
Speaker 2: Ali from Ormond Beach, Florida asked us about the drugs
Speaker 2: and how they relate to the case and if there's
Speaker 2: anything else in the piked In area that pertains to
Speaker 2: drugs that we should know.
Speaker 1: So. One of the big theories behind the murders. We
Speaker 1: explored was drugs and the fact that the Rodents did
Speaker 1: have a pretty large marijuana grow operation on their property.
Speaker 1: But it's not just specific to the Rodent or even
Speaker 1: specific to Piked. In the immediate area is kind of
Speaker 1: a hotbed that's been affected by drugs in myriad ways.
Speaker 3: For starters, there's not a ton of jobs, and that
Speaker 3: has really taken a toll on the town. And just
Speaker 3: generally speaking, Ohio.
Speaker 1: And the southern part of the state has been devastated
Speaker 1: by drug abuse, mostly prescription painkillers and heroin. In Pike County,
Speaker 1: the drug overdose mortality rate from twenty fourteen to twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen was more than seventy one deaths per one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand population. The rate for the rest of the country
Speaker 1: was twenty seven deaths per one hundred thousand. That's nearly
Speaker 1: three times the mortality rate of the rest of the country.
Speaker 1: A lot of these drugs come in from Portsmouth.
Speaker 2: Portsmouth, Ohio, is the neighboring town to Pike and so
Speaker 2: about a fifteen minute drive I spoke to investigative reporter
Speaker 2: James Pilcher, who did an incredibly deep dive into Portsmouth
Speaker 2: into the larger picture of what's happening in southeastern Ohio.
Speaker 4: Sportsmith, which is in the next county over on the
Speaker 4: river south of Pike County in Piketon, is known as
Speaker 4: ground zero for the pill mill epidemic. That's where pill
Speaker 4: mills and the opioid epidemic is known to have had
Speaker 4: a major hotspot way early on in the late nineteen
Speaker 4: nineties early two thousands, when the oxycon first hit the market.
Speaker 2: And tell me what a pill mill is.
Speaker 4: A pill mill is where a doctor who for whatever
Speaker 4: reason isn't there to see clients, somebody just shows up
Speaker 4: and you just hands some prescription for money, and then
Speaker 4: they get the prescription there and then right next door
Speaker 4: is a pharmacy and then they just put it in
Speaker 4: and then those people get the pills because it's legal
Speaker 4: in that state. They might drive them home to Florida
Speaker 4: and then sell them for ten times the price or
Speaker 4: trade them or whatever. But it was unregulated in Ohio
Speaker 4: at the time, and Kentucky was bad too. Kentucky had
Speaker 4: the same issues. So right there enforcements right there on
Speaker 4: the Ohio River bordering Kentucky, so you had both sides
Speaker 4: of the river. So there were cars lined up from
Speaker 4: Florida and West Virginia and Georgia up and down all
Speaker 4: over town for a decade, and it just ravaged the city,
Speaker 4: which had already been decimated by you know, the pullout
Speaker 4: of industrialization, and so all of that kind of flooded in.
Speaker 4: You have all of these, you know, an economically depressed area,
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, addiction becomes a major major issue.
Speaker 4: People are driving from all over the country because it's
Speaker 4: easy to get the pills there.
Speaker 2: And then of course there's also the people who get
Speaker 2: into kind of the illicit activities to make money, right.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, absolutely, a cottage industry of crime and drug associated
Speaker 4: kind of sprung up, and you know, started to do
Speaker 4: my own reporting on it. So one of our editors
Speaker 4: worked as the managing editor of the Portsmouth Daily Times,
Speaker 4: which is the daily newspaper there in the early twenty ten,
Speaker 4: and so he was very familiar with the rumors that
Speaker 4: had been circulating around about Michael Moran. Moran had already
Speaker 4: been a city council but he wasn't on city council anymore,
Speaker 4: but he was still well known within the legal circles
Speaker 4: and chamber of commerce, and he did some work pro
Speaker 4: bono work about legal defense, but he always seemed to
Speaker 4: have a pretty girl in his army. In December of
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen, a now former reporter with that newspaper put
Speaker 4: out on Facebook segments of a federal affidavits from the
Speaker 4: Drug Enforcement Administration, which basically laid there and put out
Speaker 4: for public viewing. That's the federal law enforcement was investigating
Speaker 4: the very same rumors that have been following Moran around
Speaker 4: for years, that he was running girls and running drugs,
Speaker 4: and that this was who he was.
Speaker 1: It's important to note that Michael Moran has not been
Speaker 1: arrested or charged with any crimes. Also that Moran has
Speaker 1: categorically denied all of this.
Speaker 4: My editor at the time, and I was working as
Speaker 4: an investigative reporter at the Cincinnati Enquirer, said would James
Speaker 4: be interested in taking a look at this? And I'll
Speaker 4: be honest, I thought, I didn't think it was real
Speaker 4: at first. I thought there was no way that this
Speaker 4: is as bad as they say it is and whatever.
Speaker 4: So I took a drive out there. The partnered me
Speaker 4: with a woman photographer whom we went out there a
Speaker 4: couple of times, and I'll never forget it. We were
Speaker 4: doing some b roll shoot shots in front of a
Speaker 4: pseudo abandoned shoe factory with graffiti about hookers and things
Speaker 4: like that, and a guy comes running up and says,
Speaker 4: what are you doing? And I told him and I said,
Speaker 4: by the way, ever heard of Michael Moran. He says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: that guy runs women. So this was not a secret
Speaker 4: in Portsmouth. Everybody knew the rumors and had known somebody
Speaker 4: that knew somebody that had worked for him. It was
Speaker 4: going on that he was running women all over the country.
Speaker 4: He was promising women drugs for sex. He had relationships
Speaker 4: with judges and with members of law enforcement, all of it.
Speaker 4: So you know, all of this is in a federal
Speaker 4: document we're talking about.
Speaker 2: It's like human trafficking, right, yes.
Speaker 4: So so you know, some people this is an interesting distinction.
Speaker 4: Some people will say, oh, well, these women knew what
Speaker 4: they were doing, they were just trying to make money. Well,
Speaker 4: if you talk to the experts, it went one step
Speaker 4: beyond that. It went into trafficking because Moran was holding
Speaker 4: over them a the fact that they were drug addicts,
Speaker 4: and he would withhold their money or withhold their wherewithal
Speaker 4: to get drugs, which under federal statute and Ohio statute
Speaker 4: is a form of trafficking B. He was intensively promising
Speaker 4: more lenient sentences because he had friends in the legal system.
Speaker 1: I'd like to point out here that we reached out
Speaker 1: to Michael Moran as well as the prosecutors involved. Neither
Speaker 1: side got back to us with comment.
Speaker 4: So I talked to some folks, but getting those first
Speaker 4: initial people to talk, that was their big fear, is
Speaker 4: they these women just weren't afraid to go to jail.
Speaker 4: They were afraid for their lives. And the reason they
Speaker 4: were afraid for their lives is the name of one woman,
Speaker 4: and that's Megan Lancaster. Meghan was a known prostitute in
Speaker 4: the late two thousands in Sciotra County. If you talk
Speaker 4: to her sister in law and you talk to other
Speaker 4: people who knew her, she worked for Mike Moran. Meghan
Speaker 4: got hooked on drugs early on in high school. Shortly
Speaker 4: out after high school. If you talk to her sister
Speaker 4: in law, who has led the charge, he started partying
Speaker 4: later in high school and out of high school, and
Speaker 4: that led her, according to our sources, into the circle
Speaker 4: of Morane. So Moran would hire her out for bachelor parties,
Speaker 4: and you know Katie Lancaster, her sister in law, even
Speaker 4: tells the story about her running into Megan wearing Christmas
Speaker 4: lingerie in a Walmart picking something up on her way
Speaker 4: to a Christmas party where she was the entertainment for
Speaker 4: a bunch of Moran's friends. And she mysteriously disappeared, so
Speaker 4: we can't even say she was murdered. Her car was
Speaker 4: found of blood on it, the door was left wide open,
Speaker 4: half parked in a local fast food joint there in
Speaker 4: downtown Portsmouth, and they have not found hide nor hair
Speaker 4: of her. And I can tell you there are a
Speaker 4: lot of places in Sciota County where you can hide
Speaker 4: a body. It's full of hollers and dips and forests,
Speaker 4: and it's wild country. It really is wild country. The
Speaker 4: glaciers came through and cut a bunch of stuff, and
Speaker 4: it's it's beautiful, but it's also wild country. And a
Speaker 4: flew of women went missing or got killed that were
Speaker 4: addicted prostitutes, sex workers up in Ross County, in Chilcoffee,
Speaker 4: which is two counties to the north. Since twenty ten,
Speaker 4: more than a dozen women have either been killed or
Speaker 4: gone missing in Ross County which is the county north
Speaker 4: of Pike County, which is probably an hour forty five
Speaker 4: minutes north of pikedn in Chilicothee. So Megan, A lot
Speaker 4: of people theorized that Meghan might have been wrapped up
Speaker 4: in something that got those women killed. But there's a
Speaker 4: lot of thought and there's a lot of theory or
Speaker 4: rumor that now that that was separate from what happened
Speaker 4: to her, and what happened to her points back to
Speaker 4: possibly Michael Marine that he.
Speaker 2: Would want to silence her for some reason.
Speaker 4: Yeah, these are powerful men taking advantage of addicted, unempowered women.
Speaker 2: And so how would you say, like Michael Moran in
Speaker 2: tying this back to the road in case Michael Moran
Speaker 2: and the situation in Portsmouth, I think just speaks to
Speaker 2: this community, which I think includes Piked In as people.
Speaker 2: You know, these men in power are kind of doing
Speaker 2: what they want. And you know, when you look at
Speaker 2: Sheriff Rider, who handled the investigation for the road and murder,
Speaker 2: he was also doing what he wanted. You know, now
Speaker 2: he's indicted on all these charges of you know, theft
Speaker 2: from the county.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so you know, you can the parallel if
Speaker 4: you're wanting to make a parallel to the road in
Speaker 4: cases absolutely either a you had ineffectual or corrupt or
Speaker 4: both law enforcements, right you had a community or a
Speaker 4: culture of lawlessness that has descended on upon many play
Speaker 4: in rural America. I will also say there's a major
Speaker 4: issue in small town America with the quality and quantity
Speaker 4: of law enforcement that happens there and the lack of accountability.
Speaker 4: Because nobody's watching, you might.
Speaker 2: Be wondering how the crimes in Portsmith fit into the
Speaker 2: Road and Family case. While we probably know that Michael
Speaker 2: Moran and what's happening in Portsmouth is not directly related
Speaker 2: to the Road and murders, it does speak to the
Speaker 2: distrust and lack of accountability in law enforcement. It's this
Speaker 2: idea that all these men in power, from judges to
Speaker 2: attorneys are involved in these crimes and their cover ups.
Speaker 2: It raises a pretty unnerving question who do you trust
Speaker 2: if you can't trust elected officials and law enforcement. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: this influx of drugs and lack of accountability from law
Speaker 2: enforcement and the haphazard way piked and authorities tried to
Speaker 2: recover some seemingly very important evidence is basically exactly what
Speaker 2: reporter James Pilcher outlined so well in his work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems really systemic in the area and specifically
Speaker 1: too piked in and that impacts everything from the top down.
Speaker 1: Let's stop here for a quick commercial break. We'll be
Speaker 1: back in a moment. Mike Land from Hoboken, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: asked if there were any other personal stories we'd heard
Speaker 1: from people along the way that hadn't made it into
Speaker 1: the podcast, and here are a few that stand out
Speaker 1: to us.
Speaker 3: The relationship between Frederica Wagner and Angela Wagner, her daughter
Speaker 3: in law, has been the basis of a lot of
Speaker 3: conversation that it was a troubled relationship and that Angela
Speaker 3: and her husband were vicious fighters. And we even have
Speaker 3: heard from a very close source that Angela would actually
Speaker 3: have to put a little sedative in Billy Wagner's shakes
Speaker 3: every day because that would lower his temper and that's
Speaker 3: how she would survive the day. It just paints a picture,
Speaker 3: whether this is true or not. Here Angela enters the
Speaker 3: Wagner family. She's feuding with her now mother in law,
Speaker 3: the matriarch of the family, Frederica, her husband I don't
Speaker 3: know how tall he actually is, but he's a tall
Speaker 3: presence of a man, and you know, allegedly hot tempered.
Speaker 3: So Angela is trying to survive this new dynamic homeschooling
Speaker 3: her boys and sedating her husband and feuding with her
Speaker 3: mother in law. It just paints a very complicated picture.
Speaker 1: It does. And because I can be pedantic of allegedly
Speaker 1: drugging her, but other stuff we did here because I
Speaker 1: spoke to the same person who was a family member,
Speaker 1: it was someone who was a family.
Speaker 2: They were there.
Speaker 3: This is apparently first hand account correct.
Speaker 1: And part of that which I thought also painted such
Speaker 1: an interesting picture was, like you said, the Wagners were
Speaker 1: known really widely to have get into it with the fights.
Speaker 1: And what this source said to us was that she
Speaker 1: was at the family home, at the Wagner family home,
Speaker 1: and she commented that Angela had very many decorative baskets
Speaker 1: all over and she said those are very beautiful. And
Speaker 1: Angela allegedly said, well, every time we get into a
Speaker 1: fight and Billy needs to apologize, he buys me another
Speaker 1: basket because I like him. And so just picturing this
Speaker 1: house filled with decorative baskets, each one emblematic of an argument,
Speaker 1: just an interesting picture. Here's a rich question and it
Speaker 1: comes from Aaron from Malvern, New York, and she asks
Speaker 1: how to Sheriff Reader play into the investigations and how
Speaker 1: mighty play into the upcoming court trials. He complicates this,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's been accused of many things. In court
Speaker 1: documents filed just last month, they alleged Reader of misappropriating
Speaker 1: about fifteen thousand dollars and SEES funds and borrowing six
Speaker 1: thousand dollars from employees, which can be seen as coercion.
Speaker 1: The records also accuse him of circumventing rules at auctions
Speaker 1: to improperly get impounded vehicles for his family, so to
Speaker 1: his benefit. Additionally, the court alleges that Reader on June
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, seized seven thousand dollars that prosecutors call quote
Speaker 1: possible proceeds of drug trafficking. So these are charges that
Speaker 1: have gone for several years, and there's even new allegations
Speaker 1: that charge him and engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity,
Speaker 1: which is a first degree felony, and prosecutors have long
Speaker 1: used the charge as a way to attack organized crime
Speaker 1: figures and major drug dealers by seeking long prison sentences.
Speaker 1: So the fact that they're using this against a sheriff
Speaker 1: is interesting strategy.
Speaker 2: You know. The issue is now that his character is
Speaker 2: being called into question, and according to sources we've talked to,
Speaker 2: the criminal justice experts agree that if Reader is found
Speaker 2: of any wrongdoing, it could pose obstacles for the prosecution
Speaker 2: in the trials against the Wagners.
Speaker 3: You know, Reader was the frontman of making everybody feel
Speaker 3: at ease that the investigation was being handled, but frankly
Speaker 3: was kind of doing a messy job from the jump.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, in theory, you could look at every single
Speaker 2: case Sheriff Reader took the lead on and wonder what
Speaker 2: he was doing behind the scenes in order to make
Speaker 2: an arrest, which would include the rodent investigation. On the
Speaker 2: other side of that, though, you know, what experts are
Speaker 2: saying is that the prosecution might argue to the judge
Speaker 2: on the case that Reader's criminal history isn't relevant to
Speaker 2: the Wagner trials and thus shouldn't be heard by a jury,
Speaker 2: and they'll do that by downplaying his role in the investigation.
Speaker 2: And if that becomes the case, then it won't necessarily
Speaker 2: be a death blow to the state case. Another expert
Speaker 2: was quoted as saying in the press, officers are human
Speaker 2: beings like everybody else, and so sometimes juries can weigh
Speaker 2: in on that and decide what kind of credence they
Speaker 2: want to give to his behavior.
Speaker 1: Shriff Frieder also potentially jeopardized the investigation by having the
Speaker 1: Rodents cars and mobile homes moved off site, which Attorney
Speaker 1: Mike Allen an investigative reporter Jodi Barr talked about in
Speaker 1: episode five. So Shriffrieder's involvement is far reaching and it
Speaker 1: has the potential to effect in multiple ways, not only
Speaker 1: during the investigation but moving forward with the trials.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was something else early on in the investigation
Speaker 2: that happened that really did cause a stir and that's
Speaker 2: the road in autopsy reports, And for some reason these
Speaker 2: were held up in being released to the media outlets,
Speaker 2: which is something that happens occasionally in criminal cases, but
Speaker 2: it garnered a lot of attention specifically with the road
Speaker 2: in case.
Speaker 3: Probably the reason why is oftentimes autopsies are not released
Speaker 3: to the public because there might be a hell or
Speaker 3: something very significant in those autopsy reports. For example, this
Speaker 3: is just top of head not related to the Wagner
Speaker 3: or Roding case at all. If somebody had a certain
Speaker 3: tattoo marking or had been cut in a certain way
Speaker 3: that only the perpetrator slash killer would know, then authorities
Speaker 3: don't want that information to be wildly known because it's
Speaker 3: something that would be helpful to know if there was
Speaker 3: a confession, for example, So if somebody confessed, they would
Speaker 3: know that information. So that is not entirely uncommon, although
Speaker 3: in this case it seems that was not the reason why.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's speculated that it's not the reason why. And
Speaker 1: this is this one actually all the way up to
Speaker 1: the Ohio Supreme Court. Two outlets, the Columbus Dispatch and
Speaker 1: the Cincinnati Inquirer, sued the state for the right to
Speaker 1: the autopsies. The suit was filed against the Pike County Coroner,
Speaker 1: David Kessler, and that came after the Dispatch was denied
Speaker 1: three separate times officially asking for the final autops reports.
Speaker 1: And what the Dispatch's claim was was that the final
Speaker 1: autopsy reports are of great public interest and quote significant
Speaker 1: value to the Dispatch and our news gathering activities.
Speaker 2: The authorities really were apprehensive to release the autopsy information,
Speaker 2: arguing that the release could hinder the investigation. I wonder,
Speaker 2: just to harp on this a little longer, like what
Speaker 2: was the city, like what was Pike County really trying
Speaker 2: to protect?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Four times, three times seems like a lot of times
Speaker 2: to continue to fight the release of this, and now
Speaker 2: that we know what they say, like what in there
Speaker 2: was so damning to the investigation? You know, it's just
Speaker 2: like seems like a lot.
Speaker 1: Well. I actually spoke with attorney Jack Grenier, and he
Speaker 1: was one of the lawyers who filed the suit on
Speaker 1: behalf of the dispatch, and he had some really compelling thoughts.
Speaker 5: You have to kind of wonder, in light of the
Speaker 5: trouble that the sheriff ultimately got into, what was motivating
Speaker 5: the desire to keep things kind of quiet, Because is
Speaker 5: a pretty good example of, in my view, law enforcement overreacting.
Speaker 5: And I say that kind of cautiously because you know,
Speaker 5: it's say it was multiple murders in a gruesome situation.
Speaker 5: But I think the.
Speaker 6: Idea of you know, you just have to withhold as
Speaker 6: much information as you possibly can.
Speaker 5: From the public, and even maybe more information than you're
Speaker 5: allowed to withhold, is to me an overreaction and I
Speaker 5: think we saw that in this case. You know that somehow, you.
Speaker 6: Know, if any piece of information got out.
Speaker 5: There would somehow derail the whole investigation.
Speaker 6: I just I just don't buy into that.
Speaker 2: The Inquirer really argued that it was in the public's
Speaker 2: best interest to know what the autopsy said and to review.
Speaker 2: I meant, what we learned from the autopsies is pretty
Speaker 2: important in terms of what happened to the rod Ends.
Speaker 2: We learned how many times they were shot, where they
Speaker 2: were shot, which really did speak to how personal the
Speaker 2: crimes were. Some of these family members were shot multiple
Speaker 2: times in the face with a shotgun, and so if
Speaker 2: this was a drug cartel hit, you know, it wasn't
Speaker 2: once and quick. It was personal and it was an overkill,
Speaker 2: which is what we learned from the autopsies.
Speaker 3: Once these autopsies would be released, here we go again,
Speaker 3: more questions with few answers, and sure enough, that's exactly
Speaker 3: what happened. Thankfully we have this information and we could
Speaker 3: actually really look at these autopsy reports in great detail,
Speaker 3: and I can speak for myself saying it was really
Speaker 3: dark and twisted when you really do see just how
Speaker 3: much to your point, Chef of an overkill.
Speaker 1: This really was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it made me think like what releasing this autopsy
Speaker 2: would do to the town of piked In and speaking
Speaker 2: to a fair amount of the residents and just the
Speaker 2: feeling of uncertainty. I don't know how it would if
Speaker 2: it was a good thing or a bad thing, because
Speaker 2: the people in piked In were thinking it was a
Speaker 2: drug cartel who did this prior to the autopsy release,
Speaker 2: and that created a sense of fear. But then I
Speaker 2: think after the autopsies were released, people started circling in
Speaker 2: on the Wagners and really thinking they did it, which
Speaker 2: created a whole other set of problems in terms of
Speaker 2: this kind of small town justice that the Wagner's faced,
Speaker 2: whether they deserve it or not, creates a whole new
Speaker 2: problem for the sheriff's office.
Speaker 1: Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back
Speaker 1: in a moment. So we were talking about the informant,
Speaker 1: which we've covered in the past, but I know there's
Speaker 1: been some other questions out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Woody from Comack, New York asked us on
Speaker 2: social media about the likelihood that the informant is in
Speaker 2: fact one of the Wagner four.
Speaker 3: I'm obsessed with understanding more about the informant personally, So
Speaker 3: you definitely think it must be a family member.
Speaker 1: Who must is a strong statement. I think the likelihood,
Speaker 1: I think it seems likely only because if this family
Speaker 1: allegedly did commit this careful, careful, planned out murders that
Speaker 1: they spent months planning, why would they then be so
Speaker 1: careless and have someone else involved enough with the information
Speaker 1: that they could turn state's evidence. So to me, it
Speaker 1: says that if they kept it all within the family,
Speaker 1: then necessarily it would have to be someone in the family.
Speaker 1: It's unknowable at this point, but that's what makes sense
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 3: Is it possible that it's Rita Angela Wagner's mother because
Speaker 3: she would have maybe been witnessed of some of these conversations.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's possible that it's any of them, assuming
Speaker 3: it's one of the four. Let's just play this out
Speaker 3: for a second. If Courtney, if you're correct, and it's
Speaker 3: one of the four of the Wagners that are the accused.
Speaker 3: To me, if one of them was going to fold, George,
Speaker 3: the eldest son, seems the most likely, And for that
Speaker 3: I say simply because he had the least amount of
Speaker 3: skin in the game. If he wasn't fighting for his
Speaker 3: niece solely, you know, he wasn't you know, maybe supercharged
Speaker 3: by love the way Jake was. He wasn't supercharged about
Speaker 3: protecting his children the way Angela maybe was about her
Speaker 3: son Jake and her granddaughter. We know the dads potentially
Speaker 3: had some sort of a confrontation leading up that could
Speaker 3: be you know, charged by emotion. But that said, he
Speaker 3: turns now he's the one asking for solitary confinement in
Speaker 3: a bible. The fact that they were trying to get
Speaker 3: George Wagner off on bail very recently, that would speak
Speaker 3: to this as well. That A, he's the informant b
Speaker 3: just through the basic ways that you would be released
Speaker 3: from prison on bail. They made that attempt. It was
Speaker 3: unsuccessful on the behalf of the defense, but that is
Speaker 3: interesting strategy. By the way, how shocking would this be
Speaker 3: if George Wagner, the eldest son, had to actually appear
Speaker 3: in court and testify against his mother and his father
Speaker 3: and his younger brother Jake.
Speaker 1: That would be shocking. So while it is all speculation,
Speaker 1: it is all possible, and several reputable sources have said
Speaker 1: it's not the most unlikely thing. Just as a legal reminder, Angela,
Speaker 1: Billy Jake, and George Wagner were charged with aggravated murder.
Speaker 1: Angela Wagner's mother Rita Joe Nukomb and Billy Wagner's mother
Speaker 1: Frederica were both charged with obstruction of justice and perjury.
Speaker 1: Nucomb was also charged with forgery. All six of them
Speaker 1: pled not guilty, and our justice system presumes innocence until
Speaker 1: guilt is proven. Jody Barr, who we heard from throughout
Speaker 1: the course of this podcast, has summed up pretty well
Speaker 1: how the three of us feel about this case.
Speaker 7: Soby this is a case that I think about it.
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure every day.
Speaker 7: And you know again, that's why I'm very eager to
Speaker 7: hear from Yeah, I just want to see this trial.
Speaker 7: I want to know more about what happened here and
Speaker 7: if they really do have the right people. Sounds like
Speaker 7: they do. I mean, these indictments are.
Speaker 4: Very linked in very detailed, but that's only.
Speaker 7: One side of this. I want to hear from the
Speaker 7: Wagoners and see if they have an explanation because at
Speaker 7: the end of the day, when the last trial is
Speaker 7: held and the last jury, if it gets to that point,
Speaker 7: you know, I would hope that the Rodent family can
Speaker 7: walk out of that courtroom and know for sure that
Speaker 7: the people who did this are the people who go
Speaker 7: to prison for it. I can't think of a better
Speaker 7: way to hand down justice.
Speaker 3: We've talked about this a lot, and people ask us,
Speaker 3: you know why we work in crime investigations in general,
Speaker 3: and I think their truth is victims have a voice
Speaker 3: even after death, and for us, we really do want
Speaker 3: to share our deepest sympathy with the Rodent family.
Speaker 2: I think the point of this podcast is to really
Speaker 2: angle towards shining light on the injustices that the Rodent
Speaker 2: family faced and help bring a sense of closure and
Speaker 2: answers to the surviving Rodin family.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 3: I think also when the Wagners finally do have their
Speaker 3: day in court, our hope is that the Rodents finally
Speaker 3: see justice.
Speaker 1: Piked In Massacre is executive produced by Stephanie Leidecker and
Speaker 1: me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by executive producer
Speaker 1: Jared Aston. Additional producing by Jeff Shane and Andrew Becker.
Speaker 1: The Piked In Massacre is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: KAT Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.