Speaker 1: Welcome to the Piketon Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Katie Studios. Somebody pretty important in Ohio once asked me
Speaker 1: why I was so vested and interested in this case
Speaker 1: and in sex trafficking. I had to be honest with
Speaker 1: myself and I had to say when I first heard it,
Speaker 1: I didn't believe it. I didn't think it was widespread.
Speaker 1: And ever since then it's been like, these women aren't
Speaker 1: lying and they deserve all of our attention. This is
Speaker 1: the Pikedon Massacre. Returned to Pike County season two, Episode nine,
Speaker 1: twenty five miles South, Part two. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a
Speaker 1: television producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane.
Speaker 1: Throughout the series, we've examined abuses of power by authorities
Speaker 1: in Ohio, from law enforcement officials to city councilmen. Investigative
Speaker 1: reporter James Pilcher drew a through line in the cases
Speaker 1: of Pike County, Share of Charlie, reader Michael Moran, and
Speaker 1: the corruption that has infiltrated the Southern Ohio criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: Why do I think this is happening in these kinds
Speaker 1: of counties? So much. Either Hey, you had ineffectual or
Speaker 1: corrupt or both law enforcement, right, you had a community
Speaker 1: or a culture of lawlessness that has descended on upon
Speaker 1: many places in rural America. And I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons nobody's watching. Nobody cares to watch, not
Speaker 1: to enhance or blow up importance of journalists, but if
Speaker 1: you don't have some kind of watchdog or somebody holding
Speaker 1: officials accountable, it doesn't always work well. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: reporter Nicki Blankenship uncovered in affidavit filed by the Drug
Speaker 1: Enforcement Agency. The document detailed an FBI investigation into a Portsmouth,
Speaker 1: Ohio lawyer and former city councilman named Michael Moran. It's
Speaker 1: content supported stories Nikki had long heard from area women
Speaker 1: who claimed that Moran was involved in sex trafficking and prostitution.
Speaker 1: It should be noted that Michael Moran has strongly denied
Speaker 1: the allegations. So when I got this affidavit, I immediately
Speaker 1: took it to my publisher, my editor, and they want
Speaker 1: to prove that it was real, it was authentic, and
Speaker 1: all of this was real, And so I contacted our
Speaker 1: private investigators that I knew had them look into the document. Further,
Speaker 1: I called people in court systems that I knew and
Speaker 1: had them looking into it. I verified it over and
Speaker 1: over and over, and ultimately they said that no, we're
Speaker 1: not going to publish. I gave my letter of resignation
Speaker 1: that day and I said ethical differences and I left.
Speaker 1: During the course of her reporting on sex trafficking in
Speaker 1: southern Ohio, the issue had become personal for Nicki. She
Speaker 1: often spoke with the families of Portsmouth women that had
Speaker 1: fallen into prostitution and others whose family members had gone
Speaker 1: missing or been murdered. After her resignation, NICKI had a
Speaker 1: crucial decision to make. I had made a promise to
Speaker 1: the families. I'm tearing up a little bit, but I
Speaker 1: promised these families, and I shouldn't have, as a journalists,
Speaker 1: promised them, but I did. I promised them that I
Speaker 1: was going to scream until someone listened. And so when
Speaker 1: I felt like I was just repeatedly being shut down,
Speaker 1: I felt very helpless. I had to do something. I
Speaker 1: had to put it out there some way, and social
Speaker 1: media's last way. I knew, even if only local families
Speaker 1: were able to see that, I thought it might help
Speaker 1: them in some way and give them something. And as
Speaker 1: a local journalists, a lot of people locally were on
Speaker 1: my Facebook page. So I went ahead and I published it,
Speaker 1: and I went to sleep. When I woke up the
Speaker 1: next morning, I had hundreds, probably thousands of lights on
Speaker 1: that post already and undreds, if not thousands of shares
Speaker 1: and messages from everyone. But it carna went crazier than
Speaker 1: I expected it too. When you saw the Dai David,
Speaker 1: what ran through your head? I was not a bit stunned,
Speaker 1: And people they want me to be stunned, but I wasn't.
Speaker 1: That's Katie Lancaster speaking with producer Chris Graves. Katie's best
Speaker 1: friend and sister in law, Megan Lancaster, went missing in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen. Katie alleges that Megan worked for Michael Moran
Speaker 1: as a prostitute. Moran denies these allegations. What went through
Speaker 1: my head is, oh, my gosh, like I'm not the
Speaker 1: only one that sees this, you know, like the FBI
Speaker 1: sees it. Like it was just so just a sense
Speaker 1: of relief. News of the Affidavid spread. It soon caught
Speaker 1: the attention of Cincinnati Enquirer investigative editor Bob Strictly, who
Speaker 1: had once worked for the newspaper the Portsmith Daily Times.
Speaker 1: I initially was a sports editor in Portsmouth and was
Speaker 1: elevated to managing editor, and during my time there there
Speaker 1: were always these rumors about Michael Moran and the women
Speaker 1: that he was around and the circles he ran in,
Speaker 1: and it just at the time, early in my career,
Speaker 1: it just seems so far fetched. Portsmouth, if nothing else,
Speaker 1: is a rumor mill. So a lot of things get
Speaker 1: tossed around without substantive evidence to back it up. But
Speaker 1: it was quite surprising to receive word that there was
Speaker 1: something that could actually back this up. We got a
Speaker 1: copy of it ourselves and verified it through various attorneys
Speaker 1: and our own legal counsel, and I went back and
Speaker 1: looked through the notes that I had taken, and because
Speaker 1: I never throw away a notebook from my time working
Speaker 1: in Portsman, I was like, man, a lot of the
Speaker 1: tracks and here's a government official saying so, and it's
Speaker 1: in a sworn aff a David, So it's time for
Speaker 1: the chips down on the table and get involved. As
Speaker 1: too big of a story to ignore, even if it
Speaker 1: is a place that is not traditionally in an area
Speaker 1: where it might paper covers it. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it initiated a sense of responsibility as much as it
Speaker 1: triggered a pretty huge amount of guilt that motivated me
Speaker 1: to go pitch the story to our bosses, despite the
Speaker 1: paper being two and a half hours away from the
Speaker 1: subject that we were covering. And luckily bosses were hospitable
Speaker 1: enough to allow us to explore and then go dig
Speaker 1: real deep in a story and turn over some rocks
Speaker 1: that needed to be turned over decades ago. Reporter James
Speaker 1: Pilcher was writing for The Inquirer at the time. My
Speaker 1: boss came to me, because I was an investigative reporter,
Speaker 1: and said, what do you think about this? Do you
Speaker 1: want to take a look? Is this guy trafficking women
Speaker 1: all over the country from this little town, this burned
Speaker 1: out shell of a town. It's known as the epicenter
Speaker 1: of the opioid epidemic? Is he doing this? Is it true?
Speaker 1: Can we prove it? I really thought there was no way,
Speaker 1: There was no way this could be going on for
Speaker 1: so long and nobody did anything about it. The other
Speaker 1: interesting thing was that the paper who got this wouldn't
Speaker 1: publish it. I mean it's a federal affidavit, and they
Speaker 1: still wouldn't publish it right there in the hometown. And
Speaker 1: Mike Moran, it takes a big city newspaper from two
Speaker 1: hours away in Cincinnati to come in and do this investigation. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: we had the resources of USA today behind us, but
Speaker 1: why not if that had been published, or if the
Speaker 1: local newspaper had been truly an independent arm or an
Speaker 1: independent eye with some of this stuff have gone on,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. The first time I went to Portsmouth,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to expect, and they partnered me
Speaker 1: full time. With the photographer who was also bylined on
Speaker 1: the story. Is she and I were just shooting some
Speaker 1: footage out at the US Shoe factory and there was
Speaker 1: graffiti there talking about prostitution and drugs and things like that,
Speaker 1: and this guy rides up on a bicycle saying, what
Speaker 1: you guys doing. We just kind of telling them, so,
Speaker 1: by the way, do you know Michael Murrainey says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that guy runs women. At that point, We're like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, everybody in town knows this. The guy on
Speaker 1: the street knows this guy. We didn't even ask. In
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, Pilcher began the difficult task of locating area
Speaker 1: women and asking them to open up to him about
Speaker 1: their alleged experiences with Michael Murray. And June of that
Speaker 1: year I got the first woman to come forward and say,
Speaker 1: here's exactly how he did it. And then by July
Speaker 1: we had one or two on the record. And if
Speaker 1: these allegations proven true, this guy was in the seed
Speaker 1: of power. He had these vulnerable women coming to him
Speaker 1: for help from a legal perspective, and he offered then
Speaker 1: the other way out, do this and maybe I can
Speaker 1: get these charges lesson for you. We heard that story
Speaker 1: over and over again. Do this and you won't go
Speaker 1: to jail. And how much of a worse abusive power
Speaker 1: could there being? You started this story not believing this
Speaker 1: as possible. How does that make you feel? Six seven
Speaker 1: to forty, I look like a cop, got a big
Speaker 1: black coute where a black fedora. I'm not warm and cuddley,
Speaker 1: and people don't immediately warm up. Now, I'm a good conversationalist,
Speaker 1: but I was the government kind of accountability reporter. And
Speaker 1: getting women to open up and tell me these awful
Speaker 1: things happened to them. That was eye opening and it
Speaker 1: was a new skill that I had to learn. I
Speaker 1: also had to be the reporter. I also had to
Speaker 1: be the objective reporter. And the hard part was I
Speaker 1: also had to fact check all these women. I couldn't
Speaker 1: just take their word for it. My publication's reputation was
Speaker 1: on the line. My reputation was on the line. I
Speaker 1: had to believe would be skeptical. So when they would
Speaker 1: tell me, oh, I remember that I got arrested in
Speaker 1: this particular place, and I have to say, okay, where when,
Speaker 1: what can you tell me? I'd have to go look
Speaker 1: up the court records all of those things and try
Speaker 1: to make sure that the timelines matched. Ever since then,
Speaker 1: it's been like, you know, these women aren't lying, and
Speaker 1: they deserve all of our attention. The more Pilcher investigated,
Speaker 1: the deeper the ties into the Portsmouth legal system grew.
Speaker 1: We reported several times the women were saying that Marian
Speaker 1: would brag about his relationship with former Kyoto County Common
Speaker 1: Police Court Judge William Marshall. Now William Marshall was one
Speaker 1: of the Marshall Boys. He and his brother were the
Speaker 1: son of the former judge Marshall in that county. So
Speaker 1: Bill Marshall took his dad's place as one of two
Speaker 1: Common Police Courts judges which had oversees all the serious
Speaker 1: cases and all the felonies and all the high end
Speaker 1: civil cases. At a county level, it's an elected position.
Speaker 1: There were allegations that Moran was guiding them to have relations,
Speaker 1: to go to parties with Judge William Marshall. It should
Speaker 1: be noted that Judge William Marshall has staunchly denied these
Speaker 1: allegations or any illicit ties to Michael Moran. Though a
Speaker 1: judge is mentioned in the Affidavid Marshall has repeatedly insisted
Speaker 1: he is not the judge referred to as working in
Speaker 1: collusion with Moran and has not been charged in connection
Speaker 1: with that probe. But the allegations made by area women
Speaker 1: didn't stop at a local judge. One of the women
Speaker 1: who did go on the record for that first story
Speaker 1: told us that she partied with the former police chief,
Speaker 1: she partied with former members of the police department, all
Speaker 1: because Moran sat it up. These women came forward and said,
Speaker 1: these guys used their position to either traffick me. When
Speaker 1: lady got sent up to Chicago, not knowing what she
Speaker 1: was getting into and then turned into a prostitute up there,
Speaker 1: and then other women were talking about how the probation department,
Speaker 1: his brother, the guy ran the probation department, was using
Speaker 1: his position to lessen her probation. That's how deep this went.
Speaker 1: One of the best lawyers in, a politician, and a
Speaker 1: sitting judge all possibly involved in this network. And that's
Speaker 1: when we knew we needed to get more women who
Speaker 1: had been through this experience to talk about what they'd
Speaker 1: been through. The following is audio from an interview the
Speaker 1: Cincinnati Enquirer did with a woman named Heather Boots. She
Speaker 1: claimed to have been a sex trafficking victim in Portsmouth.
Speaker 1: She went on the record about her alleged association with
Speaker 1: Michael Moran. He's your room. So many people's lives if
Speaker 1: this isn't happening for decades, because the judges and the
Speaker 1: corruption here, they're all of it. It's you just saw
Speaker 1: at any house, they will tell you everything like it's
Speaker 1: no secret. James Pilcher began further exploring the Megan Lancaster case.
Speaker 1: Katie Lancaster thinks very strongly that Michael Moran lured Megan
Speaker 1: into this life and it's his fault she's dead or missing. Now,
Speaker 1: whether he actually was directly involved, all we know is
Speaker 1: she left behind a heck of a lot of notes
Speaker 1: about all of her different liaisons and all the people
Speaker 1: she would go to for money. She kept all of it.
Speaker 1: Katie found it. She has copies of everything. We called
Speaker 1: every single number in that book. Some people acknowledge yeah,
Speaker 1: about sex from her and she became like a slew
Speaker 1: of women went missing or got killed that were addicted prostitutes,
Speaker 1: sex workers up in Ross County and Chilla Coffee, which
Speaker 1: is two counties to the north. I mean we're talking
Speaker 1: dozen more women so Megan. A lot of people theorized
Speaker 1: that Megan might have been wrapped up in something that
Speaker 1: got those women killed. But there's a lot of thought
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of theory or rumor that now
Speaker 1: that that was separate from what happened to her, and
Speaker 1: what happened to her points back to possibly Michael Morian.
Speaker 1: Michael Moran has denied any involvement or responsibility in Megan
Speaker 1: Lancaster's disappearance. Moran has stated numerous times and interviews that
Speaker 1: the only involvement he had with Megan Lancaster was in
Speaker 1: a case involving a former client where Lancaster acted as
Speaker 1: an informant. He has said that he had no other
Speaker 1: relationship with her and that she did not work for him. Additionally,
Speaker 1: authorities have not brought any charges against him in the case.
Speaker 1: At this time, it's unclear whether they have questioned him
Speaker 1: in the matter. Throughout twenty nineteen, the Cincinnati Enquirer published
Speaker 1: a series of articles by James Pilcher and his colleagues
Speaker 1: about Michael Moran and his allegedized to human trafficking. Everything
Speaker 1: that was in that affidavit, we reported it out as
Speaker 1: a rageous of the sounds allegations that he was running
Speaker 1: women all over the country, He was promising women drugs
Speaker 1: for sex, he had relationships with judges and with members
Speaker 1: of law enforcement, all of it. So those allegations, all
Speaker 1: of this is in the federal document, and yet they
Speaker 1: never moved on Moran. Now, the DA says we handed
Speaker 1: all the stuff about human trafficking over the FBI. The
Speaker 1: FBI says we're not going to comment on any potential
Speaker 1: or ongoing investigation. So you can see how frustrated we
Speaker 1: were with like, Okay, why doesn't anybody move on him.
Speaker 1: What's going on here? Bob strictly shared Pilcher's frustration. A
Speaker 1: very important thing that the press does, when it's done
Speaker 1: well is to shine lights and you know, and to
Speaker 1: offer a vehicle for those people stepping forward, right. Do
Speaker 1: you find a sense of kind of responsibility of making
Speaker 1: sure those voices are heard? What that this one apart
Speaker 1: was just the amount of women that stepped forward and
Speaker 1: said something about this to us and talk to us
Speaker 1: about it. And then also the apparatus that has to
Speaker 1: exist around a person Michael Moran for an operation as
Speaker 1: we reported on, to exist in the first place, a
Speaker 1: lot of people have to turn their heads. Kind of
Speaker 1: the damnability of people who just turned the other way
Speaker 1: and don't care about what's going on right in front
Speaker 1: of them in their community is more prevalent than maybe
Speaker 1: we've all realized. Initially. We're going to take a quick
Speaker 1: break here, we'll be back in a moment. As part
Speaker 1: of his reporting, Pilcher tracked down Michael Moran to get
Speaker 1: his side of the story. Moran vehemently denied all the
Speaker 1: allegations about being involved in any prostitution or sex trafficking rings.
Speaker 1: Talk to Michael Moran three times at length. When we
Speaker 1: first talked to him, said, are you a sex trafficker?
Speaker 1: People have said you're a sex trafficker. It says here
Speaker 1: in this appa, David, you're a sex trafficker. What do
Speaker 1: you say to that? He tried to play the dumb
Speaker 1: country lawyer. The following is an audio recording from that
Speaker 1: interview with Michael Moran. I don't even know what to say.
Speaker 1: Give me the definition of a sex trafficker. So then
Speaker 1: we get all these women lined up. Would come back
Speaker 1: to him and say, okay, we've got these women now
Speaker 1: saying that you're the guy, and he says okay, and
Speaker 1: then he was more angry. He would not go on
Speaker 1: camera with us a second time. During one conversation, Pilcher
Speaker 1: asked Moran specifically about Megan Lancaster. Moran denied being her
Speaker 1: pimp or being involved in any of that kind of activity,
Speaker 1: but when James Pilcher brought up the possible whereabouts of
Speaker 1: Megan Lancaster, he got a shocking response. Pilcher relayed the
Speaker 1: story to producer Jeff Shane. He joked with, Hey, maybe
Speaker 1: she's in my basement, maybe she's in my backyard. He
Speaker 1: thinks it's a joke because he knows what the rumors are.
Speaker 1: Wait what you So you asked him directly about it? Oh? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I said, you have anything to do with Megan Lancaster
Speaker 1: And he said no, but you can check my basement.
Speaker 1: Everybody else wants to, you can check out him back.
Speaker 1: He said, I've invited the cops in to take a look. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to surmise whether he's trying to get
Speaker 1: away with anything, because I don't know whether or not
Speaker 1: he had anything to do with her disappearance. I really don't.
Speaker 1: Are reporting didn't lead down those paths. But he had
Speaker 1: this attitude that he thought he was smarter than you,
Speaker 1: that he thought he was smarter than anybody. And I
Speaker 1: think what probably from my reporting and my history on
Speaker 1: all this is that I read a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: about him and leading up to him, and I'd see
Speaker 1: stories here and there, but nobody but Nikki Blncolnship kept
Speaker 1: at him. Nobody kept on him. And I can tell
Speaker 1: you that we never went away. The photographer person that
Speaker 1: I worked with, was all in the courtroom bugging him,
Speaker 1: you know, was bugging him that she was there. She
Speaker 1: was always taking pictures or getting video of him in
Speaker 1: action in the courtroom. We just never went away. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, authorities finally made their move. Police rated the
Speaker 1: home of a well known lawyer suspective running a national
Speaker 1: sex trafficking ring for years. March twenty fifth, state and
Speaker 1: local police raid Michael Moran's house with a search warrant
Speaker 1: in Davos. The Attorney General was personally present for that
Speaker 1: en Portsmouth. When you get the state Attorney General showing
Speaker 1: up to serve a search warrant, you know that there
Speaker 1: are some very important people watching this case. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the story I did and you can see Moran
Speaker 1: is sitting on his porch in his stocking feet while
Speaker 1: police are searching his office slash house. Now the thing
Speaker 1: you got to remember too, which is interesting. He is
Speaker 1: a brick two story house that sits on the corner
Speaker 1: right across from the courthouse and right across Catty coinner
Speaker 1: from the local prosecutors office. So he literally can walk
Speaker 1: back and forth from his house flash office to the
Speaker 1: courthouse and walked right in front of the prosecutor's office.
Speaker 1: Just seven months later, it all came crashing down from
Speaker 1: Michael Moran. A long time defense lawyer and former city
Speaker 1: councilman has been arrested in an alleged sex trafficking operation.
Speaker 1: So on Friday, October twenty third to twenty twenty, stayed
Speaker 1: in local police teamed up and arrested Michael Moran. This
Speaker 1: comes nearly seven years after that initial affidavit issued by
Speaker 1: the DA for Nicky Blanketship. It was a day that
Speaker 1: marked the culmination of years of tireless work and a
Speaker 1: victory for dozens of Portsmouth women when Mike Maman was
Speaker 1: arrested on October twenty third, He was arrested on the
Speaker 1: eighteen charges that included sex trafficking, rackety cood, spelling, and
Speaker 1: promoting prostitution. When that came out, that was a really
Speaker 1: exciting day for me. I was screaming. I ran through
Speaker 1: the house screaming because I worried that no one was
Speaker 1: ever going to check. No one wasn't really ever going
Speaker 1: to look into it. I really worried. I know that
Speaker 1: the Cincinnati enquire they had to do their own investigation,
Speaker 1: but it was approximately a year before they started releasing things,
Speaker 1: and when they released things, I still didn't know if
Speaker 1: anything was ever going to happen, and so finally I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, at least somebody's finally checking. Did it
Speaker 1: kind of validate the journey you had started on? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely did. There were also a lot of people
Speaker 1: who were saying he's a great man, and I worried
Speaker 1: about that. I'm like, did I make a mistake? Am
Speaker 1: I wrong? And there's no way I could have seen that.
Speaker 1: I was at this point, I'm like, I have so
Speaker 1: much evidence, but still I can't. I don't want to
Speaker 1: hurt anyone's life like that. So yeah, I was like, okay, something,
Speaker 1: it was valid, and everything I've worked on for for
Speaker 1: a decade is valid. Yeah. Katie Lancaster also felt a
Speaker 1: great sense of relief and was struck by the uncanny
Speaker 1: timing of Marian's arrest. Mariana was arrested October twenty third,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, the day before Megan's thirty third birthday. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was on my way to Columbus and I got
Speaker 1: jumped out of the damn car while it was moving.
Speaker 1: I couldn't speak, I couldn't talk, I couldn't tell anybody
Speaker 1: what was going on. I was just like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, Like I just couldn't believe it, and
Speaker 1: before it happened, the day that it did, it was
Speaker 1: almost like a sense of Okay, now I know this
Speaker 1: is a god thing, Like this happened the day before
Speaker 1: Megan's birthday, almost eight years into it, like it could
Speaker 1: not have come at a better time. It was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, we did it. We got this far, Megan,
Speaker 1: look what you have done. Like I so just wanted
Speaker 1: five minutes with her to say, look that you've done.
Speaker 1: Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back
Speaker 1: in a moment. Just three days after his arrest, Michael
Speaker 1: Moran appeared in court. He was arragned on October twenty six,
Speaker 1: implied not guilty, and then he posted a three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars bond and was released five days after his arrest.
Speaker 1: He was also suspended by the state Bar Association, so
Speaker 1: he's not allowed to practice law at all, both from
Speaker 1: the bar perspective but also from his bond agreement. But
Speaker 1: that didn't stop Moran from trying to pull off an
Speaker 1: audacious legal maneuver. So Michael Moran actually initially filed to
Speaker 1: defend himself in court. He had the intimate knowledge things
Speaker 1: that these women would never want to know publicly, and
Speaker 1: he could cross examine them on the witness stand. So
Speaker 1: I actually talked to the Attorney General about this and
Speaker 1: he said there's no way they were going to let
Speaker 1: them do that. They strongly, strongly objected, and Moran is
Speaker 1: since backed off of that. He hired an attorney. It
Speaker 1: didn't take long for Moran to violate his bond agreement.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, Moran represented somebody against the court order.
Speaker 1: He represented somebody in municipal court and filed paperwork for
Speaker 1: somebody in municipal court in Portsmouth. As part of his
Speaker 1: bond agreement, he was supposed to have not represented anybody.
Speaker 1: Now the State Attorney General's Office, under the direction of
Speaker 1: Dave Yos, the State Attorney General, is prosecuting this case
Speaker 1: against Moran in association with a prosecutor, Shane Kiman. So
Speaker 1: when they got this, they immediately filed with the court
Speaker 1: to have his bond agreement revoked. It don't think he
Speaker 1: takes anything seriously, and I don't know. I don't think
Speaker 1: the court is really pushing him to have to take
Speaker 1: any of this very seriously either, because even though he
Speaker 1: violated the conditions of his bond. Instead of sending him
Speaker 1: back to jail, they put on the house rests. Currently,
Speaker 1: Michael Moran is a waiting trial, though a date has
Speaker 1: not been set. He continues to maintain his innocence. If
Speaker 1: these allegations proven true, this wasn't a one off, you
Speaker 1: did this many times and it was part of a network.
Speaker 1: This was a part of a repeating pattern of criminal activity.
Speaker 1: He's looking at seventy years or more if convicted in
Speaker 1: their concurrent sentences. I think in small communities like in
Speaker 1: southern Ohio that has just been beaten with poverty and
Speaker 1: drug addiction and so many things, I think that it
Speaker 1: is just so easy to feel helpless and powerless against
Speaker 1: these kind of men. So like men like this can
Speaker 1: get by with us and do whatever they want. And
Speaker 1: I think people in areas prey on the community areas
Speaker 1: like this. I think I've always said that all the
Speaker 1: way down to the drug epidemics, that people come in
Speaker 1: offering to help and really is they're just looking how
Speaker 1: they can profit. And there's a lot of wolves in
Speaker 1: sheep's clothing. It makes it very hard to trust your officials,
Speaker 1: your local government, your local law enforcement, because those people
Speaker 1: are supposed to be there to help you. They promise
Speaker 1: to be there to help you and to fight these
Speaker 1: problems with you, and really they're taking advantage and profiting
Speaker 1: as much as they possibly can offer the issues that
Speaker 1: the rest of us have to battle every day. If
Speaker 1: Megan was sitting in front of you right now, what
Speaker 1: would you say to her? I would say to her, Megan,
Speaker 1: we love you so much and we've missed you so bad.
Speaker 1: And a little boy, he's so wonderful. Boy, he's doing great.
Speaker 1: He's doing great things, just like you are. He plays
Speaker 1: sports just like you did. You need to know the
Speaker 1: great things and the great changes that you've plowed in
Speaker 1: Saturda County and in Ohio and in the world for
Speaker 1: that matter. Your story has reached London, England. You've done
Speaker 1: great things and you will continue to do them because
Speaker 1: I will continue to fight for you. We love you,
Speaker 1: we vish you always. Next week, on the Piked and
Speaker 1: Massacre returned to Pike County. On December ninth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, someone got into Curtain Jenny's home and shot
Speaker 1: a mother, both in the bed. On a special bonus episode,
Speaker 1: a double homicide leaves another Pike County family searching for answers.
Speaker 1: After fourteen years of being told we've went as far
Speaker 1: as we can go with this case, you feel like
Speaker 1: you're never going to get justice, and then that turns
Speaker 1: into kind of aggravation. Why isn't anything being done? Why
Speaker 1: isn't this case important? Why is it my family important?
Speaker 1: More on that next time. For more information on the
Speaker 1: case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at Katie
Speaker 1: Underscore Studios. The Pikedon Massacre Returned to Pike County is
Speaker 1: executive produced by Stephanie Lydecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing
Speaker 1: and sound designed by executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing
Speaker 1: by Jeff Shane, Andrew Becker and Chris Graves. The piked
Speaker 1: In Massacre Returned to Pike County is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.