Speaker 1: Welcome to the piked In Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Katie Studios, the bodies.
Speaker 2: Of seven adults and one sixteen year old boy were
Speaker 2: found in.
Speaker 3: Four different locations along a country road in Pine County.
Speaker 1: A small town nightmare comes to life in rural Ohio.
Speaker 1: Eight members of the road and family gunned down in
Speaker 1: cold blood in their sleep.
Speaker 4: Just a nightmare scenario.
Speaker 5: All of them shot in the head execution style is
Speaker 5: absolutely shocking.
Speaker 1: The brutal murder spark a two and a half year
Speaker 1: investigation comprising state, local, and federal authorities. Then Attorney General
Speaker 1: Mike DeWine comments on what ends in a stunning series
Speaker 1: of arrests.
Speaker 6: At the center of this case were members of the
Speaker 6: Wagner family, whom we believe the avalanche will show conspired
Speaker 6: together to kill these eight people.
Speaker 1: It's a crime that shocks a once quiet community and
Speaker 1: leaves a haunting legacy that may lie at its very heart.
Speaker 2: There are survivors and they are very young. We're talking
Speaker 2: three children. One is is four days old, a six
Speaker 2: month old baby, and a three year old. And when
Speaker 2: the reporters were asking were all of them asleep at
Speaker 2: the time, they said no.
Speaker 1: This is the piked In Massacre, Episode three, Hannah and Jake.
Speaker 1: Over the course of the first two episodes, we've covered
Speaker 1: the details of the Rodin murders and learned about the
Speaker 1: family accused of carrying them out, the Wagoners. I'm Courtney Armstrong,
Speaker 1: a producer at KATI Studios. With Stephanie Leidecker and Jeff Shane,
Speaker 1: we worked on a documentary about the Roden murders back
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. Here's Stephanie.
Speaker 7: If we're going to talk about the road in deaths,
Speaker 7: then we also need to talk about their lives. So
Speaker 7: often when it comes to crime victims, it all becomes
Speaker 7: about their murders and so little about who they were prior.
Speaker 7: I all accounts, the Roden family was a very happy,
Speaker 7: close knit family. In fact, they lived just miles from
Speaker 7: one another.
Speaker 5: They were close enough that they all lived on the
Speaker 5: same road, which speaks to just how tight knit they were.
Speaker 5: And you know, this family went back generations in Pike County.
Speaker 5: Everyone we talked to you pretty much said the same
Speaker 5: thing about them. They were all very hard working, very kind,
Speaker 5: and very generous. And we probably heard this the most
Speaker 5: about the matrix of the family Hannah's mother, Dana Rodin.
Speaker 1: Here's one of Dana's oldest friends, Becky Ryder.
Speaker 3: She is a very nice person, just a great mother
Speaker 3: and a great your wife to her husband.
Speaker 8: Yeah, she's just so wrong, a good person.
Speaker 1: As we listened to Becky described Dana Roadin, we began
Speaker 1: to see a vivid portrait take shape. A trusted friend,
Speaker 1: a caring nurse at a nearby assisted living facility, and
Speaker 1: a surrogate mother to some of the local kids. Brittany
Speaker 1: was one of them, a lifelong friend of Dana's son,
Speaker 1: Chris Junior. She reminisced about Dana with Stephanie.
Speaker 3: She had shorter brown hair. She always had the like
Speaker 3: curly and sometimes she was put like purple streaks in
Speaker 3: her hair, blonde streaks like I don't know. She liked
Speaker 3: that kind of weird stuff slumps in here like. I
Speaker 3: always looked at her, like, what are you doing to
Speaker 3: your hair? See now I do that to my hair.
Speaker 9: She would be very proud of you, Yes she would.
Speaker 3: She'd laugh at me.
Speaker 7: And Dana always sort of looked after everybody else's kids.
Speaker 7: She would kind of be the mama bear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one time we were all riding and I wasn't
Speaker 3: on the four wheeler with Chris. Well, we were all
Speaker 3: riding in I actually got in a wreck because the
Speaker 3: four wheeler, like I don't know what happened to it,
Speaker 3: Like it just completely messed up and we flipped down
Speaker 3: the hill and Chris went and got his mom, and
Speaker 3: his mom like came up in the woods. It was
Speaker 3: like freaking out, and then she took care of me,
Speaker 3: gave me some eyes, she gave me some water, you know,
Speaker 3: being that whole.
Speaker 5: Mom like are you okay?
Speaker 10: Are you okay?
Speaker 3: Do I need to call the ambulance? So that was
Speaker 3: always a good thing.
Speaker 1: Dana met her husband, Chris Rhoden Senior, when she was
Speaker 1: in high school, and they fell in love immediately a
Speaker 1: few years later they got married. Here again, as Becky
Speaker 1: Ryder speaking to producer Jeff Shane, she remembered meeting Dana
Speaker 1: as a young wife who had found the man of
Speaker 1: for dreams.
Speaker 6: Well, I met danae her and Chris was already married.
Speaker 5: So they got married in high school.
Speaker 11: Then, Yeah, she got married really young.
Speaker 5: Was that uncommon?
Speaker 3: Yes, it's uncommon, But for her, she knew that's the
Speaker 3: man that she loved, and she knew she wanted to
Speaker 3: be with him forever.
Speaker 1: Stephane likns knew Chris Senior as a devoted family man
Speaker 1: and a skilled craftsman. She spoke to our producer Jeff
Speaker 1: about him.
Speaker 12: I tell you, if you could see some of the stuff,
Speaker 12: some of the things that he built, like the decks.
Speaker 12: He was an amazing carpenter. He built this one that
Speaker 12: had all kinds of intricate you know, he designed them,
Speaker 12: you know, just his imagination. You know he could if
Speaker 12: you know, if they said money's no object, you would
Speaker 12: be a at you know, the things that he could do.
Speaker 1: Together. Dana and Chris Senior raised three kids, Frankie, Hannah,
Speaker 1: and Chris Junior, but after more than twenty years of marriage,
Speaker 1: the relationship began to fall apart. Dana and Christina got divorced,
Speaker 1: but they continued to live on the same property, working
Speaker 1: together to take care of the children.
Speaker 6: They still had each other's back no matter what. Everything
Speaker 6: was always for the kids.
Speaker 1: Nineteen year old Hannah Rodin was Chris Senior and Dana's
Speaker 1: only daughter.
Speaker 3: She was great, She was funny, She was really funny.
Speaker 3: She was really really nice. She knew everyone, Everyone knew her,
Speaker 3: and she just like talked to everyone, but she wasn't
Speaker 3: stuck up or anything like that, and she lived life
Speaker 3: to the fullest.
Speaker 1: But after her murder in twenty sixteen, it became clear
Speaker 1: that Hannah's life and the events leading up to her
Speaker 1: death were much more complicated than anyone I piked in
Speaker 1: could have known. All of this starts six years earlier,
Speaker 1: in the summer of twenty ten. Hannah had recently turned thirteen,
Speaker 1: and she starts dating a local boy named Jake Wagner.
Speaker 1: At the time, Jake was just shy of eighteen. The
Speaker 1: relationship moves quickly. Three years later, Hannah and Jake begin
Speaker 1: planning to start a family, and in November twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: Hannah gives birth to their baby girl, Sophia.
Speaker 3: She was a great mom like sometimes she would bring
Speaker 3: her her baby to school like the She would always
Speaker 3: come into minding Chris's class because we had American Government together,
Speaker 3: and she would always bring the baby in there and
Speaker 3: let our teacher, mister Krino, see the baby.
Speaker 1: We talked to a relative of the Wagner family. She
Speaker 1: asked us not to use her name, but shared her
Speaker 1: thoughts on what Jake was like as a father to Sophia.
Speaker 9: Jake was always very i mean hand on, like he
Speaker 9: would always be playing like, hey be outside baby, you know,
Speaker 9: non stop hand and he always kind of make sure
Speaker 9: that she, you know, had what she needed. Just very
Speaker 9: active with her and very protective of her. It seems like,
Speaker 9: you know, the second that like if anything bad were
Speaker 9: to happen, I guess he was on it. Like he
Speaker 9: was there for her. He was ready to do whatever
Speaker 9: needed to be done in order to make sure that
Speaker 9: she was okay.
Speaker 1: Well. Raising a family is difficult for the young couple,
Speaker 1: they make things work. Hannah stays in school while Jake
Speaker 1: works as a truck driver with his brother, George Wagner.
Speaker 1: The couple in Sophia split time between the Rodent and
Speaker 1: the Wagner households. For everyone involved, it's a dream scenario.
Speaker 1: Angela Wagner, Jake's mother, is already a grandparent, but she's
Speaker 1: excited to be spending time with the newest addition to
Speaker 1: her family.
Speaker 9: Her great children. They absolutely adored her. They left her.
Speaker 9: They always wanted to, you know, go with her, and
Speaker 9: she would go out of her way to make sure
Speaker 9: that they were taking care of or, you know, on
Speaker 9: the holidays that they thought you know anything that cod
Speaker 9: you think she could give them and everything like that.
Speaker 1: Dana Rohden's friend Stefanne told our producer Jeff that Dana
Speaker 1: was just as elated.
Speaker 5: Was she excited to be a grandmother again?
Speaker 12: Oh my gosh, yes, those babies were her lives.
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, things seemed to be going well for
Speaker 1: Hannah and Jake. They have a wedding date set and
Speaker 1: even had rings tattooed on their fingers.
Speaker 7: Throughout that time, Hannah became very close with the Wagner family,
Speaker 7: so much so that after the murders, Angela Wagner tells
Speaker 7: the press that Hannah was like a daughter to her
Speaker 7: and her entire family. So if that's the case, what
Speaker 7: could possibly have gone wrong?
Speaker 5: We have a little bit of insight into that thanks
Speaker 5: to a signed affid David that Jake Wagner submitted, And
Speaker 5: this is just from his perspective, but what he claims
Speaker 5: is that he and Hannah split in April twenty fifteen,
Speaker 5: which is a year before the murders. He claims that
Speaker 5: Hannah actually was the one to break up with him
Speaker 5: because she thought he was working too much, and his
Speaker 5: perspective was that he wanted to stay at home wife
Speaker 5: and a full time mother to Sophia, which Hannah was
Speaker 5: just not ready to do.
Speaker 7: Which, again, that is his account. We don't have the
Speaker 7: benefit of having Hannah's account or any of Hannah's family's
Speaker 7: account either. We spoke with an anonymous Wagner family source
Speaker 7: and they say that Jake just really wasn't ready to
Speaker 7: throw in the towel on the relationship period.
Speaker 9: He was trying very hard to make sure that they
Speaker 9: got back together. He still wanted to be with her.
Speaker 9: He was trying to get back with her, just everything
Speaker 9: that he could.
Speaker 7: It's really hard to know what goes on in a
Speaker 7: relationship behind closed doors. Is it possible that Hannah felt
Speaker 7: as though she was being controlled by Jake or that
Speaker 7: she was in over her head and couldn't get out
Speaker 7: of the relationship. Is it possible that Jake Wagner's broken
Speaker 7: heart was really the reason that his entire family allegedly
Speaker 7: killed her entire family.
Speaker 5: Yeah, again, going back to kind of figuring out like
Speaker 5: the timeline and what might have happened, We're able to
Speaker 5: kind of piece some of it together through social media.
Speaker 5: We found a post from July of twenty fifteen where
Speaker 5: she made a rather cryptic entry on Facebook, posting lyrics
Speaker 5: to a song about domestic abuse, and the lyrics read,
Speaker 5: he slowly isolates her from all of her friends. She
Speaker 5: works really hard, but he takes all of it. She
Speaker 5: ended the post with her own words, saying, en domestic violence,
Speaker 5: live a happier life.
Speaker 1: It is important to note that we don't know for
Speaker 1: an absolute fact that these posts were about Jake. The
Speaker 1: timeline certainly matches up, but if they were all about Jake,
Speaker 1: it raises a number of questions. Was Jake Wagner a
Speaker 1: controlling and abusive partner. Though we can't be sure about
Speaker 1: what went on behind the scenes of Jake and Hannah's relationship,
Speaker 1: we do know one thing. Hannah was eighteen years old
Speaker 1: when she posted message, and she would be dead within
Speaker 1: a year. We're going to take a quick break here.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: that summer of twenty fifteen. Just after Hannah and Jake
Speaker 1: broke up. That May, she starts dating a guy named
Speaker 1: Charlie Gilly. Charlie is her brother, Frankie's best friend and
Speaker 1: the brother of Frankie's fiance, Hannah Gilly. Here's journalist Jeff Winkler,
Speaker 1: there was.
Speaker 13: This period after Hannah May had broken things off with
Speaker 13: Jake Wagner that when she got with Charlie, it was
Speaker 13: sort of by what you would hope for, you know,
Speaker 13: everyone seemed to like Charlie Gilly, who you know, by
Speaker 13: all accounts was very caring, very loving, very much liked
Speaker 13: by the family.
Speaker 1: Charlie is proud of his relationship with Hannah. He often
Speaker 1: posts photos of he and Hannah kissing and proclaims his
Speaker 1: love for her online. However, as fast as things heat up,
Speaker 1: they fizzle out just as quickly, and by the end
Speaker 1: of July twenty fifteen, the couple breaks up. Now, according
Speaker 1: to that same Fit David that Jake Wagner signed, he
Speaker 1: and Hannah continue a physical relationship that entire summer. Brittany
Speaker 1: told Jeff Shane what she heard about Jake Wagner and
Speaker 1: Hannah's fraud relationship from Hannah's brother, Chris Junior.
Speaker 3: Chris would always come to school and talk to me
Speaker 3: about it. What would he say, just that his sister
Speaker 3: is in a shitty situation. He just treats her awfully
Speaker 3: and she really can't do anything about it because she
Speaker 3: has a kid with him. He was just saying that
Speaker 3: it's a whole bunch of bs and that Jake would
Speaker 3: just treat her like crap.
Speaker 5: Ele Like, what did you think about that?
Speaker 3: At the time, that she needed to get out of
Speaker 3: that relationship and not be associated with that family.
Speaker 1: At some point this same summer, Hannah falls for another
Speaker 1: boy from piped in, Corey Holdron. According to our Wagner
Speaker 1: family source, when Jake finds out he's.
Speaker 9: Crushed, he got extremely upset when he found out that
Speaker 9: she was seeing somebody else, and he was hurt. He
Speaker 9: didn't understand, and every time that I got a chance
Speaker 9: to talk to him, he would cry. He was like,
Speaker 9: you know, I don't understand why she's why she's been
Speaker 9: this way, why she you know, won't give me from
Speaker 9: the chance to explain myself, Like we could work on it,
Speaker 9: and it would because Lucia, we would be good to Yeah,
Speaker 9: I mean, it was just always Yeah. He was very
Speaker 9: very upset about that. So and after I think, after
Speaker 9: after being upset and after that kind of war off,
Speaker 9: I think it did turn to anger.
Speaker 1: In August twenty fifteen, hannah summer ends with a big shock.
Speaker 1: She's pregnant. Unlike her first child, this one is unplanned,
Speaker 1: adding to the anxiety, she doesn't know who the father is.
Speaker 1: The potential fathers are Charlie Gilly, Corey Haldron, and Jake Wagner.
Speaker 1: For Jake, the pregnancy offers a glimmer of hope.
Speaker 9: I could just tell by talking to him that when
Speaker 9: he did find out that Hannah was pregnant again that
Speaker 9: it almost was like a sense of relief to him,
Speaker 9: kind of. I think he thought that was going to
Speaker 9: bring him back together. He as Hannah and was willing
Speaker 9: to bear, you know, for the birth. He was acting,
Speaker 9: you know, if she needed any help with anything with
Speaker 9: the baby, like the child support, he was willing to
Speaker 9: pay that He had gotten things for the baby at
Speaker 9: one point on him and Angela had went and bought
Speaker 9: a crib and just things like that for the child. Yeah,
Speaker 9: and this was before he had any idea if it
Speaker 9: was even his or not.
Speaker 1: But behind the scenes, there are rumors that the once
Speaker 1: amicable cope parenting situation between Hannah and Jake is beginning
Speaker 1: to fall apart. According to Mike Gallon, attorney and legal
Speaker 1: analyst for Fox nineteen and Cincinnati, things soon reached a
Speaker 1: boiling point.
Speaker 14: Two or three weeks prior to the murder, there's evidence
Speaker 14: that Jake Wagner and his father tried to get Hannah
Speaker 14: rode and to sign some documents that related to custody
Speaker 14: of her daughter Sophia to Jake Wagner.
Speaker 1: But Jake's plan seems to backfire here again, our Wagner
Speaker 1: family member, there.
Speaker 9: Was a custody battle. It's basically would have been able
Speaker 9: to do. There was a custody battle between you know,
Speaker 9: the the daughter. Hannah wasn't allowing Jake to see her
Speaker 9: or any of the family to see her, and so
Speaker 9: it kind of just it got out of hand at
Speaker 9: that point. It just set him off to the point
Speaker 9: where Jake, because he had made the comments a couple
Speaker 9: of times, I mean, and I had to a couple
Speaker 9: of people about this. I mean, he had made the comments,
Speaker 9: you know, that he were going to kill her, and
Speaker 9: he told her that, you know, He's like, I'm going
Speaker 9: to I'm going to ever chill you like, you're not
Speaker 9: going You're not gonna let me see the baby, then
Speaker 9: you know you're not gonna have her. And I'm like, Jake,
Speaker 9: you can't say those things. Please just chill out and
Speaker 9: of course. You know, nobody ever really thinks like, oh
Speaker 9: my god, he's actually gonna consider that.
Speaker 5: Right, People say stuff like that all the time, right.
Speaker 9: It's right, like, especially when I'm upset as he was.
Speaker 9: I mean, he was just completely out of his mind.
Speaker 9: It really really upset him.
Speaker 1: On April seventeenth, twenty sixteen, in the midst of the
Speaker 1: couple's custody dispute, Hannah gives birth to a baby girl
Speaker 1: named Kylie. On the birth certificate, she doesn't list anyone
Speaker 1: as the father. Less than a week later, on April
Speaker 1: twenty second, Hannah and seven members of her family are
Speaker 1: found murdered in their homes. Thankfully, the life of baby
Speaker 1: Kylie and her two cousin are spared. The brutal murderers
Speaker 1: committed in front of these young children rattled everyone who
Speaker 1: heard about the story, even seasoned prosecutors like then Attorney
Speaker 1: General Mike DeWine.
Speaker 8: I guess the worst thing I've ever seen. And when
Speaker 8: you see a mother, young mother just gave worth four
Speaker 8: days before and she's murdered right beside her child. Thank
Speaker 8: God they did not harm the baby. But you know,
Speaker 8: it doesn't get much worse than that.
Speaker 1: Jeff Winkler spoke to us about trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of the killer's intentions.
Speaker 6: There was a conscious choice to leave every single young
Speaker 6: child alive who basically couldn't identify them successfully. I mean,
Speaker 6: that is probably the most.
Speaker 15: Shocking part of the whole ordeals, that there was a
Speaker 15: conscious choice by these killers to spare the children, which
Speaker 15: sort of displays the cold heartedness of decisions they were making.
Speaker 1: Going back to the timeline for a second. Following the murder,
Speaker 1: it was one week that passed and Jake Wagner files
Speaker 1: for custody for both Sophia and the newborn Kylie. He
Speaker 1: seems convinced that he's Kylie's father, but acknowledges that even
Speaker 1: if he isn't, he still deserves partial custody so the
Speaker 1: sisters could spend time together.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the whole Wagner family was pretty vocal at that
Speaker 5: time about their need to have custody of these kids.
Speaker 5: Angela Wagner told the press that Sophia and Kylie quote
Speaker 5: unquote needed each other and that when they got older
Speaker 5: enough to understand what happened to their mother, that they
Speaker 5: will really need each other.
Speaker 1: Right and custody is something as complicated and it varies
Speaker 1: state by state, So Stephanie, I know you dug into
Speaker 1: this quite a bit.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's very specific. We spoke to a family law
Speaker 7: attorney in Ohio and you know, yes, if you're an
Speaker 7: unmarried woman, all parental rights go to you. The father
Speaker 7: does not have any parental rights unless he goes to
Speaker 7: court and files accordingly. To that point, these papers for
Speaker 7: custody were filed exactly one week after the murders. That's
Speaker 7: pretty quick to pull all of your custody documents together
Speaker 7: in such a short amount of time. I know things
Speaker 7: vary from state to state, but it's pretty unusual to
Speaker 7: have that so tidy so quickly. And some reports I've
Speaker 7: indicated that that may mean that they had been going
Speaker 7: through the process and that Jake and the Wagner family
Speaker 7: were compiling documents in such prior to the murders. So
Speaker 7: it is possible that because he didn't have any rights,
Speaker 7: could that actually be reason enough to go through with
Speaker 7: this crime.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I spoke to Mike Allen. He's a former prosecutor
Speaker 1: and now he's a criminal defense attorney in Ohio, and
Speaker 1: he told me about how Jake's quick custody filings look
Speaker 1: from a legal perspective.
Speaker 10: That's extremely strong evidence for the prosecution. I mean six days,
Speaker 10: less than a week after the killings.
Speaker 14: To go ahead and file it can take.
Speaker 10: Months, you know, maybe a year, a little bit more,
Speaker 10: a little bit less. It's not something that goes quickly
Speaker 10: at all, and I think that that is going to
Speaker 10: be some evidence that's problematic for the defense doing it
Speaker 10: that quickly.
Speaker 1: After the murders, Jake seems determined to be a father
Speaker 1: to Sophia and to Hannah's newborn baby. Throughout Hannah's pregnancy
Speaker 1: and even after the birth, Jake Wagner publicly says there's
Speaker 1: a good chance he's baby Kylie's father. He's so confident
Speaker 1: that shortly after Kylie is born he checks her for
Speaker 1: a hammer index toe, a Wagner family trade.
Speaker 9: He still wanted to be involved and still wanted to
Speaker 9: be there, so it was a very emotional time for him.
Speaker 5: So he really wanted to be a part of Hannah's
Speaker 5: life and Sophia's life and Kylie's baby, Kylie's life.
Speaker 9: Absolutely, he was still willing, I guess, to help with
Speaker 9: the child, help with you know, whatever Hannah would need.
Speaker 1: In June twenty sixteen, nearly two months after the Rodent murders,
Speaker 1: Jake Wagner, Charlie Gilly, and Corey Holtron all take paternity tests.
Speaker 1: It's determined that Charlie Gilly is Kylie's father.
Speaker 7: With baby Kylie going to her father, Charlie Gilly, three
Speaker 7: year old Sophia goes to her father, Jake Wagner, the accused,
Speaker 7: which is interesting when you look at the timeline of events.
Speaker 7: In fact, on the day of the murders, Jake allegedly
Speaker 7: picked up Sophia from the road and home. As a result,
Speaker 7: Sophia's life was thankfully spared. She wasn't even there. Was
Speaker 7: that just a huge coincidence? Was that fate or does
Speaker 7: that actually point to a larger plot?
Speaker 1: Well, for example, if the Wagners indeed are the killers,
Speaker 1: then on the very day Hannah and the rest of
Speaker 1: the Rodents that they were celebrating the expected birth of
Speaker 1: Kylie with the baby shower, the Wagoners were out shopping
Speaker 1: at Walmart for items that the prosecutor plans to introduce
Speaker 1: his evidence at their trial.
Speaker 7: Right, That's an important trip to Walmart that becomes a
Speaker 7: big piece of this case. We've seen those photographs too,
Speaker 7: from the baby shower and everybody looks so happy. You know,
Speaker 7: it's really staggering. Let's just say that Jake's dream was
Speaker 7: to be a family again with Hannah. He was in
Speaker 7: love with her. He wanted to keep his family together.
Speaker 7: Why kill her and guarantee that you're traumatizing your child?
Speaker 7: It doesn't really totally make sense.
Speaker 1: Journalists Jodi Barr analyze the potential motive.
Speaker 11: The older these kids get, the more they're going to
Speaker 11: look like their moms and dads who are murdered. And
Speaker 11: you want that connection, and these families are fighting over
Speaker 11: that through the court system. And now on the back
Speaker 11: end of this, you learned that Wait a minute, if
Speaker 11: everything is true that these investigators have a ledge in
Speaker 11: these charging documents, man, this goes much deeper, you know,
Speaker 11: as far as the custody is involved here, if that
Speaker 11: is truly what happened. But this is a case. I mean,
Speaker 11: we're four years removed from this now. I think about
Speaker 11: this every day in some respect. I mean, if it's
Speaker 11: you know, you wonder about those kids, you know how
Speaker 11: they're doing now? Is it gotten any easier to accept this?
Speaker 11: Are those kids do they remember any part of this?
Speaker 5: It's a whole I mean it's generations of a family
Speaker 5: wiped out.
Speaker 11: Yeah, then you think about, you know, in the back
Speaker 11: end of this, I mean, those kids had to go somewhere.
Speaker 11: What do you do with those children? What are they
Speaker 11: telling them? You know, it's just like when you when
Speaker 11: you think about the human end of this outside of
Speaker 11: the investigation, Man, this family, These are going to be
Speaker 11: hard conversations that they have with these children. Could you
Speaker 11: imagine explaining this to a kid when they ask where
Speaker 11: their mom and dad are or tell me about my
Speaker 11: mom and dad. And I mean they're going to get
Speaker 11: on the internet one day, they're going to google it.
Speaker 12: I mean, you google Rodent.
Speaker 11: The worst news possible that any human could ever have
Speaker 11: is going to come up, and you know, how do
Speaker 11: you prepare them for that? This is a you know,
Speaker 11: whatever happened that morning on Union Hill Road, you know
Speaker 11: it impacted a lot more than just those eight people
Speaker 11: who are killed. I mean, you've got their family members
Speaker 11: and you've got people in that area are going to
Speaker 11: remember this forever. This is never going away.
Speaker 1: Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back
Speaker 1: in a moment. The legacy still lingers on with Dana's
Speaker 1: friend Stephane quite ashamed.
Speaker 12: You know that paina may you know, just just had
Speaker 12: that baby and they you know, it's oh, it makes
Speaker 12: me sick.
Speaker 5: It's really unimaginable.
Speaker 8: Yes, it is.
Speaker 12: You know, no one deserves, no one deserves to die
Speaker 12: the way that they did. And it breaks my heart.
Speaker 12: It breaks my heart that they and I'll never see
Speaker 12: her kids, you know, grow up to go to school,
Speaker 12: get married, have their own children.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, it's okay, it's okay to be emotional about it.
Speaker 5: I mean, it is emotional. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is.
Speaker 5: On the one hand, you've heard I'm sure you've heard.
Speaker 5: I've heard that like whoever did this, you know, had
Speaker 5: like some sort of moral code that they wouldn't hurt
Speaker 5: the children and they wouldn't you know, harm the kids.
Speaker 5: But then on the other hand, it's like, but they
Speaker 5: left all these kids without a family, and so like
Speaker 5: that's almost worse in a way.
Speaker 12: Yes, And I feel so sorry for the children. You
Speaker 12: know that they will never get to know their parents,
Speaker 12: you know, will never grow they'll grow up without their parents.
Speaker 1: We know that the Wagoners are in prison awaiting trial
Speaker 1: for these murders, but also that they've pled not guilty
Speaker 1: to all charges. It's also important to remember that they
Speaker 1: are innocent until proven guilty. So if somebody else other
Speaker 1: than the Wagoners committed this crime, who was it and why.
Speaker 1: During the ensuing investigation, information started to emerge that perhaps
Speaker 1: there were several other theories that needed to be considered closely.
Speaker 1: Here's reporter James Pilcher, who followed the story closely for years.
Speaker 4: On the surface, the Rodents appeared to be the salt
Speaker 4: of the earth, all American, very close knit family, and
Speaker 4: there were other things that led you to believe that
Speaker 4: all was now as it seemed. There had been reports
Speaker 4: of scuffles with other people in public, there had been
Speaker 4: reports of run ins with law enforcement, and.
Speaker 1: It wasn't long before authorities made a shocking discovery that
Speaker 1: turned the case on its head. Here's the Attorney General,
Speaker 1: Mike DeWine at a news conference a few days after
Speaker 1: the murders took place.
Speaker 8: Let me go ahead, and I think it's okay for
Speaker 8: us to confirm that we did find marijuana in three
Speaker 8: three locations.
Speaker 6: There's a grow operations.
Speaker 4: Later, it was discovered that the Rodents had a pretty
Speaker 4: sizeable crop of marijuana plants on their property. You know,
Speaker 4: there were indications that they were involved in some drug deals,
Speaker 4: in drug trade with marijuana. That obviously fueled even more
Speaker 4: speculation that these were outside operators. Possibly was as a
Speaker 4: drug deal gone bad, or was somebody trying to take
Speaker 4: over their turf. All kinds of rumors started flow after
Speaker 4: that disclosure.
Speaker 1: More on that next week. Picked In Massacre there is
Speaker 1: executive produced by Stephanie Leidecker and me Courtney Armstrong, editing
Speaker 1: and sound design by executive producer Jared Aston, Additional producing
Speaker 1: by Jeff Shane and Andrew Becker. The piked in Massacre
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio and Kati Studios. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.