Speaker 1: Welcome to the Pikedon Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: KATI Studios. In April twenty sixteen, when eight members of
Speaker 1: the Rodent family were murdered in their homes, the media
Speaker 1: descended on the sleepy town of Piketon, Ohio.
Speaker 2: Community clearly shaken after this morning's multiple homicides.
Speaker 1: People in this small community being told to be on
Speaker 1: alert tonight as news of the unthinkable and gruesome killing spread,
Speaker 1: The small rural community is left feeling and rumors begins swirling.
Speaker 3: Discoveries the murder scenes are now advancing the theory the
Speaker 3: killings could be related to a drug cartel.
Speaker 4: Authorities aren't commenting on whether they had any potential suspects.
Speaker 5: Gooybody, thanks.
Speaker 6: All the bad stuff happens in the big cities, but
Speaker 6: the devil works at it everywhere.
Speaker 1: But in the aftermath of the arrests of six members
Speaker 1: of the Wagner family, attention turns to the very people
Speaker 1: responsible for the investigation.
Speaker 4: There was this belief among almost everybody I talk to
Speaker 4: about incompetence when it came to law enforce in that county.
Speaker 7: There's nobody watching the watchers in these small communities, and
Speaker 7: in many cases that can lead to major corruption and.
Speaker 1: The dark secrets of a once quiet town are slowly
Speaker 1: brought to light.
Speaker 8: There's been a lot of murders here that have not
Speaker 8: been solved. But if I say what I think, I
Speaker 8: could probably end up in the river.
Speaker 1: This is the piked In Massacre, Episode five, air and Opportunity.
Speaker 1: In the days after the killings, the Rodent murders became
Speaker 1: an international headline and it was a sensational story, a
Speaker 1: series of murders, multiple potential motives, all taking place in
Speaker 1: a small town in Ohio. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a TV
Speaker 1: producer at Katie Studios, where I work with Stephanie Leidecker
Speaker 1: and Jeff Shane. We've been following the case for a
Speaker 1: long time and through the course of our investigation learned
Speaker 1: that the town of piked In, Ohio has its own
Speaker 1: story to tell. Journalist Jeff Winkler wrote about the story
Speaker 1: for the website The Outline. He told me about his
Speaker 1: impressions of the initial reporting coming out of piked In.
Speaker 2: It was a big media story for about two weeks,
Speaker 2: and you know, everybody from all over came to cover it,
Speaker 2: all over the world, and a lot of people had
Speaker 2: been similarly executed in the middle of Appalachia and no
Speaker 2: one knew what was going on. I mean, I grew
Speaker 2: up in the Ozarks in Arkansas, and these are people
Speaker 2: I feel familiar with. You know, when I go up
Speaker 2: to New York, California, that's like a Disneyland and it's
Speaker 2: a strange, people daring place. These areas and folks like
Speaker 2: this are not wildering to me in the same way
Speaker 2: that they weren't the people who came down and covered
Speaker 2: the story Originally. You get a lot of talk of
Speaker 2: a book at these people smoking and you know, wearing camo,
Speaker 2: and you know a lot of gwking. You know, it
Speaker 2: was just these sort of quotes from sad sort of
Speaker 2: back its people is how they're perceived, and that's that's just.
Speaker 5: Not where I come from.
Speaker 2: But I think this thing that stood out for me
Speaker 2: was just how human everyone was.
Speaker 1: Piked In Resident Angie Montgomery shared her view of the
Speaker 1: media coverage with producer Jeff Sheane.
Speaker 9: How do you think like piked In and the like
Speaker 9: Pike County in general, I guess has been portrayed in
Speaker 9: the media.
Speaker 8: I don't think they've been very kind to us. I've
Speaker 8: seen a lot of reports where they call this uneducated
Speaker 8: kill billy just dumb. They think we're dumb, they think
Speaker 8: we're a bunch of inbread. I've actually seen that in
Speaker 8: some reports, and it's sad.
Speaker 9: Well, it's easy for some to view the town of
Speaker 9: piped In through this kind of provincial, almost stereotypical lens.
Speaker 9: It's not what we found when we visited the area.
Speaker 10: It's pretty far removed from the big cities of Olo.
Speaker 10: It's about an hour and a half south from Columbus,
Speaker 10: an hour and a half east of Cincinnati, and just
Speaker 10: under thirty minutes from the Ohio River, which basically separates
Speaker 10: southern Ohio from northeastern Kentucky. There's a Walmart, there's a restaurant.
Speaker 10: There used to be this great dive bar that has
Speaker 10: since closed, I believe, and look for the twenty two
Speaker 10: hundred residents piked In his home Native Barbara and Jeff
Speaker 10: actually spoke of it about that when we were there.
Speaker 11: Piked In's considered a village and it is a small
Speaker 11: just a small little town that has a grocery store
Speaker 11: and a pizza shop, and gas stations and there's a
Speaker 11: tire shop. People sit and talk to the gas station, wherever,
Speaker 11: wherever they go. They people know each other and they
Speaker 11: just sit and talk. You know, at the tire shop
Speaker 11: you're waiting for a or an oil change or whatever.
Speaker 11: You just sit there and chat with your neighbor or
Speaker 11: whoever happens to come in. You probably know who it is.
Speaker 11: You know somebody everywhere, or you know somebody that knows
Speaker 11: somebody everywhere anywhere you go.
Speaker 9: I imagine that is probably like sometimes kind of enjoyable,
Speaker 9: and then other times it's probably pretty maddening.
Speaker 11: Yeah, sometimes people know when when I spend the day
Speaker 11: in my pool or when I skip a day. If
Speaker 11: if there's a day goes by, I don't get in
Speaker 11: my pool. Next time I see someone else, they'll say,
Speaker 11: how come you weren't in your pool the other day.
Speaker 11: So it's crazy.
Speaker 1: The majority of people we spoke with depicted piked in
Speaker 1: this way. Small town USA, everyone knows everyone, nobody ever
Speaker 1: locked their doors growing up. But when we started to
Speaker 1: pull back the curtain, it was clear that piked In
Speaker 1: harbored some dark secrets, secrets that didn't start with the rodents.
Speaker 9: It seems like there's like two sides of piked In,
Speaker 9: which is one is like the blue collar hard workers
Speaker 9: who you know, want to raise their families the right way,
Speaker 9: and yet somehow something horrible still did happen to this town.
Speaker 11: I think it's like every town, you're gonna find that
Speaker 11: wherever you go, there's going to be the ugly part,
Speaker 11: and piked In has it.
Speaker 1: Jeff spoke to Stephanne, a former Pikedon resident who had
Speaker 1: recently left town. She shared barber sentiments about the community.
Speaker 9: I want to ask you, so you now you're in
Speaker 9: Florida and you're away from Pikedon and all this, but
Speaker 9: it still seems like it's very much a part of
Speaker 9: your DNA, right.
Speaker 12: I haven't been home since July a year before last,
Speaker 12: since twenty eighteen, and I just I don't know if
Speaker 12: I'll ever really like go back and live there. Ever.
Speaker 13: You know, if you look back through the history of
Speaker 13: piked In, you know there's quite a bit of things
Speaker 13: that just happened that, you know, there's no explanation for
Speaker 13: get swept under the rug. I don't know.
Speaker 12: I think there's just more evil there than just what
Speaker 12: happened to those eight.
Speaker 1: Stephan's remarks left us unsettled, but when we followed up
Speaker 1: with investigative reporter Jodi Barr. He seemed to corroborate her
Speaker 1: thoughts with some troubling stories he had heard during his
Speaker 1: time covering the road in case.
Speaker 4: This was national news the day after a few days
Speaker 4: after it happened.
Speaker 3: But you know, as it typically.
Speaker 4: Happens with the news cycles, you know, the national folks
Speaker 4: move on to.
Speaker 5: The next big story.
Speaker 4: We were left with that, and we would get emails
Speaker 4: and constant questions or phone calls about new information.
Speaker 5: Is there anything to know? And there was nothing to know.
Speaker 4: So my boss came to me and said, hey, can
Speaker 4: you go over and start digging into this and see
Speaker 4: if there's anything at all that we could find out.
Speaker 4: I was in Pike County a lot, and I kept
Speaker 4: getting stories about other homicides in Pike County, and I thought, Man,
Speaker 4: if there were that many homicides in a county, this
Speaker 4: small man, there could be something here that we don't
Speaker 4: yet know, and it's worth taking a look.
Speaker 1: Through his research, Jodi discovered that there have been at
Speaker 1: least three recent cases in By County involving multiple homicides.
Speaker 1: Cases like the January twenty sixteen murders of Candace Newsom
Speaker 1: and her teenage daughter, Christina. They were both shot execution
Speaker 1: style in their home. Police finally did arrest the Newsom's
Speaker 1: neighbor for their murders in twenty nineteen. Neighbor Christian R. Davis,
Speaker 1: was indicted by a grand jury, but did not plead,
Speaker 1: nor has he been convicted, but there was plenty of
Speaker 1: chatter on social media, none of which can be confirmed,
Speaker 1: mentioning the possibility of an accomplice to the murders still
Speaker 1: at large. Candace Newsom's sister, Darla has even spoken publicly
Speaker 1: she thinks that her sister and niece's murder may be
Speaker 1: related to the Rodents, stating that they ran in the
Speaker 1: same circles.
Speaker 9: What struck me about Candace and Christina and was just
Speaker 9: the fact the similarities between, Like just the idea that
Speaker 9: in the middle of the night these people were gunned
Speaker 9: down in the in their homes while they slept. Just
Speaker 9: it is striking, you know, before even reading any other details,
Speaker 9: just hearing that when you're researching the road in case,
Speaker 9: you're like, well, that's weird. You know, that's fifteen minutes away.
Speaker 9: It's the same exact style of murder.
Speaker 4: Yes, And it was just so odd that you had
Speaker 4: that type of crime in happening in a place like that.
Speaker 1: Then in April twenty sixteen, just weeks before the Rodents
Speaker 1: were killed, Douglas Eatman and Carolyn and Tomlinson were shot
Speaker 1: execution style in their home. According to Jodi Barr, one
Speaker 1: detail of the crime struck a familiar chord.
Speaker 4: A double homicide, four children left alive. This is very
Speaker 4: similar to the Rodent case.
Speaker 9: I mean again, it's a striking coincidence that in the
Speaker 9: same area this is happening. In the same month, you know,
Speaker 9: the same month and year that the Rodents were murdered,
Speaker 9: this has also happened.
Speaker 5: That's what led us down.
Speaker 4: The path of even looking at these cases, because we
Speaker 4: had heard that there were other people who were shot
Speaker 4: no the night, execution style in their home.
Speaker 5: When you're looking at.
Speaker 4: The Rodent case and then you see these other cases
Speaker 4: in a county that small, you start asking yourself what
Speaker 4: the hell is going on, because it doesn't make sense
Speaker 4: that this is happening there unless there is some sort
Speaker 4: of common denominator. And it's still hard to believe today
Speaker 4: that there were these types of murders that took place
Speaker 4: in a county so small, with so few people living
Speaker 4: in it. I mean, you don't hear about that in
Speaker 4: big cities, and you sit back and you wonder to yourself,
Speaker 4: what is going on?
Speaker 5: I mean, why is this happening.
Speaker 1: Fortunately, police arrested Douglas Eatman's uncle Charles and his cousin
Speaker 1: James Allen, on suspicion of Douglas and Carolyn's murder. Each
Speaker 1: face is twenty to fifty years or life in prison,
Speaker 1: with enhanced sentencing for capital offenses also a possibility. The
Speaker 1: pair were indicted but have not pled or been convicted.
Speaker 1: The case is ongoing. According to investigators, it was a
Speaker 1: drug related killing. The motive for Candas and Christina Newsom's murders, however,
Speaker 1: remains unclear. But beyond the methods of these killings, there's
Speaker 1: another thing that Jody told us about that ties them
Speaker 1: all together.
Speaker 4: Then in some cases people get away with it for
Speaker 4: extended periods of time. Kendice Newsom and her teenage daughter Christina.
Speaker 4: It took four years before investigators charged a neighbor and
Speaker 4: family friend with murder in that And that's four years
Speaker 4: and the alleged perpetrator in that case is what a
Speaker 4: next door neighbor, and it took four years a piece.
Speaker 4: That together is just you wonder if Pike County if
Speaker 4: people were getting good at committing crimes and potentially getting
Speaker 4: away with it.
Speaker 1: One case that remains unsolved is the two thousand and
Speaker 1: six murder of thirty four year old Curtis Francis and
Speaker 1: thirty year old Jennifer Brigett.
Speaker 4: Kurt Francis and Jennifer berg At. You know, they were
Speaker 4: both shot and killed in their beds, in their homes
Speaker 4: in the middle of the night. And you know, when
Speaker 4: I'm looking through these incident reports of these murders and
Speaker 4: I go, WHOA.
Speaker 5: This sounds very similar to the road case.
Speaker 4: You know, two people shot in their bed in their
Speaker 4: homes in the middle of the night, and I thought,
Speaker 4: this is one we need to pursue.
Speaker 5: But no one would talk.
Speaker 4: We couldn't find out any information. All the search warrants
Speaker 4: were sealed at the courthouse and there's absolutely no arrest.
Speaker 4: Ten years later, there's nothing here. We are today still nothing.
Speaker 4: We're in a dead end and it may never be solved.
Speaker 4: And unfortunately there are other cases like that there that
Speaker 4: just didn't get the attention.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break here we'll be
Speaker 1: back in a moment.
Speaker 10: Let's take one quick step back for a minute and
Speaker 10: really look at the Curtis Francis and Jennifer Burguett case.
Speaker 10: That's the couple who was also shot in their home
Speaker 10: while they slept in two thousand and six. They only
Speaker 10: lived about fifteen minutes down the road from the road
Speaker 10: in property. Fifteen minutes and to this day, that case
Speaker 10: remains unsolved.
Speaker 1: For Angie Montgomery, Curtis Francis's cousin, it remains a devastating
Speaker 1: memory without closure. She spoke to Jeff about it.
Speaker 9: I was shocked that I had never even heard of
Speaker 9: Curtis and Jennifer's case, because it's a pretty it's egregious
Speaker 9: that this happened and it's unsolved, and it just seems
Speaker 9: crazy that another in such a small community that something
Speaker 9: like this could happen again. And so what I would
Speaker 9: would love to do, and maybe it would kind of
Speaker 9: be to like walk through kurt and Jenny's case and
Speaker 9: kind of like explain who they were and any of
Speaker 9: the facts that you know about the case.
Speaker 8: Well, Curtis was a very hard working, good guy, loved
Speaker 8: his family, loved hunting and animals, and fishing and all
Speaker 8: that stuff, and he would help anybody. And he was
Speaker 8: very protective. That's one word I like to use to
Speaker 8: describe him. Very protective of the people. We loved. Jenny
Speaker 8: was a good girl. It's always taking care of others.
Speaker 8: I think they just got messed up with the wrong people.
Speaker 1: The wrong people and he's referring to are local drug dealers.
Speaker 8: The most of the crime that happens around here, like
Speaker 8: carthev's and breaking and enterings and things like that, is
Speaker 8: from drugs. There's a huge problem with opioids and methodmphetamine here,
Speaker 8: huge and that probably does play a part in every
Speaker 8: almost every murder that's happened, probably in the past ten years.
Speaker 8: I think the people that killed my cousin lived I
Speaker 8: think four or five minutes up the road from Curtain Jenny.
Speaker 8: They were big druggillers, and Curtis owed in some money,
Speaker 8: supposedly for marijuana.
Speaker 9: So you feel like you know who did it.
Speaker 8: Oh, yes, I don't want to be that person, but
Speaker 8: I'm pretty blunt and upfront in the law enforcement here.
Speaker 8: They have mishandled Curtain Jenny's case from the rip.
Speaker 1: When Angie says law enforcement, she's talking about the Pike
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Office, the same agency heavily involved in conducting
Speaker 1: the Rodent murder investigation. In twenty sixteen, a plumber discovered
Speaker 1: a well that had seemed to have been mysteriously hidden
Speaker 1: with rocks and dirt. It was on a property that,
Speaker 1: according to eyewitness statements, was the last place Curtis Francis
Speaker 1: was seen on the night of his murder. The Pike
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Office was called in to investigate. Officers lowered
Speaker 1: a plumber's drain camera into the well and discovered what
Speaker 1: appeared to be burned clothes and a gun.
Speaker 8: It was a thirty out six was at the bottom
Speaker 8: of the well and Curtis's pistol that was taken in
Speaker 8: nine of the murders, and that's what they were shot with,
Speaker 8: a thirty out six.
Speaker 9: Both of them.
Speaker 1: Curtain Jimmy with a potential murder weapon line just thirty
Speaker 1: feet down a well. The Pike County Sheriff's Office decided
Speaker 1: to use a curious tactic to recover the gun. They
Speaker 1: called in a fire truck to pump water into the
Speaker 1: well to try and push the firearm back up out
Speaker 1: of the well. Shaft so investigators could get their hands
Speaker 1: on it. It did not go as planned.
Speaker 8: They blew the water down the well, which in turn
Speaker 8: made the ground break because of the force of you know,
Speaker 8: a fire hose could blow the skin off of it.
Speaker 8: So they did that. This is what they told us
Speaker 8: that happened. When they did that, it busted the ground loose.
Speaker 8: The guns went down into the ground, and that they
Speaker 8: don't have the money or the equipment to get them out,
Speaker 8: so they hired a guy to seal the well shut.
Speaker 8: He's a welder. He welded the well shut and that
Speaker 8: was it. I think after this fiasco with the guns
Speaker 8: in the well, when the guns were found, and how
Speaker 8: they handled that situation and handled the possible murder weapons,
Speaker 8: I think they're ashamed, and they should be. They took
Speaker 8: probably the only hope we have of any type of
Speaker 8: physical evidence and blew it to snotherings basically, and nothing's
Speaker 8: been done with it since.
Speaker 1: With Curtis and Jennifer's case going cold, Angie decided to
Speaker 1: pursue the killers herself.
Speaker 8: I've spent years and years. I've got file after file
Speaker 8: after file of things I've done. I've actually went and
Speaker 8: got names I've went and talked to people. Well, I'm
Speaker 8: just going to be honest with you. I've done with
Speaker 8: the police. I've tried to do the police haven't done,
Speaker 8: which is talk to people, get information, you know, get date,
Speaker 8: get time, get people talking.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 8: All you've seen Kurt that day, Okay, who was with him?
Speaker 8: What was his demeanor? Things like that. There's eyewitness statements,
Speaker 8: and I've tried my best to get somebody or anybody
Speaker 8: just to listen. It's pretty cut and dry, you know.
Speaker 8: It's I've had a few people out of state that
Speaker 8: are like retired homicide investigators and stuff look at the
Speaker 8: case and tell me that they can't, for the life
Speaker 8: of them, figure out why there hasn't been an arrest
Speaker 8: made for the town that we you know, the size
Speaker 8: of our town, there's been a lot of murders here
Speaker 8: that have not been solved. It's ridiculous. But if I
Speaker 8: say what I think, I could probably end up in
Speaker 8: the river.
Speaker 1: According to Jody barr Angie's thoughts about the Pike County
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Office are shared by many in the community.
Speaker 4: The impression I got from the people in Pike County
Speaker 4: when I was working there covering the road and murders.
Speaker 5: There was this belief among.
Speaker 4: Almost everybody I talked to about incompetence when it came
Speaker 4: to law enforcement in that county and the lack of
Speaker 4: that sheriff's office ability to do a large scale murder
Speaker 4: investigation and carry that through to a prosecution.
Speaker 1: And the man at the head of the Pike County
Speaker 1: Sheriff's office is none other than Sheriff Charles Reader. You've
Speaker 1: heard about Sheriff Reader before. He's the officer who stated
Speaker 1: he would stop at nothing to solve the Rodents case.
Speaker 5: I've got a message for the killers.
Speaker 7: We will find you, the family and the victims will
Speaker 7: have justice one day.
Speaker 1: To a lot of people watching these news conferences, Reader's
Speaker 1: passionate campaign for justice was admirable, But to journalists like
Speaker 1: Jeff Winkler, Reader's determination, his mishandling of the road and
Speaker 1: investigation from the very start.
Speaker 2: It was the largest mass murder in Ohio's history, and
Speaker 2: the law enforcement at the beginning, the local law enforcement
Speaker 2: was almost comically inept to handle such a large and
Speaker 2: bloody incident. They were just they weren't equipped to handle it.
Speaker 2: From the very beginning of the investigation, and they bungled
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff right from the get go. It
Speaker 2: was one problem after another.
Speaker 1: Nearly a month after the bodies were found, Sheriff Reeder
Speaker 1: had key pieces of evidence, including the roadents, mobile homes,
Speaker 1: and automobiles, moved to a warehouse in the nearby town
Speaker 1: of Waverley. Jodie Barr was on the scene and told
Speaker 1: Jeff what he saw.
Speaker 4: So I'm out of the warehouse where they moved these vehicles,
Speaker 4: the equipment from all the roadent properties where they moved
Speaker 4: the four mobile homes where these murders happened.
Speaker 5: There's a large fence around this huge.
Speaker 4: Outdoor lot and it is full of cars and ATVs,
Speaker 4: farm equipment, back hos, huge tractor trailers. So, as a
Speaker 4: reporter with you know, at least a small knowledge of
Speaker 4: the chain of custody of evidence. I know that with
Speaker 4: all this evidence just you know, fifty yards away from me,
Speaker 4: that you've got to have it secured somehow.
Speaker 5: There's got to be a peace officer.
Speaker 4: Someone there with a gun and a bat swore who
Speaker 4: swear an oath to uphold the laws in the constitutions
Speaker 4: of the state of Ohio.
Speaker 5: They're guarding that that was not the case. Yeah.
Speaker 9: So this it's the largest in criminal investigation in the
Speaker 9: state's history, right, and the main evidence is not getting watched.
Speaker 4: There was no one in that parking lot watching that evidence.
Speaker 4: So when you drive up to a warehouse and you
Speaker 4: look and there's nothing between you and hundreds of pieces
Speaker 4: of evidence except air and opportunity, if that doesn't raise
Speaker 4: a red flag, I don't think you're doing your job.
Speaker 5: I knew at that point time.
Speaker 4: That there was something to explore here because potentially this evidence,
Speaker 4: if it's unguarded, they can't establish a chain of custody.
Speaker 5: This entire investigation could be jeopardized. So that's why we
Speaker 5: took them.
Speaker 4: We took Mike Allen, the former Hamilton County District Attorney.
Speaker 5: We took him to Pike County. I called him and
Speaker 5: I said, hey.
Speaker 4: I want to take you to Pike County. Here's what
Speaker 4: I found. I don't want to show you what I've
Speaker 4: found yet. I just want to take you to this
Speaker 4: warehouse and you give me your impressions of what we
Speaker 4: see there through the eyes of a prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Here's Mike Allen.
Speaker 6: Jody was on this thing like white on Rice, and
Speaker 6: I went up there living and that's when I noticed
Speaker 6: it too, and you know, you've got it. Seems to
Speaker 6: me it was close to thirty forty, maybe even fifty
Speaker 6: vehicles that had a fence around them. Well that's fine,
Speaker 6: but it would have taken an old man like me
Speaker 6: about ten seconds to climb over that fence and take
Speaker 6: something out of one of those vas vehicles, plant something,
Speaker 6: put something in one of the vehicles.
Speaker 5: It just was not done right.
Speaker 6: I mean, anybody involved in law enforcement, from the first
Speaker 6: week that you're at the police academy, you learned that
Speaker 6: you must preserve the evidence, and you must preserve that
Speaker 6: chain of custody of the evidence. And I don't know what,
Speaker 6: if anything, they pulled out of any of those cars,
Speaker 6: but if I were defending this case and they tried
Speaker 6: to introduce any of that evidence, I would be all
Speaker 6: over it and I would move to have the evidence
Speaker 6: excluded because it just was not properly secured.
Speaker 1: So Jody began preparing a report about the evidence fiasco
Speaker 1: for newstation Fox nineteen and Cincinnati. Soon after, Jody and
Speaker 1: his crew were approached by Sheriff Charles Reader, who presented
Speaker 1: them with a curious offer. The Sheriff's office declined to comment,
Speaker 1: but here is Jody's side of the story.
Speaker 4: He tried to make a deal with us to not
Speaker 4: hear that warehouse.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the deal was that he.
Speaker 4: Was going to give us this unfettered access where we
Speaker 4: could do this first hundred hours with Charlie Reider after
Speaker 4: he learned the murders. If we wouldn't do this, that
Speaker 4: always That still sits for me today. It pissed me
Speaker 4: off then because I'm like, you know, what, what do
Speaker 4: you think we are?
Speaker 5: We don't make deals. My photographer, how're you know? We
Speaker 5: got back in the car after that, We're going, what
Speaker 5: the hell just happened here? Never have we ever experienced that.
Speaker 1: Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back
Speaker 1: in a moment. In June twenty nineteen, Reader was indicted
Speaker 1: on eight felonies and eight misdemeanors. These felony charges are
Speaker 1: not directly related to the road and investigation. He was
Speaker 1: accused of conflict of interest, theft in office, and tampering
Speaker 1: with evidence, among other nefarious activities. According to reports, we
Speaker 1: are also allegedly stole cash sees from drug arrest to
Speaker 1: fund a gambling problem. Here's investigative journalist James Pilcher.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he had a gambling addiction and he decided, oh,
Speaker 7: I'll just use my own forces money to feed it. Yeah,
Speaker 7: uh huh. Man, in places like this, and I'm not
Speaker 7: going to say it's necessarily a lack of journalistic outlets
Speaker 7: keeping cabs or whatever, but there's no accountability. There's nobody
Speaker 7: watching the watchers in these small communities, and in many
Speaker 7: cases that can lead to major corruption.
Speaker 10: It's definitely worth noting that Sheriff Reader has pled not
Speaker 10: guilty to all of these charges. However, to Jody Barr,
Speaker 10: it's just another surreal event to what seems like a
Speaker 10: never ending bizarre story.
Speaker 4: Reader was, you know, shouldered to shoulder with Mike DeWine,
Speaker 4: the now governor who was then the attorney general when
Speaker 4: these murders happened, that they together were updating the nation
Speaker 4: about what happened here in those days after the murders,
Speaker 4: and where you going?
Speaker 5: Is this real?
Speaker 4: Then you read what the indictment's alleged, and you read
Speaker 4: what the grand jury handed up, and then you know,
Speaker 4: you just have to assume if a grand jury is
Speaker 4: handing up an indictment, that there's been an investigation conducted.
Speaker 4: There have been facts gathered, a prosecutor has reviewed that,
Speaker 4: I mean evidence, tampering and tampering with records. You're talking
Speaker 4: about a guy who led the sheriff's office and who
Speaker 4: for a time, a moment in time when this first happened,
Speaker 4: these murders first happened, who was also leading that investigation
Speaker 4: until the state came in and took it over. You
Speaker 4: just sit back and go, man, let's see where this ends.
Speaker 4: I mean, Pike County has been a crazy ride so
Speaker 4: ever since the end of April twenty sixteen, and it's
Speaker 4: still right now. You've got people awaiting trial facing the
Speaker 4: death penalty on eight murders. The sheriff and dited removed
Speaker 4: from office. It has been an absolutely crazy half a decade.
Speaker 1: There still the people of pikes And are torn about
Speaker 1: Sheriff Reader.
Speaker 14: He put this town before him, He cared about Pike County.
Speaker 1: Here's roadin family friend Brittany talking to Stephanie Leidecker.
Speaker 14: If it wasn't for him, he for Charlie Reader, they
Speaker 14: wouldn't have came close to even finding out about the Wagners. Honestly,
Speaker 14: that's my opinion. How Come because he worked his ass
Speaker 14: off to find like that's all he did was investigate
Speaker 14: all of that. He didn't like, he didn't like he
Speaker 14: had done his job, Like he went and you know,
Speaker 14: like he was doing really well in Pike County, like
Speaker 14: keeping this, like getting the drugs off the streets and whatnot.
Speaker 14: But he's still made effort, a lot of effort into
Speaker 14: the road In case.
Speaker 10: Charlie had dedicated himself to getting justice for the road
Speaker 10: and family, and then he was booted, not that that
Speaker 10: long ago.
Speaker 14: Apparently he was taking the money from the Rodent case
Speaker 14: for gambling, But honestly, I don't believe it because I
Speaker 14: don't know. I just don't believe that they just were
Speaker 14: finding reasons to get him out of office.
Speaker 1: Andrew Montgomery holds a much different view of Sheriff Reader.
Speaker 8: You know, now he's blaming his gambling habits on because
Speaker 8: what he's seen is the Rodent crime scenes have on
Speaker 8: iting so much he couldn't sleep, so he would go gamble. Well,
Speaker 8: unknown Charlie for thirty years, and he's been gambling way
Speaker 8: before this happened. And that's just that just to me
Speaker 8: shows you his character. You know, I'm going to use
Speaker 8: the death of eight people to try to smooth over that.
Speaker 8: I'm still in money off my county and gambling, and
Speaker 8: that is discuss things to me. I just think there's
Speaker 8: a lot of dirty deeds that going around here, and
Speaker 8: I think that they will do anything they can to
Speaker 8: keep them covered up. Do we have a lot of
Speaker 8: crime here, yeah, because of drugs. Do we have a
Speaker 8: lot of drug activity here? Yes, way more than there
Speaker 8: was fifteen years ago. Is it safe here? I'm more
Speaker 8: scared of law enforcement than I am of the people
Speaker 8: that killed my cousin. You're afraid to say anything when
Speaker 8: in all reality, yeah, some things are out there that
Speaker 8: you think because you go down a ton of rabbit holes.
Speaker 8: When you talk to two and three hundred people like
Speaker 8: I have over the course of two years, you find
Speaker 8: out a lot of crap and it does take you
Speaker 8: down those rabbit holes.
Speaker 13: Is it true?
Speaker 8: You don't know, but by god, it looks like something
Speaker 8: isn't right. Hike County is It's beautiful as far as landscapes,
Speaker 8: it's a beautiful place. You know. We're full of farmers
Speaker 8: and just down to earth people. But there's a lot
Speaker 8: of dirty people here too, and most of them are
Speaker 8: in power.
Speaker 1: So with sheriff readers ethics being brought into question. Does
Speaker 1: this impact the charges brought against the Wagoners? Here's Jeff
Speaker 1: wein Glare again.
Speaker 2: I would assume, you know, the charges against Reader, the
Speaker 2: felonies and the misdemeanors about being you know, through and
Speaker 2: through corrupt, and when it came to both law enforcement
Speaker 2: and financial dealings.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would assume this is going to affect a
Speaker 5: lot of things.
Speaker 2: In fact, the prosecutor for the piped in area also
Speaker 2: just resigned. This just sort of makes you start thinking
Speaker 2: about everything that happened in the beginning. Now you're seeing
Speaker 2: these charges and these resignations, and you know, it doesn't
Speaker 2: speak well about finding any answers to this thing.
Speaker 1: Every answer we get about what happened to the road
Speaker 1: and seems to leave more questions. So how through all
Speaker 1: of these other crimes did official zero went on?
Speaker 6: The Wagner's Police received over eleven hundred tips, They conducted
Speaker 6: over five hundred interviews, tested about seven hundred pieces of evidence,
Speaker 6: served close to two hundred search warrants, subpoenas and other things.
Speaker 6: So this was something that was huge.
Speaker 3: So when you read these indictments, you know they were
Speaker 3: talking about the Wagner's movements, even months before these murders happened,
Speaker 3: four months to plan this out. I mean, if that's
Speaker 3: every day for four months, that's the full time job.
Speaker 3: You know, they're hacking computers and there were surveillance cameras
Speaker 3: on those properties. If we already believe that the prosecution
Speaker 3: as a leg you know, this paints a very dark pick.
Speaker 1: Everybody had started basically attacking them the community, accusing them
Speaker 1: of murdering those people.
Speaker 13: One day, she was, I can't believe that they just
Speaker 13: won't leave us alone. They just will not leave us alone.
Speaker 13: We're starting to get really worried that we're going to
Speaker 13: be arrested.
Speaker 1: More to come next week. Piked In Massacre is executive
Speaker 1: produced by Stephanie Leidecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and
Speaker 1: sound design by executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing by
Speaker 1: Jeff Shane and Andrew Becker. The piked In Massacre is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio and Kat Studios. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.