Speaker 1: A member of the Wagner family, was back in the
Speaker 1: Pike County Courthouse today. His attorneys argued, George Wagner, the
Speaker 1: fourth did not shoot and kill any of the Rodent
Speaker 1: family members. Judge, in our motion, we have asked the
Speaker 1: court to Dismisscounts one through eight and or the accompanying
Speaker 1: death specifications which make this case a death penalty. As
Speaker 1: part of the pleadio Jake Wagner reached with prosecutors neither
Speaker 1: he nor his brother or their parents will face the
Speaker 1: death penalty as long as Jake testifies in court. George
Speaker 1: did not shoot or kill anybody. He did not pull
Speaker 1: a trigger once. Jake, on the other hand, has admitted
Speaker 1: to killing at least five people personally and shooting a sixth.
Speaker 1: Special Prosecutor Angie Kneppa argued the murder charges and death
Speaker 1: penalty specifications against George Wagner should remain until Jake Wagner
Speaker 1: testifies on the record in a courtroom. Surviving members of
Speaker 1: the Rodent family anxiously await for a search to close
Speaker 1: the case, but won't ever erase the heartache they feel.
Speaker 1: This is the piped In Massacre season three, episode seven,
Speaker 1: Breadcrumbs Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Katie's Studios, with
Speaker 1: Stephanie Ledecker and Jeff Shane. In this episode, we follow
Speaker 1: the trail of breadcrumbs left behind during these hearings. Some
Speaker 1: of them lead into very dark corners that may only
Speaker 1: be fully illuminated once the trial begins. And no issue
Speaker 1: has cast a larger shadow over the case than what
Speaker 1: Angela and Jake's testimony may reveal about George and Billy's involvement.
Speaker 1: The state has made a bargain with the shooter of
Speaker 1: at least five people to kill her at at least
Speaker 1: five people in this case, then we believe it's own
Speaker 1: constitutional improper and abuse are to pursue the death tony
Speaker 1: against George. When they admitted he didn't shoot anybody. You're
Speaker 1: not stipulating that George did not shoot anybody because you
Speaker 1: don't know that. We are simply stipulating, in sporting proper
Speaker 1: George did not shoot anybody. Maybe that's supports distinction. Now,
Speaker 1: Judge Deering ended up denying the defense motion filed by
Speaker 1: George Wagner's attorney. Now, we also learned that all four
Speaker 1: of the suspects were offered the same chance to negotiate
Speaker 1: a deal if they agreed to tell prosecutors what happened
Speaker 1: the night the Rodent family members were killed. These murders
Speaker 1: in Pike County, Ohio. It's not something they just entered into,
Speaker 1: you know. They're not just you know, sitting around with
Speaker 1: a few cans of beer oup and say let's go
Speaker 1: slaughter to Rodents. That's not what happened. This took planning.
Speaker 1: You're talking about the murder of eight other human beings.
Speaker 1: They're gonna go into quite graphic detail about, first off,
Speaker 1: the kids being locked up in this house with the
Speaker 1: deceased remains of their parents. They're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the bloodstains that were on the children. They're going to
Speaker 1: talk about how their children were weeping and crying. It's
Speaker 1: going to be incredibly impactful. It'll be like getting hit
Speaker 1: in the chest with a ten pound slash ner. You're
Speaker 1: not going to have a totality of the execution of
Speaker 1: this agreement until they get up on the stand and
Speaker 1: they do what they say that they were going to do,
Speaker 1: you know, and absent that, then it's a game changer.
Speaker 1: Defense attorney, former prosecutor, judge and Fox nineteen Legal analyst
Speaker 1: Mike Allen has been following the Keys closely. We asked
Speaker 1: them about Angela and Jake's proffers and if their testimonies
Speaker 1: need to line up closely with the prosecutions, investigative and
Speaker 1: forensic findings. The answer to that is yes. I mean,
Speaker 1: if there's what they call a proper made by a defendant,
Speaker 1: where the defendant will say, well, this is what I
Speaker 1: would testify to, it's got to line up, not a
Speaker 1: resolutely perfectly, but generally it's got to line up with
Speaker 1: what the prosecutions. They're probably meeting with Angela and Jake regularly.
Speaker 1: You don't want to screw this up. You don't want
Speaker 1: to make some kind of comment to somebody, anybody that
Speaker 1: you're in jail with, even the prison staff, that you're
Speaker 1: coming in contact with him in daily basis, anything that
Speaker 1: could hamper this trial. They want to keep this thing
Speaker 1: as pristine as they possibly can. Going into what are
Speaker 1: the prosecution's going to do with George and Billy, here's
Speaker 1: producer Chris Graves speaking with forensic death investigator Joseph Scott Morgan.
Speaker 1: If those proffers are to be believed, it would seem
Speaker 1: that Billy did the other three. Yeah, yeah, it would
Speaker 1: seem that and Jake admitted to these killings if he
Speaker 1: facilitated the deaths of five people, which he's admitted to,
Speaker 1: and we still have three that are unaccounted for it,
Speaker 1: and I think Money's own Billy at this point in time,
Speaker 1: he's front runner. I think that the State's going to
Speaker 1: want their pound of flesh in this case because of
Speaker 1: everything that has happened relatively, all of the deception, all
Speaker 1: of this horror that has come down upon this little
Speaker 1: rural county in southern Ohio. I think the people of
Speaker 1: Ohio probably are going to demand it. The Rodent family
Speaker 1: case is going to be that case that eighty years
Speaker 1: from now, people are going to sit around campfire and
Speaker 1: tell stories about. Another motion, Motion seventy six, filed by
Speaker 1: the defense, deals with the admissibility of specific evidence and
Speaker 1: expert testimony that the prosecution hopes will seal the deal
Speaker 1: for convincing the jury of Georgia's involvement. The prosecution quickly
Speaker 1: filed a memorandum stating that their case for why the
Speaker 1: evidence should be admissible and why Motion seventy six should
Speaker 1: be struck down. Here's Chris Graves speaking with retired prosecutor
Speaker 1: and Flan again about the shoeprint evidence. For every motion
Speaker 1: at the defense file, there may be a response or
Speaker 1: there may be another motion filed by the state that
Speaker 1: seeks something. And in those motions at times that you
Speaker 1: will glean some additional facts that maybe you have not
Speaker 1: heard from other sources. It's like finding little breadcrumbs to
Speaker 1: this puzzle we've all been trying to figure out. We
Speaker 1: took this new evidence and compared it to some of
Speaker 1: the facts already known in the case. Here's Stephanie and Jeff.
Speaker 1: This is the relevant factual background in the memorandum. Eight
Speaker 1: members of the Rodent family were murdered in their homes
Speaker 1: on the night of April twenty twenty sixteen. Investigators located
Speaker 1: shoeprints at two properties four oh seven seven Union Hill
Speaker 1: Road and three one two two Union Hill Road. These
Speaker 1: shoe prints had pools of dried blood belonging to the victims. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's dig into this just a little deeper. The
Speaker 1: locations where these prints were found were at the homes
Speaker 1: of Chris Roden Senior and then Dana Rodin. We've been
Speaker 1: to this location and their running distance from each other.
Speaker 1: When we visited piked In, we actually did the drive
Speaker 1: of Union Hill Road to map out the different crime scenes.
Speaker 1: Union Hill Road lies about twenty minutes west of downtown
Speaker 1: piked In off of Route thirty two. You exit the highways,
Speaker 1: then double back and head into a patchwork of forests
Speaker 1: and fields, and about half a mile up the road
Speaker 1: on the right is when you first see three one
Speaker 1: two two Union Hill Road, the property that Chris road
Speaker 1: And Senior bought for Dana and the kids just months
Speaker 1: before the murders, and we talked about this. That's also
Speaker 1: the location where Hannah May Roden had her baby shower
Speaker 1: just leading up to the murders. So moving into this
Speaker 1: home was a really happy and exciting thing for Dana.
Speaker 1: Just down the road from that is four oh seven
Speaker 1: seven Union Hill Road, and that's where Chris Roden Senior
Speaker 1: was living and as we know, his cousin Gary was
Speaker 1: staying with him. This was a very brutal crime scene.
Speaker 1: Were pools of blood everywhere, and in these pools of blood,
Speaker 1: what police found were two shoeprints, one a size ten
Speaker 1: and a half and the other a size eleven. According
Speaker 1: to the report, a size eleven Walmart Athletic Works brand
Speaker 1: shoe left a print. Here's Joseph Scott Morgan. I went
Speaker 1: back and I thought that brand sounded familiar. And the
Speaker 1: reason it was familiar to me is that when my
Speaker 1: son Noah got one of his first jobs, it was
Speaker 1: at Chick fil A and they require you to wear
Speaker 1: those non slip shoes. We went to Walmart to buy
Speaker 1: him a pair, and that's what they were, and I
Speaker 1: just looked that up. They're primarily Athletic Works shoes. Their
Speaker 1: non slip souls is what they are. They're black in color,
Speaker 1: they kind of look like athletic shoes, and visiting their website,
Speaker 1: they go for like thirteen bucks a pair or something
Speaker 1: like that. It's something that's easily acquired. The size eleven
Speaker 1: shoe was actually found in both Christina and Data's home,
Speaker 1: which is extremely significant because there's been so much speculation
Speaker 1: about this. Did they divide up and each go to
Speaker 1: a different location or did they do it together, and
Speaker 1: that's what this evidence would imply. Yeah, to further knock
Speaker 1: point stuff. What they also found was that the size
Speaker 1: eleven shoe had a mix of multiple victims blood in it,
Speaker 1: which again speaks to your point that whoever was wearing
Speaker 1: that shoe went to multiple road in houses for Joseph Morgan.
Speaker 1: It brought to mind another infamous family massacre. I urge
Speaker 1: anybody that has never read In Cold Blood to go
Speaker 1: read this book, specifically because of the forensics. Capodi did
Speaker 1: such a fantastic job and given such a great description
Speaker 1: of this horrible scene where this family was absolutely butchered,
Speaker 1: not too dissimilar from what happened in Piked, and only
Speaker 1: happened in one single home in Kansas all those years back.
Speaker 1: They had one piece of evidence that really tied everything
Speaker 1: together that scene. In Cold Blood is a non fiction
Speaker 1: novel by author Truman Capote that was published in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six. It details the nineteen fifty nine murders of
Speaker 1: the Clutter family in small town, Kansas. And you might
Speaker 1: have read this book in high school or have heard
Speaker 1: of it. It's really one of the first true crime
Speaker 1: stories that people sank their teeth into, and I would
Speaker 1: surmise that any true crime TV series or podcast or
Speaker 1: documentary really should give some credit to this one, because
Speaker 1: without it, I don't think the genre would be what
Speaker 1: it is. There are actually a lot of parallels between
Speaker 1: the piked and massacre and the clutter of family murders
Speaker 1: one the family aspect. Also to the brutality three the
Speaker 1: victims being shot in the head, and just the sheer
Speaker 1: amount of bloodshed. It's chilling. For those of you who
Speaker 1: aren't familiar with the story, we'll give you a little
Speaker 1: bit of a top line about it. It all started
Speaker 1: in the fall of nineteen fifty nine when these two
Speaker 1: x cons named Perry Smith and Richard Hiccock drove across
Speaker 1: Kansas on a tip they had received from one of
Speaker 1: their fellow inmates when they were in jail. While the
Speaker 1: duel was still in jail, they met a man nam
Speaker 1: Floyd Wells, who had claimed to them he had once
Speaker 1: worked as a farmhand for a man named Herb Clutter, who,
Speaker 1: according to Floyd, had kept thousands of dollars in a
Speaker 1: safe in his basement. And that is all that Smith
Speaker 1: and Hiccock needed to hear, And eventually, when they got
Speaker 1: out of jail, they drove four hundred miles to the
Speaker 1: Clutter residence and snuck into the house as the family
Speaker 1: was sleeping. They started by tying up mister and Missus
Speaker 1: Clutter and their two teenage children, Kenyon and Bonnie. It's
Speaker 1: every parent's worst nightmare. I can't help being reminded of
Speaker 1: what the Rodent family must have been feeling the night
Speaker 1: that they were murdered, thinking about them in their homes
Speaker 1: and having a loud, banging sound and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there's gun in your face. And it turns out there
Speaker 1: actually was not a safe. It was a total lie.
Speaker 1: Or her rumor and Hiccoc, who had a very short temper,
Speaker 1: flew into a raid. And it's so sad because they
Speaker 1: must have decided beforehand that they wouldn't lead any witnesses alive,
Speaker 1: so all they got away with was a radio in
Speaker 1: maybe fifty dollars, but still they decided they had to
Speaker 1: kill the entire family. Yeah, once they made this decision,
Speaker 1: they kind of went one by one to the family
Speaker 1: members who were in various points of the home. And
Speaker 1: they started with mister Clutter, who was bound and gagged
Speaker 1: on a box spring in the basement. Harry Smith slit
Speaker 1: his throat and then shot him in the head. They
Speaker 1: then went to the teenage son, Kenyon, who was bound
Speaker 1: in another part of the basement and shot him to death,
Speaker 1: and then they of course headed upstairs to kill mom
Speaker 1: Nancy Clutter, and sadly, after hearing both her parents and
Speaker 1: her brother being murdered, Bonnie Clutter was shot in the head.
Speaker 1: Her hands were tied in front of her, she was gagged,
Speaker 1: and get this, they actually tucked her into her bed.
Speaker 1: It's almost like they were trying to make her comfortable
Speaker 1: in the moments leading up to her murder. Another similarity
Speaker 1: to the road in case seems to be the sheer
Speaker 1: violence of all of this. To shoot someone and slip
Speaker 1: their throat is the definition of overkill. In the same
Speaker 1: way shooting members of the Rodan family multiple times in
Speaker 1: the face is just violence for violences sake. Something else
Speaker 1: that we should note that at some point in the night,
Speaker 1: Perry Smith stepped in mister Clutter's blood in the basement
Speaker 1: and left a partial footprint that again seems eerily similar
Speaker 1: to this footprint that we've been discussing in the Rodent homes.
Speaker 1: A lot of creepy stuff went on in this case. Anyway,
Speaker 1: He was executed down there, and Perry, who was one
Speaker 1: of the killers, was wearing a boot that had been
Speaker 1: resold in this boot. When you hear this name, this
Speaker 1: name in forensic parlance, it's a benchmark moment. It's called
Speaker 1: the cat Paul print. When he stepped on that box,
Speaker 1: he transferred a print to that box with his boot
Speaker 1: that had transferred from blood onto the surface, and it
Speaker 1: left that Cat Paul print. Perry Smith's boots were later recovered.
Speaker 1: Not so, and piked In the defense has struck gold here. Really,
Speaker 1: I think, so, what makes you think that, Well, guess
Speaker 1: what they found. They had Perry's boots in this case,
Speaker 1: they ain't got nothing and Piked and they don't have
Speaker 1: the shoes. They don't have that to compare to in
Speaker 1: the Clutter case they did. And I'm drawing these conclusions
Speaker 1: because I think, in my opinion at least, that this case,
Speaker 1: much like the Clutter case, is going to be a
Speaker 1: blood bath. The prosecution is betting that their footprint expert,
Speaker 1: William Bosniak, can tie the bloody prints back to the
Speaker 1: Wagners without having the actual footwear for his analysis. Bosniak
Speaker 1: bought the same Athletic Works model size and shoe at
Speaker 1: Walmart about a thousand miles away from piked In and
Speaker 1: his homestate of Florida. The defense is trying to raise
Speaker 1: doubt about the process by which Bosniak determined the match,
Speaker 1: as well as about Bosniak's actual qualifications as an expert.
Speaker 1: To do this, they've requested what's called a Daubard hearing
Speaker 1: here again and Flanagan Dalbert is just the name of
Speaker 1: a case where some guidelines were set forth by the
Speaker 1: US Supreme Court. And it was done with the idea
Speaker 1: that we don't want junk science going to a jury
Speaker 1: just because someone was declared an expert and said that
Speaker 1: this was his expert opinion. And so they gave some
Speaker 1: guidelines for attorneys and courts, and so some of the
Speaker 1: guidelines aren't what would be called Dalbert factors. Some of
Speaker 1: these factors include whether the theory or technique in question
Speaker 1: can be and has been tested, whether it has been
Speaker 1: subject to peer review and publication, known potential error rate,
Speaker 1: and whether it has attracted widespread acceptance within the forensic
Speaker 1: scientific community. Well, one of the attacks that the defense
Speaker 1: made is that this is not the shoe. The shoe
Speaker 1: that he compared to the print is a sample shoe
Speaker 1: that he bought later. They would want to do that
Speaker 1: because they see that as very damaging evidence. Understand, the
Speaker 1: defense's job is to exploit these small little issues along
Speaker 1: the way. They don't have to destroy the whole case.
Speaker 1: You know, when you start to talk about you know, well,
Speaker 1: they've given so much value to this piece of evidence,
Speaker 1: they're going to try to paint it that way. If
Speaker 1: this trial happens down there in southern Ohio and Appalachia,
Speaker 1: people that inhabit those regions, their ears perk up when
Speaker 1: they hear an accent from other places, or they see
Speaker 1: people that don't quite fit in. And all he has
Speaker 1: to do is say, you know, this s guy, he's
Speaker 1: with the Feds. Why the hell are you going to
Speaker 1: go outside of your own law enforcement Emily and the
Speaker 1: crime lab there in state, in contract with an outside
Speaker 1: expert in this particular case. Ultimately, Judge Daring ruled for
Speaker 1: the defense that the Dobbard hearing could go forward. Joseph
Speaker 1: Scott Morgan explains that if the judge rules in favor
Speaker 1: of the defense, a jury would never hear any of
Speaker 1: the evidence about the shoes. Defense is writtenes sing up
Speaker 1: to state that this gentleman is going to testify to
Speaker 1: size ten and a half and to size eleventh athletic
Speaker 1: works shoes. He's going to testify to those items and
Speaker 1: then he's marrying those up to the photographs of the
Speaker 1: shoe prints that's seen to these individuals. They're saying that
Speaker 1: this isn't going to hold water forensically, then we can
Speaker 1: conclude that perhaps that bit of evidence will be excluded.
Speaker 1: But listen, this is the defense. This is what they do.
Speaker 1: If I hire a defense attorney, I'm assuming that's their
Speaker 1: job to basically throw anything against the wall and hope
Speaker 1: that it sticks. I would imagine it's a little bit
Speaker 1: of an upful battle defending someone like George Wagner because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence against him, and so the
Speaker 1: defense attorney is just trying to find ways around that
Speaker 1: and ways to cast reasonable doubt. Because with a jury,
Speaker 1: you don't need to prove that someone's innocent. All you
Speaker 1: need to do is poke enough holes in the prosecution
Speaker 1: story that there is a reasonable doubt that George Wagner
Speaker 1: did not murder eight people. We think it's important to
Speaker 1: go through the different pieces of evidence that the prosecution
Speaker 1: is allegedly putting forward because it really does play a
Speaker 1: huge part in this case. The first thing that we
Speaker 1: think seems very relevant is these shoe receipts. Now as
Speaker 1: a result of a search warrant executed on the vehicles
Speaker 1: and the trailers belonging to the Wagner family. Investigators located
Speaker 1: a Walmart receipt for a location in Waverley, Ohio. The
Speaker 1: data on the receipt is April seventh, twenty sixteen, which,
Speaker 1: as we know, is just a couple of weeks before
Speaker 1: the murders. The receipt was for two pairs of gray
Speaker 1: men's Walmart branded shoes with belcrow straps in sizes ten
Speaker 1: and a half and eleven. Officials were able to obtain
Speaker 1: and preserve surveillance photographs and receipts of all recent purchases
Speaker 1: of that model and those sizes of the shoe in
Speaker 1: numerous Walmart stores throughout southern Ohio. At some point, an
Speaker 1: expert review the photographs obtained from a Walmart in Waverley, Ohio,
Speaker 1: and it included still images of the customers who purchased
Speaker 1: athletic work shoes that day, and the customer purchasing those
Speaker 1: shoes in this particular surveillance shot is none other than
Speaker 1: Angela Wagner. They actually show her exiting the Waverley Walmart
Speaker 1: on April seventh, twenty sixteen, at approximately the exact same
Speaker 1: time on the receipt found on the Wagner property. And
Speaker 1: this day is so significant because, as you know, Hannah
Speaker 1: May Roden was having her baby shower at her new
Speaker 1: house where she lived with her mom, which we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier. It is pretty damning evidence, to say the least.
Speaker 1: We were told at some point that Angela Wagner chose
Speaker 1: those specific shoes for her boys to wear, because they
Speaker 1: were allegedly the exact same shoes that Dana Roden's brother
Speaker 1: wore to work. And it's been speculated that perhaps Angela
Speaker 1: Wagner was literally trying to set up Dana Roden's brother
Speaker 1: for these murders. I have a question, what do you
Speaker 1: think has more weight in the courtroom, the science and
Speaker 1: the facts of the case or Jake Wagner's version of events. Well,
Speaker 1: it all depends on what Jake has given them at
Speaker 1: this point. And Mama, from a forensic standpoint, I can't
Speaker 1: wait to see this. They've already shown their hand to
Speaker 1: a certain degree. They're saying, we're going after the forensic
Speaker 1: evidence right now. We know it's footwear. What else is
Speaker 1: on the table, or we're gonna talk about ballistics because
Speaker 1: that's the agency for bringing about death here. You know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about firing multiple rounds into all of these people.
Speaker 1: Reporter Angeanette Levy sees potential implications for George and Billy
Speaker 1: Wagner if the evidence is allowed. I just know from
Speaker 1: one of the hearings back in August of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: they were saying, you have no evidence against George the
Speaker 1: fourth and the same with Billy. Billy's attorneys said in
Speaker 1: court documents, you have no evidence against our guy. There's
Speaker 1: nothing in the discovery that ties him to this. So
Speaker 1: when you look at it, if we're looking at shoe
Speaker 1: impression evidence, those could be things that maybe tie them
Speaker 1: to the crime scenes because we have that whole issue
Speaker 1: of the state saying and Angela Wagner at confirming that
Speaker 1: she purchased these shoes at Walmart for them to use.
Speaker 1: So those items could tie George and Billy to the crimes.
Speaker 1: Because the Dabbard hearing could affect both father and son,
Speaker 1: Judge Deerring raised the possibility that they both appear in
Speaker 1: court at the same time. I would think that's going
Speaker 1: to be potentially the most interesting thing to come out
Speaker 1: of the Daubard hearing. So you're going to have the
Speaker 1: singular hearing about the scientific evidence, and then it's going
Speaker 1: to be presented at two separate capital murder trials. We're
Speaker 1: going to take a break. We'll be back in a moment.
Speaker 1: Judge Deerring decided to have two separate Dabbard cases for
Speaker 1: George and Billy Wagner, avoiding a father son faced face
Speaker 1: for the first time since their arrests almost four years ago.
Speaker 1: Here's Joseph Morgan. What if they come to a conclusion,
Speaker 1: let's just say it has to do with footwear, they
Speaker 1: come to the conclusion X relative to the findings in
Speaker 1: George's case and validity of the evidence and how was examined,
Speaker 1: collected and analyzed. You've got the dynamic of a separate
Speaker 1: legal team there. They might have a completely different view
Speaker 1: of this. When you're accused of something, and I'm just
Speaker 1: speaking strictly about forensics here, you have to be able
Speaker 1: to hold forth against the entire might of the state
Speaker 1: and what they bring to bear their forensic resources. George's
Speaker 1: team is there to save George, they're not there to
Speaker 1: save Billy. The morning of the trial, William Bosniak arrived
Speaker 1: early and took a seat while the defense and prosecution
Speaker 1: organized their arguments. Bosniak is fit with a head of
Speaker 1: silver hair. You might guess he's ten years younger than
Speaker 1: his actual age of seventy six. Stud call, mister Tom
Speaker 1: the testimony. You are about the institute the truth for
Speaker 1: whole truth and nothing about the truth? Answer? And you got?
Speaker 1: I did? Can you tell us what your vocation is.
Speaker 1: I'm a forensic consultant and examiner. I specialize in footwear
Speaker 1: entire impression evidence. And can you tell us how abo
Speaker 1: you see big doing that? Since nineteen seventy three, George
Speaker 1: the Fourth avoids eye contact with Bosniak. Angie Kneppa goes
Speaker 1: through the very standard procedure of having an expert describe
Speaker 1: his resume to the court. He speaks for a full
Speaker 1: hour and a half on his qualifications. Bosniak has done
Speaker 1: thousands of footwear impression examinations during his career with the
Speaker 1: FBI and in the twenty plus years of consulting since
Speaker 1: his retirement in nineteen ninety eight. Footwear shoes of people
Speaker 1: leave impressions. Some of these are on two dimensional surfaces,
Speaker 1: where shoes acquire material like dust, dirt, mud, blood, and
Speaker 1: so forth, and then they read deposited in subsequent steps,
Speaker 1: typically the few step in a pool of blood. The
Speaker 1: first few steps are pretty heavy and messy. I have
Speaker 1: a lot of blood, and then eventually each step some
Speaker 1: of that blood is transferred to the floor and consumed,
Speaker 1: so the next step doesn't have as much. Bosniak explains
Speaker 1: that he can identify specific brands, models, and sizes of
Speaker 1: shoes even if they aren't recovered. He does this by
Speaker 1: comparing or recovered prints to the molds used by manufacturers
Speaker 1: to make the soles of any given shoe. In shoes
Speaker 1: that are not popular, a manufacturer may only make one
Speaker 1: mold for most or all sizes. The basic design will
Speaker 1: be the same. It's computer generated has been for years,
Speaker 1: so it's overall design and its physical size of that
Speaker 1: design from all of those molds will virtually be indistinguishable.
Speaker 1: But in some shoe designs they also add something that
Speaker 1: is known as generically as texture. At this point, Bosniac
Speaker 1: fires up a video he narrated. Texture is broadly defined
Speaker 1: as a shallow pattern sometimes found on selective surfaces of
Speaker 1: a footwear outshole. Adding texture to a mold is a
Speaker 1: separate process. The video shows two workers in Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: They each sit at their own workbench with a small
Speaker 1: hammer and all they're punching little divots into the shoe
Speaker 1: molds that will later be used to cast rubber soles.
Speaker 1: During the molding process, there are two predominant methods of
Speaker 1: adding texture to a mold surface. One of those are
Speaker 1: shown here, involves mechanically striking a pattern into the surface
Speaker 1: using a steel dye or similar tool. This is known
Speaker 1: as hand stiffly. Believe it or not, those little patterns
Speaker 1: of the fine detail on the bottom of your shoes
Speaker 1: are mostly hand carved, and no two are alike. A
Speaker 1: size of level and mold created by one person will
Speaker 1: have minute differences from a size eleven created by another person.
Speaker 1: This goes even for the same brand and model shoe.
Speaker 1: It creates a very specific footprint. What's great about this
Speaker 1: evidence is that it's what we call it the monstrable
Speaker 1: And when you have demonstrable evidence, that's a big, big
Speaker 1: test of its reliability. If you live with Florida and
Speaker 1: you're asked to do an examinations with Florida, how can
Speaker 1: you make a comparison to a chie print impression? It
Speaker 1: was left because manufacturers sell their shoes all over the country,
Speaker 1: so if they're sold at one Walmart, you're probably sold
Speaker 1: at the majority of them. If I know they're Walmart shoes,
Speaker 1: then that's the obvious place that I would go to first.
Speaker 1: Angie cannep arrests. Now it's time for defense attorney Rob
Speaker 1: Junk to convince the judge that Bosniak is not a
Speaker 1: reliable expert. So what I'm hearing from you? Then, in
Speaker 1: doing this test, you're required to have a mold standard
Speaker 1: from the factories, right, No, in some cases, I just
Speaker 1: simply go to the store and buy some or get
Speaker 1: permission to make photographs and take standards of the shoes
Speaker 1: they have. And why not go to the manufact That's
Speaker 1: not always possible, they're at other countries mostly. But unless
Speaker 1: you have obtained all of the molds, how do you
Speaker 1: know or how can you be certain that the impression
Speaker 1: you have is a one particular mold or shoe that
Speaker 1: you have purchased from the store. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: just through your experience, is that right? You don't know
Speaker 1: this to be I know this to be certain because
Speaker 1: I've observed it. I've worked cases like this, I've interacted
Speaker 1: with manufacturers, numerous manufacturers. I've been in factories asking questions
Speaker 1: like this, and I've observed it over and over again
Speaker 1: and used this process over and over again, and it's
Speaker 1: a certain as anything can be. The defense works tirelessly
Speaker 1: to see if Bosniak will slip up. The defense then
Speaker 1: moves on to the issue of not having the actual
Speaker 1: shoes used in the crime. Can you explain to the quarters,
Speaker 1: if we're looking at a Walmart, how reliable it is
Speaker 1: to make a comparison ring match between a Walmart store
Speaker 1: and Florida and a shoe that a Walmart store maybe
Speaker 1: in California d sell. Sure they came from the same hold,
Speaker 1: they just got distributed to all over the country. And
Speaker 1: although the impression corresponded with the shoe that you purchased
Speaker 1: from Walmart, you cannot say that that impression came from
Speaker 1: the athletic work shoe or a right. Yes, it's an
Speaker 1: athletic workshoe that has the texture that I purchased in
Speaker 1: that I compared and they corresponds with the crime scene.
Speaker 1: After three hours of questioning, Judge Deering has heard enough.
Speaker 1: I think I'm just going to rule an emotion. I mean,
Speaker 1: I could include the court concludes that the footwear impression
Speaker 1: evidence has explained and testified too, but William Budsiac satisfies
Speaker 1: the criteria of evidence rule seven and two and Dallart
Speaker 1: Merrill for the admissibility of expert testimony. Let's stop here
Speaker 1: for another break with the Dobbard hearing over and motion
Speaker 1: seventy six denied. It's guaranteed the jury will hear the
Speaker 1: testimony of William Bosniac his positive identification linking the shoes
Speaker 1: bought at Walmart by Angela Wagner and the footprints at
Speaker 1: the crime scene containing the blood of multiple victims. This
Speaker 1: may have far rich in consequences for the entire Wagner family. Regardless,
Speaker 1: jurors will still see Jake's plea correct, and that would
Speaker 1: have its own narrative in and of itself, and maybe
Speaker 1: then the defense would poke holes in that. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get more than that from Jake. He's gonna be on
Speaker 1: the stand. He's got to stand and deliver. That's the
Speaker 1: only way they made to steal him and Mama gonna
Speaker 1: be on stand. Man, You're gonna have a five time
Speaker 1: murderer all to stand given testimony against his daddy, against
Speaker 1: his brother, I don't ever recall that I've ever heard
Speaker 1: of case like this, not in my memory, not in
Speaker 1: recent history, at least anywhere in America. The stakes at
Speaker 1: this point are so incredibly high it's unimaginable. More on
Speaker 1: that next time. If you're enjoying The Pikes and Massacre,
Speaker 1: listen to our other hits series, Crazy and Love. New
Speaker 1: episodes are every Tuesday. Wherever you get your podcasts. For
Speaker 1: more information and case photos, follow us on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Katie Underscore Studios. The Piked and Massacre is produced by
Speaker 1: Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Greaves, Scott de Graw, and
Speaker 1: me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by Jeff Tui.
Speaker 1: Music by Jared Aston. The Piked and Massacre is a
Speaker 1: production of Katie Studios and I Heartradio. For more podcasts
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