Speaker 1: Welcome to The Piked and Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Katie Studios. There were always these rumors about Michael
Speaker 1: Moran and the women that he was around and the
Speaker 1: circles he ran in. This guy trafficking women all over
Speaker 1: the country from this little town that's known as the
Speaker 1: epicenter of the opioid epidemic. It was public knowledge, that
Speaker 1: was the crazy thing. Everybody knew the rumors and had
Speaker 1: known somebody that knew somebody that had worked for him.
Speaker 1: She loved papers and it said Michael Moran's name, his
Speaker 1: cell phone number. I had all this information that really
Speaker 1: impacted our area, and so this could have brought a
Speaker 1: lot of closure to these families who were being told
Speaker 1: nothing by our local officials, in our local enforcement. This
Speaker 1: is the Piked and Massacre. Returned to Pike County Season two,
Speaker 1: Episode seven, twenty five miles South. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a
Speaker 1: television producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker and of Shane.
Speaker 1: In episode five of this season, we explored the allegations
Speaker 1: of corruption and the subsequent arrest of Pike County shaff
Speaker 1: of Charlie Reader. But his story is just one of
Speaker 1: many that has illuminated alleged abuses of power perpetrated by
Speaker 1: those involved in southern Ohio's criminal justice system. So in
Speaker 1: this episode, we want to focus on another case that
Speaker 1: has long affected a community just twenty five miles south
Speaker 1: of Piketon, in a town called Portsmouth, Ohio. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: a reporter named Nicki Blankenship began investigating rumors of human
Speaker 1: trafficking in the town. Like many small Ohio towns, Portsmouth
Speaker 1: has a long, rich history of industrial might, preceding an
Speaker 1: era of rapid urban decay. Here's James Pilcher, a reporter
Speaker 1: for Local twelve News and Cincinnati, speaking with our producer
Speaker 1: Chris Graves. Portsmouth is the county seat of Theodore County,
Speaker 1: which fits right below Pike County, so it's about thirty
Speaker 1: to forty five minutes south of Piketon. Portsmouth has this
Speaker 1: rust belt burned out in industrial field. There are half
Speaker 1: empty two empty factories in the middle of the city.
Speaker 1: At one point US Shoe had their biggest plant there,
Speaker 1: and then obviously you know the global economy and we
Speaker 1: all know what happened to manufacturing in the Midwest. It
Speaker 1: still has a small profitable steel mill downtown, but it's
Speaker 1: barely hanging on. So it's kind of like a city
Speaker 1: that was forgotten. Yes, when the manufacturing industry began to disappear,
Speaker 1: Portsmouth was besieged by the drug trade. Nicky Blanketship grew
Speaker 1: up in the area and saw the devastation firsthand. Your
Speaker 1: area has been really hit by the opiate crisis, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we call ourselves ground zero for the opiate ever the
Speaker 1: met I've lived in Ohio since nineteen eighty four, Insider County,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I've lived here in my whole life. I
Speaker 1: remember in high school people around me, they would start
Speaker 1: out with small pain pills and an oxycott and hit
Speaker 1: and it was no longer recreational drug use that people
Speaker 1: to one at parties. You were seeing people become addicted
Speaker 1: very very very quickly. In two thousand and eight, Nikki
Speaker 1: started writing about the issue for a local newspaper. I
Speaker 1: started out covering the drug epidemic. I was the first
Speaker 1: in the area to do stories on oxycotton and looking
Speaker 1: at overdose rates in the area and started asking those
Speaker 1: questions from the corner's office about how many of these
Speaker 1: depths that we're seeing are connected to opiate use, and
Speaker 1: then started looking into pill mills and we ended up
Speaker 1: shutting down over twenty three pill mills inside a county.
Speaker 1: Nikki's reporting helped shut a light on the area's drug problem,
Speaker 1: but other illicit industries sprung up around it. Nikki was
Speaker 1: there to cover it all. In twenty thirteen, I did
Speaker 1: a series that ran for months on prostitution, and I
Speaker 1: was walking the streets with some of these girls. I
Speaker 1: also talked to like parents of women that were working
Speaker 1: on the streets and talked to officers about the problem
Speaker 1: and local instances about how it affected them. It was
Speaker 1: interesting because when I was doing these stories, I started
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of names come up from these girls.
Speaker 1: The one mentioned most often was Michael Moran. Michael Moran,
Speaker 1: he's in his mid seventies, long time defense attorney, you know,
Speaker 1: d wise, drug offenses, those kinds of things. He had
Speaker 1: his own firm in Portsmouth, and at one point in
Speaker 1: the late two thousands he got himself appointed as a
Speaker 1: city councilman of Portsmouth. He's a very public person, so
Speaker 1: if there was a Red Cross banquet or something that
Speaker 1: I was covering, he would be there. So he's been
Speaker 1: around my whole career pretty much now. Rumors have been
Speaker 1: circulating about Mike Moran for years. These stories about him
Speaker 1: being involved in prostitution go all the way back to
Speaker 1: the seventies. A lot of those stories are just about
Speaker 1: him hiring girls dance and at local parties and poker games.
Speaker 1: It was the secret that everyone choked about, but no
Speaker 1: one really talked about, and it was pretty common knowledge.
Speaker 1: I think I mentioned like a Red Cross banquet I
Speaker 1: had to cover once. He was there with a girl
Speaker 1: known to be arrested for prostitution, known to be arrested
Speaker 1: for drug abuse, and she was there. You could tell
Speaker 1: that she was under the influence by her behavior. She
Speaker 1: was being very loud and on a cell phone in
Speaker 1: the middle of this banquet and speaking very appropriately for
Speaker 1: the setting, and Mike's just laughing with her. And a
Speaker 1: city councilman at the time actually leaned over towards me
Speaker 1: jokingly elbowed me on the side and said, there's Mike
Speaker 1: and one of his girls. It's just always been known
Speaker 1: as Nicky began exploring Moran's ties to the local sex trade.
Speaker 1: The story grew much darker. I was interviewing some people
Speaker 1: who were in an impatient treatment facility, and I found
Speaker 1: out that one of the women over the program was
Speaker 1: involved with a human trafficking program, and so I started
Speaker 1: talking with her about human trafficking and she said that
Speaker 1: when women are arrested at a certain age, Moran has
Speaker 1: been going to see them in jail and gotten them
Speaker 1: judge charges and exchange for doing sexual favors for him
Speaker 1: and working in prostitution. Nikki further explained the allegations leveled
Speaker 1: against Moran by area women at the corrupt of what
Speaker 1: he does is he offers his legal services to get
Speaker 1: these women out of jail and then puts them under
Speaker 1: his employee. Yes, he gets women out of jail and
Speaker 1: that basically gets them into his clutches. Other stories are
Speaker 1: that people are hired as dog walkers or as cleaners
Speaker 1: and and said are actually working in prostitution, and affidavit
Speaker 1: filed by the DA would later support these accounts. James
Speaker 1: Pilcher explained that this method of manipulation marks the ditinction
Speaker 1: between prostitution and human trafficking. Some people will say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: these women knew what they were doing. They were just
Speaker 1: trying to make money. These women were prostitutes. Well, if
Speaker 1: you talk to the experts. It went one step beyond that,
Speaker 1: it went into trafficking because some of those allegations Moran
Speaker 1: was holding over them, the fact that they were drug addicts,
Speaker 1: even he would withhold their money or withhold their wherewithal
Speaker 1: to get drugs. So the statute says, if you withhold
Speaker 1: or threatened to withhold money that women need for drugs
Speaker 1: or withhold the drugs, it's trafficking because it's coercion. Anytime
Speaker 1: you can prove coercion, it's trafficking, both in the Ohio
Speaker 1: law and federal level. We're going to take a quick
Speaker 1: break here. We'll be back in a moment. Some believe
Speaker 1: Michael Moran's reach goes farther than even human trafficking. In
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, a Portsmouth woman named Megan Lancaster disappeared. Michael
Speaker 1: Moran has denied any involvement or responsibility in her disappearance. Additionally,
Speaker 1: authorities have not brought any charges against him in the case.
Speaker 1: At this time, it's unclear whether they have questioned him
Speaker 1: in the matter. Megan, it's probably the case that is
Speaker 1: closest to my heart, and that's mostly her sister in law,
Speaker 1: Katie Lancaster has just screamed and screamed and screamed on
Speaker 1: her behalf. My name is Katie Lancaster, and I am
Speaker 1: the sister in law and best friend of Megan Lancaster
Speaker 1: who has been missing from Soda County since April third,
Speaker 1: twenty and thirteen. Who was Megan Lancaster and how did
Speaker 1: you meet? We met at a it was called Soda
Speaker 1: County Joint Vocational School. We were both taking cosmetology. And
Speaker 1: she is a wonderful, loving, gives a shirt off her
Speaker 1: back person that I know for a fact that if
Speaker 1: this tragedy had to happen to anybody, she would have
Speaker 1: given everything she had to save the next person. Megan
Speaker 1: and Katie formed an unbreakable bond and soon they became
Speaker 1: family members. I was spending about every night with Megan,
Speaker 1: pretty much on school night. Megan would say, my brother
Speaker 1: wants to take you on a date. So I said, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: like I'll let him take me for dinner and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. And I did that well. I
Speaker 1: never left. I was seventeen and we just hit it
Speaker 1: off and fell in love. Katie and Megan's brother Jimmy,
Speaker 1: were married in two thousand and five. A few months later,
Speaker 1: Katie became pregnant. Soon after, Megan did as well. I
Speaker 1: went into labor August thirty first, had my baby September first,
Speaker 1: like in the middle of the night, and she had
Speaker 1: her baby November fourth, So we were legitimately only, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple months apart. In two thousand and six, Megan
Speaker 1: gave birth to a son named Reese. Being a young
Speaker 1: single mother was tough, but Megan seemed to have a
Speaker 1: bright future ahead of her. Any sports she played, she
Speaker 1: played to the fullest. She was there for her team,
Speaker 1: always cheering everybody. On the softball she was the pitcher.
Speaker 1: She had a full ride scholarship to Shawnee State. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, Megan couldn't have been any smarter than what
Speaker 1: she was. Despite her intelligence and athleticism, Megan fell victim
Speaker 1: to the drug epidemic that gripped the Portsmouth area. She
Speaker 1: was open back that you know that she used drugs,
Speaker 1: that she used a needle. It was rough, and I
Speaker 1: would tell her, I would say, Megan, I would try
Speaker 1: to play both sides, like her friend and her sister
Speaker 1: in law, because I would say, Megan, you need to
Speaker 1: get help and you need to change for you first
Speaker 1: and foremost, but at the same time, you need to
Speaker 1: do it for Reeese because he needs you. And her
Speaker 1: answer was, Katie, why change it? Now? Everybody's gonna look
Speaker 1: at me the same way. I'm never gonna live down
Speaker 1: the things I've done. I'm never gonna be able to
Speaker 1: change that opinion that people have of me. She just
Speaker 1: couldn't see past the past, you know, path the things
Speaker 1: that she felt people would never forgive. And then that
Speaker 1: point took over Megan and it led to more years later,
Speaker 1: a strange encounter with Megan would leave Katie forever suspicious
Speaker 1: of one local man, Michael Moran. I was in walmoret
Speaker 1: with Jeremy, and all of a sudden, I see Megan
Speaker 1: got bouncing down the aisle and I'm like, what the
Speaker 1: hell was she wearing? It was literally Anta lingerie. To
Speaker 1: be honest, she said, I'm here to get something for
Speaker 1: this party I'm doing for Marian It's a bachelor party.
Speaker 1: And I'm just like, okay, but again, why are you
Speaker 1: in here in that outfit? Is you like? Because this
Speaker 1: is what I'm wearing to the party, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: get get whatever you're getting in and get the heck
Speaker 1: out of here before you get arrested for indecent exposure?
Speaker 1: Can you describe April third, twenty thirteen. April third, twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: Megan went missing. That day, she was with her mom.
Speaker 1: She went to her mom's early in the morning, said mom,
Speaker 1: I need to pay my insurance because she had been
Speaker 1: pulled over and called over card been impounded for literally
Speaker 1: like sixty dollars in back child support or something. So
Speaker 1: her mom followed her to Portsmouth. Megan got in her
Speaker 1: mom's card down in Portsmouth, they rode down to the
Speaker 1: bonding company. They paid her insurance, then got back in
Speaker 1: her own care her Mustang, and they went their own ways.
Speaker 1: Later that day, Megan called her mother, Marcy, to make
Speaker 1: arrangements to see her son. She said, Mom, I'll be
Speaker 1: there to stay the night with Reese. But that night
Speaker 1: Megan never showed up, you know. And then the next
Speaker 1: day Marcy tried to get a hold of her cut
Speaker 1: and went by her apartment. Her car wasn't there, so
Speaker 1: Mar's thought she's out running the streets or whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: out running the road, and didn't think much more about it.
Speaker 1: Two days later, on April fifth, Megan's car was found
Speaker 1: in the parking lot of a local fast food restaurant.
Speaker 1: She was nowhere to be found. What stuck out about
Speaker 1: the car was the fact that it was up on
Speaker 1: the curb, and Megan would never have parked it like that,
Speaker 1: as she especially. She might have pulled in if she
Speaker 1: was in a hurry and got out and got something,
Speaker 1: got right back in the car and left, but she
Speaker 1: would have never pulled in there to leave it there
Speaker 1: like that. Inside the car, police found Megan's wallet and
Speaker 1: a small notebook that contained some suspicious entries. She left
Speaker 1: clues as to who she'd been working for, what's she'd
Speaker 1: been up to. Right, Yes, she left papers in it.
Speaker 1: They actually said dance for and Michael Marian's name, his
Speaker 1: cell phone number, and how much he paid for her
Speaker 1: to dance. We know we have this problem with missing women,
Speaker 1: and we know we have this problem with women who
Speaker 1: have been found dead in their cases that never their
Speaker 1: murders have never been solved. And despite that car set
Speaker 1: her mom said t October of twenty thirteen. And there's
Speaker 1: a documents where they took it, where they took the
Speaker 1: car into evidence that are dated showing that and it
Speaker 1: was really Katie and Megan's family that did all of
Speaker 1: the investigating, and higher private investigators they couldn't get in
Speaker 1: cooperation from local police. So it's Megan's case really, it's
Speaker 1: the only one that has really been made public so
Speaker 1: people can see exactly what these women have gone through
Speaker 1: and how these things have happened. If Moran was running
Speaker 1: a decades long sex trafficking operation, we're talking about some
Speaker 1: serious abuse of power. What are your thoughts on that.
Speaker 1: The abuse of power makes me completely fucking sick. Excuse
Speaker 1: my language, but I don't know how else to put
Speaker 1: it. It It makes me sick because you know, he's in
Speaker 1: this position to help people, to help rebuild their lives
Speaker 1: if they been in trouble once or twice, you know,
Speaker 1: a drug charge, whatever, they send them to treatment, they
Speaker 1: do this, they do that, but he takes it a
Speaker 1: step further and takes them, like, buys them what they want,
Speaker 1: courses them into these things, shows them a life that
Speaker 1: they've never had before, and then boom back on drugs,
Speaker 1: back to doing what they were doing back in trouble.
Speaker 1: And to me, that is sickening and there's no excuse sport.
Speaker 1: Do you think Mike Moran is involved in Megan's disappearance.
Speaker 1: I do believe Michael Moran is involved in Megan's disappearance,
Speaker 1: and I do believe that we will eventually tie Mike
Speaker 1: Moran to Megan's disappearance. Let's stop here for another quick break.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment. What's it like to
Speaker 1: go through losing a family member or a friend but
Speaker 1: not actually knowing what happened to them? It's hell. I
Speaker 1: was talking to my mother in law about this today.
Speaker 1: You know, people lose people all the time, and they
Speaker 1: have a grave to go to somewhere they can go
Speaker 1: visit that they know that that person is there, or
Speaker 1: they have ashes that they have or whatever, what have you.
Speaker 1: But we have a flipping sign with missing on it
Speaker 1: that we decorate, and it is heartbreaking, and it is
Speaker 1: hard not to know whether she's hungry, she's cold, she's
Speaker 1: being hurt, she's being abused, or worse, she's dead. Not
Speaker 1: to know that. It is so hard. I see her
Speaker 1: mama suffer daily, or importantly, I see her baby boys
Speaker 1: suffer very badly. And I'm not saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: he cries every day or no, I'm not saying that,
Speaker 1: but he has a lot of questions but we can't answer.
Speaker 1: But I can guarantee you I won't stop to I
Speaker 1: can answer him. I don't care if he's twenty five, thirty,
Speaker 1: thirty five, forty, If I'm along around that long, I'll
Speaker 1: fight until I can answer those questions for him. In
Speaker 1: an interview, Moran claimed that he only knew Megan as
Speaker 1: a police informant who was tied to a drug case
Speaker 1: he tried years back. When asked about what may have
Speaker 1: happened to her, Moran believed that she may have been murdered,
Speaker 1: though he had no information to support his statement. It
Speaker 1: should be noted that there have been no other specific
Speaker 1: allegations tying Moran to the disappearance of any other women.
Speaker 1: Nikki Blankenship continued her investigation into human trafficking in Portsmouth,
Speaker 1: but her attempt to report on the areas missing women
Speaker 1: was met with some pushback. You kind of started this
Speaker 1: with this story. This seemed to have been local knowledge
Speaker 1: that no one was reporting on. Right when I was
Speaker 1: first saying let me talk about the missing women, I
Speaker 1: was told now it didn't matter if there was proof
Speaker 1: it was can't we talk about the missing women? Can
Speaker 1: I talk to their families, and I was told, now,
Speaker 1: Nikki didn't let that stop her. So I I have
Speaker 1: seen these things personally. In Cider County, we say that
Speaker 1: everyone's been affected because if it's not your friend, it
Speaker 1: is or your family member's at least somebody you went
Speaker 1: to school with. Everybody knows somebody who's been affected by
Speaker 1: the drug epidemic, and everybody knows somebody who has turned
Speaker 1: a prostitution. So this is a pretty personal story for you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I spent probably my whole career, I feel like working
Speaker 1: on this, and nobody was listening to their stories before
Speaker 1: or seeing them as even human. That really made me
Speaker 1: connect with a lot of these people in their stories
Speaker 1: living here my whole life. These are my friends and
Speaker 1: my family members as well. Not specifically, but I have
Speaker 1: lost so many friends to overdose. I have so many
Speaker 1: friends that have battle addiction, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: I went to school with are gone. Now I have
Speaker 1: several friends from high schools that ended up working in prostitution.
Speaker 1: They're people, They're human, and yet seen as a prostitute
Speaker 1: or an addict exactly, and that makes people not really
Speaker 1: care what happens to them. That makes people assume that
Speaker 1: they chose some lifestyle that is dangerous. It makes people
Speaker 1: just assume that they somehow are asking for that or
Speaker 1: whatever happens to them as a part of a lifestyle
Speaker 1: they chose, and so they just turned a blind eye.
Speaker 1: And I think that's another thing that has made it
Speaker 1: so easy for it to happen, and it happened right
Speaker 1: in public, is that people see them as prostitutes and addicts.
Speaker 1: Nickie didn't give up searching for prooflinking Michael Moran to
Speaker 1: Portsmith's sex trafficking industry. I was at home a lot
Speaker 1: late at night, just going through court documents and talking
Speaker 1: to families because a lot of these families told me
Speaker 1: I was the only person they trusted. So then for me,
Speaker 1: it was like, how do I get something more than
Speaker 1: a story from a family member or even a girl.
Speaker 1: I need some kind of career, finding some kind of document.
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen, she got it. A man named Mark
Speaker 1: Eubanks reached out to her and passed along a copy
Speaker 1: of a sworn Affidavid filed by the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Speaker 1: Mark Cubanks, he had been reading my stories on human
Speaker 1: trafficking and on the heroin epidemic and he just smelled
Speaker 1: me a copy of this Silda Affidavid. It was actually
Speaker 1: a part of his case and had told me his story,
Speaker 1: which was that he had been arrested on drug charges
Speaker 1: and when he was arrested, he was immediately taken and
Speaker 1: given live a detective test about missing women and dead
Speaker 1: women and Mike Moran and human trafficking. The Affidavid laid
Speaker 1: out Southern Ohio Drug Task Force and FBI operations that
Speaker 1: had been UNDERWAGH since twenty fifteen investigating Michael Moran and
Speaker 1: his ties to area sex trafficking. He's accused of trafficking
Speaker 1: women all over the country from New York and New
Speaker 1: Jersey to Florida, racketeering and compelling and promoting prostitution. In
Speaker 1: other thing that is in the affidavit that he was
Speaker 1: working with drug traffickers and there was a wire tap
Speaker 1: where they were able to hear some of the conversations
Speaker 1: between Moran and drug traffickers and he was getting drugs
Speaker 1: from these drug traffickers in order to provide to the
Speaker 1: females that he had working for him. The AffA David
Speaker 1: specifically talks about whom working with local judges and law
Speaker 1: enforcement and adult probation to make these things happen. Nikki
Speaker 1: finally had the proof she needed that validated the stories
Speaker 1: told by Portsmouth's most vulnerable women, but when she brought
Speaker 1: the document to her editor, she was shocked and they
Speaker 1: told me, no, we're not going to publish. Michael Moran
Speaker 1: would later be arrested and charged with eighteen felony accounts,
Speaker 1: including promoting prostitution and trafficking in persons. He was released
Speaker 1: on a three hundred thou dollar bond, which was later
Speaker 1: revoked after he violated the terms of his agreement. He
Speaker 1: has pleaded not guilty to all charges and staunchly maintains
Speaker 1: his innocence. He is now under house arrest while he
Speaker 1: awaits trial. We'll bring you the second part of the
Speaker 1: Michael Moran story in episode nine, but next week we'll
Speaker 1: be hearing from some of our regular contributors, who will
Speaker 1: discuss updates from accused brother George Wagner, the four's most
Speaker 1: recent pre trial hearing. For more information on the case
Speaker 1: and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios.
Speaker 1: The Piked and Massacre Returned to Pike County is executive
Speaker 1: produced by Stephanie Lydecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and
Speaker 1: sound designed by executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing by
Speaker 1: Jeff Shane, Andrew Becker, and Chris Graves. The Piked and
Speaker 1: Massacre Returned to Pike County is a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.