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