Speaker 1: The cheerleaders at a gym in Buffalo have been recording
Speaker 1: themselves to make a new documentary where the news reporters
Speaker 1: because one year ago a mass shooting changed their lives.
Speaker 1: He just walked around shot all the black people. The
Speaker 1: cheer squad, most of whom are black, had to figure
Speaker 1: out how to go on and how to compete. I
Speaker 1: wanted to win for them more than anything this season.
Speaker 1: Listen to the embedded podcast from NPR within the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Carol Fisher and
Speaker 1: I'm hosting a podcast called The Girlfriends. It's Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: it's the nineteen nineties, and it is time to find
Speaker 1: a husband. There were four Jewish doctors who were felt
Speaker 1: to be eligible bachelors. One of them was of the
Speaker 1: Baron bat On paper he was perfect, but in reality,
Speaker 1: this guy's a wacko. He shouted to the point went unconscious.
Speaker 1: I would call him and I would say, I know
Speaker 1: you killed my sister. You can listen to The girl
Speaker 1: Friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. This is the story of a man
Speaker 1: who's fascinated me. His name was Sweet Daddy Grace, and
Speaker 1: that's a name you don't forget. He was a visionary
Speaker 1: who built a fortune as a black man during Jim
Speaker 1: Crow during the Depression, but today not many people know
Speaker 1: about him. The race sort of wiped out, and I
Speaker 1: wonder if this was done intentionally. Listen to Sweet Daddy
Speaker 1: Grace on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. I'm will daily. For years I've been
Speaker 1: on the road playing shows and seeing America through live music.
Speaker 1: This summer, I'll hit the stage. Who Season two of
Speaker 1: Sound of Our Town ten cities twelve episodes every other Thursday,
Speaker 1: we explore the live music venues and culture of a
Speaker 1: new American city. With each new episode, our tour continues
Speaker 1: into the kind of venues you want to get to
Speaker 1: when you landed in Detroit, Providence, Denver, or Seattle. Listen
Speaker 1: to Sound of Our Town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. You know everybody wants
Speaker 1: to paint this idyllic picture of small town America. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a CD underside to that. And if you don't
Speaker 1: have anybody watching, the watchman keeping an eye on things,
Speaker 1: keeping people accountable. Things can get out of control. There's
Speaker 1: over twenty I'm solved homicides in Pike County. I want
Speaker 1: the community to realize this can happen to their family.
Speaker 1: This is the piked In massacre returned to Pike County
Speaker 1: Season three, Episode nine, Cold Blooded. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a
Speaker 1: television producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie Lidacker and Jeff Shane.
Speaker 1: Over the last two seasons, we've covered a few local
Speaker 1: stories that we believed were unrelated to the massacre. Turns
Speaker 1: out we may have been mistaken. This episode is dedicated
Speaker 1: to tying up the loose ends of these stories that
Speaker 1: have new endings or new developments. We're also exploring the
Speaker 1: intersection between many of the main players who also have
Speaker 1: ties to the Roden murders. The connections are undeniable. The
Speaker 1: Roden murders of April twenty sixteen, earth shattering as they were,
Speaker 1: have pushed law enforcement in southern Ohio to the limit.
Speaker 1: It's left their relatively small ranks hyper extended as a result.
Speaker 1: As local cold case advocates like Angie Montgomery point out,
Speaker 1: many other local homicides have gone ignored. In fact, there
Speaker 1: are at least nine other murder cases in Pike County
Speaker 1: dating back to two thousand that have iced over without
Speaker 1: resolution or even charges issued. In light of the county's
Speaker 1: population of only fifty eight thousand, this number is staggering.
Speaker 1: Tracy Evans won the election, and he called me in
Speaker 1: January when he went into office and told me that
Speaker 1: he was going to try his best with the case
Speaker 1: and to do the best he could with it. He
Speaker 1: got in contact with the BCI and they were working
Speaker 1: on some things. Speaking as Angie Montgomery, a piked and
Speaker 1: mother of four and spiritual adviser. Once her kids were grown,
Speaker 1: Angie decided to dedicate her life to being a cold
Speaker 1: case advocate. Here she is talking about Sheriff Tracy D. Evans,
Speaker 1: who took over the Pike County Sheriff's office in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: This was after Sheriff Charles Reader, who spearheaded the Road
Speaker 1: and Investigation, pled guilty to corruption charges. Reader is currently
Speaker 1: facing a three year sentence at the Toledo Correctional Facility.
Speaker 1: Here's Stephanie and Jeff. Just as a reminder, Sheriff Charlie
Speaker 1: Reader was the sheriff at the time of the Road
Speaker 1: and murders, and he's ever been directly associated with the murders,
Speaker 1: but he, alongside former DA Mike DeWine, we're very public
Speaker 1: talking about it at the time, and after a very
Speaker 1: thorough investigation, Reader agreed to be suspended in July twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and shortly after was indicted on eighteen counts that included
Speaker 1: also racketeering. Beloved Sheriff Charlie Reader was accused of stealing
Speaker 1: more than fourteen thousand dollars from the sheriff's office and
Speaker 1: seized drug money. What he would do was go into
Speaker 1: these evidence envelopes that were in his possession, take out money,
Speaker 1: go gamble with it, and then put the money back
Speaker 1: before anyone noticed, and allegedly he repeated this process numerous
Speaker 1: times before anyone even caught on. In September twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: Reader pled guilty to two counts of theft, one count
Speaker 1: of tampering with evidence, and then also one count of
Speaker 1: conflict of interest. Another matter that doesn't necessarily relate to this,
Speaker 1: but is just another strike against Sheriff Reader's morality is
Speaker 1: the story from twenty twenty one that he was sued
Speaker 1: by Tony officials over collecting salary and benefits that they
Speaker 1: say he improperly collected while he was suspended as they
Speaker 1: were investigating all this other stuff that he had done.
Speaker 1: According to the lawsuit, Charlie Reader collected over one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty thousand dollars from the city. It's not clear
Speaker 1: the exact status of this litigation, but it is just
Speaker 1: another strike against the sheriff. Here again, Angie Montgomery, we
Speaker 1: had a meeting with Tracy Evans in June, myself and
Speaker 1: Curtis smother and Jenny sisters, and he told us that
Speaker 1: Jeff the BTI decided not to assist with the case,
Speaker 1: that he was going to wash his hands with them.
Speaker 1: It's important to note that this is Angie Montgomery's recollection
Speaker 1: of events. We've reached out to Sheriff Tracy Evans for
Speaker 1: comment but did not receive a response. The Curtis and
Speaker 1: Jenny Angie is referring to are her cousin Curtis Francis
Speaker 1: and his fiance Jennifer Burgett. The pair were found dead
Speaker 1: in their bed on December ninth, two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: in their home at one hundred and twenty four Hopper
Speaker 1: Road in Piketon. Thirty four year old Curtis and thirty
Speaker 1: year old Jennifer were each at once while asleep. The
Speaker 1: killings became known as the Hopper Road murders. According to Angie,
Speaker 1: Curtis and his fiance Jennifer were excited to get married.
Speaker 1: They both loved hunting and fishing, and Chris was a
Speaker 1: jovial guy known for playing practical jokes. Curtis had just
Speaker 1: had shoulder replacement surgery and had a supply of pain medications,
Speaker 1: so one early theory was that the killers were after
Speaker 1: his pills. In the sixteen years since the murders, the
Speaker 1: case has been opened and closed several times without a
Speaker 1: single arrest. It's currently a cold case. Sheriff Evans, who
Speaker 1: during his campaign promised voters to improve resources for victims,
Speaker 1: has deflected Angie's passionate please to reopen the case. He
Speaker 1: was done with it. Basically, there was nothing more they
Speaker 1: could do that we would have to turn to the
Speaker 1: media if we wanted to get help with the case,
Speaker 1: which was kind of heartbreaking, because you know, he gets
Speaker 1: elected and tells us that he's going to do everything
Speaker 1: he can, but then he's flipping it around and saying,
Speaker 1: if the BCI does that helped him. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to wash my hands with it, so you kind of
Speaker 1: contradict him what she told me. Kind he gave us
Speaker 1: like salt hope, like this guy's really going to dig
Speaker 1: into it and do something, and turns around and says
Speaker 1: if the BCI doesn't do anything, he's not going to
Speaker 1: do anything. And he also said that he didn't want
Speaker 1: kIPS called into the sheriff's tournament, which I thought was
Speaker 1: very odd. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation or BCI,
Speaker 1: has offered no new support. Here's investigative reporter and journal
Speaker 1: is a professor, James Pilcher. Unfortunately, the Francis and Burgette
Speaker 1: case has been ruled a cold case now by both
Speaker 1: of the Pike prosecutor in the Ohio Attorney General's office.
Speaker 1: That happened about two years ago, so now it's on
Speaker 1: the shelf. There's no answers and unless family members can
Speaker 1: come forwards new evidence, or if something just pops up
Speaker 1: or somebody walks in off the street and says I
Speaker 1: did it, you know, that's pretty much what's gonna happen
Speaker 1: for anything to move on this case. For Angie, this
Speaker 1: case has been a long and frustrating series of missed
Speaker 1: opportunities and snaffoos. In twenty sixteen, investigators discovered a hidden
Speaker 1: well at three twenty four win Road, five minutes from
Speaker 1: Hopper Road. This well contained a saddle gun, a lever
Speaker 1: action eighteen shot that is what Curtis and Jenny were
Speaker 1: killed with. There was also a pistol sunk in the
Speaker 1: swampy well, but according to reports, in the process of
Speaker 1: trying to flood the evidence out of the well, the
Speaker 1: fire department blew an eighty foothole in the well and
Speaker 1: wash the guns away. And then there was the issue
Speaker 1: of the lost nine one one call. Here again, Angie Montgomery,
Speaker 1: and then they tell me that they lost a nine
Speaker 1: one one call. They're not very efficient with things. You
Speaker 1: would think that that would be one of the main
Speaker 1: things you would keep a hold of in a double homicide.
Speaker 1: So it kind of worried me that they did turn
Speaker 1: everything over that they have to the BCI to bc
Speaker 1: I light look at it and faceful, there isn't anything
Speaker 1: here we can walk with. That's where it falls back
Speaker 1: on all these cases, all these cases that are unsolved,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. It's repetitive. All families I talked to.
Speaker 1: They go through the same thing they go through, which
Speaker 1: is they lost this or they don't have this, And
Speaker 1: why doesn't a sheriff want keeps cone into the sheriff's office.
Speaker 1: You know you got twelve documented until homicides in your account.
Speaker 1: Why aren't you asking the public for help for these cases?
Speaker 1: It's like they're just shoved to the side. That's how
Speaker 1: the case has become cold. Angie is still holding out
Speaker 1: hope that the BCI will reopen the cold case and
Speaker 1: look at it with fresh eyes. It's actually their cold
Speaker 1: Case unit, which is through the Ohio Attorney General's Office,
Speaker 1: and they are amazing. They just solved a forty seven
Speaker 1: year old homicide. They're really good. So if they do
Speaker 1: take it on and assist, I think that will get
Speaker 1: an arrest because they're good at what they do. But
Speaker 1: I'm also worried about what all Pike County has given them.
Speaker 1: What ultimately stands in the way of the Francis case
Speaker 1: finding resolution. Is it incompetence, apathy like the killer behind
Speaker 1: this awful crime. It remains a mystery. I've got someone
Speaker 1: in curtain Junie's case that gave a statement back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six when it happened, and he was
Speaker 1: the last person to see Kurs and Jennifer alive, and
Speaker 1: he went to the Sheriff's office and gave him a
Speaker 1: statement that he was there, and those people haven't They
Speaker 1: never called him back, They never followed up with him.
Speaker 1: And I had him go again and make another statement
Speaker 1: with mister Evans, the new sheriff and turning in and
Speaker 1: I asked him every day and they have not called him.
Speaker 1: They have not followed up with him. So to me,
Speaker 1: that makes me think that they don't care, period, because
Speaker 1: that's a pretty big guils someone saying they were the
Speaker 1: last person to see two people alive that were murdered,
Speaker 1: and you're not going to call him back and talk
Speaker 1: to him. It's eerie the way things are done around here.
Speaker 1: We don't know where the Francis case will go, but
Speaker 1: there's yet another piken A case, this one involving a
Speaker 1: young man named Jacob Lansing that has had its own
Speaker 1: investigative issues. In January of twenty eighteen, piked In prosecutors
Speaker 1: thought they had their man. Paul Detti, thirty one, was
Speaker 1: all set to face trial and in Pike County Common
Speaker 1: Pleas court charged with aggravated murder for the twenty twelve
Speaker 1: death of Jacob Lansing, but then prosecutors suddenly reverse course.
Speaker 1: Newly uncovered evidence exonerated Debty, and the death penalty case
Speaker 1: was dismissed. Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk, who's overseeing the
Speaker 1: road in trials, described this case as one of the
Speaker 1: weirdest he'd ever seen. On October twenty seventh, twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: Jacob Lansing's body was found underneath the vehicle at his
Speaker 1: River Road home. Authorities thought it was an unfortunate accident
Speaker 1: in which the suv the twenty five year old had
Speaker 1: been working fell on him, but his mother, Maureen, was
Speaker 1: incredulous and took action. The fact that Jacob wasn't dressed
Speaker 1: in his usual coveralls while working on his car did
Speaker 1: not wash here again, Stephanie and Jeff. Rob Junk is
Speaker 1: one of the main prosecutors against the Wagoners, and as
Speaker 1: we've come to learn over the years, he was involved
Speaker 1: with both Reader brothers. All of these names kind of
Speaker 1: keep coming back to each other. He had a very
Speaker 1: public social media spat with Sheriff Charlie Reader, where Sheriff
Speaker 1: Reader was threatening to take Rob Junk down, or, as
Speaker 1: he put it, take the quote unquote Junk out. It
Speaker 1: turns out it was Rob Junk who would end up
Speaker 1: being an integral part in getting both Charlie and Brian
Speaker 1: Reader removed from their posts. A lot of people have
Speaker 1: theorized that the main reason that Brian Reader was removed
Speaker 1: from office was because of his handling of the lancing case. However,
Speaker 1: it's been reported on that Brian Reader was terminated for
Speaker 1: attendance records and sick time. This is according to Pike
Speaker 1: County Commissioner Blaine Beakman. As for Rob Junk in January
Speaker 1: of twenty nineteen, he noted that his office as an
Speaker 1: out will employer, and he can quote let somebody go
Speaker 1: if I don't like the color of their socks. Here
Speaker 1: again are Montgomery. He never worked on his fickle in
Speaker 1: his sport twelve. That's what was bug and her there
Speaker 1: were the package cigarettes beside him, and he didn't smoke.
Speaker 1: So she got a private investigator, did it behind the
Speaker 1: CoP's back, and got her own evidence and took all
Speaker 1: of her evidence into Rob Junk, and Rob said, well,
Speaker 1: we'll look at it. This was a rare instance where
Speaker 1: an insistent family member was able to move the dial
Speaker 1: with the prosecutor's office. Jacob's mom, Marine never believed that
Speaker 1: his death was an accident. Now finally, in late twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen early twenty seventeen, she got Brian Reader to listen.
Speaker 1: Ryan was the chief investigator at the time with the
Speaker 1: Pike County Prosecutor's Office that's Rob Junk who is now
Speaker 1: part of the prosecution team overseeing the prosecution of the Wagners.
Speaker 1: He opened an investigation and even had the body exhumed
Speaker 1: and an autopsy perform and that revealed that he had
Speaker 1: been beaten and strangled to death. This means that Jacob
Speaker 1: Lansing's killer took his dead body, placed it under his suv,
Speaker 1: and then precipitously dropped the vehicle to make it look
Speaker 1: like Jacob was crushed a freak accident, but based on
Speaker 1: the new evidence, the death was ruled a homicide. Bryan
Speaker 1: spent months and months following the leads and doing interviews
Speaker 1: to find these suspects. Zeran and on a man named
Speaker 1: Paul Michael Allan Detty, who we arrested in May of
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, but in January of twenty eighteen, a week
Speaker 1: before detty's trials to begin. Rob Junk, who I mentioned
Speaker 1: before he was prosecutor, dismissed the case without prejudice and
Speaker 1: Debti was released. He cited new evidence that popped up
Speaker 1: that affected the case, but he never told us what
Speaker 1: that evidence was. A year later, in twenty nineteen, Rob
Speaker 1: Young fired Brian Reader. Investigator. Brian Reader, who had been
Speaker 1: spearheading the probe, was let go from the prosecutor's office
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. He is the brother of Charlie Reader,
Speaker 1: the disgraced former Pike County sheriff. Apparently Reader's payroll records
Speaker 1: and personnel files were under investigation by the state auditor
Speaker 1: for some time. Due to Reader's firing and the general
Speaker 1: lack of viable leads, the Jacob Lansing case stalled. No
Speaker 1: further arrests were made. In November twenty twenty, Jacob's mother,
Speaker 1: Maureen Lansing, issued an eight thousand dollars reward for information
Speaker 1: about her son's murder. It has yet to be collected.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a break. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: a moment. Oh. I'm Carol Fisher, and I'm hosting a
Speaker 1: podcast called The girl friends. Back in the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, a few of us dated the most
Speaker 1: eligible bachelor in town, Bob. He spoke several languages, he
Speaker 1: did medical missionary work, and he was Jewish. He was
Speaker 1: perfect on paper. But he wasn't. He really wasn't. He
Speaker 1: shouted into the point she went unconscious. Bob could lie
Speaker 1: about anything, but only takes the one time when somebody
Speaker 1: ends up dead. Unfortunately for Bob, us girlfriends know how
Speaker 1: to fight back. I wanted him to pay for his crime.
Speaker 1: He needed to be put to justice. I'll be honest
Speaker 1: with you. If I saw him right now, I'd spit
Speaker 1: on him. I would call him and I would say,
Speaker 1: I know you killed my sister. I will always hound
Speaker 1: you and haunt you. You can listen to the girlfriends
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts from iHeart podcasts. Whitney hell is going on here.
Speaker 1: Everyone has their limits. I'd never confronted a situation like this.
Speaker 1: I just thought it was just a really terrible, immoral thing,
Speaker 1: a line they won't cross. I was stunned, and I
Speaker 1: just said, no, we're killing people. You may never have
Speaker 1: to face that decision when you find yourself at that line,
Speaker 1: thou art Ricin and somebody needs to just for once
Speaker 1: give everybody the whole truth, like this is evil and
Speaker 1: the only person who can sound the alarm is you.
Speaker 1: I wasn't just going to sit silently. Buy from iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: These are the whistleblowers. If you are disloyal, things are
Speaker 1: going to happen to speak out disgrace to our gun
Speaker 1: be evil. Pay should be prosecuted when power corrupts. Conscience
Speaker 1: is the last line of defense. I'm Miles Taylor. Listen
Speaker 1: to the Whistleblowers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. My name's Laverne Cox. I'm
Speaker 1: an actress, producer, fashionista, and host of The Laverne Cox Show.
Speaker 1: You may remember my award winning first season. I've been
Speaker 1: pretty busy. There's always time to touch incredible guests about
Speaker 1: important things people like me have been screaming for years.
Speaker 1: We've got to watch the Supreme Court. What they're doing
Speaker 1: is wrong, what they're doing is evil. They will take
Speaker 1: things away and I can only hope that Dobbs is
Speaker 1: that like Pearl Harbor moment, girl, you and I both
Speaker 1: know what it took to just get through the day
Speaker 1: in New York City and get home in one piece.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that we're here and what you've
Speaker 1: achieved and what I've achieved, you know, that's momentous. It's
Speaker 1: not just sitting around complaining about some bills. The only
Speaker 1: reason that you might think, as Chase said, that we're
Speaker 1: always miserable is because people are constantly attacking us and
Speaker 1: we're constantly noticing it. Listen to The Laverne Cox Show
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcast. Be sure to subscribe and share. Hello and
Speaker 1: welcome to Bad Manners. This is the podcast that takes
Speaker 1: you inside Britain's stately homes and tells all the tales
Speaker 1: the guide books don't. My name is Tom Burton and
Speaker 1: I'll be your host. Britain is riddled with the big houses,
Speaker 1: from crumbling castles, massive mansions and stately piles bigger than
Speaker 1: Buckingham Palace. As a comedian, I'm not really bothered about
Speaker 1: the facts and figures. I just want the juicy stuff.
Speaker 1: So I'm on a mission to find out the frightening,
Speaker 1: filthy and downright jaw dropping stories of these stately homes
Speaker 1: and the people in them. This podcast ventures deep inside
Speaker 1: some of Britain's most incredible and outrageous buildings to spill
Speaker 1: the tea on the scandalous, scary, shocking and hilarious tales.
Speaker 1: So if you want to get historically horrid, royally rawcus
Speaker 1: and down to dirty, look no further. Listen to Bad
Speaker 1: Man Is on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, well
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. What happened to Meghan and
Speaker 1: Katie Lancaster. This is the harrowing story of two young
Speaker 1: sisters in law, one missing and one dead. This happened
Speaker 1: in a small town called Portsmouth, Ohio, one hundred miles
Speaker 1: east of Cincinnati. It's a town of twenty thousand people
Speaker 1: on the north bank of the Ohio River. Here again,
Speaker 1: James Pilcher. I believe Meghan Lancaster got involved with some
Speaker 1: bad people, like the people that have been thought to
Speaker 1: have killed some women up narrow chill a coffee and
Speaker 1: she got involved in that ring, or whether or not
Speaker 1: she just something went sideways with one of her clients
Speaker 1: or whatever. I think. Meghan is buried somewhere in those
Speaker 1: hills of Sciota County. It's not like Pike County because
Speaker 1: you get down south of Pike County, you start hitting
Speaker 1: where the glaciers came through to create the Ohio River.
Speaker 1: It's very, very, very hilly, and there's all these hollers
Speaker 1: and valleys and woods and forests, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of places to hide a body. And I think she's
Speaker 1: buried or they dumped her somewhere and she's gone. Meghan Lancaster,
Speaker 1: a mother and former high school softball player, was twenty
Speaker 1: five when she disappeared on the evening of April third,
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, dressed in jeans and an Ohio State sweatshirt.
Speaker 1: She'd spent the evening with friends. Megan called her mother
Speaker 1: at about seven thirty to say she'd be home soon.
Speaker 1: There was no communication from her after that. Meghan's white
Speaker 1: Mustang was located a few days later at a Rally's
Speaker 1: Hamburger in Portsmouth. Her wallet was found on the front seat.
Speaker 1: She left behind her seven year old son, whose name
Speaker 1: was tattooed on her shoulder. Portsmouth Police detect of Steve
Speaker 1: Brewer spearheaded the missing person's investigation, but no one looked
Speaker 1: for Megan more intensely than her sister in law and
Speaker 1: best friend, Katie Lancaster. Megan had been scraping by as
Speaker 1: a sex worker and had fallen into a life of addiction.
Speaker 1: So the search led Katie into the vast and shadowy
Speaker 1: underworld of sex trafficking and Portsmouth. Undeterred, Katie threw herself
Speaker 1: in defining her sister in law victims. Oudvocate Angie Montgomery,
Speaker 1: who helped Katie and her search efforts, describe Katie's fearlessness
Speaker 1: and determination. Their pursuit began with scouring back page, which
Speaker 1: sex workers often used to advertise their services. When I
Speaker 1: first started to hang on with Katie, we would sit
Speaker 1: for hours with our laptops and go through that website
Speaker 1: back page looking for her. Hours like we would get
Speaker 1: babysitters so we could sit and go through. She would
Speaker 1: send his pictures like Megan's. I remember she said a
Speaker 1: birthmark about her belly buttons. So we would look through
Speaker 1: these pictures of these girls because mostly they would and
Speaker 1: showed her faces and we would look for that birthmark.
Speaker 1: Just hours and hours and hours of doing that. So
Speaker 1: in the beginning I kind of did because she had
Speaker 1: a couple of leaves she sent me a video one
Speaker 1: time of a girl in Columbus on Sullivan Avenue. It
Speaker 1: was a traffic cam that looked a lot like Megan.
Speaker 1: Hey would get in the car. She would get in
Speaker 1: the car and go to strip joints and she would
Speaker 1: talk to pants, She would talk to drug dealers. She
Speaker 1: was not scared to do that. And in the beginning,
Speaker 1: I did think she might be out there somewhere, but
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Now I don't think she's here anymore.
Speaker 1: Angie says that Katie's fierceness inspired her own efforts to
Speaker 1: keep fighting to solve Curtis and Jennifer's double homicide on
Speaker 1: Hopper Road. I started to tell her a little bit
Speaker 1: about Curtis and Jennifer, and she one that told me
Speaker 1: to be a squeaky wheel because you'll get the most grief.
Speaker 1: I mean. She would go on television and talk and
Speaker 1: I would watch her and I'm like, she's so brave,
Speaker 1: And she would sit and talk with me and tell me,
Speaker 1: you got to do this. You've got to be a voice.
Speaker 1: Nobody else is going to do this. You have to
Speaker 1: do this. You know. She's the reason why I fight
Speaker 1: so hard. I watched how relentful, she was, how passionate
Speaker 1: she was, and she was kind of like my hero
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of bad guys in this
Speaker 1: area and she was not afraid to stand up against
Speaker 1: the powers that be. Katie was well aware that there
Speaker 1: could be consequences for ruffling too many feathers. With her
Speaker 1: insistent please for justice. Stupould always say, you know, if
Speaker 1: something happens to me, make sure you look into it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you find out that that's really what happened
Speaker 1: to me. Because when you do go up against the people,
Speaker 1: and you know, the small enforcement or attorneys or judges,
Speaker 1: there's always that fear they might retaliate against you. And
Speaker 1: she knew that, but she also always said, no, I'm
Speaker 1: on social media, I'm on TV. I'm saying what I
Speaker 1: need to say about these people to these people. That way,
Speaker 1: if something does happen to me, people will know to
Speaker 1: look into it, you know, instead of being quiet about it.
Speaker 1: So that always stuck with me. So the more she
Speaker 1: kind of pumped me up, the louder I got. Katie
Speaker 1: believed fervently that her sister in law got cut up
Speaker 1: with Michael Moran. Moran was a prominent local attorney who
Speaker 1: was later indicted on eighteen sex trafficking related charges. We
Speaker 1: covered his story in season one of this podcast. The
Speaker 1: indictment accused Moran of engaging in sex trafficking from two
Speaker 1: thousand and three to twenty eighteen, with at least six
Speaker 1: victims being involved. Here's reporter Bob Strictly who covered the
Speaker 1: story for the Cincinnati Enquirer. Michael Moran is an attorney
Speaker 1: that's been practicing for several decades. He's originally from Ironton, Ohio,
Speaker 1: which is just up the river from Portsmouth. He operates
Speaker 1: of an office that is right across the street from
Speaker 1: the Scato County Courthouse, and he was appointed to fulfill
Speaker 1: a term on Portsmouth City Council and continued until recently
Speaker 1: to practice criminal defense law until his law license was
Speaker 1: suspended after he was charged with different sex trafficking related crimes.
Speaker 1: Here again, Stephanie and Jeff. Marent's focus as a lawyer
Speaker 1: was Portsmouth's underworld, which gave him easy access to things
Speaker 1: like sex workers and drug dealers. He also has a
Speaker 1: connection to the Wagner's and just as a reminder, Pug
Speaker 1: Carter is actually Angela Wagner's father. And George and Jake's grandfather,
Speaker 1: and he was allegedly using his pawn business to rip
Speaker 1: people off back in the day. He was also a
Speaker 1: frequenter of this nefarious place called Big Bear Lake. It's
Speaker 1: a location we've heard about for years but haven't been
Speaker 1: able to speak about it until now, and it appears
Speaker 1: to be a place that intersects Michael Moran, Sheriff Charles Reader,
Speaker 1: the Wagners, as well as the Roadents. It may be
Speaker 1: a key factor in the trials ahead. Big Bear Lake
Speaker 1: could hauld deep secrets that pertained to the case. We'll
Speaker 1: get into that a little more next week. Here's James
Speaker 1: Pilcher speaking about Michael Moran and his connection to Pug Carter.
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you he would represent anybody that came
Speaker 1: in his door, and he specialized in low level crime
Speaker 1: and drug offenses and DUIs and all of that. That
Speaker 1: was his specialty. That's how he made his living. The
Speaker 1: fact that a guy like Pug Carter came across his
Speaker 1: bow and he represented him was not surprising to me
Speaker 1: at all, because that's what he specialized in. But now
Speaker 1: he was facing possibly career ending allegations from a half
Speaker 1: dozen women here again, Bob. Strictly, I would say that
Speaker 1: the women had stepped forward or was at the forefront.
Speaker 1: It just took somebody hidden me over the head with
Speaker 1: a fish that'd actually start paying attention to it in
Speaker 1: regard that it demands. What set this one apart for me,
Speaker 1: It was just the amount of women that stepped forward
Speaker 1: and said something about this to us and talk to
Speaker 1: us about it. And then also the apparatus that has
Speaker 1: to exist around a person like Michael Moran for an
Speaker 1: operation as we've reported on to exist in the first place,
Speaker 1: a lot of people have to turn their heads. I think,
Speaker 1: if anything, over the years working on this particular story,
Speaker 1: it's kind of the damnability of people who just turned
Speaker 1: the other way and don't care about what's going on
Speaker 1: right in front of them in their community is more
Speaker 1: prevalent than maybe we all realized. Initially. The charges against
Speaker 1: Moran included three counts of trafficking in person, five counts
Speaker 1: of compelling prostitution, nine counts of promoting prostitution, and one
Speaker 1: count of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity. His
Speaker 1: arrest was orchestrated by a Human Trafficking Task Force under
Speaker 1: Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, combining the forces of the
Speaker 1: BCI and several other agencies. Moran was the first domino
Speaker 1: to fall. Multiple other people are still under investigation. Megan
Speaker 1: Lancaster had a color coded notebook in which she kept
Speaker 1: track of clients. The entries included scribbles such as quote
Speaker 1: dance for and quote men who give money, and included
Speaker 1: Moran's name and number, along with a notation of eighty
Speaker 1: dollars again, Bob strictly. There were rumors about Lancaster's disappearance
Speaker 1: being related to Moran for several years. Her sister in
Speaker 1: law provided us with her little address like slash fun
Speaker 1: number book with different numbers in it, dozens and dozens
Speaker 1: and dozens of different numbers of men Moran was listed
Speaker 1: in there. We called all of those people to see
Speaker 1: what their associations were with Lancaster and came back with
Speaker 1: what we came back with. But she's still missing, and
Speaker 1: I give her credit for continuing to keep the issue forefront.
Speaker 1: According to investigators, there were at least six women entangled
Speaker 1: in his exploitative ring. Moran denied all allegations. Was Megan
Speaker 1: Lancaster just another piece of his disposable merchandise. After years
Speaker 1: of probing the Megan Lancaster case when cold. In May
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one, eight years after her disappearance, the
Speaker 1: Ohio BCI issued an age advanced rendering of Megan as
Speaker 1: a forensic tool to reignite interest in finding her. Soon after,
Speaker 1: the case was turned over to the BCI Cold Case Unit.
Speaker 1: Katie was hopeful, but nothing came of it. Meanwhile, Moran
Speaker 1: remained business as usual. Michael Moran was out on bond,
Speaker 1: and part of his bond agreement was not to practice law,
Speaker 1: and he was under investigation and possible suspension by the
Speaker 1: Bar Association, and he still showed up trying to defend
Speaker 1: a client in municipal court. So they rescinded his bond
Speaker 1: agreement and they put him on house arrestle of the bracelet.
Speaker 1: But that shows you that he was arrogant to the end.
Speaker 1: Then in October of twenty twenty one, the tragedy deepened
Speaker 1: when Katie Lancaster, then thirty three, was found dead in
Speaker 1: a residence on the fourth block of Portsmouth. Angie Montgomery
Speaker 1: was devastated. I can't reneger who told me somebody sent
Speaker 1: me a message about it. Of course, the first thing
Speaker 1: I did was crying my head off because she was
Speaker 1: one of my really good friends. She's the reason that
Speaker 1: I fight so hard. As reporter James Pilcher tells us,
Speaker 1: Katie's death was a possible overdose, possibly induced by the
Speaker 1: stresses of relentlessly searching for her missing sister in law,
Speaker 1: but no one knows for sure. Being the advocate can
Speaker 1: really wear on you. There's only so much fuel in
Speaker 1: the tank, There's only so much emotional fuel in the tank,
Speaker 1: or something like that. And the funny thing is is
Speaker 1: that she wasn't really other than being her sister in law.
Speaker 1: She wasn't really technically related to her. She was really
Speaker 1: good friends with her, and then to lose her possibly
Speaker 1: a drug overdose, given all of what's going on in
Speaker 1: Syoda County, in Pike County, it was just such a tragic,
Speaker 1: tragic thing to hear given everything that that family has
Speaker 1: been through. As tragical as it is that she's gone,
Speaker 1: the fact that she kept going as long as she
Speaker 1: did and brought attention to this is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why we had the story that we did. Angie
Speaker 1: has her doubt. It's about the apparent overdose infiltrating the
Speaker 1: sex trafficking world like she was. Could Katie have been silenced?
Speaker 1: I'm going to be honest with you, she was easy.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it. Around this area, they find ways
Speaker 1: to meet people quiet Like at first, when I found
Speaker 1: out that it was supposed an overdose, I was like, no,
Speaker 1: something's wrong. There's been people here in Pike Canody that
Speaker 1: have died of apparent drug overdoses and everybody knews better.
Speaker 1: As brutal as the fate of these two women is,
Speaker 1: it did raise awareness of the struggle of women living
Speaker 1: in the margins. Bob, strictly, it certainly is taking you
Speaker 1: an Epstein Weinstein sort of story and saying, yeah, it
Speaker 1: can happen here too. There's positions of power litter throughout
Speaker 1: our society that are in a spot where they can
Speaker 1: abuse where they stand because they're marginalized people nobody will
Speaker 1: listen to. This is a small town example of a
Speaker 1: lot of really brave women stepping up and telling their
Speaker 1: stories and hoping that something changes. James Pilcher points out
Speaker 1: that small town cases of sex abuse are systemically no
Speaker 1: different from anywhere else. The one thing that this did
Speaker 1: was made me so much more aware, and so much
Speaker 1: more interested in telling the stories of all these women
Speaker 1: all over the country. It doesn't matter if it was
Speaker 1: a small town Portsmouth, Ohio or suburban Chicago. I've spoken
Speaker 1: to girls who got trapped into it by their uncles,
Speaker 1: and they've lived in pretty affluent suburbs of Seattle. This
Speaker 1: sex trafficking is an onerous, evil thing that is going
Speaker 1: on everywhere. It's never going to stop until you make
Speaker 1: it harder on the men for buying the sex and
Speaker 1: going after the sex than it is for the women
Speaker 1: selling the sex, who most likely, more than likely, highly
Speaker 1: likely are being coerced into it. It's never going away.
Speaker 1: I will say that's one thing that I took away
Speaker 1: from that whole experience is just how whide my eyes
Speaker 1: were opened to this whole semi underbelly of American society.
Speaker 1: Let's stop here for another break. Oh. I'm Carol Fisher,
Speaker 1: and I'm hosting a podcast called The girl Friends. Back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties in Las Vegas, a few of
Speaker 1: us dated the most eligible bachelor in town, Bob. He
Speaker 1: spoke several languages, he did medical missionary work, and he
Speaker 1: was Jewish. He was perfect on paper, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: he really wasn't. He choked into the point she went unconscious.
Speaker 1: Bob could lie about anything, but only takes the one
Speaker 1: time when somebody ends up dead. Unfortunately for Bob, us
Speaker 1: girlfriends know how to fight back. I wanted him to
Speaker 1: pay for his crime. He needed to be put to justice.
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you. If I saw him right now,
Speaker 1: I'd spit on him. I would call him and I
Speaker 1: would say, I know you killed my sister. I will
Speaker 1: always hound you and haunt you. You can listen to
Speaker 1: the girlfriends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts from iHeart podcasts. Whitney hell is
Speaker 1: going on here. Everyone has their limits. I'd never confronted
Speaker 1: a situation like this. I just thought it was just
Speaker 1: a really terrible immoral thing, a line they won't cross.
Speaker 1: I was stunned, and I just said, no, we're killing people.
Speaker 1: You may never have to face that decision when you
Speaker 1: find yourself at that line. Bounce Ricin, arn't Ricin, And
Speaker 1: somebody needs to just for once give everybody the whole truth,
Speaker 1: like this is evil and the only person who can
Speaker 1: sound the alarm is you. I wasn't just going to
Speaker 1: sit silently. Buy from iHeart Podcasts. Are the whistleblowers. If
Speaker 1: you are disloyal, thanks are going to happen to speak
Speaker 1: out disgrace to our good evil prosecute when power corrupts.
Speaker 1: Conscience is the last line of defense. I'm Miles Taylor.
Speaker 1: Listen to the Whistleblowers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. My name's Laverne Cox.
Speaker 1: I'm an actress, producer, fashionista, and host of The Laverne
Speaker 1: Cox Show. You may remember my award winning first season.
Speaker 1: I've been pretty busy. There's always time to touch incredible
Speaker 1: guests about important things people like me have been screaming
Speaker 1: for years. We've got to watch the Supreme Court. What
Speaker 1: they're doing is wrong, what they're doing as evil. They
Speaker 1: will take things away. And I can only hope that Dobbs,
Speaker 1: is that like Pearl Harbor moment or you and I
Speaker 1: both know what it took to just get through the
Speaker 1: day in New York City and get home in one piece.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that we're here and what you've
Speaker 1: achieved and what I've achieved, you know, that's momentous. It's
Speaker 1: not just sitting around complaining about some bills. The only
Speaker 1: reason that you might think, as Chase said, that we're
Speaker 1: always miserable is because people are constantly attacking us and
Speaker 1: we're constantly noticing it. Listen to the Verne Cox Show
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcast. Be sure to subscribe and share. This is
Speaker 1: the unbelievable but true story of George Remus. You might
Speaker 1: know him as a character from Boardwalk Empire or as
Speaker 1: the inspiration for Jay Gatsby. He was an eccentric and
Speaker 1: genius lawyer who figured out how to game the system
Speaker 1: during Prohibition. Remus is in the whiskey business, and Remus
Speaker 1: is the biggest man in the business, while living the
Speaker 1: life of luxury with his clamorous and ambitious wife Imogene. Daddy,
Speaker 1: I am so glad you are here. But George Ramus's
Speaker 1: wild existence took a dark and shocking turn, leading to
Speaker 1: betray She had Remus just exactly where she wanted him revenge.
Speaker 1: Feel this muscle. I got this for Remus. I could
Speaker 1: crush him like an egg. And one of the most
Speaker 1: sensational murder trials in American history, we the jury, find
Speaker 1: the defendant, Join me Abbot Kaylor As we traced George
Speaker 1: Remus's transformation from Bootleg King to alleged Madman. Listen to
Speaker 1: Remus the Mad Bootleg King every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In November
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one, Michael Moran, who had a number
Speaker 1: of health issues, died while Aldam Bond after a brief
Speaker 1: hospital stay. His case was then dismissed, but Moran might
Speaker 1: have left behind a more wide ranging network of abuse
Speaker 1: and exploitation. James Pilcher, the women wives he ruined are
Speaker 1: not getting a shot to face him in court, in
Speaker 1: face person that did this to them. But there's so
Speaker 1: much more to that story than just Michael Moran. There's
Speaker 1: so much more what was going on in Portsmouth and
Speaker 1: how his operation had created all of these webs into
Speaker 1: branches of government. I really think that there are people
Speaker 1: that do not want it to go any further. Now
Speaker 1: that Moran is dead, you're opening a whole can of worms.
Speaker 1: I mean, they had opened an investigation into all of
Speaker 1: the previous convictions and trials overseen by William Marshall. The
Speaker 1: judge who was known to pal around with Michael Moran,
Speaker 1: who was possibly named in the federal affidavit. The first
Speaker 1: turn to saw on to the Moran story and that
Speaker 1: other women said that they slept with him and that
Speaker 1: Moran set it up. According to an article published an
Speaker 1: a frill of twenty twenty by The Daily Independent, in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, more than two thousand and seven hundred cases
Speaker 1: Judge William Marshall Oversaw were reviewed by the state. This
Speaker 1: happened after it was revealed that he was potentially involved
Speaker 1: with Michael Moran's sex trafficking ring, among other allegations. He
Speaker 1: has never commented on these controversies, and he describes her
Speaker 1: reaction when she learned Moran was dead. I turned my
Speaker 1: phone on and it was blown up. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh God, something happened, and I've seen it like that
Speaker 1: son of a bitch. That's horrible to say about someone
Speaker 1: passing away, but I got mean, you got away and
Speaker 1: he took all these secrets with him, because there's way
Speaker 1: more than him involved in all that. I'm hoping that
Speaker 1: he stilled the beans and told the whole story before
Speaker 1: he passed away, but I don't know. He was an
Speaker 1: awful evil man. There were other people involved and they
Speaker 1: need to be prosecuted. That there's women, men are dead
Speaker 1: because of that, and when the men are missy because
Speaker 1: of what he did. For years he denied it, but
Speaker 1: everybody knew what he was doing. It surprised me that
Speaker 1: it took that long for something to be done about it.
Speaker 1: It's a long time. People have been talking about that
Speaker 1: for fifteen years. But as Angie says, in the end,
Speaker 1: Moran will still meet his maker and maybe there's a
Speaker 1: reason to hope for a brighter future again. James Pilcher,
Speaker 1: Portsmouth is actually better off than Pike County. There are
Speaker 1: new people in positions of authority. Now they've got a
Speaker 1: new police because they've got a new mayor. I mean,
Speaker 1: you still have the poverty. It's still one of the
Speaker 1: places in Ohio with the highest rate of overdose deaths
Speaker 1: and opioid addiction. But as for the town moving on
Speaker 1: from the corruption and all of the things were happening
Speaker 1: when Moran was there, I think they're trying to on
Speaker 1: a corner. More on that next time. If you're enjoying
Speaker 1: the Piked and Massacre, listen to our other hit series
Speaker 1: Crazy and Love. New episodes there every Tuesday. Wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. For more information and case photos, follow
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. The Piked and
Speaker 1: Massacre is produced by Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Greeves,
Speaker 1: Alan Wheeder and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed
Speaker 1: by Jeff Tis, music by Jared Aston, audio mixing by
Speaker 1: Ken Novak. The Piked and Massacre is a production of
Speaker 1: Katie Studios and iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. I'm Carol Fisher and I'm hosting a
Speaker 1: podcast called The girl Friends. It's Las Vegas, it's the
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, and it is time to find a husband.
Speaker 1: There were four Jewish doctors who were felt to be
Speaker 1: eligible bachelors. One of them was a Barrenmout. On paper,
Speaker 1: he was perfect, but in reality, this guy's a wackome.
Speaker 1: He shouted to the point she went unconscious. I would
Speaker 1: call him and I would say, I know you killed
Speaker 1: my sister. You can listen to The Girlfriends on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm free and I'm rthy. We have spent the last
Speaker 1: twenty years building and working at some of the largest
Speaker 1: companies in the world. We worked with some remarkable people
Speaker 1: Rob mcalinney. When I see the people of Wrexham, I
Speaker 1: grew up exactly like them. Check out the Art and
Speaker 1: Treed Arm show. That is a R D HI and
Speaker 1: s R I R A M show. Listen to the
Speaker 1: Art Instrie Arm Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the story
Speaker 1: of a man who's fascinated me. His name was Sweet
Speaker 1: Daddy Grace, and that's a name you don't forget. He
Speaker 1: was a visionary who built a fortune as a black
Speaker 1: man during Jim Crow during the Depression, but today not
Speaker 1: many people know about him. The race sort of wiped out,
Speaker 1: and I wonder if this was done intentionally. Listen to
Speaker 1: Sweet Daddy Grace on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. I'm will daily. For years,
Speaker 1: I've been on the road playing shows and seeing America
Speaker 1: through live music. This summer I'll hit the stage who
Speaker 1: Season two of Sound of Our Town ten cities twelve episodes.
Speaker 1: Every other Thursday, we explore the live music, venues and
Speaker 1: culture of a new American city. With each new episode,
Speaker 1: our tour continues into the kind of venues you want
Speaker 1: to get to when you landed in Detroit, Providence, Denver,
Speaker 1: or Seattle. Listen to Sound of our Town on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.