Speaker 1: Welcome to the piked In Massacre, A production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and KAT Studios, Episode seven, four thousand Miles Away. I'm
Speaker 1: Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Kati's Studios, with Stephanie
Speaker 1: Leidecker and Jeff Shane. After the Rodent family was brutally
Speaker 1: gunned down in their homes, authorities embarked in what would
Speaker 1: become the largest homicide investigation in Ohio's history. Over the
Speaker 1: course of the case's first year, law enforcement officers began
Speaker 1: compiling a staggering amount of clues that they hoped would
Speaker 1: lead to the killers.
Speaker 2: Ohio Attorney General Mike Dwine, giving an update in the
Speaker 2: Pike County murders.
Speaker 3: You received eight hundred and eighty three tips. We have
Speaker 3: conducted four hundred and sixty.
Speaker 4: Five interviews, the Wine says.
Speaker 5: There have also been thirty eight search warns issued, but
Speaker 5: so far new arrest.
Speaker 3: I think that we've made significant progress.
Speaker 1: But by early twenty seventeen, the evidence that authorities had
Speaker 1: collected was pointing them towards one group of people, in particular,
Speaker 1: the Wagner family. That spring, with the case heating up,
Speaker 1: the Wagners decided to leave the Piked in area with
Speaker 1: Jake Wagner and Hannah Rodin's daughter Sophia until they sold
Speaker 1: their farm, packed up their belongings, and drove four thousand
Speaker 1: miles north to Keenei, Alaska, a city of about eight
Speaker 1: thousand people southwest of Anchorage. It was a move that
Speaker 1: Wagner relative Deray not only encouraged, but conceived of.
Speaker 6: They had been wanting to move to Alaska for a
Speaker 6: while because the pastor of the church moved there. He's
Speaker 6: very important headstone in their family. I'm the one that
Speaker 6: told him go to Alaska. Number one, the state of
Speaker 6: Ohio can not afford to extradite you from Alaska back home.
Speaker 6: I just thought it was the griatest that they took off.
Speaker 6: I said, that's the best thing in the world for
Speaker 6: the kids, and it's the best thing in the world
Speaker 6: for you, guys.
Speaker 1: The family quickly got settled in keen I. They lived
Speaker 1: together in a double white trailer on a large piece
Speaker 1: of property. Billy and Angela even registered to vote. Jeff
Speaker 1: talked to one of the Wagner's family relatives who kept
Speaker 1: in touch with them while they were in Alaska. She
Speaker 1: asked us not to use her name, but told us
Speaker 1: about their life once they arrived.
Speaker 4: What was their life like in Alaska?
Speaker 7: Well, Jake has got a job, it was a construction
Speaker 7: type business. Angela didn't work. I think she might have
Speaker 7: done some things from like home or the Annett or
Speaker 7: something like that. And Bill, I'm not sure what he
Speaker 7: did exactly, but they did have a very nice home
Speaker 7: in Alaska that they were in the process of trying
Speaker 7: to buy from what I understand anyways, and Jake he
Speaker 7: had Sophia at the time, and they just kind of
Speaker 7: work get in by.
Speaker 1: The Wagner's sudden departure left the whole town of piped
Speaker 1: and bewildered and suspicious. Dana Roden's friend Stephanne remembers the
Speaker 1: day she heard the news. She shared her thoughts with Jeff.
Speaker 8: Well, when they left for Alaska, I was like, Oh, wow,
Speaker 8: they're gonna they're running, you know, they're running. And then
Speaker 8: I thought they'll get away with it if they did this,
Speaker 8: if they did this, they will get away with it.
Speaker 4: Or people talking about the Wagners, like, was the feeling
Speaker 4: that they might have been guilty or what were people
Speaker 4: thinking or speculating in town.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they pretty much thought that, you know that was
Speaker 8: the that was the deal.
Speaker 5: They were running from it.
Speaker 1: But the Wagner's relocation didn't hinder the investigation. According to
Speaker 1: reporter James Pilcher, it only helped to move the case forward.
Speaker 9: They moved to Alaska, which raised even more suspicion. But
Speaker 9: then the very following month, law enforcement actually finally searches
Speaker 9: the properties where the Wagners lived. So that was really
Speaker 9: the first public indication that the Wagners were possible suspects,
Speaker 9: if not people of interest, So that started to tighten
Speaker 9: the noose in terms of the Wagner's.
Speaker 1: On June sixth, twenty seventeen, as the investigation pressed on,
Speaker 1: Attorney General Mike DeWine appealed to the public for information
Speaker 1: connecting the Wagoners to the crime.
Speaker 10: Investigators want any information about the family, including information about vehicles, guns,
Speaker 10: and ammunition. Anyone with information is asked.
Speaker 4: To call the past uns.
Speaker 1: Investigative journalists Jodi Barr recalled the Attorney General's announcement.
Speaker 2: Other than being on the ground in Tight County and
Speaker 2: hearing the Waggers' names come up from time to time
Speaker 2: and you had no verifiable leads, or you would exhaust
Speaker 2: all leads, that was the first time that anything was
Speaker 2: said in public from anybody with this investigation that they
Speaker 2: may have people that they were looking at and who
Speaker 2: potentially had something to do with this, and at that time,
Speaker 2: no one knew the extent of the involvement that the
Speaker 2: investigators believed the Waggers may have had. It was just
Speaker 2: they were asking for help, and that seemed really strange.
Speaker 2: But it also, on the other hand, it connected some
Speaker 2: of the pieces that we had heard in the beginning,
Speaker 2: you know, that maybe gave more weight to the custody
Speaker 2: issues that we were trying to dig into before.
Speaker 9: But it was still just it was still.
Speaker 2: Confusing that they would come out and say that and
Speaker 2: no arrests made, no indictments made, but yet they were
Speaker 2: asking for help to identify Yeah.
Speaker 4: Is that unusual that they would just kind of like
Speaker 4: blatantly say a name and be like, does anyone know
Speaker 4: anything about this person who's not an official suspect or
Speaker 4: someone we've arrested.
Speaker 2: Even it's just confusing, and I would love to ask, now,
Speaker 2: Governor Mike DeWine, you know why they played it the
Speaker 2: way they played it, You know, did they know what
Speaker 2: they needed to know?
Speaker 7: Then?
Speaker 2: Were they trying to have the Wagners make a misstep
Speaker 2: when they announced this to the world.
Speaker 1: Mike Dewayne's press release prompted the Wagner's family attorney John K. Clark,
Speaker 1: to accuse law enforcement of harassing his clients. Here's Jeff,
Speaker 1: followed by Stephanie.
Speaker 4: In a statement to the Cincinnati inquire the lawyer said
Speaker 4: that the authorities were clueless and competent where they themselves
Speaker 4: were involved in a cover up. In short, his clients
Speaker 4: were innocent.
Speaker 11: That's because, according to Clark, the Wagners were cooperating with
Speaker 11: officials and had provided authorities with everything they had asked for,
Speaker 11: including laptops, phones, and DNA willingly, and they also agreed
Speaker 11: to repeated interviews with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
Speaker 11: Clark even said that the Wagners told BCI agents that
Speaker 11: they were in fact moving.
Speaker 1: I spoke with former Ohio Prosecutor Mike Allen about the
Speaker 1: legal implications of the Wagner's cooperation. What about the Wagners
Speaker 1: and their compliance with authorities? I know their lawyer has
Speaker 1: said they've cooperated one hundred and ten percent. Can you
Speaker 1: talk through the details of.
Speaker 12: That, sure? I mean, from what I understand, they did
Speaker 12: turn over some things laptops, phones that they submitted to DNA,
Speaker 12: giving exemplars which they could be compelled to do anyway.
Speaker 12: Some of them at least were interviewed by Ohio BCI agents,
Speaker 12: and I guess they told those agents that they were
Speaker 12: traveling and about to move to Atlaska, and they claimed
Speaker 12: they had been thinking about that for a long time.
Speaker 12: So yeah, I mean, from what I can see, there
Speaker 12: was some cooperation. But whether it was one hundred and
Speaker 12: ten percent, I don't know. And frankly I doubt because
Speaker 12: that rarely happens.
Speaker 1: Does that do anything when it comes to juries? You know?
Speaker 1: Does that hold sway?
Speaker 12: It can? You know in closing argument and the defense
Speaker 12: lawyer could stand up and say to the jury, my client,
Speaker 12: you know, he cooperated one hundred and ten percent, you know,
Speaker 12: meaning that he has nothing to hide.
Speaker 1: The Cincinnati Inquirer even tracked the family down in Alaska
Speaker 1: in July of twenty seventeen. In a published article, Jake
Speaker 1: Wagner said that he had moved to give Sophia a
Speaker 1: better life. This is Jodi Barr again.
Speaker 2: The Cincinnati Inquirer obviously went there and they found them.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was they didn't try to slip off
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night. It didn't seem I mean,
Speaker 2: if a reporter could find them, then obviously law enforcement
Speaker 2: knew very much where they were at that point in time.
Speaker 2: I mean, as far as a level of cooperation, we
Speaker 2: haven't heard anything yet that said the Wagers weren't cooperating
Speaker 2: with the law enforcement. Did they do it? We want
Speaker 2: to know now. Obviously everybody wants to know right now,
Speaker 2: and you don't let the process play out. But man,
Speaker 2: if they're cooperating, as this attorney says, they're giving over
Speaker 2: computers and laptop, you know, DNA, whatever it takes. You know,
Speaker 2: people who aren't experts in criminology, we look at that
Speaker 2: and go, well, man, that sounds like an innocent person.
Speaker 2: An innocent person will be doing that.
Speaker 1: Despite their involvement in a very large and very active
Speaker 1: murder investigation. The Wagners were trying to start a new
Speaker 1: life in Alaska and didn't seem to have any intention
Speaker 1: of returning. Here's our anonymous Wagner family source.
Speaker 7: When I would ask interest how things going, You know, winter,
Speaker 7: you can come back and visit, or so on and
Speaker 7: so forth, she was kind of just really backwards about it.
Speaker 7: She never would really tell me what they were doing.
Speaker 7: She never really said when she would be back home
Speaker 7: to visit, just that she misses us, you know, and
Speaker 7: that she would love to be able to come home,
Speaker 7: but right now she can't. And that she made the
Speaker 7: comment on and said that if she did get to
Speaker 7: come back, that she couldn't tell me over the phone,
Speaker 7: that she would just basically have to show up, and
Speaker 7: that once she made it here, then she would contact
Speaker 7: me and let me know, but that she didn't, you know,
Speaker 7: want a lot of people to find out about it.
Speaker 1: In Alaska, the family went about life as normal. They
Speaker 1: tried to fit into the local community and became regular
Speaker 1: parishioners at the local church. Their pastor even described them
Speaker 1: to the Dayton Daily News as quote good country people.
Speaker 1: We reached out to the pastor, who declined to speak
Speaker 1: with us. It was at this same church that Jake
Speaker 1: Wagner was introduced to another churchgoer, Elizabeth Armor. The couple
Speaker 1: dated for several months, and then in March twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: they got married. This is Jodie Barr.
Speaker 2: I've seen you know people I know lost of spouse.
Speaker 2: You know they're married again.
Speaker 4: Six months.
Speaker 2: If he's interested and he got remarried and wanted to
Speaker 2: carry on with his life, then you know, maybe that's it.
Speaker 2: But if he really is guilty of having a hand
Speaker 2: and killing eight people and one of those being the
Speaker 2: mother of his own child, and then he enters into
Speaker 2: vows with another woman within months of that, ooh, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I don't know what kind of person you're
Speaker 2: dealing with.
Speaker 12: Here.
Speaker 1: Here's Stephanie talking about what she learned by looking at
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Armer's Facebook posts.
Speaker 11: She took to Facebook to let the world know just
Speaker 11: how dangerous being involved with the Wagners could be. Elizabeth
Speaker 11: said in one of her posts that God told her
Speaker 11: to come forward about her relationship with Jake Wagner. According
Speaker 11: to her posts, Elizabeth met Jake through the church and
Speaker 11: then was encouraged to get to know him by her pastor.
Speaker 11: But she maintained that she had no idea that the
Speaker 11: Wagners were involved in such a large murder investigation, and
Speaker 11: when that news of the road and massacre came up,
Speaker 11: the pastor had vouched for the Wagners, telling her that
Speaker 11: the charges were just slander against the family. However, in
Speaker 11: another post, she said she wanted to just be a
Speaker 11: mother to Sophia, but that she ended up marrying her
Speaker 11: worst nightmare. All of those posts have since been taken down.
Speaker 11: We've tried to find her and contact her directly, and
Speaker 11: she's literally nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1: Then, in the spring of twenty eighteen, two years after
Speaker 1: the Rodents were killed, the Wagner shocked everyone again, this
Speaker 1: time by returning to the Pipedon area. Our Wagner family
Speaker 1: relative explained why they decided.
Speaker 7: To come home from what I like, I said, I
Speaker 7: have understood just some a little bit that I talked
Speaker 7: to Angela and then our family and general talking. They
Speaker 7: had came back home because built family, his father got
Speaker 7: sick and they couldn't afford or they were losing what
Speaker 7: the whole and everything that they had there in Alaska.
Speaker 7: So I basically just like it was a handful of
Speaker 7: that type of stuff. So they decided that they were
Speaker 7: gonna come back down here and they were just gonna
Speaker 7: get everything basically situated here. Once that happened, and once
Speaker 7: they got back on their feet, basically, then they were
Speaker 7: planning to go back. They wanted to go back. Angela
Speaker 7: wanted to go back there. She made that clear to
Speaker 7: her father multiple times that that was going to be,
Speaker 7: you know, a place that they were. They were really
Speaker 7: looking forward. She lived and just wanted to be there,
Speaker 7: but they had a bunch of stuff that they still
Speaker 7: had to take care of in order for that to happen.
Speaker 1: The move seemed to baffle everyone and piked In Here's
Speaker 1: local resident Annie.
Speaker 5: If you think about it, the Wagoners were scott free.
Speaker 5: They went to Alaska. They could have took off and
Speaker 5: nobody could have ever seen them again ever, But they
Speaker 5: came back here. They came back. Now, my the way
Speaker 5: that I am, I would never do that. But if
Speaker 5: I had pulled something off like that and got away
Speaker 5: with it that long and went to Alastis, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm packing my shit and I'm hitting the woods and
Speaker 5: nobody's ever gonna see me again, I'm sure the hell
Speaker 5: I'm not going to come back. The only way I
Speaker 5: would come back is if I thought my ass covered.
Speaker 1: Upon returning to piked In, the Wagoners tried to fly
Speaker 1: under the radar and return to life as normal, but
Speaker 1: our Wagner family relative told Jeff that their homecoming was
Speaker 1: anything but welcome.
Speaker 4: When they came back, were people kind of like has
Speaker 4: the story died down or were people like, oh, the
Speaker 4: wagoners are back. It was probably.
Speaker 7: Quiet for about I don't know, two three weeks if that,
Speaker 7: and then everybody found out that they were back in town,
Speaker 7: and they just absolutely tortured. I mean daily. Everybody had
Speaker 7: started basically attacking then the community, accusing them of murdering
Speaker 7: those people, like if they were in town and people
Speaker 7: identified their vehicle, they would throw pot bottles at him.
Speaker 7: Angela had actually went into a store one day and
Speaker 7: some woman had actually flewed up behind Angela. She was
Speaker 7: coming back out of the store and threw a glass
Speaker 7: key bottle after her and it busted her in the back.
Speaker 7: She was constantly getting it was less and right, like
Speaker 7: anybody that knew them or that knew our family. Like
Speaker 7: where we lived, there was a handful of people that
Speaker 7: had drop on my house and then they were throwing stuff.
Speaker 7: Because I lived kind of right on the highway and
Speaker 7: my house is very easy to spot. I have no privacy,
Speaker 7: so when they I was getting trash, people were throwing
Speaker 7: their trash out in my yard, in my driveway. They
Speaker 7: were trying to hit us while we were me and
Speaker 7: my son at the time. You know, they were just
Speaker 7: doing my workplace. My vehicle was parked outside and my
Speaker 7: vehicle got keyed. They had, of course through ends on
Speaker 7: it all that type of stuff, wrote murderer on it
Speaker 7: when I had app nothing to do with any of that.
Speaker 1: As things began to unravel for the Wagner's law enforcement
Speaker 1: was tightening up the case against the family. It seemed
Speaker 1: like it was only a matter of time before they
Speaker 1: were arrested.
Speaker 2: Investigators now believe there were multiple attackers, as according to
Speaker 2: information from the Ohio Attorney General's office.
Speaker 12: The Ohio Attorney General says the investigation is progressing.
Speaker 7: Wine adds his office knows a lot more about what
Speaker 7: goes on in those Pike County hills.
Speaker 2: Now we know a lot more today.
Speaker 12: Have we cracked the cage?
Speaker 3: Have we come up with enough evidence to arrest someone
Speaker 3: and get them convicted?
Speaker 7: No, we have not.
Speaker 12: But if we made the progress, oh, yeah, we made
Speaker 12: a lot of progress.
Speaker 1: On Halloween of twenty eighteen, authorities conducted yet another search
Speaker 1: on a Wagner family property, this time a farm formerly
Speaker 1: owned by Jake and George Wagner. During that raid, investigators
Speaker 1: uncovered a homemade silencer at the bottom of a well,
Speaker 1: it would seem to be the final piece of the
Speaker 1: puzzle for investigators. As we discussed in great detail in
Speaker 1: episode two. On November thirteenth, Angela and Billy Wagner and
Speaker 1: their two sons, Jake and George Wagner, were arrested for
Speaker 1: the murders of eight members of the Rodent family and everyone.
Speaker 3: We have major developments tonight in a bizarre and tragic
Speaker 3: murder case.
Speaker 12: He took two and a half years, but arrests have
Speaker 12: finally been made in the Pike County massacre.
Speaker 4: George Billy Wagner the third, he's forty seven.
Speaker 8: Also forty eight year old Angela Wagner.
Speaker 2: Twenty seven year old George Wagner the fourth, and twenty
Speaker 2: six year old Edward Jake Wagner are now facing charges.
Speaker 13: The Attorney General announced two more arrests of people accused
Speaker 13: of being involved.
Speaker 3: Angela's mother, Rita Knugal and Billy's mother, Fredrika Wangner. We're
Speaker 3: also arrested today in conjunction with the cover up of
Speaker 3: these crimes.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break here. We'll be
Speaker 1: back in a moment. Angela, Billy, Jake, and George Wagner
Speaker 1: were charged with aggravated murder. Angela Wagner's mother Rita Joe Nucom,
Speaker 1: and Billy Wagner's mother, Frederica were both charged with obstruction
Speaker 1: of justice and perjury. Nucom was also charged with forgery.
Speaker 1: All six of them pled not guilty, and our justice
Speaker 1: system presumes innocence until guilt is proven at first blush,
Speaker 1: it seems far fetched to believe that these two grandmothers
Speaker 1: had a part in conspiring to pull off Ohio's largest
Speaker 1: mass murder. Jeff spoke with Mike Allen about the charges
Speaker 1: against Frederica Wagner.
Speaker 4: Frederica has been charged with obstruction of justice and perjury.
Speaker 4: So how do you explain that to someone who you know,
Speaker 4: like me, who's never been to law school or doesn't
Speaker 4: know what it means.
Speaker 12: Well, perjury is pretty simple under Ohio law. It just
Speaker 12: basically says that you cannot knowingly make a false statement
Speaker 12: in an efficient proceeding while you are under oath. It's
Speaker 12: real simple, and the constructing justice is pretty simple as well.
Speaker 12: Ohiolall provides that you can't, with purpose to hinder the discovery, apprehension,
Speaker 12: or prosecution of a person, do anything that would assist
Speaker 12: someone in doing that and that's one that that's charged
Speaker 12: pretty frequently. You don't see perjury charged a lot because
Speaker 12: it's so difficult to prove, but but convicted of both,
Speaker 12: she would be facing four years max.
Speaker 1: Plainly stated, prosecutors think Frederica was lying to them and
Speaker 1: trying to hinder the investigation to cover up for her family.
Speaker 1: We'll get into the specifics of her charges later. For
Speaker 1: now here, Stephanie, followed by Jeff.
Speaker 11: We wondered if there was anything in Frederica Wagner's past
Speaker 11: that could have indicated that she would be involved in
Speaker 11: something as gruesome as mass murder.
Speaker 4: As we know, the Wagners were a well known and
Speaker 4: well to do family in the Pecton area, and Frederica
Speaker 4: Wagner was at the helm of this. A self described entrepreneur,
Speaker 4: she owned properties oliver Pie County that spanned over seventeen
Speaker 4: hundred acres and were valued at more than four million dollars.
Speaker 4: She'd also founded two nonprofits, Lucasville Mission, a church that
Speaker 4: helps underprivileged children, and the Crystal Springs Home, a facility
Speaker 4: that provides services to developmentally disabled adults. As we've learned
Speaker 4: throughout the series, Frederica had her detractors as well as
Speaker 4: her supporters in the community. Growing up, Christina Howard spent
Speaker 4: a lot of time with Frederica. In fact, her mom
Speaker 4: worked at the Crystal Springs Home.
Speaker 14: She was pretty well known by everybody, and if she
Speaker 14: wasn't doing a charity or something outside of church, since
Speaker 14: she was doing one in church. She owned over two
Speaker 14: hundred acres of land and a lot of people that
Speaker 14: lived on her property that she rented out to. She
Speaker 14: would say, hey, you know, if you come to church,
Speaker 14: then I won't charge you a diamond root. And all
Speaker 14: she ever asked of was for them to go to church.
Speaker 14: She was always nice to be growing up. She's never
Speaker 14: yelled at me. She's never really told me no. There
Speaker 14: would be times that I would go to work with
Speaker 14: mom and I would just hang out at Freddy's all
Speaker 14: day long while my mom was working, you know, I
Speaker 14: would just hang out feed the horses, the maths, brush them.
Speaker 14: She was literally like a grandma to me growing up.
Speaker 1: Deray Paint's a similar portrait of Frederica. She told us
Speaker 1: about the pastoral surroundings of her grandmother's Flying w farms
Speaker 1: and her family's legacy in the area.
Speaker 6: If you go to their house.
Speaker 10: You go eighty eight miles out of Cincinnati east on
Speaker 10: thirty three, and I'm telling you you were in the hills,
Speaker 10: the Appalachian.
Speaker 6: Hills of Ohio at this time.
Speaker 10: Then all of a sudden, you'll see something to the right.
Speaker 10: It looks like a real nice entryway. It's flying w
Speaker 10: farms on it. And you look and you see a
Speaker 10: trailer sitting right next to the entrance, a nice entrance
Speaker 10: with wrought iron gates. It's got blind w's on it.
Speaker 14: Then you look.
Speaker 5: Aways up you see all these little.
Speaker 10: Houses, some of them were catteries. And then she's got
Speaker 10: the pig house, and then she's got the old walking
Speaker 10: horse barn, and then she's got the shop. Then you
Speaker 10: come to her her colonial style on home, and it's
Speaker 10: a very homey feeling. When you walk into the home,
Speaker 10: you feel like you're going home. And I see all
Speaker 10: my grandmother's Catholic little statues around and pictures of the
Speaker 10: kids on the horses, pictures of all their famous horses.
Speaker 6: She developed a breed of horse called the Georgian Grande
Speaker 6: she named after my uncle, which she takes no credits for.
Speaker 6: The horses is what the driving passion was for Frederica
Speaker 6: involve to be together, stay together, work together, because that's
Speaker 6: the problem I think with people who get married today.
Speaker 10: Okay, so it's natural to want to have relationships, it's
Speaker 10: natural to want to have kids when you're young, all
Speaker 10: those hormones in your head.
Speaker 9: But to keep you.
Speaker 10: Together, you'd better have something solid and common that you
Speaker 10: have to work with together to keep your family, leading
Speaker 10: them a legacy. And that's what Frederica Wagner did for
Speaker 10: her kids. Her and Bob developed a breed a horse.
Speaker 10: Over years, they have a two thousand acre farm. They
Speaker 10: had three kids, and they left them a legacy.
Speaker 5: You know, we're not talking about people who are trained murderers.
Speaker 2: We're talking about real people.
Speaker 6: Here who had real, honest and goodness, god fearing lives.
Speaker 4: Frederica Wagner's attorney described her as a god fearing woman
Speaker 4: who taught Sunday school for nearly half a century and
Speaker 4: lived about as close to the cross as anyone can.
Speaker 4: We all struggled with this contradiction in Frederica Wagner. How
Speaker 4: could this sweet grandmother who was charitable and kind be
Speaker 4: involved in any capacity with the murder of eight people.
Speaker 4: So we decided to look a little deeper into Pikedon's
Speaker 4: most giving resident, and what we found was not all virtuous.
Speaker 4: Jody Barfield us in.
Speaker 2: After the world became familiar with the Wagner family. You know,
Speaker 2: of course, reporters start digging into their backgrounds, and it's
Speaker 2: just some of the things that come out. You learn
Speaker 2: about the business dealings, and you know what Frederica, you know,
Speaker 2: is accused of doing in the past. This is good
Speaker 2: background information to have when you're trying to understand who
Speaker 2: these people are. But I have to say, when I
Speaker 2: was on the ground in Pike County, Ohio, when I
Speaker 2: was hearing their names, when I went by Flying W Farm,
Speaker 2: I mean, it is a peaceful, quaint farm tucked into
Speaker 2: the rolling hills of eastern Ohio. When you drive by there,
Speaker 2: nothing on the surface points to anything that's been a
Speaker 2: ledge now that any of the people involved in any
Speaker 2: of this could have been involved in the killing of
Speaker 2: eight people. That's the beauty of investigations, I guess, is
Speaker 2: that you just don't know the whole story until you
Speaker 2: know the whole story.
Speaker 1: Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back
Speaker 1: in a moment. Let's start with Flying W farms. The
Speaker 1: farm breeds horses as well as dogs and pigs typically
Speaker 1: found in New Zealand. In the nineteen nineties, Frederica got
Speaker 1: into legal trouble with a group of customers surrounding the
Speaker 1: sale of these pigs. Here's Mike Gallon again.
Speaker 12: She was sued by a group of customers. I guess
Speaker 12: the allegation was that her place, I think it was
Speaker 12: the Flying W it didn't meet the standards promise for
Speaker 12: the sale of exotic animals, which is interesting. I guess
Speaker 12: the group said that she defrauded them in the sales.
Speaker 12: They gave them some animals that didn't match the advertised description.
Speaker 1: Dana Roden's friend Becky told Jeff that Flying W Farms
Speaker 1: had been whispered about and piked in for years.
Speaker 13: At one point in time, you know, for Erika was
Speaker 13: a person to be feared in the county because there
Speaker 13: was always rumors. I don't know exactly what all the
Speaker 13: rumors was, but everybody's like, oh, you don't want to
Speaker 13: go back there. Bad things happen to people that go
Speaker 13: back here. So you know, I stayed away from my
Speaker 13: area way back where Fredrika's farm because I've always heard
Speaker 13: a bad things about it. So, yeah, somewhere I would never.
Speaker 1: Go piked in local Barbara told Jeff about one rumor
Speaker 1: in particular, they.
Speaker 8: Made their money in horses and miniature horses, and there's
Speaker 8: some shady dealings that I've heard about going on there,
Speaker 8: like them stuffing the horses with drugs and sending them
Speaker 8: back and forth to Mexico, and you know, just awful
Speaker 8: things like that.
Speaker 1: Now, we obviously can't prove that, but it's worth mentioning
Speaker 1: because it's this type of thing that people in Pike
Speaker 1: didn't like to whisper about. One thing we should talk
Speaker 1: about is this quote unquote life changing rent to own
Speaker 1: operation Frederica Wagner, designed to help lower income residents.
Speaker 11: Over the decades, Frederica Wagner entered into at least one
Speaker 11: hundred and thirty two land installment contracts. Now, these contracts
Speaker 11: basically allowed the Wagners to retain deeds on land as
Speaker 11: buyers attempted to pay off the principle and the interest.
Speaker 11: The idea was that if the buyers made all of
Speaker 11: their payments, they'd eventually become landowners, but it rarely played
Speaker 11: out that way. In fact, as it turns out, only
Speaker 11: twelve of those contracts were actually satisfied, twelve out of
Speaker 11: one hundred and thirty two. And in looking into all
Speaker 11: of the deals, nearly eighty percent of them were ultimately
Speaker 11: terminated without a corresponding d transfer, And that basically indicates
Speaker 11: despite somebody making payments, at the end of the day,
Speaker 11: the land stayed in Frederica Wagner's possession. There are countless
Speaker 11: examples of sour deals just like that, where people really
Speaker 11: did feel that Frederica Wagner took advantage of them. And again,
Speaker 11: does that mean that she was involved with a mass murder.
Speaker 11: Of course not, but it does point to character, which
Speaker 11: I do think is valuable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was one tenant quoted in the story saying
Speaker 4: that Frederica had raised her rent by twenty five percent
Speaker 4: following the murders in twenty sixteen, and another described his
Speaker 4: rental property as a one room home with an exposed
Speaker 4: toilet standing just a few feet from the foot of
Speaker 4: his bed. Again, this doesn't prove their guilt, but it
Speaker 4: does speak to the type of woman Frederica was, or
Speaker 4: at least how the public perceived her at the time.
Speaker 1: I spoke to attorney Mike Gallon about Frederica's land deal contracts.
Speaker 1: When I was npiped and I spoke to some people
Speaker 1: and these are just personal accounts, but saying, you know,
Speaker 1: my family rented land and did it for years and
Speaker 1: years and years and then had it pulled out, which
Speaker 1: I mean, the court seems to.
Speaker 7: Back that up.
Speaker 12: But yeah, land contracts are tough, and you know, for
Speaker 12: the person who is you know, not the owner of
Speaker 12: the property, but the person trying to buy it, there
Speaker 12: are a lot of pitfalls with it, and someone smart,
Speaker 12: which apparently Frederica was, they can take advantage of people
Speaker 12: in a land contract situation.
Speaker 1: Frederica also runs a nonprofit called Crystal Springs, a group
Speaker 1: home that provides housing and rehabilitation services to developmentally disabled adults.
Speaker 1: And according to some when her son Billy married Angela Nucombe,
Speaker 1: who we now know as Angela Wagner, Frederica wasn't happy
Speaker 1: about it. Christina Howard told us that the relationship between
Speaker 1: Frederica Wagner and her daughter in law always seemed contentious.
Speaker 14: She never really had much to do with Angela unless
Speaker 14: it come to Billy and grown up by her Freddie
Speaker 14: call Angela like an evil woman or Tom or two
Speaker 14: like a nasty woman. One time, Angela tried to keep
Speaker 14: Freddie from seeing her grandkids George and Jake because they
Speaker 14: was talking about moving away and all this. And I
Speaker 14: never heard Freddy say that she hated anybody, but she said,
Speaker 14: you know, like, oh, I really dislike this woman. She's
Speaker 14: just a nasty woman.
Speaker 1: Perhaps Frederica Wagner has reason to be suspicious of Angela.
Speaker 1: Christina Howard gave Stephanie her thoughts on Angela Wagner.
Speaker 14: Angela, she does have a little bit of a shady
Speaker 14: forsad tour, Like you feel like there's more tour than
Speaker 14: Mintsi I and stuff. Like on the outside she's all
Speaker 14: happy thoughts with anybody and everything else. But you just
Speaker 14: get a vibe from her, you know that there's more
Speaker 14: to it.
Speaker 1: It turns out that this seemingly devoted, hard working mother
Speaker 1: had a bit of a checkered past. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, Angela Wagner, along with Billy Wagner, we're charged
Speaker 1: with improperly handling a firearm, and in twenty twelve they
Speaker 1: were both charged with receiving stolen property, which is a
Speaker 1: fifth grade felony. Jody Barr put the Wagner family's criminal
Speaker 1: history into context for us.
Speaker 2: You're looking at and properly handling a firearm charges. When
Speaker 2: you look at those two charges and even the details
Speaker 2: that were reported to support those charges, I'm back to
Speaker 2: where I was in the rest of the Wagner's background
Speaker 2: when you look at this as a whole, across the
Speaker 2: course of their lives. The charges of improperly handling a firearm,
Speaker 2: I mean, those charges came fifteen years before these murders.
Speaker 2: It was an alleged road rage. You know, there was
Speaker 2: a gun pulled out, but the charges are dismissed. No
Speaker 2: one got hurt. I mean that is something that I
Speaker 2: see multiple times a week, alleged police reports. The charge
Speaker 2: of receiving still in property came four years before these murders.
Speaker 2: When you look at the criminal record, nothing in this
Speaker 2: says to me that you've got murderers in the hills
Speaker 2: of Pike County, Ohio. I mean, this could be your
Speaker 2: neighbor now door with these charges.
Speaker 1: Here again is Frederica's niece Deray, reading a news article
Speaker 1: about her aunt's involvement in the Rodent murders.
Speaker 6: So let me summarize it for you. On November thirteenth,
Speaker 6: twenty eighteen, the Ohio Governor elect Mike d Wine held
Speaker 6: an internationally broadcast news conference and announced the arrest of
Speaker 6: Frederica Wagner and several of her family members. Governor d
Speaker 6: Wine accused Frederica's family members of the Rodents homicides, and
Speaker 6: he specifically accused Frederica of masterminding the Kava Rock. When
Speaker 6: I heard that, I wanted to call him up and
Speaker 6: tell him that there was no way and that someday
Speaker 6: you will have to apologize to my aunt.
Speaker 10: I do not know who came up with that theory
Speaker 10: and tried to put it out there, but that is
Speaker 10: someone with an evil mind. I think that that it's
Speaker 10: that it's the devil trying trying to test us, because
Speaker 10: there's no way possible that Frederica could ever.
Speaker 7: Do something like that.
Speaker 10: Ever, she is not that kind of person. She carries
Speaker 10: the light of Jesus with her everywhere she goes, and
Speaker 10: I am, I am, I am convicted on that there's
Speaker 10: no way she would have ever done something like that.
Speaker 1: Ever, the idea that the entire Wagner family allegedly conspired
Speaker 1: to kill the Rodents and cold blood still baffles Jodie
Speaker 1: Barr to this day.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 2: I think that is the common theme of this entire
Speaker 2: story about Pike County and about this rodent massacre, is
Speaker 2: it seems just too far fetched now when you try
Speaker 2: to connect the dots through the histories of you know,
Speaker 2: how the Wagners conducted their business, how they live their lives.
Speaker 2: I don't know that I have seen any report, any
Speaker 2: fact brought out about the Wagoners that would say, Yep,
Speaker 2: there you go, mass murderers. I think that is the
Speaker 2: draw that continues to keep people interested in this story,
Speaker 2: is that you would have never seen any of this coming.
Speaker 2: I don't know what a family capable of a mass
Speaker 2: murder would look like or how they would conduct her business.
Speaker 2: But this was out of nowhere. It's still just hard
Speaker 2: to believe.
Speaker 1: On June twenty sixth, twenty nineteen, Frederica Wagner headed into
Speaker 1: a Pike County courtroom for a pre trial hearing, with
Speaker 1: Frederica sitting in the defendant's chair. There was a stunning
Speaker 1: courtroom revelation.
Speaker 6: Charges against the grandmother connected to the road and family
Speaker 6: massacre have been dismissed.
Speaker 14: It was dismissed because I was innocent.
Speaker 10: They had no evidence against me.
Speaker 1: Well, grandmother Frederica Wagner might be out of the woods.
Speaker 1: The rest of her family await their day in court,
Speaker 1: where a stunning number of truths promised to be exposed.
Speaker 12: For the truth, I believe that as it applies to
Speaker 12: this case, the mystery will be solved. The truth will
Speaker 12: eventually be discovered.
Speaker 14: Hannah was struggling to keep custody of Sophia Pavey. Straight up.
Speaker 14: Tolderisay presenting with papers, do not sign them because they
Speaker 14: will sure you over.
Speaker 2: You've got to wonder who is this informant, because if
Speaker 2: it's a member of the Wager family, I think that's
Speaker 2: a twist no one saw coming.
Speaker 1: More on that next week. Reach out to us on
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Speaker 1: your questions and upcoming bonus episodes. Pikedon Massacre is executive
Speaker 1: produced by Stephanie Leidecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and
Speaker 1: sound designed by executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing by
Speaker 1: Jeff Shane and Andrew Becker. The piked In Massacre is
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