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Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories with

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Speaker 1: Nancy Grace. I'm executive producer Jackie Howard. It's been five

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Speaker 1: years since eight people, seven adults and a teenage boy

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Speaker 1: were murdered in four homes in Pike County, Ohio. Edward

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Speaker 1: Jake Wagner has plenty guilty to eight counts of aggravated

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Speaker 1: murder in the depths of the Rodent family. Wagner's parents

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Speaker 1: and older brother are still facing murder charges themselves. An

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Speaker 1: investigators say this was an elaborate and long planned execution

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Speaker 1: plot to get rid of anyone who might stand in

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Speaker 1: the way of custody and control of Jack Wagner's child.

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Speaker 1: The first alarm was raised when Chris Roden's sister in

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Speaker 1: law called nine one at seven forty nine. AM listen,

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Speaker 1: kay my brother in laws who stays through and look?

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Speaker 1: I think the hell out of them? Okay, were all hearts? Man?

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Speaker 1: Can you counting with county? That's my county, it's my county.

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Speaker 1: Hugging that okay? Okay? I mean you get out of

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Speaker 1: the house, think you drive over there? That's like here? Okay,

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Speaker 1: what's your name mine? What is your brother in law's name?

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Speaker 1: What's your brother in law's name? Man? Yeah, what's your name?

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Speaker 1: Christ Versing, Garry Rose, Fanking, Gary Road? First, un head,

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Speaker 1: look like the dad think you're Road? I think the

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Speaker 1: great said, it's like one husband out of them. Okay,

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Speaker 1: if there's anybody else in the house, I know. Okay.

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Speaker 1: The bard was law school, was got here but on

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Speaker 1: her friends he was ill? Then in isn't it a

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Speaker 1: landing on the floor. I need to get out of

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Speaker 1: the house and starting now. Okay. Shortly after that, Kenneth

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Speaker 1: Roden's cousin also called nine one one, Yeah, I need

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Speaker 1: a days come out to post. Okay, uh, it's all

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Speaker 1: that stuff. It's on the news. I just found, just

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Speaker 1: found my cousin was again shop wind Okay, got mine?

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Speaker 1: So no, okay here and I don't know what his

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Speaker 1: address is it don't he don't have a boss, you

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Speaker 1: don't have a bo Okay, I'll be staying out my

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Speaker 1: a very well, no, sir, what do you think Kenneth Rode? Yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: so ny how does the house? I'm out of the

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Speaker 1: house right now. I just went in horror and check

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Speaker 1: and I again. Eight murders in four homes. That's a nightmare.

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Speaker 1: For forensic investigators. Jeff goot Morgan, professor of forensics at

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Speaker 1: Jacksonville State University and author of Ldendeath My Feet, joins me. Now,

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Speaker 1: Joe Scott, how would you handle a crime scene like

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Speaker 1: this over four homes? It's I got to tell you, Jackie.

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Speaker 1: I've been on several scenes like this are similar to

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Speaker 1: this over my career, where you've got multiple bodies that

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Speaker 1: are scattered over a large area. To say that it

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Speaker 1: is a logistical nightmare is an understatement because I think

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Speaker 1: that most most people, particularly U Nancy's fans, can probably

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Speaker 1: understand that we're very meticulous when it just comes to

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Speaker 1: to one body, But just multiply that and think about

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Speaker 1: everything that goes into literally processing each body, because as

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Speaker 1: cruel as it sounds, each body or a body is

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Speaker 1: a is your largest piece of evidence that you have

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Speaker 1: at a scene. And without that body and without the

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Speaker 1: information that it gives up, you're lost. You're loss from

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Speaker 1: from Jump Street. So the moment that you cross that

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Speaker 1: threshold onto that scene, you can never get that first

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Speaker 1: step again. It only happens once. So you have to

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Speaker 1: be prepared mentally and physically, and logistically and every other

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Speaker 1: way before you ever set foot inside there, because you're

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Speaker 1: you are the individual that is going to be annotating

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Speaker 1: everything that's going on within there. Now, you know, most

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Speaker 1: of time there's a team of us that go in.

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Speaker 1: You're going to have crime scene investigators who are collecting

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Speaker 1: you know, fiber evidence and all that sort of thing

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Speaker 1: and ballistic evidence. And you're going to have probably a

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Speaker 1: crime scene photographer who's their sole purpose is to actually

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Speaker 1: be there and document everything photographically because you know, like

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Speaker 1: the old saying, you know, a single photo, you know,

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Speaker 1: it can speak a thousand words. So and that's a

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Speaker 1: moment in time that you're having to capture that maybe

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Speaker 1: you know, six months later or eight months later, in

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Speaker 1: this case, five years later, it's going to tell you

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Speaker 1: about that frozen moment in time, and you have to

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Speaker 1: be very careful in capturing. And of course you've got

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Speaker 1: the detective that's there, that's the lead investigators. He's taking

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Speaker 1: notes and making observations. And then there's somebody like myself

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Speaker 1: from the Medical Examiner's Office who's the medical legal death investigator,

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Speaker 1: and we look at these scenes like this and we

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Speaker 1: try to determine what exactly happened to this individual. First off,

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Speaker 1: to bring about their death. But sometimes sometimes we can

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Speaker 1: get an indication as to what was going on prior

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Speaker 1: to death. Then in the midst of the death, which

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Speaker 1: is something a lot of people don't hear about. It's

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Speaker 1: called perimortem, which is in the middle of and then

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Speaker 1: of course we document what has happened to the body afterwards.

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Speaker 1: And so you have to be very careful, Jackie, because

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Speaker 1: the case literally can be one or lost, or solved

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Speaker 1: or unsolved by virtue of what you do in that

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Speaker 1: one instant in time. And it's you know, lawyers, people

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Speaker 1: like Nancy, they love to use the term you can

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Speaker 1: never unring the bell. You can't get that soundback once

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Speaker 1: the clapper hits inside of that bell, and that certainly

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Speaker 1: rings true, pardon the pun. In forensics, you can't get

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Speaker 1: that first act because if you go in and you

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Speaker 1: step on something, or you don't pay attention to everything

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Speaker 1: in your environment, you're ruined from the absolute beginning. Well,

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Speaker 1: speaking of that, just got time must be an enemy

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Speaker 1: for year at a scene like this over for home.

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Speaker 1: It takes a lot of time to collect this much evidence.

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Speaker 1: Does it degrade? I mean, it's the possibility of it

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Speaker 1: degrading in the amount of time that it takes, and

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Speaker 1: how many people would it take literally to process this

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Speaker 1: many crime scenes. Well, okay, I'll give you an example.

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Speaker 1: Many years ago, when I was working in Atlanta, we

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Speaker 1: had a tragedy that occurred there that's been since referred

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Speaker 1: to as the Buckhead shooting. And we had I don't

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Speaker 1: know upwards, I think it was something like sixteen bodies.

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Speaker 1: And these bodies were spread out all over kind of

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Speaker 1: a large area. They were in a building, but they

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Speaker 1: were on multiple locations. And I've had other mass homicides

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Speaker 1: that have taken place, and the best way to do

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Speaker 1: that is say, if you take body A. Okay, you

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Speaker 1: take Body A, and you assign Team A to that body,

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Speaker 1: and they are solely responsible for that body. They don't

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Speaker 1: get involved with anything else. Their sole assignment is to

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Speaker 1: handle all of the photography, all of the trace evidence,

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Speaker 1: all of the measurements, anything else that comes into play,

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Speaker 1: and of course the examination of the body. And you know,

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Speaker 1: to your point, that creates a kind of a steadiness,

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Speaker 1: if you will, because you've set the framework you know

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Speaker 1: you're talking about, how you know, it doesn't matter what

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Speaker 1: we do that the old hands on the clock never

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Speaker 1: stop moving forward, do they. And so you can't freeze time.

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Speaker 1: You can't say, oh, I want to do over time out.

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Speaker 1: It's not like a ball game. Time is ticking off

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Speaker 1: that clock. So everything that you have in that environment

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Speaker 1: does in fact begin to degrade, whether it's blood evidence,

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Speaker 1: what a strong wind comes along and blows away fiber,

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Speaker 1: or if you've got something, say, for instance, that's outside

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Speaker 1: the home, there's a rainstorm that comes up and you

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Speaker 1: haven't accounted for it. Will rain is one of the

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Speaker 1: worst enemies, you know for an investigator. But you know,

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Speaker 1: there's even something that's that's more um, that's more critical

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Speaker 1: than that sometimes, and that's that's the effect that time

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Speaker 1: has on a body. Because you know, we hear about

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Speaker 1: all these terms, and you hear this one overarch theme

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Speaker 1: and death investigation. It's called the post mortal interval. We

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Speaker 1: talk about it all the time. And that's that's a

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Speaker 1: very significant thing because you know, one of the biggest

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Speaker 1: questions people ask me as a medical legal death investigator

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Speaker 1: is you know, well, hey, Morgan, when when did this

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Speaker 1: person die? Well that's a central piece of the puzzle,

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Speaker 1: isn't it. And when you have a multitude of bodies,

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Speaker 1: you know, at a scene, the sequencing of all of that,

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Speaker 1: When did they die, in what order did they die?

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Speaker 1: How long have they been here in this particular state,

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Speaker 1: Were they originally killed here, were they migrated somewhere? So

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Speaker 1: all of that stuff comes into play. And the one denominator,

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Speaker 1: the common denominator relative to that is time, and then

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Speaker 1: you place all your other factors in place. So you

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Speaker 1: have to be very attuned to this as you move

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Speaker 1: down this line. And one of the most important elements

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Speaker 1: here is that you may have actually heard of before.

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Speaker 1: It's an odd terms called algor mortise, and what that

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Speaker 1: means is it's actually the postmortem cooling of the body.

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Speaker 1: You know, how at what temperature is the body when

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Speaker 1: you get there as an investigator, and by measuring that temperature,

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Speaker 1: you can actually there's a formula we can plug that

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Speaker 1: into to get an idea as to what at what

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Speaker 1: rate is the body decreasing in temperature. You know, our

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Speaker 1: body temperature in life as ninety eight point six. You know,

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Speaker 1: as an average, everybody's not at that, but you use

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Speaker 1: that as an average and you kind of measure that

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Speaker 1: as you move through time, and if we should say

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Speaker 1: we show up at a scene and we've got a

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Speaker 1: body that's at I don't know, ninety five degrees okay, Well,

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Speaker 1: dependent upon the environment that they're in, we can kind

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Speaker 1: of get a guestament that that person's been down roughly

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Speaker 1: anywhere from three to maybe four and a half hours. Now,

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Speaker 1: you can't really tie it down contrary to with see

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Speaker 1: on TV, you can't tie it down any closer than that.

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Speaker 1: But that time element is very important. And here's why,

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Speaker 1: because once you're at the scene and you're with the body,

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Speaker 1: if a body has taken on room temperature at that point,

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Speaker 1: it's pointless to take the body temperature other than initially

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Speaker 1: because that means that you're outside of a twelve hour block.

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Speaker 1: Because at the twelfth hour after death, all of the

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Speaker 1: energy that we've generated in life is gone, it's dissipated.

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Speaker 1: So it's real important that once you get there, you

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Speaker 1: get an initial body temperature and that will give us

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Speaker 1: an idea. And you say, well, Morgan, that's that's kind

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Speaker 1: of I don't understand that. Well, let me give you

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Speaker 1: a great example. Let's say the police actually apprehend somebody

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Speaker 1: or they're questioning somebody, and they have what's called an

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Speaker 1: alibi for where they were, or they say they have

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Speaker 1: an alibi. They say, well, I last saw them, you know,

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Speaker 1: you know, two hours ago, but you know, based upon

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Speaker 1: science a temperature, this person's been dead for at least

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Speaker 1: six hours, so you can kind of with science you

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Speaker 1: begin to chip away at that alibi and you say, no,

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Speaker 1: you can't see them two hours ago, because I know

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Speaker 1: that they've been dead for at least six or seven

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Speaker 1: hours at this point. So that's why it's so important.

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Speaker 1: And then you get an idea about the sequencing. You know,

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Speaker 1: you get a mass casualty event, which in this little

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Speaker 1: area is you look at that and you think, well,

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Speaker 1: in what order did these people die? Is there is

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Speaker 1: there any variables in the postmortem, the postmortem changes that

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Speaker 1: have taken place, the stiffness of the body otherwise known

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Speaker 1: as ryger mortis or you know algor mortis with the

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Speaker 1: body temperature, or postmortem lividity, libra mortis, the settling of

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Speaker 1: the blood. So all of these things are essential when

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Speaker 1: we're trying to tell this tale of what happened in

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Speaker 1: a mass casualty event. And this is, like I said,

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Speaker 1: a mass casualty event, because you know, you look at

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Speaker 1: someplace like, let's just take a big metropolitan area where

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Speaker 1: maybe New York or Chicago. Now though it is a tragedy,

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Speaker 1: if you have eight people dead and one of those locations,

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Speaker 1: they're going to view that as as a mass casually,

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Speaker 1: but it's not going to be as impactful there to

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Speaker 1: the resources as it is in some place like say

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Speaker 1: rural Ohio or another rural location in America. Its it

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Speaker 1: puts a great strain on the resources and how you

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Speaker 1: can respond and how you have to process it because,

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Speaker 1: as you can imagine, in a in a tiny, little

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Speaker 1: Appalachian village town, they're not going to have the same

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Speaker 1: crime scene investigators or the same type of technology for instance,

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Speaker 1: that say somebody in a large metropolitan area has You're

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Speaker 1: gonna have to wait. You're gonna have to wait and

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Speaker 1: call the state police, and state police are gonna have

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Speaker 1: to show up. And what's happening that entire time, Well,

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Speaker 1: time is bleeding off that clock. It's just kind of

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Speaker 1: whittling away and going forward and forward, and the further

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Speaker 1: you move out down that timeline, more evidence it's lost,

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Speaker 1: more information is lost, and so it's critical to get

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Speaker 1: there as quickly as your possible can. Crime stories with

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Speaker 1: Nancy Grace Joe the Pike County Sheriff at the prime

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Speaker 1: Charles Readers said that these individuals their lives were taken

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Speaker 1: in the most horrific way he'd ever seen, execution style.

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Speaker 1: You came in like thieves in the night and took

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Speaker 1: eight lives, some being children, the most horrific way I've

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Speaker 1: ever seen in my twenty plus years. We are getting closer.

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Speaker 1: We will find you. The family and the victims will

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Speaker 1: have justice one day. We are coming. The autopsies revealed

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Speaker 1: powder burns on the skin of some of the victims.

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Speaker 1: What can you tell us about how these victims died?

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Speaker 1: I can tell you if what the investigators and sheriff

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Speaker 1: are saying, there's a level of brutality involved in this

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Speaker 1: case that I think that would probably classify this is

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Speaker 1: making it very very personal because if you're just going

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Speaker 1: out to simply execute somebody, and I think the example

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Speaker 1: people use many times it's like a mob hit, for instance,

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Speaker 1: that a lot of people are familiar with because of

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Speaker 1: modern media or news or maybe movies. You just see

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Speaker 1: somebody simply shooting somebody in the back of the head

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Speaker 1: and then walking away. There's there's almost an economy in

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Speaker 1: the way somebody would do that. But when you begin

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Speaker 1: to see what I classify as uber violence at a scene,

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Speaker 1: then that breaks it down and kind of ties it

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Speaker 1: back to a personal nature. Because isn't one stab wound,

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Speaker 1: isn't one beating, isn't one bullet? Isn't that sufficient to

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Speaker 1: the task? Why do you have to go down this

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Speaker 1: road and get yourself involved in something like overkill? Which

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Speaker 1: gives you, I think from a profile in standpoint, it

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Speaker 1: gives you a rule at least it begins to form

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Speaker 1: a picture of the type of person that the police

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Speaker 1: might be looking for in a case like that, somebody

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Speaker 1: that you had a proverbial axtagron. Let's take a listen

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Speaker 1: to what WLWU Team News five reporter Brian Hemrick had

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Speaker 1: to say about the autopsies when they were released. The

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Speaker 1: coroner's preliminary report shows Christopher Roden's senior was shot nine times,

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Speaker 1: including five times in the phase, three in the torso,

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Speaker 1: and once in the arm. He appears to be the

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Speaker 1: only one of eight with defensive wounds, indicating he may

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Speaker 1: have been awake when the attack happened and was most

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Speaker 1: likely the first one killed inside the same trailer. Gary

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Speaker 1: Roden was shot three times in the head and face,

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Speaker 1: including one shot that left a muzzle stamp on his temple,

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Speaker 1: indicating a point blank shot. Next to her, A couple

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Speaker 1: shot while in their bed with their week old baby

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Speaker 1: between them, another child on the floor. Frankie Rodin was

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Speaker 1: shot three times in the head and face. His girlfriend,

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Speaker 1: Hannah Gilly, was shot five times in the head and face.

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Speaker 1: One of the shots was through her eye. Both baby

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Speaker 1: and the young child left unharmed. Just down the road,

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Speaker 1: three more killed Dana Roden, Chris Senior's ex wife. She

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Speaker 1: was shot five times across the forehead and in the temple,

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Speaker 1: then up through the chin. Chris Roden Jr. He Was

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Speaker 1: sixteen shot four times, including two through the top of

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Speaker 1: his head, and his sister Hannah was shot twice in

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Speaker 1: the head and in a trailer a few miles away.

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Speaker 1: Kenneth Roden he was shot once through the right eye.

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Speaker 1: Given what you said about the personal nature of this show,

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Speaker 1: the corner said, all but one of the victims was

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Speaker 1: shot more than one. Two people were shot five times,

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Speaker 1: one person was shot nine times, shot at close range.

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Speaker 1: The evidence showed that a couple of the individuals were

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Speaker 1: awake when they were attacked. How would we know that

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Speaker 1: there is a certain awareness that people have when they

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Speaker 1: are being attacked as opposed to just slumbering. And I'm

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Speaker 1: glad you mentioned that, Jackie. You know, again back to

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Speaker 1: a case that I worked many many years ago. I

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Speaker 1: had an entire family of eight that were killed in

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Speaker 1: a very very small home. I mean it was tiny.

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Speaker 1: This house couldn't have been more than thirteen hundred square

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Speaker 1: feet and there were eight people living in that. Can

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Speaker 1: you imagine. And one of the one of the one

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Speaker 1: of the decedents that actually has always stuck in my

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Speaker 1: mind with that case was a young girl that was

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Speaker 1: thirteen years old at the time, and she was laying

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Speaker 1: on a single size bed. You know, just imagine a

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Speaker 1: tiny bed that you would put your young child in.

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Speaker 1: And she was laying on that bed, and she had

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Speaker 1: the covers and I'll never forget it, she had my

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Speaker 1: little pony blanket that was pulled up so that it

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Speaker 1: was right at the level of her shoulders, and jack

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Speaker 1: you know, she had a perfectly circular defect or bullet

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Speaker 1: hole right between her shoulder blades, and you know, her

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Speaker 1: little head was still turned to the left she was

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Speaker 1: layding face down, turned to the left, with her arms

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Speaker 1: resting beneath her head and sleeping. She had no awareness

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Speaker 1: that that was coming to her. So for us, when

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Speaker 1: I see a body like that, in the case of

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Speaker 1: the thirteen year old girl, I know that she did

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Speaker 1: not have an awareness. Now in the hallway though in

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Speaker 1: the hallway it was a blood bath. You had three

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Speaker 1: siblings that were all laying on top of one another

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Speaker 1: in the middle of the hallway. There was so much blood. Actually,

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Speaker 1: and I don't want to be too graphic, but I

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Speaker 1: actually slipped down at that scene in the blood. And

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Speaker 1: those individuals, because they were up and fighting for their life,

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Speaker 1: they knew what was going on. But for that little girl,

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Speaker 1: she had no awareness. So as an investigator, that might

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Speaker 1: say to me, for instance, that she was one of

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Speaker 1: the first people were killed. For everybody else, the ones

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Speaker 1: that weren't in bed, they never saw it coming. So

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Speaker 1: you have to be very very careful when you observe

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Speaker 1: individuals at scenes in the position in which they are

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Speaker 1: initially found, and you have to be very careful as

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Speaker 1: to how you document that because again that goes back

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Speaker 1: to this idea of sequencing the deaths in what order,

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Speaker 1: because there are no more living witnesses in certainly like

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Speaker 1: a case like we're discussing. In the cases I've worked

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Speaker 1: many times, there were no living witnesses. All you had

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Speaker 1: to go on was what the bodies were telling us.

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Speaker 1: We had to actually in that case, and people have

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Speaker 1: heard the set for years and years. We had to

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Speaker 1: let the dead speak to us in that moment time

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Speaker 1: and tell us their tales through the science that they

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Speaker 1: were living behind in their clues. With me today is

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Speaker 1: Jeff Scott Morgan. He is a forensics professor at Jaxable

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Speaker 1: State University and author of Blood Beneath My Feet. For

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Speaker 1: more on this case and others, go to crime online

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Speaker 1: dot com For crime stories with Nan Straith. I'm Jackie

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Speaker 1: Howard H