cover of episode 40. The Piketon Massacre - Rhoden Family Murders

40. The Piketon Massacre - Rhoden Family Murders

2020/12/14
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The episode details the horrific murder of eight members of the Roden family in Piketon, Ohio, in 2016. The narrative explores the discovery of the bodies, the interconnectedness of the family members, and the initial theories surrounding the murders.

Shownotes Transcript

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Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. Oh my gosh, we are completely amazed about everyone who participated in our giveaway last week. It was literally insane. Like I was flagging every single DM I got. It was just crazy. So thank you to everyone who participated. We actually have selected our winner. Don't worry, it was completely random generated. We didn't do it.

And we will have that up and on Instagram for you guys as this drops. Okay, Garrett, what are your 10 seconds for this week's episode? Well, Peyton and I went snowboarding this weekend and it was Peyton's first time. And it was horrible. Just kidding. It was actually really good. I did just fall kind of a lot, but it was really good. You really did good.

I actually only fell hard really once off the little ski lift thing and it was really embarrassing. Yeah, I felt bad because the other times I was holding her, she was getting off. And the one time I didn't, she went, boom. Yeah, you can imagine. But it was really fun. Yep. That was a good 10 seconds. Thank you.

Okay, let's get into today's murder. It is really complex and, you know, it has a lot of characters involved. And I know sometimes people get lost in this, so I would highly suggest visiting one of our social media channels to view the image with all of the names written out so you don't get lost during the story. It will be...

like a tree of how everyone's connected and kind of like our pizza bomber case. It's just a lot easier once you've actually seen the image to then follow along with us. So I would suggest doing that as we get into the story. Our case sources for this story are the Pikedon family murders on Amazon prime. It's like a documentary. And then actually a podcast called the Pikedon massacre, which is made by the same people who made the documentary and

And I don't typically use other podcasts as sources just to kind of, you know, stay away, let everyone be original, let everyone have their content. But because these were made by the same people, I figured that the details would be fairly similar. So that's why I used it.

It's 7.53 a.m. on Friday, April 22, 2016, when Bobbie Jo Manley discovers the body of her brother-in-law, Chris Roden Sr., and his cousin, Gary Roden, shot to death in one of the several mobile homes owned by the Roden family on this piece of property.

Essentially, we are in a town, Piketon, where the whole Rodin family, cousins, in-laws, all live in the same community. And this isn't very uncommon for the area. Generations of other families have also stayed there, stayed close to each other in a way where once you leave home, you don't actually go on and like create your own life. You just stay around, you see family every day, and that's your life. Is it just because it's a small town? Yeah.

Yes. The roots run deep here. It doesn't really matter if you have a promising future there or not. Like you stay there and that's where you live your life. So the whole entire Roden family basically lives in Pikedon. It's a small sleepy town in Ohio with a population around the time of only 2100 people. Wow. And this is in 2016. So it's not like we're like clear back then, you know?

The girl who just found her ex-brother-in-law, Chris Roden, and his cousin, after letting herself into their trailer home with a key and finding them, runs to an adjacent trailer home on the Roden property with more family members in it. So like I said, it's not only that they all live in the town, it's that they all live within miles of each other. So she runs across to another family member's house for help. She knocks, but is shocked when the little boy of the family answers the door.

He is completely covered in blood, and he tells Bobby Joe that his daddy is in the other room playing zombie. He had been watching The Walking Dead with his family at the time, and so this is what it looked like to him. She storms into the home and is completely taken aback when she discovers that Frankie Roden, his dad...

Okay, so wait a second. I'm just trying to clarify all the family members because I don't want it to get too confusing. Okay.

So this is going to be like extended family members. So Bobby Joe goes to a trailer actually to let some dogs out of the trailer. She goes in and finds her brother-in-law, Chris Roden, and his cousin, Gary, dead. So she doesn't really know Gary anymore.

I mean, she does, but it's not like they're blood related or anything. She's not even blood related to Chris. Yes. She then runs. Yes. To the trailer. The next door. Yes. Whatever you want to call it. Who contains a Frankie who is Chris Roden, the dead guy in the first trailers son. Okay. Chris Roden and Frankie Roden. Frankie Roden is in the trailer with his fiance, Hannah Gilley, and they are both dead.

So anyway, so she goes to this trailer. Frankie and his fiance are in the trailer dead. And the little boy says that his dad's playing zombies. The horrible part about this is that Hannah's six-month-old baby was alive, also in the trailer with her brother, and in bed with her dead parents. Horrified, Bobby Joe calls police.

While waiting for the police to arrive, Bobby Joe calls her brother, James Manley, for help. And they're all just family friends. He heads to another Roden property in town, only to discover that Dana and Hannah Roden, the occupants of the trailer, are also dead. And Dana is Chris's wife, and Hannah is her daughter.

This means that six members of the Rodin family had been violently murdered on April 22nd, 2016 in three separate mobile homes in Piketon. Mom and dad are Chris and Dana Rodin who were not in the same trailer. Keep in mind their children, Frankie and Hannah Rodin, Frankie's fiance, Hannah Gilley. So there's two Hannah's, the fiance and then the daughter, Hannah Rodin.

And Gary wrote in their cousin, all the victims were adults. Okay. This is huge for this small town and completely devastating. Multiple scenes with multiple bodies and one family is not common in this small town. So it's like this extended family, but really it's this one immediate family. The mom and dad, the kids, and then like his wife and his cousin. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm.

With all the commotion of that morning, slowly people start realizing that there were members of the slaughtered Roden family that were not found in any of the homes and no one had heard from them. So once they draw connections that this was kind of from this immediate family, they start going, okay, well, where is everyone from this immediate family? 16-year-old Chris Roden Jr. and his uncle Kenneth Roden were missing.

It's not long before police discover Chris Jr.'s body at his home. His fate just like that the rest of his family.

And seven hours later, another call comes into the Piketon County Police Station from who appears to be Kenneth Roden's cousin, stating that after seeing all of the stuff on the news about the Roden family, he decided to check in on Kenneth at his home and he had also been shot. This crime scene was different, though. Kenneth's body was surrounded in dollar bills.

So eight members of the Rodin family are all now murdered in the middle of the night at separate locations in a town of 2,100 people. So someone literally massacred this whole family.

going to house to house to house to house to do it in one night so are they all living in the same trailer park no so it like a couple of the trailers are close and then you drive a couple miles and there's a couple more trailers and then you drive a couple miles and there's a couple more it's all along the same road and they're all trailers none of them are they're all mobile like single family homes nope all mobile homes okay

Now you have to imagine what this is like for this small town. Could one person have done this? Probably not. Which then means that there are multiple people in this town who are capable of this. The panic and fear sets in.

It comes out that none of the little children in the family had been hurt. None of them killed, all left alive, all asleep while their family was getting slaughtered in other rooms. So all the adults and the 16 year old get slaughtered. But any of the ones who had kids or anything, all of the kids stayed alive. 16 is still pretty young though. Still young. Yeah.

Hannah Roden, the adult daughter, had just had a baby four days before the murder. And when they found Hannah's body with her mom, Dana, and the four-day-old baby was alive in the bed as well with the two adults. That's kind of weird. Very weird. Yeah.

So 40 year old Chris senior, he's the dad. He had worked construction jobs, but when work was slow, he would buy cars and flip them. So all of these properties are those properties where the cars outnumbered everything else. Like there's seven cars on the property. Does that make sense? Because they were constantly flipping them. Dana, his wife was a 37 year old nurse. After 13 years of marriage, they decided to separate, but stay close for their kids.

Chris moved into a home with his cousin, 38-year-old Gary, who they were found dead together, and ended up buying a mobile home for his ex-wife to stick around in.

So they were like, we're going to get divorced, but we're all about family. So he's like, I'm going to buy you a mobile home and you go live over there. And she, Dana, his wife was found with their daughter, Hannah and the four day old baby. Holy moly. There's too many family members. I'm trying to keep organized, but it gets, it's getting crazy. And these are all just the same people we've been talking about. I'm just giving you a little bit of background on them. So just down the road from them lived Chris's brother, Kenneth Roden, who was the 44 year old found with the dollar bills around him.

And all three of them were close and would do anything for anybody at any time. Like they were just really nice guys is what everyone says. Their oldest child, Frankie, who was 20, loved being outdoors. He was also found dead with his fiance, Hannah. He

He loved to hunt and people say that the girls loved him in high school. He too loved cars and wanted to be in the local demolition derby. Like that was a goal of his. You know what? Like I instantly thought of what footloose. Oh yeah. Like they're in the demolition or they're in the, you know, driving the cars around. Totally. That's funny.

So Hannah Roden, their 19-year-old daughter, was an amazing mom. And luckily, the night of the murders, her two-year-old baby was with her father, Jake Wagner. So she had her four-day-old baby in bed with her, but her two-year-old was with her father, Jake. Okay.

Although not married, Jake Wagner and Hannah Roden, Jake was considered a part of the Roden family, but his whole family also lived in Piketon, just like this family, like extended family, everything. Their daughter would spend time at each family. 16-year-old Chris was the baby of the family, and Hannah Gilley, Frankie's fiancee, was a 20-year-old and also a mother.

I'm really surprised that they were able to kill whoever did this. I know we're going to get into it, but that they were able to kill all these members without anything going wrong, right? Without anyone screaming or anyone getting tackled or whatever it may be. You and everybody else. Okay. How did this person or people hit four locations, kill eight family members, and nobody knew a thing?

Especially because we haven't gotten into it, but I assume it was probably with a gun. Yes. And so how did no one hear? Literally, this town is freaking out. Okay. Hola. ¿Cómo está? Hola, ¿cómo estamos? Want to learn a new language? Well, the best way is to uproot your entire life, move to Spain, and live there for the rest of your...

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So due to the extent of the murders, eight family members, four locations, one night, the Pikedon Police Department immediately call in for backup and help. They're like, we are, no, there's no way we're solving this. So police discover that most of the victims were shot multiple times. So not only were they just like shot once, like you were saying, they were shot multiple times. Chris Sr., the dad, having been shot nine times. What? What?

And he was the only victim to also have been beaten. So the rest of the victims were shot. And I'm going to say this. They were not beaten because they were shot in their sleep. Chris was awake during his attack. So he was also beaten. Do you know what kind of gun he used? No. Oh.

Oh, so it felt like a lot of hatred. Evidently, during his murder, nine shots, he had defensive wounds on his forearms and his body had also been moved and then positioned. But we don't know into what position. So I'm just going to preface this now. There is not a lot of information released on that, like the details of this case, which is why I don't know what gun it was. OK, I just know it was a gun.

Gary, his cousin, who was in the same home with Chris senior, had a muzzle burn against his head, which means he was shot point blank gun touching his head in his bed asleep, which is like what kind of.

Kind of intense. Yeah. Like if you think about it, they touched the gun to his head while he was asleep and shot him, which is just a little bit different. I don't know. It feels different to me than just like shooting someone from a couple feet away. I'm just still guns are loud. They're not something that's not a quiet thing. Guns are loud. So how did nobody hear this? Mm hmm.

Many theories are investigated for why this whole family was slaughtered. Possible like cockfights on the property. They had a couple cages. And so people were like, maybe there was like a feud over one of these. Maybe feuds in the demolition derbies that they were trying to get involved in. Even all the way to a road rage incident that Chris Jr., the son, had gotten, the 16-year-old, had gotten in a couple weeks earlier. Police got involved. But none of these really turn out for the multiple departments investigating this crime.

The attorney general comes forward a couple days later and tells the public that the Rodin family was growing marijuana on their property and like a lot of it not for personal use. And this is really like the only main detail that police kind of give. And it's only a couple days after the murders. And so I kind of find this weird that they were just willing to give this evidence out but haven't really released anything else.

So they immediately assume that maybe these deaths have something to do with the cartel or a drug deal gone bad or something. It makes the most sense with multiple houses, multiple hits and a clean get out. How did nobody hear? How come nobody knew what was going on?

This is weird because the Rodin family gave no hints that they were making huge money off drugs. They drove average cars. They lived in average trailers. It didn't seem like they were rolling in it. Okay. Which if they were working with the cartel, they would be right. Did they find cash anywhere or large sums of money? They've released to us. Okay.

There was one main problem with this theory, though. Leaving the children and the grandchildren alive shows some type of moral compass, which the FBI, along with every police department that has looked into this case, do not think a cartel would do. They think if a cartel came to slaughter this whole family to prove a point, they would have killed the children.

Police decide to put the cartel theory away. They don't think a cartel would take the risk to come take out like a whole family one night, like this huge operation for some competition that wasn't ginormous. You know what I mean? It's not like they were bigger than the cartel themselves.

The Rodin family had security and cameras as well as guard dogs on the properties. So whoever did this not only shot and got away with it and didn't hear anything. There were literal German shepherds outside of the house of the properties and security cameras on the properties. So how did they just like breeze by all this easily as well? Not to mention that all the doors were most likely locked. Wait, so what did the security cameras get then?

Don't know. They haven't released anything on it. What? They just have told us that there was security cameras. This is like almost conspiracy theory. This is so strange. So police decide whoever did it had a personal vendetta against this family. Like, obviously. They went to four different locations to slaughter the whole family. The Rodin family definitely knew they're killers, police decide. So the police literally found the security footage. Yeah.

I'm assuming. There's no details on it? No details. Nothing released. Okay. Police turned back to Bobby Joe and her brother. Remember, Bobby Joe is the non-blood related person. Yes. Who found them and her brother who she called for help, who then found another one of the crime scenes.

So they think it was family and they were the first ones on the scene, which obviously you're going to be a suspect if you're the first person to come upon a scene. Bobby Joe insists she had nothing to do with the murders, but agrees to take a lie detector test anyways. Now, as we all know, that's a big mistake, but lucky for her, she passed the test. Police questioned her brother, James, and he fails his polygraph tests, but police have nothing to hold him on. So they've let him go.

Police then followed James Manley. They put a tracker on his truck. But remember how like the whole family loves cars? Yeah. Well, so did this James Manley, who's not actually blood related to them, but he hangs out with them all the time. So the car just probably sat in one spot and didn't move for a while. Well, so they put the tracker on his main truck that he drives. Okay. He like ends up working on the truck one Saturday and immediately finds the tracker underneath the truck.

And so he like pulls it off and throws it away. Obviously, he's like, this isn't belong. Like, I think if I found a tracker on my car, I wouldn't even know what it was. I think this belongs here and put it back. I wouldn't know what it was. So get this. Police come and arrest him for removing the tracker that they put on his car. They charge him with tampering of evidence and vandalism. You can't do that. Oh, the charges are dropped. OK, he doesn't actually do any time for it or anything.

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The town of Piketon starts to wonder if they will ever find the killers. And is another family in town going to be the next victims? Like, they have no idea what brought on this massacre. If you were related to that family at all, you would be so freaked out. Like, what would you do? They went into hiding. Oh. So no one knew where the surviving kids were being held. And, like, the grandparents. So Dana and Chris...

senior, the two parents, their parents were also in like high. Did they go to like witness protection program or? Yeah, we don't know. We just know that they weren't like no one really knew where they were. Okay.

So they have no idea. They have no idea what's going on. Years have passed and they have no idea. All of this changes when on May 12th, 2017, multiple police units serve a warrant and search a Pikedon farm that was recently sold by Billy and Angela Wagner. If the name Wagner rings a bell, it's because their son, Jake Wagner, is Chris and Donna Roden's daughter's husband.

So Chris and wrote in the two murdered. Also, Hannah, the one who was murdered with her four day old baby, her other two year old who was at her dad's house is Jake Wagner. Oh, okay. So remember like they share custody of her ex-husband. Well, they were never married. Okay. It's her baby daddy. Okay.

his parents' farm is searched in conjunction with this case. And this is weird because three different properties that the Wagner family owned are searched. And this is a big deal because the Wagner's

are one, if not the wealthiest family in Piketon. Have they always been the wealthiest family? Yes, generation and generation back. So it's, I assume it's what you said earlier about marijuana. So the Wagner family, including the grandmother, owns a lot of land and a prestigious horse farm. The Wagner family has helped a lot of other families around town. They were known as being super giving people.

So when this comes out, everyone's like, what? Wait, how did the police not know this before? I mean, I'm not blaming them. I'm just curious. Like, how did they not go, oh, the Wagner family's always been wealthy. So they don't know that it's connected. If it is connected to marijuana and they have evidence, it hasn't been released to us. But it comes out, police say, Chris Roden and Billy Wagner, who are the same age, both dads of families, the same generation, have gone into some

Quote unquote business deals together. That was what was released. And by business deals, everyone thinks it's marijuana because they would have nothing else to really do with each other. You've got like this super wealthy family that's well off. So the police really didn't know. Or if they do know they haven't released that it's about marijuana. All they've said is business deals, but they do confirm that the two dads of these families have gone in business together. Got it.

So that's really the only connection besides their son, Jake, and their daughter, Hannah, having a baby together. That's really the only other connection between these two families. And police don't even say why they're searching all of this other Wagner family's properties. They just search them. And so everyone in town is like, what the heck is going on? You've got two prominent families, generation after generation, staying in this town.

One of them completely murdered. The other one being searched for the murder. Do you think that the police haven't said anything because the FBI are involved and or the like higher ups? Yeah, because of all the drugs and marijuana and so forth. I'm assuming that they're saving it for trial in hopes that like everything's a fair trial and nothing can be like discounted. You know what I'm saying? Because of too much media attention or whatever. That's what I'm.

hoping, it's either that or they actually don't have any evidence. That's our only two options. So Hannah and Jake, the two, the kids that had the baby together had never been married, but they did have a serious relationship and then they broke it off, but continued to co-parent their daughter together. Hannah and Jake had also continued to get together and then break up throughout the years. So their relationship had been rocky.

People say that Jake really loved her. So Jake Wagner loved Hannah Roden, who is now murdered. But Hannah wasn't really into it.

She eventually started dating another man, broke up with him and then dated another man who she also broke it off with all the while still figuring things out with Jake Wagner. And then she gets pregnant again. She does not know who the father is. She already has a baby with Jake, the two year old, but the new baby could have been any of the three men's babies. Okay. And she likes that. She fully admits like, I don't know who the dad is.

She tells Jake, it could be you. It could be this guy. It could be this guy. Jake tells her, I don't care. I'll help you raise this baby. I love you. We already have the two-year-old together. Goes and buys a crib for the new baby that he doesn't even know if it's his. And Hannah eventually tells him, no, I don't want to raise this baby with you. Has the baby. Turns out it's not his baby. Oh, wow. We learn that later. Okay.

So she has the baby, right? Four days later is murdered with the baby in her bed. Yes. Even though police searched the Wagner property, no arrests come of it. So everyone in town is confused. Like what's with the random search? What's with no one telling us anything and you randomly search the Wagners and then nothing.

Right after the one year anniversary and after the searches of their property, the Wagner family throws even more suspicion on themselves when their whole family packs up and moves to Alaska. Keep in mind, generation after generation has stayed in Pikedon. They are literally royalty in Pikedon that like everybody knows who they are and they leave after their farms are searched. And go to Alaska out of all places. Well, granted, I want to visit Alaska. But still, Alaska. So random.

So the Wagners tell media when media is like, why the heck are you doing this? That the police in Pikedon were harassing them. And after the searches, they just had to get away, which I could see. But it also feels like if they were escaping because they had done the murders and now they're under suspicion. Why wait a year to get out of Dodge? Like, it just doesn't make sense. Like a year later, you're going to flee. Why not flee right after the murder? Mm hmm.

A whole nother year goes by and yet another year with no arrest. Wagner's move a whole year goes by nothing. The case is just still. At what point do you just do stop? Do you just, I mean, yeah, I mean like, so what happens with cases is they're just passed down from detective to detective. So detective gets this case. He gives what he has to give into it, whether that's like a month or years, whatever it is, he has to look into a case. And then when he retires, the case is passed on to another detective and

And then it's that detective's responsibility, but it has only been like three years. So it's, I'm sure it's still the same detective who has the case just around another six months. A part of the Wagner family comes back to Pikedon, like the immediate Wagner family moves back to Pikedon after being in Alaska for a year.

And quite suddenly, literally out of the blue, are arrested for the murders of the Rodin family. All eight of them. What in the world is going on? So Billy Wagner, the dad, who is the same age as Chris Rodin, his wife, Angela Wagner, who is 48, as well as their two sons, 26-year-old Jake Wagner, Hannah's ex-boyfriend and baby daddy,

as well as their other son, George Wagner, who's 27 years old. So four of them, mom, dad, son, son, are arrested for the murders of the Rodin family. Okay. Although law enforcement will not come forward with any details or evidence, they seem sure about their arrests. Like they go on and do a press conference and we're like, we promised you we'd arrest someone for these murders and here we are. We've done it. And they're so confident, but we'll release no evidence on why they've arrested them. That's so confusing. Yeah.

When the indictment comes out, it explains that the Wagners had used a lawnmower to make a silencer before the murder. And it was like public knowledge they had told people. So that's how the police found this information. Okay. When you say they used a lawnmower to make a silence, do you mean they got a lawnmower and started using it? No.

Or do you mean they made a silencer out of a lawnmower? In the middle of the night, they just go mow all the lawns while they're killing everyone. That's why I was so confused. No, they use the parts. Okay, that makes so much more sense. Don't ask me how. I'm not sure how. I had to clarify that in case any of the other listeners thought that a lawnmower was being used at midnight or whatever time it was to silence these murders.

So it also comes out indictment. They had bought special shoes for the murder. I don't know what that means. This is all just what the police has released. Yes. And they bought a device that catches a gun shell when fired. So it's not left. Oh, yeah. I don't know what that's called, but it's like when you fire the gun, she'll pop out and catches it instead of leaving it at the scene.

They do all three of these things a couple days before the murder. And that's what is released in the indictment, which is literally no concrete evidence. Circumstantial at best. But that's what is released for the arrest of these people.

Just a couple days later, both Billy and Angela's mothers, so the grandparents, are also taken into custody and arrested. 76-year-old Frederica Wagner, who is adored by the community, literally, like, is the grandmother of Pikedon.

and Rita Newcomb, who is 65, both arrested. Frederico Wagner is charged with lying to a grand jury and Rita is charged with forging custody documents between Jake and Hannah's little two-year-old that they shared. A lot of details emerge that Jake and Hannah were in a custody battle over their daughter,

And Jake's family did not like Hannah after she left Jake and got together and had a baby with another man, but kept leading him on according to them. Could this really be enough motive for an eight person family slaughtering at four different locations? It wasn't just Hannah that they killed. It was eight people, a custody battle over a two year old.

Was a reason for an eight person family slaughter. That's, that's what everyone's assuming because police haven't come out. Well, I'm actually really surprised that the police found the evidence that they did so far. Yes. Right. The silencer. Yeah. The device to catch a shells and so forth. I think all of that just came from like credit card statements and then other people. Yeah. So Jake did file for custody of the two year old immediately after the murder, maybe in hopes that like the grandparents wouldn't get her. Yeah.

But it's a little weird. Like lawyers have come out and said like that shouldn't have happened so fast. It takes a long time to get all those papers together, which means he was already getting the papers together before the murders, which means he was going to try to get full custody of their daughter before she died. So he was planning everything. That's what people are saying. They were quote unquote planning everything. Yes.

But would he really need to kill the whole entire family to eliminate a custody battle with everyone? Because that's what it would be, right? Is I'm in this custody battle and so just killing the mother. I'm going to kill every possible person who could get custody of my daughter. That would be the motive. Yeah. So each of the family members enters a not guilty plea and the four who are charged of murder are held in prison while trial gets ready. They aren't released on bail.

So it comes out later that James Manley, which is the brother of Bobby Joe, who found everyone and they put the tracker on his car. I just try to keep up with them. Go look at our picture because it has literally a family tree of both families and who everyone is and what they are. So it'll be so much easier to listen, but he's the one who found the tracker on his car and then was charged, but the charges got dropped. He had been texting Jake Wagner, uh,

who is Hannah Wagner's baby daddy, the whole, basically the whole motive for this family. He had been texting Jake Wagner the night of the murder at 2 a.m., which is when the murders were happening. Oh, that's weird. So two sides of the families, like both sides, the family that's murdered and the family that's convicted or charged with the murders, texting the night of the murders at 2 a.m. when the murders are happening.

Police don't tell us what the messages say. Would he have gotten anything for his family dying? Like any type of big sum of money or something? I didn't even think of that. But it's not his blood family. I mean, they could have. They could have. He could have been in a will, but I don't think so. Okay. I mean, and he did find some of the bodies after Bobby Joe had called him. But we don't know what the messages say. Why don't they tell us anything? Why won't they tell us anything? I just think they're saving it. Dang. Dang.

So anyways, the four, like I said, who are charged of murder are being held in prison literally right now while this trial gets. Oh, they're still in prison. Well, this is 2017. And I mean, it's 2020. So here's the problem is they're not let out on. They don't have bail. The fact like they're, you know, when they're like, oh, you can get bail or you can just be held. They're just being held at a county jail.

So here's the thing is they've done like appeal after appeal saying we should be out on bell. Like this doesn't make sense. It's been three years. Like we're all just wasting our life in here. We don't even know what the evidence is. Like we were not a flight risk, but they probably said they were a flight risk because they went to Alaska after the farms were searched. But they're like, we should be out. We should be out. And all of the appeals have been denied. Why did they even come back? Why come back? No idea. If you're in Alaska and you're quote unquote, if you're safe,

why come back to the place where you might have murdered somebody? And also like, why would police wait for them to come back? Why not go to Alaska? That's weird too. So if anyone knows, like, like I said, this case, there's not a lot of information, but there could be people out there who know it. I'm not, I'm not perfect. I'm not claiming to be perfect in my research at all. So if anybody does know any details that we're asking questions of, please comment and let us know. And I will update everyone. I'm just going by all the, you know, the research that I went on. I do not know why they came back.

Okay. And the town, the Pikedon town is torn on if they're guilty or not. Wow. Half of the town literally thinks there's no way. Like the Wagner family is the nicest family in town. They have done so... Like the grandma has bought houses for people. She feeds like less fortunate people once a week. I guess what's weird though is how did they find or why would they have had the...

The silencer, the shoes. Well, I mean, I get, yeah, the shoes and then the, I don't know. I mean, I guess you could just buy the device that catches shells. I mean, that's kind of a normal thing. Also like it's Ohio. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a town where people own guns. Oh, of course. But,

Yeah, that's so hard. But what about the silencer? What? Cause you said they made it. How did they, how did they figure out, how did the police figure out that they made it? And I think that came from like third person. They told us they were making it. So I don't even know if that's hard. I don't even know if they found it. And if they did find it, then that's maybe why they said it. There really isn't much evidence then. It's all circumstantial. And the only motive so far, unless the police know some motive between the supposed business deal that the two dads did, um,

The only motive is this custody battle. I'm actually surprised they're in jail then because there really isn't much evidence. And that's what they've said is like, is like, why are we in jail? And I know that the prosecutor was probably like, look at the murders they're being charged with. It's not like it was some third degree, you know, it was eight murders in four different locations. But you can't even prove it.

I mean, I'm not saying they do it. But here's the thing. Maybe they have evidence that's not released. That's true. You could be right. That's right. So that all could be happening in court and we have no idea. So everyone else is thinking like we are like the whole entire town is like WTF. Yep. But but they might know, you know, but I wouldn't think so with all the appeals. But then also, why are they getting denied? I have no idea.

So basically there's updates here and there about, but you know, everything with Corona has really pushed back basically any improvement that we can get on cases right now.

But we will see. Like, I don't even know if they have a start date for the trial planned or anything. But as soon as this trial gets going, it's going to be crazy. Because if they come forward and this is the only evidence they have and they're trying to try these people. There's no way. It will be uproar. Yeah. Like, I wouldn't even, I would not suggest trying these people with this is all the evidence. That's a crazy story. Yeah.

super sad that eight people died that's so crazy and it just is like four different locations that's the part that gets me that's the part that gets me and the fact that two babies one four days old one six months old were left in the bed as the people were killed that's so weird too i forgot about that who how when where like how i know that it was like miles apart but like

You just went boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah. I have no idea. No one saw anything. No one heard anything. You got past all the German shepherds. You got past the security cameras. Like you said, the, I think the police are withholding information. I mean, they have the security cameras. Yes. Right. So they've, they obviously can see or saw kind of what was going on. The problem is, is it seems like in most of these cases, security cameras don't work. So I don't know. I don't know. Maybe that may, I don't know. It's just insane. So yeah, stay tuned. I actually had never heard of this case.

And I don't know how, because this seems like a pretty historic case. I'm surprised I didn't see it on the news. 2016. Uh-huh. Insane.

I'm just excited to follow this case, so I will be doing any updates we have on this case. Also, I have gotten a lot of requests if we have any updates on the Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell whole situation. Meetings are just continuing to get pushed back due to COVID-19. If I do hear anything, I promise I will update you guys, but that's why there isn't an update. We haven't forgotten about them. We haven't forgotten about Tylee and JJ. There just is seriously no updating available.

And thanks so much for continuing to follow, listening, subscribing, commenting, all that fun stuff. All right. Well, that is the Rodin Family Massacre in Piketon, Ohio. And we will see you guys next week for another episode. I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.