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2022/7/6
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The episode discusses the implications of DNA evidence and plea deals on the trial of George and Billy Wagner, focusing on the emotional impact on the surviving Roden family members and the legal strategies of both the prosecution and defense.

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Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm John Walczak, host of the new podcast Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using AI.

In 2001, police say I killed my family and rigged my house to explode before escaping into the wilderness. Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. Join me. I'm going down in the cave. As I track down clues. I'm going to call the police and have you removed. Hunting. One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world. Robert Fisher. Do you recognize my voice? Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America.

Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast. I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling, some unnerving, some even downright terrifying. But all of them will be totally true.

Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A member of the Wagner family was back in the Pike County Courthouse today. His attorneys argue George Wagner IV did not shoot and kill any of the Rodin family members. Judge, in our motion, we have asked the court to dismiss counts one through eight and or the accompanying death specifications, which make this case a death penalty.

As part of the plea deal Jake Wagner reached with prosecutors, neither he nor his brother or their parents will face the death penalty as long as Jake testifies in court. George did not shoot or kill anybody. He did not pull a trigger once. Jake, on the other hand, has admitted to killing at least five people personally and shooting a sixth.

Special Prosecutor Angie Canepa argued the murder charges and death penalty specifications against George Wagner should remain until Jake Wagner testifies on the record in a courtroom. Surviving members of the Roden family anxiously await for answers to close the case, but won't ever erase the heartache they feel. This is The Pikedon Massacre, Season 3, Episode 7, Breadcrumbs.

I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at KT Studios with Stephanie Lidecker and Jeff Shane. In this episode, we follow the trail of breadcrumbs left behind during these hearings. Some of them lead into very dark corners that may only be fully illuminated once the trial begins. And no issue has cast a larger shadow over the case than what Angela and Jake's testimony may reveal about George and Billy's involvement. ♪

When the state has made a bargain with the shooter of at least five people, the killer of at least five people in this case, then we believe it's unconstitutional, improper, and an abuse of power to pursue the death penalty against George when they admit it, he didn't shoot anybody. We are not stipulating that George did not shoot anybody because we don't know that. We are simply stipulating that according to Jake's proffer, George did not shoot anybody. I think that's an important distinction.

Now, Judge Deering ended up denying the defense motion filed by George Wagner's attorney. Now, we also learned that all four of the suspects were offered the same chance to negotiate a deal if they agreed to tell prosecutors what happened the night the Rodin family members were killed. These murders in Pike County, Ohio, it's not something they just entered into. You know, they're not just, you know, sitting around with a few cans of beer open and saying, let's go slaughter the Rodins. That's not what happened.

This took planning. You're talking about the murder of eight other human beings. They're going to go into quite graphic detail about, first off, the kids being locked up in this house with the deceased remains of their parents.

They're going to talk about all the bloodstains that were on the children. They're going to talk about how those children were weeping and crying. It's going to be incredibly impactful. It'll be like getting hit in the chest with a 10-pound sledgehammer.

You're not going to have a totality of the execution of this agreement until they get up on the stand and they do what they say that they were going to do. And absent that, then it's a game changer. Defense attorney, former prosecutor, judge, and FOX 19 legal analyst Mike Allen has been following the case closely.

— We asked him about Angela and Jake's proffers and if their testimonies need to line up closely with the prosecution's investigative and forensic findings. — The answer to that is yes. I mean, if there's what they call a proffer made by a defendant, where the defendant will say, "Well, this is what I would testify to," it's got to line up, not absolutely perfectly, but generally, it's got to line up with what the prosecution has.

They're probably meeting with Angela and Jake regularly. You don't want to screw this up. You don't want to make some kind of comment to somebody, anybody that you're in jail with, even the prison staff that you're coming in contact with on a daily basis. Anything that could hamper this trial, they want to keep this thing as pristine as they possibly can going into whatever the prosecution's going to do with George and Billy. Here's producer Chris Graves speaking with forensic death investigator Joseph Scott Morgan.

If those proffers are to be believed, it would seem that Billy did the other three. Yeah, yeah, it would seem that. And Jake admitted to these killings. If he facilitated the deaths of five people, which he's admitted to, and we still have three that are unaccounted for, I think money's on Billy at this point in time. He's a frontrunner.

I think that the state's going to want their pound of flesh in this case because of everything that has happened relative to this. All of the deception, all of this horror that has come down upon this little rural county in southern Ohio. I think the people of Ohio probably are going to demand it. The Roden family case is going to be that case that 80 years from now, people are going to sit around a campfire and tell stories about.

Another motion, Motion 76, filed by the defense, deals with the admissibility of specific evidence and expert testimony that the prosecution hopes will seal the deal for convincing the jury of George's involvement. The prosecution quickly filed a memorandum stating that their case for why the evidence should be admissible and why Motion 76 should be struck down. Here's Chris Graves speaking with retired prosecutor Ann Flanagan about the shoe print evidence.

For every motion that the defense filed, there may be a response or there may be another motion filed by the state that seeks something. And in those motions, at times, you will glean some additional facts that maybe you have not heard from other sources. It's like finding little breadcrumbs to this puzzle we've all been trying to figure out. We took this new evidence and compared it to some of the facts already known in the case.

Here's Stephanie and Jeff. This is the relevant factual background in the memorandum. Eight members of the Rodin family were murdered in their homes on the night of April 22nd, 2016. Investigators located shoe prints at two properties, 4077 Union Hill Road and 3122 Union Hill Road. These shoe prints had pools of dried blood belonging to the victims. Okay, so let's dig into this just a little deeper.

The locations where these prints were found were at the homes of Chris Roden Sr. and then Dana Roden. We've been to this location and they're running distance from each other. When we visited Pikedon, we actually did the drive of Union Hill Road to map out the different crime scenes. Union Hill Road lies about 20 minutes west of downtown Pikedon off of Route 32.

You exit the highway, then double back and head into a patchwork of forests and fields. And about half a mile up the road on the right is when you first see 3122 Union Hill Road, the property that Chris Roden Sr. bought for Dana and the kids just months before the murders. And we talked about this.

That's also the location where Hannah Mae Roden had her baby shower just leading up to the murders. So moving into this home was a really happy and exciting thing for Dana. Just down the road from that is 4077 Union Hill Road. And that's where Chris Roden Sr. was living. And as we know, his cousin Gary was staying with him. This was a very brutal crime scene. There were pools of blood everywhere.

And in these pools of blood, what police found were two shoe prints. One a size 10.5 and the other a size 11. According to the report, a size 11 Walmart Athletic Works brand shoe left a print.

Here's Joseph Scott Morgan. I went back and I thought that brand sounded familiar. And the reason it was familiar to me is that when my son Noah got one of his first jobs, it was at Chick-fil-A. And they require you to wear those non-slip shoes. We went to Walmart to buy him a pair and that's what they were. And I just looked that up. They're primarily athletic works shoes.

They're non-slip soles is what they are. They're black in color. They kind of look like athletic shoes. And visiting their website, they go for like 13 bucks a pair or something like that. It's something that's easily acquired online.

The size 11 shoe was actually found in both Chris Sr. and Data's home. Which is extremely significant because there's been so much speculation about this. Did they divide up and each go to a different location or did they do it together? And that's what this evidence would imply.

Yeah, to further that point, Steph, what they also found was that the size 11 shoe had a mix of multiple victims' blood in it, which again speaks to your point that whoever was wearing that shoe went to multiple rodent houses. For Joseph Morgan, it brought to mind another infamous family massacre.

I urge anybody that has never read In Cold Blood to go read this book, specifically because of the forensics. Capote did such a fantastic job in giving such a great description of this horrible scene where this family was absolutely butchered. Not too dissimilar from what happened in Pikedon, only it happened in one single home in Kansas all those years back. They had one piece of evidence that really tied everything together at that scene.

"In Cold Blood" is a nonfiction novel by author Truman Capote that was published in 1966.

It details the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in small town Kansas. And you might have read this book in high school or have heard of it. It's really one of the first true crime stories that people sank their teeth into. And I would surmise that any true crime TV series or podcast or documentary really should give some credit to this one because without it, I don't think the genre would be what it is.

There are actually a lot of parallels between the Pikedon massacre and the clutter of family murders. One, the family aspect. Also, two, the brutality. Three, the victims being shot in the head and just the sheer amount of bloodshed. It's chilling.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the story, we'll give you a little bit of a top line about it. It all started in the fall of 1959 when these two ex-cons named Perry Smith and Richard Hickok drove across Kansas on a tip they had received from one of their fellow inmates when they were in jail. While the duo was still in jail, they met a man named Floyd Wells who had claimed to them he had once worked as a farmhand for a man named Herb Clutter, who, according to Floyd, had kept thousands of dollars in a safe in his basement.

And that is all that Smith and Hickok needed to hear. And eventually, when they got out of jail, they drove 400 miles to the Clutter residence and snuck into the house as the family was sleeping. They started by tying up Mr. and Mrs. Clutter and their two teenage children, Kenyon and Bonnie. It's every parent's worst nightmare.

I can't help being reminded of what the Rodin family must have been feeling the night that they were murdered, thinking about them in their homes and having a loud banging sound and all of a sudden there's a gun in your face. And it turns out there actually was not a safe. It was a total lie or a rumor. And Hickok, who had a very short temper, flew into a rage. And it's so sad because they must have decided beforehand that they wouldn't leave any witnesses alive.

So all they got away with was a radio and maybe $50, but still they decided they had to kill the entire family. Yeah, once they made this decision, they kind of went one by one to the family members who were in various points of the home. And they started with Mr. Clutter, who was bound and gagged on a box spring in the basement. Harry Smith slit his throat and then shot him in the head.

They then went to the teenage son Kenyon, who was bound in another part of the basement and shot him to death. And then they, of course, headed upstairs to kill mom, Nancy Clutter. And sadly, after hearing both her parents and her brother being murdered, Bonnie Clutter was shot in the head. Her hands were tied in front of her. She was gagged. And get this, they actually tucked her into her bed. It's almost like they were trying to make her comfortable in the moments leading up to her murder.

Another similarity to the Rodin case seems to be the sheer violence of all of this. To shoot someone and slit their throat is the definition of overkill. In the same way, shooting members of the Rodin family multiple times in the face is just violence for violence sake. Something else that we should note, that at some point in the night, Harry Smith stepped in Mr. Clutter's blood in the basement and left a partial footprint.

That again seems eerily similar to this footprint that we've been discussing in the Roden homes. A lot of creepy stuff went on with this case. Anyway, he was executed down there. And Perry, who was one of the killers, was wearing a boot that had been resold. And this boot, when you hear this name, this name in forensic parlance, it's a benchmark moment. It's called the cat paw print. When he stepped on that box,

He transferred a print to that box with his boot that had transferred from blood onto the surface and it left that cat paw print. Perry Smith's boots were later recovered. Not so in Piketon. The defense has struck gold here. Really? I think so, yeah. What makes you think that? Well, guess what they found? They had Perry's boots. In this case...

They ain't got nothing. In Piketon, they don't have the shoes. They don't have that to compare it to. In the Clutter case, they did. And I'm drawing these conclusions because I think, in my opinion at least, that this case, much like the Clutter case, is going to be a bloodbath. The prosecution is betting that their footprint expert, William Bosniak, can tie the bloody prints back to the Wagners without having the actual footwear.

For his analysis, Bosniak bought the same Athletic Works model, size and shoe at Walmart, about a thousand miles away from Pikedon in his home state of Florida. The defense is trying to raise doubt about the process by which Bosniak determined the match, as well as about Bosniak's actual qualifications as an expert. To do this, they've requested what's called a Daubert hearing. Here again, Anne Flanagan.

Daubert is just the name of a case where some guidelines were set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court, and it was done with the idea that we don't want junk science going to a jury just because someone was declared an expert and said that this was his expert opinion. And so they gave some guidelines for attorneys and courts. And so some of the guidelines are what we call Daubert factors.

Some of these factors include whether the theory or technique in question can be and has been tested, whether it has been subject to peer review and publication, its known potential error rate, and whether it has attracted widespread acceptance within the forensic scientific community.

One of the attacks that the defense made is that this is not the shoe. The shoe that he compared to the print is a sample shoe that he bought later. They would want to do that because they see that as very damaging evidence. Understand the defense's job is to exploit the small little issues along the way. They don't have to destroy the whole case. You know, when you start to talk about, you know, well, they've given so much value to this piece of evidence, they're going to try to paint it that way.

If this trial happens down there in southern Ohio, in Appalachia, people that inhabit those regions, their ears perk up when they hear an accent from other places or they see people that don't quite fit in. And all he has to do is say, you know, this guy, he's with the feds. Why the hell are you going to go outside of your own law enforcement family and the crime lab there in the state and contract with an outside expert in this particular case?

Ultimately, Judge Deering ruled for the defense that the Daubert hearing could go forward. Joseph Scott Morgan explains that if the judge rules in favor of the defense, a jury would never hear any of the evidence about the shoes. Defense is witnessing up to state that this gentleman is going to testify to size 10 1⁄2 and to size 11 athletic works shoes. He's going to testify to those items and that he's marrying those up

to the photographs of the shoe prints at the scene to these individuals. They're saying that this isn't going to hold water forensically. Then we can conclude that perhaps that bit of evidence will be excluded. But listen, this is the defense. This is what they do.

If I hire a defense attorney, I'm assuming that's their job, to basically throw anything against the wall and hope that it sticks. I would imagine it's a little bit of an uphill battle defending someone like George Wagner because there's a lot of evidence against him. And so the defense attorney is just trying to find ways around that and ways to cast evidence.

reasonable doubt because with a jury, you don't need to prove that someone's innocent. All you need to do is poke enough holes in the prosecution's story that there is a reasonable doubt that George Wagner did not murder eight people. We think it's important to go through the different pieces of evidence that the prosecution is allegedly putting forward because it really does play a huge part in this case.

The first thing that we think seems very relevant is the shoe receipts. Now, as a result of a search warrant executed on the vehicles and the trailers belonging to the Wagner family, investigators located a Walmart receipt for a location in Waverly, Ohio. The date on the receipt is April 7th, 2016, which, as we know, is just a couple of weeks before the murders.

The receipt was for two pairs of gray men's Walmart-branded shoes with Velcro straps in sizes 10.5 and 11. Officials were able to obtain and preserve surveillance photographs and receipts of all recent purchases of that model and those sizes of the shoe in numerous Walmart stores throughout Southern Ohio.

At some point, an expert reviewed the photographs obtained from a Walmart in Waverly, Ohio, and it included still images of the customers who purchased Athletic Works shoes that day. And the customer purchasing those shoes in this particular surveillance shot is none other than Angela Wagner.

They actually show her exiting the Waverly Walmart on April 7th, 2016, at approximately the exact same time on the receipt found on the Wagner property. And this day is so significant because as we know, Hannah Mae Roden was having her baby shower at her new house where she lived with her mom, which we talked about earlier.

It is pretty damning evidence, to say the least. We were told at some point that Angela Wagner chose those specific shoes for her boys to wear because they were allegedly the exact same shoes that Dana Roden's brother wore to work. And it's been speculated that perhaps Angela Wagner was literally trying to set up Dana Roden's brother for these murders. ♪

I have a question. What do you think has more weight in the courtroom, the science and the facts of the case or Jake Wagner's version of events? Well, it all depends on what Jake has given them at this point and Mama. From a forensic standpoint, I can't wait to see this. They've already shown their hand to a certain degree. They're saying we're going after the forensic evidence. Right now, we know it's footwear.

Reporter Anjanette Levy sees potential implications for George and Billy Wagner if the evidence is allowed.

I just know from one of the hearings back in August of 2020, they were saying, "You have no evidence against George IV." And same with Billy. Billy's attorney said in court documents, "You have no evidence against our guy." There's nothing in the discovery that ties him to this.

So when you look at it, if we're looking at shoe impression evidence, those could be things that maybe tie them to the crime scenes because we have that whole issue of the state saying and Angela Wagner confirming that she purchased these shoes at Walmart for them to use. So those items could tie George and Billy to the crimes. Because the Daubert hearing could affect both father and son, Judge Steering raised the possibility that they both appear in court at the same time.

I would think that's going to be potentially the most interesting thing to come out of the Daubert hearing. So you're going to have the singular hearing about the scientific evidence, and then it's going to be presented at two separate capital murder trials. We're going to take a break. We'll be back in a moment.

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.

From unbelievable romantic betrayals... The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal...

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Walzak, host of the new podcast Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using AI. Come on.

In 2001, police say I killed my family. First mom, then the kids. And rigged my house to explode. In a quiet suburb. This is the Beverly Hills of the Valley. Before escaping into the wilderness. There was sleet and hail and snow coming down. They found my wife's SUV. Right on the reservation boundary. And my dog flew. All I could think of is him and the sniper me out of some tree.

But not me. Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. For two years. They won't tell you anything. I've traveled the nation. I'm going down in the cave. Tracking down clues. They were thinking that I picked him up and took him somewhere. If you keep asking me this, I'm going to call the police and have you removed. Searching for Robert Fisher. One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world.

Do you recognize my voice? Join an exploding house, the hunt, family annihilation today and a disappearing act. Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I spent almost a decade researching right wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters.

But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat.

It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition?

Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Judge Deering decided to have two separate Daubert cases for George and Billy Wagner, avoiding a father-son face-to-face for the first time since their arrests almost four years ago. Here's Joseph Morgan.

What if they come to a conclusion, let's just say it has to do with footwear. They come to the conclusion X relative to the findings in George's case and the validity of the evidence and how it was examined, collected, analyzed. You've got the dynamic of a separate legal team there. They might have a completely different view of this.

When you're accused of something, and I'm just speaking strictly about forensics here, you have to be able to hold forth against the entire might of the state and what they bring to bear. They're forensic resources. Georgia's team is there to save George. They're not there to save Billy. The morning of the trial, William Bozniak arrived early and took a seat while the defense and prosecution organized their arguments.

Bozniak is fit with a head of silver hair. You might guess he's 10 years younger than his actual age of 76.

Your Honor, at this time, the state would call Mr. Bosiac to the stand. You sign, swear, or affirm that the testimony you're about to give should be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and you shall answer unto God. I do. You may be seated. Just for your record, can you tell us what your vocation is? I'm a forensic consultant and examiner. I specialize in footwear and tire impression evidence. And can you tell us...

How long have you been doing that? Since 1973. George IV avoids eye contact with Bosniak. Angie Kanepa goes through the very standard procedure of having an expert describe his resume to the court. He speaks for a full hour and a half on his qualifications. Bosniak has done thousands of footwear impression examinations during his career with the FBI and in the 20-plus years of consulting since his retirement in 1998.

Footwear, shoes of people leave impressions. Some of these are on two-dimensional surfaces where shoes acquire material like dust, dirt, mud, blood, so forth. And then they redeposit it in subsequent steps. Typically if you step in a pool of blood, the first few steps are pretty heavy.

Bosniak explains that he can identify specific brands, models, and sizes of shoes even if they aren't recovered. He does this by comparing recovered prints to the molds used by manufacturers to make the soles of any given shoe.

In shoes that are not popular, a manufacturer may only make one mold for most or all sizes. The basic design will be the same. It's computer generated, has been for years. So its overall design and its physical size of that design from all of those molds will virtually be indistinguishable.

But in some shoe designs, they also add something that is known as, generically, as texture. At this point, Bosniak fires up a video he narrated. Texture is broadly defined as a shallow pattern sometimes found on selective surfaces of a footwear outsole. Adding texture to a mold is a separate process. The video shows two workers in Southeast Asia.

They each sit at their own workbench with a small hammer and awl. They're punching little divots into the shoe molds that will later be used to cast rubber soles. During the molding process, there are two predominant methods of adding texture to a mold surface. One of those shown here involves mechanically striking a pattern into the surface using a steel die or similar tool. This is known as hand stippling.

Believe it or not, those little patterns of the fine detail on the bottom of your shoes are mostly hand-carved and no two are alike. A size 11 mold created by one person will have minute differences from a size 11 created by another person. This goes even for the same brand and model shoe. It creates a very specific footprint.

What's great about this evidence is that it's what we call demonstrable. And when you have demonstrable evidence, that's a big, big test of its reliability. If you live in Florida and you're asked to do an examination and purchase that shoe in Florida, how can you make a comparison to a shoe print impression that was left in a crime scene in Ohio? Because manufacturers sell their shoes all over the country, so...

If they're sold at one Walmart, they're probably sold at the majority of them. If I know they're Walmart shoes, then that's the obvious place that I would go to first. Angie Koneppa rests. Now it's time for defense attorney Rob Junk to convince the judge that Bosniak is not a reliable expert.

So what I'm hearing from you then in doing this test, you're required to have a mold standard from the factory. Is that right? No. In some cases, I just simply go to the store and buy some or get permission to make photographs and take standards of the shoes they have. And why not go to the manufacturer? That's not always possible. They're in other countries mostly.

But sir, unless you have obtained all of the molds, how do you know or how can you be certain that the impression you have is of one particular mold or shoe that you have purchased from the store? I mean, this is just through your experience, is that right? You don't know this to be certain. I know this to be certain because I've observed it.

I've worked cases like this. I've interacted with manufacturers, numerous manufacturers. I've been in factories asking questions like this. And I've observed it over and over again and used this process over and over again. And it's as certain as anything can be. The defense works tirelessly to see if Bosniak will slip up. The defense then moves on to the issue of not having the actual shoes used in the crime.

Can you explain to the court, if we're looking at a Walmart shoe, how reliable it is to make a comparison or a match between a Walmart store in Florida and a shoe that a Walmart store in

Maybe in California would sell. Sure, they came from the same old. They just got distributed to all over the country. And although the impression corresponded with the shoe that you purchased from Walmart, you cannot say that that impression came from the athletic work shoe or a athletic work shoe, is that right? Yes, it's an athletic work shoe that has the texture on it that I purchased and that...

I compared and it corresponds with the crime scene. After three hours of questioning, Judge Deering has heard enough. I think I'm just going to rule on the motion. I mean, I can conclude, the court concludes that the footwear impression evidence as explained and testified to by William Bogey Act satisfies the criteria of Evidence Rule 7 and 2 in Dalbert Merrill for the admissibility of expert testimony. Let's stop here for another break.

After your entire world is flipped upside down,

From unbelievable romantic betrayals. The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family. When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal. This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me.

Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Walzak, host of the new podcast Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using AI. Oh my God.

In 2001, police say I killed my family. First mom, then the kids. And rigged my house to explode. In a quiet suburb. This is the Beverly Hills of the Valley. Before escaping into the wilderness. There was sleet and hail and snow coming down. They found my wife's SUV. Right on the reservation boundary. And my dog flew. All I could think of is him and the sniper me out of some tree.

But not me. Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. For two years. They won't tell you anything. I've traveled the nation. I'm going down in the cave. Tracking down clues. They were thinking that I picked him up and took him somewhere. If you keep asking me this, I'm going to call the police and have you removed. Searching for Robert Fisher. One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world.

Do you recognize my voice? Join an exploding house, the hunt, family annihilation today and a disappearing act. Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I spent almost a decade researching right wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters.

But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to.

Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition?

Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions.

Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. With the Daubert hearing over and Motion 76 denied, it's guaranteed the jury will hear the testimony of William Bosniak, his positive identification linking the shoes bought at Walmart by Angela Wagner, and the footprints at the crime scene containing the blood of multiple victims. This may have far-reaching consequences for the entire Wagner family.

Regardless, jurors will still see Jake's plea, correct? And that would have its own narrative in and of itself. And maybe then the defense would poke holes in that? You're going to get more than that from Jake. He's going to be on the stand. He's got a stand to deliver. That's the only way they made this deal. Him and Mama are going to be on the stand. Man, you're going to have a five-time murderer on the stand giving testimony against his daddy, against his brother.

I don't ever recall that I've ever heard of a case like this. Not in my memory. Not in recent history, at least. Anywhere in America. The stakes at this point are so incredibly high, it's unimaginable. More on that next time. If you're enjoying The Pyton Massacre, listen to our other hit series, Crazy in Love. New episodes air every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.

For more information and case photos, follow us on Instagram at KT underscore studios. The Piked Massacre is produced by Stephanie Lidecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Greaves, Scott DeGraw, and me, Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design by Jeff Twa. Music by Jared Aston. The Piked Massacre is a production of KT Studios and iHeartRadio.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind.

Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Walzak, host of the new podcast Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using AI. Come on, Paul.

In 2001... Police say I killed my family and rigged my house to explode. Before escaping into the wilderness... Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. Join me... I'm going down in the cave. As I track down clues... I'm going to call the police and have you removed. Hunting... One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world. Robert Fisher... Do you recognize my voice? Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the Weird Little Guys trying to destroy America.

Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast. I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling, some unnerving, some even downright terrifying. But all of them will be totally true.

Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.