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This is Tracy V. Wilson from Stuff You Missed in History Class. The national sales event is on at your Toyota dealer, making now the perfect time to get a great deal on a dependable new car. Like a legendary Camry built for performance and available with all-wheel drive, you can count on your new Camry to get anywhere you need to go. Or check out in a
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We're here for the history, not the hype. To shed light, not fan flames. We're here for the whole story, not just a headline. Here to uphold democracy, uncover the facts, and illuminate what matters. Democracy dies in darkness. That's where we come in. The Washington Post. Switch on. Subscribe today at washingtonpost.com slash iHeart. There's always some tension in every trial. This one, I would say, is an 8.5 or 9 out of 10.
He's been shot. I've seen blood all over his face. The bullet ended up in the frontal lobe of the brain. I mean, there's a lot at stake here for both sides. On the one side, the prosecution is overseeing the most expensive, most complex trial in the history of Ohio. And on the other hand, the defense is trying to save a guy's life. So no matter how you slice this, it is still life and death. This is the Piketon Massacre. Season 4, Episode 4,
Devil in the Details. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at KT Studios with Stephanie Lidecker and Jeff Shane. We've been following this case closely for almost five years, and it's surreal to see it all begin to unravel in a brick-red 19th century courthouse on 2nd Street in Waverly, Ohio, a cozy town of 4,000 on the Ceuta River. It's important to note that George Wagner IV, who's currently on trial, has pleaded not guilty and has maintained he did not kill anyone.
His father, Billy Wagner, whose trial is upcoming, has also pleaded not guilty to all charges. George Wagner IV says he has absolutely nothing to do with the eight murders his brother Jake and mother Angela have pled guilty to. But the prosecution believes they can put George Wagner IV at the scene of the killings or at least prove he was part of the murder conspiracy. Soon, Jake Wagner and Angela Wagner will take the stand against their family.
Here's reporter James Pilcher. It depends on how believable the jury finds Jake and Angela. And is it possible that he walks free? Absolutely, it's possible. You never can tell. Jake has previously testified that George Wagner did not kill anyone. What he and his mother Angela will say on the stand is anyone's guess. Here's Stephanie and Jeff Pilcher.
Keep in mind, the prosecution believes that they can put George Wagner IV at the scene of the killings, or at least they feel they can prove that he was part of the murder conspiracy. Prosecutor Angie Konepa, you'll remember, agreed in December 2021's hearing that George Wagner IV didn't kill anybody.
However, unique to the state of Ohio, someone can be sentenced to death for an aggravated murder conviction. And Steph, it's an interesting distinction that we really want to make clear because it means that you can be convicted even if all you did was help plan or cover up the crimes. Jake and Angela have been proven to be liars in the past. Remember, after the murders, they claimed their innocence and then years later, of course, changed their story. So why should we believe them now?
Pike County Sheriff Tracy Evans chose not to be recorded while testifying, which is rare for an elected official. We do know Evans told jurors he was the one who determined Dana Roden had been shot to death after removing a blanket and pillow that was covering her head. One key witness who agreed to be recorded was Miranda Cable, a registered nurse and paramedic who responded to the call at Frankie Roden and Hannah Gilley's house. She's one of the first responders to testify about the crime scenes.
Initially, Cable thought it was a domestic violence dispute where somebody was possibly killed. She was then directed to a second location where she learned there were only deceased people on the scene. She then returned to Hannah Gilley and Frankie Roden's house where the couple was found brutally slaughtered. Their six-month-old baby had been discovered alive, covered in their blood. We were asked to go back to the first residence to transport a child.
And do you know that child's name? Yes, it was *** Roden. Okay. To protect the children's identities, we will beep the use of any minors' names used in court.
Do you know how old Roden was at that time? Six months. Okay, so five minutes later, basically. Okay. And do you recall the condition that you found in? He had blood on his head, on his arms and legs, and various parts of his body. He didn't appear to have any visible injuries. Showing you what's been marked as States Exhibit Q2.
Again, there appears to be blood on his legs and feet and head and face. Is that consistent with the condition you found him in? Yes. Okay. And can you tell us, when you were examining him, did you personally take care not to clean him up or anything at that time? Forensic investigator Joseph Scott Morgan. The fact that Miranda, the EMT, had walked in and she was essentially handed over
like this still living legacy, if you will, that's stained in blood, swaddled the child, I would imagine, blood-stained diaper, you know, and has to make sure. And at that moment, you know, you can imagine, I know that I've been in on scenes before that were very dramatic, but in that moment in time, you're getting a sense that everybody's been wiped out and this little precious angel is still cooing and alive. The defense did not cross.
Timothy Dickerson, former Pike County police officer and director of Pike County Emergency Management, also arrived on the scene. In his court testimony, he detailed entering Dana Roden's house to find the bodies of Hannah Mae and Chris Roden Jr. It was a grisly spectacle.
Exited my vehicle, went into the home. I then turned right, went into a room and found a deceased male. He was in the bed. Went from there out through the, I guess would be the living room, the kitchen area, to another room where a deceased female was located and then made a right and found a third deceased female.
While Dickerson was in Haname's room, he heard a sound and saw a baby's arms extend up from the bed in which her mother had been shot to death. What was the baby's condition? From what I remember, I just remember the diaper having blood on it. It was a traumatic scene, a large scene, and when I discovered that the baby was alive, I was very thankful for that. Did you have a fear that the baby may not have been alive? Yes. Dickerson later learned the baby was only four days old.
In his words, she was very, very tiny. The jury on day four was shown numerable evidence photos of inside the home, bloody drag marks, blood spatter on the wall, and other forensic material. All of this might trigger a jury to respond in anger. The defense questioned whether all these gory exhibits were necessary. Here's James Pilcher.
Here again, Stephanie and Jeff.
In court, they've been showing these autopsy photos of the victims and the crime scenes as we've been hearing very graphic and very disturbing. And due to the graphic nature of all these pictures and walkthroughs, the defense has tried to move for a mistrial.
Basically how it works in the courtroom is behind the witness, there's a flat screen television. And when pictures are shown of the crime scenes in autopsies, et cetera, it goes on this big screen. And of course the jury is moved emotionally by the graphic nature of it. And the defense is saying, hey, that's not fair. It's
not proven that George has done this. So humans in general are going to feel angry toward anybody who might be associated with these photographs. And on the flip of that, prosecutor Angie Kanepa is saying, look, this is what happened. To not show these photos is also a crime. You have to see the graphic details to really know the depth of these crimes.
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The Washington Post. Switch on. Subscribe today at washingtonpost.com slash iHeart. Defense attorney Richard Nash drilled Dickerson on where Dana Roden's home was located. Was it in Pike, Adams, or Scioto County? When Dickerson answered Pike at first, the two got into a heated exchange.
This was a case of an old motion rearing its head again that the trial venue was improper and search warrants invalid because Dana's home was not technically in Pike County. James Pilcher. I think...
After Dickerson, prosecutors called Gary Michael Mosley, a former Pikedon officer who responded to the scene along with Dickerson's team.
Mosley opted not to be shown on camera, but consented to an audio recording. He says he and his fellow deputies responded to a shots fired call at Dana Roden's house. They searched the property with extreme caution. Guns drawn, fearing an active shooter was still on the premises. Guns were out. We had it planned. Once again, we had no idea the house was designed the way it was. His audio was a little bit difficult to hear, so Jeff's going to read from a transcript.
Guns were out. We had a plan. Once again, we had no idea the house was designed the way it was. So our plan was just to go in and set up security base once we make entry and go from there and secure it bit by bit. We open the door and the door swings inward to the right. So as I came in, I do what's called a pie graph cut. I'm an active shooter instructor and I was taught that. So we come in, I spin from this wall to this wall, constantly looking to see if there's any threats in this room.
Another key witness who took the stand was Sheriff's Lieutenant Adam Ball, who was the first officer on the murder scene. Ball had no idea what he was responding to when he pulled up to the property. He also opted not to be recorded, but Ohio Fox 19 reporter Mike Schell relays the gist of the lieutenant's testimony.
The first witness opted out of being recorded. He has Pike County Sheriff's Lieutenant Adam Ball. He testified that he was the first officer to enter the crime scene at 4077 Union Hill Rd where the bodies of Chris Roden, Sr and his cousin Gary were found. Lieutenant Ball, who was a corporal in 2016, says there was so much blood when he walked into the front door.
that he had to climb over a treadmill and other furniture to avoid disturbing the crime scene and get to the back bedroom where Chris and Gary Roden's bodies were found lying together on the floor at the foot of a bed. Chris Sr.'s fate was particularly heinous. The arm he held up in self-defense was blown off at the elbow. Here again, forensic expert Joseph Scott Morgan. Chris Sr.'s arm was so just absolutely mangled that she stated that
Many of the major muscle groups were visible. You could see fractured bone, and she could not make heads or tails of at what point the bullet entered his arm and what point it exited. That's important for us because from a forensic standpoint, it seemed because that goes to the dynamics of what's happening at that moment. It's not like you're shooting at a fixed paper target at a gun range, okay? If Chris is rotated slightly to the left or to the right,
That could give you an indication that he had an awareness that he was being shot as opposed to straight on where he's staring down the muzzle of this weapon. Here again, James Pilcher. He would have bled to death from the shot in the arm. The shot to his stomach, he might have survived for several hours without treatment, but it would have caused sepsis and other things and it hit liver and all that. The shot to his chest hit his heart. He would have died within a couple of minutes.
And then of course there are the six shots to the head. And they said that four of the shots to the head were clearly he was already lying down and not moving. So these were just on top of everything else. They shot him while he was on the ground, just bang, bang, bang, bang. Lieutenant Ball was also the one to discover the Roden's marijuana grow operation. He describes it as, quote, extensive, taking up a garage, an outbuilding, and a semi-trailer.
He also discovered that the Roden's security cameras had been dismantled. Lieutenant Ball actually went outside after clearing the house because they didn't know if anybody was still around. They didn't know if somebody was still on the property killing anybody or armed or whatever. So after clearing the trailer,
The defense exploited the grow operation to suggest that the murders could have been cartel-related, a theory police have long dismissed.
At one time, there was speculation that a Mexican drug cartel may have been involved in the murders, but then Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said it was not a factor. The motive was a custody dispute over Jake Wagner and Hannah Roden's two-year-old daughter. It's obviously too early to surmise how this trial is skewing, but one glaring omission from the defense is this. George Wagner IV's attorneys have yet to offer up a clear, solid alibi for where George was on the night of the killings.
Again, James Pilcher.
They've been kind of vague on this point. They have not come out and said, and actually this was, they were about to say something along those lines in their opening, the defense's opening. And there was an immediate objection and they went back in the chambers five minutes into the defense's opening. You get a, you get a objection from the prosecution. It was really, really strange. And they kind of intimated that George stayed home and was asleep in his bed and he was going out and, uh,
And that's going to be the difficult thing for the defense, especially when you start seeing their funds were commingled. They even have them on recording.
telling his mother, I don't want to leave. We're all here together. This place is a moneymaker. This is after they moved to Alaska. I know I'm jumping ahead of myself. But there have been evidence produced since the first days of the trial that have indicated that George was still part of the family. He didn't want to leave like the defense has indicated in their opening statements. And the prosecution is specifically tailoring
Joseph Scott Morgan weighs in on the challenges the prosecution faces to place George at the scene of the crime.
regarding the planning, I think that he had an awareness, obviously. And for all I know, he was very well in the vehicle. You know, I mean, who am I to say? But to physically put him in the trailer with, for instance, with Chris and Gary that night when that hole was blown through the door or when that wood was splintered and sent into Chris Sr.'s face, you really think...
You know, was he there? You know, was he physically there while it was happening or when the bodies are being drugged from one room to the other? You know, which is really kind of an exclamation point in all of this because it goes to the kind of the ghastliness of it all. Here again, Stephanie and Jeff. At this stage, it seems that the main question is,
Was George Wagner there? And if he wasn't, was he a part of the planning? And if he was a part of the planning, is he equally culpable? It seems like what the defense will try to do is hammer away at this story and argue that, yes, he came from a bad family, but that doesn't make him a bad guy.
So as we learned last season, the opinion of George Wagner is a little mixed. Some people were shocked that he was involved with the murders and had a very hard time wrapping their head around it. And other people were not surprised and thought he was very much a part of the Wagner clan. And so I think it's just going to be fascinating to watch all of this play out in the courtroom. The prosecution has its vulnerabilities also.
Among the media pool, there is definitely a sense of questioning about the prosecution strategy and when are they all going to tie this together? When are they going to point to George being part of this conspiracy? Because none of the physical evidence presented so far, they're starting to get into some of the
Joseph Morgan theorizes about how the lack of DNA evidence will be a possible blockade in proving George IV was there the night of the slayings.
It's tough nowadays. You know, maybe 10 years ago it wouldn't have been tough, but we're in a brave new world. People have an expectation that, oh, they're going to get up here and talk about DNA. I've seen that on television. And you get up there and it's a big fail. You know, as far as the jury is concerned,
But just because you have an absence of something doesn't mean that something hasn't occurred. It's just that that's what many people expect, you know, that we can conjure up DNA. And you can't. It's either there or it's not. You know, and I think that that's significant. And it's also significant relative to fingerprints as well. Let's stop here for another break.
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With eight bodies and four suspects, this is a case with a dizzying number of moving pieces.
And there's a real risk of the jury being confused, allowing reasonable doubt to seep in. Here's law and crimes legal analyst Terry Austin.
The more complicated, the better for the defense. The most complicating part of this case is keeping track of the names and the relationships. I mean, we know already that there are eight victims, four defendants, four different crime scenes, and all of those individuals have people who were involved in terms of finding those individuals who were killed. And so
So the biggest issue for the prosecution is going to keep everything straight. You want that jury to follow your story. In the case of prosecution trying to pursue the claims against George, it's going to be difficult to establish that motive. They have evidence against, you know, obviously Jake, against Angela, but I think it might be difficult. And all you have to do, as you know, is have one juror who has reasonable doubt and doesn't want to convict.
So we'll see what happens. But I think there could be some doubt in the case against George here. And remember, this is a jury of his peers that's rooted within our founding documents. And his peers consist of those that live in that small slice of the world up there that they see each other day to day, you know, Walmart and the cafe and everywhere else that they go up there.
they see one another and they know one another. They raise their hand to one another as they're driving down the road and wave, you know, and that sort of thing. It's that kind of community. And I previously said, and I'll continue to say, that the level of brutality that is involved in the Piketon Massacre
in the murders of the Rodin family. Again, it is something that is going to live in infamy in this corner of the world. It's the type of thing that 100 years from now, kids will sit around campfires and they will tell horror stories about. This is what we're dealing with in that world. And so it's on the shoulders of this jury.
to weigh the evidence and decide, you know, is somebody going to be made to pay? But they've got a hard decision, I think. And it's still coming. They're not there yet, but they will have a hard decision to make about George. So look at it this way. TV has 60 minutes, maybe two hours, if you're a movie, to tell a story about a trial.
You can only fit so much evidence, you can only fit so much dramatic moments into that. But when you're dealing with the actual rule of law and how you can introduce evidence and what kind of questions you can ask and all of those things, all that stuff you see on TV is out the door. So what we're seeing is the very slow, incremental process of justice and the law in this case.
As day four wrapped up in the face of all the brutal evidence, presiding judge Randy Deering took a moment to remind the jury of their weighty responsibilities. You're not to permit this case to be discussed with you or in your presence.
Even though many witnesses are opting out of being recorded, the KT Studios team and experts are there. In the coming weeks, the pieces of a devastating and complicated puzzle will finally come together once and for all.
I would say they were trying to shock the jury at this point with the violence of it for sure because they showed the pictures of people dead in their beds or on the floor or pulled into beds time and time and time again. I can't imagine. Can you even put it into words what it was like? Worst nightmare? Living in hell really?
I was trying to get a hold of my father and I wasn't able to reach him to let him know that his brother and his niece and nephews and stuff's been killed. Luke said their dad, Billy Wagner, once threatened violence against his dad and his uncle, Chris Roden Sr. Luke said that while his dad and uncle were doing a good deed for Billy Wagner, Billy told Luke that a dust up between the three of them would not end well. Mark my words. This case is about to blow wide open.
More on that next time. For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kt underscore studios. The Pyton Massacre is produced by Stephanie Lidecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Graves, Alan Weider, Andrew Arnau, and me, Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design by Jeff Twa.
Music by Jared Aston. The Pikedon Massacre is a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
MITRE's mission is to solve problems for a safer world. If you have a passion for applied cybersecurity with skills in infrastructure threat intelligence, deterrence technologies, advisal threat emulation, or intelligence analysis, explore the many challenging and fulfilling career opportunities at MITRE.org slash careers. That's M-I-T-R-E dot org slash careers.
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