Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: SHOCKING SENTENCE - Possible Parole for Architect of Piketon Massacre 

Episode Date: January 12, 2025

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This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. Close your eyes for a second. And as you close your eyes, think about being in a dark room with only your smartphone. You know what I'm talking about. I know we're all guilty of it, even though they say we're not supposed to do it, laying there in bed in the darkness. And that glow, it illuminates

your face. As a matter of fact, sometimes Kim will roll over and say, honey, put the phone down, go to sleep. But just for a moment, imagine laying in a totally darkened bedroom. And that glow seeps out and illuminates only that small part of your face. It illuminates it to the point where the killer that has just walked into your room is able to make the statement, she looked up and made a gasping noise. Then I shot her. That comes from the lips of Jake Wagner. As he shot, Dana wrote, while she was in her bed, having worked an entire day as a

nursing assistant. And her newborn grandbaby is right down the hall along with her daughter that has just been murdered and along with her 16-year-old son that has just been murdered as well. Let that sink in, because today we're going to talk about the quote-unquote punishment that the Wagner family has been given. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. As old preachers like to say, Dave, brothers and sisters, I come to you today with a heavy heart. I got to tell you, I couldn't believe my ears. I really couldn't believe my ears.

I really couldn't. When I found out about the sentencing, two of my friends, Gigi from Pretty Little Lies and Alibis, and my friend Anjanette Levy from Law and Crime Network, were covering the sentencing of the Wagners in real time yesterday. I've used this term before. Most Americans don't understand what it means, but the British have a term that I love. Mac, where, you know, you have this expectation of this culmination of all of this work that has gone into discovery, investigation, presentation of a case. And Dave, it has drug on for years, since 2016, and this is what you wind up with. One year for every life that was taken that night. One year for all eight of those individuals that were systematically executed in their own homes in four locations in one night, and this is what you give us?

I'm still dumbfounded by the structure of the sentencing that was meted out by the judge, Judge Hine, up there in Ohio. And I still don't fully understand, do I appreciate, uh, the, the depth and breadth. Maybe he sees something and he knows something that I don't know. Um, I don't know. I know that yesterday when I called you, because you and I have covered the Pikeman massacre for so long, um, I could hear you almost draw a breath on the other end of the line.

And you were like, you're joking. You're kidding me. This is what happened. I missed it when I was working on something else. And I just I missed the sentencing because Billy Wagner still hasn't gone through the process yet. And I really wondered why they wouldn't just wait until they've got all the convictions or what have you, you know, go through the adjud and lay out some sentencing. And when you told me what it was, it was horrific. The Pike Town or Piketon Massacre. It's called the Pike County Murders, Piketon Massacre and a few other things.

There have been dozens of podcasts, true crime podcasts. There have been television shows, documentaries, because as you mentioned, Joe, four locations, one night. And it is a story of two families, the Wagners and the Rodens, Jake Wagner and Hannah Roden. Now, Jake Wagner is who we're actually really talking about today, along with his mother, who was the the queen of planning? Yeah. You know, Metallica's got a great song that everybody knows out there. You hear bands play it all over the place called Puppet Master. And yeah, that's the thing here.

You know, I think I don't want to get too far off into religion i think people view satan as a puppet master i submit to you that it's it's people that have this kind of evil in their heart where they can find it very easy to dismiss the pain and suffering of others and still drive on with this plan this ultimate plan plan. And Angela Wagner is the person, in fact, that was behind the planning. She drew the roadmap for it. And here's another aside that I think that we're maybe forgetting here. Her mother was involved in this as well, Rita Newcomb, and she was sentenced yesterday as well. And guess what she was sentenced to?

Nothing. Misdemeanor obstruction. I think she has to pay like a $500 fine. Actually, it's $750, Joe. Oh, I'm sorry. Forgive me. It's $750. I don't know what kind of recompense exists there in. However, I am I'm still, you know, that's emblematic, I think, of what went trial. His trial is being moved. And look, I'm no fan of Billy Wagner. And the death penalty for him is off the table.

We just found out, and we haven't done an episode since then, I don't think, about Paikton. But the death penalty has come off the table for Billy. Now, I don't think that they're going to make him the scapegoat and all this. There's too much evidence that points back to this kind of confederacy that was going on. And Billy, I don't know. I mean, Billy is innocent until proven guilty, but he's kind of adult, if you will. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed and easily, easily driven. And he's driven. You ever been around somebody, Dave, that you knew that,

I'm not saying you would ever do this, but I'm just saying you knew that if you could make somebody angry enough, you knew which buttons to press, they're easier to control because their anger becomes predictable many times. And there's people that are highly skilled at doing that. I think that that's probably what Angela did with Billy. You know, her son, Jake, is no fool. I mean, he, you know, he's relatively articulate when he, you know, when he goes to speak. He's the one, he's kind of the linchpin in this whole case that, you know, held forth on the, you know, actually what went down that night. He talked about it in great detail and rendered a confession, you know, and it was based upon, okay, the death penalty is off the table for you guys. And a lot of people forget this, but you have to confess. And if anybody refuses to roll over on this, then we're going to reevaluate the death penalty.

It'll be back. I got to tell you, Dave, I'm not a huge fan of the death penalty. You and I have had this discussion off air. But there are certain cases, there are certain cases where particularly when great planning goes into them, that element of premeditation. And I know Nancy's kind of fallback position is always, well, premeditation can be formed in the twinkling of an eye. She loves to say that. And I understand why she says it, but we're talking about a premeditative event involving a multiple homicide that took a very long time to be planned, Dave. And I beg you, please explain to me how this does not qualify for the death penalty. I just don't understand it. It doesn't make sense to me how this does not qualify for the death penalty. I just don't understand it.

It doesn't make sense to me. And look, if you want to stuff them away and throw them in a cell and forget that they ever existed, I guess that's fine. But even that didn't happen in this case, Dave. That's the shocking reality, Joe. For those of you who are not that familiar, just to give you an overview, this actually is a story of two families, the Wagners and the Rodens. Jake Wagner and Hannah Roden began dating when Hannah was 13 and Jake was 18. Now, most of us know that a 13-year-old is underage.

An 18-year- old is an adult. So when a 13 year old and an 18 year old are dating, even if the parents approve, there are still some illegal activities taking place. If the couple has sex, I'm just throwing that out there to tell you. Wait, hang on. Yeah. Remember what you've always told me? 13 year old is not capable of having sex or they're raped. That's it. They're raped. Yep.

You're right. Go ahead. That's some of the most, that's, when you told me that statement, I don't know how long ago, that was one of those epiphanal moments for me because I'd never viewed it that way. And I know I probably deep down in my heart, but you explained it in such an earnest way to me. It really, you know, scales kind of fell off my eyes at that point. It's crazy. But the reality is, if you're not of age, then if you're not capable in the eyes of the law of making a consensual decision when it comes to sexual relations, then you cannot have sex. You cannot make love. You can only be raped. So and by the way, that works for males and females when you're dealing with boys being raped by teachers in school.

Yeah. So back to this. Hannah's 13. Jake is 18. Hannah becomes pregnant with Jake's baby when she's allegedly 15. Baby Sophia is born and both families loved her. Those who knew Jake Wagner and Hannah Roden said that Jake Wagner was very controlling and had been verbally and physically abusive to Hannah. Hannah Roden broke up with Jake Wagner, and they both dated other people. Hannah had a child with another man,

and Jake Wagner married another woman briefly. The Wagner family wanted custody of Sophia and accused Hannah Roden of dating men that might sexually assault Sophia. There was no proof that this was the case, but it fueled the rage in the Wagners towards Hannah Roden. When the Wagners tried to force Hannah Roden to sign papers to turn custody of Sophia over to Jake Wagner, she refused and posted a message on Facebook that she would, quote, never sign papers ever, unquote. They'll or no, let me back up. That's not the full quote.

Quote, never sign papers ever. They will have to kill me first. Unquote. Never. She would never sign papers. They would have to kill me first. That apparently is when the Wagner family decided to kill Hannah Roden, as well as her relatives, so that custody would fall to them. Because you see, if Hannah Roden is dead, well, her mom, dad, any other relatives could lay claim to being a custodial parent. But if the entire family is obliterated, the only people you have left left is the paternal side of the family.

And that would be Jake Wagner and his family. Jake Wagner allegedly, allegedly began that relationship with Hannah at 13. I only am putting that out there because I believe that is very important when you look at everything that goes into this case, that from its very basis, that whenever I see a young man consistently dating younger girls that are, I'm not talking about pedophilia here. I'm talking about younger girls who are. Right. It's a control issue. I think it is.

It's like the, you know, I think back to my high school years. And believe it or not, I don't know if you got to do this, but in my high school, we actually got to go into the front lawn of the school at lunchtime and eat outside. Can you imagine them doing that today? Dude, when I was in high school, we got to leave. Leave, yeah. Yeah, there were those among us that could, but this was one of the things that was always so creepy to me. There would be guys that would cruise around the campus that had graduated from high school like five and six years earlier that would be in their cars circling the perimeter of

the high school. And they would park like up in the senior parking lot. And of course, you know, they've got a little money now. They've got these nice cars. And the girls would go and speak to them out there. And you're thinking, why are you here? Why aren't you off, you know, working on a trade or learning something? What could a 25-year-old man have in common with a 16-year-old girl?

Yeah, I know. And now you look at this age disparity with Jake and Hannah, and you think about a 13-year-old is so easily manipulated. A 13-year-old is easily, Dave, intimidated. And a lot of this whole, the driver behind all this is intimidation. I've thought about this before, and I wanted to throw this out to you. How does this child who has now, and she's gotten a little bit older, you know, with the birth of the baby, she's still a child in my eyes. How does she muster up the intestinal fortitude to say no? To say no, I know. As a matter of fact, she'll go one better.

She says, what was it you said? What was your the quote? You'll have to kill me. I don't know that I ever recall hearing those words stated by somebody so young. I know that when I was that age, I don't know that I would have ever said that. I probably would have knuckled under. However, I can tell you this, Hannah died that night as her baby still suckled at her breast. Because Jake, after he killed her, said he didn't want the baby to starve. So adjacent to her lifeless body, he placed that newborn child so that that child could suckle during the night. I can't measure the depths of it, Dave. When our kids were little, we, my wife and I, Kim, we tried to get them to stop saying the word sorry.

I'm sorry. connotations to it, but it seemed many times inappropriate or it lacked some measure of remorse, if you will. Because you can say, I'm sorry, and it just kind of water off a duck's back. You know, if they've done something horrible, I want them to be able to explain to me because it's about learning, you know, what have you learned from this decision that you made? I don't like saying, you know, it was a mistake. You know, a mistake is like I left my keys in the car or I locked my keys in the car. It's not a mistake. There's a word, though, that I love, Dave, and the root of the word is actually contrite.

But I love the term contrition because when you say that you are contrite, that you will go and you will make a statement where you actually throw yourself down and say, I'm so sorry for what I've done. You throw yourself at the feet of the court. You throw yourself at the feet of the family members. You express some kind of remorse for what you've done. That's true recognition, I think, at least. You might disagree. I don't know. But for me, there's something about contrition, being willing to do that. You know, the old idea, the rending of clothing and, you know, wearing sackcloth and ashes and, you know, really submitting yourself to the idea that you know that you've done great harm dave that does not exist in this brother not even a little bit joe this was a total plan from the beginning to massacre and wipe out

another family with the express purpose of getting a grandchild getting a child, you know, away from another family. This is at its base out now murder to attain something that you wouldn't share because they didn't like what was going on. Look, if you've ever had a child dating another person, you know, when they're of age and they're dating and you don't like the person they're dating or you don't like what happens afterwards, or if you've ever had a child that was going through a divorce and there are children involved your heart breaks for everybody and oftentimes the couple at in the moment they're going through the breakup they fight over everything from shoelaces to children it's just the way things are and i get that this is a lot different going back to her statement hannah talking about Hannah for a moment, when she said, I'm never signing any papers.

She didn't say, Jake will have to kill me. She said, they will have to kill me. This was an entire family that she knew she was up against. And she also was stating it for herself, but laying it out there that her family because these families knew one another they were close there was not we're not we're talking hatfields mccoys romeo and juliet the families knew each other yeah you know but there's not like the the population sample is not you don't have a lot to sample from because it's so um and i think over the years the population has contracted in that area greatly.

You know, people have gone on to try to find other jobs. I've been up there several times. And I got to tell you, I'm glad I went up there because I'd never, I've been to Appalachia before. I've lived in Appalachia. I've never been to that part of our country. And I came away just thinking, oh, my gosh, it's beautiful. It's like a combination of let me see it's kind of like a combination so that i can describe it to you if if anyone has ever seen

the the first uh the first iteration of lord of the rings that that movie where they uh portray where the hobbits live, the Shire, rolling bucolic hills. There's agriculture that's going on, but it's just those rolling hills. It's like a combination of bluegrass country in Kentucky where the horses all are. And then, you know, you're right in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It is absolutely exquisite. You know, it's like, okay, I could have a home here, but if you have a home there, what the heck are you going to do for a job? Cause there's not, there's not. And actually when, when I was up there, Dave, and you know, as you well know, I've been on the podcast, the Pike and Massacre podcast, and as well as the, the oxygen,

the oxygen television series about, about these events, one of the things that really struck me was a comment that one of the locals made to us. They said that now in this area, it's made up more of people that are at retirement age, that it's like a retirement area to, you know, that people will seek out. And we saw evidence of that. Some of the developments that have been built, but, you know, for the people that are there, the salt of the earth, you know,

as they say, the common clay that occupy that space and have occupied it for generations, it was a hand-to-mouth existence in that environment. And so these two families knew each other. They went to church together. They did farmer's markets where they would see one another. There's even some indication that, you know, that both families were aware of illegal weed operations, grow operations that both were engaged in. That's a that's a big issue. Both. Yeah. It was unless you could if you're going to rat on somebody, you're talking about mutual destruction. And that's why, you know, we know what you're doing. You know what we're doing. Everybody shut up. OK. Yeah. But, you know, you mentioned they did know one another.

These families were connected by geography, by relationships. What we found out in court documents later on, the Rodin family said the Wagners were trying to force Hannah into signing over the parental rights of her, of Sophia, who was not a baby. Then she was about three at the time. I think she was a toddler because Hannah had moved on. Jake, you know, we mentioned earlier that while Jake and Hannah broke up, Hannah was the one that broke up with Jake. And it was Hannah who had the child with Jake, but she realized he's a controlling, immature jerk with no future. So I'm kicking him to the curb and she ends up having a child with another person. Jake, meanwhile, starts a relationship with another woman who also kicks him to the curb because he's a controlling, jealous, horrible person with no future. So it's like once Hannah put Jake on the road,

Jake, regardless of what relationship status he had with anybody else, began threatening Hannah about their child together, about Sophia. And once Hannah had the other baby, it was like, well, you've got that one. Let me have Sophia. And his family apparently felt the same way. The Wagners were's like right she she's got a baby with somebody else now let us have let us have jake's baby you know you don't need it and when she wouldn't do it and said hey you want it they will have to kill me well they are the wagner's and that's exactly what they did four locations in one night joe who was the person behind putting all this

together? This is a big undertaking. Four different locations in the middle of the night. You can't see what's going on. You have to plan something like this. And somebody actually thought to say, hey, we're going to do this. We need to make sure that we don't leave any, uh, any trace, anything behind. Yeah. And one of those is footprints. Don't leave any footprints that can be tracked back to you. So what did she do, Joe? Well, we're talking about, obviously we're talking about Angela and, uh, I'll say this, very briefly. Jake is vacuous. He's an empty he's an empty suit, if you will. You know, any any manifestation of anger and all those sorts of things.

I know you're supposed to take personal responsibility, but I'm telling you that that's projected from Angela through him. Just like the just like the husband, I think now. Wow. Yeah, that's what I think. I think, uh, now. Wow. Yeah. That's what I think. I think that it all stems from her. That makes so much sense. She is that root, if you will.

She's that concentric point in this and kind of radiates. Now I will tell you. She's the puppet master. Yeah. She is the puppet master. Now, I think that Jake, over probably being rather contemplative now, having been seated in this jail cell for some time, he began having some original thoughts of his own. agreed along with his mother to roll over on all this, to provide testimony against his brother, who has now since been convicted and is serving time. And of course, they have agreed to testify against Billy, the dad. Just imagine this dynamic. But going back to Angela and just with the shoes alone, this is how much she had thought this out. And this goes to remember what I'd mentioned just a moment ago about forming premeditation. She saw she had the ability to think at least outside of the box and began to think about, well, I wonder what are some of the forensic considerations here? Well, I know that what might happen that night is that if they go in there,

they're going to walk through the dirt outside the trailer, which I have stepped foot on the same surfaces, and it is dirty. You could leave impressions in the soil. We know that killing is going to take place. So if they track in blood or track blood out, then it's going to be on soles of their feet. So I know what I'll do. I'm going to run over to Walmart and I'm going to pick up several pairs of shoes, brand new shoes, so that they're not worn in any particular way.

You can't, that's going to throw them off scent relative to the principle that we talked about in forensics called individualization. You know, how we walk, pronate, supinate, all those sorts of things, because there won't be any established wear pattern. That gives you an insight, I think, into the workings of her mind. And of course, she's got, you know, she's surrounded by her guys in the family. And Lord only knows what else, you know, her mother was involved in relative to all of this, this Rita and maybe some other peripheral actors as well that I don't feel real comfortable going into at this point. But we'll we'll just say that Angela is that she's that linchpin.

She's that, that point right there that everything hinges on because she's the one that wanted Sophia. I'm not saying that Jake didn't, but she wanted Sophia because she could mold and craft Sophia in her own image and direct her and all these sorts of things. And as it turns out, she'd been doing this with the whole family for years and years. And I will tell you this,

and I've made the statement over and over again on the record. And the one thing that was a big tell to me, Dave, that I came up with, that I came away from with the Wagner case was the comment that had been made about Angela and her interaction with her husband, Billy. Billy, again, fierce anger. He never knew when he was going to go off. Big hulking man. And when I say big and hulking, guys, I'm telling you, my friends out there, please go take a look at this guy. He's massive. He's like 6'8". He looks like the stuff of nightmares when you see him. He would blow up at any given time, but he knew in his mind that his wife loved baskets, and he would go and he would purchase a basket every time they would get into a fight, a tête-à-tête, if you will.

And it is said that when you walked into their family home, there on that beautiful piece of land that they had, it looked like an old Victorian-style farm home, you go into her kitchen, the walls are covered with baskets that she had hung almost as if to memorialize every little conquest that sentencing, in any kind of case, but sentencing is almost like when you're negotiating these things, it's almost like negotiating to purchase a brand new car. What do I have to do to put you in this car today?

It doesn't work like that. You have guidelines that you have to adhere to. the sentencing of Rita's kind of, Rita Newcomb is kind of secondary, but she's emblematic of something. I think, you know, in this case that it's, you know, that she's part and parcel, perhaps of a bigger conspiracy. And, but yet she's given the $750 fine.

But what Angela and Jake got is a real slap in the face, I think, to the remnant of the Roden family. And not just that remnant, but the children that are left behind. You know, it's possible, Dave. It's certainly possible in Angela's case, because if I'm not mistaken, she was originally told that she was going to serve 30 years. She gets to court and it winds up being 26. And the judge said, well, we'll give you credit for time served. And what, you know, six years, time served. So she's got to do 20 years and she's out.

So she's still going to be out and about in Sophia's life. Just let that sink in just for a second. Now, when Sophia gets old enough, it's going to be up to her as to whether or not she wants to have contact with, you know, her paternal grandparent or not. But she, Sophia is going to bear this burden. And I haven't even mentioned the other children, you know, Hannah's newborn that was covered in bed. I forgot about that. Yeah. She was covered in blood and that's the one, that little baby that she had just given birth to. That was the,

you mentioned in the beginning, Jake Wagner actually placing the baby at her breast. So the baby could feed he she's dead, but he didn't want the baby to starve. So he put the baby could feed. She's dead, but he didn't want the baby to starve. So he put the baby right there. So she could suckle. And then you've got two other kids as well. You know, you've got these two children who, one, infamously came to the door on the morning of, Frankie Roden's trailer, the finder, who's actually the sister-in-law, former sister-in-law of Mr. Roden, knocked on the door.

And the three, four-year-old was sleeping on the sofa and came to the door and said, Mommy and Daddy are playing zombie. And again, you had another small child that was laying, an infant that was laying in between the two bodies. And again, that child was covered in blood as well. What about those kids? What about those kids? And then if you expand this out, and look, I could go on forever. It's almost geometric, I think, the way it kind of expands out, you have all of the other family members, the cousins, the aunts and the uncles, and all those people that occupy that beautiful area of the country

up there. And then you have the community at large. This is, this is something that has scarred this place. I mean, there are not too many places that can say, yeah, we had an octuple, forgive me, an octuple homicide on one night in four locations. We had an entire family that was wiped out. We're talking about a significant portion of that familial line, that genetic line. Just think about that. And, you know, I could wax philosophical here and talk about all the, you know, the people that had been wiped out as a result of this killing,

but it has impacted. And yet this is the best you can do when it comes to sentencing. This is how they're going to have to spend their time paying for what they did. I don't know. It's, it feels to me as if they've come up short, Dave. I think that is beyond shocking that such a massacre could be thought up and carried out. When all I could think of was the Charlie Manson case. You know, Manson's argument was I wasn't there. Right. You know, I didn't do it I wasn't there. Right. You know,

I didn't do it. These people did it on their own. And Manson was in our lifetime convicted of murder, even though he didn't do the murder himself. In this particular case, Angela Wagner was the mastermind. She had everything. I keep going back to the shoes. The shoes just really strikes me because that is really thinking out all of the possibilities that could happen to tie you back to this. I don't know anybody else that would, that's not in police investigations and things that would even think about shoes. I certainly didn't until this case, even consider it, Joe. Yeah. And there's so many, yeah. And there's so many little bizarre things that come up in this case forensically, I think.

And you just think about the weapons. There was kind of a half-hearted attempt, I guess you could say, to chop these weapons up, bury them in concrete, and use them as anchors for a goose box out in the middle of a little pond. You're not getting much separation between yourself and the evidence at that point in time because access and ability, you know, if you're going to search someplace, oh, where did that goose box come from? Oh, yeah, we created it for our grandmother. Yeah, it's new. Well, you know, all it took was Jake to roll over on it and said, yeah, that's where they are.

Now, I'm not saying they ever would have found those, but that goes to prep. You've got a suppressor that was used in this case. It would seem as though every, I guess, every possibility was considered. It happened in 2016. They don't get arrested for months and months later. So, and you had the police chasing their tail, not really chasing their tails. That's, that's, I shouldn't say that. They were, they were trying to exhaust every potential, every potentiality because, you know, the big thing, and you and I have talked about this on a previous episode,

the, you know, the, you know, they thought the drug cartel was involved in this. Right. At first, yeah. At first, they did. And it was because of the death. It was because of the murders, because of how they were carried out in one night in four different locations and how thorough the massacre was. And there was weed being grown and there were rumors and things like that. It makes sense that they would have to go through that.

But the one key, I think, Dave, to all this is it has been alleged, and I have no experience with this sort of thing, but it has been alleged that if this, in fact, had been a cartel hit, perhaps those babies would not have survived. Right. They would have been killed. They would have killed every living creature in there. So that tells you something about the individuals that were involved in this. So you're talking about that there's somebody that's capable of mercy in this. What why did they spare the children? I think is the geographic kind of distribution of these killings. Three of the scenes were immediately adjacent to one another. I think the greatest distance was between Dana's house and Mr. Roden Sr.'s house. It felt as though when I was out there that I could have set up a tireless one and take my driver out and drive a ball to her house from his front yard.

I might fall short, but that's how close these were. Now, Kenneth, the other brother, he's found in his own trailer house. It's almost seven miles away. It was like a camper trailer. It was. But, you know, he had built a little porch. He was a single dad. He didn't require much.

He worked. He was a day laborer. And he had his own personal stash of weed that he was growing for his own personal consumption. It's like a couple of plants, you know. But yet they went out to kill him as well. And I don't, you know, it's hard to take the measure of it. And I know that I always say that, but hard to take the measure of these horrific things that we try to describe on body bags. But I think about this and I think, you know, just understanding the the links that the Wagners went to in this case. And this is the best you're going to do. And after all the years they spent, they being the Wagners, you know, they actually went to Alaska and set up shop there for a little while.

And while they were there, another woman involved with Jake Wagner had to get away from him. You know, didn't she escape from his car on the middle of the road? Yeah. Well, she winds up in a parking lot. Right. And she but she told the tale that she she was expected to give over all of her passwords for email, all her social media. And that all gets where it had to go. Had to go to Angela. Unbelievable.

So she could keep track of it. So we're developing a thread here that we can see along the way. I missed that, Joe. I missed that. I remember you telling me that it didn't hit me until right now that it went to Angela and not Jake. Yeah, I know. And I think that, you know, the message was passed along vis-a-vis Jake. You need to do what we say to do or you're going to die.

And that was like, again, one of those horrific epiphanal moments, if you will, that that young lady had. And she's like, I got to get out of this. Have I taken leave of my senses? What am I involved in? That never hit me till right now, Joe. Yeah. And again, you can't just appreciate if you go to a museum, you know, and you're looking at a beautiful mural that's hanging on the wall. You can't just look at the center of it. You have to

look at everything and to contextualize everything, to take it in and understand, you know, what the artist is trying to get across. In this case, Angela was certainly she was a master of manipulation. I'd have to say that planning and apparently a master negotiator, too. Yeah. Here's what we get for sentencing, Joe. You've got the woman who planned everything and then pushed and prodded her entire male family members to go out and do this heinous massacre. The guy who started it all, Jake, also, by the way, rolling over on your family. Jake was the leader of the pack there along with Angela.

They both negotiated very complicated deals. And I'm guessing that Angela probably was the one negotiating because these are very complex deals that were done to take the leader of the pack and the guy who originates everything. And they get a deal that is beyond comprehension, Joe. How much? What were they sentenced to? What are we looking at for Jake and Angela? Yeah, well, I mentioned Angela earlier. Her sentence will be done in 20 years but with jake um he's got the

possibility of parole in 30 he's a young man so he's he's still got he's still got life to live you know at this point and there was an interesting reaction on his part um you, there was like obvious surprise. There's a still shot of him that I saw in local news. And you can see it's like he didn't expect that coming. So how do we make sense out of what the judge's decision is? The one thing that I've heard about Judge Hine is that he does not like to sentence anybody to any punishment that involves no possibility of parole. And so, if that's going to be your blanket statement as a jurist, I would think that, I don't know, I would question that because what you're saying is that one of the cures, because you look at sentencing, Dave, sentencing is not just for the punishment of the individuals that have committed a crime. It's it's you're setting an example. It is a remedy for crimes.

So, you know, who else is going to be motivated to perhaps do something that is equally as dastardly as as what the Wagners participated in that night? And now you've you've set a precedent here. It's okay, Dave, to go out and commit what has been stated the worst mass homicide in the history, just state of Ohio. And there's a chance you're going to be breathing free air at some point in time with the sun shining down on your face. Holding hands, walking down the beach with your daughter. Yeah, exactly. And it's a terrifying prospect to me. You know, there's going to be sun that will be shining.

It'll be shining on all of the graves of the Rodin family. And little flowers will pop up and maybe people will go out and take care of those graves. Maybe people will look back and they will grieve, you know, the empty chair at Thanksgiving and Christmas. But you can't bring them back. They're not going to get a second chance at life. But for Angela and Jake, they will. It might not be much of a life inside of those cold stone walls, but they're not dead in a graveyard somewhere.

They're still living. And they've still got hope. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.