Crime Weekly - S3 Ep184: Piketon Massacre: The Rhoden Family (Part 1)

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Piketon is a small town in Southern Ohio, 90 miles east of Cincinnati with a population of just over 2000 people. It’s a salt-of-the-earth type of place, nestled in the heart of Appalachia, where many families can trace their lineage back generations. Everyone knows everyone, no one is a stranger, and when someone is in need all they have to do is turn to their neighbor. Bad things happen everywhere, even in small, tight-knit towns, but in April of 2016 something happened that no one had ever seen before, and it shook them to their core. Eight members of one family, in four separate locations, all murdered execution-style at the same time; it was a crime that most people only experience through movies, but the members of this quiet, hardworking town would soon find themselves thrust into the national spotlight, unwillingly living through a real life murder mystery and mourning a family who had been a fixture in the community. Use code CRIMEWEEKLY at www.CrimeCon.com for a discount on your CrimeCon 2024 Nashville tickets! Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. FactorMeals.com/CrimeWeekly50 - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY50 to get 50% off! 2. Prose.com/CrimeWeekly - Get your FREE in-depth hair consultation, 50% off your first subscription order, and 15% off + FREE shipping for EVERY subscription order after that! 3. Smalls.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 50% off your first order plus FREE shipping! 4. EatIQBAR.com - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% ALL IQBAR products and FREE shipping! 5. SimpliSafe.com/CrimeWeekly - Get 20% off any new SimpliSafe system with Fast Protect Monitoring! 

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apply. Pikedon is a small town in southern Ohio, 90 miles east of Cincinnati, with a population of just over 2,000 people. It's a salt-of-the-earth type of place, nestled in the heart of Appalachia, where families can trace their lineage back generations. Everyone knows everyone. No one is a stranger. And when someone is in need, all they have to do is turn to their neighbor. Bad things happen everywhere, even in small, tight-knit towns. But in April of 2016, something happened that no one had ever seen before, and it shook them to their core. Police in southern Ohio have a dragnet out for a killer who executed eight members of one family. The motive for the killings remains unclear tonight,

but the Rodin family was clearly targeted. Eight of them killed execution style. It occurred during the night. We have victims who are in bed. The one mom apparently was killed in her bed with the four-day-old right there. They've executed five search warrants, four of those being in the crime scenes there on Union Hill Road. I spoke with the family. It's very evident that they were a target of this horrible crime. A rural town in terror after seven adults and one teenager all shot execution style. The first three homes where the bodies were found are within a couple of miles of one another on a sparsely populated stretch of road. While the eighth body, a man was found in a house within 30 miles. I do not intend to give out one piece of information that in any way will endanger the prosecution of this case or in any way will slow down what our job is.

We're very early in this. We have multiple crime scenes, very horrific crime scene here. So I am not going to rule out the fact that we do not have someone or someones that's out armed and dangerous. Eight members of one family in four separate locations all murdered execution style at roughly the same time. It was a crime that most people only experienced through movies. But the members of this quiet, hardworking town would soon find themselves thrust into the national spotlight, unwillingly living through a real-life murder mystery and mourning a family who had been a fixture in their community. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So I hope that you have your notebook ready for this case.

It's going to be a multi-parter deep dive case into the Rodin family massacre that happened in April of 2016. This case is very intensive. There's a lot of people involved. There's a lot of peripheral people involved as well that are going to be pulled in. There's a lot of crime scene information, ballistics, blood spatter, DNA. It's a very, very, very intriguing, but yet complicated case. And this case has been recommended by so many people for us to do. So many people have requested it. I actually started looking into the Rodin family massacre right when we started Crime Weekly. So I think around that same month that we actually put out our first episode, I was writing down cases that I wanted to do for Crime Weekly in the future, and this was one of them. And I started researching it, and then I realized how

intensive it was and how deep it went. And at that point, we weren't doing eight, nine, 10-part series. We weren't even really doing multi-parts at all. Because remember we did, I think we did the Watts family case in one episode at that point, because we were still doing single cases and single episodes. Still regret that one, by the way. Yeah. I cringe every time I hear about that case. That was our first episode. That was when we were working under a different set of circumstances where we were trying to do one episode cases. And we were trying to fulfill the needs of others that we were trying to do one episode cases and we were trying to fulfill the

the the needs of of others that we were working for yeah and yeah but now we can do our own thing and now i said we're like now we ain't doing that no more now we're like we're just gonna go ham and do as many parts as possible but 20 part series i know i know people are like oh we don't like the long series but most people say they do most people say they actually do prefer that and they enjoy it and i prefer it and enjoy it and And this case calls for it. Yeah. We will mix in a couple of short ones here and there. I'll do a short one next. Yeah. We'll mix in one. It might be one or two episodes if it weren't. We're not going to not cover a case because it's short. Not one. Two at the least. Oh, Stephanie. Because we do Crime Weekly News. That's like our one. Yeah, that's our one.

Overall, we let the cases dictate how long they are. We don't we don't put a that's why some people like how long how many parts is this going to be? In most cases, we don't know. So it all depends on how much dialogue we get into. Sometimes we go off. But I think that's what's great about podcasting is you guys have the opportunity to go where you want to go, whatever you enjoy. Some people don't like the long form. We're not necessarily going to cater to that. We have to do what we enjoy doing. Otherwise we would get burnt out and we wouldn't do it. So that's, you know, there's different strokes for different folks. We may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think for the most part, especially, and I know I said it last episode, especially after the feedback from Dan Markell's series, you guys really embraced that one.

And I felt like we got back to the roots of Crime Weekly and really just went for it. And it came out great as far as how we produced that episode and how it ultimately ended up. The way I look at it is it's like a college intensive course on one case. So when you leave our retelling of each case, you'll pretty much know a lot about it. You'll know this case. You can talk about it extensively with anybody who you want to chat about it with. And there's going to be a lot about the case that you know. And so we're not here to just retell a story for entertainment purposes.

We're here to tell what happened and hopefully learn something for it and pick it apart and put the puzzle together in the way that honestly a law enforcement agency would do it. You know, we're trying to look at each piece of evidence. We don't want to just sit here and be like, oh, they were murdered and tell you all the gory details and then not really give you any context to humanize these people. We're here to actually, and this is a very sad case because we have eight people in one family just wiped out in one night. Yeah. On the surface, just listening to the trailer, sounds like a collaborative effort by one or more people. So we'll get into it and we'll see where it goes. So on the morning of April 22nd, 2016, 36-year-old Bobby Joe Manley went about her typical weekday routine. She got up at 6 a.m., she woke up her 15-year-old daughter for school, got the daughter on the bus by 7 a.m., and then she headed over to the Union

Hill Road home of her brother-in-law, Christopher Roden Sr., to feed his dogs and chickens. Now, Christopher Roden had been married to Bobby's sister, Dana. And although Dana and Chris had gotten a divorce in 2007, they shared three children together and they were all still very close. When Bobby Joe arrived, she was, you know, on autopilot like we all are when we do something that's become a habit. And she left her cell phone charging in her car as she approached the front door of the trailer. Bobby Joe went for the door handle, but she was surprised when she found it locked. Chris Sr. was usually up and about by then. He usually unlocked the door for her because he knew she was coming, but it was locked this morning. And she also found it odd that Roden's two dogs were outside on the porch because they were usually inside with their owner. Bobbie Jo let herself into the trailer with the key that Chris Sr. had given her,

and she walked into something she never expected. A trail of blood in the front room led her to a back bedroom, where she found the bodies of 40-year-old Christopher Roden Sr. and his cousin, 37-year-old Gary Roden. There was blood everywhere. In a panic, Bobbie Jo fled the trailer and retrieved her cell clip, Bobby Jo, she's very clearly distressed. She's very, very upset. And she says, you know, I think I think that there's there's some dead men here. My brother in law's dead. And it looks like somebody, you know, beat the hell out of them, basically. So on the same property, within walking distance, Chris Roden's 20-year-old son, Frankie Roden, lived in a trailer with his two children and

his fiancee, Hannah Gilley. And while Bobby Joe waited for the police to arrive, she went over to wake Frankie up to let him know what had happened. When she knocked on the trailer door, it was not Frankie who answered. It was his three-year-old son, Brentley, who told Bobby Joe that his daddy was playing zombie in the bedroom. Bobby Joe rushed into the bedroom to find another horrific scene. Frankie and his 20-year-old fiancee, Hannah, were in bed. They had both been shot to death, and the bed they were laying in was soaked in blood. Frankie was lying on his back, but Hannah was curled up on her right side, facing her silent but thankfully still alive six-month-old son, Ruger. According to Bobby Joe, the baby was soaked in the blood of his parents, and he was stroking the chest of his dead father.

And Bobby Joe also believed, based on the position that Hannah Gilley was lying in, she had been nursing her son and then fallen asleep while nursing him, and she was killed in that position. Not long after this, Bobby Joe's brother, James Manley, went a bit down the road to the trailer of his sister, and there he found 37-year-old Dana Roden dead, along with her two children, 19-year-old Hannah Mae Roden and 16-year-old Christopher Roden Jr. So Bobby Joe and James and Dana are all siblings. Bobby Joe was Chris Roden Sr.'s sister-in-law. Chris Roden Sr. was married to Dana, who's Bobby Joe and James's sister. So at that time, they were living on the same road, Chris Roden Sr. and Dana Roden,

living on the same road. Chris Roden Sr. lived with his cousin Gary, and Dana lived with her and Chris Roden Sr.'s two kids, Hannah Mae and Chris Jr. And then their other son, Frankie, or Clarence is his first name, he goes by Frankie, his middle name, he was in a trailer on his father's property where he lived with his fiancee, Hannah. It's confusing because Frankie's sister's name is Hannah, his fiancee's name is Hannah. He lived there with his fiancee, Hannah, and their two sons, if that helps kind of explain the whole situation. The trailer was covered in blood, but the most shocking detail of this crime scene was the fact that next to Hannah Mae in bed was her daughter Kylie, who she had just given birth to four days

prior. Hannah was the mother to another child, a three-year-old named Sophia. But luckily, the toddler was with her father that day. As rumors of these horrific crime scenes began to make their way around town, members of the Rodin family gathered at a nearby church so they could be together if any news or updates came in. And one of these people at the church, one of these family members, was a man named Donald Stone. So hours later, in another trailer, a 10-minute drive from the Union Hill Road location, another 911 call came in at 1.26 p.m. This was Donald Stone because once he'd heard what was going on in Union Hill Road, he went to check on his cousin, Kenneth Roden. And Donald found Kenneth dead as well, shot once through the eye with $1,000 scattered around him.

Okay, so now that we've kind of talked about all eight of the victims, where they were found, etc., what are you thinking so far? Okay, so qualifier here, we were just talking about this as we're editing this episode. And I was, I asked you, is this case solved? Because I didn't know or not. I've heard of the case, but I know people always get up in an uproar when I say I haven't like investigated or researched the case that I have nothing to do with, but spoiler alert, I haven't. So my initial thought on the surface is definitely connected. I know, shocker, light bulb, Sherlock Holmes, here I come. Like all of these deaths are connected. to say professional, but someone who has an experience with killing animals or something along that lines. This was well executed, not taking into consideration the actual executions of these individuals. Someone who cleaned up after themselves in the sense where anyone who could

directly link them to the crimes was executed. That brings me back to the two teenagers who I don't think necessarily are going to be involved with whatever we end up finding out here, but they're witnesses, so they got to go too. This person still, or people who are involved, although this may be personal, there's still some level of consciousness there where all the children under a certain age were were left alone yeah they were they were spared so there's some level of emotional connection to that person where they're not a complete sociopath and they're just going through this whole thing just killing anyone and everyone that they can find for the gratification of it. It appears to be deliberate, appears to be directed, and it may be tied to one specific

person, but I don't think you go off and kill an entire family if it's just a vendetta. I don't think so. I mean, it seems like this was a thought out premeditated plan. And I know you haven't got into the specifics of the cause or manner of deaths for anyone other than Kenneth, but I would assume that we're going to find that they were all killed in a similar manner, which would lead us to believe that one or maybe a couple people were involved, but they're all connected in some way, shape or form. That's all I'll say for now. I don't really have a ton here, but crazy on the surface. When you say the two teenagers, you don't believe that they were involved. They were just kind of collateral damage. You mean 16-year-old Chris Jr. and 19-year-old Hannah, his sister, right? Yes. Now, 19 years old, because I was, again,

we're cleaning this episode up, but I actually had to pause with Stephanie to write all these names down, make sure I got all the connections. I say that where they may not be indirectly involved, but also 16 years old. I mean, old enough to drive a car, 19 years old, definitely old enough to be involved in something, whether it's criminal nature. I will say this without knowing anything about this case. In these situations, in my experience, and it's limited having something like this, of this magnitude, there's usually a criminal element to it, right? And it could be a competitor. It could be someone that was crossed during a business deal could be a lot of things. So I won't go too far down that trail, but it sounds on the surface, like there may be something

here that's more. There's more than just the fact that these people were executed for no other reason than they were. Someone didn't like them. There's more to the there's definitely more to this story. Definitely. There definitely is. Let's take our first break and we'll be right back. Local police set up roadblocks at the intersection of Union Hill Road and Route 32 at the perimeter of three of the crime scenes, and they began processing the trailers and looking for evidence. During a press conference on April 24th, 2016, then Attorney General Mike DeWine, who I believe is the governor of Ohio at this point, I believe Mike DeWine has now been promoted to governor,

but at that time he was the AG. And he announced that they didn't believe this had been a murder suicide of any kind, but they did believe the killings had been pre-planned, saying, quote, it was a sophisticated operation and those who carried it out were trying to do everything they could do to hinder the investigation and prosecution. End quote. DeWine also said that investigators had received more than 100 tips, conducted more than 60 interviews, and collected 18 pieces of evidence through the execution of five separate search warrants.

Pike County Sheriff Charles Reeder also spoke during this press conference, saying the crime scenes had been thoroughly searched, but they were still secured in case law enforcement needed to return. Reeder told the gathered journalists that this would probably be the largest investigation in Pike County history, and both he and DeWine asked the public for patience. No one was going to get answers anytime soon. It was going to take a lot of time and careful work. I want everybody to be patient but understand that we are working around the clock 24 hours a day, working on every lead that comes in, all the tips, conducting the interviews. We will provide information as we can, but this is going to be a very lengthy process. This is not your case where someone has got mad at somebody else. They've shot them.

There's a witness, two witnesses. It is a very, very, very different type case. So let me also say that while we will continue to provide you with information in regard to what we are doing. What we are not going to be able to do is to provide you results. We have to keep our eye on the goal. And the goal is to do everything within our power in this investigation to find these people or this person who has done this. We will not be telegraphing or telling the bad guys

everything that we know. As the sheriff indicated, I think this could very well be a lengthy investigation. Just to kind of double back for a second, Pike, then you said small town, by the way, too. What are we talking about as far as the capacity of this police department? I'm assuming it's not vast. Yeah, I was literally just going to say that because local Pike County law enforcement, they had the best intentions of getting to the bottom of what had happened to the eight members of the Rodin family, but they were a small department. So they called in the help of other law enforcement agencies, including the Bureau of Criminal Investigations or the BCI, which is how we will refer to it in this video. or the BCI, which is how we

will refer to it in this video. And the BCI serves as Ohio's crime lab and criminal records keeper. But special agents with the BCI also help local police and sheriff's departments around the state with felony level cases of homicide, financial crimes and corruption. So if if the police department, the local police department, in this case, the Pike County Sheriff's Department, if they're like, yeah, we have resources, but not for this. Right. This had never happened.

This is a population of 2000 people. 2000 people. Yeah. This does not happen in these small towns. You know, once again, everyone knows everyone. And we're going to see that illustrated multiple times throughout the series. Everyone knows everyone. They're all connected in some way, whether it's by blood, whether it's by you grew up together, so you're

like siblings, whether it's because your mom knows their mom, and so you guys knew each other through that way. Everyone knows everyone. So they do not deal with stuff like this. So they brought in the BCI. The reason I asked that question is because although Piketon may not have the resources or the experience to process a crime scene like this, or even do all the interviews that are going to need to be conducted with how expansive this investigation is going to be, the local law enforcement officers, I could be completely wrong here, we're going to find out it's not, but I feel like in this type of case, based on the topography and how you laid out where the trailers were, whoever's involved with this

has to have a familiarity with the area. I'm not going to go as far as yet and saying they're locals, but I won't be surprised if you tell me that the people involved with this are locals because of the, where it took place. And because of what you just said, where everyone knows everyone, the Roden family, if there was any issues going on, if they were involved in any criminal activity, locals are going to know if they were having any type of altercation or dispute with a with other individuals from that community They're going to know you know what I mean? Like they're going to be able to Bring up some potential motives very fast the fbi or the bureau of criminal investigations anybody from outside that community

Would not have access to that information more importantly They don't have the trust of that local community to obtain any details they need to try to find potential suspects. So just want to put that out there. Although Pike County may, again, not have the best resources, they are going to be critical in this case, I would imagine. They were critical in this case. Absolutely. And I mean, it just doesn't even come down to like more skill or more knowledge. It comes down to more manpower, more hands on deck. Yeah. And they eventually did have to like move because the crime scenes were so far apart. They had to take all the trailers and move them off the property and put them in

like this warehouse so that they could. And the sheriff got like a lot of shit for it. You know, he was like, I know people are not going to like this decision, but just from a functional point of view, like we have to process these scenes and we have to continue looking through them and we have to continue returning to them for the simple fact of like, what's the inside look like? How could this have happened? And that's brilliant, by the way. Imagine that having multiple crime scenes that you can stick under one roof.

Yeah, because they processed them like for forensics where they were. Right. So they did that. Yeah. Once that's done. Now you need to. He felt that he needed to move them to this warehouse so that they could continue returning to these trailers and sort of re like reenact or recreate what had happened based on the locations of things. And that's great.

And I think it was smart. But people didn't like it. They thought it was going to mess with evidence and things like that. And I mean, who knows, but Dr. Henry Lee told me this, every scene is contaminated the minute you arrive every scene. And so it's one of those things you want to minimize that contamination, uh, while obtaining whatever evidence you're trying to obtain. So I'm sure they did a cursory search of the surrounding area with the trailers and did a perimeter of everything and made sure that while these suspects or suspect were fleeing the area, they didn't drop anything or leave any type of DNA behind in the outer skirts

of the trailers. But once you do all that, you bring the trailers and you enter you and you ensure that the integrity of the whatever evidence you do find is intact if that's a secured warehouse or facility you could go back time after time again and the defense can't say well you know how do we know someone didn't break in or go inside that trailer while that's kind of the problem it wasn't secured oh okay i'm getting ahead of myself the whole time okay you know, and I think they probably had like alarms and stuff, but I remember an interview. They didn't have like a law enforcement officer there around the clock. They did not have a physical person there around the clock. That's probably not good. He was like, we just, we can't, like we can't, they've been there

for months. We can't have somebody be there night and day. But I mean, once again, all the main evidence. Was done at the has already been collected right the shell casings they've taken pictures of everything so at that point is you took pictures of everything you collected everything you did everything properly initially so now i just feel like having the trailers there was so that they could get a lay of the land and return to them and kind of just check things out if they had questions it's better than i don't know like destroying the crime scene like they did at Idaho State University, right? Yeah. I mean, it sucks. I'm saying, as you were saying it, like it sucks that they didn't have

someone there the whole time. But logistically, I can see how, again, if it's a secured facility where they have locks and stuff on the door and And I don't know. I get it. I can see both sides of the argument, but there does come a practical standpoint where you can't have around-the-clock coverage because it gets very expensive. Yeah. And I mean, like, once again, this is a small department, so they don't have a ton of resources.

Now, here's a kind of little twist to the case, because as the police and BCI are processing these crime scenes, within just a few days, they discovered three marijuana grow operation locations found at two of the four crime scenes. behind Kenneth Rodin's trailer, and he used the shed to grow plants in. And then on Chris Rodin Sr.'s land, plants were found in a big barn on his property as well as in the attic of his home. And I think the overall total of number of plants they found was like 200, which I think came out, if they sold it, would be like over $400,000 in profit. Now, this initially led the public and even law enforcement to speculate on whether or not these murders had been drug related. Piketon may have been a small, tight knit community, but it was also one of the most economically distressed areas in Ohio. And with jobs sometimes hard to come by, residents would turn to illicit activities to support their families. Well, when you think about drug trafficking, you don't like immediately think about, you know, Ohio.

It doesn't immediately come to your mind. But it is an agricultural area and marijuana is a cash crop in many places in Ohio. There were other drugs coming in, meth, cocaine, pharmaceuticals. But Pike County happened to be very close to U.S. Route 23. I think they call it the Heroin Highway. It's a known drug trafficking roadway that runs from Florida to Michigan, and it passes through many large-scale drug markets like Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh. So Dan Tierney, a spokesperson for the Attorney General's office, told CNN that in 2016, the hilly and wooded area of southeast Ohio between Interstate 23 and Interstate 70 was known as a good hiding spot for drug activity for local growers and drug cartels alike. So real quickly, and I know I alluded to

this when you were like, hey, Derek, what are your initial thoughts? So this is without even knowing this, right? But here's my issue. And the picture you're painting right now, I think some people might be listening or watching going, oh, well, here we go. That's the connection. They came in and said, we don't want you selling in this area. And they took out their competitor. Right. But to be honest with you, relatively speaking, in comparison to what you're dealing with out there, 200 plants, that's a speck on a page.

That's nothing. Yes, exactly. So I will say, even though you're laying out this picture of how this could be connected from a narcotics detective perspective, I will tell you 200 plants doesn't move the needle and most likely the cartel's not, that's a blip on a radar. They're not going to care about that. So I got to, if there's like a bigger distribution thing that you're going to tell me about down the road, maybe, but $400,000 may sound like a lot of money. It's really not. And relatively speaking from a drug perspective. Okay.

Well, the thing is like, I think that when they were looking at what happened, the way that these eight people were shot, kind of like in an orchestrated fashion, right? It looks like this is like a contract, like a professional, like somebody who kills people professionally. Right, right. You know, they've done this once or twice. That's what I said earlier. Like they've been around the block. And given that this is a small town, everyone knows everyone, things like this don't happen. Like you might have bar fights. You might even have someone killing someone, one person over something, but you're not going to see this kind of thing. Yes, I believe it was easy for people at that time to say, oh, this could have been

Mexican cartels. In fact, they found a Mexican grow operation just a few miles away from the family crime scenes, at least the ones on Union Hill Road. And given the nature of the crimes, the money located on and around Kenneth Rodin's body, like that money being sprinkled there kind of made it seem like it was financially motivated. So it did look like this might have been a contracted hit carried out by people who knew what they were doing. However, there were a few things about the murders that didn't add up when it came to cartel-style killings. It was true that any cartel presence in the area might have viewed the Rodin's Grow operation as a threat to their business, but the fact that three children had been found unharmed and alive at the scenes made investigators really doubt this cartel angle

because typically in cartel killings like this, they don't leave anybody alive. Not the children, not the animals. And there was three dogs, two at Chris Roden Sr.'s property and one at Kenneth's property that were left alive and outside. And they didn't kill those dogs. And you'd think Mexican cartels, they're coming up just so the dog doesn't bark, doesn't potentially attack. They're going to take them out. Now, it seems like- Well, think about why they do that, Stephanie. So the dog doesn't bark, doesn't potentially attack, they're going to take them out. Now, it seems like- Well, think about why they do that, Stephanie. So the dog doesn't bark or attack. Well, no, think about why the cartels kill everyone, including the children.

It's not necessarily, well, it is to obviously get rid of their competition. Send a message. It's to send a message. It's a deterrent. We don't care. We'll take everything from you. So listen, if you want to play games, you may not care about your life if you get caught by us, but you probably care about the people in your life. And if we find out you're crossing us or you're taking away from our business, we will kill you and your families.

We don't care who they are, how young they are. We will take out everybody connected to your lineage. So it deters people from stepping on their toes knowing that, hey, if I screw up, everyone I know and love and care about is gone. So that's why they do that. They'll kill babies. They don't care. To let everyone know, cross us, there'll be generational ramifications for your actions. Yes. And in general, I mean, there's no personal tie. No, there's no emotion to it. Yeah, there's no emotion to it. They don't know these people. They don't care about these babies.

And the fact that the dogs were left alive made people think, well, did these dogs recognize who was walking up to these crime scenes? Or did the people walking up to the crime scenes, people or person know that this dog wasn't going to attack because they'd had interactions with this dog before? So that kind of made people, I guess, sit on the fence. Like the way it was done seemed very much like something the cartel would do. But then there was just these little nuances that wouldn't allow law enforcement to buy it 100 percent. Yeah, I think more so maybe not cartel, maybe another local drug dealer. Or as we were saying earlier, there's some type of emotional connection to this where the rodents were going to find out, have something going on in their lives that they're all involved in that that someone

clearly didn't like. And honestly, in that area, it seemed like everybody kind of was growing weed or selling drugs or doing something like that. And there was lots of people that were interviewed in these early days when they found these grow operations. And these people were like people who lived in Piketon. And they said, yeah, I mean, you got to do what you got to do. You know, lots of people have these little side businesses to make some extra money. And it is, you know, kind of well known that in the Appalachian Mountain areas, drugs are rampant. So it wasn't as if the Rodens were alone in what they were doing. And none of them had ever been in any real trouble or caused issues for law

enforcement in the past. Sheriff Reeder said, quote, I have never been involved with that family in a criminal nature, and I've been in law enforcement locally for 20 years, end quote. In fact, the family were very well loved by their community. They were known to be friendly and giving, always willing to lend a hand or help someone in need, even though they themselves

were not always doing well financially. A Piketon resident, Kendra Jordan, said, quote, everyone knows that family. They're involved in everything. And they're at every event that's going on in town. Just about see them anywhere you went, end quote. Yeah, so this is great to know. This is obviously great to know.

And again, it goes back to talking about local officials being able to verify this type of information because they've had personal interactions with them. And so on the surface here, obviously there's maybe something we don't know about yet, but knowing that the Rodin family in general, not really known for their criminal activities, not known to get involved with bad people. That's interesting to me because the weed thing doesn't bother me, to be honest with you. It really doesn't. I've gone't. If it was like cocaine or something, you might have been more like. Cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, any of those. And also the plants themselves.

Yeah, clearly they were selling it. Let's be honest. 200 plants, that's more than personal use. Or growing it to sell. Right. They were growing it to sell it. Right. And so there's clearly some type of distribution element to it,

but it doesn't sound like these guys were hardened criminals that were some type of huge drug operation that was just under the noses of law enforcement and they didn't know it. That's at least what I'm picking up here. Two thousand people, like you said earlier, if they were doing something, more than likely law enforcement would have known about it. Yeah. And some members of their family seem to know that they were doing it while others, because there's a lot of extended rodent family in this area, right? That's another thing. Like they have lots of, you've got Dana's siblings and her father who live in the area. You've got a bunch of rodent cousins and half brothers and half sisters and stuff living there.

So there's a lot of people who are related to the rodent victims in some way. And some of them were like, no, we had absolutely no idea that they were doing that. And some of the family members knew. So it didn't seem like they were trying to hide it. It was just kind of like if you happen to find out about it or if you happen to see it or know about it, they wouldn't hide it. But they weren't also like spreading it around to everybody. But once again, many people in this town and in this area were doing the same thing. So why would the rodents be isolated and kind of targeted for doing something that many others were doing? I don't know. We'll see. Maybe we're first episode in here halfway through the script. It's so much. Yeah. I'm assuming this isn't the meat and potatoes of it. There's probably a lot more

of the story. There's a lot more to the story. But before we continue on, let's take a quick break. So Dana Manley was 16 and a student when she married 19-year-old Christopher Roden on October 27, 1994. Their first son, Clarence Frankie Roden, was born in August of 1995. Their daughter, Hannah Mae Roden, was born in April of 1997, and two years later, Christopher Roden Jr. was born in November of 1999. In 2007, Chris Sr. and Dana got divorced, but they shared custody of their three children and they remained close, basically continuing to operate as a family. Chris Sr. worked as a laborer, but he also worked seasonally at Great Bear Lake Family Resort in Lucasville for 20 years, where the owner, Robin Waddell, said that Chris Sr. had been hired for

different projects, but they would continue to bring him back because he was reliable and efficient. And both of Chris Sr.'s sons, Frankie and Chris Jr., would also work on and off at this same resort. Chris Sr.'s oldest son, Frankie, was a maintenance worker there, and he also worked at McCoy Lumber. He'd graduated from Piketon High School in 2012, and he'd studied welding at the Pike County Career Tech Center. When he wasn't working, Frankie loved doing country boy things. Fishing, hunting, four-wheeling, demolition derbies, and family was very important to him. Frankie was father to three-year-old Brentley Roden, the product of a previous relationship with a local woman named Chelsea Robinson. In December of 2014,

Frankie began dating Hannah Hazel Gilley, and in October of 2015, the couple were engaged to be married and welcoming their son, Ruger Lee Roden, into the world. In high school, Hannah was in 4-H and on the homecoming court, and she was perfect for Frankie because she also loved doing the same country boy things that he liked to do, four-wheeling, mudding, and hanging out with friends and family. She had big plans of attending college, getting a business degree, and opening a daycare. But now she's buried in Hackworth Hill Cemetery in Otway, Ohio. Frankie's baby brother, Chris Jr., was the baby of the family, and he was super close to his mother, Dana. He was a freshman at Piketon High School, and he worked summers at Big Bear Lake Family Resort. Chris Jr. may have had

big blue eyes and a baby face, but according to the school superintendent, the 16-year-old was a defender and protector of others. The superintendent, Todd Burkett, said, quote, he was the first one that if he thought someone wasn't being treated fairly or felt like someone wasn't being treated appropriately, he would speak up, end quote. Chris Jr. was also very close with his sister, Hannah Mae, who was three years older than him. They both lived together with their mother, Dana, and they would often post pictures together on social media. Hannah, who I'm going to try to refer to her as Hannah Mae so we don't confuse her with Frankie's fiance, Hannah Gilley. So Hannah Mae was described as being outgoing. She was a spunky teenager. She knew who she was. She knew she was extra.

She didn't care. And no one had ever seen her cry. No one had ever seen her scared or depressed. She was just a bundle of energy and light, and she grew up wanting to be a nurse's aide like her mother, Dana. Now, many people in Pike County could not comprehend what happened. If this wasn't the work of some cold-blooded cartel members, who could have done this to the Rodin family? No one was perfect, but the Rodins were well-liked and mostly unproblematic people. So let's turn to the crime scenes and see what investigators were facing when they first took up this case. There were three crime scenes spread out over the property of the Rodin family on Union Hill Road and one more at the trailer of Kenneth Rodin on West Fork Road. Surveillance cameras at these locations had either been destroyed or removed, and animals had been

found at two of these locations. Chris Rodin Sr.'s pit bull Chance and boxer Paisley were found alive on his front porch, and a pit terrier mix named Brownie was outside of Kenneth's trailer. Throughout all of the crime scenes, 32 bullets had been fired. And let's start with crime scene number one, the trailer of Christopher Roden Sr holes on the outside of the trailer and inside. The trail of blood that Bobby Joe Manley had spotted was evident immediately. Unlike the other victims, Chris Sr. and Gary appeared to have been awake and dressed when they were attacked, and it looked like they were near the door of the trailer. But then their bodies, after they were shot, had been dragged from the front of the trailer to the back bedroom where they were found. Deputy Coroner Karen Luman performed autopsies on all eight of the Roden victims, but she did seven of them over the weekend of April 23rd and 24th, and then she

performed Chris Sr.'s autopsy separately on April 25th. Now, Luman said she did this because she knew that Chris Sr.'s autopsy was going to take a while since he'd been shot so many times, and it was going to take her a lot of time and work locating all of the bullets. Authorities believe that Chris Sr. and his cousin Gary were the first victims to be attacked, and they had put their time of death at around 11 p.m. on Thursday, April 21st. Chris Sr. had been shot at close range, and he was shot six times in the face, once in the chest, once in the stomach, and once in the right forearm. Luhmann would later testify that the pattern of wounds indicated Roden was likely on the floor of his trailer, unmoving, when he was

shot in the face. And she said that one shot to Chris Sr.'s face lodged in his spine and caused an internal decapitation. It's believed that the first shot that Chris Sr. suffered from was only one to three inches away from his face, so at very, very close range. Luhmann said, quote, his forearm was so destroyed and lacerated that the skin was peeled back. You could see muscles. You could see the fractured pieces of bone in there. There was so much trauma there you couldn't see an entrance or exit wound. His arm was barely hanging on to the end of his elbow, end quote. Gary Roden had been shot four times in the face. So next we're moving on to crime scene number two. This is the trailer of Frankie Roden and Hannah Gilley, who had been

in bed and asleep with their six-month-old son when they were murdered. Frankie had been shot twice in the head, and Hannah had been shot five times in the head. Moving on to crime scene number three, this was the trailer of Dana Roden. She and her two children, Chris Jr. and Hannah, were all in bed when they were attacked. In separate beds, obviously. Dana Roden was shot four times in the head. Her 16-year-old son was also shot four times in the head, and Hannah sustained two bullet wounds to the head. Crime scene number four was the trailer of Kenneth Roden, and as we already talked about, he had been shot just once through his right eye. I'm more and more leaning towards

multiple people being involved based on the second crime scene, not necessarily the first, but definitely because you have multiple people in different bedrooms who were all executed, presumably before they got out of bed. And I think it's pretty safe to say that if you're sleeping and you hear gunshots in the other room, it's going to wake you up. At least you're going to be sitting up or out of bed heading towards whatever it is to see what's going on. So the fact that they were all still in bed and it appears to be sleeping, it's suggestive that this was a coordinated effort, maybe multiple shooters. I'll be more interested when we get into ballistics to figure out if it's multiple guns or the same gun. That will obviously answer a question. So I can tell you, I can give you kind of like a little spoiler alert to that because the ballistics are very extensive, actually. And they did a lot of they did a lot of great police work, not only with the ballistics, but with boot prints that were found in at crime scene number one,

which was Chris Roden Sr.'s trailer. Really interesting stuff that you're going to like. So I really wanted to give us time to talk about that. And we're going to talk about it next time. But they did find more than one type of ammunition. And so, yes, there were two at least. Well, I don't want to get too far into it, but at least two different weapons used. So at least two shooters, even though initially the police were saying, we believe this was only one person. But then they came out later and they were like, okay, we think that there was more than one person here. And that's multiple reasons because the boot prints that they found at Chris Roden Sr.'s trailer in the blood, had walked through the blood and left boot prints, but they were two different sizes. One size boot was, and it was the exact same boot, exact same tread. And the tread was from a shoe that had just recently been purchased. So they can tell that this was not a boot or a shoe that had been, you know, walked around in for months or years,

newly purchased due to the tread. And one of the treads was a 10 and a half and one was an 11, but the exact same tread, which may have been done purposely to confuse investigators by wearing the same shoes. But at the end of the day, you're a half size off. So you have a 10 and a half and then an 11. So you either have a perpetrator who's wearing two different size shoes or you have more than one. Well, they could tell that too, if it's a left and right. Yeah, if it was a left and right, yeah. So we'll, I'll save it to get into that because that's fascinating to me.

But there's the way we can talk about the ways that they would identify that and how they would be able to tell what you're looking for to tell whether the boot is worn, things like that. There's all these different variables that come into that. But so yeah, at this point, two shooters, and I'll even go as far as saying this doesn't sound like a professional to me. This doesn't sound like a professional hit overall because the manner in which they're shot, not understanding that it doesn't take four bullets to the head to kill someone.

It seems personal, right? Yeah. Especially with Chris Sr., like the way he was shot like internally decapitated his elbow was like holding his arm on by a thread and it seemed that that was the first crime scene well the forum tells me that there may have been some type of yeah defensive wound defensive wound putting their arm up to protect himself yeah um but overall natural instinct if you're if you're a hit, you know what it takes to kill someone. And especially from that close range, especially based on the type of caliber weapon you're using

for shots is overkill. I believe Chris Sr. was shot a total of nine times and they think he was the first victim. And then his cousin, Gary, they pulled the bodies into the back bedroom. Once again, the only crime scene where the bodies were moved from the location that they were killed at. So honestly, looking at the crime scenes, if you know nothing about this case, you might think that Chris Roden Sr. was the target. He was the first person killed. That was the first crime scene the killers went to. He was shot the most and what appeared to be the most viciously. So you might think like he's the crux of this. He's the nexus. He is why these people are there. And the rest of the family is

either an afterthought or just as a way to sort of send a message, as you said. But it seemed, I guess, looking from these crime scenes, would you say it kind of seemed like the father, the patriarch, Chris Roden Sr., the one who has had the grow operations on his property, the one who was shot the most, the one who was shot the most brutally, may have been the reason that they were there based on how personal his murder seemed? Yeah, on the surface, I guess that's how it looks right now. I have a feeling you're going to throw a curveball at us. But yeah, on the surface, you would think if this is somehow related to the weed, then Chris would be the main target. They go there, they take them out, but then obviously they want to take out the family members because they're either involved with this or they know the individuals

who carried out this hit. It just seems like a lot from, I keep getting stuck on the marijuana, to be honest with you. So that's what I was thinking when I first looked through it. I was like, it doesn't have to be a cartel. Maybe it's just another local. A local drug dealer. Another local grower. Yes, if anything. And maybe it wasn't even a competition thing.

Maybe it was like they got in an argument and Chris Roden Sr. was like, oh, I'm going to take out your plants. And then they kind of retaliated. And in that case, yes, it would seem like they take out the family because they're all locals and they all know each other and everyone knows everyone. And the family would probably point the finger at that other person, that other grower, if anything was to go down. And it also, I also felt, because when I first started researching this case years ago, I was just, I couldn't figure it out. I was going through all the possibilities in my head. And I also thought like, maybe they also killed all of those other family members so that you couldn't figure out who the target was,

you know, because it's easy if you have one person killed. All right, who are this person's enemies? What interactions has this person had in the past weeks or months? It's going to be a lot easier to single out a motive and to single out maybe an enemy or somebody that they had negative interactions with rather than eight people, because now you've got to go through all of that with all eight people to figure out who the target was. So it almost makes the investigation that much harder. I'm going to reserve judgment at this point. I'm just completely flying blind here. So it just seems like it's a lot of potential red herrings, but we'll see. We'll see if it all ties together.

Okay. So remember that you have a few children here who now are parentless. You have Frankie Roden and Hannah Gilley's six-month-old son. You also have Hannah Mae Roden's four-day-old infant, infant daughter daughter Kylie. So which blows my mind to have a baby and four days later be murdered while you're in bed with that baby is just so incredibly traumatic to think about. But you've got these children and they don't really have any place to go. You know, they could go to foster care. They could go with other relatives, but they have to figure this out. The police can't just give these babies to family members and say, here you go, you're taking care of this baby now,

they've got to do custody proceedings. So in August of 2016, a hearing was held to determine if these custody proceedings for the surviving children should be kept secret from the public. And Pike County Sheriff Charles Reeder, he was present at the hearing and he requested that the custody disputes should be sealed from the public because he believed that there had been more than one shooter involved in the Roden family massacre. And this is the first time that law enforcement says anything that's confirmed, that can be confirmed, where they're admitting that they believe there's more than one shooter. Up until that point, they had said they believed it was only one person. Now, Reeder was concerned that the children could potentially be in danger from these people. And he said, quote,

I believe if the information about the minor children is released, it would put the minor children or their caregivers in grave danger. I do not ever want to find victims 9, 10, and 11 and have them be those three minor children, end quote. I just want to go back and recap the children for not only myself, but anybody who's trying to keep up with this. At Frankie Roden and Hannah Gilley's house, we have two children left alive, three-year-old and a six-month-old, Brantley and Ruger, right?

And then you said at Dana's house, there was Dana, there's Hannah May, who's 19, and then there's Christopher, who's 16. Chris Jr., yep. You said one child was there, Kylie, just born. Kylie, yes. And then the other child, how old was the other child? So her other daughter, Sophia, was three, but Sophia was with her father, who was Hannah's

ex-boyfriend and not the father of this four-day-old baby. Okay. That's what I was going to ask you. So this other child is not the same father as the new baby. Correct. Okay. Before we continue, let's take a break. We'll be right back. So a few months later, in October of 2016, Sheriff Reeder also dispelled any rumors of cartel activity, claiming it was the belief of investigators that the killers were local. Do you believe that the Mexican drug cartel is involved? Absolutely not.

Can you explain why you say that? With the nature of the investigation and the things that's been revealed, why conducting the investigation, there would be no indication to me as to any type of Mexican drug cartel being involved. What he tells me next officially puts the community on notice. You're saying that the suspects likely either live in Pike County or in the area somewhere nearby? Yes that is my belief. 100% certainty? That's my belief. Dana's dad Leonard Manley says he hasn't heard from the sheriff. I'm pretty angry at all of them. But he also believes the killers are familiar. Whoever done this had to know

the dog, had to know where the security system was. Leonard tells me even he was a suspect for a time. They come back and got DNA from me and my grandson and them. With the focus now on locals, Attorney General Mike DeWine explains investigators have reconstructed every aspect of the victims' lives. He's worked on the case with Sheriff Reeder from the start. It sounds like you know exactly who you're looking for. I'm not going to say more than that. What I am going to say is that somebody who will

be watching this today knows something that would be helpful to us. This was very interesting because basically having Sheriff Reeder and the AG, Mike DeWine, come out and say, hey, not only like we think that the people who did this are living in your community. This is even more shocking for the people who live in Pike County than the thought of a Mexican cartel doing it. Right. Because the thought of having one of their own in their ranks do this to eight people was terrifying, was terrifying, especially because the motive at this point has not been revealed. So they don't know. Is there just somebody out there picking

people off because they've lost their mind? Could this happen again? Are the surviving children in danger? There's many, many Roden family members still living in Pike County. Are they in danger? And everyone's just stressed out about it. Yeah. But to have a law enforcement officer come out publicly and say, hey, listen, I don't think it's cartel. I think it's local. That does mean a lot because although to this point they've been publicly saying, we're not going to tell you much, to come out and say that it's a big risk if you're wrong. So it tells me that they have information, whether it's exculpatory or inculpatory, that suggests one way or the other, either the cartel isn't involved or that a local is more likely involved with the situation.

I want to go back to talking about Sheriff Reeder and Mike DeWine, because I really liked the way they handled this investigation from the beginning. When they first gave their press conference, they were very clear. They're like, listen, I know you guys want answers. I know you want this solved quickly. Of course, we do too. However, we more than anything want this done correctly. Sheriff Reeder was talking to the papers and saying, listen, we are investigating as far as looking at it from a prosecution standpoint. We're investigating, hoping and trying to do every single thing right so that when we give this to the DA's office,

they have an airtight case. And to do that, it's gonna take manpower, it's gonna take resources, and it's going to take time. And I know y'all don't wanna be patient and I know you want answers, but we also don't wanna give away anything that could send the killers fleeing or that could give them information

that they can now use to get away with everything if they happen to be in an interview room with us. We don't want them to know. So we're going to take this slow and we're going to do it right. And people really didn't like that because this did kind of go on for a few years before any movement happened. And a lot of the time the public thought, what are they doing? Family members of the Rodents thought, what are they doing? They're not doing anything.

But they were. They were actively working very, very hard behind the scenes because Because once again, this is a crime with eight victims. So you don't just have one victim who you have to look at where they work and who they had interactions with and who they might have arguments with and what their banking account looks like and what their financial status is, what purchases they made, where they've gone. You have eight people. You've got to do that eight times. So of course it's going to take longer. And I believe that it's likely when Sheriff Reeder and Mike DeWine gave those statements in October of 2016, they'd already zeroed in on their suspects. I agree with you as far as Reeder and DeWine are concerned. They definitely, as you said, probably had some people that they had honed in

on, but you want to make sure you get it right. You don't want to rush to judgment and push forward a prosecution where there's holes in your case and the people get off scot-free. And I also think that if they knew who the individuals were and had an idea of a potential motive, there wasn't a sense of urgency to rush this case because although this individual or individuals were dangerous, they weren't necessarily a threat to the community, right? When you think about the case itself, yes, you have multiple crime scenes, multiple victims, but they're all connected. This isn't some serial killer who's going from trailer to trailer just killing random people it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know this was a targeted attack against the rodents so although horrific in nature there wasn't necessarily a danger to

the surrounding community and therefore readerine, and the rest of the investigators involved in this case could take their time to dot their I's, cross their T's, find any potential exculpatory evidence, find any potential inculpatory evidence, and also give the forensics time to develop as far as sending it off to process it. You had mentioned earlier that you had boot prints. You may have potentially had DNA trace evidence. You could have had ballistics. All these things take time to process. Was there a sense of urgency in the processing based on the nature of the case?

I would imagine so. But it still takes time. And if you have an idea of who these individuals are or who this person is, then, and you know, they're not a threat to anyone else other than, I don't know, law enforcement when they try to apprehend them, then I think they did it right. They did it right. I think in that situation, they'd be more worried about the people getting spooked and fleeing than they would about any danger they might pose to the community, other community members. And what you'll see is they did get stuff processed through pretty quickly. But like, especially with the shoe prints, it's very cool. And we're going to talk about it more next time. And you're going to love this portion of it. But

they have a database that they compare shoe prints to. And these shoes were not found in this database. And so these agents, these special agents, had to do a lot of creative work to locate what type of shoes these were and identify them. And they eventually did do that. Yes, all of these things are going to take a long time. So I'm honestly surprised that it went as quickly as it did, considering. So as Mike DeWine said, they had to reconstruct every aspect of the victim's lives. And one of those victims was 19-year-old Hannah Mae Roden, who was a mother of two. Her oldest daughter, Sophia, had been fathered by a man named Jake Wagner. He was a

member of another well-known Pike County family. The Wagner family were seen as a very tight-knit and insular group. They were homeschooled. They did everything together. They made decisions together as a unit. And they were also considered to be like the rich people in town. You know, in a town where most people are at poverty level, the Wagners, they had money. And it was all held together by their matriarch, 74-year-old Frederica Wagner. Frederica, or Freddie, as she was known locally,

was best known along with her late husband for breeding and raising horses at their Flying W farm, a sprawling ranch surrounded by hundreds of acres of land on a hill off of Camp Creek Road. Freddie had lived on this Pike County farm for the past 43 years. She was a staple in the community. She'd even taught Sunday school there for five decades. Together, Freddie and her family appeared to be among the largest landowners in Pike County, claiming a total of 1,767 acres of land that they had kind of pulled together and accumulated over the last 25 years. And this land, as well as the associated buildings on the land, were valued at just over $4 million, which once again, in a place like Pike County, you might as well be a billionaire at that point. You've got money. So Freddie's son was George

Billy Wagner. We're going to refer to George Wagner, the eldest George Wagner, as Billy because that is his middle name. It's what he goes by. It's like his nickname. And his son is also named George. So it's just going to make it easier to not get things complicated. So Freddie's son was George Billy Wagner, and he was married to a woman named Angela, and they had two sons together, George Wagner Jr. and Edward Jake Wagner. And they were all close or connected in some way to the Rodens. So 45-year-old Billy Wagner was close friends with Christopher Roden Sr. Billy's son George was close friends with Frankie Roden. And Dana's brother Chris Newcomb,

it's her half-brother actually, he was 20 years younger than his sister and he grew up as close as brothers with both George and Jake, who are around his same age. So when Hannah Mae Roden met Jake Wagner at the Pike County Fairold child, was bubbly and excited to be at the fair, and she had this big white bunny, and she kept trying to make Jake Wagner look at it and hold it. And I guess they hit it off, because even though Jake Wagner was significantly older than Hannah, they began dating. And reportedly, Hannah was head over heels for Jake initially. They were together for two years before Hannah moved in with the Wagner family, where her boyfriend's mother, Angela Wagner, treated her like a daughter. Hannah became pregnant when she was 15, and she and Jake were planning to get married. They had even gotten

tattooed wedding bands on their fingers. Their daughter, Sophia, was born in November of 2013, and that same month, Hannah posted a Facebook status that said, got married November 23rd, 2013. When a commenter expressed shock, asking like, when? When did this happen? Hannah responded, quote, we really aren't married, but we might as well be married, end quote. But by early 2015, it seemed that there was trouble in paradise, trouble that had most likely been brewing for quite a while. On January 24th, Hannah posted on Facebook, quote, sometimes following your heart means losing your mind. And a month later, she posted, quote, I miss everything we do. I'm half a heart without you. By March of 2015,

Hannah was posting things like love is not complicated. People are. And a woman can't change a man because she loves him. A man changes himself because he loves her. This was the month that Hannah and Jake broke up, and according to Jake, it was because Hannah thought he worked too much and didn't have time for her. He claims they stopped living together, but they were still in a non-exclusive romantic relationship while they co-parented their daughter,

with the baby, Sophia, residing with one family for a month at a time. But according to many sources, the relationship was not so harmonious. Jake seemed to be very controlling, and he badly wanted Hannah back. But mostly, he and his family wanted custody of Sophia. It's interesting because I literally just asked you about this, as far as this other child, not knowing that there was all of this behind it. But doing this with you for a while, I feel like the amount of detail we're going into, this is going to somehow play into the story. I mean, I'm just being honest with you guys. There's a lot of exposition here about Jake and Hannah.

And it's interesting now, knowing this portion of the story that ironically, Sophia was not at the home when everything went down. So I'm going to be interested to hear more about their relationship after they decided to go their own way. Because as we know, when it comes to a child, we just covered entire eight-part series about Dan Markell exactly I was just gonna say that it's crazy because unintentionally this is back-to-back but you have custody of a child again and it it's sad because what you'll what you will find is Jake was not supposed to have Sophia that day yeah he was not supposed to have Sophia. That day? Yeah, he was not supposed to have her that day. So he actually, he called Hannah and we have a witness to this because she and Hannah were fishing that day, the day before the murders. And she was there when Jake called Hannah and said, hey,

you know, you just gave birth and you probably want a few days to just focus on your newborn, you know, recover from giving birth. Let me take Sophia off your hands for a little while. I'll take her for a few days so you can rest and bond with your new child and et cetera, et cetera. Sophia was supposed to be at that trailer that day. Was supposed to be there, yeah. That's interesting. And this also, because we're talking about it, it could be a red herring, but I will say on the surface, considering what we've talked about so far this episode, we're a little over an hour in, talking about someone who would have a familiarity with the area would also know the family dynamic of the rodents. That would be important as well.

Like understanding, like who's involved with this family? Who are they connected to? Where do they live? What time would they be there? Like knowing all those details. Where the surveillance cameras were located, right? Like how to disable them, like things like that. Oh, interesting.

I took that differently. And I think some of our viewers and listeners would. You're telling me that those cameras were moved or destroyed deliberately before this action? I was thinking that just as through the passage of time, the cameras that would have been there had been removed or destroyed because of other external factors. You're telling me- No, their surveillance security cameras at their home, like home security systems, and whoever killed them that night either took or broke the surveillance cameras. I definitely was thinking that they had been removed or destroyed

due to other circumstances leading up to it. Like we find in some cases where it's like, hey, do you have a camera system here? Well, I did, but during the last hurricane, they got busted, you know? And so I haven't had time to fix them yet. That's interesting. Yeah, I agree with you 100%. These individuals or this person would have to know those details would have to know those details and they would either so it's either someone who had an extreme amount of counterintelligence and did some background investigations before carrying this out if it's a if it's a professional hit or it's someone again who's not only familiar with the area not only familiar with the rodents not only familiar with the rodents, but familiar specifically with the different trailers, their locations, and the layout.

Who lived there. Yeah. Yeah. And they were moving around, too. That's also important because Hannah was moving around, so she wasn't always at her mother Dana's trailer. And Dana and Hannah and Chris Jr. were not always at that trailer. They had recently moved, I believe a month or two before the murders.

So once again, this is, yes, unless some random group of assailants is watching these people with like night vision goggles for months and months, they would not really be aware of their movements in the way that whoever attacked them clearly was. Yeah. I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves.

My questions for you would definitely go off the where we're going with this, but obviously Jake's whereabouts on the day of this occurrence, we know that he, quote unquote, had Sophia, but was he actually with her? That's the question. But let's save that. Let's take our last break. We'll be right back. So just want to qualify a little bit and talk about the Wagner family in my personal opinion, what I have come to understand about them from my research. And we thought that

Wendy Adelson's family was bad. The Wagner family are bizarre or were. They did some things that I just could not explain to you, and at the end of the day, I think it was all about keeping power and keeping control, especially because they were, you know, kind of the big people in town. But it's just very bizarre, and we're going to get into it. Essentially, what you're looking at here is Bill, Billy, Billy Wagner, who's the oldest, the father of Jake. He and Chris Roden Sr. were friends. Not only were they friends, but they also seemed to be partners so it was kind of well known around the area that sometimes Chris Roden Sr. would drive with Billy Wagner in his truck and they would use this as an opportunity to sort of move, you know, marijuana around, move things around and sell things. And Billy Wagner would always talk about all these schemes and things that he wanted to do. He would talk about how he was going to go to Mexico and open up a bar slash kind of brothel thing and that he and Chris Roden Sr. were going to do this together. And up a bar slash kind of brothel thing and that he and Chris Roden

Sr. were going to do this together. And then another time he was talking about going to Canada and buying a bunch of pharmaceuticals because they're cheaper there. And then he would, you know, drive them back into the United States and then sell them for a huge profit because in the U.S. they would pay more for them than they would in Canada. Things like that. He always had schemes going. And he and Chris Roden Sr. technically seemed to be in a business of some kind together as well as being friends. So you've got a lot of connections. You've got Jake Roden, who's dating Hannah Roden. Can we just talk about how weird it is, though, that an almost 18-year-old is going to date and have sex with a 13-year-old? Can we talk about how weird that is? I think that it's already kind of throwing some shade

on what sort of person this is. But Jake Roden is dating Hannah. They have a child together now. You've got Billy Wagner and Chris Roden Sr., best friends, kind of look like they're doing some illicit activities together. So there's lots of ties connecting these families. I wonder there too, could something have gone wrong

with a deal or a bit like we had said earlier, a business thing with Billy? We'll see. We'll explore that, I'm sure. It's interesting to me because from Hannah's Facebook, which I looked through, it seems like for years and years, she was very much in love with Jake. And even after, because she broke up with him in March of 2015, even after that, for several months, a lot of her posts were very melancholy. You know, like, I miss him. And they were those little, like, pre-portioned, like, pre-done quote boxes that people post. You know what I mean?

It says, like, a poetry line or a song lyric or something. But very sad. Very, like, much missing him. Kind of like, I thought I knew what my future was going to look like, and now I have no idea. What did Jake really do to make Hannah want to leave him? Because somebody who loves someone that much, like the way it seemed she did, like obsessed with him sort of on Facebook, she's not going to leave him or break up with him because he works too much. They have a child together.

She's having a child with him and she's at the age of 15 and he's almost 20, and she's going to just go off on her own because he's working too much, that's definitely not why they broke up. So why did they actually break up? And why did it seem like after they broke up, Jake Wagner really wanted to reconcile and really wanted her back, and Hannah wanted nothing to do with it? Well, there's going to be a couple of reasons. And first, I have to sort of explain how Hannah became pregnant with her youngest child, the one who was four days old when Hannah was murdered. So in October of 2015, Hannah started dating a new man. His name was Corey Holdren. But a week after they started seeing each other, Hannah found out that she was pregnant again with her daughter,. And obviously this is not Corey's

baby because she found out a week after they started dating. And reportedly Hannah told Jake that this new baby was not his either, but he was having a very hard time accepting that. He kept insisting that the baby was his. After Hannah's murder, Jake Wagner claimed that there was a 50-50 chance that he was baby Kylie's father. A local paper said, quote, and there is nothing Wagner would like more, he said, fondly recalling how he pulled the tiny baby sock off her itty-bitty foot shortly after she was born on April 17th. He was checking for a hammer index toe, a Wagner family trait. He's almost sure, he said, that he saw that bend. It's the hope he holds onto these days. But if he isn't Kylie's dad, and if the courts deem another man suitable to care for her,

he will step aside, at least partially. I'm not going to take her, Wagner said, but I will want mandatory visitation in order to see her regularly. He wants to ensure that she gets to know her toe-headed big sister who loves tea parties, getting her fingernails painted, and swinging and playing on the extensive play areas Wagner has built at their house. It's a home where Wagner once hoped Hannah Roden would come back eventually, bringing Kylie. Regardless of what happens, Kylie and Sophia are, and forever will be, at least half sisters.

The girls share a bond. They lost the same mommy. They need each other, said Wagner's mom, Angela Wagner. When they get old enough to understand, they'll really need each other. End quote. As it turns out, Jake Wagner was not Kylie's biological father. That title belonged to 21-year-old Charles Gilley, who's the brother of Frankie Roden's fiancee, Hannah Gilley. I know. It's like everyone's

connected. Everyone's connected. Frankie Roden's ex-girlfriend, the mother of his child, is Hannah Roden's best friend. And it also seems like they were cousins, too. I have to look more into this. But during the trial, the prosecutor kept talking to this woman and saying, oh, your cousin Hannah. And I was like, hold on a second, because if this girl is Hannah's cousin, doesn't that also mean she's Frankie's cousin? Yeah. But also she and Frankie had a baby together. So what's going on here? I got to clarify that. I got to clear that up. There's some jokes that can be made in there and I'm not going to make them. Not going to do it. I'm refraining, but you know where my head's at. If that's the case, I'm not exactly sure how that happened because I watched so much trial

testimony. My brain was fried by the time I got there because this was on day 14 of a 44-day trial. But yeah, something's going on there, but everyone's connected. So Hannah Roden gets pregnant by Charles Gilley, who's the brother of Hannah Gilley, who's engaged to Hannah Roden's brother, Frankie. All right. It's crazy. I'm with you. I hope everyone else is struggling out there to keep all these names because I have three pages of notes and you guys haven't even heard the parts that are being cut out where I'm like, pause for a second. Run this through me again, Stephanie. But anyways, we'll keep it moving.

I have a lot of pages of notes and mainly my main first two pages that I have to keep out is like a family tree with like arrows pointing to each other. And that makes it easier to visually see it. But yeah. So apparently Hannah wrote and told her new boyfriend, Corey, that Charlie Gilly didn't really want to be in the child's life. Apparently, Charlie had a pill addiction and he just wouldn't stop doing this. And Hannah didn't feel like he was really appropriate to be in her child's life. And he really wasn't in the best place to step up and do that. So they kind of just broke up and that was it, went their separate ways. But all of this initially was a lot

for Hannah's new boyfriend, Corey, to handle. And he and Hannah kind of broke up. They took some space for a while, but not long after this, Corey saw that Hannah had been in a car accident on Facebook. So he reached out to check on her because he knew she was pregnant and he was worried about her and the baby.

And so when he reached out to her, they reconnected. And Corey said at this time he was desperate for a family. He really cared about Hannah. He really liked her. And he told Hannah, listen, if Charlie Gilly steps back, then I will step up. You know, Corey said he would step in, he would take care of Hannah and raise her daughter as his own. And that's very, really sweet, actually, because Corey also appeared to have a pill problem. But according to testimony, when he knew he was going to be a father and that he was going to help Hannah raise her child, he quit. And he did what Charlie Gilley wouldn't do, which was put Hannah and this child over his own addiction. So it's very sweet. And sadly, their relationship did not last long because Hannah would be murdered not long after she gave birth to her child. So in December of 2015, Hannah let Jake Wagner know that she was considering moving in with her new boyfriend, Corey, who had really been there for her and accepted her. Corey was the one who had picked out Kylie's name. He was the first person who would hold her when she was born in April of 2016. But it was shortly after Hannah wrote and told Jake that she was going to be moving in with

Corey that police and prosecutors claim Jake and many members of the Wagner family began making plans to end Hannah's life. And it was all over a custody dispute concerning Sophia. During one of the trials involved in this case, text messages dating back to 2013 were shown to the jury, along with the testimony of several witnesses. And all of this stuff would illustrate the lengths that Jake and his family were willing to go to in order to keep Sophia with them.

And we are going to talk about this in greater detail next time. But where the evidence ended up leading, no one could have expected. In November of 2018, Pike County authorities announced the arrests of six members of the Wagner family for their involvement in the Roden family murders. George Billy Wagner, his wife Angela Wagner, their two sons, George and Jake Wagner, they were all charged with multiple counts of aggravated murder. Angela's mother, Rita Newcomb, as well as Billy's mother, Frederica Wagner, were also arrested and charged with obstructing justice and perjury. All family members pleaded not guilty, but in a shocking turn of events, Jake Wagner, the man at the center of it all, he agreed to testify against his brother

and his parents in exchange for the state dropping the death penalty. So over the course of several hearings and trials, the prosecution is going to paint a picture of a family who were so close, they had basically become a criminal enterprise all on their own. A family who were so controlling and domineering, who felt they were so powerful and untouchable, that they could commit and get away with a massacre of this proportion, and that they would do that if it meant getting what they wanted. And that's crazy to me, because, listen, Jake turned on his family. And at least in the Adelson's case, it seems like Wendy and Charlie have kind of held ranks at least, and they didn't turn on each other and they're not like throwing each other under the bus. Wendy did

kind of throw Charlie under the bus a little bit, but Charlie never has thrown Wendy under the bus. But Jake Wagner, he's like, let me tell you exactly what happened. I know I'm going to spend my life in prison, but if it helps me avoid the death penalty, then I will throw every single member of my family under the bus. Hey, I'm Jake. No, first off, I didn't think we were going there in this first episode where we're going to start to get it. But now looking at everything in totality, this does make a lot more sense to me on the surface. I'm not knowing a ton about Jake at this point, and I'm sure we'll get into the minutia of who he is. And that was really something that can drive a lot of men crazy, especially when they care about their kids in a certain way where it's not an option for them. But overall, taking away the why, when we think about the how, this does make a lot

more sense when you talk about Billy's connection to Chris and Jake's connection to Hannah and being at those locations, the trailers, probably hundreds of times over the years and understanding the layout, the best time to do something like this, how to do it. And not only the layout of, I'm talking the outside of the trailers, but also the interior where people would be sleeping, how they would be sleeping, what are their sleeping patterns. And then as you alluded to- They probably knew the dogs, right? They're not going to get attacked by the dogs. The dogs, not going after them. And as you alluded to earlier, the camera systems and understanding where they are and how to disable them. And also having an idea of the type of, nothing against them, but the type of law enforcement officers that are on that department and their lack of capabilities. Maybe thinking, hey, we can do it this way.

And based on, you know, again, they all know each other. You know, John, Jane, and Joe on the police department, they're a bunch of morons. They're never going to put this together. They're never going to suspect us, the Wagner family. Our affluent family, you know, what we've done. And we were friends with them. We were close with them.

So knowing all of that in hindsight, it's easy to kind of see how these puzzle pieces fit together a lot more appropriately than the cartel angle which i love what you did there you tried to throw us off the path because it does make sense but when you really get into it i didn't try it's like the investigation threw everyone off the path initially right well i mean it's storytelling purposes too you want to give all angles and but i think just knowing drugs i hate to say it like this, knowing drugs like I do, it's just like 200 plants is, I've seen, honestly, we've walked into houses and I've seen families using that for personal use, like over a period of time. Of course. So it's not like, whoa,

if they're selling that, like, you know, they're the kings of marijuana in the Ohio, the Piketon area. That's not what we're looking at here. And I think it's also kind of shows why they maybe felt, I guess, that everybody had to be murdered. Because if there was anybody left alive in Hannah's immediate family, her parents or her brothers, then they would link it back to Jake. Well, they could also battle the Wagner family for custody, right? They could technically have a claim or at least partial custody to Sophia and Kylie. And it's weird to me because, listen, Hannah had been telling Jake since the get go. There's text messages and stuff. We're going to go over. This baby is not yours. The new one. Right, Kylie?

This is not your baby. And he's like, yes, it is. Yeah. And then even after he murders her, because you'll find that Jake Wagner was at these crime scenes. He took part in this. He didn't send other people to do his dirty work. He did it himself as well.

After he takes part in murdering eight members of this family, including Hannah Gilley, who, by the way, had no there was there was nothing she did to these people. They just had to kill her because she was there. Right. So even after Hannah Roden is dead and her family is dead, Jake's giving interviews saying like, oh, yeah, Kylie, you know, there's a 50% chance she's mine. He went to the hospital when she was born, trying to like stake his claim. And he's like, oh, if I can't get full custody, then I'm at least going to have mandatory visitation with a child that's not even yours. So like the audacity of somebody to even think that you have any say or any entitlement or any rights to any visitation with a child that's not biologically related to you by blood in any way, shape, or form that is the child of another man just because that child happens to be sisters with your child. And you're like, oh, I'm definitely going to get at least visitation,

mandatory visitation. What are you talking about? It's so weird to me that this guy went into the papers and was saying this stuff after what he did. And I will say, in my opinion, that whole family's messed up, but he's the worst out of them. He is, I think, a sociopath, to be honest. And at the end of the day, he's the one that threw them under the bus. But the details get crazy because there's more connections and there's more stuff coming. And there's just so many twists and turns. And you're going to start to see exactly why this happened the way it did. And the fact of the matter is how it happened and who was involved makes it all that much more worse. Yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to getting into. The

how, the details of it, how it was executed, clearly wasn't executed that well. But we'll get into it all. I'm looking forward to breaking it down. I'm looking forward to diving into the details regarding ballistics and then the forensic evidence, specifically the boot prints. We haven't discussed how that process is done at length. So I think that'd be cool to talk about. One of my first robberies I ever solved was with a boot print that was left on a counter.

Was it the gas station? Of a gas station. Yeah. Didn't I tell you that story already? You were in there with like the powder just like dusting everything down.

Yep. The kid had Air Force Ones on. But we'll talk about it next week. There was distinguishable marks on the bottom of his Air Force Ones that made it as if it couldn't be any other set of air force ones so and that was like one of my prouder moments because i just finished uh bci school background criminal investigation school uh you have to take that at the university of rhode island to be certified as a detective

i literally was just got my fingerprint kit and i'm like i screwed up that whole gas station i mean i was covered i looked like i was working in a coal mine when i was done that's that shot within like zoolander where he like jumps out of the wall and he's like surprise and he's all like painted black so he met have you ever seen zoolander of course i've seen zoolander okay you know zoolander he's in the mines with him he jumps out and scares his brother and father and he's just covered in like soot yeah no i'm not joking i literally was like covered like i'll put it i'll give you even a better comparison days of thunder i'm going back to your boy tom cruise here when he wins the race the daytona 500 he takes off his goggles because i had goggles you know you're doing

it he's got the the dirt on his face that was me for. Okay. I wasn't the best fingerprinter at that point. I was still, because now guys do it and they don't get dust on anything but what they wanted to be on. But it was your first time, man. It was my first time using it out in this, in the, and I, yeah, it was a, you know, it was a process. Any other things to clean up before we wrap this one up? I don't think so.

No, I, this is a very interesting, riveting case. We've barely scratched the surface. So I'm excited for everybody to be along for the rest of the journey. And I'm excited to hear your comments about what you think about this case so far. I'm into it. We will see you guys next week. Everyone like, comment, subscribe. Let us know your thoughts on the episode in the comment section below. I'm going to try not to read too many because then I'm going to give not to read too many because then I'm going to give away, although we kind of have a overview of what happened, but to kind of stay clear of it and stay from the same mindset that you guys who are listening to this are at, I'm

going to try to avoid some of that. So anyways, we appreciate you being here. Everyone stay safe out there. We will see you next week. Bye.