Crime Weekly - S3 Ep190: Piketon Massacre: Blood Brothers (Part 4)

Episode Date: March 15, 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. SKIMS.com - FREE shipping on orders over $75! After you place your order, select "podcast" in the survey and select our show to let them know we sent you! 2. HelixSleep.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code HELIXPARTNER20 and get 20% off ALL mattress orders and two FREE pillows! 3. ZipRecruiter.com/CrimeWeekly - Try ZipRecruiter for FREE! 4. Smalls.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY at checkout for 50% off your first order and FREE shipping! 5. EatIQBAR.com - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% of ALL IQBAR products!

Dear McDonald's, your breakfast menu, fire. Tens across the board. I could be happy with anything, even though I order the same thing every time. Thanks for not judging me. I'll try something new next time. Maybe. Score a two for $5 deal on a sausage McMuffin with egg and more. Limited time only.

Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Single item at regular price. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are diving into part four of the Pike County Massacre series. There will be one final part after this, and then we'll be starting with a new case. But is there anything you want to mention before we dive in? Because I know you mentioned something in Crime Weekly News. Yeah, just Muffin 10. Muffin 10 will be available for probably one more week. I'd also mention there for criminal coffee people,

if you want to go use that code on criminalcoffeeco.com, you can. And we're probably about a week or so away from merging the two websites. So when you go on there, you'll be able to buy coffee and merch at the same time. I'll also say something that I didn't say on Crime Weekly, but we've been hinting to it for a while. Just got something in the mail the other day that I have to proof, and then we will be making an announcement probably within the next two to three weeks, and it's a big one for criminal coffee. So some of you detectives in the comments have already figured it out. Don't spoil it for everybody, but extremely excited about it. We've been working very hard on it behind the scenes and it all seems like it's coming to fruition in 2024.

So we will have that for you very shortly. Yeah. And I know what it is. Spoiler alert. Yeah. You were kind of involved in it. So yeah. Yes, I was. But I know what it is. Spoiler alert. Yeah. You were kind of involved in it. So yeah, I would hope so. Yes, I was. You were kind of involved in it. But I'm not saying anything. But it's exciting. It's exciting.

So we're getting ready for that. There's some logistical things that have to go on behind closed doors to make sure everything's good so that when the customer experience is good. But overall, it's been great. And just the support for Criminal Coffee, we're just passing two years with this company and it's growing year over year. The support is still there. There's been multiple people that I get to see the orders every week. And there's been some of you who have been with us since week one and literally still order on a bi-weekly or monthly basis two years later

and are a huge support to it. And we have enough funding for two more cases right now. We're looking at it. None of it would be possible without those people and even the people who come once and check it out. So just extremely appreciative for all the support. And I'm really excited to see where Criminal Coffee is in 10 years from now. I think that's what's looking back at these videos, thinking about this small company and what the original mission was and where we could potentially go. That's exciting to me. Yeah, it's awesome. And we really do appreciate your support for Crime Weekly, for Criminal Coffee. We are so glad that- And your channel and Detective Perspective, all of it. The whole Derek and Stephanie ecosystem.

There's a lot of us. Yeah. And we, we love that you guys are here and that you support everything we do. And we hope to be able to pay you back and great content and, um, our love and appreciation. Maybe later in the year, we'll do a live. Everyone keeps saying in the comments, it's not that we don't want to, but you have personal, professional things going on. It's tough to do it, but we do want to do it for sure. And it will come down the road. And we are talking about a sponsorship with a slime company as well for anyone who's on YouTube. Or not. I wish we were. What is the company? Just give them a shout out. This one is, I think, Slime Obsidian.

Slime Obsidian. Shout out to you. Slime obsidian. You're keeping Stephanie sane. But I also like OG slimes. Anyways, I like slime. It's good for my ADHD. I'm stimming. We need a pineapple slime. Tell them to get on that.

I have a pineapple slime. It looks kind of like a pineapple slime. This one's carrot cake. It smells so good. Carrot cake cloud. And it's like slime, but it's also like kinetic sand. It's a cloud slime. So it's so satisfying. Look at that. Oh, my God. You love that. Everyone on audio is like, what is going on right now? But it looks cool. We promise. I'll bring you one next time I see you. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

All right. Let's dive in to part four of the Pike County Massacre. In November of 2018, an Ohio grand jury brought indictments against George Wagner, Jake Wagner, Angela Wagner, Billy Wagner, Frederica Wagner, and Rita Newcomb. The main four Wagners, which would be Jake, George, and their parents, Billy and Angela, they were charged with eight counts of aggravated murder each, along with a series of additional charges including conspiracy, engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, tampering with evidence, unlawful possession of a dangerous ordinance, forgery, unauthorized use of property, interception of wire, oral or electronic communications, obstructing justice, and aggravated

burglary. On top of all of that, Jake Wagner was charged with unlawful sexual conduct with a minor in regards to his relationship with Hannah Mae Roden when he was 20 and she was just 15. We promised that the day would come when arrests would be made in the Pike County massacres. Today is that day. Yesterday, a Pike County grand jury indicted four individuals for aggravated murder with death penalty specifications. George Billy Wagner III, his wife Angela Wagner, and their sons George Wagner IV and Edward Jake Wagner. After an extensive, thorough joint investigation by the Attorney General's Office, the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, as well as our Special Prosecution Section,

and Pike County Sheriff Charles Reeder's office, these four individuals are now in custody for allegedly committing this heartless, ruthless, cold-blooded murder. All eight victims were killed in cold blood. They were shot in their own homes. They were brutally and viciously executed. The killers knew the territory and meticulously planned these horrendous murders. The eight victims left behind an extended grief-stricken family, including four young children. Thankfully, in their only show of mercy, the killers spared the three children at the scenes.

At the center of this case were members of one family whom we believe the evidence will show conspired together to kill these eight people, eight of their friends. We believe that the Wagners conspired together to develop an elaborate plan to kill the eight victims under the cover of darkness and then carefully cover up their tracks. We believe the evidence will show that suspects spent months planning the crimes. They studied the victims' habits and their routines. They knew the layouts of their homes. They knew where they slept. And then after executing each victim, we believe the evidence will further show that the suspects tampered with the evidence, such as the victim's phones and the surveillance cameras on their properties.

Two other people were also arrested today in conjunction with the cover-up of these crimes. And let me again emphasize, these two individuals were arrested in regard to the cover up of these crimes. Angela's mother, Rita Newcomb, and Billy's mother, Frederica Wagner. The charges against these two suspects relate to their alleged actions to mislead our authorities. Pike County is a resilient community, very small. I know it's been tough to be known as the place where people were murdered, but we are much, much more than that. We are a place that

doesn't let cowardly murderers get away with their crimes under the cover of darkness. We're the place that finds justice for victims, and today is a big step on that path. So Angela's mother, Rita Newcomb, was accused of forging custody documents related to the case and then lying about it to a grand jury and to investigators. She would eventually accept a deal where she pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge of obstructing official business, and in exchange, the felony charges of forgery, perjury, and obstructing justice were dismissed. Apparently, handwriting samples concluded that Rita had not actually signed these custody documents herself, and she would admit to falsely telling a grand jury and the police that she had signed them because her daughter, Angela Wagner, had told

her to. And I don't think that it takes much of a stretch to realize that Angela Wagner herself forged these custody documents and forged her mother's signature as the person who was notarizing the documents. So Angela is doing all sorts of forgery. And then she's kind of like telling her mother to take the fall for it, which is pretty messed up. Yeah, but you see this a lot, though, honestly, and it could be for different reasons, but they want to diversify the guilt first and foremost because they figure, hey, if it's lesser charges for each person,

it's only one battle you have to fight. I also think it's optics where, you know, are they going to go after the grandma? Are they going to go after the elderly person? Now that's their thought. I'm not saying that's what's going to happen, but that could be part of it as well, where they're going to go easier on grandma instead of her. And there's a lot of different reasons, but we've seen this in a lot of narcotics cases,

honestly, where you'll have the main guy. I know who the main guy is, but he's got mom who's 60, 70 years old, keeping the drugs up in her place because we're not going to rip mom's apartment apart. You know what I mean? We're not going to rip her house apart. We're not going to go in there and charge this granny with possession of heroin. We're not going to do that. We're going to go easier on her. So different crime, but similar mentality, I think. Yes. And I mean, I think that Rita Newcomb at the end of the day, she was like, well, yeah, I did lie to the grand jury and tell them I signed the papers, but I can't lie anymore because God wouldn't want me to. And I just, I think it's kind of messed up to pull your own mother into a criminal act and then not even tell

her until after you had decided to do that, that you had decided to do that and then ask her to cover for you. But I will say Angela Wagner believes that her family is like the Sopranos. So I'm not surprised that she just assumed everybody would be, you know, all for the criminal element of the Wagners. Well, it's probably been like that way her whole life. You see that with a lot of criminals

who start at a young age. Initially, it's them doing things they shouldn't be doing and the parents not correcting it. And then it goes to a position where they're still doing things and now it may be of a criminal nature and the parents are justifying it and therefore enabling them. That doesn't change when they get older, when they think, hey, listen, if I do something wrong, mom or dad are always going to be there to bail me out. The crimes just get worse. The charges get worse and the coverups get more involved. And in some cases- Yeah. And the repercussions get worse. The repercussions increase until the point where the parents are in prison for something they didn't do because they're defending Timmy or Jenny. Absolutely. Now, remember Frederica Wagner.

At this point, I believe she's 78 years old. She's Billy's mother and Jake and George's grandmother. So initially to the grand jury, she claimed she'd bought them on Amazon when in fact it turned out she had purchased them from eBay. But then Frederica was able to provide receipts showing she had purchased these bulletproof vests after the Roden family massacre. And she said she just forgot. She just forgotten where she'd bought them from. I honestly don't think that Frederica had anything to do with it. I don't think she was informed. I think that for the most part, she probably was the good upstanding citizen that she appeared to be.

And I'm not sure why this good upstanding grandma citizen is buying two bulletproof vests. I was just going to say that. I mean, everyone's entitled to do it. I don't know. Were these receipts handwritten by any chance? I don't think so. I think they were confirmed by law enforcement to be valid. I mean, they must have been, right? I would hope so. If it's in the court documents.

Why are you buying two bulletproof vests? You know, there are people, and I'm one of them, to be honest with you, but it partially started from law enforcement where I wouldn't say I'm a full doomsday prepper. But, you know, there are people who go out there and buy those pre-made like food meals that will last like for 30 years. They'll buy vests, firearms, ammo, water. I mean, maybe. Rice. I mean, they're down south. They could be into that where it's like they do prep for the next.

The doomsday. The next zombie apocalypse, you know? The coming of, the second coming that Lori Vallow and Chad Daybelt were getting ready for. For real. But if that's the case, then the vest isn't going to help you. Like, that's the one argument, right? Like, they must be preparing for like a civil war because. Are you saying demons don't use guns?

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. They do. They're just going to go right through the vest. They do because they're using people's bodies. I mean, unless they body jump, I don't know. Maybe the bulletproof vest prevents the body jumping. Yeah, they can't go through with the Kevlar. Can't go in, can't go through. Even though your face isn't protected. They don't go in through your face. They go through your solar plexus. Yeah. Frederica Wagner did not waive her right to a speedy trial and her attorneys asked for the charges to be dismissed, saying, quote, Mrs. Wagner is maintaining as she has since the day of her arrest.

She's innocent and has been wrongfully charged. We believe that the foundation for the dismissal is that the evidence doesn't lead to guilt. End quote. Now, charges against Frederica would be dropped in June of 2019, but the prosecution said, listen, we still have a ton of evidence to go through. And I think the statute of limitations on her charges she was facing was seven years. And they said, we could bring these charges back.

We're not saying she's innocent. We're not saying she's in the clear. We're saying that as of this time, because we're building a case against these other people, we don't have time to mess around with it. But when we do, we may be coming back for this grandma, this bulletproof vest buying grandma. And that is, you got to prioritize, right? We talked about this in Crime Weekly News for a different reason, but manpower, resources, all that stuff. You want to focus on the main guys and make sure that you dot your I's, cross your T's,

and have a solid case there before you start diverting manpower and resources to the extensions of that crime. Yeah, you want to try to get everyone, but you want to make sure you get at least the main guy. And if you're spreading yourself too thin, everyone can walk. Yeah, And there was

a lot of evidence, a lot of evidence in this case. So they want to obviously go after the people who held the guns and took part in the massacre and spend time sorting through that evidence and organizing that evidence before they worry about an almost 80-year-old woman buying bulletproof vests on eBay. And most evidence, once you identify it, is indefinite. It's not going to go anywhere. There's no expiration date on it. It's something that can go back and be reanalyzed later. So once you have it, it's not going to degradate or deteriorate unless it's like I said, like a DNA. And even then, if it's preserved correctly, it wouldn't happen. So yeah, you're right. Once you have the evidence, you want to collect everything. You want to organize it, categorize everything, and link it to the people responsible.

And as you just mentioned, if they want to go after Granny later, they can go back and review the evidence. And maybe making those initial arrests, they will also learn new information that will expose new people or solidify and incriminate the individuals that they had initially figured were involved. Yep, absolutely. And that's what's happening in this case. So they're going to start working on that. And we're going to talk about exactly what kind of evidence they gathered against these people when we come back from our first break. On November 28th, 2018, George Wagner, so he's Jake's brother and Billy and Angela's son, he entered a not guilty plea for all 22 charges he faced. The following month, George's father, Billy, also entered a plea of not guilty for his 22 charges. And it was sort of expected that Jake and his mother, Angela, would follow suit.

And at the end of November 2018, Jake did plead not guilty. But in April of 2021, Jake Wagner pleaded guilty to eight counts of aggravated murder. In exchange for Jake's testimony against the other members of his family, prosecutors agreed to not seek the death penalty for him. But the death penalty would still be on the table for his brother, George. Today marks the fifth year anniversary of the Roden murders. And today today Jake Wagner pled guilty to eight counts of aggravated murder.

28-year-old Jake Wagner will die in prison for the crime of killing eight members of the Roden family using what the judge said was a firearm equipped with a silencer. Some of the victims had been killed while they were sleeping. In exchange for his guilty plea, the prosecutor says Wagner agreed to testify against the rest of his family. Doing so avoided him from receiving the death penalty. Prosecutors say they were able to tie Wagner to the crimes based on purchases before the murders.

Investigators also found receipts and video evidence of the Wagners making purchases of shoes during the same month of the homicides that matched identically the shoe tread marks left in blood at one of the scenes. At one point, Wagner turned to the crowded courtroom full of Roden family survivors and said, And I'm deeply and very sorry. In court, the judge described how far the Wagners went to plan this mass killing.

They hacked the Facebook accounts of two Roden family members to monitor their conversations, used surveillance video to watch the family's movements, including their dogs. This was cold, cold, cold blood. I mean, this was calculated, planned out. And it just chills you to think about. Prosecutors say the motive in the case was an obsession by the Wagners to gain custody of Jake's daughter. They forged paperwork that said in the event of the death of the child's mother, Jake would get custody. That paperwork was filed six days after the murders. In addition, the special prosecutor says they found burned remains of a failed silencer on the Wagners property and

that Jake Wagner led them to other evidence that they never found. Specifically, the weapons that were used in these offenses, along with vehicles that were used during these offenses, including one that was bought specifically to use the night of the homicides only. Jake Wagner confirmed this to the judge, saying it was all true. He now will testify against his family. potentially the other child as well that he thought was his. And here he is diming them all out. I don't know. And he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison. So I don't really see the incentive. He didn't want the death penalty. I mean, at that point, wouldn't he just, you know, what's the incentive? Yeah, because there's no chance of parole for him. Yeah.

I just, I don't get it. Now I'm glad he did for the sake of the family that they know exactly what happened, but. Maybe he, maybe he thinks that civil war is coming, that they're preparing for, and then he'll just be busted out of jail by his fellow comrades. He's hoping that one day everything just breaks down and there's no more laws. And he's like, you know, that'll happen in a few years that the way society's going. But he's like, I'll just, you know, then they'll just break open the doors of the jail and everybody will walk out. I will say this, you know, you don't want to judge a book by its cover, but

we're starting to learn about the details of the crime now. And I will say from an outside perspective, looking in higher level of execution and planning than I would have anticipated for this type of family based on my initial impressions of them. Now, they did do some stupid things that ultimately got them caught, but to think that they were monitoring the family prior to the event by hacking their Facebook accounts, monitoring them on surveillance cameras to see their movements and where they were at certain times of the day, not only them, but also their dogs as well, because obviously the

dogs could alert them by barking or maybe attack one of them in the process of carrying out the murders. So there was definitely some premeditation, some planning that went into this. And if you were to ask me at the beginning, if I thought that would be the case, just looking at them, maybe that's my fault. I wouldn't have assumed that much. I would have assumed it was just kind of like, hey, grab your gun. Let's go, you know, and just go for it. So you're going to find that the Wagner boys are actually pretty handy. I believe Angela Wagner was the brains behind the operation. Like, I'm not going to lie to you. And you're going to hear George towards the end of this episode talk a little bit. You're going to realize he's not not the sharpest tool in the shed. And I can't imagine that Jake was either. But they were pretty handy. You're going

to find out that they took a truck and modified it to make basically a false bottom so that he and George could hide in the bed of the truck without it looking like anybody was in the bed of the truck. They built a barn. They were very physically handy, the kind of guys you'd want around if you were going to put in a new hardwood floor or hang a shelf or something. But the brains definitely was Angela. When you want to talk about intelligence, when you want to talk about execution of the plan, I'm sure she made sure that every step made sense and wasn't going to lead them into prison, although apparently that didn't work. But once again, that goes to ego and hubris and thinking, oh, we're the Wagners. Nobody's going to suspect us. Angela is such a wholesome chocolate chip muffin baking grandma, and we're not going to be suspects in this. And then when they realized they were, you'll find they started making plans, like what happens if we go to jail? Well, we'll break each other out, things like that.

So, yeah, they kind of really went about this in a very calculated, premeditated, and planned way. And I don't think that there was a chance they would ever get away with it because those shell casings on their property really gave them away and started law enforcement kind of looking at them. But if they had not been doing target practice at that property for probably years and they were able to collect those shells, or if they'd gotten different guns, right, like you had said last episode, if they'd just gotten different guns, they may have gotten away with this. That's what's kind of scary to think about. If they had used completely different guns than they'd used for target practice at their house on Peterson Road, they may have gotten away with this. I'm saying above 50-50 chance that they got away with this. So you mentioned the shell casings. In that clip, it also mentioned the footprint,

the bloody footprint. Do you want to talk about that now? Well, we have talked about that multiple times. That's the size 10 and a half and the size 11 shoes, the shoes that they matched to the ones Angela bought at Walmart. And these were basically brand new, never used shoes. They didn't put them on until that night. Jake said he was wearing the size 10 and a half. George is wearing the size 11. And you'll hear when the prosecutor starts talking about what Jake revealed, that he pretty much told them like, OK, so this is where George was standing when he was doing a lookout thing. And then she'll say, and that's exactly where we found that size 11 shoe print. So we know that Jake was at least being accurate about the events of that evening. They were to establish credibility. Well, that goes back to guilt knowledge.

That's what we talk about when they don't release everything. But when someone comes forward with information that only they would know, they were able to corroborate it with information that the person saying it doesn't know they have, which lends the credibility to it. As far as the footprint itself, because we did talk about it briefly, with footprints, it's interesting because with footprint impressions it's not all like one shot one one size fits all no pun intended uh depending on the impression that you have there's going to be different ways from a detective's angle of how we're going to process that scene if it's a muddy

boot print we'll usually use like a dental stone where you make it into a liquid form you pour it into the the mud print you pour it into the mud print, you cast it, you then can pull that out and then you can go with it from there. You can enhance it through photography. With blood impressions, it's a little different because you don't want to disturb it. And it may also not be as detailed, but if you've ever seen a bloody footprint, they can actually be very detailed. Almost this, I would describe it as imagine you're doing a fingerprint, right? Where you're putting your finger in ink and it's just a thin layer that you then roll your finger onto the piece of paper.

And you can see all the little indentations and impressions and all the little details of that specific fingerprint because of this ink. And because it's and because it's not oversaturated with ink. Sometimes when someone steps in blood, yes, a couple first prints will be too much to kind of make out, but as they continue to walk, it'll be very similar to a fingerprint in some type of ink. And so what we would do before ever trying to transpose it onto a piece of paper or anything like that is we take really high quality photos with not like your iPhone, but like a DSLR camera, usually a Nikon, and we'll take really good photos with a macro lens, a regular lens, take as much as we can, different lighting, et cetera. Then what we will do is we will bring that print, those photos back to the police station and we can enhance them

through Photoshop, other programs that we can use where you don't want to change the impression, but basically you take out the coloring, you make it black and white, you enhance the contrast and it gives you a clearer, you get rid of all the stuff around it, all the noise, all the other blood. And now you're just left with this footprint impression. Now you're just left with this boot print. And in that boot print, you will find that just like any fingerprint out there where you have scars or marks from your own life, shoes will do the same. Whether you're walking on concrete or walking through sand or cut some of the rubber sole on a rock or a piece of glass, every shoe print will be slightly different. Every shoe print will have its own imperfections. So you could say, oh, well, any boot print of that,

you know, that's that brand is going to look the same. Yes. When it's first purchased, but there's, if there's identifiable points or marks on that boot print and you have a pair to compare it to, you can bring that boot print in, you can take ink or something similar to that, you make an impression of that boot print, the suspected boot print on a piece of paper, you enhance it, and then you can compare them in a software to see if the specific identifiable marks that make that shoe print specific to that print, you can compare them to see if the other shoe has it as well. Obviously, you're going to compare a boot print that has a similar brand,

whether it's right or left foot. Then you get into the tread pattern. Then you go into the details of, oh, look over in this top left corner. There's a small gash in the third line down from the tread. Let's go over to our boot print at the seam. Third line down. There's also a gash. Okay. That's one point. You want to get as many markers as you can, and then you put them side by side in a nice little packet and you can present it to the courts. But it's a long process. It's not easy, but it's actually a lot of fun to do, to be honest. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. And it was pretty easy in this situation, right? Because these shoes had never been worn before. So when they looked at the treads, they're like brand new, not worn down. There's no gashes. There's no like marks from rocks and like scarring and pock marks from gravel and things like that. Brand new. So all they had to

do was identify what type of shoe it was and see if these suspects bought them, which is what exactly happened. And they could see the receipts and all that. So then you have everything around them. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool stuff. The forensics of crime scene investigation is, I think that's the stuff that a lot of our people like too. I know I do.

Maybe. I know you do. Yeah. I love it. I could talk about it for hours. Well, before you talk about it for hours, let's take a break. We'll be right back. Sounds good.

So the following September, after Jake pleaded guilty to eight counts of aggravated murder, his mother, Angela Wagner, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, aggravated burglary, tampering with evidence, forgery, unauthorized use of property, and unlawful possession of a dangerous ordinance. In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop the eight charges of aggravated murder, and they recommended that she serve 30 years in prison with no chance of early release. At her age, this means she too will most likely die behind bars. But it was also a requirement that Angela, like her son Jake, would have to testify at the trials of her family members. In May of 2022, the prosecution detailed new evidence during a hearing on what would be allowed into the trial. The Wagners were

described as more criminal enterprise than family. There were multiple instances of arson of various properties that the Wagners owned, which were committed by them for financial gain. There were multiple instances of theft by the Wagners, including things like gas and tractor trailers. There were instances of Billy threatening his wife, Angela, with a gun, and he had also threatened Chris Roden Sr. with a gun the same week as the massacre. There was allegations that Billy Wagner had killed, plotted to kill, or threatened to kill others before. And the Wagners were also involved in transporting drugs and drug trafficking. They had tried to obtain a mortgage by committing fraud. It was ridiculous, the laundry list of

things that these people had done that didn't even come to light, really, until their trials, until they were on trial for these other crimes. And then the police found out that the family had ordered potential witnesses to not speak to law enforcement and they wanted to ensure that no one would speak against them. So the Wagners hired witnesses, lawyers, and then even went with these witnesses, these potential witnesses, to their attorneys' offices to just make sure that they were saying the right thing, doing the right thing, and not putting the Wagners in a compromising position. And this actually continued via phone and email correspondence

after the Wagners were behind bars. They continued this kind of sort of controlling, manipulative tactics. The prosecution asserted that the Wagners had made threats to BCI agents and other law enforcement and government officials, and the family had made a plan that if they were not all arrested at the same time, the ones who were still free would break the others out of jail. Now, the trial of George Wagner began in September of 2022, and during opening statements, prosecutor Angela Sanapa laid out what had happened to the Rodens and Hannah Gilley based on the evidence collected and what

Jake Wagner had revealed. He dated Hannah. He fell in love with her. He was very upset when they parted ways. He wanted her very much to come back to him. He was certainly jealous. But also that it did not, the idea to kill these people did not initiate to him. He, you know, was certainly jealous. But also that it did not, the idea to kill these people did not initiate with him. He was definitely a willing participant. He will tell you that his dad was the first to broach the subject with him. And the idea was that they had to kill Hannah. And Jake said, no, not going to that. When his dad first brought the idea to him. On another occasion, Jake will tell you that he thought about it. And although he did not believe anything had happened to Sophia at the time of the homicides,

he indicated to us that why would you wait for something to happen? Because you can't undo that. So based on that, and encouraged by his father and encouraged by his mother, they set out on a plan to kill Hannah Mae. At first it was just going to be Hannah Mae. But ultimately this idea snowballed and it became we have to kill Hannah Mae, Frankie, Little Chris and Big Chris. And then like I said, on site kind of that Kenneth got added on to that Jake will tell

you freely that they knew there might be other people there. And they knew that they would kill them, even though they were perfectly innocent. He also believed what he had read, that Hannah Mae would never sign custody papers over to him. So he believed the only way to get sole control of his daughter was to kill Hannah Mae and her family members. He will admit that he purchased the silencer parts, that they purchased a truck specifically for this um to commit this offense in he will admit that angela wagner bought the shoes for he and george to wear the night of the homicides again trying to make it different sizes than what they normally wore and to make it a different kind of shoe and then you know they would be caught dead in frankly you know they usually wore boots and

uh usually did not wear tennis shoes especially that kind of make and style so he admits that um and the same idea was for the murder truck the truck that they used for the murder um you will hear that uh billy uh overheard his um cousin saying or his uncle saying that he was selling a car um he was talking to that uh silas wagner is his name he was talking to another individual and said that he would sell this truck that he had for 2500 and billy said we'll buy it and that was one day and then shortly thereafter um silas will tell you that jake and george and angela came up to his property and gave him the 2500 for that truck. Jake will tell you that they modified the truck.

They built a false bed in the truck. Jake will tell you he used two by fours. You'll have pictures of the truck, but where the eye hooks were, kind of there's a level plane and there's some eye hooks kind of on top of that. He put the two by fours up and then put plywood and then put hay on top of that he put the two by fours up and then put plywood and then put hay on top of that so it would look like the bed was full of hay and instead that's where he and George stowed away when they drove up to Chris Senior's that night he will tell you that they made plans with Chris Senior Billy made plans with Chris Senior about this imaginary plans with Chris Sr. about this imaginary drug deal. And so

he was going to drive up to talk to Chris Sr. about that drug deal that night and still don't know if it's a real thing or not, or if this was all just a feigned way for him to go up there. But that way, Chris Sr. would be expecting them, right? So then no alarms would be sounded. The plan was that George was going to shoot Chrisris senior from a distance like a sniper in a fashion that chris would never know what hit him would never know that billy wagner was betraying him or whatever of course gary was there also they walked they went out to outdoor grow they walked back in front of the house and jake will tell you however that george was taking too long and seemed to be frozen he didn't know if it was because i neglected to tell you this so that thing that we dug out of

the well the silencer that we dug out the well had all the parts that they had purchased to make the silencer that was a prototype but it had failed. And so they scrapped that idea. And they decided to use filters instead fuel filters instead. So they had a silencer on made out of a filter on both the SKS in the 1911. So the 40 block was the only weapon that did not have a silencer on it. So Matt White was right about all of the involved weapons. It was a 40 Glock, it was a 1911-22, and it was a high-powered.30 caliber SKS. So Jake didn't know if it was because the fuel filter was blocking his view, because Jake said when he had test fired the weapon, he found that to be an issue.

Either way, ultimately, Jake took the weapon from George, and Billy at some point came back out to where they were and were questioning them why they hadn't shot. At that time, Billy came up with a ruse of asking Chris Sr. to call his phone. I don't know where my phone is. Can you call it so I can find my phone? Well, truth be told, all the phones belonging to Billy and Jake and George were left back at Peterson Road, actually with instructions to Angela, who left back at peterson road um actually with instructions but to angela who remained back at the home with with bullvine and sophia to text people or use that the phone so it would appear that they were at home this whole time providing

them an alibi of note the phone jammer uh had worked when they tested it but the battery ran out very quickly jake will tell you, and so it didn't work for long at all. And so you will see, I told you that that 1055 p.m. time was very important. It's very important because that's when Chris Sr., at the request of his friend Billy Wagner, made calls to his friend's phone so that his friend could find his phone. And really all that did was take him to the front door so that Jake could shoot him. And so we kind of know the time of death of Chris Sr. because it was shortly after making that phone call. Billy was still inside of the

residence, according to Jake, with the 40 Glock, where he shot both Billy and or Chris and Gary and he will say at that point Billy came running out of the residence and was hysterical saying I just shot my best friend I just shot my best friend and it talks about the look that Chris gave him when he realized what was happening Jake will tell you that he and George tried to calm Billy down and that Jake went inside the residence and retrieved keys that he knew to be in Chris Sr.'s pocket. While he did that, George and Billy drug the bodies of Gary Roden and Chris Sr. back to the bedroom of Chris Sr. Jake knows that because when he came back down, their bodies had been moved.

But they drove by Dana's and Dana was not yet there. And I think I told you earlier that they claimed that she was not in main target. They then decided to go to Frankie's. Jake will tell you that he entered through the open, there was an open window at the back of the trailer. Again, keep in mind that this is a trailer that he has been in before. Then he went back. He will tell you that Brent Lee was asleep on that couch upon entering the residence. There was a couch in the living room and the TV was on. And he went back to the room where he knew Hannah and Hazel or Hannah Hazel and Frankie would be sleeping and shot both of them with the 1911 22. They went back to Chris Senior's again and got into the vehicle to Chris Senior's vehicle and they went to Dana's. There they entered that residence. Jake will tell you that both George and Billy entered the residence he will tell you that he went into a hallway and again he'll we will show you this with Heimstein

photos Etc but he basically positioned himself so that he could see both Hannah and Dana he says he took two quick steps into Dana's room and shot her twice and then immediately rushed back to where Hannah was and he will tell you that Hannah obviously heard him because she was laying with her left side to the doorway and turned to look she had been nursing Kylie and saw him. He doesn't believe she recognized him, but she saw him, and he shot her. He will tell you that after he shot her, he rearranged her body on the bed so that Kylie could nurse if she wanted to. And he will say that he went back into Dana's room

and shot her more times because she was making noises. Jake claims that he then went to into Dana's room and shot her more times because she was making noises. Jake claims that he then went to little Chris's room and also shot little Chris who had never woken up. He was asleep at the time he was killed. They then went back and got into Chris's car. This time they drove back to Chris's car and got their truck that they had brought up there, the one that they had purchased from silas wagner and they both the cars followed each other so at that point billy was driving the truck that they had chris's truck and george was driving the truck that they had

purchased and they went down to left fork and again you'll see this on the surveillance cameras and um jake will say that there was a little turn off that we kind of showed you a little intersection down there close to left fork that that's where they had george pull off um he was kind of a lookout um slash getaway driver in the event that um things went bad again they were driving chris's truck right up to Kenneth's driveway. Kenneth had an electric sensor. His daughter will tell you that if he had taken his blood pressure medication, he's a very heavy sleeper.

And that's the only thing she can guess as to why he didn't wake up. But his door is unlocked when he's sleeping inside of it because he padlocks it when he leaves it. So the padlock's on the outside, not the inside jake states that billy entered that residence and he claims he saw a flash of light and that billy killed him with the 40 caliber clock at that point there again was cameras to remove at that location um because he had a kind of a mini grow and they did that and removed a trail cam from a tree as well after they were done at kennes they drove back up to chris seniors they

left chris seniors truck there and got in the vehicle that they had purchased from silas wagner and drove back to peterson road where they kind of just undid everything they did right they parked the truck in the barn they got out of those clothes they put on their original clothing and jake will say that they burned and tried to destroy the weapons cut up the weapons and destroy specifically the firing pins and other things that would enable BCI or anybody to do ballistics on them. And that they dug a hole in the barn and buried the, put it in a duffel bag and buried it temporarily. He will tell you that in the meantime, once they dis disassembled they also disassembled the truck the fake false bed in the truck and that billy then took the truck to his niece billy's niece

katie wagner katie wagner is the daughter of billy's brother bobby they live in athens and you will hear from them as well that kind of out of the blue billy wagner shows up with a truck for katie before it the sun had even risen unannounced unplanned unpredicted and of course katie was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth and she was happy to have a truck and she got it titled in her name the same day and you will see that it was titled in her name on april 22nd of 2016. billy had bobby taken back to the farm and uh because he didn't have any other way to get back bobby will tell you that when he arrived both jake and george were outside of the house and they led him into the old barn not the new barn where they had been doing their dirty deeds but the new barn and and had him look at a pig or something.

And ultimately, he said he went into the residence with the three of them, Jake, George and Billy. Jake will tell you that obviously they planned this for months and their plan was not only to kill these people, but also to get away with it. They didn't want to get caught. So they took great measures to do that. One of those great measures was to not talk on phones, not even talk in the house unless you ran water nearby. They would go outside and talk. They just pretty much assumed that everything was bugged. He also tells us what he did with the murder weapons. He told us that after the homicides and after they had buried those items and burned a lot of the items as well, that anything that was left over, they had five gallon buckets of concrete and they dropped the stuff in four different buckets of concrete. And then they made a goose box for their grandfather, Bobby, or Robert Wagner, father, the father, Bobby Wagner, not the brother.

And they gave it to him for Father's Day that year and floated it on the pond, that big pond that you saw out there, and used the concrete buckets full of the murdered weapons as anchors. Armed with this information, we were able to get a search warrant and go out there and we did recover those concrete buckets and took them to the lab at BCI where they were broken up, chiseled out, soaked in oil, and recovered multiple weapon parts belonging to an SKS, the 1911, the 40 Glock. Even though they were in parts, the firing pin had not been damaged. So Matt White, who was our ballistics expert, will tell you that he was able to test fire those. They have the ability in the lab to hold the gun together so it doesn't explode apart. And he was able to make positive identifications with the ballistics

on the both the 22 and the 40 clock so we know without a doubt that that is those were the murder weapons that were used that jake led us to after that we being the skeptic of the pirate right we made an offer to the rest of the individuals that if anyone came forward, we purposely did not release Jake's statement. We did not provide that to anybody. Nobody except the attorneys and our lead agent knew the contents of that proffer. And we said that if anyone else came forward and could tell us something that

was consistent with what we had just heard that would do two things for us it would it would demonstrate that jake was telling us the truth right um and it would just be stronger corroborating evidence that that another member of the wagner family was giving us the same information without knowing exactly what jake had said right and that person that came forward was Angela Wagner. She came forward in September of 2021, about five months after Jake had come forward. All right, that was a lot. Hopefully you guys were able to follow all that.

I think it's best hearing it from the people who worked the case. I thought it was a really well-said chronological order with all the details because a lot of the questions you had about it, it's all there, but we'll talk all about it. We'll be back right after this break. I had to leave some in because otherwise it would have sounded choppy and weird. I took out over 50% of them and it still felt incessant. It was long.

It was very annoying to hear her every other word. I didn't notice it as much until you just said it. So I think you're good. I think you did a good job. All right. Well, let's add some context to a few things that this prosecutor, Angela Sneppa, spoke about during her opening statement. First, she mentions a Boondock Saints clip that George and Jake watched before going out to commit these murders. Now, during George's trial, the lead investigator, Ryan Scheiderter, testified that

he believed the Wagner boys may have been inspired by the Boondock Saints films. In the films, two Irish Catholic brothers become vigilantes to wipe out the criminal underworld of Boston in God's name. And they had both dyed their hair darker to look like the characters, and the Beretta pistol used in the murders was the same as the one used in the film. The Wagner brothers also covered their faces with ski masks and used silencers similar to the Boondock Saints characters. And remember that Jake is a huge fan of Norman Reedus from The Walking Dead. Norman Reedus also plays one of these brothers in the Boondock Saints films. And both George and Jake did dye their hair like much darker in probably one of the reasons they probably didn't want to be recognized by their hair color, although

everyone afterwards saw them with this darker hair. But also it was like this way to hype themselves up, like to actually put themselves into these characters shoes and almost maybe disassociate from the fact that it was them doing it. I'm a big Boondock Saints fan as well of the movie, being from the New England area. And, you know, Irish kid definitely liked that movie. And now in hindsight, Jake Irish kid definitely liked that movie. What's, and now in hindsight, Jake actually does look like that character. Yeah. He thought he did. He, he told people he was a lookalike. Not now, not now in these new clips, but, but back then he definitely did. So as soon as you said it and now, and I remember that, and I told you, I didn't watch

the walking dead, but I did know that the actor from the Boondock Saints is in The Walking Dead. So that was like, oh, okay, that's who it is. And it all makes sense. Boondock Saints is a great movie. There's multiple, there's multiple movies of it. The first one's the best one. The other ones are not that great. Yes, I completely agree.

Yeah, but it's, the first one's pretty good. The toilet scene. Do you remember the toilet scene? In the first movie, yes. When he's breaking the toilet to get to his brother? It's great. Yes. It's a really good movie.

I agree. A lot of people don't like it. Anyone who's watched it with me is like, that was stupid. Really? Yeah. They're not fans of it. But I think it's pretty good. Was that a Quentin Tarantino film?

I don't know if it was a Tarantino film. It wasn't as bloody as his movies usually are. But it is interesting bringing it back to the case. I was thinking about the elements of the crime. And I remembered that in the movie, they did use the silencers and all these things. So you do start to see those similarities where these morons were using this fictional movie as a template for how they were going to commit these crimes. But it doesn't surprise me. So it was not Quentin Tarantino. It's Troy Duffy. And it was his first time writing a screenplay. But yeah, he was inspired by personal experience

while living with his brother Taylor in Los Angeles. Even though this, I think the movie took place in Boston, but- It did Boston, right? William Dafoe, another great actor in that movie. Yes. Yes. I couldn't imagine two more different cities than Boston and LA, honestly. It's a very, it's a polar opposite for sure. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. It was great. But yes. So it feels like George and Jake almost wanted to emulate these characters to separate themselves from what they were about to do. And Special Agent Schreider talked about a scene in the film where the scorpion and the frog fable is spoken about just before a father kills his best friend with the help of his two sons. Right.

And we heard they go up to the first scene one, which is Chris Roden Sr.'s trailer. And Jake and George are outside. Billy goes into the trailer and he has some ruse, right, to tell Chris Sr. Like, oh, I can't find my phone. Can you call it for me? I lost it. And that brings Chris Sr. to the door. And then George was supposed to shoot him, but George froze.

So Jake grabbed his brother's SKS and shot at Chris Roden Sr. from outside. He actually shot twice, and I believe he hit him twice. And then from inside, Billy then finishes Chris Sr. off, comes out of the house, the trailer, all upset. I just killed my best friend. He's a mess, etc., etc., which is so weird because you also heard Angela Sinapa talk about how Billy, the father, was the first person to bring up the idea of murdering Hannah Mae. And as a result, you know, multiple family members and what he initially or what had been initially suggested by Angela was, oh, let's just tell the police that Chris Sr. is growing this weed and get him thrown in prison. And Billy was like, no, I'm not doing that to my best friend. I'm not going to let him serve five years in prison. I'm just going to take his life and the life of every single person that he loved and cared about. That's what a good friend would do, more likely. But yes,

this Boondock Saints clip with the father killing his best friend with the help of his sons is very much reflective of what happened here with the Wagners and the Rodens. And then after the Roden murders, George Wagner, the son, he got a tattoo of a scorpion and they felt that this was a possible reference to that film scene. George also got a tattoo of an eight ball. And it's been speculated by law enforcement and prosecution that this was in reference to the eight people he helped kill. Now, apparently the Wagner brothers watched an especially violent clip from the movie on the night they killed Hannah Mae Roden, her family, and her future sister-in-law. And they did this to pump themselves up for what they were intending to do. Now, when Jake was on the stand during the trial and they played this clip for the jury,

a smile touched his lips. He seemed to really be enjoying watching it again. Like there's pictures of him looking at this clip and smiling like, what a freak. Do you know what you're doing there? Do you know why you're sitting here in this courtroom watching this this clip right now? Or did you think you were back home on the on the sofa enjoying your favorite movie? It was a throwback to better times before he was apprehended for multiple murders. from their family member, Silas Wagner. This was George and Jake's great uncle. So it was Billy's uncle. And this truck had been purchased three weeks before the murders. Jake and George modified the truck to create a fake bed using a two by four and a piece of plywood so they could be hidden inside of it. So like I said, they're handy. All right. They are definitely handy. Indisputable. Jake Wagner would testify in front of the jury, but he did so

without the cameras rolling, which is allowed by Ohio law. And you will see during this trial, if you watched it, there's going to be a day like trial, day 22, and it's going to be seven, eight hours long and three hours is just a complete black screen or like one of the statues in the courtroom because whoever was testifying at that point had asked to not be filmed while they testified. And Jake did not want to be filmed while he testified. Neither did his mother, Angela, by the way. Jake said that he was close-ish to his father, close to his mother, and very close to his brother, which meant it was incredibly difficult for him to be there testifying against George. Jake denied ever choking Hannah Mae Roden, saying,

I never choked her once I threw my right shoulder up against her and held her up against the barn. When Hannah started dating other men, like Charlie Gilley and Corey Holdren, Jake became concerned about his daughter's well-being because both men were known drug addicts. Jake said, quote, I was concerned that Hannah was going to let my daughter get molested like she did. My daughter told me that Hannah locked her in her bedroom and let her scream for hours, end quote. Jake also claimed that when he had Sophia and he was scheduled to bring her back to her mother's house, Sophia would scratch and claw at his legs and tell him, Daddy, don't let me go. Now, according to Jake, when he brought all of this to Hannah's attention, she told him that their daughter was just being a brat.

Jake said that Hannah was lazy with responsibilities. And the final straw for him came when he asked her what would happen if her carelessness got their daughter molested, and Hannah responded, if it happens, we'll deal with it. Jake calmly told those in the courtroom, quote, I had no choice. I decided to kill Hannah. If I didn't do something, Sophie would be harmed, end quote. Now, I want to talk about this for a second because could this stuff be true? Sure. Also, unicorns could be flying around in space somewhere and mermaids could be in the ocean and we just don't know about it because we haven't seen them. We can't go into space in certain parts and we can't go that deep into the sea. There could be mermaids and unicorns. I don't believe it. Jake Wagner is a narcissistic abuser. He's making up stories to

make Hannah look bad even after her death. He's trying to use Hannah to justify what he did to her and her family. Because at the end of the day, I cannot imagine any mother in the world, much less a mother like Hannah, who was described as loving her children very much, looking at somebody who's telling you, hey, you know, maybe these men you have our daughter around could molest her or hurt her. And Hannah saying, you know, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, especially if she had been a victim of sexual abuse or molestation as a child herself, which he is once again also suggesting. I just don't see that being being a true thing. I also don't see it being true that Hannah locked her two-year-old daughter in a room and let her scream for hours. I also don't believe that Jake never choked her because men like Jake love to go and choke women and use their physicality to intimidate and keep control over women. And I know Jake's a narcissist because of the fact that he comes from a family of narcissists,

that his mother's a narcissist, that he and his mother need control over the people in their lives like they need air, right? So if you look at these four people, Jake, his brother George, their parents, Billy and Angela, clearly Angela and Jake are birds of a feather. They are the same person. They are the ones who, when George and Billy were like, now we're not talking, pact of silence, family comes first, Jake and Angela are over here like, I got to save myself. You know, I got to save myself, even though they were, I do believe, the main driving forces behind why this happened. So I don't believe anything he's saying. He's an idiot over here smiling at a Boondock Saints clip, acting like the only possible option you had to protect your daughter,

even though you were the one constantly threatening legal action, even though you were the one always with the lawyer, even though you were the one always recording Hannah and trying to catch her up in something and you didn't, I don't believe that there was nothing else you could do but kill her. You had no choice. And even, and he's saying, I don't think anything happened. Nothing actually happened to Sophia, but something could. Even if something had happened to Sophia, you still don't have no other choice but to kill eight people. You know, it's just ridiculous. He doesn't want to take any accountability for himself. He wants to throw his

family under the bus just so he doesn't get the chair. And honestly, he's a disgusting human being. Disgusting. And I i don't think that they should have given him such a good deal but i understand why they felt they had to although i will say i i think the evidence was strong enough i think the evidence was strong yeah leading them to the murder weapons obviously super helpful did you hear what happened like did you hear what she was talking about that they had taken the guns put them in like cement and then made like a duck floating thing for their grandfather billy's father, who ended up passing away after they moved to Alaska, made a duck floating thing and put it in the pond. Yeah, I mean, they they they went all out. No,

as far as as far as what you were just talking about. I see it all the time. I've I've very rarely had a situation, even if it's completely unjustified, where a murderer would just say, I did it knowing it was wrong. I just wanted to get off on it. There are those people out there and those are the ones that get a lot of coverage because we as human beings are so fascinated by that because clearly they're mentally disturbed, right? For them to get gratification from killing another human being. In most cases, it's something like this, where whether it's true or not, the offender has found a way to justify their actions, whether that's just outright lies that they've told so often to so many people

that I truly mean this. They blur the lines of reality from fiction. They start to actually believe their own shit. And I've said it to you before, like the best liars are the ones where they're telling you the story. And I kid you not, there's part of them that believes what they're saying at this point, because they've said it so many times. It's now become their reality. And in a lot of cases, their individual perspectives on how they view something will convince them that what they're saying is true. There may be no evidence of it.

It may have never happened before. Hannah may have not responded in the manner that he had described, but now through his eyes and his skewed view of Hannah and the whole situation as a whole, he's now convinced others and more importantly himself that this is what needs to be done in order to save his daughter. There's no other choice. And as far as the violence, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I've definitely expressed this sentiment before, but any man, I don't, and this, you know, we'll, I don't know how everyone will feel about this, but any man who puts his hand on a woman, regardless of the situation is just a petulant scumbag and a coward. And there is no justification for doing it at just period. There's no other thing to say. If you were a man and you put your hand on a woman, you are a scumbag period. There's no other thing to say. If you were a man and you put your hand on a woman, you are a scumbag. Period. So Jake automatically to me loses all credit. Just can't stand the guy. And then on top of that, you take into consideration his ability to put his hands on a woman. It just makes me doubt what he's saying even more so because the guys that do put their hands on women, as you alluded to, will find a way to justify it. Oh, she hit me first or she did this. She

brought it on herself. That's just typical abuser talk. That's what they do. And they're not just doing it for you, by the way. They're doing it for themselves because at the core, they know they're a scumbag. Yeah. And the narcissist's public perception is so, so important to them. They need to be seen as like a good person. They need to be seen as this person that they're projecting, the mask that they wear. And at the end of the day, in order to do that, sometimes they have to lie to themselves and convince themselves that what they're saying and what they're feeling is true. And they get to a point where they absolutely do convince themselves of that. And that's why they're so charming. That's why they're so convincing. And that's why they get

away with destroying so many lives, honestly, because you can't understand as a normal person how anybody could sit there and lie in the way that they do with a straight face as if they believe it. And so you automatically are like, well, they must be telling the truth. They're not. He's not telling the truth, in my opinion. But anyways, moving on. Victim mentality. That's what they are. They did this.

They got it. It's poor me. Everyone feel bad for me. I'm the victim here. Normally, that's not the case. You know what? Before we continue on, we're going to finish the episode. Let's take our last break.

We'll be right back. So initially, Jake had gone to his father, Billy, for advice. And he was like, you know, I'm worried about Sophia. What do I do? And it was Billy who had at first suggested that Hannah had to die. And this happened sometime in 2016. Jake claimed that at that time he had blown up on his father and told him that Hannah was the mother of his child. But eventually, Jake came around to the idea and realized there was no other way. When Jake finally agreed to the plot, Billy told him they would also have to kill Hannah's father, Chris Roden Sr., her older brother Frankie, and her uncle Kenneth, because if they left them alive, they would come after Billy like, quote, a sniper on a hill, end quote. Hannah Gilley, Chris Roden Jr., and Gary Roden died because they happened to be at the scenes,

as well as Dana Roden. Although you do hear the prosecutor refer to Dana and say that the Wagners claimed she was never a target, yet when they first went to her house after leaving Chris Roden Sr.'s trailer, when they first went to her house after leaving Chris Roden's seniors trailer. When they first went to her house, she was not home yet because she was working as an RN. So she hadn't got home from work yet. They left and then came back when she got home. So once again, can you really believe the words of narcissistic liars, narcissistic abusers, people who care more about control and what things look like than what things actually are. No, you can't. So they definitely wanted Dana dead as well.

The most shocking part for me of Jake's testimony was when he described shooting his ex-girlfriend, a person he claimed to still love. He shot her in the head, and then he arranged her newborn baby, Kylie, so that the baby could nurse from Hannah's dead body. And Jake said, quote, it may not make sense, but I did that because if the discovery of the bodies took a long time, I was concerned Kylie would starve to death, end quote. That's messed up, man. That is messed up. Angela Wagner would have a few details to add to the expanding narrative. But first, let's hear from Angela's half-brother, Chris Newcomb, who was 20 years younger than his sister, so he grew up Angela and her two sons Jake and George how would you describe that relationship on her part controlling is I'll get out okay tell me about that what what do you mean by controlling as I'll get out she tell them to jump I jump I think it's the politest way I can put that.

Can you tell us what her relationship was like with Billy? Give me a minute. Dysfunctional? Sound about right? Okay. And why do you say that? If you know Billy, you pretty much know why he was dysfunctional. So go ahead and tell me about that.

Tell me about your observations or your experience with Billy. He's about as useless as tits on a boar hole. Okay. I'm sorry, am I allowed to say that? Yes, I'm sorry. And why do you say that specifically? Lazy, didn't want to do nothing, always running his mouth, always scheming on some way or another. Okay. Grinded his teeth beyond recognition. That's enough to drive anybody crazy.

Can you tell us, regarding Jake and George, was George protective of Jake? Yes. Tell me about that. As his little brother, he was always told to protect him, take care of him against anything, even me on occasion. And he would, he'd protect him. Dude, this guy is so funny.

He's hilarious. I thoroughly enjoyed his testimony. Can I say that? Hilarious. And at one point the judge was like, just answer the questions that are set in front of you. Yeah. But he's so funny. What did he say? That Billy was as useless as-

Useless as tits on a bowl? Or he said something different though, I think. But that's the phrase. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hilarious. But it just shows you like everybody around them kind of knew, but everyone was also sort of like, we don't even want to deal with this. You know, like, even this guy said he's like, yeah, she tried to control me, but I took off. Like, I'm not going to have it happening.

Yep. At the end of the day, like, if I think about this whole thing, I don't feel bad for any of them, but I am an empathetic person. I don't think it's fair that Jake took a plea deal and he hung his brother out to dry. Because if you look at the testimony, it was Jake and Billy who shot most of these victims. And George froze up and he was unable to shoot at Chris Roden Sr.'s house or at Chris Roden Sr. and Jr. or at Chris Roden Sr. in general. He froze up. He couldn't do it. Jake had to take his gun and do it for him. Now, why did Jake take George's gun and shoot Chris Roden Sr. when Jake himself had a gun in his hand? Was he trying to set his brother up? Was he anticipating that they might be, you know,

arrested one day and he would have to turn on them and have something to give police? When in fact, George never actually shot anyone, but he would still later be found guilty on all 22 counts and sentenced to life in prison. George's lawyers, though, they had to take it one step further because it wasn't good enough that George was there and hadn't shot anybody. They said that George was never there at all. He had no idea his family was even planning the murders and he'd been at home asleep. Well, at first, when the Wagners were questioned at the Montana border, when they were coming back from Alaska, George told the police and BCI agents, oh, we were all home together that night, right? Me, my brother, my parents, the kids, we were watching a fairy movie, a kid's movie.

And then later, when he realized his mother and his brother had completely thrown him under the bus, he said, actually, I was home asleep at that time. So he's claiming he didn't even know about it and had no part in it, which I don't believe. I believe he knew about it. I believe he had a part in it. I believe that he thought he could be as ruthless as Jake wanted him to be, as his parents wanted him to be, maybe even as ruthless as he wanted to be, like the Boondock Saints, right? But when he got there, when he was faced with it, faced with people he had known his whole life, faced with people he'd grown up with, family, basically, the Rodens and the Wagners were basically like family. When he was faced with

that, he couldn't pull the trigger, literally. And he still does deserve life in prison. And, you know, Jake's going to spend his life in prison, too. So it's not as if one brother got a better sentence, but just the betrayal, the betrayal in general. When you heard Chris Newcomb, Angela's half brother, say, yes, George was very protective over his younger brother, very, very protective. To know that this person that you had grown up protecting, sheltering, influencing, and becoming very close to, they were best friends, they worked together, they lived together. And to know that this person with no care for you completely threw you under the bus, because George is probably still thinking, maybe if we'd gone to trial without these testimonies, there would still be a chance that there wasn't enough evidence or there was enough reasonable doubt that I could have gotten off. But with Jake

and my mother turning on me, there's no way. They've testified against me, my own family. So that betrayal has to hurt, you know, even for a murderer, even though he didn't actually shoot anyone, that betrayal has to hurt. And I feel kind of, I feel a little empathetic for him. I feel a little like that's got to stay. That's got to suck. Yeah. I mean, I think the fact of getting caught sucks, but I agree with you. I think having someone that you grew up with turn on you like that when you thought you knew them so well, that hurts even more. Because as far as the courts are concerned, most criminals realize that as cops, we're just doing our job. We don't care who you are, what your beliefs are. It's black or white for us. You committed the crime or you didn't. That's it. And so it's just business. So I feel like most criminals don't take it personal when the cops arrest them or when the prosecutors are prosecuting them because, again, we're just doing our job.

But when you have a family member or a close friend turn on you and implicate you in a crime that you were supposed to be doing together, that you were supposed to go until the wheels fall off. And in reality, a crime that you were doing for the guy that ultimately rolled on you, that's got to sting. It's got to sting. But like you said. Your own brother, your own family, and they were a close family, man. And they're known and the name and they've grew, you know, this is what they know. And yeah, to look across from you and realize that the person who's really burying you is your own blood, that's a tough one. But I get what you're saying. You don't like actually feel bad for him, but that's how this goes. When we come in as investigators, you guys, the criminals, think they have this solid pact with each other and they're too smart and too loyal to get caught.

We get in there and we create those cracks. We get you in a room. We separate you. We start dropping the hammer on you. And we're going to see how loyal you really are. That's our job. And our job is to separate and turn you against each other, to be honest with you. Some people may not like me saying that, but that's fair game.

We're going to lie to you. We're going a fair game. We're going to lie to you. We're going to tell you. We're going to use trickery. We're going to get you to believe that your co-conspirator doesn't really have your back. And it would be in your best interest to get yourself a good deal before that other person takes theirs. Because once they take theirs, you're done. The deal's off the table.

And it doesn't always happen, but there are times where they'll say, yeah, I got to protect myself here. And they start singing like a canary, and this is where you end up. So it's part of the game. If you don't want to be in this situation, don't conspire to commit murder against a bunch of innocent people. Then you don't have to worry about it. Yes, exactly. And I mean, once again, I think George, he's a very simple guy. You can tell when we are going to hear him talk. He's simple. I think he went along with what his family wanted because that's all he knew.

That's what he was used to. Yeah. He was, you know, he went with the tide. He went with what the family wanted. They all did. They took a vote. They went with what they wanted. Yeah.

So I don't know. Sorry, George. It's unfortunate. Yeah. Sorry, George. But you are where you deserve. You are right where you need to be. Now, George Wagner would testify on his own behalf,

and he did not seem happy with his brother or his mother. You said that the night of the homicides, you went to bed at 10 o'clock. 10-ish, if I remember correctly. It's been a long time. Okay. And you said that was your usual bedtime usually somewhere around there okay all right and so do you recall again being interviewed at the border and saying that the four of you well the six of you

actually your mom your dad your brother yourself Sophia and bull bind we're watching a movie and you were up until you didn't go to bed till 1230 I don't remember what time it was okay do you remember telling the border at the border the agents when they asked you about what you did that night you saying that your mom could fix cheeseburgers for you, how delicious they were, and she makes the best, and maybe one day she could make them for them. I don't remember that, no. I'm not saying I didn't say it, I just said I don't remember. Okay. You indicated that you watched a movie, a fairy movie, correct?

What? You indicated that you watched a fairy movie. I don't remember what. A movie that Sophia wanted to watch. I just, I remember watching another group of kids at this point. I don't remember what it was. Okay. It's been a long time. And you indicated that that is when your son would usually go to sleep as well. My son usually went to sleep at 10 or 11 usually.

Okay. That's the one I can remember. Is there a reason that you would lie to the people at the border i'm not saying i did i'm saying i don't remember what time do i told them then okay i mean it may have been i just put my memory now i remember going to bed around 10ish i could be wrong about that but that's what i remember yeah well because now we know that Chris Sr. and Gary were being killed at 11 p.m., right? I don't know that. You don't know that?

No. You don't know that that's when your dad had Chris call his phone and you saw the phone calls, correct? I'm saying I wasn't there. I don't know when Chris had died. You know that's what Jake said. I know my brother's time is off on everything that's been showed in here. So now we know, at least according to Jake, that Chris Sr. and Gary were killed at 11 o'clock, right? I think that's what he said. Which makes your story at the border impossible, right?

Again, I don't remember exactly everything I said at the border. Well, I assume you were trying your best to tell the truth when you were interviewed at the border impossible, right? Again, I don't remember exactly everything I said at the border. Well, I assume you were trying your best to tell the truth when you were interviewed at the border, correct? To my knowledge of what I remembered. Okay, and this was much closer to the time of the offense when you were interviewed at the border, right? A year and a half, I think. Well, it was May of 17, which is a year.

A little over a year. Just a little over a year, yeah. And now we're at six and a half years later? I think it's around six and a half, maybe a little more. So would you agree that your memory would have been better then than it is now as far as times go? I can't say yes or no because I really don't remember what I said back then. Okay. I'm not interested as much as what you said as much as do you agree that it would be more

accurate back then? I can't agree yes or no because I just don't know. You agree that you were trying to be honest with the agents, certainly weren't trying to lie to them. Yes, I agree on that. You certainly weren't trying to provide a cover story for you and your brother and your father and your mother. No, I was not. So this whole idea that we're going to coordinate our response and say that we were all together on family night, movie night, watching a video, surely you didn't just make this up when you told people at the border.

It just happened to be the same story that you guys had agreed in advance to tell. There was no agreement in advance. My dad came down, my kid didn't want to leave. Testified yesterday that you considered Hannah like a little sister, is that right? Yes. What type of things would you, the two of you, talk about? Everything from hunting and fishing and four-wheeling to county fairs to fall festivals. Any issues that she had that she was going through or anything I was going through.

Did you confide in her as well? Yes. What would you confide in her? Issues about my weight and stuff, why I couldn't lose weight, and if I was having a bad week with Jake or my mother, or if I had any issues with Tabby. Under any circumstances, would you kill him? No. Would you assist somebody else in killing him? No. Do you remember saying on the recordings anything about your mother and whether she should get an attorney or not? Do you remember any of that?

Yes. What do you remember? Um, the conversation that I believe you're talking about is that if all of us were arrested that my mother should get the best one. And did you say that? Yes. Why did you say that? Because my mom's the one that watched the kids five days a week while we were gone anyway.

They were used to being with her for five days a week, and I feared it would be easier on the children. What were you thinking when you said that? I was just going under what basically I understood from the attorneys that if we got arrested, that it could take six months, it could take two years to get to a trial and be able to work things out do you remember on some of the recordings we listened to your mother saying that something about being framed yes what do you recall my mom and brother has said that since the beginning that's why i believe that we were being framed because they said that they were twisting everything that my mom and brother had on their phones and laptops and they were

trying to frame us and was that your mindset during these conversations yes after listening to these recordings that we heard in court how do you feel about what jake was saying and what you now know he did i now know that he was just lying through his teeth to me. What about your mother? Same thing. She was just lying to me from the beginning. Did you ever tell your mother you would take the blame for these murders? No, I did not. So now we're back.

Pretty interesting there. Obviously, what he actually had to say, basically everything that you had said leading into it, you could tell he knows he's been turned on and he's kind of fighting. It's self-preservation mode at this point. But one thing I want to bring up, we talk about body language and verbal and nonverbal communication. If you go back and watch that clip again, you'll have to watch it. But 98%, we talk about baselines, right? This is a short baseline. And this is usually what I'll have in an interview process or an interrogation room. It's not like this long, you know, three weeks of video footage of this individual before we go in there. I'm developing the baseline as I'm sitting there.

Go back and watch that video after I say this, and you'll notice that 95 to 98% of the responses, he does the same thing. He leans in a little bit to the right, to his right, to the microphone, but keeps eye contact with the person questioning him. Yes. No. He's not thinking about what he has to say. He's just responding. It's an organic response. It's pretty simple. Now go and look at when he answers the question about killing Hannah or having an involvement with it. That's one of the few times through that entire six or seven minute clip that we have where he stutters for a second, not like physically, like not with his words, but his eyes, they look down at the mic. He's uncertain because he's

thinking something different than what he's saying. It's throwing him off just a little bit. When we talk about indicators of potential deception, those are the things that we're noting down in our notebooks, on our pieces of paper, as we're interviewing him, everything else that he said, that's just coming from memory, very simple response, keep eye contact with you. But when there's a potential deceptive response, there'll usually be a small alteration in the way they respond, and you got to see it in that clip. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, at the end of the day, Jake Wagner and Angela Wagner gave the almost exact same version of events.

And they hadn't seen each other's statements or knew what each other's testimonies were going to be prior to giving their own statements. And the prosecutor, Angela Sineppa, pointed out to the jury that the mother and the son didn't point the finger at each other or at Billy Wagner. They didn't tell inconsistent stories. Their testimonies were pretty much identical. Angela Sineppa also seemed to have warmed up to Jake Wagner, and she told the jury that Jake seemed to be turning on his family to help them as much as he was helping himself. She said, quote, he didn't do this plea to get his family in trouble. It's the opposite. He's trying to get his family out of as much trouble as possible. He asked us if there was any way he could see his family one trouble. It's the opposite. He's trying to get his family out of as much trouble as possible. He asked us if there was any way

he could see his family one last time, his mom, his dad, his brother, and hug them before they go to prison for the rest of their lives, end quote. I don't think he did to help his family, Angela. I'm sorry, I don't. But to each their own opinion. To each their own.

Now, George did not seem to feel as if his brother was helping him during the trial. Jake attempted to make eye contact with George more than once, but George would not meet his eyes. George Wagner would be found guilty and be carted off to prison for the rest of his life. But we still have yet to hear Angela Wagner's side of the story. And we have to check in with the Wagner family patriarch, Billy, to see what his status is. And we will do that next week when we conclude this series on the Pike County Massacre. Yeah, I really think we got a lot of the who, what, where and why answered tonight, especially with that long clip.

And it was a long clip, probably like 20 minutes, but it was necessary and it's always better to hear. It was 40 minutes before I cut out all the ums. Yeah, all the ums. And so that really kind of tied it up for me. And this is one of those classic cases where although the family to the outside, you know, the outsiders watching this, oh, it's a tight family. They got each other's back. You know, they're known for staying loyal and being this, you know, prominent family within the community. But when the threat of life in prison or the death penalty is on the line, you get to really see how loyal they are. And, you know, not, we're not trying to justify anything or say there's a different angle here. I think they're all where they need to be. Whether you pulled the trigger or not, you could have stopped this. You could have told someone you didn't, you were there, you were present. You deserve to be held accountable. And that's the law. That's the

law. It's a law. It's a law. But Jake, he could have tried an angle where he was like, Hey, it was me. I went there. I did this alone. Now, the evidence wouldn't have lined up with that. Yeah. But if he was really done that. But if he really wanted to, he could have minimized it. He could have kept his brother out of it. Maybe he says, hey, me, my dad and, you know, make up some or me and a friend. I'm not willing to give that friend up, you know, something, something other than just giving them everything. But that's not what he did. And I'd venture to say that if George, I believe the reason George did not get the death penalty was because the jury realized he hadn't shot anybody. But when his father, Billy, goes to trial, he might get the death penalty because he did shoot people.

And Jake only didn't get the death penalty because he made the deal. So it remains to be seen. It's a pretty slam dunk case, to be honest with you. You have people there. You have a means motive opportunity. You have the forensic evidence to support it. And nobody's offering any type of strong defense against it. You saying, I don't remember. I don't remember. I can't tell you if I was being more truthful then because I don't remember what I'm saying. It gets you out of that questioning, but it's not helping you. It's not going to assist you. You're not offering an alternative. You're not giving exculpatory evidence. You're not giving anything. And yes, it is the prosecution's responsibility to prove guilt, not your job to prove innocence. But when a jury of your peers is listening to all the evidence,

it would be in your best interest to offer some type of reason why your brother would be lying and you weren't there. And at this point, it doesn't sound like that. And to end it, those final statements that he says to his mom, although can be taken a few ways where it's, you know, he says the kids need to be with her. That's kind of his way of knowing that we're not getting out anytime soon. We're going to prison for the rest of our lives, if not getting killed. And you could almost see him get a little emotional at that part. Cause I think he was reflecting on how he felt in that moment, realizing like, Hey, my life is over. And that's the, that's the least that we can do considering what he did. I kind of skated over it when you said it earlier,

but just the thought of putting the baby with Hannah for nursing because you didn't – I mean, we don't want to go into the details of it. What kind of person are you? It's like, oh, I didn't want her to starve, but I murdered her mother. It's like, what do you think – like, she's not going to starve? Even killing Chris. Chris didn't wake up the entire time you could have gotten out of there without him ever knowing i mean but they they they wanted to take

out everyone no but they basically said like they basically said like if we leave anyone alive they'll know we did it because of this custody battle so we can't leave anybody alive because of the potential that they could be a witness could have seen something could have heard something could have recognized us and because of the potential that they could be a witness, could have seen something, could have heard something, could have recognized us. And because of the potential of when law enforcement comes calling and says, who would have wanted to do this to your sister and your parents? Chris Jr. would have said, well, I mean, look at the Wagner family. Yeah, there's only there's only one or two people that fit that fit that bill. No, it's a it's a interesting case, a very sad one at that, because the real victims here are the kids and what they have to deal with now because now they don't have a father, a mother.

Just a terrible situation. But we will be back next week for the final part of this series. Yes. Everyone stay safe out there. Have a good night. We will see you next week. Bye.