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25 Miles South

2021/6/23
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The Idaho Massacre

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凯蒂·兰开斯特
妮基·布兰肯希普
科特尼·阿姆斯特朗
节目讲述者
詹姆斯·皮尔彻
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节目讲述者:本集节目深入探讨了俄亥俄州朴茨茅斯镇长期存在的性交易网络,以及该网络与当地一位有影响力的律师迈克尔·莫兰之间的关联。莫兰利用其律师身份和社会地位,帮助被捕的女性减轻罪行,以换取性服务和参与卖淫活动,甚至可能涉及人口贩卖。记者妮基·布兰肯希普的调查揭露了这一长期被忽视的犯罪活动,为受害者家庭带来了希望,也引发了对当地司法腐败的质疑。 妮基·布兰肯希普:作为一名长期在朴茨茅斯镇工作的调查记者,我亲眼目睹了阿片类药物危机和性交易对当地社区造成的严重破坏。我的报道揭露了迈克尔·莫兰利用其律师身份控制和剥削女性,迫使她们从事卖淫活动。尽管面临阻力,我坚持调查,最终获得了一份来自缉毒局的宣誓证词,为我的报道提供了关键证据。莫兰被捕并面临多项重罪指控,但仍坚称自己无罪。 詹姆斯·皮尔彻:朴茨茅斯镇曾是一个繁荣的工业城市,但后来经历了衰败,成为阿片类药物危机的中心。经济衰退和毒品泛滥为性交易的滋生提供了土壤。莫兰的行为构成人口贩卖,因为他的行为涉及胁迫。 科特尼·阿姆斯特朗:本集节目关注的是俄亥俄州朴茨茅斯镇发生的另一起案件,该案件长期以来一直困扰着当地社区。这起案件与该地区长期存在的司法腐败问题有关。 凯蒂·兰开斯特:作为梅根·兰开斯特的姐妹兼好友,我讲述了梅根的失踪以及我对她失踪原因的怀疑。梅根曾吸毒,但她有潜力改变生活。我相信迈克尔·莫兰与梅根的失踪有关,我将继续为她寻找真相,为她的儿子找到答案。梅根的失踪给她的家人带来了巨大的痛苦和不确定性。

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This chapter delves into the allegations surrounding Michael Moran, a prominent figure in Portsmouth, Ohio, who is accused of being involved in human trafficking. The narrative explores the rumors and public knowledge about his involvement in the sex trade, as well as the impact on the local community.

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Piked Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios. ♪

There were always these rumors about Michael Moran and the women that he was around and the circles he ran in. This guy trafficking women all over the country from this little town that's known as the epicenter of the opioid epidemic. It was public knowledge. That was the crazy thing. Everybody knew the rumors and had known somebody that knew somebody that had worked for him.

She left papers and it said Michael Moran's name, his cell phone number. I had all this information that really impacted our area. And this could have brought a lot of closure to these families who were being told nothing by our local officials and our local law enforcement. This is the Pikedon Massacre, Return to Pike County, Season 2, Episode 7, 25 Miles South.

I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at KT Studios with Stephanie Lidecker and Jeff Shane. In episode five of this season, we explored the allegations of corruption and the subsequent arrest of Pike County Sheriff Charlie Reeder.

But his story is just one of many that has illuminated alleged abuses of power perpetrated by those involved in Southern Ohio's criminal justice system. So in this episode, we want to focus on another case that has long affected a community just 25 miles south of Piketon in a town called Portsmouth, Ohio. In 2015, a reporter named Nikki Blankenship began investigating rumors of human trafficking in the town.

Like many small Ohio towns, Portsmouth has a long, rich history of industrial might preceding an era of rapid urban decay. Here's James Pilcher, a reporter for Local 12 News in Cincinnati, speaking with our producer, Chris Graves. Portsmouth is the county seat of Theodore County, which sits right below Pike County. So it's about 30 to 45 minutes south of Piketon.

Portsmouth has this, you know, rust belt, burned out industrial field. There are half empty to empty factories in the middle of the city. At one point, USU had the biggest plant there. And then obviously, you know, the global economy and we all know what happened to manufacturing in the Midwest. It still has a small, profitable steel mill downtown, but it's barely hanging on. So it's kind of like a city that was forgotten. Yes. Yes.

When the manufacturing industry began to disappear, Portsmouth was besieged by the drug trade. Nikki Blankenship grew up in the area and saw the devastation firsthand. Your area has been really hit by the opioid crisis, right? Yeah, we call ourselves Ground Zero for the opioid epidemic. I've lived in Ohio since 1984 in Sireter County. So yeah, I've lived here my whole life.

I remember in high school, people around me, they would start out with small pain pills and then Oxycontin hit and it was no longer recreational drug use that people were doing at parties. You were seeing people become addicted very, very, very quickly.

In 2008, Nikki started writing about the issue for a local newspaper. I started out covering the drug epidemic. I was the first in the area to do stories on Oxycontin and looking at overdose rates in the area and started asking those questions from the coroner's office about how many of these deaths that we're seeing are connected to opiate use. And then started looking into pill mills and we ended up shutting down over 23 pill mills in Scioto County.

Nikki's reporting helped shed a light on the area's drug problem, but other illicit industries sprung up around it. Nikki was there to cover it all. In 2013, I did a series that ran for months on prostitution, and I was walking the streets with some of these girls. I also talked to parents of women that were working on the streets and talked to officers about the problem and local businesses about how it affected them.

The one mentioned most often was Michael Moran.

Michael Moran, he's in his mid-70s, long-time defense attorney. You know, DUIs, drug offenses, those kinds of things. He had his own firm in Portsmouth. And at one point in the late 2000s, he got himself appointed as a city councilman of Portsmouth.

He's a very public person, so if there was a Red Cross banquet or something that I was covering, he would be there. So he's been around my whole career pretty much. Now, rumors have been circulating about Mike Moran for years. These stories about him being involved in prostitution go all the way back to the '70s. A lot of those stories are just about him hiring girls to dance at local parties and poker games.

It was the secret that everyone joked about, but no one really talked about. And it was pretty common knowledge. I think I mentioned like a Red Cross bank that I had to cover once. He was there with a girl known to be arrested for prostitution, known to be arrested for drug abuse. And she was there. You could tell that she was under the influence by her behavior. She was being very loud and on a cell phone in the middle of this bank. But

and speaking very inappropriately for the setting. And Mike's just laughing with her. And a city councilman at the time actually leaned over towards me, jokingly elbowed me on the side and said, there's Mike and one of his girls. It's just always been known.

As Nikki began exploring Moran's ties to the local sex trade, the story grew much darker. I was interviewing some people who were in an inpatient treatment facility, and I found out that one of the women over the program was involved with a human trafficking program. And so I started talking with her about human trafficking, and she said that when women are arrested of a certain age,

Moran has been going to see them in jail and gotten them reduced charges in exchange for doing sexual favors for him and working in prostitution.

Nikki further explained the allegations leveled against Moran by area women. At the crux of what he does is he offers his legal services to get these women out of jail and then puts them under his employ. Yes, he gets women out of jail and that basically gets them into his clutches.

Other stories are that people are hired as dog walkers or as cleaners and instead are actually working in prostitution. An affidavit filed by the DEA would later support these accounts. James Pilcher explained that this method of manipulation marks the distinction between prostitution and human trafficking. Some people will say, oh, well, these women knew what they were doing. They were just trying to make money. These women were prostitutes.

Well, if you talk to the experts, it went one step beyond that. It went into trafficking because some of those allegations, Moran was holding over them the fact that they were drug addicts and he would withhold their money or withhold their wherewithal to get drugs. So the statute says if you withhold or threaten to withhold money that women need for drugs or withhold the drugs, it's trafficking because it's coercion. Anytime you can prove coercion, it's trafficking. Well,

both in the Ohio law and federal law. We're going to take a quick break here. We'll be back in a moment. Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind.

Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down from unbelievable romantic betrayals. The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family. When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Some believe Michael Moran's reach goes farther than even human trafficking. In 2013, a Portsmouth woman named Megan Lancaster disappeared.

Michael Moran has denied any involvement or responsibility in her disappearance. Additionally, authorities have not brought any charges against him in the case. At this time, it's unclear whether they have questioned him in the matter. Megan is probably the case that is closest to my heart, and that's mostly her sister-in-law. Katie Lancaster has just screamed and screamed and screamed on her behalf.

My name is Katie Lancaster and I am the sister-in-law and best friend of Megan Lancaster who has been missing from Scioto County since April 3rd, 2013.

Who was Megan Lancaster and how did you meet? We met at a, it was called Scioto County Joint Vocational School. We were both taking cosmetology and she is a wonderful, loving, give the shirt off her back person that I know for a fact that if this tragedy had to happen to anybody, she would have given everything she had to save the next person.

Megan and Katie formed an unbreakable bond, and soon they became family members. I was spending about every night with Megan, pretty much on school nights. Megan would say, my brother wants to take you on a date. So I said, okay, okay, like, I'll let him take me for dinner and so on and so forth. And I did that. Well, I never left.

I was 17 and we just hit it off and fell in love.

Katie and Megan's brother Jimmy were married in 2005. A few months later, Katie became pregnant. Soon after, Megan did as well. I went into labor August 31st, had my baby September 1st, like in the middle of the night, and she had her baby November 4th. So we were legitimately only, you know, a couple months apart. In 2006, Megan gave birth to a son named Reese.

Being a young single mother was tough, but Megan seemed to have a bright future ahead of her. Any sport she played, she played to the fullest. She was there for her team, always cheering everybody on. The softball, she was the pitcher. She had a full-ride scholarship to Shawnee State. I mean, to me, Megan couldn't have been any smarter than what she was.

Despite her intelligence and athleticism, Megan fell victim to the drug epidemic that gripped the Portsmouth area. She was open about the fact that, you know, that she used drugs, that she used a needle.

It was rough, and I would tell her, I would say, "Megan." I would try to play both sides, like her friend and her sister-in-law, because I would say, "Megan, you need to get help, and you need to change for you first and foremost. But at the same time, you need to do it for Reese because he needs you." And her answer was, "Katy, why change it now? Everybody's going to look at me the same way.

I'm never going to live down the things I've done. I'm never going to be able to change that opinion that people have of me. She just couldn't see past the past, you know, past the things that she felt people would never forgive. And then that point took over Megan and it led to more.

Years later, a strange encounter with Megan would leave Katie forever suspicious of one local man, Michael Moran. I was in Walmart with Jeremy, and all of a sudden I see Megan come bouncing down the aisle, and I'm like, what the hell is she wearing? It was literally Santa lingerie, to be honest.

She said, "I'm here to get something for this party I'm doing for Moran. It's a bachelor party." And I'm just like, "Okay, but again, why are you in here in that outfit?" And she's like, "Because it's what I'm wearing to the party." And I'm like, "Well, get whatever you're getting and get the heck out of here before you get arrested for indecent exposure." Can you describe April 3rd, 2013?

April 3rd, 2013, Megan went missing. That day, she was with her mom. She went to her mom's early in the morning, said, Mom, I need to pay my insurance because she had been pulled over and called over, car had been impounded for literally like $60 in back child support or something. So,

Later that day, Megan called her mother Marcy to make arrangements to see her son. She said, But that night, Megan never showed up.

Two days later, on April 5th, Megan's car was found in the parking lot of a local fast food restaurant. She was nowhere to be found.

What stuck out about the car was the fact that it was up on the curb and Megan would never have parked it like that. Especially, she might have pulled in if she was in a hurry and got out and got something, got right back in the car and left. But she would have never pulled in there to leave it there like that.

Inside the car, police found Megan's wallet and a small notebook that contained some suspicious entries. She left clues as to who she'd been working for, what she'd been up to, right? Yes, she left papers in it. They actually said, dance for, and Michael Moran's name, his cell phone number, and how much he paid for her to dance. ♪

We know we have this problem with missing women and we know we have this problem with women who have been found dead and their cases have never, their murders have never been solved. And despite that car set, our mom said until October of 2013, and there's documents where they took it, where they took the car into evidence that are dated showing that. And it was really Katie and Megan's family that did all of the investigating and hired private investigators. They couldn't get any cooperation from local police.

So it's Megan's case, really. It's the only one that has really been made public so people can see exactly what these women have gone through and how these things have happened. If Moran was running a decades-long sex trafficking operation,

We're talking about some serious abuse of power. What are your thoughts on that? The abuse of power makes me completely fucking sick. Excuse my language, but I don't know how else to put it. It makes me sick because, you know, he's in this position to help people, to help rebuild their lives. If they've been in trouble once or twice, you know, drug charge, whatever, they send them to treatment, they do this, they do that. But he takes it a step further and takes them away.

like, buys them what they want, courses them into these things, shows them a life that they've never had before, and then, boom, back on drugs, back to doing what they were doing, back in trouble. And to me, that is sickening, and there's no excuse for it. Do you think Mike Moran is involved in Megan's disappearance?

I do believe Michael Moran is involved in Megan's disappearance. And I do believe that we will eventually tie Mike Moran to Megan's disappearance. Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back in a moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's it like to go through losing a family member or friend, but not actually knowing what happened to them? It's hell. I was talking to my mother-in-law about this today. You know, people lose people all the time. And they have a grave to go to. They have somewhere they can go visit that they know that that person is there. Or they have ashes that they have or whatever, what have you. But we have a flipping sign everywhere.

with missing on it that we decorate and it is heartbreaking and it is hard not to know whether she's hungry she's cold she's being hurt she's being abused or worse she's dead not to know that is so hard i see her mama suffer daily more importantly i see her baby boys suffer very badly

And I'm not saying that, you know, he cries every day. No, I'm not saying that. But he has a lot of questions that we can't answer. But I can guarantee you I won't stop until I can answer them. I don't care if he's 25, 30, 35, 40. If I'm around that long, I'll fight until I can answer those questions for him.

In an interview, Moran claimed that he only knew Megan as a police informant who was tied to a drug case he tried years back. When asked about what may have happened to her, Moran believed that she may have been murdered, though he had no information to support his statement. It should be noted that there have been no other specific allegations tying Moran to the disappearance of any other women.

Nikki Blankenship continued her investigation into human trafficking in Portsmouth. But her attempt to report on the area's missing women was met with some pushback. You kind of started this with this story. This seemed to have been local knowledge that no one was reporting on. Right. When I was first saying, let me talk about the missing women, I was told no. It didn't matter if there was proof. It was, can we talk about the missing women? Can I talk to their families? And I was told no. Nikki didn't let that stop her.

So I have seen these things personally. In Scioto County, we say that everyone's been affected because if it's not your friend or your family member, it's at least somebody who went to school with. Everybody knows somebody who's been affected by the drug epidemic and everybody knows somebody who has turned to prostitution.

So this is a pretty personal story for you. Yeah, I spent probably my whole career, I feel like, working on this and nobody was listening to their stories before or seeing them as even human. That really made me connect with a lot of these people and their stories.

Living here my whole life, these are my friends and my family members as well. Not specifically, but I have lost so many friends to overdose. I have so many friends that have battled addiction. A lot of people I went to school with are gone now. I have several friends from high school that ended up working in prostitution.

They're people, they're human, and yet they're seen as a prostitute or an addict. Exactly. And that makes people not really care what happens to them. That makes people assume that they chose some lifestyle that is dangerous. It makes people just assume that they somehow are asking for that or whatever happens to them is a part of life.

a lifestyle they chose and so they just turn a blind eye. And I think that's another thing that has made it so easy for it to happen and to happen right in public is that people see them as prostitutes and addicts.

Nikki didn't give up searching for proof linking Michael Moran to Portsmouth's sex trafficking industry. I was at home a lot late at night just going through court documents and talking to families because a lot of these families told me I was the only person they trusted. So then for me, it was like, how do I get something more than a story from a family member or even a girl? I need some kind of proof. I need some kind of document.

In 2017, she got it. A man named Mark Eubanks reached out to her and passed along a copy of a sworn affidavit filed by the Drug Enforcement Agency. Mark Eubanks, he had been reading my stories on human trafficking and on the heroin epidemic, and he just mailed me a copy of this sealed affidavit. It was actually a part of his case and had told me his story, which was that he had been arrested on drug charges.

And when he was arrested, he was immediately taken and given lie detector tests about missing women and dead women and Mike Moran and human trafficking.

The affidavit laid out Southern Ohio drug task force and FBI operations that had been underway since 2015 investigating Michael Moran and his ties to area sex trafficking. He's accused of trafficking women all over the country from New York and New Jersey to Florida, racketeering and compelling and promoting prostitution. Another thing that is in the affidavit that he was working with drug traffickers and there was a wiretap.

where they were able to hear some of the conversations between Moran and drug traffickers. And he was getting drugs from these drug traffickers in order to provide to the females that he had working for him. The affidavit specifically talks about him working with local judges and law enforcement and adult probation to make these things happen. Nikki finally had the proof she needed that validated the stories told by Portsmouth's most vulnerable women.

But when she brought the document to her editor, she was shocked. They told me, "No, we're not going to publish." Michael Moran would later be arrested and charged with 18 felony counts, including promoting prostitution and trafficking in persons. He was released on a $300,000 bond, which was later revoked after he violated the terms of his agreement. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and staunchly maintains his innocence. He is now under house arrest while he awaits trial.

We'll bring you the second part of the Michael Moran story in episode nine. But next week, we'll be hearing from some of our regular contributors who will discuss updates from accused brother George Wagner IV's most recent pretrial hearing. For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kt underscore studios.

The Pikedon Massacre Return to Pike County is executive produced by Stephanie Lidecker and me, Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design by executive producer Jared Astin. Additional producing by Jeff Shane, Andrew Becker, and Chris Graves. The Pikedon Massacre Return to Pike County is a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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

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

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

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

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

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