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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 Pyton Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios. Season 2, Episode 8, Expert Roundtable. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at KT Studios with Stephanie Lidecker and Jeff Shane.
On June 21st, 2021, accused brother George Wagner IV appeared in court for a pretrial hearing in the Roden murder case. Case number 2018, CR 155, scheduled for hearing on a number of defense pretrial motions.
It was the first full hearing to take place since George's younger brother, Jake Wagner, pled guilty to killing five of the eight slain members of the Rodin family in April 2016. And it was Jake's plea and what he potentially told authorities that became the defense's primary focus during these proceedings. I think we need more than 60 days to investigate whatever we learned in Jake's process.
profit because we've not been provided that even though it's been available for two months. We have not received that. We are entitled to that under criminal rule 16 and once we get it, I understand it's more than 10 hours of recorded statements. So once we get that we need an adequate amount of time to investigate whatever we need to investigate and we'll certainly comply with our discovery obligations.
The state agreed to work towards providing George Wagner's attorneys with Jake's confession. The court also scheduled George's next motion hearing to take place on September 13th. But before court was dismissed, Judge Randy Deering provided one critical piece of information for George moving forward. We have set a trial date in this case for April 4th at 8.30 a.m.
With accused brother George Wagner set to begin trial on April 4th, 2022, there will surely be a lot to cover moving forward. But just a few days before George Wagner's most recent hearing, we got some of our regular contributors together for discussion. Reporters Anjanette Levy and Jody Barr and criminal forensic expert Joseph Morgan. We covered a range of topics that span their years covering the Roden murder case.
We started out with a talk about some of the details they had heard leading up to George Wagner's trial last week and what they expected the outcome to be. Anjanette Levy started us off. Some documents filed by George IV's lawyers saying they still haven't received Jake's statements to law enforcement. And they were led to believe that Jake's interviews were between 10 and 18 hours. So they subpoenaed Greg Myers, who is the lead counsel for Jake.
And they filed a motion demanding that the additional discovery, including Jake's interviews, be turned over. So we don't know the veracity of his statements or how truthful they are, other than he allegedly led them to the vehicle used and the weapons used.
So, I mean, he did quite a bit of talking. Jody, how rare is it for one attorney to subpoena another attorney? I don't recall a specific instance of that, but I mean, that is a clear indication that one side does not feel that they are getting the information they need to defend their client. So I think it's worth a deeper look at why either the state or Jake's own attorneys are not playing ball here.
That's been a complaint the entire time that defense attorneys have complained consistently that they're not getting material as quickly as they would like. And you would think they would just make a copy and send it over. Yeah, I mean, and in this one, I would venture a guess that it was at least audio recorded, perhaps, if not video recorded, this statement that Jake gave. So, I mean...
You know, they need to produce this. I don't know how these three defense teams can adequately prepare for trial when there's this huge evidence dump from Jake Wagner's mouth that apparently they don't have access to right now. You've got one of the four saying, I did it, I did it. And what did he do exactly? We didn't hear it in court. Maybe he told that story in the statements. But 10 to 18 hours, that's a heck of a long time to have a conversation, cover a lot of ground in that time.
So at a quote, normal pretrial, what happens? What's the broad strokes? They usually ask the defendant if they're happy with their lawyer and they're meeting with their lawyer enough and they discuss the pace of discovery and what have you. But
I feel like in this case, nothing ever happens. I mean, they go into chambers for an hour and then they come out and put something on the record because these are death penalty cases. Now they're really not death penalty cases because they've taken that off the table if Jake testifies against everyone. They typically are pretty uneventful. We've had some sparks fly in some of the motions hearings, but I haven't, you know, these pretrials tend to be pretty dry.
Yeah, I thought that too until, what was that, April the 21st of this year, the night before Jake Wagner pled guilty. I was told by some family members that BCI reached out and said, you want to be at the courthouse tomorrow in Pike County. And then that was just docketed as a pretrial hearing. And there was no indication that Jake Wagner would be pleading guilty other than the state calling...
the family and suggesting they be there. So that actually turned into the end of his prosecution. So man, I think if you get a call from the family, any one of these pretrials, it just seemed like a routine, you know, where are we in this prosecution? And does everybody have what they need so we can try this thing? Man, I think you got to be careful in this case. You don't know what may come next. I mean, Jake was, I think, a complete surprise to everybody, even the family.
What were your thoughts on that day, Joseph? None of us were expecting this. Do you remember? We were all texting between one another saying, what in the hell is going on? Because this thing dropped like thunder out of the heavens and we never saw it coming. I didn't. Certainly, I had no idea that this was about to happen. So you could knock me over with a feather that day.
There is a distinct possibility that he could come in and plead. I don't think he's going to plead guilty. If he was going to plead guilty, I don't think his lawyer would be filing a demand for discovery and a trial date. So just my opinion. But what do I know? Probably get out there and something crazy will happen. It's the Piketon Massacre. Who knows? You never know where this is going next. Covering this story, who did you guys first think did it?
I thought it could have been related to the pot, you know, the marijuana growing operation. But I had been told early on by some law enforcement sources, federal law enforcement sources, that the cartel thing wasn't true because they ran that down. Because of the level of violence that was involved in it,
And it didn't seem like messaging so much to me, as you would see with an organized crime hit. There's generally something that will be left that is substantial. You know, the elements that we've talked about quite a bit relative to overkill in cases I've seen and then, you know, displayed before us. It seemed very intimate to me, very, very intimate. And cartels love their money, but they're not intimate.
Also, with intimacy comes that level of familiarity and the fact that in this tight little space, you know, and it is a tight little space when you travel down that road, you have these locations where all these people inhabited this, these very specific pinpoint locations and there's other structures and other families around that area.
They knew where they were going. There were no mistakes. Many times, if somebody's not familiar with an area and they're going to go out and kill somebody, you'll have mistakes along the way. But they had pinpointed four separate locations. And that, again, goes back, I think, there's connectivity with that seed of intimacy.
The whole thing about the dogs not barking because they said those dogs would have, that was just very strange. We knew there was a baby. We knew there was a child. You know, we knew about the little girl and we knew about the Wagners, but I didn't hear the Wagner name and any association with the murders or suspected association until May of 2017.
And then Jody, was that your experience as well? I got over there heavily in June, July, right after the murders. And I mean, people you talk with, even the family members had already, and I don't know what the reasons were, but it had already suspected something to do with the Wagners. I mean, they had already floated the Wagner farm out as being the base of operations for this family. There was also a drug case in Adams County, which is just right next door to Pike, that
the rumor mill believed could have been linked to the Wagners, the Wagner farm, or at least what happened over as far as the drug angle that ended up not being connected in the end, or as far as we know, it's not connected. But we went as far as covering a court hearing over there for someone who had a substantial amount of drugs on them. So anyway, there was a lot swirling around. But the Wagner name, we heard that early on that some people suspected that they were somehow involved. But
Back then, it's like, where do you start on something like that? I went out past the Flying W Farm. You try to dig in the property records and background these people. And first off, there wasn't a lot to background with these folks. And secondly, it's just what you did find didn't scream mass murderers.
I didn't see anything there that would cause me to continue digging. There was nothing that I found, at least, in looking into the Wagner family that I went, okay, there it is, smoking gun. The rumors are true. It's just you collected it as information. You try to vet it. You get nowhere and you just move on.
And then Anjanette, yeah, I'm curious your perspective on starting to develop an idea of them. I started looking into them. And, you know, when you see that Jake and George and the house and the mom lived there with them, I was kind of like, oh, that's weird. And then I remember being out there and hearing a little bit about, you know, how they lived and learning more about them.
George's wife, now ex-wife, it all started to kind of sound very interesting. So I remember specifically going up to the Flying W and you go up there and it's like this steep, I would say it's like a 60 or 70 degree kind of like driveway, gravel driveway and driving up there and being...
basically told to get off the property, you know, just seeing if they wanted to comment. So it was a little creepy, a little scary. I mean, it's a beautiful property, don't get me wrong. But when your cell phone doesn't work, and you're driving up somewhere to go try to talk to somebody, and somebody, you know, basically comes out and tells you to get out of there. I
It felt a little weird. Obviously, it wasn't very welcoming. I started digging around on Facebook quite a bit too. And it didn't seem like on the surface that you would suspect anything. The mom, Angela, was running some type of little organic farm type thing at that Peterson Road house. She was trying to breed animals and sell them. And she had pictures of the children on there on Facebook. So...
You know, at first it didn't seem weird, but then I contacted her and said, look, you know, I'd love to do an interview with you. And then some of the things Angela Wagner said to me on Facebook Messenger kind of made me feel a little uncomfortable the way she was trying to dictate what I said.
What I would be reporting about our conversations on Facebook Messenger. She said, you know, you are not to report any of this. What I said, you know, I do not give you permission to report anything I just told you. She said that she was being slandered, she and her family.
Do you think Jake is lying about being personally responsible for five of the eight? I don't know what his incentive to lie about that is. I mean, is he that afraid of the death penalty? The economics of that equation just does not make sense to me, where he would openly confess to murdering five people. Probably the worst act you could commit as a human is taking the life of another. And he did that five times over.
I think we got a good idea of what happened here. And Jake Wagner told his story in court and he took the guilty plea and said he did it. Five of the eight. You know, I think that's the best shot we've had so far at some confirmation of really peeling this story back.
I think the world wants to know what happened when they woke up that morning, put this plan in place, who went where, who did what. As I think all of us have done since April of 2016, when this happened, as you roll around these scenarios in your mind, trying to figure out, first off, what's the mindset of someone to pull this off and then to just run free for what, two years afterward? And you live with this every day of your life.
It may have been passion-driven and it was certainly anger-driven, but it wasn't like somebody just suddenly flew off the handle and decided to go and visit hell down upon the road. This is something that took planning.
in my estimation at least. So you begin thinking this confederacy, what do you think about when you're moving from someplace like the last house that you hit with multiple people in it and then you drive out to Kenneth's house that's some distance away? What does that conversation consist of? You talk about what music you're going to listen to on the radio. You talk about who's going to handle what.
I don't know who pulled the trigger. Jake said he killed five of them. But I can't imagine, to Jody's point, why in the world that man would say that he killed five people in an open court and he didn't do it. So that leaves us with the other three. Who would do this? And do it in the presence of these babies and just leave them. And I can only imagine having to wall it around about in that blood there. I don't know. It leaves me dumbfounded. And that's hard to do.
Hannah Gilley, she was attacked on the only second to Chris Roden. She was shot this woman five times in the face, which is an unbelievable overkill. So the thought is a why? And then also, is it possible it would be a connection or rage because her brother, Charlie Gilley, is the father of Hannah Roden's new baby?
That would be my suspicion, but I really don't know for sure. I mean, I would just be speculating because of that connection. There's a whole lot more going on. And, you know, Hannah Gilley shot five times in the face. It's, you know, you look at that and go, well, is that a message being sent? One shot is a message, you know, five. I don't know what you're doing at that point.
Jay Wagner at least set out with a plan that night to do what he did to five of the eight, you know, who killed the other three. You know, I just, I just hope we all, you know, get these answers. Now this brings us to another point. I'm going to reflect back to an old, old case real quick that many people will be aware of and absolutely horrendous. And it's Dennis Rader with BTK killing. Now in Kansas, he stood up and he said, I,
I will, in fact, admit to everything I've done since, I don't know, 1973 or 74. Whenever it was, he started this horrific murder spree, his serial killings. They put this one caveat in there. They said, okay, that's fine. We'll take death off the table and...
You have to stand in court and you have to stand and deliver at this moment in time. And he was compelled to what is framed as an allocution. He had to stand there. And it's one of the most chilling things you've ever seen because this guy's a psychopath. And so when you listen to him give the details behind these horrific crimes he participated in, it really makes you wonder if you want this thing that people talk about they frame as closure because it's a horror show.
But in this particular case, if this is the route you're going to go, I think that these individuals should be compelled to allocute. Let's think about these babies that are left behind. These children, don't you think they're going to want an explanation at some point in time? I mean, yeah, I know the community does, but what about these kids? Let's just assume that they do get convictions on all fronts here. What do you do? You push them off into a deep, dark hole and they're never to be heard from again. And we'll never hear anything else about this. And people keep talking about
Well, we'll never hear the true story. Because a deal was cut and they weren't compelled, the perpetrators, if it is them and they are so convicted, they were never compelled to say, okay, this is what happened. This is how the planning took place. And this is what we did that night. And those questions will always exist. And on a broader note, you're always going to have people sitting in their basement with tinfoil hats on saying, well, it wasn't them.
You know, there'll be crazy conspiracy theories that will be created for years and years to come. But what actually happened that night? 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, mom.
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 your theory on who the mastermind is? I don't want to indict anybody, obviously, but we have Jake Wagner confessing and implicating all of his family members in this, at least Billy, Angela and his older brother, George IV. Angela, if you if you really kind of watch these hearings very closely, she was apparently on jail calls.
She was calling her mother against the judge's orders and telling Rita Newcomb, you don't have to testify against us. People who are completely innocent, they don't call their mothers and say, you don't have to testify against us. And her mother came out in court and said she asked me to lie about notarizing the documents.
The custody documents, the forged custody documents that have been discussed in this case, it was stated they were declaration documents and it was stated in Rita Newcomb's case because she was the one accused of charged with forgery or obstruction.
It said that it was declarations for the children of Hannah Roden, George IV, and Jake. And so basically these documents designated a guardian should any of them die. And these documents had been signed and notarized 19 days before the murders. And it designated the children go to Angela should any of them die. ♪
That's just one of those puzzle pieces that I felt like showed that Angela, she may have been the driving force here since she was the one that had the Facebook message that's been referenced in court that showed that Hannah said they'd have to kill me first before I gave up my child. And she showed that message to Jake. Angie Canepa said that in court when Jake pleaded guilty. The next thing...
thing I wanted to talk about was Alaska. When they all up and moved to your point together, sold all of their stuff. I went, whew, this doesn't look good on paper. It looks like what you would suspect someone involved in a crime like this would do is to go to the other side of the world. So, I mean, that was just my initial impression of it. But to end up
picking everything you own up and throwing it in multiple trailers and moving man to Alaska. That's not like, you know, moving just out of state. That's, that's a long way to go. And then to come right back, I would love to know more about the reasons behind that. You know, did they feel the heat at that point in time? Were they really trying to get away? Yeah.
I think what I'm so interested in is Jake's wife, who we don't know all that much about, but obviously he goes to Alaska, meets a woman and then ends up marrying her. This other woman. I mean, what were those conversations like? I mean, I would love to be able to sit down and talk with her now about, you know, she watched that video feed of Jake pleading guilty to these murders. I mean, if he hid that from her too, you know, it's like a whole
another level, another layer on this sadistic, twisted person that he turned out to be. Elizabeth then came back to Pike County with the family, and then she went to the police claiming threats, harassment, and potential identity theft. Right.
It's been very frustrating because that case is now years old and they won't release any more records about it or any more of the report than just the first page, which basically says a name and, you know, a complaint lodged. It doesn't say anything else. I talked to a lawyer about it a while back who did not think it would be successful to pursue obtaining that.
It's still listed as an open case, even though it's been many years. This is, of course, all speculation on my part. But because Jake's wife, Elizabeth, filed those harassment charges, because she was living with Jake and his family in Alaska, came back to Pikedon, it seems like a possibility she could be the informant. Who do you think the informant or informants are?
I think Jake Wagner's wife. We have efforted to find her so many times, so many ways. And roadblock after roadblock, we just, we haven't been able to
speak with her. Well, I've kind of suspected for a while now that it was, it was her. And then what I thought was interesting, and this was said in court, someone or more than one person refers to the informant as she. Right. Ryan Scheider, I think, said she during his testimony last August. So that, that is what was the final thing to lead me to believe it was her. But it could be, could be wrong. I don't know. Yeah.
Who knows? Could be a curveball out of nowhere, though. What if it's, you know, one of the grandmothers? I know that's hard to believe. I don't...
I don't know how impossible it is about the grandmothers. A, obviously, they're also tight knit. And I do think it's interesting. Frederica has not said one word to my knowledge publicly since Jake has made his confession. But even with Rita Newcomb, I can't imagine the pressure she was under when she had to talk about, you know, my daughter said this and she did have something to say and they were pressing her for a long time.
Again, that's why, you know, it's like there's so much left unknown with this. And I hope one day down the road we could rip this case file open and when it's all said and done and get some more of the truth here. Antoinette and Jody, I know you live pretty local to Pikes and have been there. Joseph, can you tell us what your recent first trip was like?
It's not unlike a lot of Appalachian towns and communities. You can tell that there's a church just about on every corner. And the people, I found, were very warm. They didn't put it in the vernacular. They didn't give us the side eye when we got there. They were very friendly and welcoming.
I even now live in Southern Appalachia. So I wasn't too far removed from my home and from that location. But when I got there, from the perspective of a forensics guy and a death investigator, everything has got to be contextualized for the environment in which it occurs, you know, these horrible events. And horrible events occur everywhere. No one is immune to them. But
But for me, going to Piketon and kind of seeing it, you kind of get a feel for the routes that people would run and that there are a limited number of points of egress, I think, to get from point A to point B.
It's not like you've got multiple surface roads where you can get to a variety of different locations. Essentially, there's one way in and one way out. This is not a location where if you pulled in your average Joe and just slapped them down, they're going to know where to go. It informs you as an investigator that whoever ran these routes and ran the route knew the area because there's several
locations along Union Hill where essentially only one car can pass at a time in certain locations, particularly dependent upon the vehicle. And one other note, if there's someone that is not of there, of that place, you will be noticed. You will be noticed. People will take notice of your presence there because it's not heavily populated. It's sparse.
And so to move through that space, you would have to know where all the twists and turns are. You'd have to know what to avoid, what's a point of view that someone might have a particular location. All of these things are going to play into any kind of scenario that you're constructing in your mind where you're thinking, how can I go about getting away with a slaughter? 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. Come on, Paul.
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.
So if the four Wagners committed this crime together, who was watching Jake and Hannah Roden's daughter? Was she in the car, which is unimaginable, or was she home? I mean, that's a special kind of crazy if you're going to take children along to kill eight people and just have them in their car seats. So I can't imagine anyone would do such a thing. So I would think somebody had to have been with those children.
hopefully we'll get that question answered. I mean, in the end, does it really matter? No, it's been alleged many times that each one of them had a role in this. I mean, we've kind of heard that discussed before. Yeah. Cause to your question of, does it matter? I mean, in my mind, what,
would certainly is if someone outside the four is, because then that person has been living with this secret knowledge that is hard to imagine bearing. Oh, sure. I mean, it's not like you just dial up a babysitter and say, hey, can you come by and watch my kids for the night? I mean, can you imagine are my grandkids? I mean, you would think that they would have spoken to that person already if there was a fifth person watching the children or something like that.
Any kind of closing bites, Anjanette? Any thoughts at this moment? Yeah, I mean, I would love to see what Jake told the investigators. What was behind this? Was it just the child and why? And I know why Jake, I mean, I kind of know why Jake confessed. He feels like he's been
He found God. That's what I was. That's what I heard. So don't they all though, you know, if you ever covered a bond hearing, I think some kind of find God, I think some find God. And I guess he found he really found him. How about that? It will be interesting to see if it was more than just the child because to wipe out eight people over a child is, you know, if that's it, that's a whole different
type of thing that I'm, you know, you hear about domestic violence incidents over children and divorces going ugly and a spouse kills another spouse over control. But to kill an entire family because you want one child is it is hard to wrap your head around if that is indeed all this was about.
So right now, all we know is what Jake Wagner did. So I think we can all speak with certainty that he had a major role in this. But I mean, if you're looking at trying to make sense of this and, you know, it's the custody issue. But then on top of that, it does loop Hannah Gilley in to some extent because her brother, apparently he got this, you know, Hannah Roden pregnant. You know, it's not just Hannah and this child. It's Hannah, her mother, her
her father, you know, all centered around this baby. Everyone who could get custody of this baby, you know, that may be driving him at that point. But then you now have Hannah Gilley looped in through her brother and that's tied to Hannah Roden. You know, I don't... Is that enough? I mean, you know, what if...
It comes out that, and I know we've all heard the theory from the state at this point in time that this was a concerted effort by four members of the Wagner family. But what if it comes out that Jake was truly the trigger guy and the rest are sort of on the periphery helping and supporting? Again, I mean, this is just me shooting the breeze here about this, but it's just...
You try to put yourself in that mindset of doing what we know Jake did at this point in time. And the result of whoever's actions, you still got eight people dead and children laying in the blood and the aftermath of that. It's a hell of a situation over there. We'll continue to monitor movements in George Wagner's trial, as well as any developments regarding accused father Billy Wagner and accused mother Angela Wagner.
But while we wait, we want to turn our attention back to the Michael Moran story that we covered in Episode 7. I really thought there was no way. There was no way this could be going on for so long and nobody did anything about it. One of the best lawyers and a politician and a sitting judge all possibly involved in this network. That's how deep this went. And that's when we knew we needed to get more women who had been through this experience to talk about what they said they'd been through with Michael Moran. ♪♪
We'll have part two of that next week. For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at KT underscore studios. The Piketon 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.
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