The Victims Need a Voice
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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 Pikes and Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios. A lot of what I do is I kind of tiptoe into people's tragedy, but I get to pull my toes out as opposed to the families who their entire lives are, you know, shattered and in some cases destroyed and decimated, which certainly happened in this case.

But as the story unfolded and as we started piecing together things and talking with family members and law enforcement and people in the community, it just became clear to me, I guess, that this was a special place. This is the Pikedon Massacre, Return to Pike County. Season 2, Episode 6, The Victims Need a Voice. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at KT Studios with Stephanie Lidecker and Jeff Shane. ♪

The day that eight members of the Roden family were found murdered, journalist Chris Graves began covering the story for the Cincinnati Inquirer. Her insight is crucial as she spoke with members of the victims' families, the Rodens, Manleys, and Gillies, in the immediate aftermath of the killings. She's the only journalist to conduct an exclusive interview with the Wagner family just weeks after the Rodens were found dead. Graves sat down with Jake Wagner, who has now pled guilty, and his accused mother, Angela.

When did you first hear about the Roden murders?

So I first heard about the crime the Friday in which it broke. I saw a tweet, as I recall, and the first news of this was that there were people dead in Pike County and that the police were beginning to investigate.

So my news instincts kicked in and then I texted our editors and said, this is our story. This is what I was thinking. Multiple people found dead in more than one location along Union Hill Road in Piketon this morning. By 2 p.m., investigators say they found eight people dead, seven adult victims and a 16-year-old boy, all from the Rodent family. There is a shooter or shooters out there somewhere. No one is in custody right now. Whoever they are.

They were trying to possibly wipe out this entire family. I was trying to get somebody who's on the ground, who has eyes, who can help you as a reporter. Because when stories like this begin to unfold, there's just so much you don't know. You don't know anything. There was a church right across from Union Hill Road and

I managed to get Reverend Phil Fulton on the phone and I, you know, I just started interviewing him. And during the course of that conversation, I could hear the Reverend Fulton talking with what appeared to be a family member who turned out to be Leonard Manley. Leonard is the father of Dana Manley Roden, also the grandfather of Hannah Roden, Chris Jr., and all of the kids.

So I asked him if he could put Leonard Manley on the phone and he did. And that was the first time I talked with a family member. He was able to tell me in that conversation who they believed had been killed. And it was his daughter who found the first four victims who made the first 911 call, which we've all heard.

I was trying to, on the phone, piece together who all these people, what their relationships were, who were they, what were their relationships. It was certainly horrific and tragic. Highton is a small community where everyone knows everyone, and as you can imagine, the town is just stunned. It's quite a shock, thinking about the whole family, really. It is hard to believe. It's such a useless tragedy. I just don't understand why it happened here.

It was one of those things, you know, pinch me, wake me up. Sometimes I'll wake up and it'll just be like a dream. On April 24th, 2016, Chris Graves made her way to Pike County. That church became a place for both law enforcement and the family to gather. And I asked the Reverend Fulton if I could attend his church service on Sunday, which is what I did. I went down into church and listened to his sermon.

What was that sermon like on that Sunday? It's a small church. It's not a big church. Pastor Fulton sort of lives in the community, has lived in the community, sort of grew up there. He had preached there for 43 years. He talked a lot about this is what a church does. It's, you know, it's a shelter, a refuge, a safe haven in a dark storm.

He talked about the need for the community to come together and support a family. There was a lot of singing. He turned to the scriptures for inspiration and solace. He talked a lot about evil and what evil would descend to do this.

Small country church just up the way, north of Route 32, helping some of the family and friends as they come to grips with an unspeakable event. Can you describe the evil that committed this? I don't think you can really describe it. It's just unbelievable, these things that's happening and going on. Such tragedies like this, we should not have them. You were faced with this giant puzzle, a very tragic puzzle, that you were trying to put together so that others could learn what had possibly happened.

Right. You're trying to find the truth. You're trying to figure out who is in a relationship with whom and how are these people connected? What could have happened? Where did they work? What's all the, you know, prior criminal history of everybody? And

You're sort of left as a reporter to, I mean really, to kind of do knock on doors, talk to people, try to figure out, you know, talk to the people who are closest to the information, then begin to sort of piece stuff together.

And what was the result of that? I think this part of America gets a little bit of a rap that it's a very and it is insular, but it's also kind. People were kind when they maybe shouldn't have been, you know, at least to me.

And I just, I really just wanted to understand the victims. I wanted to understand family. So I spent hours sometimes, oftentimes interviewing not just family members, but people who lived, you know, down the road and across the way. And, you know, the librarian and I mean, all kinds of, you know, certainly the sheriff and the attorney general and all of that.

People call it, and we did too, the rodent case of the rodent. And certainly their family lost the most people, which sounds horrific even to say. I mean, I just like, there's no good words for any of this. But I mean, there are three family units, the Manleys, the Gillies, and the Rodents.

Hannah Gilley is a little often turned into a rodent or a footnote, right? We don't get to explore her world nearly enough. And that's the other thing I think about Hannah Hazel. That's what they call Hannah Hazel Gilley. To make the distinction between Hannah Mae, rodent,

You know, she became, I think by default, a rodent. So when we first started writing, and I mean, I did think about that, like how we're sort of saying, well, it's rodents. And I thought, well, she's essentially a rodent. I mean, she was engaged to Frankie. They were going to get married. They'd had a child together. She...

She lived for her son, you know, was really into nursing and the health of him and was trying to eat healthy. She graduated from high school, was totally in love with Frankie. They were, you know, it's everything building a life. She saw herself as a rodent. Having said that, she's still a ghillie.

And so this amount of devastation to essentially three families, all of whom live in close proximity to each other and their families have been in various stages differently intertwined and the ripple effect of that and the children

which is what hit me the hardest. I'm a mother of two and the idea that there were three very small children at the crime scenes and they were found alive and physically unharmed

resonated with me. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine giving an update three children did survive, a four-day-old, a six-month-old, and a three-year-old. I think what makes this particularly grisly is the fact that you have these children involved who obviously were there when executions took place. You know, it's heartbreaking. I mean, you know, the one mom apparently was killed with the four-day-old right there. I mean, it's just, you know, it's just hard to believe.

Then I went and did my first column and I just went driving. Pike County, it's pretty rolling hills. It's absolutely beautiful. And it was starting to warm up. Things were beginning to bloom. There were fields of yellow and purple. And I mean, it's just it was just absolutely beautiful.

all of the things that as someone who looks for ways in which to tell stories, you look for, right? I mean, as this county was going through its spring rebirth, it struck me that this tragedy was rippling across sort of these beautiful fields of yellow flowers. And I just could not get those three children out of my head. And I just started looking out and I started to cry, truthfully.

and sort of became, I don't know, overwhelmed.

But I came around or down a hill and I saw a house just sort of out on its own with, you know, a couple of rocking chairs on the porch. And, you know, they were just rocking, but nobody was in them. And I sort of started thinking about this lullaby. It's called the Appalachian Lullaby. And it just started going through my head and I was remembering pieces of it. And I just couldn't help but think about...

those children and who would rock them to sleep and who would hold them tight and who, you know, who would sing them lullabies to sleep. And I thought that's what this is about. This was more than just a homicide or a multiple homicide or a mass killing. It's about who takes care of those babies and what in the world happened here. And those children's lives will never be the same.

These are families, so many lives affected and the ripple effects of that, which will go on for decades and generations. They now are and will forever be bound by this horrible tragedy.

But both their strength and their resilience and their resolve and their pain, I mean, it's incredible to me. I don't, I'm struggling with words because I don't know the right words, truthfully. It's heartbreaking and just awe-inspiring. Somehow they're survivors. So that's what I wrote about. Nobody can imagine what this family has been through.

Only the other families, the Manleys, the Gillies, those families are suffering as much as we are. They only know what we are all going through. Every day we live with this, it never goes away. I can tell you that even though it's been extremely hard, that I know our family will never stop. We will never give up.

We will never give up trying to find and bring the people who ever did this to justice. We will not give up.

Can you describe your first impressions of the Wagners? My first interview with Jake Wagner and his mom, Angela, was on May 31st, 2016. You know, so what is that, six weeks after the homicides? I had talked with other people who said, oh, they probably aren't going to talk to you. They're pretty to themselves. But I knew that Jake and Hannah had been in a relationship and had shared a child. So, well, you know, we'll go try.

I showed up and he and his mom agreed to the interview, he and Angela, outside their home, which was searched two years later.

We sat outside in a patio area and talked for, I don't know, two and a half hours maybe. There were children's toys everywhere. Like those little pretend little cars that they drive that are motorized or little pikes, you know, the slides and all of that. It seemed like, wow, here's a family

who really digs their kids and or grandkids in Angela's case. And I was trying to establish who were the Wagners, who are the Wagners. When did you start dating Hannah? What was that relationship? You know, he didn't dodge questions, looked me in the eye when I interviewed him really nicely.

It seemed to me as if when we had talked that very first time that he was truly in love with Hannah, whatever that means. But he thought that they were going to be that it would all that there would be a reconciliation and they would all come together. And he had this idea in his head about what that would look like.

And I told him this, like, wow, for a young man, you seem to have everything lined up. You know, I mean, he was saying, well, we were going to do this. He and Hannah, we were going to do this. We're going to do this. My plan was this. I was like, wow, that's a lot of you.

You are really linear, I think is what I said. Everything has to line up. And I was sort of taken by that. I didn't quite know what to think of it. But again, I try to keep my mind as open as possible when I'm interviewing people. If in fact what Jake Wagner said is true, and he committed five of eight murders and then went to sleep that night, took a shower and then had the nerve to sit down with you.

straight-faced, said, I'm good, you know, like a regular person. That's so unfathomable to me. Humans are multifaceted. I've said for years that being a reporter didn't get easier. It gets harder the longer you do it because the world, you begin to understand the world is multidimensional and things are very, it just, there's not sometimes these clear things. They're not

I have a lot of questions. As someone who's talked to Jake before, I have tons of questions, as you can only imagine. But yeah, I mean, it seemed to me as if, as I just painted, you know, there were toys everywhere. He talked about his daughter all the time. He talked about, you know, for instance, he could name movies they all watched together. The books he would read her before they went to bed. What he told her about...

where her mom was, you know, that mom's with Jesus now. He said, you know, I don't know how to explain to her that mom isn't coming back. Did you ask where his daughter was that night? I mean, it was my understanding that this was his week to have the child. And he had gotten the child

a day earlier than he would normally have done that. Fast forward five years, if Jake Wagner is to be believed by what he said in court, what we still don't know is where all four of the Wagners were the night and early morning of the 21st and 22nd.

So there's an assumption, I think, that all four of the Wagners participated physically in the crimes. I don't know if that's true. I simply don't know that. What Jake said, and as you all know, what Jake said in court is that he was, quote unquote, personally responsible for five of the eight victims. So I don't know where his brother was, his dad or his mom.

What was Angela Wagner like? Jake talked a lot more than Angela, but Angela would add on things as Jake talked. But any in-person interview I did with Jake, Angela was there and didn't leave.

I mean, she was a mom. I mean, that's how I saw it. You know, she's a mom here. Her again, this is six weeks after these homicides. And when I, you know, and again, I'm not trying to be sympathetic to the Wagners right now. I'm not. But but again, dialing back five years, I show up on your doorstep. And if I'm the mom and my son has just lost the mother of his child,

I guess I thought she was just being a protective mom. I'm here for my kid kind of thing. Again, this all looks different today than it did five years ago. At the time, did you feel like they might have been guilty or did you believe what they were saying? Or do you not put yourself in that position to even have an opinion? I had somebody ask me, I don't even know, a couple of years ago, what's it like to look into the eyes of pure evil? I said, I don't know. Sometimes I think that people...

I think you would just automatically, I don't know, that some, like I have some kind of radar that go off that, you know, but they weren't suspects. So I wasn't approaching them with that in the back of my mind. Like, oh, now you're suspects in this. It was more information gathering. They didn't seem nervous.

I don't think they ever asked me, because sometimes in interviews people will say, "Oh, don't use that," or "Don't use that," or "That makes me really nervous." I mean, I don't recall any of that. You know, there wasn't any like, "Well, you can't use that," or "What are you doing?" or any of that. But I don't, you know, again, you don't know what you don't know. And to be completely honest, I did ask them, Angela and Jake, once via email, just straight out, "Did you kill them?" And they never responded.

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.

In 2017, the investigation ramped up. "More than two dozen investigators are focused on solving one of Ohio's largest mass murders in history." "As of today, we've received 883 tips. We have conducted 465 interviews. 38 search warrants have been issued and 60 cyber extractions have been done." "They say they made significant progress in the investigation, believe more than one person committed the crimes." "But today the killers are still on the loose."

When did you hear that the Wagners were suspects? All of a sudden, I got a tip from somebody. They said, hey, have you heard about this search at the Wagners? And it became really clear to me that they must have had something because you'd have to have probable cause. So whatever it was that got them probable cause was

to do the search, I thought, well, they found something because it isn't just going to be a fishing expedition, right? So I got in my car and I drove there. And there were helicopters up and there were law enforcement like on four wheelers. I was sitting there at the search and someone said, well, you know, the house is sold. I said, no, I don't know that. And then I sat in my car and looked up

the property records and saw that it was on the market. And then you start connecting the dots in your own head. Right. And I was like, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute. And then I found out they were in Alaska. The Wagners were in Alaska. And then I went to the editor and said, I need to go to Alaska. I need to talk to them.

We have major developments tonight in a bizarre and tragic murder case with ties between Ohio and Alaska. Investigators want any information the public has about the Wagner family. If someone has information, it really is in their best interest to come forward voluntarily and give us that information. We're not messing around. We're going to go after people if they're withholding evidence from us. So it's in their interest to come forward.

They went somewhere where you had to really want to find them to find them, right? It did seem like they were trying to get lost in a way. They lived in a rural part. It's a Kenai Peninsula. And Alaska is expansive. But I mean, everything is so far from everything else. I talked with people in, you know, a little, like a little cafe. People knew that they were there, but it wasn't any big deal. They were like, oh, you mean the people who are wanted in Ohio for killing all those people?

Attorney General DeWine, you know, said they were, you know, while not calling them suspects, said, you know, they were laser focused of the investigation. And I'm like, well, actually, they're not really wanted, you know? I mean, that was the thing that was really interesting. By the time the news got there, most people thought they were wanted, but that didn't seem to bother people. I remember quoting a guy saying, well, this is where people come to get lost, right?

You know, it's no surprise. I remember being struck when we drove there that, well, of course they live here. It looks just like Pike County. You know, it's wooded, it's beautiful.

When I knocked on the door, she came to the door and I said, Angela, I'm here. Let's talk. And she was sort of startled, I think, to see me. And then Jake came to the door and the little girl came and Jake Wagner says, oh, my gosh, Chris, it's so great to see you. It's so great to see somebody. I mean, there was no trepidation.

But Billy did yell. I never saw him, but he yelled from the living room. Hey, Angela, what are you doing? You know, get back in here. And she's like, oh, don't mind him. You know, his barks were sent as bite. I mean, they were like, well, I don't know about this. We've got a lawyer back in Ohio. I don't think we should say anything until we talk to him. I was like, well, I'd really like to do a sit down interview. I'd really like to record it.

Then it became a back and forth about, well, who's your lawyer? How do I talk to him? Where do I get him? What will we do? I need to talk to him.

And then I had a long conversation with him on the phone, but he was in Ohio. So I go all the way to Alaska to talk to somebody in Ohio. And he was the one who made it sound like DeWine was harassing them. This is all harassment. They've done nothing but be cooperative. They've cooperated 110%. They've given over their laptops, their phones. They've provided DNA.

They've agreed to any number of interviews with the BCI, which is the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. They've told authorities that they were going to Alaska. The state is making them look like suspects when they haven't called them suspects.

It was the last time Chris Graves would ever speak with the Wagner family.

However, she recently returned to Pike County for the first time in years after hearing some shocking news. Exactly five years after the Roden murders in Pike County, one of the four defendants, Jake Wagner, is pleading guilty to all counts. In exchange, he avoids the death penalty and will serve multiple life sentences with no chance at parole. His father, mother, and brother are similarly charged, and they've pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say that Jake will testify against them.

Hearing the prosecutor sort of describe that he was going to change his plea and outlining the terms of the plea arrangement, and then when she shared some details of the crime, it was just like, oh my gosh, this is really happening right now. I mean, I'm a journalist, so I just sort of think about what are the facts, what's happening, what are they saying? I don't

I don't even know if I really believe he personally killed five people. I thought, is he trying to get his mom off? Is he trying to paint a picture that his mom wasn't there or his dad, somebody wasn't there, so he's gonna like cop the majority of them? All four were involved. But what does that mean? Does that mean two were involved in the planning? Other people did something

You know, somebody went in and pulled all the trail cameras but weren't involved in the actual shooting. Again, we don't really, and I know I'm saying this all the time, but we really don't know a ton of these details. A lot of it, even with his guilty plea, is speculation. So I don't know. I'm like, well, is he trying to spare? Is he trying to lie about who was there?

I mean, he's lied before, so why would he tell the complete truth now? 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. Oh my God.

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. Like everybody, I want to know the answers. I want to know the details. I want to know how you come up with this.

Are you all just sitting around the kitchen table, like plotting this? And at some point, why is it that out of four people, somebody doesn't say, no, no. It's one thing to talk about it, but now we're doing it and we're building silencers and we're plotting things as it's been described.

In some mental way, you're imagining you're doing something good for the benefit of your kin, your grandchild. But why would you put your own kids in the heart of murder? And again, the idea that of four people, of four people who were supposedly religious people, not one of you said, thou shalt not kill. Not one of you. Really? Yeah.

Not one of you had a moment where you said, this is wrong. This is fundamentally, catastrophically wrong. I honestly don't, I cannot understand that. Like, was that a surprise to you that it was them? No. The thing that startled me or continues to, I guess,

that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around is that you would annihilate eight people or an entire family over the custody of the youngest member of that combined, co-joined family. But I kept thinking, it's got to be about more than that. My gosh, I mean...

Who does this for custody? You know, who destroys a family, decimates a family, and in essence then destroying that child's life to protect that? It just doesn't reconcile with me. I remember interviewing Tony Roden. He's the brother of the victims and uncle and all of that. I remember Tony just saying, Chris, I can't, I mean...

Please don't let that be true. I hope that isn't true because that little girl does not deserve this. You know, for her sake, I just, I hope this isn't true. And he meant it. I mean, it came from a very deep and meaningful place. But I guess we're all always looking for logical explanations to illogical acts.

What has been your experience being back in Pike County now, five years later? The question I've asked people here is, do people still think about this case? Do people still talk about this? And the response that I've got is yes. And I guess I talked to a couple of people the other day in a public setting and they

talked in the terms of how tragic it is and how it's inconceivable. But yeah, I think it's a fallacy, and not just in this case, but in all cases, to think that there's like a closure thing. I don't think that exists. I drove past the crime scenes and they, you know, interestingly,

A couple buildings that remain there, a little bit more weathered, I noticed, but it feels like time sort of is standing still there, you know, waiting for an end to this. So I don't think this brings anybody closure. I think that's some Hollywood nice version of, well, now you get to move on with your life. I think that's frankly BS, but

I think the amount of loss and the ripple effects of that loss will be felt for generations. Truthfully, it has become the most important and meaningful story of my career.

At the end of the day, I was doing my work. And I try to do that with compassion and empathy and understanding, as well as trying to find facts and being hard when I need to. But then I get to leave. You know, I get to leave. And certainly they stay with me and they will always stay with me. But I don't, you know, I don't wake up every morning without a mother, without someone

without my grandchildren, without, you know, I don't wake up having to figure out how to tell those children what happened to their mother and fathers and cousins and uncles and that. Or, I mean...

My goodness, you know, the conversations that are going to have to be had with Jake and Hannah's daughter. I mean, I don't have to do that. And that's what I want people to think about when they think about this crime. I think sometimes we become fascinated with the inner workings of how would one family do this to the other family? These are people's lives.

And I cannot say that enough. And that's what should not be forgotten in all of this is that through all of the horrificness of the crime, there are so many people left behind in this wake. The family was decimated. So I guess that's what I hope people take away from this as opposed to it's a salacious story.

On June 21st, 2021, accused brother George Wagner will head back to court for a hearing, one that could change the landscape of the case moving forward. But as we wait, we turn our attention to another story that has had a lasting effect on a different community just miles away from Pike County.

It centers around a notorious lawyer named Michael Moran. He was arrested in 2020 on 18 charges related to running a prostitution ring. He's pleaded not guilty to all of them and is currently awaiting trial. He's accused of trafficking women all over the country, from New York and New Jersey to Florida.

A lot of these women are part of marginalized society, right? Nobody was listening to their stories before or seeing them as even human. They were seeing them as criminals, people who would rob them, people who were going to break into their house. But nobody was really hearing from them. I wanted to continue to investigate these stories, but I didn't know at that time how big this was.

More on that next time. For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kt underscore studios. The Pyton 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.

We'd like to thank the Maude Hammond Fling Faculty Research Fellowship Grant, which supports faculty research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where Chris Graves teaches journalism. 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.

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