4,000 Miles Away
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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. Welcome to The Pikedon Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios. Episode 7, 4,000 Miles Away. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at KT Studios with Stephanie Lidecker and Jeff Shane. After the Roden family was brutally gunned down in their homes, authorities embarked on what would become the largest homicide investigation in Ohio's history.

Over the course of the case's first year, law enforcement officers began compiling a staggering amount of clues that they hoped would lead to the killers. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine giving an update in the Pike County murders. You've received 883 tips. We have conducted 465 interviews. DeWine says there have also been 38 search warrants issued, but so far no arrests. I think that we've made significant progress.

But by early 2017, the evidence that authorities had collected was pointing them towards one group of people in particular: the Wagner family. That spring, with the case heating up, the Wagners decided to leave the Piketon area. With Jake Wagner and Hannah Roden's daughter Sophia in tow, they sold their farm, packed up their belongings, and drove 4,000 miles north to Kenai, Alaska, a city of about 8,000 people southwest of Anchorage.

It was a move that Wagner relative DeRay not only encouraged, but conceived of. They had been wanting to move to Alaska for a while because the pastor of the church moved there. He's a very important headstone in their family. I'm the one that told them, go to Alaska. Number one, the state of Ohio cannot afford to extradite you from Alaska back home. I just thought it was the greatest thing.

that they took off. I said, that's the best thing in the world for the kids. And it's the best thing in the world for you guys. The family quickly got settled in Kenai. They lived together in a double wide trailer on a large piece of property. Billy and Angela even registered to vote.

Jeff talked to one of the Wagners' family relatives who kept in touch with them while they were in Alaska. She asked us not to use her name, but told us about their life once they arrived. What was their life like in Alaska?

I think she might have done some things from like home over the internet or something like that. And Bill, I'm not sure what he did exactly, but they did have a very nice home in Alaska that they were in the process of trying to buy, from what I understand anyways. And Jake, he had Sophie at the time, and they just kind of were getting by.

The Wagner's sudden departure left the whole town of Pipeton bewildered and suspicious. Dana Roden's friend, Stephann, remembers the day she heard the news. She shared her thoughts with Jeff. Well, when they left for Alaska, I was like, oh, wow. They're running, you know, they're running. And then I thought, they'll get away with it. If they did this, if they did this, they will get away with it.

Were people talking about the Wagners? Like, was the feeling that they might have been guilty? Or what were people thinking or speculating in town? Yeah, they pretty much thought that, you know, that was the deal. They were running from it.

But the Wagners' relocation didn't hinder the investigation. According to reporter James Pilcher, it only helped to move the case forward. They moved to Alaska, which raised even more suspicion. But then the very following month, law enforcement actually finally searches the properties where the Wagners lived. So that was really the first public indication that the Wagners were possible suspects, if not people of interest. So that started to tighten the noose in terms of the Wagners.

On June 6, 2017, as the investigation pressed on, Attorney General Mike DeWine appealed to the public for information connecting the Wagners to the crime. Investigators want any information about the family, including information about vehicles, guns, and ammunition. Anyone with information is asked to call the PCI...

Investigative journalist Jody Barr recalled the Attorney General's announcement. Other than being on the ground in Pike County and hearing the Wagner's names come up from time to time and you had no verifiable leads or you would exhaust all leads, that was the first time that anything was said in public from anybody with this investigation that they may have people that they were looking at and who potentially had something to do with this. And at that time, no one knew the extent

of the involvement that the investigators believed the Wagons may have had. It was just, they were asking for help and that seemed really strange. But it also, on the other hand, it connected some of the pieces that we had heard in the beginning, you know, that maybe gave more weight to the custody issues that we were trying to dig into before. But it was still just, it was still confusing that they would come out and say that. And no arrests made, no indictments made, but yet,

they were asking for help to identify. Yeah, is that unusual that they would just kind of like blatantly say a name and be like, "Does anyone know anything about this person who's not an official suspect or someone we've arrested even?" It's just confusing. And I would love to ask now Governor Mike DeWine, you know, why they played it the way they played it. You know, did they know what they needed to know then? Were they trying to have the Wagners make a misstep when they announced this to the world?

Mike DeWine's press release prompted the Wagner's family attorney, John K. Clark, to accuse law enforcement of harassing his clients. Here's Jeff, followed by Stephanie. In a statement to the Cincinnati Inquirer, the lawyer said that the authorities were clueless, incompetent, or they themselves were involved in a cover-up. In short, his clients were innocent.

That's because, according to Clark, the Wagners were cooperating with officials and had provided authorities with everything they had asked for, including laptops, phones and DNA willingly. And they also agreed to repeated interviews with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Clark even said that the Wagners told BCI agents that they were in fact moving.

I spoke with former Ohio prosecutor Mike Allen about the legal implications of the Wagner's cooperation. What about the Wagners and their compliance with authorities? I know their lawyer has said they've cooperated 110%. Can you talk through the details of that? Sure. I mean, from what I understand, they did turn over some things, laptops, phones, they submitted to DNA, uh,

giving exemplars which they could be compelled to do anyway. Some of them at least were interviewed by Ohio BCI agents

And I guess they told those agents that they were traveling and about to move to Alaska. And they claim they had been thinking about that for a long time. So, yeah, I mean, from what I can see, there was some cooperation. But whether it was 110 percent, I don't know. And frankly, I doubt because that rarely happens.

Does that do anything when it comes to juries? You know, does that hold sway? It can. You know, in closing argument, the defense lawyer could stand up and say to the jury, my client, you know, he cooperated 110 percent, you know, meaning that he has nothing to hide. The Cincinnati Inquirer even tracked the family down in Alaska in July of 2017.

In a published article, Jake Wagner said that he had moved to give Sophia a better life. This is Jody Barr. Again, the Cincinnati Enquirer obviously went there and they found him. I mean, it was...

They didn't try to slip off in the middle of the night, it didn't seem. I mean, if a reporter could find them, then obviously law enforcement knew very much where they were at that point in time. I mean, as far as a level of cooperation, we haven't heard anything yet that said the Wagners weren't cooperating with law enforcement. Did they do it? We want to know now, obviously. Everybody wants to know right now.

Despite their involvement in a very large and very active murder investigation, the Wagners were trying to start a new life in Alaska and didn't seem to have any intention of returning.

Here's our anonymous Wagner family source. When I would ask Angela how things going, you know, when are you guys going to come back and visit or so on and so forth, she was kind of just really backwards about it. She never would really tell me what they were doing. She never really said when she would be back home to visit.

Just that she misses us, you know, and that she would love to be able to come home, but right now she can't. And that she made the comment and said that if she did get to come back, that she couldn't tell me over the phone, that she would just basically have to show up. And that once she made it here, then she would contact me and let me know, but that she didn't want a bunch of people to find out about it.

In Alaska, the family went about life as normal. They tried to fit into the local community and became regular parishioners at the local church. Their pastor even described them to the Dayton Daily News as "good country people." We reached out to the pastor, who declined to speak with us. It was at this same church that Jake Wagner was introduced to another churchgoer, Elizabeth Armour. The couple dated for several months, and then in March 2018, they got married.

This is Jody Barr. I've seen, you know, people I know who have lost a spouse, you know, they're married again in six months. If he's innocent and he got remarried and he wanted to carry on with his life, then, you know, maybe that's it. But if he really is guilty of having a hand in killing eight people, and one of those being the mother of his own child, and then he enters into vows with another woman within months of that, I don't know. I don't know.

Here's Stephanie talking about what she learned by looking at Elizabeth Armour's Facebook posts. She took to Facebook to let the world know just how dangerous being involved with the Wagners could be. Elizabeth said in one of her posts that God told her to come forward about her relationship with Jake Wagner.

According to her posts, Elizabeth met Jake through the church and then was encouraged to get to know him by her pastor. But she maintained that she had no idea that the Wagners were involved in such a large murder investigation. And when that news of the Rodan Massacre came up, the pastor had vouched for the Wagners, telling her that the charges were just slander against the family.

However, in another post, she said she wanted to just be a mother to Sophia, but that she ended up marrying her worst nightmare. All of those posts have since been taken down. We've tried to find her and contact her directly, and she's literally nowhere to be found. Then, in the spring of 2018, two years after the rodents were killed, the Wagner shocked everyone again, this time by returning to the Pikedon area.

Our Wagner family relative explained why they decided to come home. From what I, like I said, have understood just from a little bit that I talked to Angela and then our family in general talking, they had came back home because Bill's family, his father, got sick. And they couldn't afford, or they were losing the home and everything that they had there in Alaska.

So, basically, it was a handful of that type of stuff. So, they decided that they were going to come back down here, and they were just going to get everything basically situated here. Once that happened, and once they got back on their feet, basically, then they were planning to go back. They wanted to go back. Angela wanted to go back there. She made that clear to her father multiple times that that was going to be a place that they were...

We're really looking forward to living and just wanted to be there. But they had a bunch of stuff that they still had to take care of in order for that to happen. The move seemed to baffle everyone in Piketon. Here's local resident Angie. If you think about it, the Wagners were scot-free. They went to Alaska. They could have took off and nobody could have ever seen them again, ever. But they came back here. They came back.

Now my, the way that I am, I would never do that, but if I had pulled something off like that, and got away with it that long, and went to Alaska, you know, I'm packing my shit, and I'm hitting the woods, and nobody's ever going to see me again. I'm sure the hell I'm not going to come back. The only way I would come back is if I thought my ass was covered.

Upon returning to Piketon, the Wagners tried to fly under the radar and return to life as normal. But our Wagner family relative told Jeff that their homecoming was anything but welcome. When they came back, were people kind of like, has the story died down? Or were people like, oh,

Oh, the Wagners are back. It was probably quiet for about, I don't know, two, three weeks at that. And then everybody found out that they were back in town and they just got absolutely tortured. I mean, daily. Everybody had started basically attacking them, the community, accusing them of...

And it busted her in the back.

You know...

They were just doing my workplace. My vehicle was parked outside and my vehicle got keyed. They had, of course, threw eggs on it, all that type of stuff, wrote murderer on it. I had absolutely nothing to do with any of that.

As things began to unravel for the Wagners, law enforcement was tightening up the case against the family. It seemed like it was only a matter of time before they were arrested. Investigators now believe there were multiple attackers. That's according to information from the Ohio Attorney General's office. The Ohio Attorney General says the investigation is progressing. DeWine adds his office knows a lot more about what goes on in those Pike County hills now. We know a lot more today.

On Halloween of 2018, authorities conducted yet another search on a Wagner family property. This time, a farm formerly owned by Jake and George Wagner. During that raid, investigators uncovered a homemade silencer at the bottom of a well. It would seem to be the final piece of the puzzle for investigators.

As we discussed in great detail in episode two, on November 13th, Angela and Billy Wagner and their two sons, Jake and George Wagner, were arrested for the murders of eight members of the Rodin family. Good evening, everyone. We have major developments tonight in a bizarre and tragic murder case. It took

Two and a half years, but arrests have finally been made in the Pike County Massacre. George Billy Wagner III, he's 47. Also, 48-year-old Angela Wagner, 27-year-old George Wagner IV, and 26-year-old Edward Jake Wagner are now facing charges. The Attorney General announced two more arrests of people accused of being involved. Angela's mother and Billy's mother, Frederica Wagner, were also arrested today in conjunction with the cover-up of these crimes.

We're going to take a quick break here. We'll be back in a moment. What you're hearing is Hardy Fiber Cement Siding living up to its reputation as the siding that handles hail impact with ease. James Hardy knows how important a reputation is, especially when you're a contractor. That's why Hardy Siding withstands severe weather better than vinyl siding with styles to match its strength. So you can be sure you're providing your clients with the best.

Protect your reputation with exterior products by James Hardy. 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 trees.

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 to hunt family annihilation today in A Disappearing Act. Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

Angela, Billy, Jake, and George Wagner were charged with aggravated murder. Angela Wagner's mother, Rita Jo Newcomb, and Billy Wagner's mother, Frederica, were both charged with obstruction of justice and perjury. Newcomb was also charged with forgery. All six of them pled not guilty, and our justice system presumes innocence until guilt is proven. At first blush, it seems far-fetched to believe that these two grandmothers had a part in conspiring to pull off Ohio's largest mass murder.

Jeff spoke with Mike Allen about the charges against Frederica Wagner. Frederica has been charged with obstruction of justice and perjury. So how do you explain that to someone who, you know, like me, who's never been to law school or doesn't know what it means? Well, perjury is pretty simple under Ohio law. It just basically says that you cannot knowingly make a false statement in an official proceeding while you are under oath. It's real simple. And the

Obstructing justice is pretty simple as well. Ohio law provides that you can't, with purpose to hinder the discovery, apprehension, or prosecution of a person, do anything that would assist someone in doing that. And that's one that's charged pretty frequently. You don't see perjury charged a lot because it's so difficult to prove. But with convicted of both, she would be facing four years max.

Plainly stated, prosecutors think Frederica was lying to them and trying to hinder the investigation to cover up for her family. We'll get into the specifics of her charges later. For now, here's Stephanie, followed by Jeff. We wondered if there was anything in Frederica Wagner's past that could have indicated that she would be involved in something as gruesome as mass murder.

As we know, the Wagners were a well-known and well-to-do family in the Piketon area, and Frederica Wagner was at the helm of this. A self-described entrepreneur, she owned properties all over Pike County that spanned over 1,700 acres and were valued at more than $4 million.

She had also founded two non-profits: Lucasville Mission, a church that helps underprivileged children, and the Crystal Springs Home, a facility that provides services to developmentally disabled adults. As we've learned throughout the series, Frederica had her detractors as well as her supporters in the community.

Growing up, Christina Howard spent a lot of time with Frederica. In fact, her mom worked at the Crystal Springs home. She was pretty well known by everybody. If she wasn't doing a charity or something outside of church, then she was doing one in church. She owned over 200 acres of land and a lot of people

that lived on her property that she rented out to, she would say, "Hey, you know, if you come to church, then I won't charge you a diamond ring." And all she ever asked of them was for them to go to church.

She was always nice to me growing up. She's never yelled at me. She's never really told me no. There would be times that I would go to work with mom and I would just hang out at Freddy's all day long while my mom was working. I would just hang out, feed the horses, give them baths, brush them. She was literally like a grandma to me growing up.

DeRay paints a similar portrait of Frederica. She told us about the pastoral surroundings of her grandmother's Flying W Farms and her family's legacy in the area. If you go to their house, you go 88 miles out of Cincinnati, east on 33. And I'm telling you, you were in the hills, the Appalachian Hills of Ohio at this time. Then all of a sudden you'll see something to the right that looks like a real nice entryway. It's Flying W Farms on it.

And you look, and you see a trailer sitting right next to the entrance. A nice entrance with wrought iron gates. It's got flying W's on it. Then you look a ways up. You see all these little houses. Some of them were catteries. And then she's got the pig house. And then she's got the old walking horse barn. And then she's got the shop. Then you come to her, her colonial-style home.

And it's a very homey feeling. When you walk into the home, you feel like you're going home. And I see all my grandmother's Catholic little statues around and pictures of the kids on the horses, pictures of all their famous horses. She developed a breed of horse called the Georgian Grande that she named after my uncle, which she takes no credit for.

The horses is what the driving passion was for Frederica and Bob to be together, stay together, work together, because that's the problem, I think, with with people who get married today. OK, so it's natural to want to have relationships. It's natural to want to have kids when you're young, all those hormones in your head.

But to keep you together, you better have something solid and common that you have to work with together to keep your family, leaving them a legacy. And that's what Frederica Wagner did for her kids. Her and Bob developed a breed of horse over years. They have a 2,000-acre farm. They had three kids, and they left them a legacy.

And we're not talking about people who are trained murderers. We're talking about real people here who had real honest-to-goodness, God-fearing lives. Frederica Wagner's attorney described her as a God-fearing woman who taught Sunday school for nearly half a century and lived about as close to the cross as anyone can. We all struggled with this contradiction in Frederica Wagner. How could this sweet grandmother, who was charitable and kind, be involved in any capacity with the murder of eight people?

So we decided to look a little deeper into Pikedon's most giving resident and what we found was not all virtuous. Jody Barr filled us in. After the world became familiar with the Wagner family, you know, of course reporters start digging into their backgrounds and

It's just some of the things that come out, you learn about the business dealings and what Frederica is accused of doing in the past. This is good background information to have when you're trying to understand who these people are. But I have to say, when I was on the ground in Pike County, Ohio, when I was hearing their names, when I went by Flying W Farm, I mean, it is a peaceful, quaint farm tucked into the rolling hills of Florida.

Eastern Ohio, when you drive by there, nothing on the surface points to anything that's been alleged now. That any of the people involved in any of this could have been involved in the killing of eight people. That's the beauty of investigations, I guess, is that you just don't know the whole story until you know the whole story. Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back in a moment.

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.

Let's start with Flying W Farms. The farm breeds horses as well as dogs and pigs typically found in New Zealand. In the 1990s, Frederica got into legal trouble with a group of customers surrounding the sale of these pigs. Here's Mike Allen again. She was sued by a group of customers. I guess the allegation was that her place, I think it was the Flying W, it didn't meet the standards promised for her.

the sale of exotic animals, which is interesting. I guess the group said that she defrauded them in the sales. They gave them some animals that didn't match the advertised description.

Dana Roden's friend Becky told Jeff that Flying W Farms had been whispered about in Pikedon for years. At one point in time, you know, Frederica was a person to be feared in the county because there was always rumors. I don't know exactly what all the rumors was, but everybody's like, oh, you don't want to get back there. Bad things happen to people that go back there. So, yeah, I stayed away from that area. Wait, back where? Frederica's farm. Because I've always heard bad things about it. So, yeah, somewhere I would never go.

Pikedon local Barbara told Jeff about one rumor in particular. They made their money in horses and miniature horses, and there's some shady dealings that I've heard about going on there. Like them stuffing the horses with drugs and sending them back and forth to Mexico and, you know, just awful things like that. Now, we obviously can't prove that, but it's worth mentioning because it's this type of thing that people in Pikedon like to whisper about.

One thing we should talk about is this quote-unquote life-changing rent-to-own operation Frederica Wagner designed to help lower-income residents. Over the decades, Frederica Wagner entered into at least 132 land installment contracts.

Now, these contracts basically allowed the Wagners to retain deeds on land as buyers attempted to pay off the principal and the interest. The idea was that if the buyers made all of their payments, they'd eventually become landowners. But it rarely played out that way. In fact, as it turns out, only 12 of those contracts were actually satisfied. 12 out of 132.

And in looking into all of the deals, nearly 80% of them were ultimately terminated without a corresponding deed transfer. And that basically indicates despite somebody making payments, at the end of the day, the land stayed in Frederica Wagner's possession. There are countless examples of sour deals just like that, where people really did feel that Frederica Wagner took advantage of them.

And again, does that mean that she was involved with a mass murder? Of course not. But it does point to character, which I do think is valuable. Yeah, there was one tenant quoted in the story saying that Frederica had raised her rent by 25% following the murders in 2016. And another described his rental property as a one-room home with an exposed toilet standing just a few feet from the foot of his bed.

Again, this doesn't prove their guilt, but it does speak to the type of woman Frederica was, or at least how the public perceived her at the time. I spoke to attorney Mike Allen about Frederica's land deal contracts. When I was in Piketon, I spoke to some people, and these are just personal accounts, but saying, you know, my family rented land there.

And did it for years and years and years and then had it pulled out, which, I mean, the court seems to back that up. Yeah, land contracts are tough. And, you know, for the person who is, you know, not the owner of the property, but the person trying to buy it, there are a lot of pitfalls with it. And someone smart, which apparently Frederica was, they can take advantage of people in a land contract situation.

Frederica also runs a nonprofit called Crystal Springs, a group home that provides housing and rehabilitation services to developmentally disabled adults.

And according to some, when her son Billy married Angela Newcomb, who we now know as Angela Wagner, Frederica wasn't happy about it. Christina Howard told us that the relationship between Frederica Wagner and her daughter-in-law always seemed contentious. She never really had much to do with Angela unless it come to Billy. And growing up, I heard Freddie call Angela like an evil woman a time or two, like a nasty woman.

One time, Angela tried to keep Freddie from seeing her grandkids, George and Jake, because they was talking about moving away and all this. And I never heard Freddie say that she hated anybody, but she said, you know, like, oh, I really dislike this woman. She's just a nasty woman.

Perhaps Frederica Wagner has reason to be suspicious of Angela. Christina Howard gave Stephanie her thoughts on Angela Wagner. Angela, she does have a little bit of a shady facade to her. Like, you feel like there's more to her than meets the eye and stuff. Like, on the outside, she's all happy, talks with anybody and everything else, but you just get a vibe from her, you know, that there's more to it.

It turns out that this seemingly devoted, hardworking mother had a bit of a checkered past. In 2001, Angela Wagner, along with Billy Wagner, were charged with improperly handling a firearm. And in 2012, they were both charged with receiving stolen property, which is a fifth-degree felony.

Jody Barr put the Wagner family's criminal history into context for us. You're looking at improperly handling of firearm charges. When you look at those two charges and even the details that were reported to support those charges, I'm back to where I was in the rest of the Wagner's background.

When you look at this as a whole across the course of their lives, the charges of improperly handling a firearm, I mean, those charges came 15 years before these murders. It was an alleged road rage. You know, there was a gun pulled out, but the charges are dismissed. No one got hurt.

I mean, that is something that I see multiple times a week alleged in police reports. The charge of receiving stolen property came four years before these murders. When you look at the criminal record, nothing in this says to me that you've got murderers in the hills of Pike County, Ohio. I mean, this could be your neighbor next door with these charges.

Here again is Frederica's niece, DeRay, reading a news article about her aunt's involvement in the Roden murders. So let me summarize it for you. On November the 13th, 2018, the Ohio governor-elect, Mike DeWine, held an internationally broadcast news conference and announced the arrest of Frederica Wagner and several of her family members.

Governor DeWine accused Frederica's family members of the rodents' homicides, and he specifically accused Frederica of masterminding the cover-up. When I heard that, I wanted to call him up and tell him that there was no way, and that someday you will have to apologize to my aunt. I do not know who came up with that theory and tried to put it out there, but that is

is someone with an evil mind. I think that it's the devil trying to test us because there's no way possible that Frederica could ever do something like that. Ever. She is not that kind of person. She carries the light of Jesus with her everywhere she goes.

And I am, I am, I am convicted on that. There's no way she would have ever done something like that ever.

The idea that the entire Wagner family allegedly conspired to kill the rodents in cold blood still baffles Jody Barr to this day. I think that is the common theme of this entire story about Pike County and about this rodent massacre is it seems just too far-fetched now when you try to connect the dots through the histories of, you know, how the Wagners conducted their business, how they lived their lives.

I don't know that I have seen any reporting, any fact brought out about the Wagners that would say, yep, there you go, mass murderers. I think that is the draw that continues to keep people interested in this story is that you would have never seen any of this coming. I don't know what a family capable of a mass murder would look like or how they would conduct their business, but this was out of nowhere. It's still just hard to believe.

On June 26, 2019, Frederica Wagner headed into a Pike County courtroom for a pretrial hearing. With Frederica sitting in the defendant's chair, there was a stunning courtroom revelation. Charges against the grandmother connected to the Rodin family massacre have been dismissed. It was dismissed because I was innocent. They had no evidence against me.

While grandmother Frederica Wagner might be out of the woods, the rest of her family await their day in court, where a stunning number of truths promise to be exposed. It's a search for the truth. I believe that as it applies to this case. The mystery will be solved. The truth will eventually be discovered. Hannah was struggling to keep custody of Sophia. Tabby straight up told her, if they present you with papers, do not sign them because they will screw you over.

You've got to wonder, who is this informant? Because if it's a member of the Wagner family, I think that's a twist no one saw coming. More on that next week. Reach out to us on our social media outlets with questions. We're on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at Pikedon Massacre. We look forward to answering your questions in upcoming bonus episodes.

Pikedon Massacre is executive produced by Stephanie Lidecker and me, Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design by executive producer Jared Astin. Additional producing by Jeff Shane and Andrew Becker. The Pikedon Massacre 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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