Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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 Pikedon Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios. Growing up around him, he was such a sweetheart and everything. Jake Wagner, he originally pleaded not guilty to the murder of eight rodent family members. Seeing him say that he was guilty. I am guilty. It just gives you a complete chill.
Dick admitted to personally killing five of the eight and to trying to burn and get rid of evidence. He'll now avoid the death penalty and spend the rest of his life in prison. If I'd done something to make him that outrageously mad, he could have killed me too. Wagner showed little to no emotion in court today, just answering yes or no to the judge. But his life was controlled.
all the time. Special prosecutor said the Wagners were a cult-like family. I think it was still Angela behind the scenes controlling everything like a little puppet master. This is the Pikedon Massacre, Return to Pike County, Season 2, Episode 2, Cinnamon and Hay. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at KT Studios with Stephanie Lidecker and Jeff Shane.
On April 22nd, 2021, Jake Wagner pleaded guilty to 23 counts, including eight aggravated murder charges in the Roden murder case. The motive behind the killings back in 2016, according to prosecutors, was a custody dispute between Jake and victim Hannah Mae Roden over their young daughter. As it stands, the other three Wagners accused in the murders, Jake's father Billy, mother Angela, and brother George, have all pled not guilty.
The day that Jake appeared in court for his plea deal, we caught up with Christina Howard. Her sister Tabby had a relationship with the accused eldest son, George Wagner. The two were married and had a son together, but eventually divorced. When you found out for a fact that Jake was guilty, what was your reaction? My reaction was like, wow, in a way kind of speechless. Because me and him were friends when we were younger.
Last season, Christina told us a little bit about a custody dispute that ensued between Tabby and George Wagner after the couple split up. It piqued our interest when we heard about it since it foreshadowed what was to come for Hannah Mae Roden.
Christina was a little hesitant to divulge too much last time we spoke, but in light of Jake's plea, she chose to delve into Tabby's story a little more. And what we found is far darker and much more disturbing than we could have ever imagined. What follows is Christina's recollection of the events. Christina's relationship with the Wagner family goes back to her childhood. Her mother began working for grandmother of the accused, Frederica Wagner, whom Christina affectionately refers to as Freddie when she was a kid.
She was a grandmother to me in a way. I would go to work with my mother and I would hang around Freddie a lot. And she treated my family pretty kindly. On holidays, she would always get me and my sister's presents and have Christmas dinners and Easter dinners. And it was like, you know, us being part of her family. And it was pretty nice.
Eventually, Christina and her sister Tabby met Frederica's grandsons, George and Jake Wagner. Christina told Jeff that George and Tabby hit it off and soon became a couple. Did you think that George was bad news? Yeah.
Christina would often tag along when Tabby went to visit George at the Wagners' home. They had like this pretty little like house up on the hill and they had like their own little pond up there. It was pretty isolated. They had a privacy gate at the bottom that in order to get in, somebody up at the top of the house would have to come down and unlock it.
Me, George, Jake, and Tabby, we would like go outside and, you know, do young, dumb teenager kid type stuff and play tag, jump on the trampoline and the treehouse and all that. It was really fun and we could be as rowdy and noisy as we wanted because they didn't have no neighbors whatsoever.
While George and Tabby were hanging out, Christina struck up a friendship with Jake Wagner. Jake was actually a really nice kid. Me and him were kind of friends. He was pretty cool. He was really nice, kind of shy. We played video games and all that good stuff.
As a kid, Jake struck Christina as kind and almost unusually empathetic. I remember in Jake's bedroom, you know, he had his own little TV and video game system and all that stuff. And he had this one stuffed duck, and it was like hanging on the wall or something. And it kind of gave me the creeps whenever I was a little kid. And he was sweet enough to take it off his wall and hide it in his closet or something because it gave me the creeps.
The more time Christina spent at the home, the more familiar she became with the boy's mother, accused murderer Angela Wagner. She's sometimes referred to as Angie. Christina told Stephanie that, on the surface, everything about Angela Wagner seemed to personify the typical all-American mom. Out front was like this nice little...
walkway with flowers and, you know, the white picket fence except in the country kind of deal. And then, like, you go inside the house, there's the kitchen, and then right beside the kitchen is the living room, and it's pretty big. They got, like, this huge sectional and a nice big TV, and the house smelled like...
It kind of smelled like cinnamon mixed with hay. I don't know if you can really imagine that, but like take some hay, throw it around everywhere and sprinkle some cinnamon in it. And that's what it smelled like.
She sounds like a homemaker, which is again what makes it so shocking to imagine that she had the ability to do something so horrific. Yeah.
But the more time Christina spent at the Wagner home, the relationship between the Wagner boys and their mother came into focus. They were always around their mom, no matter what their mom said when.
always. If they wanted to play outside longer, if Angie said no, it was no. If they wanted to play their video games longer, if Angie said no, it was no. Even if they slightly disobeyed her, she put her foot down, meaning like, you better listen to me or I'm going to whoop your butt. And they're just like, all right, mama.
It didn't matter what Angie said. That's what went. As the kids got older, Angela Wagner seemed to take more control over her boys' lives, especially Jake. He had a job somewhere and his mom actually made him quit the job because she said that the job wasn't good enough for him.
Meaning Angela Wagner, Jake Wagner's mom, said, this job's over. It's not good enough for you. Yeah. It's like, you know, your mom controls your whole entire life.
And it wasn't long before Angela turned her controlling ways towards Christina's family. Angie made George break up with Tabby because Angie didn't like my sister because, you know, George and Jake were mama's boys and ain't nothing in the world gonna be able to steal her boys from her. She was just so controlling. Soon, Angela Wagner's true colors began to shine through her All-American facade.
In some photos that I've seen of Angela, she looks smiley and she's pretty and just looks like an all-American mom. But then in other pictures, like her mugshot, for example, she's sort of grimacing and has a scary vibe. What was she like in person?
in person she was the type you know to talk about everyday stuff like how you doing how's your family and everything else like that but it felt like whenever she would talk to you it felt like an accident she was putting on like you know she was looking down on you kind of thing at least that's what I always picked up she seemed like she was
After the Wagner family was arrested in 2018, the family's unusual dynamic became a key building block in the state's case against Angela, Billy, Jake, and George Wagner.
On August 31st of last year, George Wagner appeared in court for a pretrial hearing. Special Agent Ryan Scheiderer of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation testified that day. He provided details of what authorities had uncovered about the Wagners over two years of investigating. Here's Prosecutor Angie Canepa questioning Agent Scheiderer.
How would you describe the Wagner family? The Wagner family, from what we found through the investigation as well as their own admittances, they're very close. When I say close, they live together. They've always lived together. There's not been a period in time where George Wagner has not lived with his brother or his mother. But their finances are intermingled.
They work together, they boys work together, they homeschool together, they raise their kids together, everything is done together. So from birth until the day they were arrested, they lived together? Yes. Do you have an opinion as to whether or not one of them might strike out and go commit some heinous crime without the others knowing about it or participating in it? No. We have an informant who says that every decision within that family is made as a family decision.
Years after Angela Wagner forced George Wagner and Tabby Howard's relationship to end, the couple rekindled their romance. Soon after, victim Hannah Mae Roden started going out with Jake Wagner. And the Rodens, Wagners, and Howards became very close.
Hannah's brother, victim Frankie Roden, even joined the fray. Hannah and Tabby were best friends. Hannah and Jake were together, and Tabby and George were together. And Frankie would hang out with them a lot, because they were, like, best friends with Frankie, I suppose. So they were always, like, going out, hunting and fishing and stuff.
Then one day, Tabby Howard came to her family with some surprising news. She and George Wagner were getting married. We didn't know anything about it until shortly before it. So hearing something like that, it's like, wow, that's crazy.
Instead of excitement, Christina felt something much different based on her time spent around the family and accused mother Angela Wagner in particular. It just didn't feel right to me, and I thought I'd speak my mind about it. I told her, I said, listen, you don't want to marry him. And she said, well, why not? I said, because his mom is very controlling.
I said, you want to wait a few years and see how things go before you, you know, jump in to get married to him and stuff. And she said, well, you're just full of it. You don't know what you're talking about. We love each other and everything. And Angie's just trying to look out for me. So towards that part, I feel like Angie, you know, like kind of turned her against her family a bit.
On July 1, 2012, all three families gathered for Tabby Howard and George Wagner's wedding.
That was a normal, pretty wedding. It was kind of country because, you know, Tybee, she had a camouflage dress and
George, he had a camo tux. Everybody's camouflage crazy around here. They love it. Can't get enough of it. You ask somebody what their favorite color is, and they're like, oh, it's camouflage. Me and two of my sisters and Hannah were her bridesmaids. The bridesmaids, we wore black dresses, and Jake was George's best man. Obviously, the Wagners were there. There was Freddie, George, and...
We talked last episode about the photo of the Rodens and Wagners from Tabby and George's wedding. And we can't stop looking at it because it's just so chilling.
The happiness on everyone's face is palpable, but Christina now sees details in the picture she never saw before. In my mind, I feel like the people in the picture should be sorted out differently. You know, like, in this placement, it's like Tabby and George is set off to the side because even though they're getting married, they're not, like, the main attraction. And Angie is just, like, top center, you know,
Yeah, I was going to ask you, because people have different views, but some people think you don't wear white to anyone else's wedding. Yeah, why would Andrew wear white to another person's wedding? I mean, you're not supposed to do that, because that is, like, supposed to be, like, bad juju on the married couple. Like, saying that, I hope that your wedding don't last long kind of thing.
It's clear that George Wagner and Tabby Howard's wedding marked an inflection point in the lives of all three families. After that day, nothing would ever be the same. Shortly after the wedding, we stopped hearing from her. The last thing that we heard from Tabby was that she was pregnant with my nephew and she was giving birth to him and that was it. We didn't get no pictures of him, no nothing.
We didn't hear anything from Tabby, nothing from Angela or George or anybody. They just like straight up disappeared. We're going to take a quick break here. 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. 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, 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.
Nobody knew where they were. Nobody knew what they were doing or anything. And it went like that for a couple of years. Everybody was just so concerned about my sister because we're like, you know, we literally have not heard a thing from her. Then one night Tabby suddenly resurfaced. It was a call, like a random call in the middle of the night from a gas station from a number we didn't know.
And she's calling us, telling us, hey, can you come get me? I'm here at this gas station and, you know, we're freaking out. Like, what's going on? We ain't heard nothing from you in a few years. She said, I don't really have time to explain. Can you come get me? And all that. So we packed up in the car. It was me, my mom and dad to go get my sister. And then we get there and she's bawling her eyes out. She rode there in the middle of the night. It was crazy.
raining cats and dogs outside. She was all wet and cold. She rode there on a bike and the police showed up and put my sister in a car, in the cop car, asking her what was going on and everything. Apparently her and George got into a fight. Angie called the cops on her and said that she was beating George and
hit him with a two by four and everything else and tried to stab him with scissors and all this. And Tabby said that that wasn't how it happened. She said she was, you know, I guess she got into a fight with George and Angie and George wouldn't like let her go and get his hands off of her. George didn't have any marks on him to prove that Tabby had beaten him.
What Tabby Howard told her family that night was deeply disturbing.
Here's Christina's recollection of her sister's story. According to Tabby, Angie wouldn't let her, like, have a phone. And she always said that Tabby was crazy. And she was telling us all about how she was controlling. And Tabby said that she wasn't allowed to...
you know, do anything with her kid. And Angie always said, no, you're not. You're crazy. You're an unfit mother. She said that she would all the time tell George about what's going on and everything. And George was like, oh, it's okay. You're just being dramatic. Mom wouldn't do that to you. And it's all for your own good. Blah, blah, blah. We're just looking out for you.
Christina's story about Tabby's escape from the Wagner household may sound outrageous. However, it was convincing enough for Agent Scheiderer to testify about it in court during George Wagner's hearing last year.
Was George ever married? Yes. Who was he married to? Tabitha. And did he still live with the family during the time he was married to Tabitha? Yes. So Tabitha lived with them? Yes. Okay. And are you aware of what happened that ended that relationship? Yes. What happened?
She fled the relationship. There was an incident on one particular day. Her and George had gotten into an argument. Scheiderer included a few frightening details that Christina hadn't told us.
Eventually, there was a comment by Angela that she was going to kill Tabitha, so she fled to a gas station and ultimately never returned. And actually, specifically, she first hid on the property until nightfall and then got on a bike and drove to a gas station and made her escape that way and never went back after that. Correct.
Soon after Tabby Howard fled the Wagner's household, the family became too much for victim Hannah Mae Roden to bear as well. Hannah, I guess she told my sister that that was really courageous of her. She was proud of her. She was saying that she was tired of it, tired of always being controlled and told what to do and everything. So Hannah decided, you know, that she was going to leave too.
It seems that Hannah Mae Roden left Jake Wagner due to the same reasons Tabby Howard left George. Some of these details were illuminated at that same hearing for George Wagner last year. Here's prosecutor Angie Canepa questioning agent Ryan Scheiderer about some messages Hannah Mae had written. They were two other Roden family members and were about Jake, their breakup, and her relationship with new boyfriend Charlie Gilley. Were you aware why Hannah Mae left Jake?
domestic violence issues between jake assaulting her okay and you observed specific communications about that yes she made it aware she made people aware of it yes did she also make comments about the wagner family as a whole being controlling yes after she had left jake um she started seeing another individual
ultimately conceived a second child with that individual correct yes and that was her Charlie Gilley and are you aware as to whether or not Hannah told Jake that she was pregnant and that she also told him who the father of the child was she she told Jake as well as Angela that she was pregnant and it was Charlie Gilley's child okay
During that time after she was pregnant with Charlie Gilley's child, in the months leading up to the homicides, did she make it clear to Jake that they were not getting back together? Very clear. Okay. And had he asked her to engage in dialogue with an attorney in order to try to work out custody between them?
By the time Hannah Mae Roden left, Tabby Howard was in the middle of her own custody battle with Jake's brother, George Wagner.
While we don't know all the details of George Wagner and Tabby's custody case, there is evidence to support Christina's account of it. It was a preview of what would come to bear for Hannah Mae in the following months. My sister was going to do joint custody. My mom tried to help my sister go through court and all that with all that, you know, trying to help her.
And my sister told my mom, she said, no, it's okay. Angie will help me out with it. And why she trusted Angie with it is beyond me. And why she still wanted to trust her with court, I don't know. I don't know what was running through Tabby's head, but somehow she got Tabby to sign some paperwork saying that
George would get full custody of my nephew and that Tabby would only get visitation rights like on their terms. She wasn't allowed to leave the property with my nephew.
Tabby Howard's custody story was also highlighted by Agent Scheiderer last year. There was a divorce with some child custody issues where ultimately she was forced to give up all control of her son to George. So she gave up all of her parental rights. And when you say she was forced to, did someone hold a gun to her head? No. Okay. But in fact, was she pro se in the custody proceedings and not represented by an attorney? No.
Okay. And, but George was? Yes. Despite the Wagners' repeated attempts to keep Tabby away from her son, she tried to visit him as much as she could. Whenever she would try to reach out to George, like, hey, can I come visit my son? Angela would
We're going to take a quick break here. 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. 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'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. 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.
Tabby Howard made one last valiant effort to see her son. It was an Easter because I remember my sister made her son an Easter basket, you know, wanting to give it to him for Easter and everything. I went there with her. It was me, her, and my mom.
And my mom stayed in the car and I got out of the car with Tabby and we walk up there, you know, knocking on the door. Because she had previously called George asking him if she could come see her son and give him an Easter basket. He said, yeah, that's fine. Come on over and
you can see your son and give him his Easter basket. And she said, all right. So we went there and then once we got there, Angie answered the door and Tabby said, oh, I'm here to see my son. Can I have a few minutes, spend a few minutes with him for Easter? She said, let me go get George. And then she slammed the door in my sister's face.
And we're sitting out there waiting a good 10, 15 minutes. And then George comes out. She asked George, she said, what was that about? Why was your mom, you know, being hateful? I didn't do anything. And he was like, oh, she's just not in a good mood today. And she said, where's our son? You know, I'd like to see him. You said I could come see him. He said, no.
"Oh, he's in there with a fever right now. He's sick from staying up all night and day, throwing a fit and everything else." You know, just coming up with another excuse. And then my sister started crying. She said, "Well, I just wanted to see my son. You said I could. What's the problem?" And he was telling her like, "Oh, don't cry. Everything's all right."
And then he tried to hug her and she said, "No, I don't want to hug." She said, "Don't touch me." And he's like, "All right, I won't touch you." She was wiping away her tears and stuff. She said, "Well, can you at least give this to our son? And if you have time, whenever he gets it, can you send me a picture of him with it? Even if it's just a picture, I'm happy to see my son."
Like Tabby Howard, victim Hannah Mae Roden kept up the fight for her child after she and Jake Wagner had broken up. But the Rodens had one advantage Tabby didn't.
Because they had money too. Maybe not as much as the Wagners, but they still lived pretty damn comfortably. If they wanted to take Angie to court and all that, then Angie would have a real problem on her hands, especially since they had money too.
And Hannah was the mom. And here in Ohio, the mom has the right. And they weren't married. Your sister and George were married, which immediately changes the custody discussion from the start. So unlike with the two of you, Hannah and Jake were unmarried, so he legally had no rights. So that became an added trigger potentially. Right. And it seems that the Wagners knew that.
We talked last season about forged custody documents the Wagners had drawn up in order to get sole custody of Hannah Mae Roden and Jake Wagner's young daughter. Agent Scheiderer discussed the genesis of these custody documents, also called declaration documents, in great detail at George Wagner's hearing last year. Here's an excerpt from that testimony. You seized a computer from the Wagners, is that correct? Correct. Okay. And that computer was analyzed for evidence, correct? Yes.
During that review of the content of the computer, you discovered that there had been documents
Google searched for on April 3rd of 2016, correct? Declaration documents, correct. Okay. And then do you also see that those documents were printed out of the computer on the same day? Yes. Yeah. The bottom corner of the pages, it says April 3rd, 2016. Okay. So like computers sometimes do when you print something, it says what date you're printing it out. Did you ultimately recover those documents, the actual physical documents? Yes.
Okay. And it's your testimony that one of them was a declaration reportedly made or apparently made by Hannah Mae, where it bore what was intended to be her signature. Correct. Did you submit all of these documents to be examined by a handwriting expert within BCI? Yes. Did you find out if, in fact, that was her signature? No.
We did. It was not her signature. Okay. Additionally, you talked about the fact that they were dated at a prior time. And so I'm clear. Are you saying that they were in fact backdated? Yes. That is backdated as if it were signed...
in 2014 by Hannah Mae? Correct. Okay. So they print out a piece of paper on April 3rd of 2016. You see evidence of that in the computer that it is also printed out that same day. Yes. You later also recover the original documents with a raised stamp on it, correct? Yes. And that piece of paper didn't exist in 2014. Correct. So it could not have been signed on those days. Correct. Okay.
Prosecutor Angie Canepa noted the unusual settlement on the Wagner's forged custody documents. This paper says if Hannah is to meet her demise, then Sophia should go to Jake. Correct. Okay. But if Jake meets his demise, then his child goes to his mom. Correct. Not to Hannah. Correct. Correct.
Last season, we highlighted an ominous Facebook message that Hannah Mae Roden had written during her protracted custody battle with Jake. It was discovered on a laptop owned by the Wagner family. Agent Scheiderer spoke about that message and the warning she received from someone who is intimately familiar with the Wagners' nefarious ways at the hearing. You talked about...
The fact that this relationship between Jake and Hannah was not going well, that he was bugging her to sign stuff giving him custody. Obviously, they forged documents that if she were to die, Jake would get custody. Was there a specific communication that sticks out in your mind that Hannah may have?
made to another person that the Wagners became aware of? Yes, a Facebook message. Okay. Messenger message. Okay, so a messenger message, and who was that message to? Patricia, but it would be Tabitha's mother. Okay. Tabitha, George's ex-wife. You said it was private messenger, correct? Yes. And so, if I'm understanding correctly, private messenger is not something that
Anyone else would be able to see except for the two people that are messaging each other? Correct. Are you aware whether or not the Wagners became aware of that conversation? Absolutely, we're aware of it. And how do you know that?
There is a screenshot of this conversation found on the laptop that belonged to the Wagner family. Okay. The device was registered to Jake, but there's strong evidence that Angela seemed to be the primary user of that laptop. Can you tell us what were they discussing at the time that she made this statement?
The theme of the conversation was basically Patricia was telling Hannah, you know, don't let what happened to Tabitha happen to you. You know, don't, you know, keep fighting for your kid. Don't give up your kid. You know, basically saying don't become another Tabitha. Okay. And what does Hannah say in response to that?
This is a copy of the body of their text, their conversation, and her reply is, I won't sign papers ever. It won't happen. They will have to kill me first. So not only was that Hannah Mae's sentiments at the time, that she would not sign papers ever, that they would have to kill her first. This was her sentiments on December 10, 2015.
And you know for a fact that the Wagners saw it, in fact, the same day that she said that, correct? Yes. Okay. And just over four months later, Hannah and all of her family are dead. Correct. I have no more questions. After the Roden family was murdered, Christina Howard and her family were panicked. Pretty much a whole bloodline gets murked off over the custody of one kid.
And, you know, my sister is, she's got a kid with them too. And, you know, after we heard about it, we was like, oh shit, better up on security because we ain't about to get crossed out.
But when the Wagners were arrested in 2018, Tabby Howard's nightmare finally came to an end. Once they were arrested, he was in like child protective services for a while. And after a few months, she was finally granted full custody of her son.
Following Jake Wagner's admission in court just weeks ago, Christina had to come to terms with her feelings about the one Wagner she thought she could always trust, grandmother of the accused, Frederica. I loved Frederica, but she's very gullible. They probably told her some crazy stuff like, oh, these people are after us, they're trying to frame us for these murders, blah, blah, blah. Well, of course, if I'm gullible, I'm going to hide them. I'm not saying she did or anything, but like...
And in that kind of situation, yeah. So what does the Wagners' sordid history mean if Angela, Billy and George decide to stand trial? They all maintain their pleas of not guilty. It may force Jake Wagner to go to court and sit in front of his mother, father and brother and in front of a jury and spill his guts.
And a lot of things we haven't known in the last five years are going to be known then. You know, who went into what home? Who died first? Why they died? You've got to believe we're going to learn things we never knew before and hear things you would have never believed. And if the trials move forward, the stakes for Pike County prosecutors couldn't be higher. The case that the prosecution is building against the Wagner family
It's not a single-story ranch. It's a freaking mansion. And they're investing a lot of time, a lot of hours, a lot of capital in this thing. And they don't want to see it fail. Because if this thing fails, can you imagine what a nightmare this is? If one little thing goes wrong with it, the whole case can be destroyed. But on April 28, 2021, less than one week after Jake Wagner's plea deal took place, his brother George appeared in a Pike County courtroom.
Reporter Anjanette Levy was on the scene. George just found out in the week prior that his brother had confessed and implicated his whole family. His attorney had been so steadfast in court documents and saying, you know, my guy didn't do this. He wasn't involved. Well, clearly now his brother was saying that's not the case, that George IV was very much involved. I think we were all wondering, what is this motions hearing going to be like?
Was George Wagner going to change his plea? More on that next time. The Pikedon Massacre, Return to Pike County, is executive produced by Stephanie Lidecker and me, Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design by executive producer Jared Astin. Additional producing by Jeff Shane, Andrew Becker, Chris Graves, Tim Hamilton, and Haley Nielsen. Engineering by Jason Freeman.
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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