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Jake takes the rifle from George, and then when Chris shows up in the doorway, he shoots him. What really stood out to me was just the way he talked about killing people. Like it was no big deal. This is The Piketon Massacre, Return to Pike County. Season 4, Episode 18, Jake Wagner on the stand. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at KT Studios with Stephanie Lidecker and Jeff Shane.
It's important to note that George Wagner IV pleaded not guilty to all charges. His father, Billy Wagner, whose trial is upcoming, also pleaded not guilty to all charges. At the beginning of the eighth week of testimony, I traveled to Ohio to be in the courtroom when jurors heard from the man who seems to be at the center of this trial, Jake Wagner.
In April of 2021, on the five-year anniversary of the murders, Jake pled guilty to eight counts of aggravated murder and agreed to testify against his own family, including his older brother George.
In exchange, the prosecution removed the death penalty as a possible punishment for all Wagners. Judge Randy Deering allowed Jake Wagner to opt out from having his testimony recorded. That's why we will not hear Jake Wagner's voice in this episode. Still, his testimony is chilling.
Dramatic testimony in Pike County today. Brother versus brother today. Jake Wagner took the stand against George Wagner IV. When Jake Wagner entered the courtroom, both his hands and feet were shackled with long chain manacles. He wore thick black glasses and a prison-issued tan jumpsuit. His hair was slicked back and in a ponytail.
I was not surprised to see him in jail clothes. You know, a lot of the reporters had been speculating that, oh, maybe they'll put him in street clothes. And I just thought to myself, I've never seen an inmate testify who was put in street clothes. I mean...
The prosecution wanted these people to be seen, or at least Jake and Angela, as criminals. Now 29 years old, Jake Wagner has been in the Franklin County Jail for nearly four years. The only noticeable change in his appearance is he looked stronger. He looked fitter than the thin, gangly man he was before his arrest. ♪
He looks like a different person now. You see Jake as a teenager and suddenly you got a con sitting there at that big table there in that courthouse. It's an understatement to say Jake Wagner's testimony has been highly anticipated. Unsurprisingly, the courtroom was packed. This is me speaking with Stephanie from Ohio.
Was anybody on the Wagner side that you could identify or was it still a total no-show for George? There wasn't a seat to be had, completely filled, including extra seats that were put into the aisles. So that was just getting in. So it felt unlike any other day in the trial so far. It was a real buzz.
There appeared to be no one there for George Wagner. A lot of the people outside of the media and victims' family members were family members of the attorneys on the prosecution and defense sides. That's interesting because you never would really think that that's who would come, but this is their big moment. So for family members of the lawyers, that does make sense. After Jake took the stand, he looked directly at his brother George from across the room and smiled.
For a brief moment, they made eye contact, the first time in years, before George looked away. Here's reporter Anjanette Levy, who was in the courtroom. I was sitting right behind George, and George made eye contact with him. But I don't think it was for very long. It was pretty short-lived. And Jake just kind of, you know, he kept looking around a little bit. Like, he was very—it was almost kind of like this alert look. He kept, like, turning his head, looking back and forth. And—
You know, then things started. The questioning started. Prosecutor Angie Canepa started by asking Jake if it was difficult to testify against his own family. He said it was very difficult. When he was asked, would you love nothing more for your brother, your mother, and your father to be able to go home? And he said yes. The only other emotion Jake appeared to show that morning was when he mouthed, quote, I am sorry, in the direction of the Roden family sitting in the courtroom.
Then he calmly and with little emotion walked jurors through the killings. During more than six hours of detailed testimony, Jake Wagner explained why he wanted to kill Hannah Roden, the mother of his child. With Jake Wagner, what's fascinating about him is that he's kind of the doorway into what can be described only as a horror show.
Jake Wagner detailed how his family's criminal activity began long before they were arrested for the Rodin, Manley, and Gilley murders. Prosecutor Angie Canepa asked Jake Wagner about the various homes and vehicles his family owned.
We found out through Jake Wagner's testimony today that he, his brother, and his father would commit crimes together, including multiple arsons to collect insurance money and stealing high-priced items from businesses. Jake admitted that his parents set fire to their own home on Bethel Hill Road to collect the insurance benefits. He also testified that the Wagners torched multiple vehicles for the same reason. Jake said they would steal everything from fuel to building materials to livestock.
Also that he learned to pick a lock at a very young age. Here again is law and crime reporter Anjanette Levy. She's followed by forensic investigator Joseph Scott Morgan. They were taught these things so that they could get away with crimes and not necessarily so they could be like good human beings. I mean, they were raised to be criminals. It's quite sad when you listen to them talk about how their dad would sit them down with like a lock pick set when they were seven, nine years old, something like that.
and teach them how to pick locks and weird games about, oh, if you were out and about and you spot a cop, you get a dollar. When you hear about the way that Jake grew up, where he was essentially discipled into a life of crime, Billy described it as he was teaching his boy survival skills, how to essentially steal a car or hotwire a car in case he ever got quote unquote kidnapped.
And I'm thinking, you know, I don't know of any parent out there that sits around and thinks, well, they tell my child how to steal a car in case they ever get kidnapped. I wonder, I wonder where oil changes and tire rotations came in. You know, did you at least talk about that first? You know, and he's saying this, he's saying this from the stand and you're really getting a peek behind the curtain at this life that they led.
Jake told the courtroom his relationship with Hannah Mae Roden began when she was just 13 years old. He said he met Hannah at the Pike County Fair where she was showing off her pet rabbits. Despite being four years older than Hannah, Jake asked her parents Dana and Chris Roden if he could date her. At times, their relationship was violent. Prosecutor Angie Canepa asked Jake if he ever choked his young girlfriend, as Hannah Mae had once claimed.
And he said, "I never choked her." And he was very, like, adamant about it. And he said, "She was having a fit."
And, you know, I held her up against the wall and I put my arm on her collarbone, but I didn't choke her. I just held her there until she calmed down. And after he gave that answer, he kind of like Angie Canepa kind of made a sighing noise. But it was just like he was talking about this like, oh, I didn't choke her. I was just, you know, holding her there. It was like this minimization or justification thing.
or rationalization for basically holding your ex-girlfriend against a wall because she was upset about something and you know he's claiming he didn't choke her well hannah may saying he choked her like that his arm was on her throat so some of these things were pretty strange to me the way he would describe them by age 15 hannah may rodent was pregnant and gave birth to her daughter she shared with jake wagner
Her tumultuous relationship with Jake ended in February of 2015, a little more than a year before the murders.
Jake Wagner described his family's motive in one of the worst massacres in Ohio's history that led to the death of eight members of the Rodin family. After their relationship broke up, Jake testified that he and his mother Angela began to have concerns about the safety of his daughter who was living with the Rodins. This was true in particular after Hannah Mae started dating Corey Holdren, who Jake believed was dealing drugs.
Jake said he was concerned his daughter wouldn't be safe living with the rodents, even going as far as saying he was concerned would be molested since he said it happened in both his family and Hannah's family. Jake testified that his mother, Angela Wagner, was monitoring Hannah Mae's private Facebook conversations. Jake's concern for his daughter only grew when he became aware of an online conversation where Hannah said the only way she would give up custody of their daughter is if the Wagners killed her first.
"Wagner said that his father, Billy Wagner, first mentioned a murder plot, but he would not let it happen." Jake testified he told Hannah he was concerned that their daughter could be molested. And he claims that Hannah was dismissive, saying, quote, "If that happens, we'll just have to deal with it." That alleged response, Jake Wagner told the court, was the tipping point.
Jake Wagner said by the winter of 2015 and 2016, he was concerned that his daughter with Hannah Roden might be molested. So he decided his only choice to protect his daughter was actually to kill Hannah. The prosecution says basically that that was made up. This fear that the little girl would be molested, the prosecution basically says that was something they kind of whipped up in their heads to justify what they wanted to do.
And we had earlier in the trial seen text messages or Facebook messages where Hannah Mae and Jake were talking about their child. And it was just amazing to me that in some points he would say things like, I'll take her even if I have to do it by force. Just some really eerie foreshadowing. So it just seemed to me that they, for whatever reason, and everybody wants their children to be with them, but this seems to...
Once he made up his mind that Hannah Mae had to be killed, Jake testified that the Wagner family began to plan and plot. His first idea was to frame Hannah's boyfriend, Corey Holdren. Here's James Pilcher, longtime investigative reporter in Cincinnati, now with Local 12. He's followed by Law and Crime's Anjanette Levy.
Jake was convinced that something needed to be done, that they were going to kill Hannah and Corey and make it look like a murder-suicide. And Billy said, no, you can't do that either because they'll figure out it was us and they'll come after us. I don't want somebody up there on the hill with a sniper rifle killing us.
Billy said, well, you know, if you kill her, you're going to have to kill Chris and Frankie because they will know you did it and they will come after you. So it was just this insane like, oh, yeah, I mean, you're going to kill. Well, if we're going to kill her, we got to kill everybody else, too. We're going to take a break. We'll be back in a moment.
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Jake said the Wagners spent three months preparing, buying everything from ammunition to shoes from Walmart to a device to jam phone calls. Jake even ordered a Captain America winter soldier mask specifically for his brother George to wear. Jake Wagner said that his brother George, who's on trial, was with him when he bought a pickup truck and a false truck bed cover for those killings. On the afternoon of April 21st, Billy Wagner told his sons this would be the night.
Four days earlier, Hannah Roden had given birth to her second child, so they knew she would be home. Billy Wagner also believed the cloudy weather would prevent surveillance satellites from tracking their movements. Wagner said he dyed his hair a dark brown like a character in the movie "Boondock Saints." Wagner said before heading out, he watched a clip of the movie to quote, "psych myself into what I was about to do."
Next, Jake Wagner described how he walked barefoot to the truck to avoid tracking any dirt from his home. Here again, forensic expert Joseph Scott Morgan. We have longed to hear about what happened that night, what went into the planning. You know, I was particularly interested in
The care that Jake talked about with walking barefoot, when he went back to the vehicle, he wanted to prevent any kind of prints being left behind. He had enough sense about that. And he even knew about soil types, which is fascinating to me because, you know, there's an entire discipline. He's not a dummy. He was aware of that. He had a sensitivity to it. I think it's another kind of point along the continuum that goes to guilt because that's a premeditated factor.
Then Jake described how they went from house to house, killing eight people. Jake described how his father, Billy, as well as George, all took part in these murders on that night. And he went into detail describing that they modified the bed of their truck in order to hide George and himself in the back while his father drove them to the rodent's trailers.
Once at the Rodents' property on Union Hill Road, Billy Wagner lured Chris Roden outside. Jake said the plan was to shoot Chris Sr. as he and Billy walked back towards the Rodents' marijuana grow site. But the shot never came.
Prosecutors were asking if George was going to be involved in the killings. Jake said yes. Jake testified that George was actually supposed to kill Chris Roden Sr. Jake testified George was in a firing position. Jake said he told him to shoot, but he didn't. After a few minutes outside, Chris Sr. and Billy Wagner went back into the trailer where Chris' cousin Gary Roden was. After a few minutes, Billy was able to convince Chris to come to the door one more time, and the killing spree began.
Again, investigative reporters James Pilcher and Anjanette Levy. Jake takes the rifle from George, and then when Chris shows up in the doorway, he shoots him.
What really stood out to me
was just the way he talked about killing people. Like, it was no big deal. You would think after you maybe fired the first shot at somebody's head, you might flinch, but it doesn't sound like there was any flinching on Jake's part.
Inside, Billy Wagner killed Gary Roden and fired several more shots into Chris Sr.'s body. Jake Wagner said his father came running out of the house in a, quote, nervous breakdown. Jake said that Billy came out and was freaking out. And he was like, you can't freak out now. It's too late. There's no turning back.
Jake went through Chris Roden Sr.'s pockets and grabbed the keys to the marijuana shed so he could remove the hard drive from the security system. When Jake returned to the trailer, he said Chris and Gary Roden's bodies had been moved into the back bedroom. Jake testified he threw a blanket on top of them, but admitted to the jury that he didn't know why.
Throughout his testimony, Jake appeared calm and responsive. And several times throughout it, he would even look at his brother George. However, I can say that George would avert his gaze multiple times and appear to not even want to look at his brother. Next, the Wagners went to Frankie Roden's home. Jake said after he crawled through a window, he let his brother and father in through the front door.
Frankie Roden's three-year-old was lying on the couch. Jake said he walked past the sleeping child to the back bedroom and shot Frankie Roden in his head as he slept. He further testified that Frankie's fiancée, Hannah Hazel Gilley, began to wake, and Jake said he shot her too. Then, for no explained reason, Billy Wagner shot both Frankie and Hannah Hazel Gilley in the head as well. Their six-month-old son was sleeping between them.
It was quite chilling in a way, and I feel like that word is sometimes overused, but just the matter-of-fact way in which he described shooting people, it was just very nonchalant. According to Jake, then he, his brother George, and father Billy Wagner went to Dana Roden's home. She had just arrived home from work. The door was unlocked, and Jake said he just walked in. He was surprised to see Dana awake in her bed.
Here again, investigative reporter Anjanette Levy. He's literally standing in the hallway and he said he can see inside Dana's bedroom from where he was standing. And then he could also turn his head and see inside Hannah Mae's bedroom. He could see that Dana was on her cell phone. He could see the light from her cell phone shining on her face. And she made it, she looked at him and made a gasp. And he said he took a step and he shot her.
Before leaving, Jake said he realized Hannah's 40-year-old newborn was in the room and was concerned she might starve.
He said, you know, I know it doesn't really make sense, but I didn't want to starve. I thought that if, you know, it took too long for them to find the bodies, they might starve. So I moved Hannah so she could breastfeed. I mean, it's a newborn baby. Newborn babies are helpless as can be.
And just that weird thought that you thought a four or five day old baby is going to nurse off her dead mother. It's just so crazy. Jake Wagner then walked into Chris Roden Jr.'s bedroom and shot him point blank. Jake said then that he, his brother George and father Billy drove to Kenneth Roden's home where his father Billy killed him. He was the final victim and he was murdered with one gunshot.
According to Jake's testimony, the Wagners collected shell casings, cell phones, and returned to their home on Peterson Road. Here's Jeff speaking with attorney and legal analyst Mike Allen on the impact of Jake Wagner's chilling testimony.
I'm just curious what your take on those impactful moments are and how they kind of changed the course of this trial moving forward. His testimony appeared credible to me. It didn't sound like he was puffing it up or exaggerating it to a great degree. And I just think he was believable. And do you think that level of gory detail, like Hannah Roden's last moments,
Does that move the jury in a way that none of the other stuff has probably up until this moment? Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm sure those jurors were riveted hearing that testimony because, I mean, you know, that's the guts of the whole thing. Again, you know, that's why everyone is there. The judge, the jurors, the prosecutor, the defense lawyer is because of what he did, what Jake did at that time. And it's just a real, real important part of the trial.
In the aftermath of Jake Wagner's first day of testimony, the media pool filed a motion with Judge Randy Deering to allow cameras in the courtroom for the rest of Jake's testimony. The media argued that the public had a right to see and hear all of the testimony in the most expensive murder investigation in their state's history.
Under Ohio law, witnesses can object to being filmed or recorded. In early October, an Ohio Court of Appeals sided with the media outlets who challenged the law, striking down parts of it. But Judge Deering continued to allow witnesses to opt out, as is his right. After Jake Wagner's first day of testimony, a coalition of media groups hired a First Amendment rights lawyer to revisit the issue. A hearing was scheduled for the next day.
Here's James Pilcher. Another eventful day here in Waverly as Jake Wagner, the younger brother of defendant George Wagner, took the stand for the second straight day to testify against his brother. Inside the courtroom, prosecutor Angie Canepa asked Jake Wagner to describe what he and his family did after arriving at home immediately following the murders.
Today's testimony picked up right where they left off Monday, where Jake, Billy and George had returned home from the killings at about 4.30 a.m. on April 22nd. Now, he says on that night, they actually drove back to their family barn and began burning their clothes to get rid of any evidence on them. Jake also says he took each of their guns and began cutting them in half with power tools and even went so far as to try burning them with a torch.
However, Jake said he was unable to melt down the weapons, so instead he burnt off the serial numbers and then hid them. Then he admitted to burying pieces of the guns in the barn underneath a support beam, which he dug up with help from George. Once they were done cleaning up, they went inside to change clothes. Jake said he saw his mother, Angela Wagner, in the kitchen, but did not speak with her. Later in the morning, friend Andrew Carson called Jake and asked if he'd heard what happened. Jake said he had seen it on the news.
Once news of the rodent's death began to spread, Jake says he refused to speak about it with his family while in private and even tried to forget about it completely out of guilt. Let's stop here for another break.
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Several weeks after the murders, Jake said BCI agents came to the Wagners' home. It was after this visit that the Wagners began to worry they were under surveillance. Billy Wagner decided they should dig up the weapons and place them into a concrete bucket and drop them into a lake on his parents' property.
The weapons remained underwater until the Wagners were arrested in 2018. The best plea bargain in the state of Ohio. It is how the defense described the deal that Jake Wagner made to avoid the death penalty. On the third day of Jake Wagner's testimony, the defense took over questioning.
Immediately, George Wagner's attorney, John Parker, tried to paint Jake as a liar who turned on his own brother to avoid the death penalty. Many in the jury were poised in their seats as defense attorney John Parker said, you got off the hook for the death penalty for killing the rodents, yet your brother, who you admit did not kill any of them, is still facing death. Parker quickly asked him question after question to poke holes in Jake's account of the massacre.
The defense argued during its cross-examination that Jake Wagner murdered everyone and that George tried to stop the murders. The defense read quotes from Jake's statements to investigators that said, "George didn't like the idea whatsoever. He thought of Hannah as a sister. He said he didn't want to do it. Don't trust Dad. He decided to go because he was thinking Dad was trying to set me up.
Then the defense led Jake through each step of the massacre as he smiled at the strangest times. After the second day of Jake Wagner's testimony, I spoke with Jeff and Stephanie. Something that really struck me from Jake's first day of testimony was his attempted interaction with the Roden family, mouthing, I'm sorry, or trying to make eye contact with George. Did you see any of that? And what was that like in person if you did?
No, there really wasn't any of that. Upon cross-examination, I believe the attorney mentioned it three or four times because it was so pronounced, was Jake's smiling slash smirking the same thing that we all noticed and commented on when he pled guilty, specifically when he was asked about killing Hannah Roden and he kind of smirked.
And what Jake did was acknowledge, he said, I know this is a very serious matter. It's not funny. It's just something happened. Anyone who knows me knows that I smile at the worst moments. Right, like when they're watching the Boondock Saints clip in court, he's smiling. At least that's what I read. The defense attorney...
He had an interesting way of getting Jake to say stuff. What it appeared to be was that the defense attorney was kind of doing everything he could to get Jake to contradict himself, even in small ways from what he has laid out. So as an example, he said, oh, so you shot Hannah Roden, the mother of your child, in the back of the head. He said, no, I shot her in the front of the head and was smiling.
So is he just a sociopath or just has horrible social skills? I mean, what's your, you obviously can't diagnose him, but. I hadn't realized the extent of just how long everything took. For example, and here are a couple of things that came to light today. They actually stopped, they being Billy, Jake, and George. They made a stop on the way to Chris Roden's house. What?
Billy was driving. Jake was under, he had constructed in the back bed of the car. He had constructed a wooden platform and put bales of hay under it and was underneath that to hide. So he could lie in wait to then sniper under the car on the drive there, Billy pulled over and said, are you sure you want to go through with this? You know, now's the time to turn around if not.
And the answer was to just continue on. - That's shocking. - Later, the courtroom was shown some of the graphic crime scene photos. Jake admitted that he had tried to block the gruesome images from his mind. - Can you imagine having to look at those photos now with distance, knowing that you were the perpetrator?
But it's a different perspective. You're seeing it in a photograph. Has he seen crime photos yet? Yes. On cross-examination, the attorney was reminding Jake. He said, you have seen pictures of Kenneth Rodin, who was shot one time in the eye. The similarity of just as Hannah Gilley was shot straight through the eye.
And Jake said, "Oh, when I look at the photos, I try, I don't want to look at any of the wounds. I try not to." And Tony said, "Why?" And he said, "Because I don't want that to be in my memory." And Tony said, "Well, that must be really nice." - Hannah Mae Roden's final moment was him smiling at her
Can you imagine she's waking up, maybe, allegedly, in her bed nursing her child and you see your ex smiling at you? Those are her final moments? At the end of Jake Wagner's testimony, George Wagner's defense attorney, John Parker, once again asked Jake if he was a stone cold killer. Jake said yes.
Parker accused Jake Wagner of selling his testimony to the state of Ohio and implicating George to save his own life. Jake insisted he had provided truthful testimony. Parker then said, while waving his hand dismissively, "Take him away, Judge. No further questions." Here again, legal analyst Mike Allen on the impact of George Wagner's three days of testimony.
Nobody was contending, not the defense certainly and not the prosecution, that George shot anyone. That was never the case. I mean, the closest he got, according to the testimony, was...
He was supposed to pull the trigger on one of them, but he couldn't. And then Jake had to do it. What the state of Ohio had to show, and I watched this closely, they had to show that George was a part of the preparation for the murder, murders. He was a part of the execution, although somewhat a small part in the execution of the murders. But he was a really big part in the aftermath with the murder.
with respect to disposing of evidence and things like that. And the state showed that. More on that next time. For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at KT underscore studios. The Pyton Masker is produced by Stephanie Lidecker, Jeff Shane, Connor Powell, Andrew Arnau, Gabriel Castillo, and me, Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design by Jeff Twa. Music by Jared Astin.
The Piketon 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. Please welcome our Pike County Dogwood Festival Queen. Lord, I just thank you for bringing us all together as a community. I'm a boy. I take my present home, Dad. There's blood all over the house. Who could have killed eight family members in one night?
I lost my best friend, and I will never be the same because of that day. Four crime scenes, no DNA, no witnesses. The killer left those children laying in their mother's blood. The word that comes to mind is overkill. Who was the mastermind? I'm telling you, if they frame us, I'm not sitting in prison. One thing I learned...
The smaller the town, the bigger the secrets. Be sure to watch our upcoming documentary, The Pike County Murders, A Family Massacre, premiering on NBC Universal's Oxygen Network and also streaming on Peacock this Thanksgiving Day weekend, November 24th and November 25th. Please check your local listings, and our hearts are with the Rodens and the Gilley families.
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