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 Pikes and Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios. We are here today for the case stand of Ohio versus Charles Reeder. Case number is 2019 CR 6-8. The court will now hear from Mr. Reeder. I stand here before you today to take accountability for my actions, to accept responsibility for my conduct. As the sheriff of Ohio, I said, excuse me, everything that I've worked for professionally and honorably.
for 25 years was stripped of me with nobody doing but myself. If I could go back and change it, I would a million times. This is not who I am. Never ever did I imagine myself on the defense side of this courtroom that I've spent 25 years of my life in this county in law enforcement. I am a good person who made bad decisions and choices
I have and I now pray that the court will find mercy on me. This is The Piketon Massacre, Return to Pike County. Season 2, Episode 5, To Protect and Serve. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at KT Studios with Stephanie Lidecker and Jeff Shane.
On the morning of April 22, 2016, the Pike County Sheriff's Office responded to calls of multiple homicides in what would soon be considered Ohio's most notorious mass murder. The bodies of seven adults and one 16-year-old boy were found in four different locations along a country road in Pike County. We know all of these victims, all members of the Rodin family.
The shootings have left the town of Piketon numb. A lot of unanswered questions as to how this unfolded and who is responsible for this. As news of the tragedy emerged, the nation turned to the area's top law enforcement official for answers. Pike County Sheriff Charlie Reeder. To give a brief update on what we are doing, at this time I have deputies from my county and other counties that are keeping the scene secured.
Here's reporter James Pilcher. He's the one updating the media. He's the one who's available. He's the one when you wanted to ask how things are going. He was the one that you called. So he became the face of the investigation early on. This investigation is very large. One, probably the largest in Pike County.
that we've ever had and been a part of. It's very tragic. I want everybody to be patient but understand that we are working around the clock, 24 hours a day. But this is going to be a very lengthy process.
Reporter Anjanette Levy covered many of Reeder's briefings during the course of the Roden murder investigation. You know, he was out in front of this, standing next to the attorney general at the time, doing press conferences with him. And he often became very emotional. And people, there were a lot of people in Pike County who really, really liked him. You came in like thieves in the night and took eight lives, some being children. We are getting closer. The family and the victims will have justice one day.
Charlie Reeder, by all accounts, is somebody who grew up in Pike County. He did not come from a well-to-do family or anything like that. A lot of people out in Pike County are poor. He worked for many years for the Pike County prosecutor, Rob Junk. He was his investigator. And at some point, Charlie Reeder was appointed the sheriff by the Democratic Party in Pike County.
Criminal defense attorney Mike Allen remembered Reeder's 2016 landslide election. He got 75 percent. His opponent got 25 percent. His
It's pretty unheard of in any kind of election. So at one point, he was a pretty popular sheriff. There were a lot of people in the community who felt that he did some good things at the sheriff's office when he first took over. They felt like he was cleaning up crime in the streets. Southern Ohio has a very major drug problem with opioids and methamphetamine and fentanyl and all of it.
And a couple members of the community claimed that Reeder really was there for the family after one of their members had died from a drug overdose and helped plant a memorial tree in his honor. So he was very approachable. He was out and about in the community much more. Charlie Reeder branded himself as the people's sheriff.
During the height of the Roden murder investigation, Sheriff Reeder's passionate pleas for justice earned him the trust of his community. As a sheriff of Pike County, we're at 356 days into this investigation. I've got a message for the killers. We will find you, we will arrest you, and you will be prosecuted.
As this case moved forward, the spotlight grew brighter and brighter on that area because of this case. And I think he enjoyed the spotlight to a degree. And I think he had greater political aspirations as well.
Here's producer Chris Graves speaking with investigative reporter Jody Barr. He covered the Roden murder case for Fox News 19 in Cincinnati. What kind of power does a sheriff wield in a community like Pike County? He was the closest to the people of Pike County. And you see that with a lot of elected officials in more rural areas that, you know, the sheriff is literally the top dog in the county. He is the face of law enforcement.
He controls what happens with law enforcement, where patrols happen. So as far as an elected official, as far as a person holding power, your sheriff in these areas, he is the man.
Can something like that go to someone's head? You've worked in law enforcement yourself for quite a while. Oh, yeah. You see it a lot. Police chiefs or sheriffs or somebody who's recently promoted to a supervisory position. I mean, thank goodness it doesn't happen to a lot of them, but some of them it does. Now, whether that happened here or not, I don't know. But yeah, that very much could happen.
As the Roden investigation moved into its second year, some disquieting rumors about Sheriff Reeder began to surface. As we began to spend more time out there, we started hearing the rumblings that there was some corruption out there. We had heard rumors about him intimidating people and possibly taking money from people who were in the drug dealing business.
I know I, for one, was told by some of my law enforcement sources in the Cincinnati area, hey, you need to be careful around him. He's dirty. And these were just people that were my sources who said, you know, look, I just want you to be aware. Be careful. Was it because they were afraid? They didn't trust him. They did not trust Charlie Reeder.
There was a rumor that he was sexually harassing some female employees when he worked at the Ross County Juvenile Detention Center. Records from his personnel file said that he wasn't the right fit and there were too many questions. He had a lawsuit in small claims court in 1995 in Gallup Police for not paying a debt and there was a warrant issued for him, but he ended up paying it.
So, I mean, there were some things out there. There appears to be two sides of Charlie Reeder. One that, you know, the public sees and they saw it in these nationally televised broadcast press conferences where Reeder is very emotional talking about these rodent murders very early on. And then there is something you see in Charlie Reeder where when Reeder is challenged, you see another side of Reeder.
So he's got a very public face and a very private face then. Oh, yeah. Investigators recently towed vehicles that had been parked at the homes where eight members of the Rodin family were found shot to death in Pike County, Ohio, last month. The four mobile homes themselves where the bodies were found will be removed from the scene to be stored at a location in nearby Waverly. We're going to get right out to the investigative reporter Jody Barr live in Pike County.
While I was in Pike County, I started seeing things that I had to question. What we found at that evidence warehouse where the trailers, the vehicles, the equipment that all belonged to the rodents, where the sheriff's office and BCI took that. So we found problems with the security of that evidence and the security of that warehouse. I'm not an attorney. I've never prosecuted a case. I've never collected evidence. But what I do know is that evidence that is collected has to be secured. I've
I've seen prosecutions lost in courtrooms in the states I've covered because someone failed to secure one piece of evidence. And of course, Charlie Reeder was so central to what we were looking at. He is the man in charge that we had to go find him.
We scheduled the interview and we sat down and we had this conversation with Charlie Reeder. And I want to say it lasted maybe 45 minutes to an hour. And again, back to watching the two sides of Charlie Reeder, you had the emotional Charlie Reeder early on in the interview where he's talking about
you know, the rodents and, you know, what this has done to Pike County. And then I broke out an iPad. And on that iPad, I had visuals, the images that I had taken from that warehouse with the gate standing wide open. Another gate secured with a piece of thin wire, you know, days and nights of no law enforcement at that warehouse. And I think Reeder knew during the middle of that interview that this was not going to look good when we reported it.
that what we found there looked terrible. And it reflected on the job he did. So I saw Charlie Reeder change, but he changed into very defensive and red-faced. But Reeder finally admitted that they did not have a deputy posted at that warehouse watching that evidence 24-7.
What Sheriff Reeder did next struck seasoned reporter Jody Barr as troubling. Here is Jody's firsthand account of the interaction. So the interview ends, and my photographer and I are tearing down the equipment, and Charlie Reeder walks us out the front door of the old sheriff's office in Waverly, and we're standing on the porch of that sheriff's office, and Reeder wants to make a deal.
And he says, "If we'll just hold off on airing the report at the evidence warehouse and wait until they could return property to the family, that Reeder would let us in and give us full access to him and Charlie Reeder's story of the first 100 hours after the Roden murders." And I just told him, "No, we don't make deals."
Several months after that report aired, I got messages from people in Pike County, one after the other, telling me that there was a raid underway at this rodent evidence warehouse in Waverly. Well, I dropped everything I was doing in Cincinnati and drove the two hours east to this warehouse. And when I got there, there they were. Sheriff Charlie Reeder, deputies of the Pike County Sheriff's Office, carrying things in and out of this warehouse. And, you know, I'm standing there wondering what happened.
is going on here. This shouldn't be happening unless there's something's happened we don't know about involving the Rodin murders. This was a great public concern, but that night Reeder would not return my phone calls. It was very contentious trying to get information out of Pike County, out of the sheriff's office at that point, but after that we were never able to access him again.
Despite Sheriff Reeder's apparent mishandling of aspects of the Roden murder investigation, authorities were able to put the Wagner family behind bars in 2018. However, just weeks later, area journalists got word that a different investigation, unrelated to the Roden murders, was underway. One that placed Sheriff Charlie Reeder on the other side of the law. The state auditor's office released a document to all of us that stated that
An anonymous tip had come in to the auditor's office in which someone stated that everyone was scared to death of Reeder, that he was basically a monster and investigators needed to look into a safe that was in his office that contained money seized in drug deals. And it also said something about him possibly gambling.
In June of 2019, a grand jury brought forth 16 charges against Sheriff Charlie Reeder. As a result, he was suspended from office, bringing his three-year tenure as sheriff to a close.
The indictment laid out details of the investigation and his crimes. Reeder originally faced several counts of theft in office, which is a felony in Ohio, as well as tampering with evidence, which is also a felony in Ohio. So what happens is that Charlie Reeder has a pretty sizable amount of money that he's taken from alleged drug dealers in Pike County. Every sheriff, every law enforcement agency in the entire country, much less, and including Ohio, is allowed to
to seize money from suspects if they think that that money or those goods are being used in the commission of a crime.
money that was seized in drug cases is supposed to be secured in a safe or in a bank account or something. And you can use them for education purposes, for the sheriff's department. You can contribute it to appropriate charities. But in these cases, at least on two occasions, the allegation was that he took cash and converted it to his own use.
So the state auditor does their annual review of the books. On the first pass, the state auditors find some money missing out of the seizure account.
And then they go back to Reeder and apparently he tries to put it back, but that leads to the state auditor's office. Then diving into getting warrants and diving into his personal finance records, they find multiple expenses and multiple trips to casinos both in the area and out of state. And tens of thousands of dollars spent at casinos and possible debts.
The records are pretty clear that showed some pretty big losses at the racetrack. And also they found that he withdrew more than $2,800 from machines at the Atlantic Casino. So it was pretty clear it was from gambling.
Some of the other allegations were that a lot of times in drug cases, cars are forfeited. And in a couple of the charges, the allegations are that at the auction, he rigged it and engineered it that either he or friends of his would get those vehicles and then turn around and sell them. So they were very serious charges.
On September 24th, 2020, Sheriff Charles Reeder pled guilty to five charges filed against him. They included two counts of theft in office, two counts of tampering with evidence, and one count of conflict of interest.
A few months later, he appeared in court for sentencing. It was a day that Anjanette Levy would not soon forget. What was the mood like through all of this? I couldn't believe it when I got out there that morning. The street was blocked off. There were members of the U.S. Marshals Service there. The U.S. Marshals Service bomb squad was there.
There were sheriff's deputies there. I mean, this was quite the operation. There were snipers on roofs. I actually have a photograph of a sniper on a roof. And there had been some rumblings online, apparently, people encouraging people to show up at the courthouse to protest this sentence.
There was some fear that people who were really hardcore supporters of his might show up and try to do something dangerous in order to keep him from being sentenced to prison. It was crazy. It had never even been like that for a Wagner court hearing. We're going to take a quick break here. We'll be back in a moment.
Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.
From unbelievable romantic betrayals... The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal...
This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Walzak, host of the new podcast Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using AI. Oh my God.
In 2001, police say I killed my family. First mom, then the kids. And rigged my house to explode. In a quiet suburb. This is the Beverly Hills of the Valley. Before escaping into the wilderness. There was sleet and hail and snow coming down. They found my wife's SUV. Right on the reservation boundary. And my dog flew. All I could think of is him and the sniper me out of some tree.
But not me. Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. For two years. They won't tell you anything. I've traveled the nation. I'm going down in the cave. Tracking down clues. They were thinking that I picked him up and took him somewhere. If you keep asking me this, I'm going to call the police and have you removed. Searching for Robert Fisher. One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world.
Do you recognize my voice? Join an exploding house, the hunt, family annihilation today and a disappearing act. Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I spent almost a decade researching right wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters.
But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to.
Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition?
Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives.
Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Inside the courtroom, the mood was much different. We're here today for sentencing in the case State of Ohio versus Charles Reeder.
Case number is 2019 CR 6-8. Reeder had his sentencing in front of a visiting judge, Patricia Cosgrove, who had actually sentenced three previous Ohio sheriffs on corruption charges. There were five charges, and all of those could have gotten him more than 12 years in prison.
You see Charlie Reeder, he's sitting in court, sitting beside his defense attorney at a table to the left. And at the table to the right, the prosecutor who went to the grand jury got the indictments against Reeder, who got the guilty plea from Reeder months before. And you see these two tables in opposition to one another. And the judge is in the center and there's an empty podium in the center. And then you see people walk up to that podium and then they start telling these stories of the good deeds Charlie Reeder committed.
in certain instances around that county. He went through one of the most horrendous crimes ever committed in our county, to my memory. What he went through, I can't tell you, ma'am. The nights that he went sleepless, what his family went through, what it done to his health. But I believe in his heart, Charlie Reeder is a good man. Has Charlie made mistakes? Yes, ma'am, he probably has. But in the Bible, it says, you who are without sin cast the first stone.
I couldn't throw many rocks at him because I've made mistakes too. But one fact I know, Charlie was a man you could count on when you needed him. And I would vote for him today just as sure as I'm standing here as God is my witness. After these people have said what they said, you see Reeder walk up to the podium. The court will now hear from Mr. Reeder. He's instantly emotional. He's in tears and he's asking the judge for mercy to be lenient with him in sentencing.
This is where he is laying it all out and asking the state of Ohio for mercy. I just had bad light on the office of sheriff. I can only ask that my staff, their families, the community, and my family who is here today will forgive me for the undue stress I caused them. I have and I now pray that the court will find mercy on me. I have no words for the shame that I have.
and that I feel the regret that I have betraying and displaying the trust that I had with my staff and the community. Please do not send me to prison. I have run, but I'm not ruined. I still have a lot of good left in me. During the proceedings, details of Reeder's crimes were illuminated. The state would note that the defendant was an elected county sheriff who committed these crimes in his position as a county sheriff.
He used his position to obtain control over the evidence bags and then use that control to remove the funds and use them for his own benefit. The majority of the funds involved were removed from the four evidence bags cut open by defendant. $14,775 was removed prior to the defendant and his attorney turning those bags over to investigators for the Auditor of State's office.
The different currency new, in many cases uncirculated bills, were put into the currency bags. So that restitution would have been taken care of at that point. Additionally, there's a total of $4,850 outstanding, $3,500 from the purchase of the Nissan Diversa,
which was the profit made by the sheriff on that transaction, $350 owed to the people who purchased the Chevy Silverado, and $1,000, which the state says never made it into the evidence bag.
So Judge Patricia Cosgrove, she has a reputation for being very tough on sheriffs in Ohio who have been engaged in corruption. And she is no nonsense. And she questioned Reeder from the bench.
During the judge's questioning, Sheriff Reeder did his best to explain his moral motivation behind his actions. Why did you cut open these evidence envelopes and take the money out and then in some cases you put it back although you were caught because the envelopes had been unsealed and sealed again improperly and the denominations did not match?
what was taken at the crime scene or from those individuals, I guess, why did you take the money? I took the money, and mind you, this does not excuse it, but from drug dealers. That took it from parents of very poor people in this county. That money, regardless of what the state and what the media has claimed in the past years of a gambling problem and that money being used for gambling, was used...
when there was a tree planted in the name of the Sheltman boy. It's at the entrance of Western High School to the left as soon as you pull in. Nobody could pay for that tree. Nobody offered to pay for that tree. A drug dealer did. When schools had cheerleading or peewee that had car washes and such, I would have our cruisers taken down there.
My men and women did not make good money. So some of them would give them $2, $5. I took money from that and I provided it to those people. In the PSI, the pre-sentence investigation, the PSI officer notes that there's no documentation that you used it for those things. Right. I did not document those things. Okay.
He didn't produce any receipts to back these claims up. And there's a very strict process by which those funds are tracked and you have to produce an accounting of all of that money. So he claimed that he was essentially a Robin Hood. The judge certainly didn't believe it.
But then the judge started asking him questions about gambling. There were a couple of times that Judge Cosgrove all but caught him in a lie. And she sounded very, very skeptical. Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back in a moment.
Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.
From unbelievable romantic betrayals... The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal...
This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Walzak, host of the new podcast Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using AI. Come on, Paul.
In 2001, police say I killed my family. First mom, then the kids. And rigged my house to explode. In a quiet suburb. This is the Beverly Hills of the Valley. Before escaping into the wilderness. There was sleet and hail and snow coming down. They found my wife's SUV. Right on the reservation boundary. And my dog flew. All I could think of is him and the sniper me out of some 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.
Did you lose $3,000 gambling at the Scioto Downs Resino between June 2017 and September 2017? Yes. Not by myself. They have cards. And of course, again, Your Honor, I plead guilty to this. But they have cards that you put in a machine. I can have a card in my name.
and I can have a card in my name that my wife possesses. So I can be at one machine and she can be at the other. And the money that she spends and the money that I spend, they count on the same card and calculate the money as one. Well, obviously...
That doesn't answer the question, where did the money in the checking account come from? OK. Also, I want to ask you, in late June 2017, you took a trip to Reno, Nevada for the Sheriff's Conference, and then you withdrew $2,800 in an ATM. The state believes that some of this is due to gambling. I mean, you're talking like over-- or almost $6,000 in a couple of months that you lost.
or expended on gambling. At that point we were making almost $11,000 a month. And that again was from my checking account where it should show my direct deposits, my wife directs deposits, and that it came from our debit cards where I retrieved that money.
I don't doubt it came from debit cards. The question is where did the money come that went to your checking account? That's, I guess, that's a good question. That's where the media reported that I had marital problems because it came from our joint bank account. My wife made very good money at the time and I took that money and I gambled. Okay.
All right, that's all the questions the court has.
She really let him have it. She took no grief from him whatsoever. It cannot be underestimated the damage that you have caused to the citizens of Pike County, to law enforcement who every day get up, face the same sort of stresses that you do. They go home at night. They get up in the morning. They don't know if they're going to come home. The sacrifices that these men and women make
I think you've made a mockery of them. I could have imposed a much greater sentence than I have. As I said, I've taken into consideration some of the mitigating factors, but punishment is appropriate to sentence you to, I consider, the minimum. However, to sentence you to anything less than three years in prison would demean the seriousness of the offense and not adequately protect society from future criminal conduct by yourself and others.
The judge handed him three years and Reeder walked out of that courtroom and into a jail cell to pay for throwing away his career, embarrassing himself and embarrassing his family.
Do you think he became a victim of his own power? You said a sheriff in a county like that is top dog, right? Maybe he started feeling he was above the law. You know, in 15 years of doing this job, looking at people like Charlie Reeder in multiple states with multiple different schemes of crimes being committed, there's a trend with just sheriffs in general where a lot of them get in trouble.
Is it because they feel so powerful and untouchable? I don't know. But man, when you look at it in the final analysis, what we have here is a guy in Pike County who had the county by a string, who had the trust of people who live in that county. So is it power? I don't know. All that I know at this point is you had an elected official who made some pretty bad decisions and he's paying for it now.
Have you gotten a sense what the implications might be for the Wagner cases that Reeder is now going to jail? The early phase of the investigation is now in prison for corruption. Whether or not that had anything to do with the actual investigation, no one knows. But if I'm a defense attorney, all I got to do is throw up that smoke screen at some point and see what happens. And if I'm a prosecutor, I'm thinking, OK, I need to have a contingency plan to how to answer this. If you're the defense, I'm assuming you will bring it up.
In court, you'll point to that if the judge allows it and say, you know, how can you trust this investigation? This man was out there on the scene that morning. I think it makes people in the county question what's really going on there. While we wait to see how Sheriff Reeder's conviction will impact the Wagner trials, one journalist continues to grapple with the legacy of the Roden family murders, a story that forever changed her life more than five years ago. More on that next time.
For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kt underscore studios. The Piketon Massacre Return to Pike County is executive produced by Stephanie Lidecker and me, Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design by executive producer Jared Astin. Additional producing by Jeff Shane, Andrew Becker, and Chris Graves.
The Pikedon Massacre, Return to Pike County, is a production of iHeartRadio and KT Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday.
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 Walzak, host of the new podcast Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using AI. Come on.
In 2001, police say I killed my family 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.