25 Miles South Part 2

the Pikedon Massacre. Returned to Pike County season two, Episode nine, twenty five miles South, Part two. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane. Throughout the series, we've examined abuses of power by authorities

in Ohio, from law enforcement officials to city councilmen. Investigative reporter James Pilcher drew a through line in the cases of Pike County, Share of Charlie, reader Michael Moran, and the corruption that has infiltrated the Southern Ohio criminal justice system. Why do I think this is happening in these kinds of counties? So much. Either Hey, you had ineffectual or corrupt or both law enforcement, right, you had a community or a culture of lawlessness that has descended on upon

many places in rural America. And I think that's one of the reasons nobody's watching. Nobody cares to watch, not to enhance or blow up importance of journalists, but if you don't have some kind of watchdog or somebody holding officials accountable, it doesn't always work well. In twenty seventeen, reporter Nicki Blankenship uncovered in affidavit filed by the Drug Enforcement Agency. The document detailed an FBI investigation into a Portsmouth,

Ohio lawyer and former city councilman named Michael Moran. It's content supported stories Nikki had long heard from area women who claimed that Moran was involved in sex trafficking and prostitution. It should be noted that Michael Moran has strongly denied the allegations. So when I got this affidavit, I immediately took it to my publisher, my editor, and they want to prove that it was real, it was authentic, and all of this was real, And so I contacted our

private investigators that I knew had them look into the document. Further, I called people in court systems that I knew and had them looking into it. I verified it over and over and over, and ultimately they said that no, we're not going to publish. I gave my letter of resignation that day and I said ethical differences and I left. During the course of her reporting on sex trafficking in

southern Ohio, the issue had become personal for Nicki. She often spoke with the families of Portsmouth women that had fallen into prostitution and others whose family members had gone missing or been murdered. After her resignation, NICKI had a crucial decision to make. I had made a promise to the families. I'm tearing up a little bit, but I promised these families, and I shouldn't have, as a journalists, promised them, but I did. I promised them that I

was going to scream until someone listened. And so when I felt like I was just repeatedly being shut down, I felt very helpless. I had to do something. I had to put it out there some way, and social media's last way. I knew, even if only local families were able to see that, I thought it might help them in some way and give them something. And as a local journalists, a lot of people locally were on my Facebook page. So I went ahead and I published it,

and I went to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I had hundreds, probably thousands of lights on that post already and undreds, if not thousands of shares and messages from everyone. But it carna went crazier than I expected it too. When you saw the Dai David, what ran through your head? I was not a bit stunned, And people they want me to be stunned, but I wasn't.

That's Katie Lancaster speaking with producer Chris Graves. Katie's best friend and sister in law, Megan Lancaster, went missing in twenty thirteen. Katie alleges that Megan worked for Michael Moran as a prostitute. Moran denies these allegations. What went through my head is, oh, my gosh, like I'm not the only one that sees this, you know, like the FBI sees it. Like it was just so just a sense

of relief. News of the Affidavid spread. It soon caught the attention of Cincinnati Enquirer investigative editor Bob Strictly, who had once worked for the newspaper the Portsmith Daily Times. I initially was a sports editor in Portsmouth and was elevated to managing editor, and during my time there there were always these rumors about Michael Moran and the women that he was around and the circles he ran in, and it just at the time, early in my career,

it just seems so far fetched. Portsmouth, if nothing else, is a rumor mill. So a lot of things get tossed around without substantive evidence to back it up. But it was quite surprising to receive word that there was

something that could actually back this up. We got a copy of it ourselves and verified it through various attorneys and our own legal counsel, and I went back and looked through the notes that I had taken, and because I never throw away a notebook from my time working in Portsman, I was like, man, a lot of the tracks and here's a government official saying so, and it's in a sworn aff a David, So it's time for

the chips down on the table and get involved. As too big of a story to ignore, even if it is a place that is not traditionally in an area where it might paper covers it. I don't know if it initiated a sense of responsibility as much as it triggered a pretty huge amount of guilt that motivated me to go pitch the story to our bosses, despite the paper being two and a half hours away from the

subject that we were covering. And luckily bosses were hospitable enough to allow us to explore and then go dig real deep in a story and turn over some rocks that needed to be turned over decades ago. Reporter James Pilcher was writing for The Inquirer at the time. My boss came to me, because I was an investigative reporter, and said, what do you think about this? Do you want to take a look? Is this guy trafficking women all over the country from this little town, this burned

out shell of a town. It's known as the epicenter of the opioid epidemic? Is he doing this? Is it true? Can we prove it? I really thought there was no way, There was no way this could be going on for so long and nobody did anything about it. The other interesting thing was that the paper who got this wouldn't publish it. I mean it's a federal affidavit, and they still wouldn't publish it right there in the hometown. And Mike Moran, it takes a big city newspaper from two

hours away in Cincinnati to come in and do this investigation. Now, granted, we had the resources of USA today behind us, but why not if that had been published, or if the local newspaper had been truly an independent arm or an independent eye with some of this stuff have gone on, I don't think so. The first time I went to Portsmouth, I didn't know what to expect, and they partnered me full time. With the photographer who was also bylined on

the story. Is she and I were just shooting some footage out at the US Shoe factory and there was graffiti there talking about prostitution and drugs and things like that, and this guy rides up on a bicycle saying, what you guys doing. We just kind of telling them, so, by the way, do you know Michael Murrainey says, oh, yeah, that guy runs women. At that point, We're like, oh my god, everybody in town knows this. The guy on

the street knows this guy. We didn't even ask. In twenty eighteen, Pilcher began the difficult task of locating area women and asking them to open up to him about their alleged experiences with Michael Murray. And June of that year I got the first woman to come forward and say, here's exactly how he did it. And then by July we had one or two on the record. And if these allegations proven true, this guy was in the seed

of power. He had these vulnerable women coming to him for help from a legal perspective, and he offered then the other way out, do this and maybe I can get these charges lesson for you. We heard that story over and over again. Do this and you won't go to jail. And how much of a worse abusive power could there being? You started this story not believing this as possible. How does that make you feel? Six seven to forty, I look like a cop, got a big

black coute where a black fedora. I'm not warm and cuddley, and people don't immediately warm up. Now, I'm a good conversationalist, but I was the government kind of accountability reporter. And getting women to open up and tell me these awful things happened to them. That was eye opening and it was a new skill that I had to learn. I also had to be the reporter. I also had to be the objective reporter. And the hard part was I also had to fact check all these women. I couldn't

just take their word for it. My publication's reputation was on the line. My reputation was on the line. I had to believe would be skeptical. So when they would tell me, oh, I remember that I got arrested in this particular place, and I have to say, okay, where when, what can you tell me? I'd have to go look up the court records all of those things and try to make sure that the timelines matched. Ever since then, it's been like, you know, these women aren't lying, and

they deserve all of our attention. The more Pilcher investigated, the deeper the ties into the Portsmouth legal system grew. We reported several times the women were saying that Marian would brag about his relationship with former Kyoto County Common Police Court Judge William Marshall. Now William Marshall was one of the Marshall Boys. He and his brother were the

son of the former judge Marshall in that county. So Bill Marshall took his dad's place as one of two Common Police Courts judges which had oversees all the serious cases and all the felonies and all the high end civil cases. At a county level, it's an elected position. There were allegations that Moran was guiding them to have relations, to go to parties with Judge William Marshall. It should be noted that Judge William Marshall has staunchly denied these

allegations or any illicit ties to Michael Moran. Though a judge is mentioned in the Affidavid Marshall has repeatedly insisted he is not the judge referred to as working in collusion with Moran and has not been charged in connection with that probe. But the allegations made by area women didn't stop at a local judge. One of the women who did go on the record for that first story told us that she partied with the former police chief, she partied with former members of the police department, all

because Moran sat it up. These women came forward and said, these guys used their position to either traffick me. When lady got sent up to Chicago, not knowing what she was getting into and then turned into a prostitute up there, and then other women were talking about how the probation department, his brother, the guy ran the probation department, was using his position to lessen her probation. That's how deep this went. One of the best lawyers in, a politician, and a

sitting judge all possibly involved in this network. And that's when we knew we needed to get more women who had been through this experience to talk about what they'd been through. The following is audio from an interview the Cincinnati Enquirer did with a woman named Heather Boots. She claimed to have been a sex trafficking victim in Portsmouth. She went on the record about her alleged association with

Michael Moran. He's your room. So many people's lives if this isn't happening for decades, because the judges and the corruption here, they're all of it. It's you just saw at any house, they will tell you everything like it's no secret. James Pilcher began further exploring the Megan Lancaster case. Katie Lancaster thinks very strongly that Michael Moran lured Megan

into this life and it's his fault she's dead or missing. Now, whether he actually was directly involved, all we know is she left behind a heck of a lot of notes about all of her different liaisons and all the people she would go to for money. She kept all of it. Katie found it. She has copies of everything. We called

every single number in that book. Some people acknowledge yeah, about sex from her and she became like a slew of women went missing or got killed that were addicted prostitutes, sex workers up in Ross County and Chilla Coffee, which is two counties to the north. I mean we're talking dozen more women so Megan. A lot of people theorized that Megan might have been wrapped up in something that

got those women killed. But there's a lot of thought and there's a lot of theory or rumor that now that that was separate from what happened to her, and what happened to her points back to possibly Michael Morian. Michael Moran has denied any involvement or responsibility in Megan Lancaster's disappearance. Moran has stated numerous times and interviews that the only involvement he had with Megan Lancaster was in a case involving a former client where Lancaster acted as

an informant. He has said that he had no other relationship with her and that she did not work for him. Additionally, authorities have not brought any charges against him in the case. At this time, it's unclear whether they have questioned him in the matter. Throughout twenty nineteen, the Cincinnati Enquirer published a series of articles by James Pilcher and his colleagues

about Michael Moran and his allegedized to human trafficking. Everything that was in that affidavit, we reported it out as a rageous of the sounds allegations that he was running women all over the country, He was promising women drugs for sex, he had relationships with judges and with members of law enforcement, all of it. So those allegations, all of this is in the federal document, and yet they never moved on Moran. Now, the DA says we handed

all the stuff about human trafficking over the FBI. The FBI says we're not going to comment on any potential or ongoing investigation. So you can see how frustrated we were with like, Okay, why doesn't anybody move on him. What's going on here? Bob strictly shared Pilcher's frustration. A very important thing that the press does, when it's done well is to shine lights and you know, and to

offer a vehicle for those people stepping forward, right. Do you find a sense of kind of responsibility of making sure those voices are heard? What that this one apart was just the amount of women that stepped forward and said something about this to us and talk to us about it. And then also the apparatus that has to exist around a person Michael Moran for an operation as we reported on, to exist in the first place, a

lot of people have to turn their heads. Kind of the damnability of people who just turned the other way and don't care about what's going on right in front of them in their community is more prevalent than maybe we've all realized. Initially. We're going to take a quick break here, we'll be back in a moment. As part of his reporting, Pilcher tracked down Michael Moran to get

his side of the story. Moran vehemently denied all the allegations about being involved in any prostitution or sex trafficking rings. Talk to Michael Moran three times at length. When we first talked to him, said, are you a sex trafficker? People have said you're a sex trafficker. It says here in this appa, David, you're a sex trafficker. What do you say to that? He tried to play the dumb country lawyer. The following is an audio recording from that

interview with Michael Moran. I don't even know what to say. Give me the definition of a sex trafficker. So then we get all these women lined up. Would come back to him and say, okay, we've got these women now saying that you're the guy, and he says okay, and then he was more angry. He would not go on camera with us a second time. During one conversation, Pilcher

asked Moran specifically about Megan Lancaster. Moran denied being her pimp or being involved in any of that kind of activity, but when James Pilcher brought up the possible whereabouts of Megan Lancaster, he got a shocking response. Pilcher relayed the story to producer Jeff Shane. He joked with, Hey, maybe she's in my basement, maybe she's in my backyard. He thinks it's a joke because he knows what the rumors are.

Wait what you So you asked him directly about it? Oh? Absolutely, I said, you have anything to do with Megan Lancaster And he said no, but you can check my basement. Everybody else wants to, you can check out him back. He said, I've invited the cops in to take a look. Well, I'm not going to surmise whether he's trying to get away with anything, because I don't know whether or not he had anything to do with her disappearance. I really don't.

Are reporting didn't lead down those paths. But he had this attitude that he thought he was smarter than you, that he thought he was smarter than anybody. And I think what probably from my reporting and my history on all this is that I read a lot of stuff about him and leading up to him, and I'd see stories here and there, but nobody but Nikki Blncolnship kept at him. Nobody kept on him. And I can tell

you that we never went away. The photographer person that I worked with, was all in the courtroom bugging him, you know, was bugging him that she was there. She was always taking pictures or getting video of him in action in the courtroom. We just never went away. In twenty twenty, authorities finally made their move. Police rated the home of a well known lawyer suspective running a national

sex trafficking ring for years. March twenty fifth, state and local police raid Michael Moran's house with a search warrant in Davos. The Attorney General was personally present for that en Portsmouth. When you get the state Attorney General showing up to serve a search warrant, you know that there are some very important people watching this case. I'm looking at the story I did and you can see Moran is sitting on his porch in his stocking feet while

police are searching his office slash house. Now the thing you got to remember too, which is interesting. He is a brick two story house that sits on the corner right across from the courthouse and right across Catty coinner from the local prosecutors office. So he literally can walk back and forth from his house flash office to the courthouse and walked right in front of the prosecutor's office. Just seven months later, it all came crashing down from

Michael Moran. A long time defense lawyer and former city councilman has been arrested in an alleged sex trafficking operation. So on Friday, October twenty third to twenty twenty, stayed in local police teamed up and arrested Michael Moran. This comes nearly seven years after that initial affidavit issued by

the DA for Nicky Blanketship. It was a day that marked the culmination of years of tireless work and a victory for dozens of Portsmouth women when Mike Maman was arrested on October twenty third, He was arrested on the eighteen charges that included sex trafficking, rackety cood, spelling, and promoting prostitution. When that came out, that was a really exciting day for me. I was screaming. I ran through the house screaming because I worried that no one was

ever going to check. No one wasn't really ever going to look into it. I really worried. I know that the Cincinnati enquire they had to do their own investigation, but it was approximately a year before they started releasing things, and when they released things, I still didn't know if anything was ever going to happen, and so finally I was like, Okay, at least somebody's finally checking. Did it kind of validate the journey you had started on? Yeah? Yeah,

it definitely did. There were also a lot of people who were saying he's a great man, and I worried about that. I'm like, did I make a mistake? Am I wrong? And there's no way I could have seen that. I was at this point, I'm like, I have so much evidence, but still I can't. I don't want to hurt anyone's life like that. So yeah, I was like, okay, something, it was valid, and everything I've worked on for for

a decade is valid. Yeah. Katie Lancaster also felt a great sense of relief and was struck by the uncanny timing of Marian's arrest. Mariana was arrested October twenty third, twenty twenty, the day before Megan's thirty third birthday. I mean, I was on my way to Columbus and I got jumped out of the damn car while it was moving. I couldn't speak, I couldn't talk, I couldn't tell anybody

what was going on. I was just like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, Like I just couldn't believe it, and before it happened, the day that it did, it was almost like a sense of Okay, now I know this is a god thing, Like this happened the day before Megan's birthday, almost eight years into it, like it could not have come at a better time. It was like, oh my gosh, we did it. We got this far, Megan, look what you have done. Like I so just wanted five minutes with her to say, look that you've done.

Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back in a moment. Just three days after his arrest, Michael Moran appeared in court. He was arragned on October twenty six, implied not guilty, and then he posted a three hundred thousand dollars bond and was released five days after his arrest. He was also suspended by the state Bar Association, so he's not allowed to practice law at all, both from

the bar perspective but also from his bond agreement. But that didn't stop Moran from trying to pull off an audacious legal maneuver. So Michael Moran actually initially filed to defend himself in court. He had the intimate knowledge things that these women would never want to know publicly, and he could cross examine them on the witness stand. So I actually talked to the Attorney General about this and he said there's no way they were going to let

them do that. They strongly, strongly objected, and Moran is since backed off of that. He hired an attorney. It didn't take long for Moran to violate his bond agreement. As it turns out, Moran represented somebody against the court order. He represented somebody in municipal court and filed paperwork for somebody in municipal court in Portsmouth. As part of his bond agreement, he was supposed to have not represented anybody.

Now the State Attorney General's Office, under the direction of Dave Yos, the State Attorney General, is prosecuting this case against Moran in association with a prosecutor, Shane Kiman. So when they got this, they immediately filed with the court to have his bond agreement revoked. It don't think he takes anything seriously, and I don't know. I don't think the court is really pushing him to have to take any of this very seriously either, because even though he

violated the conditions of his bond. Instead of sending him back to jail, they put on the house rests. Currently, Michael Moran is a waiting trial, though a date has not been set. He continues to maintain his innocence. If these allegations proven true, this wasn't a one off, you did this many times and it was part of a network. This was a part of a repeating pattern of criminal activity. He's looking at seventy years or more if convicted in

their concurrent sentences. I think in small communities like in southern Ohio that has just been beaten with poverty and drug addiction and so many things, I think that it is just so easy to feel helpless and powerless against these kind of men. So like men like this can get by with us and do whatever they want. And I think people in areas prey on the community areas

like this. I think I've always said that all the way down to the drug epidemics, that people come in offering to help and really is they're just looking how they can profit. And there's a lot of wolves in sheep's clothing. It makes it very hard to trust your officials, your local government, your local law enforcement, because those people

are supposed to be there to help you. They promise to be there to help you and to fight these problems with you, and really they're taking advantage and profiting as much as they possibly can offer the issues that the rest of us have to battle every day. If Megan was sitting in front of you right now, what would you say to her? I would say to her, Megan, we love you so much and we've missed you so bad. And a little boy, he's so wonderful. Boy, he's doing great.

He's doing great things, just like you are. He plays sports just like you did. You need to know the great things and the great changes that you've plowed in Saturda County and in Ohio and in the world for that matter. Your story has reached London, England. You've done great things and you will continue to do them because I will continue to fight for you. We love you, we vish you always. Next week, on the Piked and

Massacre returned to Pike County. On December ninth, two thousand and six, someone got into Curtain Jenny's home and shot a mother, both in the bed. On a special bonus episode, a double homicide leaves another Pike County family searching for answers. After fourteen years of being told we've went as far as we can go with this case, you feel like you're never going to get justice, and then that turns into kind of aggravation. Why isn't anything being done? Why

isn't this case important? Why is it my family important? More on that next time. For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. The Pikedon Massacre Returned to Pike County is executive produced by Stephanie Lydecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing by Jeff Shane, Andrew Becker and Chris Graves. The piked In Massacre Returned to Pike County is a production of

iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.