25 Miles South

She loved papers and it said Michael Moran's name, his cell phone number. I had all this information that really impacted our area, and so this could have brought a lot of closure to these families who were being told nothing by our local officials, in our local enforcement. This is the Piked and Massacre. Returned to Pike County Season two, Episode seven, twenty five miles South. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker and of Shane.

In episode five of this season, we explored the allegations of corruption and the subsequent arrest of Pike County shaff of Charlie Reader. But his story is just one of many that has illuminated alleged abuses of power perpetrated by those involved in southern Ohio's criminal justice system. So in this episode, we want to focus on another case that has long affected a community just twenty five miles south

of Piketon, in a town called Portsmouth, Ohio. In twenty fifteen, a reporter named Nicki Blankenship began investigating rumors of human trafficking in the town. Like many small Ohio towns, Portsmouth has a long, rich history of industrial might, preceding an era of rapid urban decay. Here's James Pilcher, a reporter for Local twelve News and Cincinnati, speaking with our producer

Chris Graves. Portsmouth is the county seat of Theodore County, which fits right below Pike County, so it's about thirty to forty five minutes south of Piketon. Portsmouth has this rust belt burned out in industrial field. There are half empty two empty factories in the middle of the city. At one point US Shoe had their biggest plant there, and then obviously you know the global economy and we

all know what happened to manufacturing in the Midwest. It still has a small profitable steel mill downtown, but it's barely hanging on. So it's kind of like a city that was forgotten. Yes, when the manufacturing industry began to disappear, Portsmouth was besieged by the drug trade. Nicky Blanketship grew

up in the area and saw the devastation firsthand. Your area has been really hit by the opiate crisis, right, Yeah, we call ourselves ground zero for the opiate ever the met I've lived in Ohio since nineteen eighty four, Insider County, so yeah, I've lived here in my whole life. I remember in high school people around me, they would start out with small pain pills and an oxycott and hit and it was no longer recreational drug use that people

to one at parties. You were seeing people become addicted very very very quickly. In two thousand and eight, Nikki started writing about the issue for a local newspaper. I

started out covering the drug epidemic. I was the first in the area to do stories on oxycotton and looking at overdose rates in the area and started asking those questions from the corner's office about how many of these depths that we're seeing are connected to opiate use, and then started looking into pill mills and we ended up shutting down over twenty three pill mills inside a county. Nikki's reporting helped shut a light on the area's drug problem,

but other illicit industries sprung up around it. Nikki was there to cover it all. In twenty thirteen, I did a series that ran for months on prostitution, and I was walking the streets with some of these girls. I also talked to like parents of women that were working on the streets and talked to officers about the problem and local instances about how it affected them. It was interesting because when I was doing these stories, I started seeing a lot of names come up from these girls.

The one mentioned most often was Michael Moran. Michael Moran, he's in his mid seventies, long time defense attorney, you know, d wise, drug offenses, those kinds of things. He had his own firm in Portsmouth, and at one point in the late two thousands he got himself appointed as a city councilman of Portsmouth. He's a very public person, so if there was a Red Cross banquet or something that I was covering, he would be there. So he's been around my whole career pretty much now. Rumors have been

circulating about Mike Moran for years. These stories about him being involved in prostitution go all the way back to the seventies. A lot of those stories are just about him hiring girls dance and at local parties and poker games. It was the secret that everyone choked about, but no one really talked about, and it was pretty common knowledge. I think I mentioned like a Red Cross banquet I had to cover once. He was there with a girl known to be arrested for prostitution, known to be arrested

for drug abuse, and she was there. You could tell that she was under the influence by her behavior. She was being very loud and on a cell phone in the middle of this banquet and speaking very appropriately for the setting, and Mike's just laughing with her. And a city councilman at the time actually leaned over towards me jokingly elbowed me on the side and said, there's Mike and one of his girls. It's just always been known as Nicky began exploring Moran's ties to the local sex trade.

The story grew much darker. I was interviewing some people who were in an impatient treatment facility, and I found out that one of the women over the program was involved with a human trafficking program, and so I started talking with her about human trafficking and she said that when women are arrested at a certain age, Moran has been going to see them in jail and gotten them judge charges and exchange for doing sexual favors for him

and working in prostitution. Nikki further explained the allegations leveled against Moran by area women at the corrupt of what he does is he offers his legal services to get these women out of jail and then puts them under his employee. Yes, he gets women out of jail and that basically gets them into his clutches. Other stories are that people are hired as dog walkers or as cleaners and and said are actually working in prostitution, and affidavit

filed by the DA would later support these accounts. James Pilcher explained that this method of manipulation marks the ditinction between prostitution and human trafficking. Some people will say, oh, well, these women knew what they were doing. They were just trying to make money. These women were prostitutes. Well, if

you talk to the experts. It went one step beyond that, it went into trafficking because some of those allegations Moran was holding over them, the fact that they were drug addicts, even he would withhold their money or withhold their wherewithal to get drugs. So the statute says, if you withhold or threatened to withhold money that women need for drugs or withhold the drugs, it's trafficking because it's coercion. Anytime you can prove coercion, it's trafficking, both in the Ohio

law and federal level. We're going to take a quick break here. We'll be back in a moment. Some believe Michael Moran's reach goes farther than even human trafficking. In twenty thirteen, a Portsmouth woman named Megan Lancaster disappeared. Michael Moran has denied any involvement or responsibility in her disappearance. 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. Megan, it's probably the case that is closest to my heart, and that's mostly her sister in law, Katie Lancaster has just screamed and screamed and screamed on her behalf. My name is Katie Lancaster, and I am the sister in law and best friend of Megan Lancaster who has been missing from Soda County since April third, twenty and thirteen. Who was Megan Lancaster and how did you meet? We met at a it was called Soda

County Joint Vocational School. We were both taking cosmetology. And she is a wonderful, loving, gives a shirt off her back person that I know for a fact that if this tragedy had to happen to anybody, she would have given everything she had to save the next person. Megan and Katie formed an unbreakable bond and soon they became family members. I was spending about every night with Megan, pretty much on school night. Megan would say, my brother

wants to take you on a date. So I said, okay, okay, like I'll let him take me for dinner and so on and so forth. And I did that well. I never left. I was seventeen and we just hit it off and fell in love. Katie and Megan's brother Jimmy, were married in two thousand and five. A few months later,

Katie became pregnant. Soon after, Megan did as well. I went into labor August thirty first, had my baby September first, like in the middle of the night, and she had her baby November fourth, So we were legitimately only, you know, a couple months apart. In two thousand and six, Megan gave birth to a son named Reese. Being a young single mother was tough, but Megan seemed to have a bright future ahead of her. Any sports she played, she played to the fullest. She was there for her team,

always cheering everybody. On the softball she was the pitcher. She had a full ride scholarship to Shawnee State. I mean, I mean, Megan couldn't have been any smarter than what she was. Despite her intelligence and athleticism, Megan fell victim to the drug epidemic that gripped the Portsmouth area. She was open back that you know that she used drugs,

that she used a needle. It was rough, and I would tell her, I would say, Megan, I would try to play both sides, like her friend and her sister in law, because I would say, Megan, you need to get help and you need to change for you first and foremost, but at the same time, you need to do it for Reeese because he needs you. And her answer was, Katie, why change it? Now? Everybody's gonna look at me the same way. I'm never gonna live down the things I've done. I'm never gonna be able to

change that opinion that people have of me. She just couldn't see past the past, you know, path the things that she felt people would never forgive. And then that point took over Megan and it led to more years later, a strange encounter with Megan would leave Katie forever suspicious of one local man, Michael Moran. I was in walmoret with Jeremy, and all of a sudden, I see Megan got bouncing down the aisle and I'm like, what the

hell was she wearing? It was literally Anta lingerie. To be honest, she said, I'm here to get something for this party I'm doing for Marian It's a bachelor party. And I'm just like, okay, but again, why are you in here in that outfit? Is you like? Because this is what I'm wearing to the party, And I'm like, get get whatever you're getting in and get the heck out of here before you get arrested for indecent exposure? Can you describe April third, twenty thirteen. April third, twenty thirteen,

Megan went missing. That day, she was with her mom. She went to her mom's early in the morning, said mom, I need to pay my insurance because she had been pulled over and called over card been impounded for literally like sixty dollars in back child support or something. So her mom followed her to Portsmouth. Megan got in her mom's card down in Portsmouth, they rode down to the bonding company. They paid her insurance, then got back in her own care her Mustang, and they went their own ways.

Later that day, Megan called her mother, Marcy, to make arrangements to see her son. She said, Mom, I'll be there to stay the night with Reese. But that night Megan never showed up, you know. And then the next day Marcy tried to get a hold of her cut and went by her apartment. Her car wasn't there, so Mar's thought she's out running the streets or whatever, you know, out running the road, and didn't think much more about it.

Two days later, on April fifth, Megan's car was found in the parking lot of a local fast food restaurant. She was nowhere to be found. What stuck out about the car was the fact that it was up on the curb, and Megan would never have parked it like that, as she especially. She might have pulled in if she was in a hurry and got out and got something, got right back in the car and left, but she would have never pulled in there to leave it there

like that. Inside the car, police found Megan's wallet and a small notebook that contained some suspicious entries. She left clues as to who she'd been working for, what's she'd been up to. Right, Yes, she left papers in it. They actually said dance for and Michael Marian's name, his cell phone number, and how much he paid for her to dance. We know we have this problem with missing women, and we know we have this problem with women who have been found dead in their cases that never their

murders have never been solved. And despite that car set her mom said t October of twenty thirteen. And there's a documents where they took it, where they took the car into evidence that are dated showing that and it was really Katie and Megan's family that did all of the investigating, and higher private investigators they couldn't get in

cooperation from local police. So it's Megan's case really, it's the only one that has really been made public so people can see exactly what these women have gone through and how these things have happened. If Moran was running a decades long sex trafficking operation, we're talking about some serious abuse of power. What are your thoughts on that. The abuse of power makes me completely fucking sick. Excuse my language, but I don't know how else to put

it. It It makes me sick because you know, he's in this position to help people, to help rebuild their lives if they been in trouble once or twice, you know, a drug charge, whatever, they send them to treatment, they do this, they do that, but he takes it a step further and takes them, like, buys them what they want, courses them into these things, shows them a life that they've never had before, and then boom back on drugs, back to doing what they were doing back in trouble.

And to me, that is sickening and there's no excuse sport. Do you think Mike Moran is involved in Megan's disappearance. I do believe Michael Moran is involved in Megan's disappearance, and I do believe that we will eventually tie Mike Moran to Megan's disappearance. Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back in a moment. What's it like to go through losing a family member or a friend but

not actually knowing what happened to them? It's hell. I was talking to my mother in law about this today. You know, people lose people all the time, and they have a grave to go to somewhere they can go visit that they know that that person is there, or they have ashes that they have or whatever, what have you. But we have a flipping sign with missing on it that we decorate, and it is heartbreaking, and it is hard not to know whether she's hungry, she's cold, she's

being hurt, she's being abused, or worse, she's dead. Not to know that. It is so hard. I see her mama suffer daily, or importantly, I see her baby boys suffer very badly. And I'm not saying that, you know, he cries every day or no, I'm not saying that, but he has a lot of questions but we can't answer. But I can guarantee you I won't stop to I can answer him. I don't care if he's twenty five, thirty, thirty five, forty, If I'm along around that long, I'll

fight until I can answer those questions for him. In an interview, Moran claimed that he only knew Megan as a police informant who was tied to a drug case he tried years back. When asked about what may have happened to her, Moran believed that she may have been murdered, though he had no information to support his statement. It should be noted that there have been no other specific allegations tying Moran to the disappearance of any other women.

Nikki Blankenship continued her investigation into human trafficking in Portsmouth, but her attempt to report on the areas missing women was met with some pushback. You kind of started this with this story. This seemed to have been local knowledge that no one was reporting on. Right when I was first saying let me talk about the missing women, I was told now it didn't matter if there was proof it was can't we talk about the missing women? Can I talk to their families, and I was told, now,

Nikki didn't let that stop her. So I I have seen these things personally. In Cider County, we say that everyone's been affected because if it's not your friend, it is or your family member's at least somebody you went to school with. Everybody knows somebody who's been affected by the drug epidemic, and everybody knows somebody who has turned a prostitution. So this is a pretty personal story for you. Yeah.

I spent probably my whole career, I feel like working on this, and nobody was listening to their stories before or seeing them as even human. That really made me connect with a lot of these people in their stories living here my whole life. These are my friends and my family members as well. Not specifically, but I have lost so many friends to overdose. I have so many friends that have battle addiction, and a lot of people

I went to school with are gone. Now I have several friends from high schools that ended up working in prostitution. They're people, They're human, and yet seen as a prostitute or an addict exactly, and that makes people not really care what happens to them. That makes people assume that they chose some lifestyle that is dangerous. It makes people just assume that they somehow are asking for that or whatever happens to them as a part of a lifestyle they chose, and so they just turned a blind eye.

And I think that's another thing that has made it so easy for it to happen, and it happened right in public, is that people see them as prostitutes and addicts. Nickie didn't give up searching for prooflinking Michael Moran to Portsmith's sex trafficking industry. I was at home a lot late at night, just going through court documents and talking to families because a lot of these families told me

I was the only person they trusted. So then for me, it was like, how do I get something more than a story from a family member or even a girl. I need some kind of career, finding some kind of document. In twenty seventeen, she got it. A man named Mark Eubanks reached out to her and passed along a copy of a sworn Affidavid filed by the Drug Enforcement Agency. Mark Cubanks, he had been reading my stories on human trafficking and on the heroin epidemic and he just smelled

me a copy of this Silda Affidavid. It was actually a part of his case and had told me his story, which was that he had been arrested on drug charges and when he was arrested, he was immediately taken and given live a detective test about missing women and dead women and Mike Moran and human trafficking. The Affidavid laid out Southern Ohio Drug Task Force and FBI operations that had been UNDERWAGH since twenty fifteen investigating Michael Moran and

his ties to area sex trafficking. He's accused of trafficking women all over the country from New York and New Jersey to Florida, racketeering and compelling and promoting prostitution. In other thing that is in the affidavit that he was working with drug traffickers and there was a wire tap where they were able to hear some of the conversations between Moran and drug traffickers and he was getting drugs from these drug traffickers in order to provide to the

females that he had working for him. The AffA David specifically talks about whom working with local judges and law enforcement and adult probation to make these things happen. Nikki finally had the proof she needed that validated the stories told by Portsmouth's most vulnerable women, but when she brought the document to her editor, she was shocked and they told me, no, we're not going to publish. Michael Moran would later be arrested and charged with eighteen felony accounts,

including promoting prostitution and trafficking in persons. He was released on a three hundred thou dollar bond, which was later revoked after he violated the terms of his agreement. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and staunchly maintains his innocence. He is now under house arrest while he

awaits trial. We'll bring you the second part of the Michael Moran story in episode nine, but next week we'll be hearing from some of our regular contributors, who will discuss updates from accused brother George Wagner, the four's most recent pre trial hearing. For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. The Piked and 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 and 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.