4,000 Miles Away

Welcome to the piked In Massacre, A production of iHeartRadio and KAT Studios, Episode seven, four thousand Miles Away. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Kati's Studios, with Stephanie Leidecker and Jeff Shane. After the Rodent family was brutally gunned down in their homes, authorities embarked in what would

Ohio Attorney General Mike Dwine, giving an update in the Pike County murders.

You received eight hundred and eighty three tips. We have conducted four hundred and sixty.

Five interviews, the Wine says.

There have also been thirty eight search warns issued, but so far new arrest.

I think that we've made significant progress.

But by early twenty seventeen, the evidence that authorities had collected was pointing them towards one group of people, in particular, the Wagner family. That spring, with the case heating up, the Wagners decided to leave the Piked in area with Jake Wagner and Hannah Rodin's daughter Sophia until they sold their farm, packed up their belongings, and drove four thousand miles north to Keenei, Alaska, a city of about eight

They had been wanting to move to Alaska for a while because the pastor of the church moved there. He's very important headstone in their family. I'm the one that told him go to Alaska. Number one, the state of Ohio can not afford to extradite you from Alaska back home. I just thought it was the griatest that they took off. I said, that's the best thing in the world for the kids, and it's the best thing in the world for you, guys.

The family quickly got settled in keen I. They lived together in a double white trailer on a large piece of property. Billy and Angela even registered to vote. Jeff talked to one of the Wagner's family relatives who kept in touch with them while they were in Alaska. She asked us not to use her name, but told us about their life once they arrived.

What was their life like in Alaska?

Well, Jake has got a job, it was a construction type business. Angela didn't work. I think she might have done some things from like home or the Annett or something like that. And Bill, I'm not sure what he did exactly, but they did have a very nice home in Alaska that they were in the process of trying to buy from what I understand anyways, and Jake he had Sophia at the time, and they just kind of work get in by.

The Wagner's sudden departure left the whole town of piped and bewildered and suspicious. Dana Roden's friend Stephanne remembers the day she heard the news. She shared her thoughts with Jeff.

Well, when they left for Alaska, I was like, Oh, wow, they're gonna they're running, you know, they're running. And then I thought they'll get away with it if they did this, if they did this, they will get away with it.

Or people talking about the Wagners, like, was the feeling that they might have been guilty or what were people thinking or speculating in town.

Yeah, they pretty much thought that, you know that was the that was the deal.

They were running from it.

But the Wagner's relocation didn't hinder the investigation. According to reporter James Pilcher, it only helped to move the case forward.

They moved to Alaska, which raised even more suspicion. But then the very following month, law enforcement actually finally searches the properties where the Wagners lived. So that was really the first public indication that the Wagners were possible suspects, if not people of interest, So that started to tighten the noose in terms of the Wagner's.

On June sixth, twenty seventeen, as the investigation pressed on, Attorney General Mike DeWine appealed to the public for information connecting the Wagoners to the crime.

Investigators want any information about the family, including information about vehicles, guns, and ammunition. Anyone with information is asked.

To call the past uns.

Investigative journalists Jodi Barr recalled the Attorney General's announcement.

Other than being on the ground in Tight County and hearing the Waggers' names come up from time to time and you had no verifiable leads, or you would exhaust all leads, that was the first time that anything was said in public from anybody with this investigation that they may have people that they were looking at and who potentially had something to do with this, and at that time, no one knew the extent of the involvement that the

But it was still just it was still.

Confusing that they would come out and say that and no arrests made, no indictments made, but yet they were asking for help to identify Yeah.

Is that unusual that they would just kind of like blatantly say a name and be like, does anyone know anything about this person who's not an official suspect or someone we've arrested.

Even it's just confusing, and I would love to ask, now, Governor Mike DeWine, you know why they played it the way they played it, You know, did they know what they needed to know?

Then?

Were they trying to have the Wagners make a misstep when they announced this to the world.

Mike Dewayne's press release prompted the Wagner's family attorney John K. Clark, to accuse law enforcement of harassing his clients. Here's Jeff, followed by Stephanie.

In a statement to the Cincinnati inquire the lawyer said that the authorities were clueless and competent where they themselves were involved in a cover up. In short, his clients were innocent.

That's because, according to Clark, the Wagners were cooperating with officials and had provided authorities with everything they had asked for, including laptops, phones, and DNA willingly, and they also agreed to repeated interviews with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Clark even said that the Wagners told BCI agents that they were in fact moving.

I spoke with former Ohio Prosecutor Mike Allen about the legal implications of the Wagner's cooperation. What about the Wagners and their compliance with authorities? I know their lawyer has said they've cooperated one hundred and ten percent. Can you talk through the details of.

That, sure? I mean, from what I understand, they did turn over some things laptops, phones that they submitted to DNA, giving exemplars which they could be compelled to do anyway. Some of them at least were interviewed by Ohio BCI agents, and I guess they told those agents that they were traveling and about to move to Atlaska, and they claimed they had been thinking about that for a long time. So yeah, I mean, from what I can see, there was some cooperation. But whether it was one hundred and

Does that do anything when it comes to juries? You know? Does that hold sway?

It can? You know in closing argument and the defense lawyer could stand up and say to the jury, my client, you know, he cooperated one hundred and ten percent, you know, meaning that he has nothing to hide.

The Cincinnati Inquirer even tracked the family down in Alaska in July of twenty seventeen. In a published article, Jake Wagner said that he had moved to give Sophia a better life. This is Jodi Barr again.

The Cincinnati Inquirer obviously went there and they found them. I mean, it was they didn't try to slip off in the middle of the night. It didn't seem I mean, if a reporter could find them, then obviously law enforcement knew very much where they were at that point in time. I mean, as far as a level of cooperation, we haven't heard anything yet that said the Wagers weren't cooperating with the law enforcement. Did they do it? We want to know now. Obviously everybody wants to know right now,

Despite their involvement in a very large and very active murder investigation. The Wagners were trying to start a new life in Alaska and didn't seem to have any intention of returning. Here's our anonymous Wagner family source.

When I would ask interest how things going, You know, winter, you can come back and visit, or so on and so forth, she was kind of just really backwards about it. She never would really tell me what they were doing. She never really said when she would be back home to visit, just that she misses us, you know, and that she would love to be able to come home,

In Alaska, the family went about life as normal. They tried to fit into the local community and became regular parishioners at the local church. Their pastor even described them to the Dayton Daily News as quote good country people. We reached out to the pastor, who declined to speak with us. It was at this same church that Jake Wagner was introduced to another churchgoer, Elizabeth Armor. The couple dated for several months, and then in March twenty eighteen,

I've seen you know people I know lost of spouse. You know they're married again.

Six months.

If he's interested and he got remarried and wanted to carry on with his life, then you know, maybe that's it. But if he really is guilty of having a hand and killing eight people and one of those being the mother of his own child, and then he enters into vows with another woman within months of that, ooh, I don't know. I don't know what kind of person you're dealing with.

Here.

Here's Stephanie talking about what she learned by looking at Elizabeth Armer's Facebook posts.

She took to Facebook to let the world know just how dangerous being involved with the Wagners could be. Elizabeth said in one of her posts that God told her to come forward about her relationship with Jake Wagner. According to her posts, Elizabeth met Jake through the church and then was encouraged to get to know him by her pastor.

Then, in the spring of twenty eighteen, two years after the Rodents were killed, the Wagner shocked everyone again, this time by returning to the Pipedon area. Our Wagner family relative explained why they decided.

To come home from what I like, I said, I have understood just some a little bit that I talked to Angela and then our family and general talking. They had came back home because built family, his father got sick and they couldn't afford or they were losing what the whole and everything that they had there in Alaska. So I basically just like it was a handful of that type of stuff. So they decided that they were gonna come back down here and they were just gonna

The move seemed to baffle everyone and piked In Here's local resident Annie.

If you think about it, the Wagoners were scott free. They went to Alaska. They could have took off and nobody could have ever seen them again ever, But they came back here. They came back. Now, my the way that I am, I would never do that. But if I had pulled something off like that and got away with it that long and went to Alastis, you know, I'm packing my shit and I'm hitting the woods and nobody's ever gonna see me again, I'm sure the hell

Upon returning to piked In, the Wagoners tried to fly under the radar and return to life as normal, but our Wagner family relative told Jeff that their homecoming was anything but welcome.

When they came back, were people kind of like has the story died down or were people like, oh, the wagoners are back. It was probably.

Quiet for about I don't know, two three weeks if that, and then everybody found out that they were back in town, and they just absolutely tortured. I mean daily. Everybody had started basically attacking then the community, accusing them of murdering those people, like if they were in town and people identified their vehicle, they would throw pot bottles at him. Angela had actually went into a store one day and

As things began to unravel for the Wagner's law enforcement was tightening up the case against the family. It seemed like it was only a matter of time before they were arrested.

Investigators now believe there were multiple attackers, as according to information from the Ohio Attorney General's office.

The Ohio Attorney General says the investigation is progressing.

Wine adds his office knows a lot more about what goes on in those Pike County hills.

Now we know a lot more today.

Have we cracked the cage?

Have we come up with enough evidence to arrest someone and get them convicted?

No, we have not.

But if we made the progress, oh, yeah, we made a lot of progress.

On Halloween of twenty eighteen, authorities conducted yet another search on a Wagner family property, this time a farm formerly owned by Jake and George Wagner. During that raid, investigators uncovered a homemade silencer at the bottom of a well, it would seem to be the final piece of the puzzle for investigators. As we discussed in great detail in

We have major developments tonight in a bizarre and tragic murder case.

He took two and a half years, but arrests have finally been made in the Pike County massacre.

George Billy Wagner the third, he's forty seven.

Also forty eight year old Angela Wagner.

Twenty seven year old George Wagner the fourth, and twenty six year old Edward Jake Wagner are now facing charges.

The Attorney General announced two more arrests of people accused of being involved.

Angela's mother, Rita Knugal and Billy's mother, Fredrika Wangner. We're also arrested today in conjunction with the cover up of these crimes.

We're going to take a quick break here. We'll be back in a moment. Angela, Billy, Jake, and George Wagner were charged with aggravated murder. Angela Wagner's mother Rita Joe Nucom, and Billy Wagner's mother, Frederica were both charged with obstruction of justice and perjury. Nucom was also charged with forgery.

Frederica has been charged with obstruction of justice and perjury. So how do you explain that to someone who you know, like me, who's never been to law school or doesn't know what it means.

Well, perjury is pretty simple under Ohio law. It just basically says that you cannot knowingly make a false statement in an efficient proceeding while you are under oath. It's real simple, and the constructing justice is pretty simple as well. Ohiolall provides that you can't, with purpose to hinder the discovery, apprehension, or prosecution of a person, do anything that would assist someone in doing that and that's one that that's charged

Plainly stated, prosecutors think Frederica was lying to them and trying to hinder the investigation to cover up for her family. We'll get into the specifics of her charges later. For now here, Stephanie, followed by Jeff.

We wondered if there was anything in Frederica Wagner's past that could have indicated that she would be involved in something as gruesome as mass murder.

As we know, the Wagners were a well known and well to do family in the Pecton area, and Frederica Wagner was at the helm of this. A self described entrepreneur, she owned properties oliver Pie County that spanned over seventeen hundred acres and were valued at more than four million dollars. She'd also founded two nonprofits, Lucasville Mission, a church that helps underprivileged children, and the Crystal Springs Home, a facility

She was pretty well known by everybody, and if she wasn't doing a charity or something outside of church, since she was doing one in church. She owned over two hundred acres of land and a lot of people that lived on her property that she rented out to. She would say, hey, you know, if you come to church, then I won't charge you a diamond root. And all she ever asked of was for them to go to church. She was always nice to be growing up. She's never

Deray Paint's a similar portrait of Frederica. She told us about the pastoral surroundings of her grandmother's Flying w farms and her family's legacy in the area.

If you go to their house.

You go eighty eight miles out of Cincinnati east on thirty three, and I'm telling you you were in the hills, the Appalachian.

Hills of Ohio at this time.

Then all of a sudden, you'll see something to the right. It looks like a real nice entryway. It's flying w farms on it. And you look and you see a trailer sitting right next to the entrance, a nice entrance with wrought iron gates. It's got blind w's on it.

Then you look.

Aways up you see all these little.

Houses, some of them were catteries. And then she's got the pig house, and then she's got the old walking horse barn, and then she's got the shop. Then you come to her her colonial style on home, and it's a very homey feeling. When you walk into the home, you feel like you're going home. And I see all my grandmother's Catholic little statues around and pictures of the kids on the horses, pictures of all their famous horses.

She developed a breed of horse called the Georgian Grande she named after my uncle, which she takes no credits for. The horses is what the driving passion was for Frederica involve to be together, stay together, work together, because that's the problem I think with people who get married today.

Okay, so it's natural to want to have relationships, it's natural to want to have kids when you're young, all those hormones in your head.

But to keep you.

Together, you'd better have something solid and common that you have to work with together to keep your family, leading them a legacy. And that's what Frederica Wagner did for her kids. Her and Bob developed a breed a horse. Over years, they have a two thousand acre farm. They had three kids, and they left them a legacy.

You know, we're not talking about people who are trained murderers.

We're talking about real people.

Here who had real, honest and goodness, god fearing lives.

Frederica Wagner's attorney described her as a god fearing woman who taught Sunday school for nearly half a century and lived about as close to the cross as anyone can. We all struggled with this contradiction in Frederica Wagner. How could this sweet grandmother who was charitable and kind be involved in any capacity with the murder of eight people. So we decided to look a little deeper into Pikedon's most giving resident, and what we found was not all virtuous. Jody Barfield us in.

After the world became familiar with the Wagner family. You know, of course, reporters start digging into their backgrounds, and it's just some of the things that come out. You learn about the business dealings, and you know what Frederica, you know, is accused of doing in the past. This is good background information to have when you're trying to understand who

Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back in a moment. Let's start with Flying W farms. The farm breeds horses as well as dogs and pigs typically found in New Zealand. In the nineteen nineties, Frederica got into legal trouble with a group of customers surrounding the sale of these pigs. Here's Mike Gallon again.

She was sued by a group of customers. I guess the allegation was that her place, I think it was the Flying W it didn't meet the standards promise for the sale of exotic animals, which is interesting. I guess the group said that she defrauded them in the sales. They gave them some animals that didn't match the advertised description.

Dana Roden's friend Becky told Jeff that Flying W Farms had been whispered about and piked in for years.

At one point in time, you know, for Erika was a person to be feared in the county because there was always rumors. I don't know exactly what all the rumors was, but everybody's like, oh, you don't want to go back there. Bad things happen to people that go back here. So you know, I stayed away from my area way back where Fredrika's farm because I've always heard a bad things about it. So, yeah, somewhere I would never.

Go piked in local Barbara told Jeff about one rumor in particular, they.

Made their money in horses and miniature horses, and there's some shady dealings that I've heard about going on there, like them stuffing the horses with drugs and sending them back and forth to Mexico, and you know, just awful things like that.

Now, we obviously can't prove that, but it's worth mentioning because it's this type of thing that people in Pike didn't like to whisper about. One thing we should talk about is this quote unquote life changing rent to own operation Frederica Wagner, designed to help lower income residents.

Over the decades, Frederica Wagner entered into at least one hundred and thirty two land installment contracts. Now, these contracts basically allowed the Wagners to retain deeds on land as buyers attempted to pay off the principle and the interest. The idea was that if the buyers made all of their payments, they'd eventually become landowners, but it rarely played out that way. In fact, as it turns out, only twelve of those contracts were actually satisfied, twelve out of

Yeah, there was one tenant quoted in the story saying that Frederica had raised her rent by twenty five percent following the murders in twenty sixteen, and another described his rental property as a one room home with an exposed toilet standing just a few feet from the foot of his bed. Again, this doesn't prove their guilt, but it does speak to the type of woman Frederica was, or at least how the public perceived her at the time.

I spoke to attorney Mike Gallon about Frederica's land deal contracts. When I was npiped and I spoke to some people and these are just personal accounts, but saying, you know, my family rented land and did it for years and years and years and then had it pulled out, which I mean, the court seems to.

Back that up.

But yeah, land contracts are tough, and you know, for the person who is you know, not the owner of the property, but the person trying to buy it, there are a lot of pitfalls with it, and someone smart, which apparently Frederica was, they can take advantage of people in a land contract situation.

Frederica also runs a nonprofit called Crystal Springs, a group home that provides housing and rehabilitation services to developmentally disabled adults. And according to some when her son Billy married Angela Nucombe, who we now know as Angela Wagner, Frederica wasn't happy about it. Christina Howard told us that the relationship between Frederica Wagner and her daughter in law always seemed contentious.

She never really had much to do with Angela unless it come to Billy and grown up by her Freddie call Angela like an evil woman or Tom or two like a nasty woman. One time, Angela tried to keep Freddie from seeing her grandkids George and Jake because they was talking about moving away and all this. And I never heard Freddy say that she hated anybody, but she said, you know, like, oh, I really dislike this woman. She's just a nasty woman.

Perhaps Frederica Wagner has reason to be suspicious of Angela. Christina Howard gave Stephanie her thoughts on Angela Wagner.

Angela, she does have a little bit of a shady forsad tour, Like you feel like there's more tour than Mintsi I and stuff. Like on the outside she's all happy thoughts with anybody and everything else. But you just get a vibe from her, you know that there's more to it.

It turns out that this seemingly devoted, hard working mother had a bit of a checkered past. In two thousand and one, Angela Wagner, along with Billy Wagner, we're charged with improperly handling a firearm, and in twenty twelve they were both charged with receiving stolen property, which is a fifth grade felony. Jody Barr put the Wagner family's criminal history into context for us.

You're looking at and properly handling a firearm charges. When you look at those two charges and even the details that were reported to support those charges, I'm back to where I was in the rest of the Wagner's background when you look at this as a whole, across the course of their lives. The charges of improperly handling a firearm, I mean, those charges came fifteen years before these murders. It was an alleged road rage. You know, there was a gun pulled out, but the charges are dismissed. No

Here again is Frederica's niece Deray, reading a news article about her aunt's involvement in the Rodent murders.

So let me summarize it for you. On November thirteenth, twenty eighteen, the Ohio Governor elect Mike d Wine held an internationally broadcast news conference and announced the arrest of Frederica Wagner and several of her family members. Governor d Wine accused Frederica's family members of the Rodents homicides, and

I do not know who came up with that theory and tried to put it out there, but that is someone with an evil mind. I think that that it's that it's the devil trying trying to test us, because there's no way possible that Frederica could ever.

Do something like that.

Ever, she is not that kind of person. She carries the light of Jesus with her everywhere she goes, and I am, I am, I am convicted on that there's no way she would have ever done something like that.

Ever, the idea that the entire Wagner family allegedly conspired to kill the Rodents and cold blood still baffles Jodie Barr to this day.

Now.

I think that is the common theme of this entire story about Pike County and about this rodent massacre, is it seems just too far fetched now when you try to connect the dots through the histories of you know, how the Wagners conducted their business, how they live their lives. I don't know that I have seen any report, any fact brought out about the Wagoners that would say, Yep,

On June twenty sixth, twenty nineteen, Frederica Wagner headed into a Pike County courtroom for a pre trial hearing, with Frederica sitting in the defendant's chair. There was a stunning courtroom revelation.

Charges against the grandmother connected to the road and family massacre have been dismissed.

It was dismissed because I was innocent.

They had no evidence against me.

Well, grandmother Frederica Wagner might be out of the woods. The rest of her family await their day in court, where a stunning number of truths promised to be exposed.

For the truth, I believe that as it applies to this case, the mystery will be solved. The truth will eventually be discovered.

Hannah was struggling to keep custody of Sophia Pavey. Straight up. Tolderisay presenting with papers, do not sign them because they will sure you over.

You've got to wonder who is this informant, because if it's a member of the Wager family, I think that's a twist no one saw coming.

More on that next week. Reach out to us on our social media outlets with questions. We're on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at pichon Massacre. We look forward to answering your questions and upcoming bonus episodes. Pikedon Massacre is executive produced by Stephanie Leidecker and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by executive producer Jared Aston. Additional producing by Jeff Shane and Andrew Becker. The piked In Massacre is