George Wagner Takes the Stand

Were you aware at any time that Jake and your dad and your mom weren't planning to kill the Rose?

No?

Was that ever discussed with you?

No?

He said straight up, we don't get along. He said there were times he wanted to leave, and I wondered if that was really true, and maybe he did want.

To leave, but he didn't do it.

Describe your relationship name I looked hand as a baby sister.

I personally was surprised that the sent specifically said were you there? Did you do anything you know about it? Any time? When did you find out that they were guilty or that they had actually participated?

I never would have believed my family would be capable of doing something of this magnitude.

This is the Pike Did Massacre Returned to Pike County Season four, episode twenty one, George Wagner takes the stand. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Kat's Studios with Stephanie Leidecer and Jeff Shane. It's important to note that George Wagner has pleaded not guilty and has maintained he did not kill anyone. His father, Billy Wagner, whose trial is upcoming, has also pleaded not guilty to all charges.

It was a bombshell day, if you will, of testimony.

For nine weeks, George Wagner the Fourth has sat quietly as a parade of witnesses, from police investigators to his own brother and mother picked apart his claim of innocence and ignorance.

George, let me adjust this microphone for you. Just keep your voice up real loud so hear you. Please stage your full name for the.

Record, George washing King Wagner the Fourth.

You've been sitting in this trial for any weeks.

Right, yes.

But on the forty second day of the trial, wearing a white collar dress shirt, dark tie, and a gray vest, George Wagner took the stands in his own defense. His attorney began by asking George to describe the troubled environment he grew up in.

Let's talk about your education first. Okay, did you ever go to a public school.

For a very short period of time?

So how did you get your education?

My mother homeschooled, but George Wagner's homeschooling didn't last long. By the age of fourteen, his official education was over. It was replaced by a different type of education.

When did you quit?

I felt that I didn't need anymore and I just wanted to do my own thing. My father quit in the sixth grade.

And so what did you want to do? Qu school? What did you do with your life? Did you have any or aspiration?

When I was a young kid, I wanted to be either a game warden or a forester. And when I got older, my father pushed me more towards being a decent mechanic and a truck driver. Was that my father didn't want nobody in the family that wore a badge?

Why was that?

He thought all law enforcement was crooked?

George Wagner said when he was young, he and his father had a great relationship and that the pair spent many days hunting and fishing together. But his father, Billy Wagner, was also responsible for George Wagner's other education.

In your youth, did he teach you other things?

My father taught me how to open a lock, how to steal fuel, how the steel loads or break into loads?

How did he actually do it? Did he set you down and explain.

How he bought uh, like a lock pick set in terms of like a whole bunch of different locks and picks, And then you sit us down for hours until we could figure out how to open it?

And what would what would he do? If anything? Would you want you learn how to do that?

After my brother and I learned how to do it, he would go from my hotel to hotel in different counties and open the vending machines in them.

Would he do it?

Usually you'd have my brother do it. Why your brother, My brother can open the lock in a matter of seconds, right, well.

What about your three four minutes? So your brother was a little better picking locks? To me, Yes that your dad took both in and around to pick one. Yes, what kind of locks would you have? Your pick?

Pad locks? Vending machine locks was the most common door locks on trucks. Ignition, which is all right? And what would be the purpose vending machines? Yeah, he would take the coin box and the cash box out of it.

And did he teach you anything else around that age?

Just how to break in the trailers and drive off his loads.

And with the loads, you go around, take the padlock and the hinges off so you don't break the seal.

It's it's the seal is broken. It's instantly. Somebody's been in it. So you got to take a hinge off and open it without it. But you see what's in the trailer. If it's something you wanted, then you'd unload it. If it's not, you put the handback on the way.

Ever knows it was opened, right and your was with you?

Yes, all right?

And he would pick out the truck. Yes, did he have any like methods or codes or anything like that as far as how would he pick out truck?

Usually it had to end up being a company truck. But Walmart was like the one he went after more than anything.

And why was that you do?

He despises Walmart. I don't know why.

Now did your mother know about these activities?

Yes? She was there ninety nine percent of the time.

Yes, and she knew your father was teaching.

Yes.

Were there other things that your father taught you around how the steel fuel steal fuel? Yes, so your dad taught you to steel fuel and pick lots. When you would go out with your father, would he ever teach you to look out for things or not look out for things? Is or anything like that?

So the job was you were always supposed to make sure you could see a top before they seen you, or to know where every camera was.

All right, So why did you explain how he touched it? Uh?

It really goes back to when I was a kid and he was still around in Pennsylvania a lot for every cop me or my brother would see, we'd get a dollar when we were a kid, all right, And that goes back to like eight years old, even before he started the theft.

And how old is that life's weird?

Can eleven? He would go around and start out with the we'd go down one street or something and if we missed one that he missed, then we'd lose four wheeler for a week. Or if he pointed one out, the wee get and see we get four wheeler taken for a week.

Here's Stephanie and Jeff.

The fact that George Wagner took the stand in his own defense unexpectedly.

Nobody in the.

Courtroom was anticipating him to take the stand that day, and I have to say he was very composed. He seemed very prepared. I mean, think about it. The stakes could not be higher for him. And when he describes his childhood, it's almost as though he was born into a family of con artists. You know, here he is being taught how to pick padlocks and steal fuel and

It's possible that the defense was feeling the pressure and decided it can't hurt to have George Wagner take the stand. And I think he did a pretty good job. He does not seem emotional to me. He seems more credible than Jake and Angela Wagner. Now it might be different because Jake and Angela Wagner's stories line up, she said, versus he said. I mean, he's extremely prepared for this moment.

And remember accused killer Dad Billy Wagner, he's very anti government, anti law enforcement. We've heard many, many stories about him preparing for the end of days. So the other side of this is, you know, in a very rural area in the event of a disaster, Billy Wagner wanted to make sure that their kids were prepared and could survive in any situation. That's the nice way of framing it. But the truth was they were stealing, and they were stealing on a very high level at a very young age.

If I'm the Rodent family, I'm thinking, I don't care. There's no excuse for allegedly murdering eight people. To me, you know, you got your ATV taken.

Away as a kid.

I don't know how that equates to being a part of an eight person homicide. But again, I mean this whole case. You know, we've heard a lot of things that we don't think are relevant, and what the jury is thinking and what the judge's thinking, we can't say.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting context because obviously George Wagner's attorneys are really painting a picture of a guy who was considered maybe second best to his brother. Much has been made about perhaps Jake was favored by his parents and that George was always the outcast and trying to step away from the family and maybe look away from their scams and cons and just try to get out

By the time George Wagner was a teenager. He said he was growing apart from his own family and that he was growing closer to his uncle Chris Nucom. The two regularly went hunting and rode ATVs around the farm.

Let's talk about chrispher More. Explain your relationship with Chris.

Chris is more like a brother to me than an uncle. That we were almost identical, and everything we like and do.

And what type of things would you do to you go.

Mudd and hunting, fishing, Just see how far we could go on four wheeler in a day.

And would Jake be part of.

This in his own way? Sometimes?

Yes? All right?

He was always left behind?

And what was he left hunt?

He didn't want to get his four wheeler as dirt Michael, ever, he had dirty and he'd run like two mile an hour?

And how were you and kristin?

Kind of like a bad out help.

George Wagner said his brother Jake preferred to play video games and to play with action figures.

He had hundreds of them. Every time he got as a young kid, he spent on action figures. He would set them up on the shelf and stare at them for hours.

And did you play with him as well?

No? But I would go in and move them when he was there, just to see if he'd knows it, and you could move with like a centimeter he'd know.

And did that ever cause any products?

Many many of fights?

Would you do that just to kind of double your brother?

Just to antagonizing this?

Antagonize him? Did he have any particular video games he liked?

Marvel Universe, Resident Evil left for Dad? That's another one. I can't remember what it was.

What other type of things would you and Chris as.

You got over right? Party run girls?

Wagner testified he started drinking alcohol at age thirteen and was partying regularly around the time he was eighteen years old. George met Frankie Rodin the pair became quick friends.

Did you consider it a good friend or I can said you one of my best friends?

George said his life changed once he got his driver's license. He made new friends and was able to get away from his mother Angela and brother Jake.

Because I have freedom. Freedom I could leave when I wanted, hang out for my uncle or Frankie or John and Nathan Walls Garrett Leaf all right?

And did that cause any problems?

Back home on Bethel Hood, my mom was never happy about it.

Tell us about that.

She always said that I was leaving my brother to do all the work, and I needed to be more like him to stay home.

Around the time George got his driver's license, his father, Billy Wagner, bought him a huge Chevy pickup truck for about twenty five hundred dollars. But even that purchase created lasting tension because Billy Wagner also bought more expensive pickup for Jake.

He got his three or four months before mine. My mother made my father buy it for him, all right.

Was it a cheap truck and expensive truck?

It was sixteen thousand dollars, So he.

Got this sixteen thousand dollars truck before you got any truck?

Yes? And how did that make you feel considering the one I wanted? Was I was told no for? And then a couple of weeks later they bought my brother's truck that was the same price. It not a good feeling for a fifteen year old.

Did you express your feelings?

I brought it up many times my entire life.

A little bit bitter about that.

Yes, Still there, with freedom and new friends, George Wagner spent most of his free time partying with Frankie roodin at nearby Big Bear Lake.

Describe the drinking parties or whatever that you did.

You played drinking games and drink until one of us fell out, which was usually me.

Right, Did you enjoy that?

Yes?

Did that cause any problems back at the home?

Yeah? My mother didn't let me being down there.

Why.

She said it was a bad environment and a bad influences and I was basically going to end up sending myself to hell from it.

And how would she tell you that or when would she tell you that?

Almost daily?

George testified that his mother, Angela, regularly berated him for his amoral lifestyle, also that she viewed Jake is an angel.

When my mother had him paranoid that he was going to go to hell, and she kept beating into everybody's head if you do anything that you're making Jesus cry and you're going to end up going to hell. She would say that all the time. If you say one curse word, or if you do anything which she thought was that appropriate. What would she say that you're in, you know, going down entirely bad road, or you're making Jesus cry for this or that or depending on the situation.

What about Jake?

Jake was always terrified of going to help.

How would you describe Jake as compared to you at this point?

At this point, yeah, we are nothing alike.

And how would you describe your relationship as you went through your teams.

I spend as much time away from Jake as I possibly could.

We're going to take a break. We'll be back in a moment. George described his brother Jake as rude and lacking a filter.

He goes with somebody's house and he thinks he's dirty. He's gonna tell him your house is filthy. If he thinks you stink, he'll tell you go take a shower. He has no filter.

Did that cause a problem.

Yes. He insults people, and a lot of my friends and stuff didn't like him being around. Did that cause you yes, because then they didn't want to hang out with me. My brother thinks that he's a satan, can do no wrong, and he's better than everybody. And he thinks that him being honest with people is what people wants to hear about his opinion of their self, and did.

That cause a problem with your relationship with your mom?

Yes, my mother thinks that I should be like him. She's always said that, what do you mean. She thinks that he's a satan, does no wrong, and she thinks that I'm basically going to help.

Here's investigative journalists and lawn crime reporter Anjeanette Levy.

He made it sound like, you know, angela favorite Jake. He always got in trouble for what Jake did. Jake would blame him for things when they were kids. But I mean, he said, straight up, we don't get along. We'd fight all the time, and sometimes we get along, and then most of the times we didn't. I can't imagine existing like that. He said there were times he wanted to leave, and I wondered if that was really true, and maybe he did want to leave, but he didn't do it.

Later, George told the jury that his younger brother Jake, was also regular at Big Bear Lake, but instead of partying, Jake would hang out with his new thirteen year old girlfriend, Hannah Mee Rodin.

He would sit in the tan or around the campfire, back and ark where he was with Hannah all night.

He wouldn't join in with the Drew.

No, he wouldn't let Hannah either.

Did Anna try to join sometimes?

Yes, Jake wouldn't let her go. What he getting more in Hannah having bad influences dranking her party.

At this point in George's testimony, Having set up the tensions between George and his mother and brother, defense attorney John Parker pivoted back to the Wagner's life on Bethel Hill and began to unpack the Wagner's history of criminal activity.

The first house was a single white trailer. When six years old, my mother tried to burn the house down. That failed because she didn't know what she was doing in the beginning, all right, explain the if there was no heir, it's mother's out. And she had everything closed up in the beginning, so just a kitchen, living room.

Mary barn all right, and your mother set that on fire.

She had my father set it on fire. But it was her plan, and she's the one taught my father how to do it right.

And you remember this when you were six or seven years old? And what did you think about that when you were a kid.

Really had no improt on it, George said, after his parents remodeled their first trailer. They added a second one, but once again, his parents set fire to their newly remodeled home.

In two thousand. You were about nine years old roughly, all right? And what do you mean they.

Burned hy burned that one down and succeeded with that one.

Who's dead?

My father and my mother?

And how did they burned?

Same MESSI there's always a whole batch of newspapers stuck underneath the fusebox.

So at this point in time, when you're nine years old, approximately your first two homes have been burned by your mom and dad.

Yes, later, the Wagoners built a more permanent home on their property. It was nicknamed the quote Kentucky Wonder Mansion, and George said he was fond of this house because he had his own area that allowed him to leave whenever he wanted. George said he often did this to avoid working with his mother in her dog breeding business.

She expected me and my brother to put in eight to ten hour days and basically not get paid for it. Okay, So every time she'd turn her back, I'd be gone.

And so what did your mom played?

She'd always throw a fit for me leaving my brother.

And did she sell a lot of dogs? Lots of them made money at it? A lot, right? And what type of dogs.

At that point? English bulldogs and laborator treads?

Yes, were they always pure bread?

She would well start with the labs. The English bulldogs were legit because it's hard to find something that looks like them. But the labs. If one of the females had eight puffs, she would go to the pound and get four or five more if it look like them. And if she sold the eight, she'd just say she didn't sell the eight, and then she'd resell the ones that she got from the pound that may or may not be a lab. Occasionally, if it had a white spot on a black dog that looked identical to a lab,

What happened?

We came home from Columbus one night, late at night, and it was laying in ashes, all four a dog cannels And how many dogs close to one hundred?

Did you ever find out how that dog kill or burn?

But the fires didn't stop. George said his parents burnt the Kentucky Wonder Mansion in two thousand and seven. When his parents considered moving to Alaska, however, they decided to stay in Ohio and built a new house, which contained a special room in the basement for a new business opportunity with Chris Roden Sr.

All Right, what was ever used?

It was used for growing marijuana.

Explain that it.

Was ten foot wide by forty foot long.

All right? And were you ever in that room?

No?

Why not?

I don't agree with drugs.

George also testified that his family once stole a truckload of boots.

From the beginning, my father and other people that he drove with had choices. Basically, they were either going to take a load of diapers or a load of rocky boots. Who actually hooked the trailer? I can't say. I was not there. I don't live who hooked it. But the plan was either the diapers or the boots. My mother was pushing for the diapers, and my father and his friends all wanted the boots, so my mother sided with them and they went with the boots.

Okay, So what happened then?

The boots showed up, and my dad's friends and hit their family. My dad, my brother, and I my mom unloaded the trailer, all right.

And so what what happened next?

We unloaded it and he got divided three ways, and then they hauled the trailer out. Why everybody hauled their boots to whoever's house they were going to?

And how many boots are we talking about it?

Fifty three one oh two load thousands.

Thousands of boots? Yes, and your mom.

Was involved in that, Yes, she helped plant, She helped plant.

Yes, and so did you guys get some of the boots.

Everybody in Pike County was wearing Rocky boots at that point.

Are you aware of any other deaths between two thousand and five twenty fourteen, bomb or dad or family?

How many do you want me to go into, because I can go for days.

George Wagner detailed many other crimes his family committed, from stealing Dell computers to copper wiring after the items were sold. George said his father, Billy Wagner, would hide money around the country.

Did your dad ever tell you something about a pension plant he had?

My father used to say that he buried money across the US in different spots. When he gets big, big loads of stuff that he would take in all to Mexico and sell. He would take the money and bury it.

Where would he bury it?

I can't say that, just know somewhere between here and Texas, That's what he told. He said, multiple places.

So if your standard, he would take a load.

Of what copper, aluminum, and he would come back.

Yes, what would he come back with?

Brown paper bags full of money?

How much money?

Anywhere? One hundred and two hundred thousand, depending on what the price of scrap was at that time.

How do you know it?

Because my brother and I would count it.

That was your job, Yes, to count that one.

Yes, here again, Stephanie and Jeff.

This is pretty shocking. It's a pretty wild detail. Two hundred thousand dollars in a little brown bag is a lot of cash. So you're buying scraps, You're stealing scraps of aluminum and copper, and then hiding the money in various places throughout the country.

It's a big plan.

It shows a lot of thinking. By the way, if any of the wagoners were using some of these clever ways of making money legally, imagine how successful they would be. It takes a lot of thought and preparation and care to even come up with the plan to be able to hide money in various parts of the country, And all of the stealing and the thieving and the oursin and the receipts, it's just all used for bad. Does that mean it's not such a leap to imagine them as murderers? Maybe not.

Where I think George Wagner's testimony goes a little off the rails is this section about bearing money and all of the things, because to me, it just makes the whole family only seem more out of their minds, and they looked at themselves as this criminal enterprise who everyone was out to get them, and they were being trailed and tracked at all the moments of the day, so much so that they had to hide money across the

Let's stop here for another break. Despite being close to his father as a young boy, the pair grew apart when George was a teenager and after his father Billy, began driving long haul truck.

Routes after the dog kennels burned the last one, my father started driving the truck.

And did you notice any changes in your father after he started driving.

Yes, my father has a habit of wanting to be identical to whoever he takes to the father figure at the time.

What do you mean by that?

He has daddy issues?

Okay? And so when he started driving truck, did you notice a change?

Yes?

What did you know?

The guy he was driving with took multiple different things to stay awake, and my father couldn't keep up with him, so he started doing the same thing.

What do you mean he started doing the thing.

He would take? What's that guy he was driving with was taking, like taking multiple handfuls of ad effects and pain pills.

And did you notice any changes in his.

Behaf It made him very irritable, hard to be around.

Did that cause any problems in your relationship.

With I loved it, He said he had a tumultuous relationship with his father, Billy ever called three fist fights they got into over the years.

My brother ran me over with my own truck when he was trying to look up a trailer and I was yelling at my brother, and for some reason my father went off on me, right, and.

He said, your brother, Randy Lowe, was a a purpose.

Or an accident. He was not paying attention.

Were you injured?

Not really? Just a little black and blue, all right?

And so what happened?

My father thought I was just yelling at my brother for no reason and pushed me up against my truck and dared me to hit him.

Okay, and you were sixteen, yes, and so what happened?

I was just fed up with it, so I hit him. What do you mean I hauled off and hit.

Him with your fist? Yes, And what happened?

Then he hit the ground and he got back up and we went into a fist fight.

How long did that?

A few minutes till my mother broke it up?

And so did that first fist fight affect your relationship with your death?

We didn't speak for a few weeks after that.

And so were there other instances or other times you got into a fight.

With your dad?

Yes? Three more. I remember two more fist fights. In one that was just like a massive verbal argument. He called me dumb, say I wouldn't listen. Call me ignorant all the time I worry about in my late teens.

So what happened?

Then I hit him again?

Did he hit your back?

Yes?

What happened?

We got into another fist fight for four or five minutes until it endedn't.

Did that affect your relationship?

Another three or four weeks and they're talking to each other.

In early twenty sixteen, there was another fight between George and Billy. This one nearly turned deadly.

My father got upset and while I was leaving and broke the passenger's side window out of the truck and shattered me a glass.

How did he do that?

He punched the window and then then my aari always kept on my dash, He grabbed it and threw it across the yard into the dog pin.

Fift.

That's a gun, yes, and so you broke out the passenger side window and grabbed your gun that was on the dash.

And so what happened after?

I got upset because he just threw my arm But I just recently bought a few months prior, and me and my father went to another fist fight. Not to really go into a lot of detail, but my father lost.

So did that affect your relationship?

Yes, we went over two months without speaking. I want to.

Say more on that next time. For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at katie Underscore Studios. The piked In Maskers produced by Stephanie Leidecker, Jeff Shane, Connor Powell, Andrew Arnell, Gabriel Castillo and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by Jeff Ta Music by Jared Aston. The piked In Masker is a production