House On A Hill

love like something is off. This is the Piked massacre returned to Pike County season three, episode ten, House on a Hill. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane. In researching this story, we sometimes find ourselves mired in details that lead to dead ends. In this episode, before George Wagner the fourth Trial, we're stepping back to take an eagle life view on

the dark power dynamics at play in southern Ohio. We have uncovered some shocking new theories about what might have led to the grizzly murders of the eight members of the Rodent family. Here's Stephanie and Jeff. After following the story for years, you really start to see that there are sort of two piked in's. In one piked in there are people simply trying to live, work and put food on the table for their family. And on the other hands, there's a lot of people in power who

are misusing it. And quite a few of these individuals have used their power for personal gain period, often with brutal consequences for those who get caught in the crossfire. No one exemplifies this more than Michael Moran, who we know is a local Portsmouth lawyer who was accused of doing all sorts of heinous things. As we've discussed in previous episodes, Michael Moran preyed upon vulnerable female clients, often

prostitutes and drug users. He lured them in with inexpensive legal representation, then trapped him into sexual slavery and worse. His victims were people like Megan Lancaster who went missing in twenty thirteen. Aungie Montgomery knew her and her sister in law, Katie, who spent years trying to find Megan. Here's Angie. The way Katie described Megan to me. She looked at me and she was like, I knew she would find a way to get a whole subody. I knew she would. That's what I always you know, it

was in the back of her mind. I knew she would find a way to say something to somebody. During her tireless crusade to find out what happened to Megan, Katie Lancaster also fell victim to the pressures of life in Pike County. I'm going to be honest with you, she was easy. I didn't know it. Her and her husband went through hell right before she died. And she also told me that the court told her to stop

with her Megan's campaign. She was found in an area in Portsmouth it's known for drug dally and she was found in a house having apparently overdosed. Right that's the same area that Moran's office was in, right right up the road. Here's Jeff speaking with Sophie, an acquaintance of the Wagner family. We spoke with her in an earlier episode, but as a reminder, she's the one who alerted us to ties between Michael Moran and Angela Wagner's father, Pug Carter.

It's not a surprise to me that her dad had him as a lawyer. That was news to me. How did you find that out? You probably send the link to it. We talked about Michael Moran on the podcast, but kind of as an outlier. It just spoke to crimes that were happening in the community. But this really connects Michael Moran to the Wagner family. Yes, and Angie

was always really close with her dad. From what I remember is that there was like an undercover seeing where the police were going to his house and purchasing and selling drugs. So actual drug list is how he got caught. Another local sleuth who goes by j J, confirms the story. Everybody there in that little town of South Webster knew what he was doing. I mean, he was their supplier. Is it just mainly pot now we're talking about or party drugs like heroin and cocaine, oxy cod own. He

even did time in prison for his drug dealings. He was a want to be gangster, if you will. So that's what she grew up in, That's what she was familiar with. Billy Wagner's aunts lived across the street from the cars. That's how they had to have met. For a defense lawyer like Michael Moran, Pug Carter was probably a legitimate source of study income, but he also recognized another possible stream of cash from his less well off

female clients. Michael Moran exploited the power dynamic ruthlessly, often abusing the women he lured in and calling them the product he turned around and sold their services right back to the most powerful and Pike County. It's rumored that some of this took place in a house on a hill just south of Piketon. Here's Stephanie speaking with Angie Montgomery.

This is just, you know, frankly, rumor and speculation that there's a place that was this power slash bar, and officials, people that worked for the local police would go there for drinks, and sometimes there were girls there and maybe not such great behavior would happen behind closed doors. Yes, and if you give me two seconds, I'll give you the name of the place. It's on top of Big Beer Lake. It's just like a it's like a resort.

I was told that there was some sort of a security PINpad that you could go into that club at anytime. I shouldn't call it a club like a bar anytime if you had a key. Yes, it's like you just take this place and just drop it in the middle, and it lands on top of this mountain because you have to have four rollers to get up to it. Actually, I dated a police officer years ago. I remember me and whom We're driving down one or four and we

drove past Big Beer Lake. I remember whom telling me that's where all the cops go to get chicks and do illegal stuff. And this was in like nineteen ninety nine. He told me this, and I thought he was blowing smoke at my ass, but apparently he wasn't. So you can actually go up to it now and walk through it. There's rooms like you got the restaurant in the bar, then you've got your little rooms, kind of like a hotel. Frasier's.

It's called Frasier's Chateau Club and it's got the address. Wow, we took the address and just put it into Google Maps, and the chateau seems to be located just south of piked In, kind of on the way to Portsmith. It's way up on the top of this mountain looking over Lake Frasier, which is actually sometimes referred to as Big Bear Lake, but the technical name is Lake Frasier, hence

the name Frasier Chateau. We heard a lot about in the early days that you know, the Rodents would go to Big Bear Lake in the summertime to go off roading and tubing, and it was just a place to go as a family for fun. But when you look at this photo, you see at the very very top there's almost this fancy place kind of looking over the

whole thing and stuff. Which I find interesting is if you look at this map which we'll post on our Instagram at kat Underscore Studios, there's almost this like back road that goes up to it that almost looks like a place where you could drive a four wheeler, which does remind me of how Angie described this place. It makes you wonder what was going up and down this road, like who was transporting what to the chateau from town.

We found out that it was for sale in two thousand and one and it was owned by a man named Richard Fraser Jr. He then passed it on to Richard Fraser the Third in the early nineties. We were also able to track down some videos of the chateau in its heyday. What you see are people enjoying the better things of life. They're having drinks, they're watching the Kentucky Derby. We were only going to win about a

million dollars. The audio is a little hard to decipher, but what you just heard was one man saying bring it on home to Daddy, followed by another saying we were only going to win about a million dollars. Men are wearing tuxedos and they're gambling and drinking champagne. You know, it looks like one of those very fancy, upscale country clubs you would see in the movies. Everybody is living their best possible life. Makes you wonder what was happening

up at the chateau. What's being alleged is that this chateau sort of serves as the center of yet another backstory in the massacre that could be connected. And again we're kind of learning about this real time also. But it's interesting when things that were considered rumor in previous seasons and we couldn't talk about it really now we're all shaping up to be a matter of fact. And the more people we speak to, the connective tissue becomes

clearer and clearer. We were also able to uncover that Moran represented the owners of the chateau in a court case where they had an issue with a bank loan. So there's now no doubt that Michael Moran was tied to Frasier Chateau in some capacity. It just ties together all of these players that we've been talking about, Michael Moran, Frasier Chateau, the cops, the Wagners, the Rodents, They're all in the same world in ways that we never imagined.

We've also found road in connections to the chateau. We've been told that Chris Senior might have been doing construction there, and it's confirmed that Frankie and Chris Junior worked there because they listed as their place of employment on Facebook,

so there was an obvious connection there for work. And we have heard that Chris Senior was also a craftsmanoon used to do construction on a lot of patios in and around the area, and it's been speculated that perhaps he overheard something or saw some sort of nefarious behavior at the chateau and that people were afraid he was going to snitch and maybe that's a factor into the massacre. But again we do know, it's definitely playing a role,

and quickly these dots are getting connected. Worth noting, though, that none of our research would suggest that any of the Rodents were connected to anything nefarious at Big bear Lake. We called and confirmed with Big Bear Lake workers that the chateau is now closed. We've learned that Big Bear Lake bought over three hundred acres of land fifteen years ago, which included the chateau. The current owners have nothing to

do with the chateau. According to the person we spoke with who has worked at Big Bear Lake for fifteen years, thieves who rode around on ATVs would come in and have completely destroyed what was left of the property. This same worker knew the Rodents and confirmed the work they did there. The whole thing is now boarded up, and Big Bear Lake's current owner actually plans on bulldozing the

whole building in a few weeks. The Rodent men all working at Big Bear Lake just speaks to what we've heard about them before, which is that they're all really hard workers and good with their hands. Before the murders, Chris Roden Senior worked as a carpenter and Dana Roden was working full time, sometimes even double time as a nurse. The whole ring of people, the powers that be that are not doing what they should be doing, and that's

why families in Pike County feel like we're forgotten. In the early two thousands, most of the big companies in charge of plants and mills in the area left Pike County, and drug abuse was up at the time of the murders. The unemployment rate was also at eight point six percent, compared to five point one percent nationwide. You know, you've got people that are hard working people segre marijuana. It's so bizarre to people outside, you know, the rural communities

that don't know the goings on. As reported at the time of the murders, the Rodents had two hundred marijuana plants with a street value of about half a million dollars. I thought the cartel did it. I really did. And I've talked to people in the area who said they swear the cartal did it. Cartel activity in the area is documented. In twenty ten, a large marijuana seizure just fifteen miles west of piked In was suspected of being

linked to the Sinaloa cartel. Two years later, another pot buzz yielded solid evidence of a campsite set by the Mexican nationals. According to a Wagner family insider, it's been going on for years and there are rumors that the Wagners were wrapped up in it as well. Again, these are simply rumors about the Wagners being involved in the cartel that we have heard throughout the years. However, it seems likely that any potential connections between them were also investigated.

Maybe they got mixed up with the cartel. Bol I live in Chill Coffee and whenever you get down through Waverley, they're a big horse table and my whole wife And when I say it was legit, cartel lived there, my mom and dies at several electric drops form and they would even tell you that the horses that they ship didn't had drugs in them. And that's why I said it was so close too. Then she's referring to the cartel location being close to Frederica and George Wagner Senior's

horse farm. Orge Wagner Senior, which was Billy's father, was a drug dealer too, and he would put bags of dope and these female horses of vaginas and ship them that's FUNDI transported as drugs. It was right in the back door. You know what about thee what live at your Bible and the horses. It threw me into that thing, thinking of the horses with Freddie and them with horses, that Mexicans shipping the horses. You know, maybe there was something here. I need to point out that we were

unable to locate any records to support these allegations. Pike Din's location suits cartel operations in the Midwest perfectly. There's a lot of cartel in that area, and they grow in the hills. You know, it's re fertile ground, and it's you know, it's easy to hide. It's also a known trafficking route in southern Ohio. US through twenty three runs from the state line in Portsmouth north through Piken, Columbus, and eventually into Michigan. But before nineteen twenty six, Portsmouth

was the southern terminus of the road. Three years later it was expanded, eventually running all the way to the Atlantic Ocean in Jacksonville, Florida. Now, the two lane divided expressway is outdated. Interstate seventy five gets most of the legitimate north south traffic in the area, which makes twenty three the preferred route of those trying to keep a low profile. Maybe it was some crazy thing like that, because you know who else would go in and kill

a Holdian family. It just seems to me that it was so personal the murders were to me, especially the way Christnior was killed, just how many times he was shot, Because if you're just doing this to get kustie of a child, you're just going to go in shoot the person one time, a couple of times and then lead not do what they did to him. When I read the autopsy, I mean he was shot in its extremity to torso his head. That's overkilled and to me that's anger.

The autopsies if you really look at them, if you really read between the lines and where the paragraphs leading up to the redactions, if you really look at it and go, oh, okay, that's what's redacted. There was marks in the groin area, you know, wounds in the groin area. Chris Senior and Frankie Rodent, it appears that they're janitalia had been removed. They were tortured, they were mutilated. There was marks where not a typical knife would have been used.

There was a lot of talk about do you know what a gaff is. A gaff is a weapon that's used by the cartel. Okay, what's it looked like? It has like a claw with sharp blades, like Edward scissorhand. You think the redacted sections of the autopsy point to that type of weapon maybe being used. Yes, we're going to take a break. We'll be back in a moment.

The brutality of the Mexican cartel is widely known. It's possible all the power brokers in the orbit of the piked and massacre we're dealing with something larger and even more terrifying than what they had created themselves. Even Sheriff Frieder, who was at the time in charge of enforcing the law in his dark corner of Ohio, was possibly in over his head. Here's Jeff talking about the possibilities of what happened the night of April twenty first, twenty sixteen.

It all comes full circle back to Reader. When we initially got involved in the case, the theory out there was that it was the cartel, and that theory was put out there by Reader very early on in the investigation and is what people thought happened for quite some time.

I remember talking with Rodin, Kenny's daughter, and this was maybe a week or so after the murders happened, and it was when Charlie went on TV to do a pressor and said that he didn't know the Rodent And I remember Kinder looking at me and saying, I don't know why he's saying he doesn't know us. He knows who we are. I know she just went through hell. And I didn't want to say, well, how does he know you? Or whatever you know, but I always kept that in the back of my mind, like it upset

her that he said he didn't know them. Imagine them sitting around a table eaten supper, plotting to kill eight people. It's just hard to grasp. Was there a larger and much more dangerous element pulling the strings from a distance with threats against the Wagner family and others in Piketon.

And I'm just theorizing, but it's been said to me it's possible that Jake is lying because there's death threats in some way against them behind bars, which would kind of point to a larger issue, whether that's the marijuana operation or some fishy dealings, or maybe Billy was in other trouble and this was gonna be his way out. I think they're involved, but I believe the cartel was

involved with them. It was too horrendous and happened too fast for everything to go down in a time frame that it supposedly went down in for having just two people to do it, you know what I mean. The cartel zoomed in on him, and they let it be known that if you don't take a plea, we will kill your family, will kill the rest of your family. You know, they're wielding this proverbial sword over their heads because they are involved. I mean, out of nowhere, he

took a plea. I do not think Jake could stand over Hannah and shoot her, especially with a baby next to her. Something is off, Something is not right. It's important to note that George the fourth Wagner and his father, Billy Wagner have both pleaded not guilty and are presumed innocent. No one except for the people who will appear in court next month, knows the real truth. It seems like

there are basically three ways this could play out. It's either, as their plea deals would suggest, Jake Wagner has confessed to killing five. Who are those five? We do not know. That would suggest that either Billy or George are responsible for the remaining three. Many accounts would suggest that George was not a trigger puller, and that seems to be their first line of defense. So what we know for a fact is that George Wagner's trial is set to

start August twenty nine. We're going to learn a lot more when George's trial actually begins and we learn more about the prosecution's case, but for right now, all we can do is sort of guess what might happen, And what's being reported so far is that Angela Wagner was not present at the time of the murders. Jake Wagner has confessed to committing five, and we can sort of surmise that because George Wagner saying he didn't kill anyone,

that Billy Wagner must have killed the other three. This theory plays well into what the plea deals have said so far, but there are still so many other theories to impact. Is it possible that there's another layer to this altogether, and the Wagners were in fact tied into something nefarious, Whether that's the cartel or not, and there was this potential of a custody battle to heat up. And on top of that, there does seem to be

corruption behind the scenes. We know that. So at this point there's been so many pieces of the puzzle held closed by the prosecution in the defense for obvious reasons. They want to keep their case sacred. But that's about to change once George's trial starts. It shapes everything because you'd have to imagine that Billy Wagner's trial is just behind it and their stories all better match, or is

there an entire news story that's evolving real time. We're likely going to pause just for a stretch so we can have jury's selection happen and really be with you when things start to heat up. I think there's a curveball coming. Whether or not Angela Wagner was present at any or all of the Road family houses on the night of the murders has been a huge point of contention. Added confusion is that we've read conflicting reports based on what was reported on and what we've seen in court.

What we've understood and have reported on this podcast that Angela was at home babysitting the night of the murders. However, in looking back one more time through court transcripts, we found conflicting reports that said Angela had moved two of the bodies. To shed some light on this, we spoke to Fox nineteen legal analyst Mike Allen, and she pled to conspiracy to commit aggravated murder, which indicates to me that she was not there and didn't participate in it.

Also several counts of aggravated burglary. Now that's trespassing in an occupied structure or a structure that could be occupied. But the real thing here is tampering with evidence. I checked with Mike Shell. He's a reporter here at Fox nineteen. He's been following this thing closer than anyone. I said, is there any indication that Angela could participate in the homicide? And he said no. His understanding was that she was

at home with a baby or baby. So I think the gist of what she pled to is that she was not there when it happened, but conspired before the fact. I don't know why they're so close mouth about this, but that would be my speculation. You mentioned the dumping tight lips. Is that standard or not standard? What do you make of the prosecution not releasing a lot of information.

You know, they want to keep a lid on it because it's just got so many tentacles and goes in so many different directions, and I think they're probably inundated with media request. But I will say this, it's highly unusual. As a matter of fact, I don't ever remember a trial that I've been involved with, or that I've even

heard of here in Hamilton County where that's happened. I mean, the every document that's filed in the Clerk of Courts office is put online unless the judge orders its sealed and judge is here, and don't routinely do that unless there's a legitimate law enforcement reason to do it. So that's got me baff all. I tell you, I'm sure would make everybody job easier. Let's stop here for another break.

Just when we think we know everything about this case and things are wrapping up, we find something else out and more information comes out, and it's clear that with the Rodent and the Wagner case, that's really expect the unexpected. Ultimately, though, eight members of the Rodent, Manly and Gilly family were killed in their homes and I think I speak for the entire team here at Katsy Studios, but getting to the bottom of what happened is really in the name

of finding justice for the family. We hope to honor not only the victims, but also the lives and the people that they left behind. In speaking with their family members, loved ones, and friends, it's really hard to move on without knowing exactly what happened that night, and with the trials finally coming up, the hope is that we can at least give some sort of end to this horrible chapter of their lives. While we wait for jury selection and the trial of George the Fourth to begin, we

will continue to follow leads. We are humbled beyond measure with what the community of Pike County and family members have shared with us. For now, we leave you with a message we've recently received from one of the surviving road and family members. Just know that my family, they were good people, loving and kind, very protective, would help anyone in need. I believe in loyalty, hard work, and honesty. If you did not honor these, then you were not anyone. Family,

the Bible and God. That's what they live for. Next week's episode will be the final episode of this current season. It's one we recorded live in front of an audience at Crime Con in Las Vegas. After that, we'll pause before the Wagner trials heat up. If you're enjoying The Piked and Massacre, listen to our other hit series, Crazy and Love. New episodes are every Tuesday. Wherever you get your podcasts. For more information and case photos, follow us

on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. The Piked and Massacre is produced by Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Greeves, Scott de Graw, and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by Jeff Tui, music by Jared Aston, audio mixing by Ken Novak. The Piked and Massacre is a production of Katie Studios and iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.