The Victims Need a Voice

destroyed and decimated, which certainly happened in this case. But as the story unfolded, and as we started piecing together things and talking with family members and law enforcement and people in the community, it just became clear to me. I guess that this was a special place. This is the Pikedon Massacre. Returned to Pike County, Season two, Episode six, The Victims Need a Voice. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane.

The day that eight members of the Rodent family were found murdered, journalist Chris Graves began covering the story for the Cincinnati Enquirer. Her insight is crucial, as she spoke with members of the victims families, the Manli's and Gillies in the immediate aftermath of the killings. She's the only journalist to conduct an exclusive interview with the Wagner family. Just weeks after the Rodents were found dead. Graves sat down with Jake Wagner, who has now pled guilty, and

his accused mother, Angela. We finally got Chris Graves to sit down for an interview after many tries. She's speaking out now because she feels it's imperative that the victims have a voice in this story. This is highly significant due to the current gag orders. Here she is speaking to our producer, also named Chris Graves. When did you first hear about the Rodent murders? So I first heard

about the crime the friday in which it broke. I saw a tweet, as I recall, and the first news of this was that there were people dead in Pike County and that the police were beginning to investigate. So my news instincts kicked in, and then I texted our editors and said, this is our story, this is what I was thinking. Multiple people found Daddy in more than one location along Union Hill Road and piked in this morning.

My two PM investigators say they found eight people dead, seven adult victims and a sixteen year old boy, all from the road. And family. There is a shooter or shooters out there somewhere. No one is in custody right now. Whoever they are, they were trying to possibly wipe out this entire family. I was trying to get somebody who's on the ground, who has eyes, who can help you as a reporter, because when stories like this begin to unfold,

there's just so much you don't know. You don't know anything. There was a church right across from Union Hill Road, and I managed to get Reverend Phil Fulton on the phone, and I, you know, I just started interviewing him. And during the course of that conversation, I could hear the Reverend Fulton talking with what appeared to be a family member who turned out to be Leonard Manly. Leonard is the father of Dama Many Roden, also the grandfather of

Hannah Roden, Chris Junior, and all of the kids. So I asked him if he could put Leonard Manley on the phone, and he did, and that was the first time I talked with a family member. He was able to tell me in that conversation who they believed had been killed, and it was his daughter who found the first four victims, who made the first nine one one call, which we've all heard. I was trying to on the phone, pieced together who all these people, what their relationships were,

Who were they, what were their relationships? It was certainly horrific and tragic. Pikeden is a small community where everyone knows everyone, and as you can imagine, the town is just stunned, cunshock thinking about the whole family. Really, it is hard to believe. It's such a useless strategy. I just don't understand why it happened here. It was one of the things, you know, pinched me, wake me up. Sometimes I'll wake up, but they'll just feel like a dream.

On April twenty fourth, twenty sixteen, Chris Graves made her way to Pike County. That church became a place for both law enforcement and the family to gather, and I asked the Reverend Fulton if I could attend his church service on Sunday, which is what I did. I went down into church and listened to his sermon. What was that sermon like on that Sunday. It's a small church, it's not a big church. Pastor Fulton sort of lives in the community, has lived in the community, sort of

grew up there. He preached there for forty three years. He talked a lot about this is what a church does. It's you know, it's a shelter, a refuge, a safe haven in a dark storm. He talked about the need for the community to come together and support a family. There was a lot of singing in turn to the

scriptures or inspiration and solace. He talked a lot about evil and what evil would descend to do this small country church just up the way north of RU thirty two, helping some of the family and friends as they come to grips with an unspeakable event. Can you describe the evil community is? I don't think you can really describe. It is just unbelievable. These things that's happening and going on, and such tragedies like this, we should not have them.

You were faced with this giant puzzle, a very tragic puzzle that you were trying to put together so that others could learn what it possibly happened. Right, You're trying

to find the truth. You're trying to figure out who is in a relationship with whom and how were these people connected, what could have happened, where did they work, what's all the prior criminal history of everybody, and you're sort of left as a reporter to I mean, really kind of do knock on doors, talk to people, try to figure out, you know, talk to the people who are closest to the information, and begin to sort of piece stuff together. And what was the result of that.

I think this part of America gets a little bit of a rap that it's a very and it is. It is insular, but it's also kind. People were kind when they maybe shouldn't have been, you know, at least to me. And I just I really just wanted to

understand the victims. I wanted to understand family. So I spent hours, sometimes oftentimes interviewing not just family members, but people who lived, you know, down the road and across the way, and you know, the librarian, and I mean all kinds of you know, certainly the sheriff and the attorney general and all of that. People call it and we did too, the road in case of the road, and certainly their family lost the most people, which sounds

horrific even to say. I mean, I just like, there's no good words for any of this, but I mean there are three family units. The Manlies, the Gillies, and the rodents. Hannah Gilly is a little often turned into a rodent or a footnote, right, we don't get to explore her world nearly enough. And that's the other thing I think about Hannah Hazel. That's what they call Hannah Hazel Gilly to make the distinction between Hannah may Roden. You know, she became I think, by default a rodent.

So when we first started writing, and I mean I did think about that, like how we're sort of saying, well, it's rodents, and I thought, well, she's essentially a rodent. I mean, she was engaged to Frankie, they were going to get married, they'd had a child together. She lived for her son, you know, was really into nursing and the health of him, and was trying to eat healthy. She graduated from high school, was totally in love with Frankie.

They were you know, it's everything, building a life. She saw herself as a road And having said that, she's still a Gilly. And so this amount of devastation to essentially three families, all of whom live in close proximity to each other, and their families or have been in various stages differently intertwined, and the ripple effect of that and the children, which is what hit me the hardest.

I'm a mother of two. And the idea that there were three very small children at the crime scenes and they were found alive and physically unharmed resonated with me. Ohio Attorney General Mike Dwine giving an update. Three children did survive, a four day old, a six month old, and a three year old. I think what makes this particularly grizzly is the fact that you have these children involved who obviously were there when executions took place. You know, heartbreaking.

I mean, you know the one mom apparently was killed with the four day old right there. I mean, it's just, you know, which it's just hard to believe. Then I went and did my first column, and I just went driving Pike County. It's pretty, rolling hills, It's absolutely beautiful, and it was starting to warm up. Things were beginning to bloom. There were fields of yellow and purple, and

I mean, it's just it was just absolutely beautiful. All of the things that someone who looks for ways in which to tell stories you look for, right, I mean, as this county was going through its spring rebirth, it struck me that this tragedy was rippling across sort of these beautiful fields of yellow flowers, and I just could

not get those three children out of my head. And I just started looking out and I started to cry, I truthfully, and sort of became, I don't know, overwhelmed, but I I came around or down a hill and I saw a house just sort of out on its own, with, you know, a couple of rocking chairs on the porch, and you know, they were just rocking, but nobody was

in them. And I sort of started thinking about this lullaby It's called the Appalachian Lullaby, and it just it just started going through my head and I was remembering pieces of it, and I just couldn't help but think about those children and who would rock them to sleep, and who would hold them tight, and who, you know, who would sing them lullabies to sleep. And I thought, that's what this is about. This was more than just a homicide or a multiple homicide or a mask killing.

It's about who takes care of those babies and what in the world happened here, and those children's lives will never be the same. These are families, so many lives affected, and the ripple effects of that which will go on for decades and generations. They now are and will forever be bound by this horrible tragedy. But both their strength and their resilience and their resolve and their pain, I mean, it's incredible to me. I don't, I don't. I'm struggling

with words because I don't know the right words. Truthfully, it's it's heartbreaking and um and just awe inspiring. Somehow they're survivors. So that's what I wrote about. Nobody can imagine what this family has been through. Only the other families, the Manlies, the Ali's, those families are suffering as much as we are. They only know what we are all going through every day we live with this. It never

goes away. I can tell you that even though it's been extremely hard, that I know our family will never stop. We will never give up. We will never give up trying to find and bring the people whoever did this to justice. We will not give up. Can you describe your first impression to the Wagner's. My first interview with Jake Wagner and his mom, Angela was on May thirty first, twenty sixteen. You know, so, what is that six weeks after the homicides. I had talked with other people who said, oh,

they probably aren't going to talk to you. They're pretty to themselves. But I knew that Jake and Hannah had been on a relationship and had had shared a child. Said well, well, you know, we'll go try. I showed up, and he and his mom agreed to the interview. He and Angela outside their home, which was searched two years later. We sat outside on a patio area and talked for

I don't know, two and a half hours. Maybe there were children's toys everywhere, like those little pretend little cars that they drive that are motorized, or little tikes, you know, the slides and all of that. It seemed like, Wow, here's a family who really digs their kids and or grandkids in Angela's case, and I was trying to establish who were the Wagners, Who are the Wagoners? When did you start dating Hannah? What was that relationship? You know?

He didn't dodge questions, looked me in the eye when I interviewed him, really nice. It seemed to me as if when we had talked that very first time, that he was truly in love with Hannah. Whatever that means. But he thought that they were going to be that it would all that there would be a reconciliation and they would all come together, and he had this idea in his head about what that would look like. And I told him this, like, Wow, for a young man,

you seem to have everything lined up, you know. I mean, he was saying, well, we were going to do this, he and Hannah, we were going to do this. We're going to do this. My plan was this. And I was like, wow, that's a lot of you are really linear, I think, is what I said. Everything's has to line up. And I was sort of taken by that. I didn't quite know what to think of it. But again, I try to keep my mind as open as possible when

I'm interviewing people. If in fact, what Jake Wagner said is true, And he committed five of eight murders and then went to sleep that night, took a shower, and then had the nerve to sit down with you straight faced and said, I'm good, you know, like a regular person. That's so unfathomable to me. Humans are multifaceted. I've said

for years that being a reporter didn't get easier. It gets harder the longer you do it, because the world, you begin to understand the world is multidimensional and things are very it just there's not sometimes these clear things they're not. I have a lot of questions, as someone who's talked to Jake before, I have tons of questions, as you can only imagine. But yeah, I mean, it seemed to me as if as I just painted, You know, there were toys everywhere. He talked about his daughter all

the time. He talked about you know, for instance, he could name movies they all watched together, the books he would read her before they went to bed, what he told her about where her mom was. You know that mom's with Jesus now, he said, You know, I don't know how to explain to her that mom isn't coming back. Did you ask where his daughter was that night? I mean, it was my understanding that this was his week to have the child, and he had gotten the child a

day earlier then he would normally have done that. Fast forward five years. If Jake Wagner is to be believed by what he said in court, what we still don't know is where all four of the Wagoners were the night and early morning of the twenty first and twenty second. So there's an assumption I think that all four of the Wagners participated physically in the crimes. I don't know

if that's true. I simply don't know that. What Jake said, and as you all know, what Jake said in court is that he was quote unquote personally responsible for five of the eight victims. So I don't know where his brother was, his dad, or his mom. What was Angela Wagner? Like, Jake talked a lot more than Angela, but Angela would add on things as Jake talked. But any in person interview I did with Jake, Angela was there and didn't leave. I mean she was a mom. I mean that's how

I saw it. You know, she's a mom. Here her Again, this is six weeks after these homicides, and when I you know, and again I'm not trying to be sympathetic to the Wagner's right now, I'm not, but again, dialing back five years, I show up on your doorstep, and if I'm the mom and my son has just lost the mother of his child, I guess I thought she was just being a protective mom. I'm here for my kid kind of thing. Again, this all looks different today

than it did five years ago. At the time, did you feel like they might have been guilty or did you believe what they were saying or do you not put yourself in that position to even have an opinion? I had somebody asked me, I don't even know a couple of years ago, what's it like to look into the eyes of pure evil? I said, I don't know. Sometimes I think that people think it would you would just automatically. I don't know that some like I have some kind of radar that go off that we're you know.

But they weren't suspects, so I wasn't approaching them with that in the back of my mind, like, oh, now you're suspects in this. It was more information gathering. They didn't seem nervous. I don't think they ever asked me, because sometimes in interviews people will say, oh, don't use that, or don't use that, or that makes me nervous, or I mean I don't recall any of that. You know. It wasn't any like, well you can't use that, or what are you doing or any of that. But I don't.

You know, again, you don't know what you don't know, And to be completely honest, I did ask them Angela and Jake Wants via email, just straight out did you kill them? And they never responded. We're going to take a quick break here. We'll be back in a moment. In twenty seventeen, the investigation ramped up. More than two dozen investigators are focused on solving one of Ohio's largest

mass murders in history. As of today, we've received eight hundred and eighty three tips, we have conducted four hundred and sixty five interviews, thirty eight search warrants have been issued, and sixty cyber extractions have been done. They say they made a significant progress in the investigation, believe more than one person committed the crimes, but to day, the killers are still on the loose. When did you hear that the Wagoners were suspects? All of a sudden, I got

a tip from somebody. They said, hey, have you heard about the search at the Wagoners? And it became really clear to me that they must have had something, because you'd have to have probable cause. So whatever it was that got them probable cause to do the search, I thought, well, they found something, because it isn't just going to be a fishing expedition, right. So I got in my car and I drove there, and there were helicopters up and

there were law enforcement, like on four wheelers. I was sitting there at the search and someone said, well, you know the house is sold. I said, no, I don't know that. And then I sat in my car and looked up the property records and saw that it was on the market. And then you start connecting the dots in your own head, right, And I was like, whoa wait a minute, wait a minute. And then I found out they were in Alaska. The Wagners were in Alaska. And then I went to the editor and said, I

need to go to Alaska. I need to talk to them. We have major developments tonight in a bazaar and tragic murder case with ties between Ohio and Alaska. Investigators want any information the public has about the Wagner family. That someone has information, it really is in their best interest to come forward voluntarily, thank you of us that information. They're not messing around. We're going to ask for people if they're building evidence from us, so it's in their

interests to come forward. They went somewhere where you had to really want to find them, to find them, right, It did seem like they were trying to get lost in a way. They lived in a rural part that's a Kenai peninsula, and Alaska is expansive, but I mean everything is so far from everything else. I talked with people in you know, a little like a little cafe. People knew that they were there, but it wasn't any

big deal. They were like, oh, you mean the people who are wanted in Ohio for killing all those people. Attorney General Dwine you know, said they were you know that, while not calling them suspects, said, you know, they were laser focus of the investigation. And I'm like, well, actually, they're not really wanted, you know. I mean that was the thing that was really interesting. By the time the news got there, most people thought they were wanted, but

that didn't seem to bother people. I remember quoting a guy saying, well, this is where people come to get lost, you know, it's no surprise. I remember being struck when we drove there that, well, of course they live here. It looks just like Pike County. You know, it's wooded, it's beautiful. When I knocked on the door, she came to the door and I said, Angela, I'm here, let's talk. And she was sort of startled, I think to see me.

And then Jake came to the door, and the little girl came, and Jake Wagner says, oh, my gosh, Chris, it's so great to see you. It's so great to see somebody. I mean, there was no trepidation, but Billie did yell. I never saw him, but he yelled from the living room, Hey, Angela, what are you doing? You know, get back in here. And she's like, oh, don't mind him. You know, his barks hours in his bite. I mean, they were like, well, I don't know about this. We've

got a lawyer back in Ohio. I don't think we should say anything until we talked to him. I was like, well, I'd really like to do a sit down interview. I'd really like to record it. Then it became a back and forth about well, who's your lawyer, how do I talk to him? Where do I get him? What will we do? I need to talk to him, and then I had a long conversation with him on the phone,

but he was in Ohio. So I go all the way to Alaska to talk to somebody in Ohio, and he was the one who made it sound like the Wan was harassing them. This is all harassment. They've done nothing but be cooperative. They've cooperated one hundred and ten percent. They've given over their laptops, their phones, they've provided DNA, they've agreed to any number of interviews with a BCI, which is the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. They've told

authorities that they were going to Alaska. The state is making them look like suspects when they haven't called them suspects. And then he said that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to give the interview like they basically agreed to it, and then said, NOLP, never mind, we've changed our mind, which is really unfortunate. It was the last time Chris Graves would ever speak with the Wagner family. However, she recently returned to Pike County for the first time

in years after hearing some shocking news. Exactly five years after the road and murders in Pike County, one of the four defendants, Jake Wagner, is pleading guilty to all counts. In exchange, he avoids the death penalty and will serve multiple life sentences with no chance at parole. His father, mother, and brother are similarly charged, and they've pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors say that Jake will testify against them. Hearing the prosecutor sort of described that he, you know, he's going to change his plea and outlining the terms of the plea arrangement, and then when she shared some details of the crime, it was just was like, Oh my gosh, this is really happening right now. I mean, I'm a journalist, so I just sort of think about what are the facts, what's happening, what are they saying. I don't even know

if I really believe he personally killed five people. I thought, is he trying to get his mom off? Is he trying to paint the picture that his mom wasn't there or dad? Somebody wasn't there, so he's gonna like top the majority of them. All four were involved. But what does that mean? Does that mean two were involved in the planning other people did something, you know, somebody went in and pulled all the trail cameras, but weren't involved

in the actual shooting. I don't again, we don't really and I know I'm saying this all the time, but we really don't know A ton of these details. A lot of it, even with his guilty plea, is speculation. So I don't know. I'm like, well, is he trying to spare as he trying to lie about who was there? I mean, he's lied before, so why would he tell the complete truth? Now let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back in a moment. Like everybody, I want

to know the answers. I want to know the details. I want to know, like how you come up with this? How do you do you? Are you all just sitting around the kitchen table like plotting this? And at some point, why is it that out of four people, somebody doesn't say, uh no, no, it's one thing to talk about it. But now we're doing it, and we're building silencers and we're plotting things as I mean, as it's been described.

In some mental way, you're imagining you're doing something good for the benefit of your kin, your grandchild, But why would you put your own kids in the heart of murder? And again the idea that of four people, of four people who were supposedly religious people, not one of you said thou shalt not kill not one of you, really, not one of you had a moment where you said, this is wrong, This is fundamentally catastrophically wrong. I honestly don't.

I cannot understand that, Like, was that a surprise to you, that it was that it was them? No. The thing that startled me, or continues to I guess that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around, is that you would annihilate eight people or an entire family over the custody of your of the youngest member of that mine could joined family. But I can't think it's got to be about more than that. My gosh, I mean,

who does this or custody? You know, who destroys is a family, decimates a family and in essence then destroying that child's life to protect that. It just doesn't it doesn't reconcile with me. I remember interviewing Tony Rowden, he's the brother of the victims and uncle and all of that. I remember Tony just saying Chris, and I can't, I mean, please, don't let that be true. I hope that isn't true, because that little girl does not deserve this, you know,

for her sake. I just I hope this isn't true an he meant it. I mean it came from a very deep and meaningful place. But I guess we're all always looking for logical explanations to a logical acts. What has been your experience being back in Pike County now five years later? The question I've asked people here is do people still think about this case? Do people still talk about that? And the response that I've got is yes,

And I guess. I talked to a couple of people the other day in a public setting, and they talked in the terms of how tragic it is and how it's inconceivable. But yeah, I think it's a ballacy, and not just in this case, but in all cases, to think that there's like a closure thing. I don't think that exists. I drove past the crime scenes and they, you know, interestingly, a couple buildings that remain there a

little bit more weathered, I noticed. But it feels like time sort of is standing still there, you know, waiting for an end to this. So I don't think this brings anybody closure. I think that's some Hollywood nice version of well, now you get to move on with your life. I think that's frankly, bs, I think the amount of loss and the ripple effects of that loss will be felt for generations, but truthfully has become the most important

and meaningful story of my career. At the end of the day, I was doing my work, and I try to do that with compassion and empathy and understanding, as well as trying to find facts and being hard when I need to. But it's but then I get to leave, you know, I get to leave, and certainly they stay

with me, and they will always stay with me. But I don't, you know, I don't wake up every morning without a mother, without a son, without my grandchildren, without you know, I don't wake up having to figure out how to tell those children what happened to their mothers and fathers and cousins and uncles and that or I mean, my goodness, you know, the conversations that are going to have to be had with Jake and Hannah's daughter. I mean,

I don't have to do that. And that's what I want people to think about when they think about this crime. I think sometimes we become fascinated with the inner workings of how would one family do this to the other family. These are people's lives and I cannot say that enough. And that's what should not be forgotten in all of this is that through all of the horrificness of the crime these there are so many people left behind in

this wake. The family was decimated. So I guess that's what that I hope people take away from this as opposed to this a salacious story. On June twenty one, twenty twenty one, accused brother George Wagner, will head back to court for a hearing, one that could change the landscape of the case moving forward. But as we wait, we turn our attention to another story that has had a lasting effect on a different community, just miles away from Pike County. It centers around a notorious lawyer named

Michael Moran. He was arrested in twenty twenty on eighteen charges related to running a prostitution ring. He's pleaded not guilty to all of them and is currently awaiting trial. He's accused of trafficking women all over the country, from

New York and New Jersey to Florida. A lot of these women are part of marginalized society right Nobody was listening to their stories before, or seeing them as even human They were seeing them as criminals, people who would rob them, people who were going to break into their house, but nobody was really hearing from them. I wanted to continue to investigate these stories, but I didn't know at that time how big this was. More on that next time.

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. We'd like to thank the maud Hammond Fling Faculty Research Fellowship Grant, which supports faculty research at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, where Chris Graves teaches journalism. The Piked and Massacre Returned to Pike County is a production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.