Wagners in Custody

Welcome to the piked In Massacre, a production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. On the morning of April twenty second, twenty sixteen, the small town of piked In, Ohio who woke to some horrifying news spread out across four homes, all within a few miles of each other, Eight members of a local family, the Rodents, were found murdered. They were shot execution style in their beds, the victims of

Frustration, anger, sadness, emotions are still raw at Pike County.

Most of the people in this town say, whoever shot and killed eight members of the Rodent family need to be found soon.

I hope that the.

UH now enforcene in this area apprehend each and everyone.

These aren't peoples, these or monsters.

Episode two, Wagner's in Custody. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a TV producer at Katie Studios. With Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane, we produced television series and documentaries. Here's Stephanie for me.

This case was incredibly disturbing and personally really hard to stop thinking about eight people from the exact same family, all killed in one night, but at four different locations. That's extremely strategic. The three of us have been following this case very closely for years. Here's producer Jeff Shane talking to Jodi Barr, an investigative journalists who have reported for TV station Fox nineteen and Cincinnati.

You're not, as a journalist, easily shocked, but like this was shocking, probably right, Yeah, it was shocking.

I would say it was more confusion because on the typical murder, or you know, a breaking news story, you can roll the events in your mind. But this is this isn't the typical murder, you know, where there's one or two victims of a single house and you know the bad guy took off. You know, this was something way outside the norm. You're just thinking, what is going on here?

This? None of this makes sense, But you knew.

It had to be something big because you've got eight members of one family targeted, murdered in their sleep, in their homes, and the killers seemingly vanished. We didn't know the pieces, we didn't know how to put it together. There was no information coming out about these murders, about motives, Even the family members who were in direct communication with law enforcement, even they weren't being told anything. I mean, call it good investigative work, and you know you hold

An overwhelming amount of tips have been pouring into police, but nor rest have been made.

Attorney General Mike Dwine is saying that over two hundred investigators and police officers have contributed so far to this on going.

Investment, and he's being offered, but the killer has disappeared.

As the investigation dragged on, rumors ran rampant in the close knit community, and journalists like Jodi Barr started digging deeper.

This did seem to be a very tactical, a very clean sort of you know, when you think of an assassin doing a hit like you see.

In the movies.

You started to wonder if there wasn't something to that because of just how seemingly clean these killings were. I mean, how does one person or a group of people hit four separate homes kill eight different people seemingly leave absolutely no trace of any evidence.

What does this mean? What is going on here?

But after I started having conversations with the Rodent family and you start talking to some people who were very close to the victims in this case, at least very close acquaintances, you started to realize that, you know that there were some people that even I had conversations with than Pike County, who I knew they knew more than

What did that mean? We didn't know.

By the summer of twenty eighteen, the investigation had entered its second year and piked in. Residents like Barbara were becoming increasingly scared.

It's an extremely sinister thing that occurred. It's like a movie. When I was young, people got along and you know, it was we left our doors unlocked. It was. It was that trusting and relaxed in Pike County, so we could believe something like that what happen here.

And it was.

It was especially terrifying because no one knew who did it or why. And you don't know if your family's next.

It's just a grizzly scene in a grisly situation.

If you are fearful, arm yourself. If you feel that you need to protect yourself or family, do so.

On November thirteenth, twenty eighteen, everything was said to change. Here's Governor of Ohio, Mike Dwine, then Attorney General.

Well, good afternoon.

We promised that the day would come when the rest would be made in the Pike County masters.

Today's that day.

In a series of arrests that sent shock waves through the insulated community, six members of a local family, the Wagners, were taken into custody.

Up your hands all right, brung up whack hollar.

Forty seven year old Billy Wagner is the patriarch of the Wagner family and was arrested near Lexington, Kentucky, in a horse trailer that was pulled over.

Go down your name and Hunterback and hungerbuy.

Angela Wagner is Billy's wife and matriarch of the Wagner family. The forty eight year old was arrested at their home near Piketon.

Ohioha Angela Wayner in the car twenty one copy thirteen thirty one.

Angela and Billy's two sons, George Wagner and Jake Wagner, were arrested together during a traffic stop. George is twenty seven and Jake was twenty six. Seventy six year old Frederica Wagner, Billy Wagner's mother, was arrested at the family's horse farm, the Flying w Angela Wagner mother, sixty five year old Rita Joe Newcomb, was arrested at her home, while six members of the Wagner family were arrested in

It deals about the arrests of four people in the murders of eight members of the road in family.

Back in April twenty sixteen.

Mike Allen, a criminal defense attorney and legal commentator for Fox nineteen and Cincinnati, was covering the story when the news broke.

All the arrests happened within minutes of each other, and that tells me that the BCI, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification, who was in charge of this investigation, they know what they're doing and they wanted to make sure that they affected these arrests without any kind of problems or tipping anybody off, so they had that thing down

How rare is it to have multiple capital murder cases going. I haven't seen multiple four people up for capital murder in Ohio before.

You know what.

And I've been in the system for over fifty years, and I mean the most I've seen were two co defendants being tried for capital murder from the same set of facts, but never four. So that is extremely rare that you got for people. For defendants facing the death penalty.

The charges for the two other family members were less severe. Grandmother Frederica Wagner, Billy Wagner's mother, was charged with obstruction of justice and perjury. Angela Wagner's mother, Rita Newcombe, was charged with forgery, perjury, and obstruction of justice. But to Mike Allen, one charge brought against the alleged trigger pullers makes one thing clear.

They're also charged with conspiracy engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, which means that they all work together on this. I think it's obvious, at least to the prosecutors and the investigators that this thing was nobody freelancing. They were possibly all operating together tampering with evidence. That kind of speaks for itself. I mean, you know, once they knew that they were the focus of the investigation, perhaps they did something with the evidence.

We're going to take a quick break here. We'll be back in a moment. We needed to know more about the Rodents and the accused, the Wagners. We also wanted to be mpiped in to learn about the town. So Stephanie, Jeff and I flew to Ohio.

There was this extremely eerie vibe to the town. There definitely was a sense that something very big was happening in real time. It almost felt it felt a little dangerous.

I think eeriness, she said, is the best word, like just something was not right.

Yeah, and it's not uncommon. It was a perfect American small town, right, there's one diner, there's not a movie theater. So again, small insulated.

And you know, we just when we just started trying to go door to door to meet anyone who could tell us about the road and family.

I would say every single person we spoke to legitimately invited us inside and could not have been lovelier.

There also was the experience of knocking on doors knowing very well people are there. There was smoke coming out of the chimney. We physically saw the curtains be closed, and certain people ndstandably didn't want to speak to us, but those who did, they were so welcoming. We reached out to journalist Jeff Winkler, who was doing research on the Wagner family.

For me personally.

When I first got an idea of how their ownents lived and you know, who was related to who and whatnot, I think I originally had the sense that the Wagoners were in the same sort of position in terms of property and and and perhaps financial situation will not. But the Wagoners, I was rather surprised to learn that they had, you know, a huge farm. They'd been running various farm businesses on this huge bit of land or landlords. And there were there was something of a sort of sort

In all this, we couldn't help wonder how could this esteemed piked In family allegedly be responsible for Ohio's most horrific murder. It seemed like everyone had an opinion. Here's Andreie Montgomery, a piked In resident.

When the Wagners were arrested, you had your fifty to fifty.

You had people that said, yes, I knew that they did that, and then you've got people that say, there's no way those people did that.

But we wanted to get the story for ourselves, to talk to those who actually knew the people accused of carrying out these ruthless murders.

Hello, Hi, Dorey, It's Jeff Shane calling Hi.

Hi.

How are you is now a good time.

Yeah, this is Deray Mcalvy. She's Billy Wagner's cousin and she grew up with the Wagners.

Were you close with Billy.

Billy was quite a bit younger than me.

I was about eleven years old when Billy was born, but I was raised with him, and we had.

A whole lot of fun. It was so much fun.

We all bred horses, and we lived in Ohio and it was beautiful and it snowed in the wintertime, and it was beautiful in the summer, and we just had so much fun.

It was unbelievable.

He was like a really good dad, right, like a hard working just like sturdy, like good person, right.

All for his family. M hmm, all for his family.

Dere's depiction of her aunt, Frederica Wagner was just as glowing.

I spent my summers with my aunt Frederica.

It was awesome because we rode horses, we rode ponies, did all kinds of awesome stuff.

I've heard the nicest things about her that she was like an angel in that town.

She had to have been an angel in that town because what I seen for her, what she did for the community. She built a church for the community. She financed the church for the community. She loves people, she loves children.

But we were curious what did Deray think about the charges against her family.

Our family joke is that there's no way that Betty Crocker and the Dobe boys could ever go to an extreme of murder.

It's not within their capabilities.

They love animals and they love people, and they are really good at being resilient. And if you look up the word Hillbilly and you really research that word, they were very resilient in taking care of their family.

Somebody did it, but it wasn't Now.

To get more information on twenty seven year old George and twenty six year old Jake Wagner, Angela and Billy Wagner's sons, we reached out to Christina Howard. Christina's sister, Tabitha, was married to George Wagner. The pair later divorced. Christina spoke with Stephanie Leidecker about the time she spent with the Wagner family.

My sister spent a lot of time over at George's house before they got married. She was pretty much living with them at the time before she got married, and then after she got married, she straight, you know, moved in with them, and I used to go over there to their house every now and again, you know.

And did he seem like a nice guy?

What was his demeanor like?

He was funny. He was always cracking jokes and stuff all the time.

So I don't know much about Jake Wagner at all.

What was he like as a kid.

He was actually really sweet as a kid. We got along pretty good because you know, we just hung out all the time, played video games, went outside.

Was he shy?

He wasn't shy with me. He was a really nice kid. And well, growing up, my sisters were kind of bullies to me and Taby she was dating George at the time, and Tabby she would pick on me and Jake he would take up for me, but like, hey, don't pick on your little sister like that. What's mean and stuff.

Here's a Wagner family relative. She asked us not to use her name, but was happy to talk to us about the family. She remembers Angela Wagner as a caring mother with a big heart.

Angela was just so sweet, like she was the sweetest lady. I mean, anybody could ask her for help. I know there was multiple times where there was just she had heard, you know of Like there was a woman and her daughter that was getting out of an abusive relationship and Angela had just heard about it. She didn't know this lady, you know, she had no idea anything about her. She just knew that this woman and her you know, needed help. The Angelos went and helped her get out of that.

Everything we were hearing about the Wagner seemed at odds with this image of the cold blooded killers accused of murdering an entire family. But the deeper we dug, the more secrets we began to find. Jeff continued speaking with the same anonymous Wagner relative who speaks so closingly Evangela Wagner. As it turns out, not everyone in the Wagner family has such a sterling reputation, and when the conversation shifts

Do you know when she met Billy and like when that when they got married and how like that relationship started and progressed.

Uh, yeah, that was. She has been with him for something years, maybe longer, but towards he goes now, that's a different Like I and my family we always kind of thought sometime was like off with him. We never actually never got to like connect with him in that way. We always everybody always kind of knew that there was something stranger that he was kind of he just had this persona about him, like he was just a very cold and just hateful person really is what I thought of.

So what can you tell me about the relationship between Angela and Billy Wagner?

I do know that Angela was, She was extremely She was just afraid to leave, you know, she was afraid to leave. She was terrified that if she did try to leave, that he would find her, because he made that very clear, you know, from what I've heard and what her father had said, all multiplecasions like you know, you're not gonna leave.

Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back in a moment. This account of Angela and Billy's relationship piqued our curiosity, so we started poking around for more and from about the Wagoners. Most of what we uncovered had to do with grandmother Frederica Wagner, Billy Wagner's mother, and what seemed to be some potentially questionable business practices. I followed up with journalist Jeff Winkler to find out more.

Rodrika Wagner was repeatedly referred to as a god fearing woman, was running a nursing home and doing a lot of community service and community care for people, but like the Wagers, had a lot of different sides.

To them exactly. And she had started a church as well, and she took underprivileged kids. If people needed groceries, she brought them groceries. So there is all of that, and then on the flip side, many other people say they were very secretive. There's also allegations of for example, in the nursing home, maybe some dishonest business and perhaps cheating people who were at a disadvantage out of money. And these are substantiated court documents.

Yeah, the longer we looked into it, the longer it seemed like thens you know, apart from having property and been there for a long time, they were wheeling and dealing. And I think although they were sort of pillars of the community and involved in the community, certainly I think that sort of especially when you have that sort of much to lose.

You get protective.

Frederica Wagner had very much built the family business. Fredrika Wagner was the one who kept the family business going, and she kept the family and businesses on track. And uh, you know, when you are building an empire, the last thing you want to do is to see it fall. And they were working on their fourth generation of Wagner uh dominance in the area. So I can definitely understand sort.

Of protectiveness of that.

And in those cases, you you know, maybe you close, maybe you close.

Ranks a little bit. You stick, you stick to kin.

You know, blood is thicker than water.

As we talked to more people in the community, we found that these rumblings about the Wagner's business practices had been circulating for years, and somehowd the deep distrust of the family and their once sterling reputation. Jeff got Barber's thoughts about grandmother Frederica Wagner.

All I've ever heard about her is one I've heard how wonderful she is, how generous she was. I never heard a bad word about that woman.

But just you know, she knew what she was doing, and she just did what she could do to keep them from being guilty, to keep them from being found guilty or from being arrested, you know.

What I mean.

Yeah, they seem like everyone was on the surface, like everyone loved them, and then when this happens, all the other dirt kind of starts coming out.

It's like I can see beneath that surface, you know, I feel like I can see her heart. When I look at her, I just see is just kind of see evil.

But while Frederica Wagner may have been involved in some questionable business dealings and to some accounts, Billy Wagner may not have been the best husband. We still didn't know what all this had to do with the Rodents. At their arraignment, all six members of the Wagner family pled not guilty to all charges. It is worth noting, however, that the charges against Frederica Wagner were eventually dropped and

According to official court documents, all four of the Wagner family are considered trigger pollers, meaning each one of them had a hand in killing the Rodents that night, which means they drove house to house the time, killing eight people.

It's also been speculated that Angela Wagner was really the mastermind of this whole plan. When you look at her picture, for example, her mugshot, she just looks like a regular mom that you would see at the market. She doesn't at all fit the profile that I have in my head of what a serial killer or a mass murderer should look like. And if she did do this, why did she put this plan together? Because she wanted to

Again, you know, we obviously wanted to go back and see what was the lead up, what brought us to this point, and what was the intersection between the Rodent family and the Wagner family. We got very curious about the relationship between Jake Wagner and Hannah Rodin. Here's the anonymous Wagner relative again, Jake.

She had got involved with with Hannah Roden.

Hannah Rodin is the middle Rodent child and murder victim. She was found dead in bed next to her five day old baby, Kylie. She shared a child with Jake Wagner, a two and a half year old daughter named Sophia.

Eventually, you know, they had separated. In everything that they had separated, I guess.

On five term.

It seemed that the demise of their relationship had sparked an ugly custody battle surrounding Sophia.

Hannah she was, you know, refusing to allow him to see her, to get her or any of the family to see her, and so it kind of just it got out of hand. At that point it just set him off to the point where Jake he had made the comments you know that he were going.

To kill her.

Next time on the Pikes and Massacre. Piked In 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 a production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.