To Protect & Serve

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kase stand of Ohio versus Charles Reader. Case numbers twenty nineteen CR sixty eight The Coroner now Here from mister Reer I stand here before you today to take accountability for my actions. To accept responsibility for my conduct, I said, Sheriff of Ohio, I should excuse me. Everything that I'd worked for professionally, in honorably for twenty five years was stripped to me with nobody good pointing but myself. If I could go back and change it, I would a

million times. This. This is not who I am. Never ever did I imagine myself on the defense side of this court route that I've spent twenty five years of my life in this county in law enforcement. I am a good person, make bad decisions and choices I have, and I'm out pray that the work will find mercy on me. This is the Piketon Massacre. Returned to Pike County season two, episode five, To Protect and Serve. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a television producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie

Laidecker and Jeff Shane. On the morning of April twenty second, twenty sixteen, the Pike County Sheriff's Office responded to calls of multiple homicides in what would soon be considered Ohio's most notorious mass murder. The bodies of seven adults and one sixteen year old boy were found in four different locations along a country road in Pike County. We know all of these victims all members of the Rodent family.

The shootings have left the town of Pike and numb a lot of unanswered questions as to how this unfolded and who is responsible for that. As news of the tragedy emerged, the nation turned to the area's top law enforcement official for answers, Pike County Sheriff Charlie Reader, to give a brief update on what we are doing at this time. I have deputies from my county and other counties that are keeping the scenes secured. Here's reporter James Pilcher.

He's the one updating the media. He's the one who is available. He's the one when you wanted to ask how things are going. He was the one that you call, so he began the face of the investigation early on. This investigation is very large, one probably the largest in Pike County that we've ever had and been a part of. It's very tragic. I want everybody to be patient, but understand that we are working around the clock, twenty four hours a day. But this is going to be a

very lengthy reporter. Angeinette Levy covered many of readers briefings during the course of the road and murder investigation. You know, he was out in front of us, standing next to the Attorney General at the time, doing press conferences with him, and he often became very emotional and people there were a lot of people in Pike County who really really liked him. You came in like thieves in the night and took eight lives, some being children. We are getting closer.

The family and the victims will have justice one day. Charlie Reader, by all accounts, is somebody who grew up in Pike County. He did not come from a well to do family or anything like that. A lot of people out in Pike County or poor. He worked for many years for the Pike County Prosecutor, Rob Junk. He was his investigator, and at some point Charlie Reader was appointed the sheriff by the Democratic Party in Pike County. Criminal defense attorney Mike Allen remembered Readers twenty and sixteen

flight election. He got seventy five percent. It probably got twenty five percent. It's pretty unheard of in any kind of election, so at one point he was pretty popular sheriff. There were a lot of people in the community who felt that he did some good things at the sheriff's office when he first took over. They felt like he

was cleaned up crime in the streets. Southern Ohio has a very major rug problem with hopioids in methamphetamine and fenton al in all of it, and a couple members of the community claimed that Reader really was there for the family after one of their members that died from a drug over those and helped plan a memorial three in his honor. So he was very approachable. He was out and about in the community much more. Charlie Reader

branded himself as the people's sheriff. During the height of the road and murder investigation, Sheriff Reader's passionate pleas for justice earned him the trust of his community as a sheriff of Pike County or A three hundred and fifty six days into this investigation, I've got a message for the killers. We will find you, we will arrest you, and you will be prosecuted. As this case moved forward, the spotlight grew brighter and brighter in that area because

of this case. And I think he enjoyed the spotlight to a degree, and I think he had greater political aspirations as well. Here's producer Chris Graves speaking with investigative reporter Jodi Barr. He covered the road and murder case for Fox News nineteen and Cincinnati. What kind of power does a sheriff wield in a community like Pike County. He was the closest to the people of Pike County, and you see that with a lot of elected officials in more rural areas that you know, the sheriff is

literally the top dog in the county. He is the face of law enforcement. He controls what happens with law enforcement, where patrols happened. So as far as an elected official, as far as a person holding power, your sheriff in these areas, he is the man. Can something like that go to someone's head? You've worked in law enforcement yourself for quite a while. Oh yeah, you see it a lot police chiefs or sheriffs, or somebody who's recently promoted

to a supervisory position. I mean, thank goodness, it doesn't happen to a lot of them, but some of them it does. Now, whether that happened here or not. I don't know, but yeah, that very much could happen. As the Road and investigation moved into its second years, some disquieting rumors about Sheriff Frieder began to surface. As we began to spend more time out there, we started hearing

the rumblings that there was some corruption out there. We had heard rumors about him intimidating people and possibly taking money from people who were in the drug dealing business. I know, I for one, was told by some of my law enforcement sources in the Cincinnati area, Hey, you need to be careful around him. He's dirty. And these were just people that were my sources who said, you know, look, I just want you to be aware, be careful. Was it because they were afraid they didn't trust him? They

did not trust Charlie Reader. There was a rumor that he was sexually harassing some female employees when he worked at the Ross County Juvenile Detention Center. Records from his personnel file said that he wasn't the right fit and there were too many questions. He had a lawsuit in small claims court in nineteen ninety five and Gallant Police for not paying a debt, and there was a warrant issued for him, but he ended up paying it. So I mean there were some things out there. There appears

to be two sides of Charlie Reader. One that you know, the public sees, and they saw it in these naturally televised broadcast press conferences where a reader is very emotional talking about these Rodent murders very early on. And then there's something you see and Charlie or reader where when reader is challenged, you see another side of reader. So he's got a very public face and a very private face.

Then oh yeah. Investigators recently towed vehicles that had been parked at the homes where eight members of the Rodent family were found shot to death in Pike County, Ohio last month. The four mobile homes themselves where the bodies were found will be removed from the scene to be stored at a location in nearby Waverley. We're going to get right out to investigative reporter Jodi Barr live in

Pike County. While I was in Pike County, I started seeing things that I had the question what we found at that evidence ware a house where the trailers, the vehicles, the equipment that all belonged to the Rodens where the Sheriff's Office in BCI took that. So we found problems with the security of that evidence and the security of that warehouse. I'm not an attorney. I've never prosecuted the case. I've never collected evidence. But what I do know is

that evidence that is collected has to be secured. I've seen prosecutions lost in court rooms in the States I've covered because someone failed to secure one piece of evidence. And of course Charlie Reader was so central to what we were looking at. He is the man in charge that we had to go find him. We scheduled the interview and we sat down and we had this conversation with Charlie Reader. And I want to say it last it's maybe forty five minutes to an hour. And again

back to watching the two sides of Charlie Reader. You had the emotional Charlie Reader early on in the interview where he's talking about you know, the Rodents and you know what this is done to Pike County. And then I broke out an iPad, and on that iPad I had visuals the images that I had taken from that warehouse of the gate standing wide open, another gate secured with a piece of thin wire. You know, days and

nights of no law enforcement at that warehouse. And I think Reader knew during the middle of that interview that this was not going to look good when we reported it, that what we found there look terrible and it reflected on the job he did. So I solved Charlie Reader change, but he changed into very defensive and red face. But Reader finally admitted that they did not have a deputy

posted at that warehouse. Watching that avidage twenty four to seven, what Schriff Reader did next struck seasoned reporter Jodi barrs troubling.

Here is Jodie's first hand account of the interaction. So the interview ends, and my photographer and I are tearing down the equipment and Charlie Reader walks us out the front door of the old Sheriff's office in Waverley, and we're standing on the port of that Sheriff's office and Reader wants to make a deal, and he says, if we'll just hold off on airing the report of the evidence warehouse and wait until they could return property to the family, that Reader would let us in and give

us full access to him and Charlie Reader's story of the first one hundred hours after the Road and murders, and I just told him, no, we don't make deals. Several months after that report aired, I got messages from people in Pike County, one after the other telling me that there was a raid underway at this Road and Evidence warehouse in Waverley. Well. I dropped everything I was doing at Cincinnati and drove the two hours east to

this warehouse. And when I got there, there they were Sheriff Charlie Reader, deputy was with the Pike County Sheriff's Office carrying things in and out of this warehouse. And you know, I'm standing there wondering what is going on here. This shouldn't be happening unless if something's happened, we don't know about evolving the murders. This was a great public concern, but that night Reader would not return my phone calls.

It was very contentious trying to get information out of Pike County, out of the sheriffs office at that point. But after that we were never able to access him again. Despite Sheriff readers apparent handling of aspects of the Road and murder investigation, authorities were able to put the Wagner family behind bars in twenty eighteen. However, just weeks later, area journalists got word that a different investigation, unrelated to the road and murders was underway, one that placed Sheriff

Charlie Reader on the other side of the law. The State Auditor's Office released a document to all of us that stated an anonymous tip had come into the Auditor's office in which someone stated that everyone was scared to death of Reader, that he was basically a monster, and investigators needed to look into a safe that was in his office that contained money seized in drug deals, and it also said something about him possibly gambling and is

this really wore on? The investigation continued, and then words started spreading around Pike County. It really took what was going on with Charlie Reader to a whole new level. In June of twenty nineteen, a grand jury brought forth sixteen charges against Sheriff Charlie Reader. As a result, he was suspended from office, bringing his three year ten year a sheriff to a close. The indictment laid out details

of the investigation and his crimes. Reader originally faced several counts of theft in office, which is a felony in Ohio, as well as tampering with evidence, which is also a felony in Ohio. So what happens is that Charlie Reader has a pretty sizeable amount of money that he's taken

from alleged drug dealers in Pike County. Every sheriff, every law enforcement agency in the entire country, much less than including Ohio, is allowed to seize money from suspects if they think that that money or those goods are being used in the commission of a crime. Money that was seized in drug cases is supposed to be secured in a safe or in a bank account or something, and you can use him for education and purposes for the

sheriff's department. You can contribute it to appropriate charities. But in these cases, at least on two occasions, the allegation was that he took cash and converted it to his own use. So the state auditor does their annual review

of the book. On the first past, the state auditors find some money missing out of the seizure account, and then they go back the Reader, and apparently he tries to put it back, but these that leads to the state auditor's office, then diving into getting warrants and diving into his personal finance records, they find multiple expenses and multiple trips to casinos, both in the area and out of state, and tens of thousands of dollars spent to

casinos impossible debts. The records are pretty clear that showed some pretty big losses at the racetrack, and also they found that he withdrew more than twenty eight hundred dollars from machines at the Atlantic Casino, so it was pretty

clear it was from gambling. Some of the other allegations were that a lot of times in drug cases, cars are forfeited, and in a couple of the charges, the allegations are that at the auction he rigged it and engineered it that either he or friends of his would get those vehicles and then turn around and sell them, So they were very serious charges. On September twenty fourth, twenty twenty, Sheriff Charles Reader pled guilty to five charges

filed against him. They included two counts of theft in office, two counts of tampering with evidence, and one count of conflict of interest. A few months later, he appeared in court for sentencing. It was a day that Anteinette Levy would not soon forget. What was the mood like through all of this? I couldn't believe it. When I got out there that morning, the street was blocked off. Are members of the US Marshal Service there. The US Marshalls

Service bomb squad was there. There were sheriff's deputy there. I mean, this was quite the operation. There were sniper's own roofs. I actually have a photograph of a sniper on a roof. And there had been some rumblings online, apparently, people encouraging people to show up at the courthouse to protest this sentence. There was some fear that people who were really hardcore supporters of his might show up and try to do something dangerous in order to keep him

from being sentenced to prison. It was crazy. It had never even been like that for a Wagner Court hearing. We're going to take a quick break here, we'll be back in a moment. Like many of us, you might think identity theft will never happen to you, but consider this. There's a new identity theft victim every three seconds in the US. That's over fifteen million people. By the end of this year, equal to the populations of New York,

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mood was much different. We're here today for starting in the case State of Ohio versus Charles Reader, case numbers twenty nineteen CR. Sixty eight. Reader had his sentencing in front of a visiting judge, Patricia Cosgrove, who had actually sentenced three previous Ohio sheriffs on corruption charges. There were five charges, and all of those could have gotten him more than twelve years in prison. You see Charlie Reader.

He's sitting in court, sitting beside his defense attorney at a table to the left, and at the table to the right, the prosecutor who went to the grand jury got the indictments against Reader, who got the guilty plea from Reader months before. And you see these two tables in opposition to one another, and the judges in the center, and there's an empty podium in the center, and then you see people walk up to that podium, and then they start telling these stories of the good deeds Charlie

Reader did in certain instances around that county. He went through one of the most horrendous crimes ever committed in our counties. To my memory, what he went through, I can't take you, ma'am, the knights, that he went sleepless, what his family went through, what it done to his health. But I believe in his heart Charlie Reader is a good man. As Charlie made mistakes, yes, ma'am, he probably has, But in the Bible it says you who are without saying,

cast the first stone. I couldn't throw many rocks at it because I've made mistakes. To the one fact, I know, Charlie was a man you could count on when you needed him, and I would vote for him today just as sure as I'm standing here as God is my witness. After these people have said what they said, you see a Reader walk up to the podium and including now here fon mister Reader. You know he's a emotional, he's in tears, and he's asking the judge for mercy to

be lenient with him in finacy. This is where he is laying it all out and asking the State of Ohio for mercy. I said, bad light on the office of sheriff. I can only ask that my staff, their families, the community, and my family who is here today, we'll forgive me for the undooced dress I callstim I have and I'm out prayed that the quirk will lay mercy on me. I have no words for the shame that I have and that I feel in the regret that I have betrayed and just playing the trust if I

had with my staff in the community. Please do not send me to prison. I have rolled, but I'm not runned. I still have a lot of good left, did me. During the proceedings, details of readers crimes were illuminated. The state would note that the defendant was an elected county sheriff who committed these crimes in his position as a county sheriff. He used his position to obtain control over the evidence bags and then use that control to remove

the funds and use them for his own benefit. The majority of the funds involved were removed from the four evidence bags cut open by defendant fourteen thousand seven hundred and seventy five dollars was removed prior to the defendant and his attorney turning those bags over to investigators for the Auditor States Office. The different currency new in many cases uncirculated bills were put into the currency bags, so

that restitution would have been taken care of at that point. Additionally, there's a total of four thousand, eight hundred and fifty dollars outstanding, three thousand, five hundred from the purchase of the Nissan Diversa, which was the profit made by the sheriff on that transaction, three hundred and fifty dollars owed to the purchase people who purchased the Chevy Silverado, and one thousand dollars which the state says never made it

into the evidence bag. So Judge Patricia Cosgrove, she has a reputation for being very tough on sheriffs in Ohio who have been engaged in corruption, and she has no nonsense, and she questioned reader from the bench. During the judges questioning, Sheriff Rider did his best to explain his moral motivation behind his actions. Why did you cut open these evidence

envelopes and take the money out? And then in some cases you put it back, although you were caught because the envelopes had been unsealed and sealed again improperly, and the denominations did not match what was taken at the crime scene or from those individuals. I guess why did you take the money. I took the money, and mind you, this does not excuse it, but from drug dealers that took it from parents, very poor people in this count.

That money, regardless of what the state and what the media has claimed in the past years of a gambling problem, and that money being used for gambling, was used. When there was a tree planted in the name of the shopman Boy. It's at the entrance of Western High School to the left. As soon as you pull in. Nobody can pay for that tree. Nobody offered to pay for that tree. A drug diller did. When schools had cheerleading or peewee that had car washes and such, I would

have our cruisers taken down there. My men and women did not make good money, so some of them would give them two dollars five dollars. I took money from that and I provided it to those people. In the PSI, the prec Ends Investigation, the PSI officer notes, there's no documentation that you used it for those things, right, I did not document those things. He didn't produce any receipts to back these claims up, and there's a really strict process by which those sements are tracked, and you have

to produce an accounting of all of that money. So he claimed that he was essentially a robin hood. The judge certainly didn't believe it. But then the judge started asking and questions about gambling. There were a couple of times that Judge Cosgrove all the econom in a line, and she sounded very, very skeptical. Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back in a moment. At times, it is hard to not be discouraged climate change, abortion bans,

rising inequality, attacks on the LGTBQ plus community. That's why you march, vote, write your congress person, and try to do your part. One small thing you can do is switch your mobile phone to Credo Mobile. Credo Mobile is America's only progressive mobile phone company, and they donate a portion of their proceeds to progressive nonprofit groups each month, like March for Our Lives, Plans, Parenthood, the transgender Law

Center and so many more. When you join Credo Mobile, you're not just getting service on the nation's best network. You're joining the phone company that's better for all people and the planet. Just by using your phone, you are funding the causes you care most about at no extra cost to you. Learn more at credomobile dot com. And right now, when you switch your phone to Creto, you can get a two hundred fifty dollars prepaid card and they'll donate fifty dollars to the Transgender Law Center when

you use the Code Podcast fifty. Together we can make a difference. That's credomobile dot com Code Podcast fifty. He'll forget about the video game you gave him on his birthday, Wow, Thanks Grandpa, But he'll never forget how you invested in his future. What the unst app Wow, thanks Grandpa. Don't just give them any gift, give them a gift that can grow with them. Invite grandparents and family friends to

contribute to your child's future. What the unst app unst is an investment account for kids that makes it easy to gift funds that can be used for college tuition, their first home, and more. Just by sharing the link or include a un QR code on party invitations for birthdays and holidays. For a limited time, download the unst at and use the code I Heard fifty at sign up to receive a fifty dollars bonus when you fund

your account. That's code I Heart fifty when you sign up at uneest dot coo for a fifty dollars bonus. See terms and conditions at UNEs dot coo. Curiosity Stream is the streaming service for people who want to know more more about our world and beyond. Curiosity Stream has the best collection of documentary films and TV shows and now check out Curiosity's new series, The Real Wild West. Rolling Stone magazine says, it's the history of the West.

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we'll take a trip down memory lane together. You can listen to how Rude Tan Toritos on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts, brought to you by the Hunday two. Soon it's your journey. Did you lose three thousand dollars gambling at the Sciota downs Rocino between June two thousand and seventeen in September two thousand and seventeen, Yes, not by myself. They have cards and of course, beginning your honor of guilty to this, but they have cards

that you put in a machine. I can have a card in my name, and I can have a card in my name that my wife possesses, so I could be at one machine and she can be at the other, and the money that she spends and the money that I spend they count on the same card and calculating the money as one well, obviously, and that doesn't answer the question where did the money and the checking account

come from. Okay. Also, I want to ask you, in late June two and seventeen, you took a trip to Reno, Nevada for the Sheriff's conference, and then you withdrew twenty eight hundred dollars a ATM. The state believes that some of this shouldue to gambling. I mean you're talking like over or almost six thousand dollars and a couple months that you lost are expended on gambling. And at that point we were making almost eleven thousand dollars a month.

And that again was from my checking account where it should show my direct deposits, my wife direct deposits, and that it came from our devot cards where I retrieved that money. I don't doubt it came from debit cards. The question is where did the money come when to your checking account? And that's I guess that's that's that's where that's where the media reported that I had marital problems because it came from our joint bank account. My wife made very good money at the time, and I

took that money and I gambled. Okay, all right, um, that's all the questions of court. Has she really let him have it? She took no grief from him whatsoever. It cannot be underestimated the damage that you have paused to the citizens of Pike County, to law enforcement who every day get up face the same sort of stresses that you do. They go all home and night, they get up in the morning, they don't know if they're

going to come home. The sacrifices that these men and women at make, I think you've made a mockery of them. I couldn't have imposed a much greater sentence than I have. As I said, I've taken a consideration some of the mitigating factors, but punishment is appropriate. To sentence you to I considered the minimum. However, to sentence you to anything less than three years in prison would demean the seriousness of the offense and not adequately protects society from future

criminal conduct by yourself and honors. The judge handed him three years, and Reader walked out of that courtroom and into a jail cell to pay for throwing away his career, embarrassing himself, and embarrassing his family. Do you think he became a victim of his own power? He said, A sheriff in that county like that is top dog right,

maybe he started feeling he was above the law. You know, in fifteen years of doing this job, looking at people like Charlie Reader in multiple states with multiple different schemes of crimes being committed, there's a trend with just sheriffs in general where a lot of them get in trouble.

Is it because they feel so powerful and untouchable? I don't know, But man, when you look at it in the final analysis, what we have here is a guy in Pike County who had the county by a string, who had the trust of people who live in that county. So is it power? I don't know. All that I know at this point is you had an elected official who makes them pretty bad decisions and he's paying for it. Now, have you gotten a sense what the implications might be

for the Wagner cases. That Reader is now going to jail their early facing the investigation is now in prison. For whether or not that had anything to do with the actual investigation, no one knows. But if I'm a defense attorney, all I gotta do is throw up that smokescreen at some point and see what happens. And if I'm a prosecutor, I'm thinking Okay, I need to have a contingency plan to how to answer this. If you're the defense, I'm assuming you will bring it up in court.

You'll point to that if the judge allows it and say, you know, how can you trust this investigation. This man was out there on the scene that morning. I think it makes people in the county question what's really going on there? Well, we wait to see how Sheriff Freeder's conviction will impact the Wagner trials. One journalist continues to grapple with the legacy of the Rodent family murders, a story that forever changed her life more than five years ago.

More on that next time. For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kat Underscore Studios. The Pikedon Massacre Return 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. The Pikedon Massacre Returned to Pike County 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. Have you cut the chord and are feeling bored with your streaming services, Curiosity Stream can help with thousands of documentary films and TV shows. Let Curiosity Stream put the science back in your screen time, astound you with history, come to life and wildlife that will reach out and grab you. We've got the fix for your

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