November 21, 2023 • 44 mins
Hanna Rhoden,15, gives birth to a daughter. 2-years later, Rhoden and the baby's father, Jake Wagner, fight over custody. A custody battle begins and the Wagner family pressures Hanna to give up her daughter. The Wagners hack Hanna Rhoden's Facebook account and read a private message in which Hanna vows she will not give up the child, quote "they (the Wagners) will have to kill me first." That is exactly what happens.
The Wagner family decide to not only kill Hanna Rhoden, but the rest of her family, anyone who might stand in the way of the Wagner family gaining custody of the little girl. The Wagner family plan is to take out the Rhoden family in one night, four locations, eight murders.
Join Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack as they dig deep into the Pike County Murders. Joseph Scott Morgan gives a firsthand account of the crime scenes and the forensic evidence left behind.
Time code highlights:
00:00:02 Joseph Scott Morgan asked to take part as a forensic expert in a complex case
00:02:12 Discussion about the investigation of the Pike County Murders
00:02:37 Description: One night. Four Scenes. Eight Murders
00:03:09 Description of two families that have been friends a long time
00:03:16 Discussion about Hanna Rhoden becomes pregnant with Jake Wagner's baby when she is 15-years-old. Hanna Rhoden breaks up with Jake Wagner
00:04:01 The Wagner's tried to force Hanna Roden to sign papers to turn custody of Sophia over to Jake.
00:04:22 Discussion of Wagner family plan to kill Hanna Rhoden to get custody
00:05:01 Discussion of the first person to be murdered and location of murder scene
00:06:50 Discussion of shots fired through wall first, Chris Rhoden was shot 9 times
00:07:36 Discussion of second victim, Gary Rhoden, visiting from Kentucky
00:10:06 Talk about the injuries to Chris Rhoden's arm
00:11:01 Description of head shots to both Chris Rhoden and Gary Rhoden
00:12:24 Talk of how Wagner Sr said "I just killed my best friend"
00:16:25 The Wagner's didn't know Gary Rhoden would be at the scene
00:17:30 Discussion of the Wagner's make silencers for their weapons
00:19:38 Joseph Scott Morgan talks about being at the site and what it looked like,
00:21:56 The Wagner's arrived at Chris Rhoden's house barefoot but put on shoes inside the house.
00:22:44 Investigator researched shoe print found in Rhoden trailer and found a match
00:24:45 The forensic shoe print match the best evidence used to convict
00:25:34 Description of second murder scene. Frankie Rhoden, Hannah Gilley, and two small children.
00:25:26 Older child came to door (the next morning) and said "daddy's playing zombie"
00:27:10 Discussion of Hannah Gilley was shot 5 times in the head
00:30:25 Discussion of distance from Frankie Rhoden's house to Dana Rhoden home
00:32:37 Dana Rhoden's home was unlocked, Dana Rhoden's face was illuminated by her phone, made eye contact with Jake Wagner and he shot and killed Dana Rhoden
00:33:40 Discussion of Hanna May Rhoden being the reason for the murders
00:34:00 Discussion of Hanna Rhoden had baby 4 days earlier
00:34:15 The child Hanna Rhoden had with Jake Wagner was with the Wagner family at the time of the murders
00:34:35 Discussion of Jake Wagner placing baby next to body of Hanna May Rhoden so the baby could feed off the dead mother
00:36:01 Discussion of Hanna Rhoden and Hannah Gilley both shot 5 times in the head
00:36:45 Chris Rhoden jr, 16, shot dead in bed
00:37:45 Discussion of Kenneth Rhoden living in travel trailer 7 miles from the other scenes, shot once in head.
00:41:22 Discussion of Jake Wagner and his brother going to great lengths to get rid of weapons
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan. A few years ago, I
got a phone call from a friend of mine who
runs a production company out in LA She asked me
if I'd like to take on the task of being
(00:31):
a forensic expert on a podcast that actually had already started,
but she really needed the voice and maybe the lens
of a forensics person on this because arguably, as you'll
find out soon, the deaths that we're talking about are
some of the most complex that you can imagine when
(00:52):
it comes to death investigation in my area of specialty
medical legal death investigation. And without batting an eye, of course,
I said, certainly, I'll be glad to It's one of
those moments in time where be careful what you ask for,
because I really didn't know what I was getting involved
(01:14):
with at the time. Because when friends I ask you
to do stuff for them, you generally say sure, I'll
help you any way I can. And in this case,
I became so involved in the investigation and coverage of
these deaths that I found myself many evenings after doing
(01:36):
a taping session crying. I'm not ashamed to admit that,
because this goes to the heart of everything that I
place value on in my life, namely family. We're going
to have a discussion today about what has infamously become
(01:58):
known as the Pike Count murders, or maybe better known
to some of you as the piked And Massacre. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs. First off,
Dave Max, thank you so much for agreeing to discuss
(02:19):
just how complex telling this tale is from a forensic
standpoint of the deaths of eight people who.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Eight people were at night.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, at night, And let me go ahead and throw
the tagline in here. It goes something like one night,
four scenes, eight murders, and I think that any one
of those points one night, that's that's significant. When you
couple that with eight homicides that were all committed on
(02:49):
that one night, and then you throw in I think
the logistics of four separate scenes, and it literally it
makes my hit swim even now to this day when
I began to think about it.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
It did happen, and it happened. It's the story of
two families, actually two families that had been friends for
a long time, the Wagners and the Rodents. Jake Wagner
and Hannah Roden began dating when Hannah Roden was thirteen
and Jake Wagner was eighteen. Hannah Roden became pregnant with
Jake Wagner's baby when she was fifteen, Baby Sophia was born.
(03:25):
Both families loved her. Those who knew Jake Wagner and
Hannah Rodin said that Jake Wagner was very controlling, had
been verbally and physically abusive to Hannah, and Hannah Roden
eventually broke up with Jake Wagner. That's when the problems began.
As Hannah Roden moved on with her life and started
dating other men, she became pregnant with another man's child.
Jake Wagner tried to force Hannah Roden to put his
(03:49):
name on the birth certificate for the baby of another man.
Hannah Roden wouldn't do it. The Wagners tried to force
Hannah Roden to sign papers to turn Cuss City of
Sofia over to Jake Wagner. She refused, and she posted
a message on Facebook that she would quote never sign
papers ever. They will have to kill me first unquote
(04:12):
that that message on Facebook. That is when the Wagner
family decided to kill Hannah Rodin, and they knew in
order to get custody of Sophia they would have to
kill her, Hannah Rodin's other relatives so that custody would
fall to Jake Wagner and his family. That is where
all of this began.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
The Wagners, when they went about this attempt to wipe
them out, I think that they determined to order by
who is the biggest threat, and of course, in this case,
you know, Chris Rohadin Senr. Is the biggest threat here
just from a physical violence standpoint. He was not a
type of person that would shy away from defending his family.
(04:56):
He had to be eradicated. So that night his remains
were discovered along with his cousin, Gary, who was actually visiting.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Okay, that's what I wanted to get to you.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
So we've got in this first location, we have Chris
Roden Senior, the patriarch of the Rodent family, and his
cousin Gary Rodin. Yes they're in the same facility.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, they're literally in a single white trailer. And I
don't know at that point in time if the perpetrators
expected Gary to physically be there. I think that maybe
they thought that Chris was going to be there alone, perhaps,
but you know, you can tell you know, we've talked
(05:39):
about overkill a lot, you know, on body bags. That's
what we should It's a big element when you begin
to think about, you know, who targets are and all
that sort of thing. But with Chris, he was actually
shot nine times. Dave, you've got multiple weapons, and probably
the most devastating weapon that was brought to bear in
this case, Dave was was this SKS, which is roughly
(06:03):
just so that folks understand, it's roughly a thirty caliber
high powered rifle and it's a military grade weapon that
has original Soviet Soviet origins. There's a lot of them
on the market. You can go out and you can
find an SKS just about anywhere. They're cheaper than even
in AK forty seven or AK forty seven knockoff. And
(06:24):
so this weapon was brought to bear. You've got multiple
rounds that have passed through the walls. It gives you
an indication, you know, kind of Jake talked about how
this all went down and the door was closed. You know,
Chris knew that something was up, and they're fired through
the walls to begin with, and then they made entry
(06:47):
into the home. And so you've got Chris who is
shot nine times. He's hit let me see, let me
get this right. He's hit in the head, the torso,
and the arm. As a matter of fact, the injury
that Chris sustained in the arm was so horrific that
(07:07):
it has been described as almost a traumatic amputation, you know,
with the skeletal features of the arm actually exposed. This
round passed through, this high velocity round. And so after
Chris is killed, Gary his cousin who's there as well,
and he's thirty eight years old, lives in Kentucky, and
(07:30):
he shot. He's hit multiple times in the head. So
that gives you an idea that he was you know,
you can kind of imply that this was like perhaps
an execution. It's hard to score a headshot from a
great distance. Contrary to what people see on television, this
is something that has to be purposed. You come up
on a person and it's total chaos in this environment.
(07:51):
And when the from a forensic standpoint, when you think
about the nine when one call that came in, things
that was observed at the scene day that really I
think brought everything home was the fact that there were
bloody drag marks leading from the living room area all
(08:13):
the way back to the bedroom. If people can't envision
what that looks like, you think about a bloodsoak towel
perhaps or something stained where you've drug it across the
floor and it's got these kind of curvelinear patterns to it,
where this is like almost like a dirty mop kind
of thing being drug across the floor, and it gives
(08:35):
you an idea first off of directionality. How chilling is that?
Because if you see the beginning of that as just
a civilian that walks onto the scene, you see that
there is blood on the floor, which you think is blood,
and then it's leading away. Oh my gosh, what is
this leading to? Can you imagine the chill that's associated
with that. There's like debris, you know, piled up sheets,
(08:59):
all that sort of stuff. When this is pulled back,
they discover Chris Senior and Jerry in there covered up
and they're just super saturated in blood. Something bad has
happened here.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Joe to back up for just a minute, mentioning the
weapons and the nine bullet wounds to Chris rodin correct, Yeah, yeah,
all right, you talked about the arm and how damaging
that shot was. Where were the other shots? What kind
of injuries did he sustain from those nine shots?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Well, you've got multiple shots that involve the torso. And
when I say torso, we have to differentiate, you know,
so that people understand that's head, head, and abdomen generally
when we talk about.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Waste of Yeah, the torso itself without the extremities.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Yeah, without the extremities, We've got the one round that's
passing through the arm. And if people will essentially find
the base of your wrist, where your wrist goes into
the heel of your hand, moving all the way back
to your full arm, that's the area he was shot in.
So that's where you're you're radius, and you're all in
the are those bilateral bones in there that provide structural
(10:09):
integrity to the arm, and so those are are literally
kind of transsected by the bullet or the projectile and
when they went to move his arm, these bones are protruding.
And that's that's something that is generally associated with a
high velocity round like a thirty thirty caliber rifle round,
(10:30):
which is what the SKS fires, and and so that
demonstrates that that may have been an early shot. So
he's having to fight or protect himself and his cousin
with an awareness that he can't he can't use one
of his hands. How defenseless that is. And then the
(10:53):
head shots are that they're the coup de gras, that's
that is, those are finishing shots where you're going in
you know, what do we think about the most lethal
area in the body? You're gonna shoot somebody, You're gonna
pop them in the head. And then that was kind
of the finishing at that point.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Now was that in the living room? Is did all
the shots take place? Because there was a bit of
a struggle.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Here, Yeah, there was. And again back to the awareness,
it's almost like a close close quarters combat event at
that point in time where there's this, uh, this herculean
struggle that's going on. You know, you got adrenaline pumping.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Which Wagner's were in there doing this.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Well, you've you've got Jake that has entered in to
this environment along with along with his dad and and
so they're they're perpetrating this event. The older brother, George
(11:50):
had remained outside, but Jake had left the trailer to
go disable the CCTV out in the adjacent structure, and
Jake says that when he came back in there that
he knows the bodies were gone, and he actually visualized
the bodies back in the back of the trailer and
they were covered up at that point in time. He said,
(12:10):
I don't know who exactly moved them. It wasn't me,
but they were moved. He did admit and stated plainly
that his father said straight up and paraphrasing, I've just
killed my best friend. So he's got that, you know,
in his mind. And there's an attempt and it's hard
to figure these things out day. What do you think
(12:33):
you're going to do from a physical evidence standpoint, a
forensic standpoint, where you're going to actually cover this up?
So this is some kind of half hearted attempt where
you're going to drag the bodies back into the back
of the house, the trailer house, and then cover them
up with a sheet, and you're leaving drag marks behind.
(12:53):
What What are you trying to accomplish here? I don't
I don't think it's so much an attempt to eradicate evidence.
As a matter of fact, you're creating more evidence because
it's a dynamic event. You're actually for the investigators. When
you show up at the scene, you see drag marks
and blood that that gives you an idea of postmarum activity,
(13:14):
like you're meddling with the body, you know, postmortem after
they're dead. So and there was no attempt to clean
that up. You know that that's left behind. So it's
almost like a marker there that they're leaving behind. So
you know, you begin to think about these things. Why
would it be that you're going to go in and
(13:35):
and shoot these people and then try to cover them up.
It almost gives you a sense that this is driven
by you know, passion, or it's driven by an adrenaline burst,
you know, where you're in control. You're not in control
of logical thought at this point in time, and so
that you know, that's that's just my assessment of it.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Now.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Jake was outside when this was going on, and he
returns Jake Wagner was outside when the bodies were drugging.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
To be very clear here, yes, we're starting.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
With this one because the nine to one one call
the next morning that began the reporting on this was
from this house and it was the first murders we
heard about not the order in which they were killed,
which actually does kind of come into play here because
the way I just assumed wrongly that this was the
first murder. And yet what was this the first murder?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Was Jake?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I mean, was Chris Roaden Sr. The first one they murdered?
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yes, Yes, in my opinion, he was. Yeah, him, and
then Gary and again.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And that's because they saw him as the biggest I.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Saw him as the biggest threat. Yeah, and that he
could bring, he could bring the most forced to bear
if anybody was going to try to put them off
of doing what they had all sat around in that
house at the Wagner Homestead and planned sitting around the
kitchen table that it was at this moment in time
(15:03):
they knew that he had to be neutralized.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
And they lured him there to this spot at that
time with the prospect of a drug deal.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah they did. And yeah, the luring took place with Chris,
Chris Senior. You know, Chris approached the door under the
guise of attempting to buy dope or to set up
a buy with somebody else or something. You know, this
is what they had in their mind in order to
facilitate this it's not like it was necessarily well scripted
(15:32):
out and vetted and all those sort of things. But
this is the loose scenario that they had in their mind.
Either way, they knew they could get him to the door,
and they knew that with the appearance of you know,
his best friend at the door, that his guard would
be done. You know, you show up, your buddy knocks
(15:53):
at your door in the middle of the night or
late evening, they show up, you're not going to step
out on the une talk to him. I mean, if
it had been some unknown person all dressed out, decked
out in black and all that sort of stuff, you know,
you might peek out the wind and say, what do
you want? You know, no, no, no, You're going to
open the door and you're going to have conversation. That's
(16:15):
the way it wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
And so that's the first crime scene that was called
into nine to one one the next morning. And this
is where the case begins with the elimination of Chris
Rodin Senior, who was awake, was lured to this place
at this time by somebody he saw as a friend,
the senior Wagner. You mentioned earlier that the Wagners did
(16:39):
not know Gary was going to be there, or if
they did that it was the last minute thing. They
thought they were going to go in and just have
Chris to deal with. Chris Rohaden Senior. Was Gary Roden
riddled with bullets the same way that Chris Roden Senior was.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
No, No, not to this degree. No, Chris was taught
target and uh, you know Gary was shot multiple times,
but all of his gunshot ones were head shots. These
(17:25):
weapons were actually equipped with homemade silencers that were essentially
made at home by the Wagoners, and there was even
a digital evidence that this had been searched out. You know,
how to make a homemade silencer, and there were several
iterations of this. One was I think originated with a
(17:46):
mag light flashlight where you could actually place this on
the end of the barrel and create it. I'm not
going to go into great detail about how a suppressor
is created, but everything from that to oil filters to
all kinds of other stuff. And here's here's another kind
of chilling thing that occurred from a forensic standpoint, I
(18:08):
think looking at it from an investigation, they'd actually purchased
what it referred to as brass Catcher's day and brass
catchers means that it's a it's an add on to
a weapon, where when with a semi automatic weapon, when
as these empty brass casings are empty casings, they don't,
(18:29):
Brass catchers just kind of a it's like saying kleenex.
You know, it's going to catch the spent holes of
the shells so that you're not going to leave it behind. Again,
that goes to purpose, does mean, you know, I'm going
to try to do everything I can to mitigate evidence
that might be left behind. And that actually comes into
(18:51):
play as they leave Chris Seniors home and go next
door to Frankie Rodents trailer.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
This is why there was a need for the silencers
because the proximity of the homes of the scenes, the
crime scenes were very close, and firing these weapons inside
of a trailer would have woken up the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, yeah, I think that that's probably the case.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Neighborhood being the wrong term to use. It was a
rural area, but the road and family all lived right here.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah, they're kind of heavily concentrated in this area. And
for whatever reason, you know, Frankie who's twenty years old.
He lives in a trailer, and I've physically been here.
I could as bad as my old shoulders are at
(19:43):
this point in my life, I could pick up a
rock and probably have thrown it from Chris Senior's home
to Frankie's home and hit the roof of that trailer.
And that's how close in proximity. Of course you've got.
You've got buildings that are kind of in between, all right,
you've got a barn structure of this sort of thing.
(20:04):
And of course Chris famously had the large grow area,
which was a huge facility behind his house and they
would use it for a real Was it covered, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it was covered.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
So as the investigation into these murders took place, you
mentioned the grow operation, all of the Rodents at one
point in time or other were involved in growing marijuana, small, big,
what have you, or at least Chris was.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
By extension, you know, the peripherals were there's an awareness
you can't you can't live in this close proximity and
you know, and not have an awareness of what's going on.
And of course this is a straight up you know,
obviously cash business, and so that from that perspective, it
(20:50):
could be hidden, you know, if you're changing dollars and
handing things over and that sort of thing. And who
knows how how extensive the so called network is. This
is not you know, the nineteen eighties and southern Florida,
where you've got a huge you know, people flying stuff in.
It's not like that. You're talking about people that live
in isolation. One person I've heard said, it's it's the area,
(21:13):
you know, you have to pipe in sunshine, and that's
a that's a good thing because it's beautiful. I mean,
it's absolutely gorgeous, but it is in isolation. You're not
near a major you know, interstate highway where there's gonna
be drug trafficking per se. So you have to think
about that from the sense that this is kind of
a limited operation and probably you're dealing with locals.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
All right, So Gres Rodin, he is now eliminated. The
forty year old patriarch at the family. He was awake
when it began. He was shot nine times. His face
was obliterated. The nine one calls did they beat him?
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
So when the Wagners arrived at the Rodent premises, they
were barefoot, and did they not put shoes on when
they were in Rodent's house.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yes they did. And the reason we know that is
that there was actually a recovered print in blood. You know,
that they had foot protection while they were on in there,
and that was one of the things that kind of
sealed the deal because you could look back at the
nature of that print that was left behind on the
(22:20):
floor and getting an idea of the structure of the
of the shoe. Interesting little aside about this is that
it wasn't coming up on any of the reference material
for the people at State Crime Lab and this this
technician and this is one of the odd things about
(22:41):
this case, among many others, but one of the I
guess from an investigative standpoint, a really cool cool point.
She she took it upon herself to go out and
go shopping. I'll be dog one. She didn't discover these
the shoes that had been purchased at Walmart and it
was it was bott on, Matt. That's just too we
you know, I know, you know, what are the chances
(23:03):
and you talk about just kind of good old fashioned
investigative literal what they used to call shoe leather, investigative
shoe leather where you're and that's kind of an interesting
statement where you're going where you're going to go out
and you're going to seek this thing out.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Well, you think about it in this case, Joe forensically,
because these families had been involved with one another for many,
many years, there was a reasonable expectation that hairfy and
fibers and things like that from the Wagoners would be
in the road and home.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Is just an expectation based on their relationship.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, and you're right. And that's a great point because
you know, I have a lot of people, you know
that will say, well, just look at the DNA, you know,
and you know this and that, and there really wasn't
any DNA because people always want that. But that one
piece of evidence, when you think about it, that shoeprint.
And it was actually contentious in court because you know,
(24:00):
there there were questions about the experts that were brought
in to do the examination. There was by the state
they had reached out to an individual that is highly trained,
highly competent, highly respected that was brought in to examine
(24:20):
examine the shoes. And they try to make a big
deal out of how shoe print evidence is is not.
They'll try to use terms like pseudoscience, you know, to
say that you know, these markers can't be positively and
numerically identified, you know, like you would with tox college
or DNA.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
A twenty eight years earlier, they were able to figure
out Bruno ma Alli's shoes on No. J. Simpson's feet.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
You're absolutely right, and so all of a sudden, we're
in this new paradigm where you know, the gold standard
is DNA and it's really hard to live up to
right to those numbers, you know, and everybody wants it.
But that shoe print is something I think that you know,
when we go back in time we study these cases,
(25:04):
that's going to be a seminal moment in time where
you know, you talk about what were the biggest damning
pieces of evidence, and it's it's going to be in
the top five in in this in this massacre.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Okay, now, Chris Roden, Gary Roden, his cousin both dad.
So they leave Chris Roden's trailer and walk several hundred
feet to the next victim home, which is Frankie Rodin. Yes,
all right, now inside this home is Frankie Roden, who's
twenty years old, Hannah Hazel Gilly is twenty years old,
(25:38):
and there are two children. Now, are these the children
of Frankie and Hannah or their Hannah's children?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Correct?
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Well, one of these children is the older child who
eventually comes to the door, you know, and infamously says's
daddy's playing zombie. That child is in Frankie's custody, and
that's from a previous relationship. They have a young child
(26:08):
who is actually sleeping in bed with them, Dave, and
this is a child that is like super saturated in
the blood of the parents.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Backup, they leave the Chris Roden Senior they being the
group of Wagners. Now what group of Wagners are doing this?
I mean we all know Jake Wagner is the is
there his dad and his brother? Correct Yese Wagers. Yes,
So the three Wagoners now leave Chris Rodents. They walk
to Frankie Roden's house at twenty years old, Hannah at
(26:39):
twenty years old, and their two children. Now it's in
the middle of the night and they are in better sleep.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Correct, yes, they are.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And they tried to use use the method of getting
them to come to the door by knocking on the door,
and they couldn't. They couldn't rouse them. So what happens next, Well,
Jake actually enters through a window on the back of
the on the back of their trailer, comes in through
that window, opens the door so that the others can
(27:11):
get in. This child that we're not going to mention
the children's names, but this child, the older child, is
actually sleeping on sofa and Jake enters the bedroom of
Frankie and Hannah. They're in bed, sleeping and this baby
(27:35):
is sleeping between them. That's when he he opens up.
He shoots Frankie, the twenty year old who is Jake, Yeah,
shoots Frankie who is Chris, and your son shoots him
in the head. He's deceased, and then just opens up
(27:55):
on Hannah. And I find this is one of the
things that kind of left us cratching our heads about
that why why would why would Hannah? Hazel Gilly is
actually her name. She's twenty years old as well. Her
and Frankie are not married, but they are referred to
as fiancees. And he shot her five times in the head. Dave,
(28:17):
you know what what would be the need to do that?
You know, you think, well, at one wasn't sufficient, So
I'm going to do it again, just to make sure
she's down.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
But why five, Is there any something that they got
up and tried to faint?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
No, No, they were dead. They were dead in the
bed where they were laying, and that that little precious
baby was laying in between them.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
We know they had multiple guns. Was it were multiple
guns used in the head shots? Throw as at one?
Speaker 1 (28:44):
No, this is going to be a one shot, no
one weapon deal. And they're left there. And here's here's
one other thing that Jake had admitted to there was
there were apparently like piles of clothes and this sort
of thing occupying the space. So Jay had attempted Remember
we talked about brass catchers earlier. Apparently the weapon that
(29:05):
he's using at this moment, Tim does not have a
brass catcher because he's expending brass. And his big concern
was to be able to try to retrieve that brass.
He couldn't find it all and they actually found a
spent casing in there, and again that's another forensic tie
back in this particular case, and so he just he
couldn't recover everything there physically at the scene. So they
(29:30):
actually X fil from this scene and they're going to
go and go to Dana Roden's house.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Now Chris Rodin and his cousin Gary in the first trailer.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Now Dad.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Now we go to Frankie Frankie Road and Hannah Gilly
in bed with a baby between them. The baby's left alive.
The perpetrators now leave the premises. How far do they
have to now go to get to the next location
where Dana Roading is.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
It would be a very easy trip for them. You
can't see Dana's house. And just so I can set
the scene for you having been there. Where Chris Senior's
home and Frankie's home which are they would be what
(30:46):
we refer to as next door neighbors. They're on the
north side of the road. And then if you go
back up the road toward what would be referred to
as town town is still almost away. Dana's house would
be on south side of the road. Okay, And so
(31:07):
it again sits back from the road. She doesn't really
have a lot of neighbors that are near her, and
it's set back and her home. Dana's home is a
bit more robust. It is in fact a mobile home,
but it is one of these mobile homes where it
(31:29):
has been in place. It's got a built out porch
on the front of it, and then there are adjacent
add ons to it to kind of expand it out
a bit. And then there is a large garage that's
immediately adjacent to her home on a paved on a
paved drive. It looks nothing like the other two homes,
(31:53):
Chris Senior's home, just so you know, they're old cars everywhere. Dave,
you know, and you take a look at the aerial
shots of his place, it looks like total chaos, and
it's total chaos to us, but you know he would
work on old cars and all that sort of thing.
It's not chaotic to him. It's the way he had
things ordered. And not to mention, you know, the grow
(32:14):
house and all those sorts of things. But taking a
look at this, you think, well, how in the world
are you going to negotiate all of this. Dana's home
is something completely different. It is absolutely completely different. When
they make entry, you know, into her home, which there
was no attempt to rouse her out of the bed.
(32:37):
The door was unlocked, that came in through the house,
and you've got again you've got Jake going back to
her bedroom in one chilling account. He talks about how
Dana when he opened the door to her bedroom, when
(32:59):
he made entry into her bedroom, her face was illuminated
by her phone. She was laying in bed on the
phone looking at things, and for that moment time they
made eye contact. And that's that's when you know he
went to work and he shot her laying in her bed.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Jake Wagner admitted to shooting five people, killing five. Was
Dana one of them?
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Did Jake Wagner kill Dana? Yes? He did.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Now there are still in Dana's home. Hannah may Rodin, Yes, nineteen. Now,
this Hannah may Rodin is the genesis of this entire story,
the entire thing. She's nineteen years old, and she is
in this home with her with Dana, and Chris Rodin
Junior is in the home. He's sixteen years old.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
A high school student.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
And then Hannah may Rodin had given birth to a
child four days earlier.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Yeah, she's in a postpartum state at this moment in
time and taking care of her baby. Hannah may who
is Jake's former lover and had had a child who
by the way, that child that night was in the
possession of the Wagner's day, Jake had openly admitted that
(34:22):
he did not want the baby to starve because, you know,
I guess in his mind he didn't know how long
it would take for this to be discovered, these homicides
to be discovered, So he placed the child adjacent to
Hannah's breast so that the child could suckle during the night,
(34:44):
you know, and she's in a postwartm state. He's murdered.
Just let that sink in. He's murdered this young mother.
And he paused long enough to think that when well,
it would be best if I could place the baby
(35:04):
adjacent to the breast of the chock, could feed during
the night, feeding off the dead, dead mother. And I,
you know, for a long time, as I've covered this case,
I've thought about you know, I didn't know what to
think about that, because there there's there's part of it
that's very human. I guess some people might even say
(35:25):
that in a twisted kind of way. It's it's compassionate,
I don't know. But on the on the other hand,
it's one of the more sickening aspects to this because
that's this child, you know, keep in mind, Hannah's body
has been greatly traumatized. That's that is probably one of
(35:47):
the biggest understatements I could possibly make about this, because
she's been shot again five times in the head. And
I'm still fascinated by that that we've gotten both of
these young lady, both the Hannahs that are shot five
times in bed.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Joe with five gunshot wounds to the head for Hannah
may Rodin. There's still a sixteen year old boy in
the house, Chris Jr. How did they kill him? Was
he awake?
Speaker 2 (36:19):
No?
Speaker 1 (36:19):
A single gunshot wound to the head. He was actually
killed in his bedroom. Now I think he came off
the bed perhaps and was wedged between the wall.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
So now we've got the first three locations. The fourth location,
Joe is not there. These three are on the same area.
The fourth location is not it's miles away, seven and
a half miles away, and it's a camper trailer.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Correct, Yes, yes it is. You know, when I was
standing out there, I thought these other locations were truly
in isolation. But you know, buddy, when you get out
there to where Kenneth lived, this is it's not an
unimproved road has been graded. You know, there's gravel on
either side. But and the way we measure things nowadays,
(37:07):
I think relative to isolation, that sort of thing is
do we have cell coverage? It was hit or miss
at best out there, So it's not it's not like
you're gonna, you know, hop on the phone and have
an extended, extended conversation with somebody. You know, You've got
to get to a spot, you know where where you
can actually utilize your phone.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Well, now, how was Kenneth Rodin related to Chris Rodin seeing?
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Yeah, okay, so Kenneth, you know, keep in mind Chris
Chris senior. And this is a bit confusing, I think
for some folks. Chris Senior, even though he's the patriarch
of the family, he's the younger brother of Kenneth. And
so Kenneth, you know, he had he had his own family,
he had, he had children. But he lived in this
(37:53):
little caravan, if you will, little little travel trailer that
was pulled out onto this piece of property.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Seven and a half miles away from the other three scenes.
How many times was he shot? And by what gun?
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Do you know?
Speaker 1 (38:08):
He's only shot a single Tom, Dave, He's only shot
a single Tom. And when he shot he shot with
a forty caliber glock, which is one of the other
weapons that they had. They had this twenty two handgun,
twenty two caliber handgun that looked like an old fashioned
Colt forty five nineteen eleven Colt forty five.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Was he asleep and he was shot?
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yes, yeah, and it was it was stated that, you know,
his door was simply kicked in and he was shot
in the head and that was it. And then you know,
the perpetrators turned and left. One interesting little aside is
that Kenneth who lived in the trailer, in the travel
trailer that was roughly seven miles away, he even had
(38:54):
his own tiny little grow operation at his house. And
so again you come back to thematically, you come back
to the drugs, and look, I'm not I'm saying the
universal you. You cannot fault the police for exploring that
because you know, first off, you're saying, what in the
heck we've got eight dead bodies, what's the common denominator here? Well,
(39:17):
at Chris's house, he's got a literal grow house. He's
growing weed there. And then his brother that lives at
a great distance away, he's got a small grow operation,
maybe for personal consumption. Maybe he could sell a dime bag,
you know, out of what he's producing. But that's one
(39:39):
of the common denominators that you have to look at investigatively.
It's really easy, I think, for us to Monday morning
quarterback a situation like this, but it's it is and
this goes back to what I've taught investigators in the past.
You truly have to be that quiet in the center
of the storm because when you think about this community,
(40:00):
talk about eight, eight victims all at one time. If
you and I are in a basic college statistics class together,
that number is statistically significant. This is not something you
just like from you know, from the overall population of
this little county. Eight people dead in one night. That's
a statistically significant number. So everybody there, chins are going
(40:23):
to be wagging about this. They're going to want to know,
and you know, nothing will get population and more of
a stir than a multiple homicide because they you know,
people go home, they load their weapons, and they lock
their doors because they don't know who's out there. And
Dave this case, these cases took so long to affect
an arrest on and that's what's really striking about it.
(40:47):
It took that long to formulate everything. Even after you
have all of this forensic data that you've collected, how
are you going to take all of that data and
tie it back? Even Jake said, you know, they wore
the shoes they particularly wore. They put on masks. They're
not going to shed hair. They thought about that. They've
got gloves on.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Even dyed their hair. Jake and their brother a hit.
They both dyed their hair.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Well, yeah, I mean they're taking steps to avoid leaving
behind some element of their person. They wore gloves the
entire time. Even after these deeds were done, Jake went
and his brother went to great Links to begin to
tear apart these weapons. They actually took these particulate weapons
(41:33):
and placed them into buckets, filled them with cement, and
then use them to weight down what's referred to as
a goose house, which I found absolutely fascinating. I never
heard of a goose house but in a pond where
they couldn't be found. So they're making they're taking steps
to put as much distance between themselves and the physical
(41:54):
evidence that they've created, which there by the way, there
is a lot. But they tried to do everything they
can to separate themselves from it.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
But because of the personal relationships they all had their DNA,
they're here. Things like that would be realistically expected to
be found in these locations. Number one, number two, the
Wagoners carried on as grieving friends. They went to the
funerals and cried at the funerals and lived that life
for a while. They actually it took years of developing
(42:22):
the story. We now know it, as you say, the
Monday morning quarterback or hindsight, now that we know what
actually transpired, because Jake told us, I don't know how
much was really put together in the initials beginning of
this investigation based on drugs, cockfighting, surveillance, cameras set up everywhere,
multiple grow locations, and you have to wind through all
(42:43):
of this to get down to wait a minute, it
really comes down to two teenagers that have a child.
They break up, and as they're moving on to different relationships,
the boy doesn't like the girl dating some of the
guys and he uses his daughter to say she's going
to put my daughter in harm's way, and that escalates
into the only way I'm going to get my daughter
(43:06):
out of out of harm's way is by killing the
mother and by the way, anybody else that can tie
me and my family to this crime, which is exactly
what they proved happened.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Yeah, And that's the thing, isn't it. It's as these
individuals are traveling through that dark night where maybe they're
all together in a vehicle, and they're traveling out to
kill these individuals, and they've killed maybe the first group
of people, maybe they've killed Chris. Their adrenaline is pumping.
(43:41):
Now they've got to go to the next one, and
then the next one. What do you say to one
another in those quiet moments. Maybe you've got a bit
of blood on your clothes, Maybe you can still smell
the burned gunpowder on yourself. Maybe maybe just for a second,
(44:02):
you can hear a scream that still echoes in your ear.
Or here's someone begging for their life. I don't know. Again,
words fail me. The only way I can really say is,
I don't know how you take the measure of such evil.
I have no idea. I hope that you'll please join
(44:24):
me on the Oxygen Channel on the twenty fourth of
November at eight pm Eastern, seven pm Central for the
Pike County Murders, A family massacre I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks.
Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan. A few years ago, I
got a phone call from a friend of mine who
runs a production company out in LA She asked me
if I'd like to take on the task of being
(00:31):
a forensic expert on a podcast that actually had already started,
but she really needed the voice and maybe the lens
of a forensics person on this because arguably, as you'll
find out soon, the deaths that we're talking about are
some of the most complex that you can imagine when
(00:52):
it comes to death investigation in my area of specialty
medical legal death investigation. And without batting an eye, of course,
I said, certainly, I'll be glad to It's one of
those moments in time where be careful what you ask for,
because I really didn't know what I was getting involved
(01:14):
with at the time. Because when friends I ask you
to do stuff for them, you generally say sure, I'll
help you any way I can. And in this case,
I became so involved in the investigation and coverage of
these deaths that I found myself many evenings after doing
(01:36):
a taping session crying. I'm not ashamed to admit that,
because this goes to the heart of everything that I
place value on in my life, namely family. We're going
to have a discussion today about what has infamously become
(01:58):
known as the Pike Count murders, or maybe better known
to some of you as the piked And Massacre. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs. First off,
Dave Max, thank you so much for agreeing to discuss
(02:19):
just how complex telling this tale is from a forensic
standpoint of the deaths of eight people who.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Eight people were at night.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, at night, And let me go ahead and throw
the tagline in here. It goes something like one night,
four scenes, eight murders, and I think that any one
of those points one night, that's that's significant. When you
couple that with eight homicides that were all committed on
(02:49):
that one night, and then you throw in I think
the logistics of four separate scenes, and it literally it
makes my hit swim even now to this day when
I began to think about it.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
It did happen, and it happened. It's the story of
two families, actually two families that had been friends for
a long time, the Wagners and the Rodents. Jake Wagner
and Hannah Roden began dating when Hannah Roden was thirteen
and Jake Wagner was eighteen. Hannah Roden became pregnant with
Jake Wagner's baby when she was fifteen, Baby Sophia was born.
(03:25):
Both families loved her. Those who knew Jake Wagner and
Hannah Rodin said that Jake Wagner was very controlling, had
been verbally and physically abusive to Hannah, and Hannah Roden
eventually broke up with Jake Wagner. That's when the problems began.
As Hannah Roden moved on with her life and started
dating other men, she became pregnant with another man's child.
Jake Wagner tried to force Hannah Roden to put his
(03:49):
name on the birth certificate for the baby of another man.
Hannah Roden wouldn't do it. The Wagners tried to force
Hannah Roden to sign papers to turn Cuss City of
Sofia over to Jake Wagner. She refused, and she posted
a message on Facebook that she would quote never sign
papers ever. They will have to kill me first unquote
(04:12):
that that message on Facebook. That is when the Wagner
family decided to kill Hannah Rodin, and they knew in
order to get custody of Sophia they would have to
kill her, Hannah Rodin's other relatives so that custody would
fall to Jake Wagner and his family. That is where
all of this began.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
The Wagners, when they went about this attempt to wipe
them out, I think that they determined to order by
who is the biggest threat, and of course, in this case,
you know, Chris Rohadin Senr. Is the biggest threat here
just from a physical violence standpoint. He was not a
type of person that would shy away from defending his family.
(04:56):
He had to be eradicated. So that night his remains
were discovered along with his cousin, Gary, who was actually visiting.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Okay, that's what I wanted to get to you.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
So we've got in this first location, we have Chris
Roden Senior, the patriarch of the Rodent family, and his
cousin Gary Rodin. Yes they're in the same facility.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, they're literally in a single white trailer. And I
don't know at that point in time if the perpetrators
expected Gary to physically be there. I think that maybe
they thought that Chris was going to be there alone, perhaps,
but you know, you can tell you know, we've talked
(05:39):
about overkill a lot, you know, on body bags. That's
what we should It's a big element when you begin
to think about, you know, who targets are and all
that sort of thing. But with Chris, he was actually
shot nine times. Dave, you've got multiple weapons, and probably
the most devastating weapon that was brought to bear in
this case, Dave was was this SKS, which is roughly
(06:03):
just so that folks understand, it's roughly a thirty caliber
high powered rifle and it's a military grade weapon that
has original Soviet Soviet origins. There's a lot of them
on the market. You can go out and you can
find an SKS just about anywhere. They're cheaper than even
in AK forty seven or AK forty seven knockoff. And
(06:24):
so this weapon was brought to bear. You've got multiple
rounds that have passed through the walls. It gives you
an indication, you know, kind of Jake talked about how
this all went down and the door was closed. You know,
Chris knew that something was up, and they're fired through
the walls to begin with, and then they made entry
(06:47):
into the home. And so you've got Chris who is
shot nine times. He's hit let me see, let me
get this right. He's hit in the head, the torso,
and the arm. As a matter of fact, the injury
that Chris sustained in the arm was so horrific that
(07:07):
it has been described as almost a traumatic amputation, you know,
with the skeletal features of the arm actually exposed. This
round passed through, this high velocity round. And so after
Chris is killed, Gary his cousin who's there as well,
and he's thirty eight years old, lives in Kentucky, and
(07:30):
he shot. He's hit multiple times in the head. So
that gives you an idea that he was you know,
you can kind of imply that this was like perhaps
an execution. It's hard to score a headshot from a
great distance. Contrary to what people see on television, this
is something that has to be purposed. You come up
on a person and it's total chaos in this environment.
(07:51):
And when the from a forensic standpoint, when you think
about the nine when one call that came in, things
that was observed at the scene day that really I
think brought everything home was the fact that there were
bloody drag marks leading from the living room area all
(08:13):
the way back to the bedroom. If people can't envision
what that looks like, you think about a bloodsoak towel
perhaps or something stained where you've drug it across the
floor and it's got these kind of curvelinear patterns to it,
where this is like almost like a dirty mop kind
of thing being drug across the floor, and it gives
(08:35):
you an idea first off of directionality. How chilling is that?
Because if you see the beginning of that as just
a civilian that walks onto the scene, you see that
there is blood on the floor, which you think is blood,
and then it's leading away. Oh my gosh, what is
this leading to? Can you imagine the chill that's associated
with that. There's like debris, you know, piled up sheets,
(08:59):
all that sort of stuff. When this is pulled back,
they discover Chris Senior and Jerry in there covered up
and they're just super saturated in blood. Something bad has
happened here.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Joe to back up for just a minute, mentioning the
weapons and the nine bullet wounds to Chris rodin correct, Yeah, yeah,
all right, you talked about the arm and how damaging
that shot was. Where were the other shots? What kind
of injuries did he sustain from those nine shots?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Well, you've got multiple shots that involve the torso. And
when I say torso, we have to differentiate, you know,
so that people understand that's head, head, and abdomen generally
when we talk about.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Waste of Yeah, the torso itself without the extremities.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Yeah, without the extremities, We've got the one round that's
passing through the arm. And if people will essentially find
the base of your wrist, where your wrist goes into
the heel of your hand, moving all the way back
to your full arm, that's the area he was shot in.
So that's where you're you're radius, and you're all in
the are those bilateral bones in there that provide structural
(10:09):
integrity to the arm, and so those are are literally
kind of transsected by the bullet or the projectile and
when they went to move his arm, these bones are protruding.
And that's that's something that is generally associated with a
high velocity round like a thirty thirty caliber rifle round,
(10:30):
which is what the SKS fires, and and so that
demonstrates that that may have been an early shot. So
he's having to fight or protect himself and his cousin
with an awareness that he can't he can't use one
of his hands. How defenseless that is. And then the
(10:53):
head shots are that they're the coup de gras, that's
that is, those are finishing shots where you're going in
you know, what do we think about the most lethal
area in the body? You're gonna shoot somebody, You're gonna
pop them in the head. And then that was kind
of the finishing at that point.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Now was that in the living room? Is did all
the shots take place? Because there was a bit of
a struggle.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Here, Yeah, there was. And again back to the awareness,
it's almost like a close close quarters combat event at
that point in time where there's this, uh, this herculean
struggle that's going on. You know, you got adrenaline pumping.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Which Wagner's were in there doing this.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Well, you've you've got Jake that has entered in to
this environment along with along with his dad and and
so they're they're perpetrating this event. The older brother, George
(11:50):
had remained outside, but Jake had left the trailer to
go disable the CCTV out in the adjacent structure, and
Jake says that when he came back in there that
he knows the bodies were gone, and he actually visualized
the bodies back in the back of the trailer and
they were covered up at that point in time. He said,
(12:10):
I don't know who exactly moved them. It wasn't me,
but they were moved. He did admit and stated plainly
that his father said straight up and paraphrasing, I've just
killed my best friend. So he's got that, you know,
in his mind. And there's an attempt and it's hard
to figure these things out day. What do you think
(12:33):
you're going to do from a physical evidence standpoint, a
forensic standpoint, where you're going to actually cover this up?
So this is some kind of half hearted attempt where
you're going to drag the bodies back into the back
of the house, the trailer house, and then cover them
up with a sheet, and you're leaving drag marks behind.
(12:53):
What What are you trying to accomplish here? I don't
I don't think it's so much an attempt to eradicate evidence.
As a matter of fact, you're creating more evidence because
it's a dynamic event. You're actually for the investigators. When
you show up at the scene, you see drag marks
and blood that that gives you an idea of postmarum activity,
(13:14):
like you're meddling with the body, you know, postmortem after
they're dead. So and there was no attempt to clean
that up. You know that that's left behind. So it's
almost like a marker there that they're leaving behind. So
you know, you begin to think about these things. Why
would it be that you're going to go in and
(13:35):
and shoot these people and then try to cover them up.
It almost gives you a sense that this is driven
by you know, passion, or it's driven by an adrenaline burst,
you know, where you're in control. You're not in control
of logical thought at this point in time, and so
that you know, that's that's just my assessment of it.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Now.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Jake was outside when this was going on, and he
returns Jake Wagner was outside when the bodies were drugging.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
To be very clear here, yes, we're starting.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
With this one because the nine to one one call
the next morning that began the reporting on this was
from this house and it was the first murders we
heard about not the order in which they were killed,
which actually does kind of come into play here because
the way I just assumed wrongly that this was the
first murder. And yet what was this the first murder?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Was Jake?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I mean, was Chris Roaden Sr. The first one they murdered?
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yes, Yes, in my opinion, he was. Yeah, him, and
then Gary and again.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And that's because they saw him as the biggest I.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Saw him as the biggest threat. Yeah, and that he
could bring, he could bring the most forced to bear
if anybody was going to try to put them off
of doing what they had all sat around in that
house at the Wagner Homestead and planned sitting around the
kitchen table that it was at this moment in time
(15:03):
they knew that he had to be neutralized.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
And they lured him there to this spot at that
time with the prospect of a drug deal.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah they did. And yeah, the luring took place with Chris,
Chris Senior. You know, Chris approached the door under the
guise of attempting to buy dope or to set up
a buy with somebody else or something. You know, this
is what they had in their mind in order to
facilitate this it's not like it was necessarily well scripted
(15:32):
out and vetted and all those sort of things. But
this is the loose scenario that they had in their mind.
Either way, they knew they could get him to the door,
and they knew that with the appearance of you know,
his best friend at the door, that his guard would
be done. You know, you show up, your buddy knocks
(15:53):
at your door in the middle of the night or
late evening, they show up, you're not going to step
out on the une talk to him. I mean, if
it had been some unknown person all dressed out, decked
out in black and all that sort of stuff, you know,
you might peek out the wind and say, what do
you want? You know, no, no, no, You're going to
open the door and you're going to have conversation. That's
(16:15):
the way it wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
And so that's the first crime scene that was called
into nine to one one the next morning. And this
is where the case begins with the elimination of Chris
Rodin Senior, who was awake, was lured to this place
at this time by somebody he saw as a friend,
the senior Wagner. You mentioned earlier that the Wagners did
(16:39):
not know Gary was going to be there, or if
they did that it was the last minute thing. They
thought they were going to go in and just have
Chris to deal with. Chris Rohaden Senior. Was Gary Roden
riddled with bullets the same way that Chris Roden Senior was.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
No, No, not to this degree. No, Chris was taught
target and uh, you know Gary was shot multiple times,
but all of his gunshot ones were head shots. These
(17:25):
weapons were actually equipped with homemade silencers that were essentially
made at home by the Wagoners, and there was even
a digital evidence that this had been searched out. You know,
how to make a homemade silencer, and there were several
iterations of this. One was I think originated with a
(17:46):
mag light flashlight where you could actually place this on
the end of the barrel and create it. I'm not
going to go into great detail about how a suppressor
is created, but everything from that to oil filters to
all kinds of other stuff. And here's here's another kind
of chilling thing that occurred from a forensic standpoint, I
(18:08):
think looking at it from an investigation, they'd actually purchased
what it referred to as brass Catcher's day and brass
catchers means that it's a it's an add on to
a weapon, where when with a semi automatic weapon, when
as these empty brass casings are empty casings, they don't,
(18:29):
Brass catchers just kind of a it's like saying kleenex.
You know, it's going to catch the spent holes of
the shells so that you're not going to leave it behind. Again,
that goes to purpose, does mean, you know, I'm going
to try to do everything I can to mitigate evidence
that might be left behind. And that actually comes into
(18:51):
play as they leave Chris Seniors home and go next
door to Frankie Rodents trailer.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
This is why there was a need for the silencers
because the proximity of the homes of the scenes, the
crime scenes were very close, and firing these weapons inside
of a trailer would have woken up the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, yeah, I think that that's probably the case.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Neighborhood being the wrong term to use. It was a
rural area, but the road and family all lived right here.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah, they're kind of heavily concentrated in this area. And
for whatever reason, you know, Frankie who's twenty years old.
He lives in a trailer, and I've physically been here.
I could as bad as my old shoulders are at
(19:43):
this point in my life, I could pick up a
rock and probably have thrown it from Chris Senior's home
to Frankie's home and hit the roof of that trailer.
And that's how close in proximity. Of course you've got.
You've got buildings that are kind of in between, all right,
you've got a barn structure of this sort of thing.
(20:04):
And of course Chris famously had the large grow area,
which was a huge facility behind his house and they
would use it for a real Was it covered, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it was covered.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
So as the investigation into these murders took place, you
mentioned the grow operation, all of the Rodents at one
point in time or other were involved in growing marijuana, small, big,
what have you, or at least Chris was.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
By extension, you know, the peripherals were there's an awareness
you can't you can't live in this close proximity and
you know, and not have an awareness of what's going on.
And of course this is a straight up you know,
obviously cash business, and so that from that perspective, it
(20:50):
could be hidden, you know, if you're changing dollars and
handing things over and that sort of thing. And who
knows how how extensive the so called network is. This
is not you know, the nineteen eighties and southern Florida,
where you've got a huge you know, people flying stuff in.
It's not like that. You're talking about people that live
in isolation. One person I've heard said, it's it's the area,
(21:13):
you know, you have to pipe in sunshine, and that's
a that's a good thing because it's beautiful. I mean,
it's absolutely gorgeous, but it is in isolation. You're not
near a major you know, interstate highway where there's gonna
be drug trafficking per se. So you have to think
about that from the sense that this is kind of
a limited operation and probably you're dealing with locals.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
All right, So Gres Rodin, he is now eliminated. The
forty year old patriarch at the family. He was awake
when it began. He was shot nine times. His face
was obliterated. The nine one calls did they beat him?
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
So when the Wagners arrived at the Rodent premises, they
were barefoot, and did they not put shoes on when
they were in Rodent's house.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yes they did. And the reason we know that is
that there was actually a recovered print in blood. You know,
that they had foot protection while they were on in there,
and that was one of the things that kind of
sealed the deal because you could look back at the
nature of that print that was left behind on the
(22:20):
floor and getting an idea of the structure of the
of the shoe. Interesting little aside about this is that
it wasn't coming up on any of the reference material
for the people at State Crime Lab and this this
technician and this is one of the odd things about
(22:41):
this case, among many others, but one of the I
guess from an investigative standpoint, a really cool cool point.
She she took it upon herself to go out and
go shopping. I'll be dog one. She didn't discover these
the shoes that had been purchased at Walmart and it
was it was bott on, Matt. That's just too we
you know, I know, you know, what are the chances
(23:03):
and you talk about just kind of good old fashioned
investigative literal what they used to call shoe leather, investigative
shoe leather where you're and that's kind of an interesting
statement where you're going where you're going to go out
and you're going to seek this thing out.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Well, you think about it in this case, Joe forensically,
because these families had been involved with one another for many,
many years, there was a reasonable expectation that hairfy and
fibers and things like that from the Wagoners would be
in the road and home.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Is just an expectation based on their relationship.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, and you're right. And that's a great point because
you know, I have a lot of people, you know
that will say, well, just look at the DNA, you know,
and you know this and that, and there really wasn't
any DNA because people always want that. But that one
piece of evidence, when you think about it, that shoeprint.
And it was actually contentious in court because you know,
(24:00):
there there were questions about the experts that were brought
in to do the examination. There was by the state
they had reached out to an individual that is highly trained,
highly competent, highly respected that was brought in to examine
(24:20):
examine the shoes. And they try to make a big
deal out of how shoe print evidence is is not.
They'll try to use terms like pseudoscience, you know, to
say that you know, these markers can't be positively and
numerically identified, you know, like you would with tox college
or DNA.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
A twenty eight years earlier, they were able to figure
out Bruno ma Alli's shoes on No. J. Simpson's feet.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
You're absolutely right, and so all of a sudden, we're
in this new paradigm where you know, the gold standard
is DNA and it's really hard to live up to
right to those numbers, you know, and everybody wants it.
But that shoe print is something I think that you know,
when we go back in time we study these cases,
(25:04):
that's going to be a seminal moment in time where
you know, you talk about what were the biggest damning
pieces of evidence, and it's it's going to be in
the top five in in this in this massacre.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Okay, now, Chris Roden, Gary Roden, his cousin both dad.
So they leave Chris Roden's trailer and walk several hundred
feet to the next victim home, which is Frankie Rodin. Yes,
all right, now inside this home is Frankie Roden, who's
twenty years old, Hannah Hazel Gilly is twenty years old,
(25:38):
and there are two children. Now, are these the children
of Frankie and Hannah or their Hannah's children?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Correct?
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Well, one of these children is the older child who
eventually comes to the door, you know, and infamously says's
daddy's playing zombie. That child is in Frankie's custody, and
that's from a previous relationship. They have a young child
(26:08):
who is actually sleeping in bed with them, Dave, and
this is a child that is like super saturated in
the blood of the parents.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Backup, they leave the Chris Roden Senior they being the
group of Wagners. Now what group of Wagners are doing this?
I mean we all know Jake Wagner is the is
there his dad and his brother? Correct Yese Wagers. Yes,
So the three Wagoners now leave Chris Rodents. They walk
to Frankie Roden's house at twenty years old, Hannah at
(26:39):
twenty years old, and their two children. Now it's in
the middle of the night and they are in better sleep.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Correct, yes, they are.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And they tried to use use the method of getting
them to come to the door by knocking on the door,
and they couldn't. They couldn't rouse them. So what happens next, Well,
Jake actually enters through a window on the back of
the on the back of their trailer, comes in through
that window, opens the door so that the others can
(27:11):
get in. This child that we're not going to mention
the children's names, but this child, the older child, is
actually sleeping on sofa and Jake enters the bedroom of
Frankie and Hannah. They're in bed, sleeping and this baby
(27:35):
is sleeping between them. That's when he he opens up.
He shoots Frankie, the twenty year old who is Jake, Yeah,
shoots Frankie who is Chris, and your son shoots him
in the head. He's deceased, and then just opens up
(27:55):
on Hannah. And I find this is one of the
things that kind of left us cratching our heads about
that why why would why would Hannah? Hazel Gilly is
actually her name. She's twenty years old as well. Her
and Frankie are not married, but they are referred to
as fiancees. And he shot her five times in the head. Dave,
(28:17):
you know what what would be the need to do that?
You know, you think, well, at one wasn't sufficient, So
I'm going to do it again, just to make sure
she's down.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
But why five, Is there any something that they got
up and tried to faint?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
No, No, they were dead. They were dead in the
bed where they were laying, and that that little precious
baby was laying in between them.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
We know they had multiple guns. Was it were multiple
guns used in the head shots? Throw as at one?
Speaker 1 (28:44):
No, this is going to be a one shot, no
one weapon deal. And they're left there. And here's here's
one other thing that Jake had admitted to there was
there were apparently like piles of clothes and this sort
of thing occupying the space. So Jay had attempted Remember
we talked about brass catchers earlier. Apparently the weapon that
(29:05):
he's using at this moment, Tim does not have a
brass catcher because he's expending brass. And his big concern
was to be able to try to retrieve that brass.
He couldn't find it all and they actually found a
spent casing in there, and again that's another forensic tie
back in this particular case, and so he just he
couldn't recover everything there physically at the scene. So they
(29:30):
actually X fil from this scene and they're going to
go and go to Dana Roden's house.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Now Chris Rodin and his cousin Gary in the first trailer.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Now Dad.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Now we go to Frankie Frankie Road and Hannah Gilly
in bed with a baby between them. The baby's left alive.
The perpetrators now leave the premises. How far do they
have to now go to get to the next location
where Dana Roading is.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
It would be a very easy trip for them. You
can't see Dana's house. And just so I can set
the scene for you having been there. Where Chris Senior's
home and Frankie's home which are they would be what
(30:46):
we refer to as next door neighbors. They're on the
north side of the road. And then if you go
back up the road toward what would be referred to
as town town is still almost away. Dana's house would
be on south side of the road. Okay, And so
(31:07):
it again sits back from the road. She doesn't really
have a lot of neighbors that are near her, and
it's set back and her home. Dana's home is a
bit more robust. It is in fact a mobile home,
but it is one of these mobile homes where it
(31:29):
has been in place. It's got a built out porch
on the front of it, and then there are adjacent
add ons to it to kind of expand it out
a bit. And then there is a large garage that's
immediately adjacent to her home on a paved on a
paved drive. It looks nothing like the other two homes,
(31:53):
Chris Senior's home, just so you know, they're old cars everywhere. Dave,
you know, and you take a look at the aerial
shots of his place, it looks like total chaos, and
it's total chaos to us, but you know he would
work on old cars and all that sort of thing.
It's not chaotic to him. It's the way he had
things ordered. And not to mention, you know, the grow
(32:14):
house and all those sorts of things. But taking a
look at this, you think, well, how in the world
are you going to negotiate all of this. Dana's home
is something completely different. It is absolutely completely different. When
they make entry, you know, into her home, which there
was no attempt to rouse her out of the bed.
(32:37):
The door was unlocked, that came in through the house,
and you've got again you've got Jake going back to
her bedroom in one chilling account. He talks about how
Dana when he opened the door to her bedroom, when
(32:59):
he made entry into her bedroom, her face was illuminated
by her phone. She was laying in bed on the
phone looking at things, and for that moment time they
made eye contact. And that's that's when you know he
went to work and he shot her laying in her bed.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Jake Wagner admitted to shooting five people, killing five. Was
Dana one of them?
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Did Jake Wagner kill Dana? Yes? He did.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Now there are still in Dana's home. Hannah may Rodin, Yes, nineteen. Now,
this Hannah may Rodin is the genesis of this entire story,
the entire thing. She's nineteen years old, and she is
in this home with her with Dana, and Chris Rodin
Junior is in the home. He's sixteen years old.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
A high school student.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
And then Hannah may Rodin had given birth to a
child four days earlier.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Yeah, she's in a postpartum state at this moment in
time and taking care of her baby. Hannah may who
is Jake's former lover and had had a child who
by the way, that child that night was in the
possession of the Wagner's day, Jake had openly admitted that
(34:22):
he did not want the baby to starve because, you know,
I guess in his mind he didn't know how long
it would take for this to be discovered, these homicides
to be discovered, So he placed the child adjacent to
Hannah's breast so that the child could suckle during the night,
(34:44):
you know, and she's in a postwartm state. He's murdered.
Just let that sink in. He's murdered this young mother.
And he paused long enough to think that when well,
it would be best if I could place the baby
(35:04):
adjacent to the breast of the chock, could feed during
the night, feeding off the dead, dead mother. And I,
you know, for a long time, as I've covered this case,
I've thought about you know, I didn't know what to
think about that, because there there's there's part of it
that's very human. I guess some people might even say
(35:25):
that in a twisted kind of way. It's it's compassionate,
I don't know. But on the on the other hand,
it's one of the more sickening aspects to this because
that's this child, you know, keep in mind, Hannah's body
has been greatly traumatized. That's that is probably one of
(35:47):
the biggest understatements I could possibly make about this, because
she's been shot again five times in the head. And
I'm still fascinated by that that we've gotten both of
these young lady, both the Hannahs that are shot five
times in bed.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Joe with five gunshot wounds to the head for Hannah
may Rodin. There's still a sixteen year old boy in
the house, Chris Jr. How did they kill him? Was
he awake?
Speaker 2 (36:19):
No?
Speaker 1 (36:19):
A single gunshot wound to the head. He was actually
killed in his bedroom. Now I think he came off
the bed perhaps and was wedged between the wall.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
So now we've got the first three locations. The fourth location,
Joe is not there. These three are on the same area.
The fourth location is not it's miles away, seven and
a half miles away, and it's a camper trailer.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Correct, Yes, yes it is. You know, when I was
standing out there, I thought these other locations were truly
in isolation. But you know, buddy, when you get out
there to where Kenneth lived, this is it's not an
unimproved road has been graded. You know, there's gravel on
either side. But and the way we measure things nowadays,
(37:07):
I think relative to isolation, that sort of thing is
do we have cell coverage? It was hit or miss
at best out there, So it's not it's not like
you're gonna, you know, hop on the phone and have
an extended, extended conversation with somebody. You know, You've got
to get to a spot, you know where where you
can actually utilize your phone.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Well, now, how was Kenneth Rodin related to Chris Rodin seeing?
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Yeah, okay, so Kenneth, you know, keep in mind Chris
Chris senior. And this is a bit confusing, I think
for some folks. Chris Senior, even though he's the patriarch
of the family, he's the younger brother of Kenneth. And
so Kenneth, you know, he had he had his own family,
he had, he had children. But he lived in this
(37:53):
little caravan, if you will, little little travel trailer that
was pulled out onto this piece of property.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Seven and a half miles away from the other three scenes.
How many times was he shot? And by what gun?
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Do you know?
Speaker 1 (38:08):
He's only shot a single Tom, Dave, He's only shot
a single Tom. And when he shot he shot with
a forty caliber glock, which is one of the other
weapons that they had. They had this twenty two handgun,
twenty two caliber handgun that looked like an old fashioned
Colt forty five nineteen eleven Colt forty five.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Was he asleep and he was shot?
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yes, yeah, and it was it was stated that, you know,
his door was simply kicked in and he was shot
in the head and that was it. And then you know,
the perpetrators turned and left. One interesting little aside is
that Kenneth who lived in the trailer, in the travel
trailer that was roughly seven miles away, he even had
(38:54):
his own tiny little grow operation at his house. And
so again you come back to thematically, you come back
to the drugs, and look, I'm not I'm saying the
universal you. You cannot fault the police for exploring that
because you know, first off, you're saying, what in the
heck we've got eight dead bodies, what's the common denominator here? Well,
(39:17):
at Chris's house, he's got a literal grow house. He's
growing weed there. And then his brother that lives at
a great distance away, he's got a small grow operation,
maybe for personal consumption. Maybe he could sell a dime bag,
you know, out of what he's producing. But that's one
(39:39):
of the common denominators that you have to look at investigatively.
It's really easy, I think, for us to Monday morning
quarterback a situation like this, but it's it is and
this goes back to what I've taught investigators in the past.
You truly have to be that quiet in the center
of the storm because when you think about this community,
(40:00):
talk about eight, eight victims all at one time. If
you and I are in a basic college statistics class together,
that number is statistically significant. This is not something you
just like from you know, from the overall population of
this little county. Eight people dead in one night. That's
a statistically significant number. So everybody there, chins are going
(40:23):
to be wagging about this. They're going to want to know,
and you know, nothing will get population and more of
a stir than a multiple homicide because they you know,
people go home, they load their weapons, and they lock
their doors because they don't know who's out there. And
Dave this case, these cases took so long to affect
an arrest on and that's what's really striking about it.
(40:47):
It took that long to formulate everything. Even after you
have all of this forensic data that you've collected, how
are you going to take all of that data and
tie it back? Even Jake said, you know, they wore
the shoes they particularly wore. They put on masks. They're
not going to shed hair. They thought about that. They've
got gloves on.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Even dyed their hair. Jake and their brother a hit.
They both dyed their hair.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Well, yeah, I mean they're taking steps to avoid leaving
behind some element of their person. They wore gloves the
entire time. Even after these deeds were done, Jake went
and his brother went to great Links to begin to
tear apart these weapons. They actually took these particulate weapons
(41:33):
and placed them into buckets, filled them with cement, and
then use them to weight down what's referred to as
a goose house, which I found absolutely fascinating. I never
heard of a goose house but in a pond where
they couldn't be found. So they're making they're taking steps
to put as much distance between themselves and the physical
(41:54):
evidence that they've created, which there by the way, there
is a lot. But they tried to do everything they
can to separate themselves from it.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
But because of the personal relationships they all had their DNA,
they're here. Things like that would be realistically expected to
be found in these locations. Number one, number two, the
Wagoners carried on as grieving friends. They went to the
funerals and cried at the funerals and lived that life
for a while. They actually it took years of developing
(42:22):
the story. We now know it, as you say, the
Monday morning quarterback or hindsight, now that we know what
actually transpired, because Jake told us, I don't know how
much was really put together in the initials beginning of
this investigation based on drugs, cockfighting, surveillance, cameras set up everywhere,
multiple grow locations, and you have to wind through all
(42:43):
of this to get down to wait a minute, it
really comes down to two teenagers that have a child.
They break up, and as they're moving on to different relationships,
the boy doesn't like the girl dating some of the
guys and he uses his daughter to say she's going
to put my daughter in harm's way, and that escalates
into the only way I'm going to get my daughter
(43:06):
out of out of harm's way is by killing the
mother and by the way, anybody else that can tie
me and my family to this crime, which is exactly
what they proved happened.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Yeah, And that's the thing, isn't it. It's as these
individuals are traveling through that dark night where maybe they're
all together in a vehicle, and they're traveling out to
kill these individuals, and they've killed maybe the first group
of people, maybe they've killed Chris. Their adrenaline is pumping.
(43:41):
Now they've got to go to the next one, and
then the next one. What do you say to one
another in those quiet moments. Maybe you've got a bit
of blood on your clothes, Maybe you can still smell
the burned gunpowder on yourself. Maybe maybe just for a second,
(44:02):
you can hear a scream that still echoes in your ear.
Or here's someone begging for their life. I don't know. Again,
words fail me. The only way I can really say is,
I don't know how you take the measure of such evil.
I have no idea. I hope that you'll please join
(44:24):
me on the Oxygen Channel on the twenty fourth of
November at eight pm Eastern, seven pm Central for the
Pike County Murders, A family massacre I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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