Summer Series 2025: Pike County Massacre: Part 4

Welcome to the twenty twenty five summer series. Here at Primetime Crime, we are going to be discussing the Pike County Massacre. We're going to be talking about the murders of Dane of Roden, Christopher Roden Senior, Kenneth Roden, Gary Roden, Frankie Rodin, Hannah Hazel Gilly, Hannah Roden, and Christopher Roden Junior. Those are our victims, all eight of them. We're going to talk about the case. We're going to talk about the victims. We're going to honor the victims, and we're going to discuss where everything stands today as this case is finally adjudicated. Join me every Sunday night starting in June for an episode of the Pike County Massacre for twenty twenty five summer series. Let's go. Okay, guys, welcome to Part four of the Pike County Massacre, the Roden Family Murders. We are still knee deep in trial coverage of the trial of George Wagner the fourth and we still have so much to cover, and I really do feel that this series is going to last all summer long, so we are going to go ahead and get into the next day of trial coverage, and if you're keeping up, we are on day eighteen. So first witness up today is a man named Brian White. He is a former BCI agent and he worked as the crime scene agent and was called to the Wagner property on May tenth of twenty seventeen for a small scale search that they did of the property. Now, they were able to initially keep this search pretty low key and the media was not alerted to this. He ended up taking pictures of the outside area of the house and some of the barn buildings, and what they later found would lead to the second bigger search warrant being executed on the Wagner family property. So they talked about the spent shieldcasings that were found. They found a ton of spent shial casings. They found twenty two rimfire m twenty two rim fire cartridges, nine mm fire cartridges, and they also found a live twenty two round in the kitchen cabinet of the Wagner family home. So, after all of this that they had gathered and all of the different spent shellcasings, they were able to compare those to the ones that were left at the crime scenes and that is when they kind of realized that everything was a match and they had their suspects, and that is what led to the second bigger search that would occur at the house just a few days later. Now, I also do want to say that in the midst of the second search going on, is after the Wagner family had decided that they were going to leave Ohio and move to Alaska. I think that they realized that they were onto them and they wanted to basically get the heck out of Dodge. And honestly, the Wagner family home is cute. It's like this cute little red home. It is a lot of property, but it obviously has a lot of bad juju and there's majorly bad vibes that happened all around that property. I'm going to be posting some of the pictures on my Instagram and Facebook pages that way you guys can see what it looks like, kind of what the property looks like, because I'm such a visual person that I want to see kind of what I'm talking about when I'm telling these stories. When I think of Tabitha hiding out on the property, hiding from crazy Angela Wagner, I want to be able to visualize how did she hide? How is she able to get away without being attacked by crazy Angela Wagner. And you can see the property is very brush heavy and there's a lot of property there, so it makes sense that she'd be able to hide and remain undetected, thankfully, and not shot at by Angela Wagner because Angela is crazy. The Wagner property is seventy acres. So these searches that they did were a big undertaking. The bigger search, like I said, happened just two days later, and this was a massive search, and again there was more shellcasings found all over the property. They also found a burned DVR that had been placed in the fire pit. And a lot of this ongoing testimony was about ballistics and such, and it was very extensive. There was a lot. I'm just giving you guys the meat and potatoes of things because I cannot navigate hours of ballistics because I am not that person. I am just not. He did testify that they were able to do some comparisons between the twenty two's that were found at the Wagner property and said that they did compare them to the shell casings from Franky and Dana's house and they were the same. So next up was special agent. His name is Todd Fortner, and they talked about the search warrant on May twelfth at the Wagner home. He said he was there and he went to the area where they stored the different trucks and trailers on the property. And they had a lot stuff on this property. It was massive. They unloaded all of the trailers and it literally looks like an episode of Hoarders. There was so much stuff that they had to comb through. They found newspapers with headlines about the road and family murders. In the floorboard of a truck that belonged to Jake Wagner. They found three different black ski masks in a crate. They found paperwork and documents from law offices with forged custody agreements. They found the Walmart receipt for the shoes. They found phones, camera kits, trail cams, so many things. There was so much crap on this property. They also searched a large open air trailer and they found more cell phones, trail cams, a notepad with writings, a GPS system, a brass catcher which I guess is supposed to catch shellcasings when a gun is fired. They also found SD cards, shoes, laundry baskets, bank cards, iPad boxes, and a bug detector and so on and so forth. There was also a notebook with George's name on it and it had writings in them. Now, there were some drawings and some of the notebooks had drawings of tactle gear. Now, the defense very much argued that the sche mass couldn't have been involved in the crime because Jake said that they burned any of the items of clothing that were used in the homicides. Basically, the defense is doing everything they can to try to argue that just because these items were found some of them might have had George Wagner's name on them, they didn't necessarily point to George being involved and actually being one of the people that was at the different crime scenes and committed these murders. Because at the end of the day, it's their job to defend their client as much as we might not agree with them, and they need to try to cast doubt that George Wagner was involved in this. So that is exactly what they are doing now during these days of trial. George Wagner the Fourth turned thirty one, but no mention of his birthday was made, and you really have to think about what a sad way to celebrate your thirty first birthday being on trial for eight person murder. What even is your life at this point in time. In the next day of trial, there were many guns that were introduced by the state and these were all guns that were found during the executed search warrant in twenty seventeen and eighteen on properties owned by the Wagner family, And there were a ton a ton of guns that they brought in, but none of these guns were the murder weapons, and the defense very much did not want these guns to be brought in and not part of what the jury heard and had to take back with them because basically saying, these guns don't have anything to do with the homicide, and all of these guns painted George Wagner the fourth and his family to be homicidal maniacs, which they were. But the judge ended up denying the motion by the defense to exclude the guns, and the whole day day twenty was spent talking about the guns that the Wagner family owned. Now it was revealed that Jake Wagner had a list of all of the different guns that the family owned on his phone. However, there were some guns on the list that they were not able to find, and these were the guns that were used in the homicides. There were twenty one guns listed on his list and they only found seventeen. So, honestly, if nothing else, though, I feel like all the gun talk and bringing in all of these guns really does show you that the Wagner family was prepared to take on a mass murder, and they obviously were familiar with guns. They were comfortable with guns. They did target practice constantly on their property. And it makes sense when you think about it, because a lot of the people that were killed were only shot once. Hence, while a lot of people in the beginning phases of this case thought that this was a cartel type hit because a lot of the people that were killed, a lot of the victims were killed pretty much instantly, So it makes sense that they're bringing these guns in to show that, hey, they are very familiar, very comfortable, very experienced handling firearms and handling these guns. The next day of trial was basically spent and going through phone records and text messages and different interactions between Jake, Angela Billy, and George Wagner in the months that led up to their arrests in twenty eighteen. Now, there were a lot of text messages that were presented, a lot of which were full of misspellings, hard to read, I don't even know, just random gibberish stuff. So a lot of the messages had to do with Billy and Angela, and a lot of them discussed their relationship and their relationship wasn't great following the murders, and in some of the messages, Billy had talked about how his mental health was not good and that he wished he could die, and he said he wanted Angela to shoot him in the head. And then there was also talk that they just wanted to run away with the two of them and leave their children, but they would take their grandchildren with them. There was also text messages between the two that revealed that Angela said that George and Tabitha's son would often sleep with her in bed and that he would call her mommy. And I don't know what is going on with Angela Wagner, but she has some really deep seated issues. I don't get what her hang up is, but she had a really odd relationship with George Wagner, and I don't even know what kind of relationship she had with Jake. And then it looks like she's just repeating the cycle with her grandson. And it's just so bizarre to me. I don't know any normal woman who would act like this. So again, the reason that the prosecutors brought all this evidence in is because they said that Angela wore the pants. She was the boss of the family, and she had aspirations of taking the grandkids and raising them as her own. Again, she tried to repete the crazy cycle of the Wagner family. Next up, the jury got to hear Angela's interrogation, which was played for them, and this interrogation was two hours long. It took place in Montana in twenty seventeen. Now, this interrogation took place after the family had already moved to Alaska and BCI agents had learned that they were on their way back to Ohio and they were able to intercept them in Montana. So during this interview, Angela denied having any knowledge of who killed the road In family, and she said that she had first learned about the murders while she was at home in her kitchen and Jake came inside and he was hysterically crying and said, you need to turn on the news now. Obviously this is all a lie because they knew about it ahead of time, because they're the ones that did it. Angela Wagner's brother then took the stand to testify against the Wagner family and his name is Chris Newcom, and he talked about buying guns for the Wagner's gift them to the Wagners and also said he had bought them a forty caliber gun and this is the gun that the state believes is one of the weapons that was used in the murders. Chris Newcomb was also asked if he knew what George and Jake's favorite movie was, and Chris said it was a movie called Boondock Saints and basically, if you don't know, because I did not know. This movie portrays two brothers who go on a murdering spree using guns that have silencers attached to them. And they believe that this movie is very much what inspired Jake to use the silencers in the killings because they did find the silencers on the Wagner property, and prosecutors later said that Jake Wagner idolized Norman Ritis, who is an actor. I believe I talked about that earlier, and Jake had dyed his hair to mimic Norman's appearance and basically did all of this before going and acting out this movie script in the homicides against the Ronan family. And Chris said that when he learned about the homicides and that the Wagners were involved, that he felt like he wanted to go out and kill Jake himself for his role in things. Next step on the stand is Rita Newcom, who is Angela Wagner's mom. Now, remember she decided to testify against the family against George Wagner the fourth in order to spare her own freedom. So Rita Newcom is a notary and she told prosecutors, the grand jury agents from BCI that she had witnessed Hannah Rodin signed custody documents saying that she gives sole custody to Jake Wagner. But all of this was a lie. At this trial for George Wagner, she testified that she did not see Hannah sign the paperwork, and that Angela essentially stole the notary stamp, ended up using it, and then asked her mom to lie. So not only were these documents forged with the stamp that Rita uses for her notary stuff, but it also had forged Hannah Rodin's signature, and the paperwork was also illegally postmarked to reflect the signing occurring a whole two years before the murders, when the paperwork was actually drafted up and created three weeks before the killings. In exchange for her testimony, she received no prison time and would only receive probation. And honestly, Rita is probably the least heinous person in all of this. Not that I agree with what she did, because she obviously knew what her daughter and family were involved in, and she lied for them, and Angela pretty much forged her name and everything else, but then she asked her to lie about it. But still, you can't do that, and I'm glad that she did do the right thing, and she came forward and she testified against the family and basically told the truth. The state then brought back an expert witness with the BCI crime Lab. Her name is Julia I've talked about her in the past, and they ended up going over more Facebook data and accounts, and the jury learned during the test simony that the Wagner and Roden family had all blocked one another on Facebook except Jake Wagner, who was friends with everybody, because I guess in Jake's head, it's keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Next day up, Julia is still up on the stand for the state and she's going through all the different wiretaps and phone calls that went back and forth between the Wagner family, and I'm going to go through all of this, but I do want to give credit to Gigi from Pretty Licen Alibis for breaking all of this stuff down transcribing it all because she did a day by day trial coverage of this trial, and there's so much information here. All of this stuff that I'm about to talk about comes directly from her podcast episode she did on this day breaking down all of these different wire taps. Because I was not able to find anything else online really about it. I have been just kind of referencing different articles throughout to go through this trial coverage, but this was one day of trial coverage that was. So Gigi is bringing you all the information and we are going to go through that now. So the first conversation happens May fifth of twenty seventeen at twelve fifty seven pm, and it's a conversation that occurs in the car between all four of the Wagners, Billy, George, Jake, and Angela, and they're talking to Bovine, who is George the fourth and Tabitha's son, and he's a child at this point, he's three years old, and he is basically being told by his dad that during this road trip on the way back to Alaska, they were stopped at the border, and that the people at the border are bad people. They're the ones that want to kill us. They want to kill Uncle Jake, they want to kill your papa, they want to kill me. They're bad people, and basically trying to get this kid to believe that anybody that isn't a Wagner family member is somebody that can't be trusted. And he's only three years old. And they also all go on to have like this wild paranoia that Tabitha is at the border waiting for them, waiting to flip the script on them, that was never true. But they just have this insane paranoia that everybody is out to get them because they literally killed eight people, So I guess I would be paranoid too, but I don't understand why they are acting like this. Then there is a call on June thirteenth of twenty seventeen from Billy to George, and George asks for Angela to google something because he found something on his truck that he wants her to google, and he tells her to google the letter HX plus and he said that he found something on the top of his truck and it says h plus Remote Start, and he said that it looks like an oblong thing with black wires coming out of it. Billy responded and thought that maybe it was something with a GPS, and then George said that he thought it's something maybe for a stereo or something GPS related, and then George said that he's going to wait on Jake at the Utoparts store and that they were trying to find a radiator, and they just kind of go back and forth about that. Then there is text messages back and forth between Jake and the new owner of the home that the Wagner family used to live in that is on Peterson Road, and the text was on June fifteenth of twenty seventeen, at nine point thirty seven in the morning, and the new owner said, Hey, I called the sheriff about the Thompson guy, and the investigators are here at the farm today digging the crap out of the lot behind the barn, which someone would let us know what the heck's going on. All they say is that it will be done on Friday night at nine am. Jake responds and asks what they're doing. The owner says, I don't know what they're doing, and Jake says, I don't know what they're looking for, but I know they've harassed us so much that I won't talk to them anymore if they don't have a warrant, and I would go ahead and tell them to take a hike. Jake says that they need a search warrant and tells the new owner to ask a lawyer and says you could basically sue them for doing this. Then at ten oh five, Jake texts and says, I'm sorry that they're doing this to you guys, but seriously, if you do not give them permission and they don't have a warrant, they can't do that. You can sue them. At ten sixteen, Jake texts once again and said, did they give you a warrant the first time they searched or did you give permission? And somebody named Joe had told Jake that they were tearing them place up with a trap ho and said, if they are, sue them for destruction of property because they won't stop until you do so. Basically, in my opinion, at this point, Jake Wagner is losing his mind because he knows that they're going to find some little shred of evidence that is going to be able to pin this back on the Wagners and his freedom will be over for good. So I think he knew at this point in time that they were really in trouble. The owner of the home did say that they left the warrants on the kitchen table, and there's really nothing that they can do because they do have the warrants, so they have to allow them to search the property. Next is a call on June fifteenth of twenty seventeen, and this is a call between George and Angela, and George is losing his mind. He is panicking about the search at the property, and Angela also is a little panicking too, and they keep going over and over, and George said, the new owner is texting Jake, and they're down there again today digging up everything inside of the barn. Now in all of these calls, Angela is starting to lose her mind because I think she also realizes that the gig is finally almost up and they are going to find evidence on the property because that's where they disposed of a lot of their stuff. That's why they left it, that's why they went to Alaska. They wanted to get away from all of it. So Angela is starting to lose her mind. George is losing his mind, Jake is losing his mind. Billy God knows what he's doing, what he's thinking during all of this. So although they were actually losing their minds, they were still in the process of going to Alaska and finding a new property. And in one of the calls that took place on June fifteenth, at nine to twelve pm, they are talking about this property. It's going to be four acres, they're not going to have any neighbors, and Angela is so excited. She just cannot wait. They are going to move into this new house on Saturday. It is brand new, they've remodeled it, and it has this big basement. There's a full basement with a big wood stove fireplace downstairs. And again there's four acres, there's no neighbors, and they talk about how they're going to be able to put all of the different cars on the property, and literally all of the panic and fear that Angela had in the previous calls about the BCI basically digging up her old property has gone out the window. And she is just so excited about this new home and this new beginning for her family. And they decide for whatever reason, that they're going to put the house in George's name, but all of their names are going to be on it, but it's going to be in George's name. And they're going to run a credit check in about ten minutes, and George has the best credit, so there's nothing wrong with his credit. And there was also calls with Rita newcom and Angela going back and forth about everything there. It is very involved. There is a lot to it, but basically Angela Wagner is losing her a mind, trying everything she can in the world to cover her tracks and make it seem like she's not a delusional human. And I don't think she did a great job with that. In just in my opinion, they talk about thirteen hundred screenshots of different Facebook communications. There are three hundred plus screenshots of Hannah's communications on Facebook Messenger from July twenty fifteen to April twenty first of twenty sixteen, which is when they were murdered. They show a screenshot of the message where Hannah says they'll have to kill me first, and her saying I won't sign the papers ever, it won't happen now. That message was sent at eight thirty eight pm and the screenshot of it was taken at nine to sixteen that same night. Then there are searches that happened on April third of twenty sixteen, which was forms for declaration of guardian in the event of my death. Those ended up being printed off the same day and the next day. There is a sample form for guardianship in case of my death in Ohio that was also searched for, and they were able to find all of this through all of Jake's old iPhone backups. So, like I had said, Angela Wagner had access to Hannah Rodin's Facebook page. She had her password from when Hannah was living with the family and she was a creep, so she was obviously going onto Hannah's account. She saw the message about they'll have to kill me first, and that's when the plan really started to take shape, and they started looking up all of these different forms and all of that was found as evidence on on the road and family cell phones. They then go on to talk about some of the other Google searches that transpired. On May third, they searched for Pike County murders. Again on the seventh Pike County murders, and on July twenty ninth of twenty sixteen, they searched the name Jake Wagner. On August sixth of twenty sixteen, they searched Victims of Violent Crimes Fund. There is a photo of one of Jake's guns that was the cult nineteen eleven twenty two, that was taken on January thirty first of twenty fifteen, and they believe that this is the gun that was used in the murders. And there's also a picture of Jake's hand holding that gun. So it's really incredible to see all the work that law enforcement did to basically catch them in the act and try to trace back all of the evidence that they had and pin it on the Wagners. Because the Wagners, essentially, they were in their safe space. They were in their home, they were in their car, they were having these conversations between one another, and they thought that they were safe, but the wire taps proved for that to be not the case. They were not safe, and the wire taps really did come back to bite them in the butt because they were talking about different things that were transpiring, the searches of the property, the stuff with Rita, and the forgery of the documents. It all just kind of came together in a full circle moment to make us realize that the Wagners were not innocent in any of this, and they played a huge role in the Road and family murders. The next day of trial, they very much focused on the silencer that they thought that the Wagner family had used during the massacres, and they found this silencer had been burned and this again was consistent with Jake Wagner's confession. That burned all of the evidence, which is so dumb. But the silencer wouldn't melt under the fire because it is made out of metal and other items. I guess I'm not a gun person, so I have no idea, but it wouldn't burn. So Jake said that they just threw it inside of the barn, and that's probably why they were flipping out when they were doing all of these searches, because they knew that that silencer was still there and had not been disposed of. They also had a forensics accountant with BCI who basically went over all of the different financial records of the Wagner family and there was a ton of different occurrences where Angela Wagner would use her son's credit and bank cards and she would go out and buy these different items to carry out the murders. They said that Angela bought a cell phone jammer above detector which ended up being used in the killings, and she bought all of this stuff using George's credit card and the purchases were made. The fraud department of the credit card company did call George and he sure enough authorized and said that he knew that his mother is buying these items, so that proves that he was complicit in what was happening. She was buying these items to commit the murders and he knew it and was okay with it because he gave his approval. There were also some credit card statements that were shown that appeared that George's card was used to buy a vehicle oil filter at a local autopart store, and they said that they believed that this was likely used as a second kind of homemade silencer. And I don't know anything about silencers. I know what they do, what they're supposed to do. But the Wagner family is so dumb for all of this stuff. I don't understand how they felt that they were going to get away with all of this and not have all of this evidence come back to bite them in the butt, because it's all right there in black and white. Okay, So we are now getting into the part of the trial where Jake Wagner himself is going to come up and take the stand as a witness for the state. So Jake did this, gave his testimony in exchange for taking a plea deal. Essentially, we're going to get into all of that in a little while at the end of this series, but he testified. It was not recorded audio or video, but there is transcripts that live out on the internet. I'm going to do my best to try to sum it all up. But he testified for four days, which is a long time. He essentially is the star witness of this case. But you have to remember the defendant is his brother. So it's all very wild and convoluted that this all would transpire in the way it did, and that he would end up being the state's biggest witness. So we are just going to go through it. I was able to find the transcript. We're going to go through it. I might skip over some parts that I don't really feel are relevant. But he approaches the stand. He says his name is Edward Jacob Wagner. He says he is twenty nine and he is currently incarcerated in Columbus, and he says the jail is CCR or FCCR one, and he says it's in Franklin County and he's been in there for about four years. He was arrested November thirteenth of twenty eighteen, and they asked, your mother, brother, and father were all arrested on the same date and he said yes, and they asked him, prior to being arrested, can you tell us where you lived? And he gave the address. He was back living in Ohio at this point, he said he lived there with his mom, brother, his daughter, and his nephew, and the home was previously owned by his grandfather and that was his mother's father, so Angela's father. They asked about another home that the Wagner family had previously lived in, and then they get to the home on Peterson Road and they ask about that. They asked who all had lived at that location, and he said, his brother, his brother's ex wife, Tabitha, my nephew, my daughter, and sometimes my father meaning Billy Wagner. And they said, when your dad wasn't at the house, where was he? And Jake answered and said that he was at his mom's house. His mom is Rodrika Wagner. We've talked about her, and she lived on the Flying w Farms that she owned in Pikedon, Ohio. Now, they asked him whose name that house was in, and it was in George's name, and Jake goes on to say that it was put in to George's name for insurance purposes, and he said the reason for that was because he and George's credit and insurance history was clean, so it would have been cheaper for them to get insured with the house versus their parents. I guess their parents had bad credit. They asked about the fire that had occurred at the property, and Jake gov on to talk about that, and then they go and they ask what the family likes to do together, and he said, you mean hobbies. We hunted, we fished, We rode four wheelers, played in the mud, went to fairs, festivals, immunsement parks. Not often. We tinkered on engines, and I think that's about it. They asked if he went to school, and Jake said public school for a very short period of time. He only went for about a month, and then he and his brother were homeschooled. And they asked if he received any other type of schooling after homeschooling was finished, and he said yes, and that he and his brother both attended a technical education college in Lucaville for diesel engineering. They asked if both brothers went there at the same time, and Jake said they did, and they went for about a year, and then they asked, are you close with your brother? And do you love your brother? Do you believe he loves you? And Jake said yes to both. And they asked if it was difficult for Jake to be there today, and Jake says very And they asked, is it true that you would love nothing more than for him to be able to go home? Jake says yes, and he says he feels the same way about his mother and father. And then they ask what type of jobs they had, and Jake said, mechanic, welding, transportation as in truck driving, and he said he pretty much did all of those jobs with his brother. And then they went on to talk more about hunting, and they said, tell us when you hunted, who would you be hunting with? Would it just be you and George? You and George and your dad? Kind of tell me a little bit about that, and then he said a variety my brother and I mostly occasionally my dad, uncle Chris, some member of the Rodens, my friend James Roden and his family from Virginia, some of my uncle Chris's friends, and that's about all I can remember. He said. Hannah came a couple of times, uncle Chris is fiance Randa came and he thinks that that's all. And I do want to say I misspoke. I mentioned James Roden. It's James Roden are with a T, not a D. So I just wanted to clarify that. And they also clarified that in the questioning. And they asked how often would you hunt? How many times per year and he said at least two weeks out of the year. And they talk about the different types of hunting, deer hunting. They just go into all of the hunting information, different types of hunting, different things that they would use during hunting. They go on and on and on about that. They then go on to ask Jake about the relationship with his mom, and he said they had a close relationship, but he had a closer relationship with his brother and a close ish relationship with his father. And they say, can you tell me a little bit about the family meetings that you guys would have and some of the things that you would discuss, And he says, I can't think of a proper word, but an example would be if we needed to build a fence, where it would go, how it would be situated, they would all get together and talk about that and try to figure out where they were going to do it, how they were going to execute the plan to build defense or make amendments to the property, whatever the case may be. Now, he said, the family meetings would typically be himself, his mom, his father, and his brother, and they would just kind of go back and forth and talk about things. Sometimes they would vote on things. It was just kind of the routine that they had. They would have these family meetings in the kitchen and they would discuss everything that needed to be discussed, and like I said, they would take a vote on things if they needed to take a vote, and kind of go from there. Obviously, the state is very much trying to establish here that the Wagner family made decisions about everything as a family. They would have family meetings about the placement of offence, So they're very much trying to paint the picture that the Wagner family did everything together and they talked about everything beforehand. So obviously, George is guilty of this homicide and he's the one who's on trial right now, and Jake is testifying against his brother, which again mind blown. Jake then goes on to recall when he first met Hannah, and Hannah was only thirteen and he was seventeen, and he said, the first time he met her, she had this bunny from four h that she was holding, and Jake eventually would pet the bunny and then they ended up talking, and that's kind of how their relationships started. And I just have to say, at a seventeen year old being interested in a thirteen year old actually makes my skin crawl. It is so disgusting to me. I can't even imagine. He said, when he and Hannah started dating, he had talked with both Dana and Chris and got their permission to date Hannah. And he says that Billy had a good relationship with Chris, so they were good friends. But anytime that Hannah and Jake would be alone, there would be another Rodin family member that would accompany them, either Chris Junior would go or Frankie Roden would go, So it was never just like Hannah and Jake were necessarily alone, at least in the beginning stages of all of that. So Hannah got pregnant, obviously, and she was sixteen at the time, and the baby, Sophia, ended up being born in twenty thirteen, and they asked, prior to the baby being born, did Hannah live with you and your family? And he said yes for the majority, and then approximately in February twenty and fifteen, they ended up kind of separating a little bit, and she ended up leaving and not living with the Road and family anymore. And they said, Jake, I would like for you to talk about a time where Hannah stated that you choked her. Can you tell us if you recall such an incident and what you recall about that incident? And he said, I do recall the incident, but I never choked her. They said, can you describe what you did? And he said, I believe the argument was over yard work. I believe, trivial stuff. And she had I'm not exactly sure of the right word to be blunt, I guess you could say, and frank, she was lazy in her responsibilities as she voluntarily chose to do, and I was upset because she was making me do not only my responsibilities but also hers. I honestly didn't have to, but if something doesn't get done, I figured I needed to do it and get it done. She in my eyes at the moment, she was acting much like my brother's ex wife, which at the time I had not a high value of her attitude or her actions, and she I don't know specifically why she was in her attitude that day, she had an attitude. I know she was on Facebook, and that was my argument. Basically, she wanted to be on Facebook while everybody else was doing her responsibility, which was a very small responsibility. Basically it was to mow the grass once every other week, and she stomped off outside. I followed her, and she was I wouldn't say yelling, basically saying that I was trying to have her do the work, which she didn't want to. I argued with her that she volunteered to do this work. I'm not trying to make her do it. I was just trying to tell her, you need to do your job of what you said you're going to do, because if I'm going to make this farm work, I need you to do your part. Because my argument was that, I really guess my point was my idea for her to do her part so I could save enough to get a dairy calf business going, and she was going to be responsible for tending to baby calves, which is a lot of responsibility, time and dedication. I was telling her if she couldn't do a single job of mowing the grass, how was she going to be able to do that to make actual money. And she had basically started to stomp off on the patio outside of the house and was going to say something, and she was just gonna leave, and I was frustrated, so I put my right hand on her. She was facing me. I put my right hand on her shoulder, just under her collarbone, and used my forearm pressed against under her collarbone, not on her throat, and I pressed her against the board on the patio and held her there until she would stop, basically screaming, not saying a word, and she was very mad, so I held her there until she calmed down. So he is admitting here that Hannah, I guess, wasn't holding up her end of the bargain and mowing the grass, even though she was taking care of his child and living in the hell hole that was the Wagner family home, being spied on, being stalked, god knows what else. And she wanted to scroll on Facebook and just have a little bit of quiet time. And Jake was on her for not mowing the grass, and he thought, well, if you can't mow the grass, how are you going to take care of all the cattle that I want to buy for this farm and we're going to make money off of And then he put his hands on her and tried to stop her from leaving and being upset, and he says, yeah, I did put my hands on her, but I didn't choke her, and then said that this whole thing lasted probably less than five minutes. And they ended up breaking up after that, and then Hannah started seeing somebody named Charlie Gilly who was the brother of Hannah Hazel Gilly who was married to Frankie Rodin. And then eventually she broke up with Charlie. And then at the time time of her death, she was dating a man named Corey Holdron, and Jake said that he was aware of that. He met Corey maybe once, maybe twice. And this is where we start to get into the child abuse claims, because in Jake's mind, his daughter Sophia was being sexually molested in some way, shape or form at the Rodan family home by somebody that the Rodan family knew. So these were his concerns. He was concerned that Hannah was gonna let Sophia be molested. And they said, what did you base those concerns on? And he said, to my knowledge at the time, what I've heard for several people that her choice of men was some kind of drug user. And he said, there was a time when I had been informed from Hannah's cousin, Patricia Manley, I think her last name is. It was Patricia. I'm sure everybody knows who that is. She had told me, actually texted me and told me that Hannaana and Charlie Hannah had went to put Sophia to sleep in her room, and then her and Charlie were both in the room with the door locked and were in there for hours and not answering the door whenever she knocked. She did not elaborate on what that meant, but I assumed she may have put Sophia to sleep and possibly have been doing inappropriate things with my child in the room with them, I guess you could call it. Besides that, my daughter had told me that Corey Holdron had locked her in the bedroom and left her there for hours while she screamed for her mother and no one would come to rescue her. She told me that she had screamed for me and I didn't come to rescue her. Whenever I was home, Sofia would cling to me, and every time that it was time for her to go back to Hannah's house, she would scratch and claw. However, she would hold on to my leg and scream, Daddy, please don't make me go, with eyes that were filled with tears. I did not know what was going on, but I asked Dana Rhodin. She said she was just being a brat. I asked Hannah about it. She said, nothing out of the ordinary was going on, going wrong, And in fronted Hannah, I said, Hannah, well, I guess I should probably say this first. There's a past history in my family and Hannah and Tabitha's of either rape or child molestation, and because of those I had a deep fear for my own daughter when she was born, and I solemnly swore to her that while she was in my arms, I would never let anything happen to her as it happened to Tabitha, as it happened to Hannah, and as it happened to my mother and to a couple cousins of mine. I confronted Hannah about all of those things, and she was abrupt with me. She said, I was overreacting. She said that Sophia was just being a brat. It's the same opinion that Dana had told me. And I told her abruptly, Hannah, what if your carelessness leads to my daughter being molested as you were? And she said, I guess we'll just have to deal with it. And those were my concerns, and I was very, very fearful that it was going to happen or already had happened. They asked if anyone else in the family have those concerned and he said, to some extent, yes, And they asked who and his family had those concerns, and he said, my father, my mother, and my brother. They then asked him if he had obtained an attorney at some point to try and get fifty to fifty custody, and he said, I believe it's called shared parenting with equal rights, but yes, And they said, can you tell us if Hannah seem interested in signing any of the paperwork that you and your attorney had tried to get her to sign, and he said, for a good period she did seem very interested. Towards the end of twenty fifteen, it seemed more along the lines that she was just stalling for some reason. I don't know why. She told me she was getting a lawyer to double check the paperwork, but the paperwork was very, very short, and said that it was basically Chris Roaden Senior's legal lawyer that he had used from Columbus, and Jake doesn't believe that there ever was such a lawyer. They then asked if during this time, if someone from the family was monitoring Facebook private messages of Tabitha and her mom, and Jake says yes, and he said that the one who was monitoring that was his mom, Angela. And they asked who Tabitha is and Jake says that it's his brother's ex wife, and they said okay. And while your mother was monitoring these conversations, did she also observe a conversation that occurred between Tabitha's mom and Hannah, And Jake goes on to say yes, and asked if they recalled. He happened to recall what the general nature of the conversation was, and that was objected to and it was sustained. They asked if they knew why Angela was watching these messages, watching Tabitha's personal messages, and Jake says she was monitoring Tabitha's personal messages to see if she was planning to try to see custody again of her son, my nephew, and to see if she was still involved in some sort of drug use or potential harmful behavior for my nephew. They then talked about the conversation between Hannah and Tabitha's mom, and they asked Jake when he saw that message between Tabitha's mom and Hannah, he had to make a decision about his concerns for Sophia, and he said, to be Frank, I guess to the point I had decided that I felt I had no other choice other than to kill Hannah. And they said, can you tell us how that decision progressed? When did you first think of it? Were you the first one who thought of it? Tell us about that, and he said, I was not the first. My father first mentioned it to me. He said something along the lines that if something is not done, Sophia will be I forget the exact word he used, but in a general aspect, I'm going to say harm and I at first. I can't remember exact words I use, but my first response was that I had blowed up over a matter and told him, telling him that that was my daughter's mother. I still loved her and I was not going to let that happen. And I stopped out of the door, and then they ended up having another conversation and Angela was there, and basically he said it again, it's not quote. It may have been worded differently somehow. He said something along the lines that the only option would be that they would have to kill Hannah. He was dismissive of it, of course, but then after his last conversation and argument with Hannah, he went to his dad and said, I told him, we'll have to do it. He said, the time span between when Billy Wagner had first brought it up to him and when he said we're going to have to do it was probably about two months of time. So we are getting into the meat and potatoes of Jake Wagner's testimony. We are going to go ahead and call this good for part four, and we are going to pick up next week with Part five. We're going to continue in to all of the testimony. It is long it is involved. There is a lot of information here. I'm trying my best not to overwhelm myself, and I don't want to overwhelm you guys with all of this information, because it is a heck of a lot. So we are going to go ahead and call that good for this episode. I will see you next week for part five of the Road and Family Murders Pike County Massacre. I hope you guys have a great week and I will see you then. Bye.