6. breaking point

Armed with two confessions but virtually no forensic evidence, prosecutors take the two remaining Wagners to trial. But when they take the stand, will the two confessors tell the truth? 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Breaking news right now at four o'clock. A guilty plea and the Pike County Massacre to talk about. Five years ago today, eight family members were killed. Moments ago, one of those charged with the murder pleaded guilty.

SPEAKER_07 0:17

It's April 22nd, 2021, five years to the day since the Pike County Massacre.

SPEAKER_32 0:23

A sunny day in court. One of the suspects in the Ohio Massacre pleads guilty to every count against him.

SPEAKER_07 0:29

At this point, Billy, Angela, George, and Jake Wagner have been in jail for two and a half years, waiting for their trials and not allowed to have any contact with each other. While the four of them have been waiting, some important things have happened on the outside.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

We begin with that stunning development of the Pine County Massacre. A relative who was accused of covering up the crime is now a free woman.

SPEAKER_07 0:53

The Cincinnati Inquirer reported the specific reason that Angie Kineppa charged grandmother Frederica Wagner with lying to a grand jury. You know, because she said Amazon instead of eBay? And once that detail came out in the news, Special Prosecutor Kineppa just dropped the charges.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

The state dropped the charges against Frederica Wagner, and tonight she maintains her innocence.

SPEAKER_13 1:15

I never lied about anything.

SPEAKER_26 1:18

Do you believe your family had anything to do with this?

SPEAKER_13 1:21

Absolutely not. I believe that with all my heart and soul they didn't do it.

SPEAKER_07 1:27

The other Wagner grandma, Rita, cut a deal. She had been facing 14 years in prison. So going from 14 to zero seems like a good reason to plead guilty, even if you've done nothing wrong.

SPEAKER_20 1:53

Rita, anything you can tell us at all? No, thanks, honey. I'm not allowed to talk.

SPEAKER_06 1:58

Were those tears of relief in there?

SPEAKER_07 2:02

Meanwhile, prosecutors have repeatedly gone to the Wagners in their jails and offered them deals. Confess, and we won't seek the death penalty against your family. And throughout two and a half years in jail, each of them keeps saying, No, I'm innocent. But on the day of the fifth anniversary of the massacre, the Attorney General's office tells the news media to assemble at the Pike County Courthouse for a big announcement.

SPEAKER_31 2:31

I am guilty, Your Honor.

SPEAKER_23 2:32

One by one.

SPEAKER_29 2:34

I am guilty, Yon.

SPEAKER_23 2:36

Jake Wagner pleaded guilty to every single one of the 23 charges.

SPEAKER_29 2:40

This hearing is still going on. It should be wrapping up in just a matter of minutes. So I can tell you right now, one of our photographers saw Governor Mike DeWine walk in the back door of this courthouse. As you know, DeWine was the attorney general of the state of Ohio when these murders happened.

SPEAKER_07 2:55

As soon as Jake finishes entering his plea, now Governor Mike DeWine walks outside the courthouse to talk to the media. And after he talks for a while, he gives this interesting insight into how the investigation picked the Wagners as their main suspects.

SPEAKER_31 3:14

When you started going through the evidence, it just, you know, it it you didn't have a lot to start with. And it was a while. It was a good while before we started zeroing in on this family. And then it was a case of, okay, just be patient. So we waited. Waited and waited. And at some point, you we got to the point where we all just looked at each other and said, There's nothing else we can do. We gotta go with this. We gotta go with what we got. And uh we had a discussion, and I'll I'll say this former Sheriff Reeder. Uh he looks up and he says, Boys, we gotta go. And um I said, Yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_07 3:55

The prosecution's deal with Jake is that he not only has to confess, but he also has to testify.

SPEAKER_23 4:00

Jake Wagner, the youngest suspect in the family of four, will turn his back on his own blood and testify against them.

SPEAKER_07 4:07

And more specifically, testify to the prosecution's liking.

SPEAKER_04 4:11

Jake has to testify to the state's liking as per their plea deal for all of the family to avoid the death penalty.

SPEAKER_07 4:17

If Jake backs out of testifying, or if he testifies badly, they can go right back to seeking the death penalty.

SPEAKER_29 4:24

What this means for the other family members up in the air, but you can imagine the dominoes will start to fall.

SPEAKER_07 4:28

And of course, once Jake takes a plea, that puts enormous pressure on Billy, Angela, and George to cut their own deals. How could they expect to win at trial with Jake testifying against them? So in September of 2021, five months after Jake's confession and five and a half years after the murders, his mother, Angela, also changes her plea.

SPEAKER_32 4:58

Wagner agreed to plead guilty to a dozen charges. She'll be behind bars for 30 years, but avoids the death penalty.

SPEAKER_07 5:05

Angela reportedly tells prosecutors she's taking this deal because if she lives long enough, she might be able to see her grandchildren again. Look, maybe five years after the crimes, four years after being publicly accused of the crimes, and two and a half years after going to jail, Jake and Angela's consciences finally got to them. Maybe these are legitimate confessions, but they have a lot of the hallmarks of false confessions.

SPEAKER_11 5:35

What I want to talk about actually is the tendency for people to give confessions to crimes they did not commit.

SPEAKER_07 5:41

There's a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Dr. Saul Cassen.

SPEAKER_11 5:45

I have been investigating this topic for many years now.

SPEAKER_07 5:48

Whose life's work is researching false confessions and trying to understand why people admit to crimes they didn't commit.

SPEAKER_11 5:55

Just say to yourself, I have a breaking point. Everybody has a breaking point. And innocent people who know they're innocent confess anyway because they can't take it anymore.

SPEAKER_07 6:07

Professor Cassen's research shows, and maybe this one's obvious, that people are much more likely to falsely confess when they're extremely stressed and fatigued.

SPEAKER_11 6:16

They become more likely to sacrifice the future for the present. I want this to stop and the rest will work itself out.

SPEAKER_07 6:22

I think it's fair to say that spending two and a half years in jail legally barred from having any contact whatsoever with the people you love would be pretty stressful and fatiguing.

SPEAKER_11 6:33

Time breaks people down. People need others around and they need social support, especially when they at times get stressful.

SPEAKER_07 6:42

Professor Cassand has also shown that people with intellectual disabilities are more likely to falsely confess. And you've heard that Jake Wagner had multiple brain injuries while he was growing up, and that people who know him describe him as slow.

SPEAKER_11 7:00

We see a number of these cases where the suspect starts to get confused and disoriented and starts to question his or her own innocence.

SPEAKER_07 7:09

Professor Cassen's research also shows that in about a third of all false confession cases, the false confessor actually comes to believe their own false confession.

SPEAKER_11 7:21

Not only does the innocent person agree to sign a confession, but the innocent person starts to think he did it.

SPEAKER_07 7:27

Even when the evidence shows they couldn't possibly have committed the crime, the process of being pushed into a false confession actually changes the confessor's memories.

SPEAKER_11 7:38

They often even confabulate memories to support that false belief.

SPEAKER_07 7:42

And when Jake eventually takes the stand, he'll say that for years he truly believed he was 100% innocent, and he had no memories whatsoever of committing these crimes.

SPEAKER_18 7:56

What he told us led us to discover some evidence that had yet to be recovered, specifically the weapons that were used in these offenses.

SPEAKER_07 8:03

Prosecutor Kinepa will later say that you can believe Jake Wagner's confession because, she claims, he told investigators where to find a gun that he supposedly used in the murders.

SPEAKER_04 8:14

Jake led investigators to the weapons five years after the homicide spree.

SPEAKER_16 8:23

So he did.

SPEAKER_07 8:25

That sounds good, but there's a problem. Kaneppa says Jake supposedly did an incredible job destroying this gun.

SPEAKER_26 8:33

Jake says he used a grinding tool to cut them into pieces and then an acetylene torch to try to melt them.

SPEAKER_16 8:39

They had five-gallon buckets of concrete and they dropped the stuff in four different buckets of concrete.

SPEAKER_07 8:48

She says Jake was so thorough when he supposedly ground the gun up into little chunks of metal and then melted the chunks with a torch and then dunked these chunks into concrete, that unfortunately BCI's labs can't possibly pull any forensic evidence that would independently corroborate the chunks were once the murder weapon. So, yeah, the only thing that connects this evidence to the crime, this evidence that supposedly would corroborate Jake's confession, is Jake's confession.

SPEAKER_25 9:18

The process of picking a jury for the biggest murder trial in Ohio history is now underway.

SPEAKER_07 9:24

Still, with Jake and Angela pleading guilty, the state of Ohio has the other two Wagners, George and Billy, right where it wants them. Yet George and Billy maintain their innocence and they'll take their chances at trial.

SPEAKER_08 9:35

Opening statements are underway in the murder trial for one of the suspects accused in the Pike County Massacre.

SPEAKER_07 9:41

And in November of 2022, almost six years after the murders, George goes first.

SPEAKER_18 9:51

We are here, ladies and gentlemen, the jury, because this defendant, George Wagner IV, and his brother and his father murdered eight people.

SPEAKER_14 10:25

The custody documents that they forged. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that is almost as good as us actually being there and seeing them commit these crimes.

SPEAKER_07 10:38

Instead, Angie Kneppa tells the jury they're going to hear from character witnesses. Witnesses who don't know anything about the crimes, but will describe the Wagners as the kind of people who would have committed them. If I had to summarize the picture that Kineppa tries to paint of the Wagners at trial, it would come down to these three characteristics. One, she wants the jury to believe that even though the Wagners don't have criminal records, they have a kind of criminal instinct.

SPEAKER_14 11:04

Billy and Jake and George would steal gas, things like that. You know, Billy taught Jake pick locks.

SPEAKER_07 11:11

Like she says that even though the Wagners were never caught or arrested for any of this, the state is going to show that they did stuff like commit insurance fraud, they went hunting without licenses.

SPEAKER_14 11:19

Just because they did that does not mean that they progressed to murder. But what it does show us is this behavioral fingerprint.

SPEAKER_07 11:26

The second characteristic Kanepa wants the jury to believe is that this family is too close.

SPEAKER_16 11:33

That family structure and that family dynamic was very insular. Both of the boys were homeschooled, they worked together, they did almost everything together.

SPEAKER_07 11:43

The Wagners do too many things together. They pool their money, they share expenses.

SPEAKER_16 11:49

They function as one unit in pretty much everything they do. They would have family meetings, they would take votes.

SPEAKER_07 11:54

I know, none of that is objectively bad. It actually sounds kind of nice, right?

SPEAKER_14 11:59

A lot of conversations in this family happen in the kitchen. That's where they have a lot of their family meetings.

SPEAKER_07 12:03

But Angie Kanepa says it in a kind of sinister tone of voice.

SPEAKER_14 12:07

There is nothing that happens in that household that is not a group decision.

SPEAKER_07 12:14

And I guess the point is to convince the jury that the Wagners planned and committed these murders with one kind of collective evil mind.

SPEAKER_14 12:22

The whole family affair.

SPEAKER_07 12:23

And none of the four would act as an individual and say something to the others like, we shouldn't do this.

SPEAKER_14 12:28

Until they are arrested in 2018, they are still working as a family.

SPEAKER_07 12:50

Kineppa sets out to portray the Wagners as too protective of the little children in their family.

SPEAKER_14 12:58

Each one of them would do anything to protect the children.

SPEAKER_07 13:01

Jake and Hannah May's daughter and George's son.

SPEAKER_16 13:04

All she has to say is that it's for the best interest of the young children.

SPEAKER_07 13:07

Kinepa would have a hard time arguing that there's something wrong with protecting children.

SPEAKER_16 13:12

It's all about protecting the children and kind of these wild accusations.

SPEAKER_07 13:17

But when you hear her lead Jake through his testimony, you'll understand why she really needs the jury to see the Wagners as delusional about this.

SPEAKER_15 13:25

The reality of those fears is questioned, but that was their perception.

SPEAKER_07 13:31

Kineppa calls a few character witnesses to try to make these points about the Wagners.

SPEAKER_25 13:36

The ex-wife of the man on trial for murder in the Pike County Massacre case takes the stand today.

SPEAKER_07 13:41

One is George's ex-wife.

SPEAKER_26 13:42

It was Tabitha Claytor taking the stand, and she actually lived with the Wagners for two years.

SPEAKER_07 13:48

She and George had a messy relationship, so Kineppa uses her to try to make George less likable.

SPEAKER_15 13:53

It was Angela's house, so it was her rose. And did George go along with those choices? Yes.

SPEAKER_07 14:01

But of course, George's ex doesn't have any information that connects him or any of the Wagners to the Pike County massacre.

SPEAKER_27 14:10

So is the state ready to call its next witness? Yes.

SPEAKER_07 14:14

The most important character witness in this entire trial, though.

SPEAKER_27 14:18

You solvably swear or affirm that the testimony you were about to give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is someone you already know.

SPEAKER_15 14:26

Good morning. Good morning.

SPEAKER_07 14:27

Someone who seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth years earlier.

SPEAKER_20 14:31

Can you please state your name? My name is Elizabeth Armour.

SPEAKER_07 14:37

This is the return of Jake Wagner's Alaska love, Elizabeth Armour.

SPEAKER_13 14:42

Dramatic testimony in Pike County today.

SPEAKER_07 14:55

Quick review of Elizabeth. She showed up alone in the Wagner's small town in Alaska without any evidence that she had a past.

SPEAKER_21 15:02

A bag of mine was lost, which contained all of my personal documents.

SPEAKER_07 15:08

She had this weird, fast, but also chaste love affair with Jake.

SPEAKER_21 15:12

I hadn't dated anybody, so I had requested that we not consummate marriage.

SPEAKER_07 15:18

Then, right after traveling back to Ohio with the Wagner, she vanished from the aisles of a Walmart and seemed to disappear into thin air.

SPEAKER_21 15:25

I walked into the Walmart, changed my clothes at a changing station, and left out the back.

SPEAKER_07 15:34

And here's where the Elizabeth Armour story gets even more bizarre. After Walmart, she goes dark for four months. Then in November 2018, the state arrests and charges the Wagners. Right after the arrests, Elizabeth Armour very briefly pops back up.

SPEAKER_19 15:51

So I've been receiving a lot of questions lately since God told me to put my Facebook account public.

SPEAKER_06 15:58

And makes what appears to be the first social media post of her entire life.

SPEAKER_19 16:03

I am not allowed to speak publicly about the murders. So if people could just not ask me questions about the murders, that'd be great.

SPEAKER_07 16:12

After the big news of the arrests of the Wagners, the appearance of Jake's ex-wife on social media generates a lot of interest, and reporters start asking the Attorney General's office questions about her. So Special Prosecutor Angie Kaneppa actually makes an announcement. She says Elizabeth Armour is so traumatized by her time with the Wagners that she is changing her name. And for some reason, Kineppa also announces that Elizabeth is getting a new Social Security number and going into hiding. So there's no proof Elizabeth Armour existed before meeting the Wagners in Alaska. And shortly after the Wagners get arrested, she seems to stop existing again. And nobody hears another word about or from Elizabeth Armour until four years later in 2022.

SPEAKER_22 16:58

She was sharp, calm, collected as she described a toxic family dynamic.

SPEAKER_07 17:03

Okay, clearly I'm saying that I doubt Elizabeth Armour is a real person. I can't prove it, but I think it's much more likely that this is a fake identity being used by somebody who worked on behalf of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. I think that she had been assigned to get close to the Wagners and try to get them to say something incriminating while they were being secretly recorded. And I think I may have figured out the real identity of this person. While researching this, I of course tried to find any photos or videos of Elizabeth from before or after her time with Jake. The first thing I did was I took screen grabs from her new social media videos and ran them through a reverse image search. When I do this, it immediately brings up tons of pictures and videos of a person I've never heard of. And yeah, she looks exactly like Elizabeth Armour except for her clothes and her hair and her makeup. And here's another thing. The person calling herself Elizabeth Armour and this person both have cystic acne on their faces. So I take a close-up of one of their faces and I lay it over the close-up of the other's face. Their cystic acne lines up perfectly. It's in the same pattern, in the same spots on both faces. And here's where it gets even crazier. This person who matches Elizabeth Armour is, let me put it this way, very closely connected to someone who plays a leading role in the Pike County massacre investigation. The most important part of this whole Elizabeth Armour thing, though, is this.

SPEAKER_27 18:38

Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you were about to give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

SPEAKER_07 18:44

I do. In George Wagner's trial, she takes the stand and she testifies under oath as Elizabeth Armour.

SPEAKER_20 18:52

My name is Elizabeth Armour.

SPEAKER_07 18:55

If she's not who she says she is, that's perjury. People who work undercover for law enforcement can't testify under oath as if their cover story is true. There are ways for people who work undercover to testify while protecting their real identity. Like with the judge's permission, they can hide their face, they can keep their real name out of the record. But to do that, this person would first have to reveal that she was working undercover the whole time. And Angie Kneppa can't let her do that. This person is the key character witness who can get on the stand and try to establish the state's new and very hard-to-believe story about the Wagner supposed motive for the Pike County massacre.

SPEAKER_17 19:35

Miss Armour, when you were living in that home with Angela, Jake, and George, and the two children, did Angela ever accuse you of things regarding either one of the children?

SPEAKER_21 19:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 19:51

So basically, Jake and Hannah Mae's daughter didn't like Elizabeth, and the little girl would often complain about her to Angela or Jake. At some point, she said something to Angela that made Angela worried that Elizabeth had crossed a line with the little girl.

SPEAKER_21 20:05

It was brought to my attention by Jake that she said that I had inappropriately touched Sophia sexually.

SPEAKER_07 20:16

The person calling herself Elizabeth testifies that during this conversation, Jake described a violent fantasy.

SPEAKER_21 20:23

Jake said that he didn't believe I had done it, but that if I had done it, that the right thing to do would be to create uh Lucille, the baseball bat from The Walking Dead.

SPEAKER_07 20:41

She says Jake was a big fan of The Walking Dead. So he said that if anyone ever abused his daughter, he would do to them what one of the characters on the show did to his enemies. And when the person calling herself Elizabeth recounts what Jake said, it does sound pretty scary.

SPEAKER_21 20:56

And string me up in the barn, beat me to death with the baseball bat, bulldoze the barn, burn it down, and hunt down and kill my family. He just kept saying any of them would be willing to do this because it would be the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_07 21:16

But she also testifies that Jake quickly clarified that he would never actually do that.

SPEAKER_21 21:21

Jake was saying that he hadn't meant it, that he was joking, that he was just using a figure of speech, basically.

SPEAKER_07 21:30

And that's it. This person doesn't testify that she saw Jake or any of the Wagners even come close to doing anything violent, or that she saw or heard anything that could incriminate them in any crimes, let alone the Pie County Massacre. But Angie Kneppa is going to try to establish a new motive for the murders. And Elizabeth's Walking Dead story is meant to convince the jury that the Wagners would do insane things to protect their children from abuse.

SPEAKER_22 22:00

Again tomorrow, and we have yet to hear from George's brother Jake and mother Angela.

SPEAKER_07 22:06

The most important moments of George Wagner's trial, though, are when Angela and Jake take the stand against him. And in the coming days, Wagner's mother, Angela, is expected to testify against her son. When they take the stand, the public is going to hear for the very first time the state's official version of the Pike County Massacre. People are anxiously awaiting hearing from George Wagner's mom and brother. That version is going to come in the form of Angela and Jake's testimonies, but remember, Prosecutor Kinepa and her team have had a year and a half between Jake and Angela's guilty pleas and the start of this trial to work with Jake and Angela and get them ready to tell the official version on the stand.

SPEAKER_29 22:45

Mother and son came face to face for the first time since their arrest connected to the Pike County Massacre.

SPEAKER_07 22:50

In this trial, witnesses are allowed to opt out of being recorded, so there's no audio of Angela Wagner's testimony, but it's pretty simple. Prosecutor Kinepa has her say that she knew ahead of time that Billy, George, and Jake were going to commit the murders, and she didn't do anything to stop it. But that's pretty much it for her role. Her official testimony, as Prosecutor Kinepa walks her through it, is that she didn't participate in any planning and didn't know how or even when this was going to happen. She testifies that she was given only a few minor tasks related to the crimes, but two of them are awfully convenient for the prosecution. One, she testifies that she had to go to Walmart to buy those shoes, of course.

SPEAKER_22 23:43

She said she bought Walmart shoes for the sons, too small for their feet, to try to throw off investigators if they left prints at the crime scene.

SPEAKER_07 24:04

The Wagner's alibi was that they were home all night, and the prosecution needs something to explain why the Wagner's cell phone records back up their alibi. And that's as much as Angela Wagner can do for the prosecution because she testifies that Billy, George, and Jake literally never spoke about the crimes after they supposedly carried them out.

SPEAKER_24 24:31

I can tell you he was polite answering questions: yes, sir, no, sir. If you didn't know what he did and what he admitted to doing, I would say he came across as likable.

SPEAKER_07 24:42

Jake Wagner's testimony also isn't filmed, so there's no recording. But anyone can find the transcript of his testimony online. And so I'm gonna use AI voices here to recreate Jake's testimony and Angela Kanepa's questions from the transcript.

SPEAKER_16 24:56

Can you please tell us your name?

SPEAKER_03 24:58

Edward Jacob Wagner.

SPEAKER_07 25:00

If you read the transcript, I think you're gonna agree with me that Angie Kinepa clearly leads Jake through his testimony. And sometimes she just outright feeds him what she wants him to say. For example, listen to this exchange as Kineppa tries to get Jake to say why there's nothing incriminating on any of the secret recordings.

SPEAKER_16 25:19

Can you tell us, did you or anyone else in the family have concerns about being listened to?

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Being what?

SPEAKER_16 25:26

Being listened to by the authorities.

SPEAKER_03 25:28

Can you ask me that in a specific time frame?

SPEAKER_16 25:31

Yes. Was there a time where you became concerned about that?

SPEAKER_03 25:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_16 25:36

Okay. And so as a result of those concerns, did you guys alter your behaviors at all? No. Did you I mean, I guess you said you weren't having a lot of conversations.

SPEAKER_07 25:47

Another thing I think will jump out is how much of the crime Jake says he can't remember. I'm talking easy details, like who drove their vehicle.

SPEAKER_16 25:55

First of all, tell me who's in the vehicle and where you guys are seated.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

I I myself, my brother, and my father are in the vehicle. I think I was driving. Maybe dad was driving. One of the two.

SPEAKER_07 26:08

Or whether or not they used flashlights during the crime.

SPEAKER_16 26:12

What kind of flashlight did your dad have with him that night?

SPEAKER_03 26:15

I cannot remember.

SPEAKER_16 26:16

Okay. Did you have a flashlight at all?

SPEAKER_03 26:20

I don't believe I did.

SPEAKER_16 26:21

Okay. And do you know if George had a flashlight that night?

SPEAKER_07 26:25

I don't know. Remember, Jake's deal is that he has to testify to the state's liking in order to avoid the death penalty for him and his family. This isn't like someone getting on the stand and saying, I don't remember because they want to get away with a crime. It's better for Jake and for his family if he can recall details. But he just can't.

SPEAKER_16 26:44

Okay, do you recall what your father was wearing that night?

SPEAKER_03 26:48

I can remember him wearing a hoodie. I don't remember him wearing anything out of the normal.

SPEAKER_16 26:53

Out of the norm?

SPEAKER_03 26:54

Ordinary. Out of the norm.

SPEAKER_16 26:56

Did he have a ski mask on?

SPEAKER_03 26:58

No.

SPEAKER_16 26:59

Did he have gloves on?

SPEAKER_03 27:01

I think so. I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_07 27:04

So let's finally get to the story that Angie Kineppa has Jake tell on the stand about why and how he and his family supposedly murdered the rodents. We'll start with the motive. Remember after the arrests, Mike DeWine said this.

SPEAKER_31 27:20

There certainly was an obsession with custody.

SPEAKER_05 27:23

And his office told the news media this. The motive centers police say on custody. The little girl's dad was a Wagner, her mom a rodent. Friction led to murder.

SPEAKER_07 27:34

Well, now that Jake's on the stand telling the story the state wants him to tell, he and Angie Kinepa barely mentioned this supposedly heated custody battle. What you're about to hear is the entirety of Kinepa's questioning of Jake about wanting a formal custody agreement.

SPEAKER_16 27:52

And can you tell us if Hannah seemed interested in signing any of the paperwork that you and your attorney had tried to get her to sign?

SPEAKER_03 28:00

For a good period, she did seem very interested. Towards the end of 2015, it seemed more along the line she was just stalling for some odd reasons. I don't know what the reason. She told me she was getting a lawyer to double check the paperwork, which was very, very short, and said it was Chris Rodin Sr.'s legal lawyer that he used from Columbus. I don't believe there was ever such a lawyer.

SPEAKER_07 28:24

And that's it. There's nothing else about Jake trying to get Hannah May to sign custody papers or getting frustrated about it or arguing over it. Nothing. So if the state is no longer saying that the Wagners killed the Rodents because they couldn't get Hannah May to sign custody documents, what is the story?

SPEAKER_16 28:43

Okay. Can you tell us during the time that I guess during 2015, did you have concerns about did you have concerns regarding your daughter?

SPEAKER_03 28:56

Yes. And Excuse me just a second. I'm sorry. Can you repeat that question?

SPEAKER_16 29:01

I said, did you have concerns about your daughter during that year of 2015?

SPEAKER_03 29:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_16 29:07

And what were those concerns?

SPEAKER_03 29:09

I was concerned that Hannah was going to let my daughter be molested.

SPEAKER_07 29:14

When we get to trial, the state's new official story is that while Jake and Hannah May were sharing custody of their daughter, you know, one week at his house, one week at hers, Jake became concerned that Hannah May wasn't keeping a close enough eye on the child. And that if she wasn't paying close attention, somebody, not somebody in the Roden family, or even anyone specific, but just somebody, like maybe a future boyfriend of Hannah May's, could hypothetically abuse their child.

SPEAKER_16 29:42

Okay, and what did you base those concerns on?

SPEAKER_03 29:46

Are you wanting specifics as in the reactions of Sophia or reactions? Or my knowledge of people that she was just, I don't know.

SPEAKER_16 29:53

Yeah, whatever caused those concerns for you.

SPEAKER_03 29:56

Okay. To my knowledge at the time, what I'd heard from several people, the her choice of men was some kind of drug user of various sorts, however you describe it.

SPEAKER_07 30:07

Jake testifies that he expressed his concerns to Hannah May.

SPEAKER_03 30:11

I asked Hannah about it. She said that nothing out of the ordinary was going wrong. 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.

SPEAKER_07 30:24

That, according to the prosecution and the official testimony the state gets from Jake Wagner, is supposedly the reason why four people who'd never committed a violent crime before carried out the worst mass murder in state history.

SPEAKER_16 30:40

So sometime after that, whether that was late 2015 or early 2016, did you make a decision regarding your concerns about Sophia?

SPEAKER_03 30:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_16 30:49

Okay, and can you tell us what you decided?

SPEAKER_03 30:51

To be frank, I guess, to the point.

SPEAKER_07 31:08

Jake says he's the one who first suggests murder.

SPEAKER_16 31:12

Were you the one who first thought of it? Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_03 31:16

I was not the first. My father first mentioned it to me. He had 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 harmed. And I, at first, I can't remember exact words I used.

SPEAKER_07 31:35

Now, if your father, just out of the blue, after never saying anything even close to this in your or his entire life, turns to you and says that you should kill the mother of your child, you'd probably remember some details of that conversation, right? Well, here's Jake Wagner's recollection of it.

SPEAKER_16 31:50

And was it just you and your father who was a part of that conversation?

SPEAKER_03 31:54

I think my mother was there too.

SPEAKER_16 31:57

Okay. And when he said something has to be done, was he specific about what that something was?

SPEAKER_03 32:03

Yes. He had said that, again, it's not a quote. It may have been worded differently somehow. He said something along the lines that the only option would be to kill her or kill Hannah. It was something like that.

SPEAKER_07 32:16

Now in the official story, Jake initially tells Billy that he doesn't want to commit murder.

SPEAKER_16 32:22

And when he first suggested this to you, you told him basically no way.

SPEAKER_03 32:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_16 32:27

And stomped out.

SPEAKER_03 32:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_16 32:29

Did he say anything to you after you told him no way?

SPEAKER_03 32:32

In the same moment or after, just in general?

SPEAKER_16 32:35

After that.

SPEAKER_03 32:37

He had tried to talk to me about the matter, like later on, not that same day, like the near future.

SPEAKER_16 32:43

Okay, and what did he say at that time?

SPEAKER_03 32:46

I can't exactly remember the conversation.

SPEAKER_07 32:49

After some undetermined amount of time, though, Jake supposedly changes his mind and decides that his father is right.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

I had gone to my father and I told him we'll have to do it.

SPEAKER_16 33:00

And do you remember where you were when you had that conversation?

SPEAKER_07 33:04

Not specifically, no. Jake's memory of this supposed life-changing conversation is not great.

SPEAKER_16 33:11

Okay. After you told your father that you agreed to do it, what plans were made? Was it just gonna be Hannah? Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

There was Can you ask the question a little more specifically?

SPEAKER_16 33:24

Yes. When you tell your father that you're agreeing to do this, to kill Hannah, do you guys then start making plans immediately? If so, what were those plans?

SPEAKER_03 33:36

I had made a suggestion. I'm not sure if it was immediately. It may have been. His response was something of sorts of, I'll think of something. I may have made an idea at that point. It may have been later on.

SPEAKER_07 33:49

The next question that Jake's gonna have to try to answer is: if the plan is to kill Hannah May, why do they end up going house to house to house to house, killing eight people? Remember back at the press conference for the arrests, a reporter asked Mike DeWine about this?

SPEAKER_12 34:05

Were this many people targeted, so there would be no one left to try to claim rights to that child.

SPEAKER_31 34:10

Well, you can draw your own conclusions to that.

SPEAKER_07 34:13

Well, it's understandable that by the time they get to trial, the state abandons that explanation because it was never gonna make sense. And that's primarily because of Kenneth Roden. He is the baby's grandfather's cousin. One of dozens of cousins. And he lives all by himself on a marijuana growth site more than 12 miles from all the other victims. If the Wagners are supposedly trying to eliminate anyone who could make a custody claim, maybe the state could try to sell to a jury that the Wagners went after the baby's uncles and grandparents, but traveling to an entirely different site to eliminate just one of the baby's grandfather's dozens of cousins? That wouldn't make sense if it's about the line of custody. So why did they go after everyone including Kenneth? According to the state of Ohio, through Jake's testimony, they supposedly expanded the target list to prevent anyone from taking revenge on them.

SPEAKER_03 35:06

If I killed Hannah, if the slightest hint of the finger would have been pointed at me, he said that Chris and Frankie and Kenneth would all be bearing down on me with a sniper up on the hill or some sort. He said you cannot kill Hannah without killing them as well.

SPEAKER_07 35:20

Now, the Rodens have a huge extended family. Why wouldn't the Wagners worry that any of Chris Roden Sr.'s eight brothers or sisters or any of the other million cousins would seek revenge? Dana Roden had a brother who was known around Pike County as someone not to mess with. Why not try to eliminate him too? Out of all those siblings and cousins, the Wagners supposedly just happened to pick the one who's directly involved in Chris Roden Sr.'s marijuana business?

SPEAKER_03 35:47

Ultimately, the plan would have been that we would kill Hannah, Chris Sr., Frankie, and Kenneth. Dana would be in the same household, so. I don't know what the right word would be, but not necessarily a problem. But just as in the residence, because they all lived in the houses of which each one lived.

SPEAKER_07 36:07

Now let's get to the state's official story about how the Wagners supposedly pulled off these crimes.

SPEAKER_31 36:13

This was a pre-planned execution. It was a sophisticated operation.

SPEAKER_07 36:33

But when Jake takes the stand, he testifies that he didn't really plan anything. He testifies that his dad, Billy Wagner, who people say couldn't plan his way out of a paper bag, did all of the planning.

SPEAKER_16 36:49

After you and your dad decided that you were, in fact, going to kill not only Hannah, but Chris and Kenneth and Frankie, and then any individual that was present, what kinds of plans were made to make that happen.

SPEAKER_03 37:05

My father had said that the timing and surrounding events of the homicide he would take care of, and I was to obtain a vehicle that was not our own and to prep firearms with silencers.

SPEAKER_07 37:17

Jake doesn't describe any stalking of the rodents, any research. He doesn't even describe any Wagner family meetings about it, or really any discussion at all before the murders about how they're going to do it, or even when they're going to do it.

SPEAKER_16 37:33

Can you tell us how it was decided which night this would occur?

SPEAKER_03 37:37

It was at my father's discretion, but the little I do know had to do with the weather, such as overcast.

SPEAKER_07 37:43

According to the state, one day Billy Wagner supposedly just turns to the others out of the blue and for no specific reason says, tonight's the night.

SPEAKER_16 37:52

And can you tell us how did you learn what night it was going to be?

SPEAKER_03 37:56

My father told me.

SPEAKER_16 37:57

Okay, and how did he tell you?

SPEAKER_03 37:59

He came down in the earlier afternoon and said that was well, it may have been a few days before. I think it was the day of Okay.

SPEAKER_16 38:09

So your recollection is he came down in the early afternoon and said that was going to be the day?

SPEAKER_03 38:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 38:15

And then Kineppa leads Jake through testimony describing a sequence of events that doesn't exactly match Mike DeWine's description of a sophisticated operation. First of all, listen to what Jake testifies about what time he and Billy and George left their house.

SPEAKER_16 38:33

Okay, so talk to me about what time approximately did you leave.

SPEAKER_03 38:37

We left sometime around 9 o'clock in the evening.

SPEAKER_07 38:40

The Wagners lived about 15 miles from the rodents. So if the Wagners left their house at 9 p.m., even if they drove slowly, that means they would have arrived at Chris Sr.'s trailer around 9.30 p.m. Remember, six out of eight victims are killed in their sleep. Are they all deeply asleep before 10 p.m.? Nothing in Jake's testimony explains this. Jake says that when they arrived, Billy got out and went inside his best friend Chris Roden Sr.'s trailer while George and Jake supposedly waited outside to kill him.

SPEAKER_16 39:13

And what happened when you arrived?

SPEAKER_03 39:15

My dad parked the vehicle out front. And I can't quite remember if he did this immediately or maybe come back out a very, very short period of time. I think he did immediately. When he got out, he came to the back of the truck and said something about waiting for a signal of some kind. Or something like that.

SPEAKER_07 39:34

Jake says his dad supposedly walked inside the trailer and then walked out with Chris Sr.

SPEAKER_03 39:39

Chris stood in his doorway and I took aim. The first shot I suppose missed, and I panicked, and I closed my eyes, pointed in the midsection, and just fired randomly.

SPEAKER_07 39:50

In this supposedly professional, well-planned hit, the story the state wants us to believe is that Jake began by closing his eyes and firing his weapon in his own father's direction.

SPEAKER_16 40:02

Okay. And when you you said you closed your eyes and shot, uh when you opened your eyes, what did you see?

SPEAKER_07 40:08

Chris was gone. But wait, Jake's brother George is supposedly right next to him. What's he up to?

SPEAKER_16 40:14

And what was George doing at that time?

SPEAKER_03 40:16

I um I don't know on that one.

SPEAKER_07 40:20

Chris Roden Sr. lived in the trailer with his cousin Gary Roden, who was also killed. But Jake in his testimony says he has no idea how Gary got killed. He says he assumes Billy killed him. Then Jake testifies that he walked inside Chris Sr.'s trailer in order to take Chris and Gary's keys and their cell phones.

SPEAKER_16 40:38

Okay, and tell us why you got their cell phones.

SPEAKER_07 40:41

Honestly, I don't know. Now, according to the investigation, the evidence shows that Chris Sr. and Gary Roden were likely the only victims of the massacre who were awake when they were murdered. And Chris had been shot so many times that his body was grotesquely mangled. Remember when Bobby Joe Manley discovered the scene the next morning, she called 911 and described it like this?

SPEAKER_00 41:06

My brother-in-law did that really I beat the hell out of him.

SPEAKER_07 41:11

But Jake testifies that he went inside that trailer right after Chris Sr. was murdered and didn't really notice anything.

SPEAKER_16 41:19

And did you notice any injuries, any specific injuries to his body at that time?

SPEAKER_07 41:24

I cannot remember any, no. Jake testifies that after killing Chris Sr. and Gary, he and Billy and George walked to Frankie Roden's trailer, which was maybe a hundred feet from Chris's. Frankie lived there with his fiance, Hannah Gilly, his three-year-old from a previous relationship, and his and Hannah Gilly's six-month-old. Remember, according to Jake's timeline, it was maybe 10 o'clock, 10:15. He testifies that they supposedly just walked straight up to the front door of Frankie's trailer, and Billy tried to open it.

SPEAKER_16 41:54

Okay, and what did your father discover?

SPEAKER_03 41:56

It was locked.

SPEAKER_16 41:57

Okay, and so what did you do then?

SPEAKER_03 41:59

We walked to the opposite side and seen if the back door was locked. I think I went over with him. It was also locked.

SPEAKER_16 42:07

Okay, and so was there any conversation about that?

SPEAKER_03 42:10

He had said that it might be with Frankie's house, it might have to. It might have to be a kick the door in situation. Or something like that.

SPEAKER_07 42:21

Then they supposedly walked back to Chris Rodin Sr.'s trailer to regroup.

SPEAKER_16 42:25

Okay, so once you got back to Chris's, what did you do?

SPEAKER_03 42:28

At that point, we had gotten in Chris's truck and went, I think we went to Dana's house to see if to see if she was home.

SPEAKER_07 42:37

Stymied by the two locked doors at Frankie's trailer, they supposedly decided to drive Chris Sr.'s truck half a mile up the road to Dana Roden's house. But Jake says they could tell from outside that Dana wasn't home from work yet. So then they drove Chris's truck 12 miles to Kenneth Roden's trailer.

SPEAKER_16 42:54

Okay, and what was the purpose of driving past Kenneth's?

SPEAKER_03 42:58

To see if he was home.

SPEAKER_16 42:59

And what did you discover?

SPEAKER_03 43:01

We seen that he was home.

SPEAKER_07 43:03

They supposedly saw that Kenneth was home, but for some reason Jake can't explain, they then turned around and drove 12 miles all the way back to Chris Roden Sr.'s trailer.

SPEAKER_16 43:14

Okay, and once you got back to Chris's, what did you do?

SPEAKER_03 43:17

At that point, we went back to Frankie's, walked back the same way, and went to the back of the house. And I had tried to open the back door with the knife, the hunting knife that I had.

SPEAKER_07 43:29

Jake testifies that supposedly after driving to Dana's and then driving to Kenneth's and doing nothing, they went back to Frankie Roden's trailer, where Jake supposedly tried to wedge a knife into the back door and jam it open. Again, remember, Frankie, his fiancee, and their two children were all inside the trailer at this time. Jake testifies that he supposedly tried so hard to jam the door open that he broke his knife.

SPEAKER_03 43:54

And it broke, so the door, the door would not open. And I had noticed the window was opened under. The middle bedroom. So we let's see. So we walked past, or at least I did. Dad was behind me. So we walked past the chicken fencing, the dog. No Yeah. Past the chicken fencing and the dogs.

SPEAKER_07 44:16

Jake supposedly walked around Frankie's trailer past guard dogs, and these were aggressive dogs that were trained to bark their heads off at everyone. Again, without waking anyone inside. Then, after all those unsuccessful attempts to get through Frankie's doors, Jake supposedly noticed that Frankie had left a window open.

SPEAKER_03 44:37

And I had told Dad, hold my gun. I boosted myself into the home, up and down, in through the open window.

SPEAKER_07 44:47

The state's story is that Jake was able to shoot both Frankie and Hannah Gilly without waking either of them, or the three-year-old, or their six-month-old, because Jake used the homemade silencer on his gun. But listen to how Jake describes the sound this silencer supposedly made.

SPEAKER_16 45:06

Okay, can you tell us with that oil filter suppressor on that SKS? What was the nature of the sound that it made?

SPEAKER_03 45:14

Similar to the sound of a hammer hitting wood.

SPEAKER_07 45:17

Jake testifies that he and Billy and George then drove Chris's truck up to Dana Roden's farmhouse, where he says they could tell that at that point Dana Roden had arrived home. Inside that house, Dana had a bedroom, Haname Roden had another bedroom with her newborn infant, and teenager Chris Roden Jr. had another.

SPEAKER_03 45:35

We pulled up to the in the driveway. By this point it was raining and thundering, and we exited the vehicle and walked up to the front door. I had checked to see if the door was locked. It was not.

SPEAKER_07 45:50

Jake then describes a series of actions inside that house that are physically impossible. He says he walked to a spot in the hallway where he could see into Dana Roden's bedroom and also into Hannah May's bedroom at the same time. Then he testifies that he supposedly shot each of them from that spot where he was standing in the hallway.

SPEAKER_16 46:11

Did you actually go into her room at that point?

SPEAKER_03 46:14

When I shot, I don't think no. The initial shots, not the follow-ups, but the initial shots was both taken for Dana and Hannah inside the hallway.

SPEAKER_07 46:25

But later in his testimony, Jake is shown a floor plan of Dana's house and he realizes he's made a mistake.

SPEAKER_03 46:31

This really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because I could see here, but I was standing here.

SPEAKER_07 46:37

The crime scene shows that whoever killed Dana Roden then covered her with a blanket.

SPEAKER_16 46:43

Did you do anything else in her room as far as covering her with any items?

SPEAKER_03 46:47

I don't remember doing so.

SPEAKER_16 46:49

Okay. So when you left her, how was she?

SPEAKER_07 46:52

I'm not sure. Then Jake testifies that he and Billy and George got back in Chris Senior's truck, and for the second time that night, they supposedly drove the 12 miles to Kenneth Roden's trailer.

SPEAKER_03 47:06

Once we pulled in, I pulled right up to the front of Kenneth's camper.

SPEAKER_07 47:11

Now Jake testifies that he had never been to Kenneth Roden's trailer before in his life, but somehow he knew exactly where to find Kenneth's grow room and how to quickly disable its security cameras. Then Jake testifies that in the middle of the woods, in the dark of night, in the rain, he then supposedly noticed a security camera hidden in a tree outside Kenneth's trailer.

SPEAKER_16 47:33

Okay, and how far up the tree was it? How did you get to it?

SPEAKER_03 47:37

Ten or so feet, maybe. Something like that. I can't really remember specifically how I got up there to get. There could have only been two options.

SPEAKER_16 47:47

Okay, what are those two options?

SPEAKER_03 47:49

One is to climb the tree, or two, there was a ladder nearby.

SPEAKER_16 47:54

And you don't have a recollection of which one occurred.

SPEAKER_03 47:57

I remember getting the camera. I just don't remember how.

SPEAKER_07 48:02

Jake testifies that after he disabled Kenneth's camera, they then drove Chris Sr.'s truck back to his trailer, and then they supposedly switched back into their own truck and drove home.

SPEAKER_16 48:13

Do you recall what time you said you got back approximately?

SPEAKER_07 48:17

4:30-ish a.m. Remember he had testified that they left their house about 9 p.m.? So according to Jake's testimony, it supposedly took the Wagners more than seven hours to carry out these murders. Does the story you just heard sound like it would take seven hours? When you hear Jake's testimony in George's trial, you're probably wondering, where is George's lawyer in all this? Why isn't he constantly objecting to the way Angie Kaneppa leads Jake through his testimony? And why doesn't George's lawyer pick this testimony apart? All I can say is, those are great questions. He seems completely overmatched, and George's fate is sealed.

SPEAKER_27 49:05

It says we, the jury, find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, George Washington Wagner IV, is guilty of aggravated murder as charged in count one of the indictment.

SPEAKER_31 49:38

From the day that these murders occurred and throughout the long investigation, I always believe that we would find the truth. And I always believe that there would be justice for these victims. Today brings us one step closer to achieving this justice.

SPEAKER_07 50:00

George's conviction leaves Billy Wagner as the only one of the four who hasn't either confessed or been convicted. And today, more than three years after George's conviction, Billy maintains he's not guilty and refuses to take any kind of deal. Still, even though Billy's innocent until proven guilty, he's been in jail for more than seven years awaiting trial. And while I'm recording this at the beginning of 2026, he still doesn't have a court date. To lose so many of your loved ones in one night in such a senseless and brutal crime. Or what it's like when the state tells you after years of failure and frustration that it has found the killers and it's punishing them. I don't want to cause the Rodens, Manleys, or Gillies pain by undermining their feeling that in the conviction of the three Wagners, justice has been done. But I also can't help thinking about the fact that a homemaker, a truck driver, and two mechanics will likely spend the rest of their lives in prison because of corruption and politics. At least partly because a man with enormous generational wealth, a man who never had to work for money in his life, a career politician who basically hasn't done anything in his life except run for and hold a series of offices, needed to achieve his life's ambition. And didn't care who he had to hurt to get it. As I record this, that man Mike DeWine is in the last months of his second term as governor of Ohio. And he will assuredly never suffer any consequences for what he did to the Wagners or what he did to the extended Roden family. Because, in all likelihood, the person or persons who killed their loved ones in the middle of the night in 2016 got away with it. And I have no idea what can be done about this. There are amazing organizations like the Innocence Project that work tirelessly to overturn convictions based on false and coerced confessions. But here's the problem. In order for the Innocence Project to take up a case, the convicted person has to ask for help. But if either Angela or Jake try to recant their confessions, they'll break the deals that they made with prosecutors, and the state could be free to seek the death penalty against Billy. I guess I hope that by putting this together and telling all I think I know about the Pike County Massacre, that somebody who's listening, somebody who knows a lot more than me about criminal justice and the legal system. Or maybe somebody with inside knowledge about Mike DeWine. Or about prosecutor Angie Kinepa. Or about former Sheriff Charles Reeder and what they did behind the scenes to bring about this outcome. Or maybe somebody with information about the actual perpetrators of the Pike County massacre. That that person who's listening will stand up and do something to make this right.

SPEAKER_28 53:47

Thanks for listening to the