0:05

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. This

0:14

is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm executive

0:16

producer Jackie Howard. It's been five years

0:18

since eight people, seven adults and a teenage

0:21

boy were murdered in four homes in

0:23

Pike County, Ohio. Edward

0:25

Jake Wagner has plenty guilty to eight counts

0:27

of aggravated murder in the depths of the

0:30

Rodent family. Wagner's parents

0:32

and older brother are still facing murder charges

0:34

themselves. An investigators say

0:36

this was an elaborate and long planned

0:38

execution plot to get rid

0:41

of anyone who might stand in the way of custody

0:43

and control of Jack Wagner's child.

0:46

The first alarm was raised when Chris Roden's

0:48

sister in law called nine one at

0:51

seven forty nine. AM listen, kay

1:00

my brother in laws who stays through and look? I

1:03

think the hell out of them? Okay,

1:07

were all hearts? Man?

1:10

Can you counting with county? That's my

1:13

county, it's my county.

1:15

Hugging that okay?

1:18

Okay? I mean you get out of the house, think

1:22

you drive over there? That's like here?

1:24

Okay, what's your name mine?

1:28

What is your brother in law's name? What's

1:31

your brother in law's name? Man?

1:37

Yeah, what's your name? Christ

1:39

Versing, Garry Rose, Fanking,

1:41

Gary Road? First, un

1:44

head, look like the dad think you're Road?

1:47

I think the great said, it's like one husband out

1:49

of them. Okay, if there's anybody else

1:51

in the house, I know.

1:56

Okay. The bard was law school, was got

1:58

here but on her friends he was ill?

2:00

Then in isn't it a landing on the floor. I

2:03

need to get out of the house and starting

2:07

now. Okay. Shortly after that, Kenneth

2:10

Roden's cousin also called nine one

2:12

one, Yeah,

2:14

I need a days come out to post.

2:19

Okay, uh, it's

2:22

all that stuff. It's on the news. I

2:25

just found, just found my cousin was

2:27

again shop wind Okay,

2:30

got mine? So no,

2:34

okay here and

2:37

I don't know what his address is it don't

2:39

he don't have a boss, you don't have a bo Okay,

2:43

I'll be staying out my a very well, no, sir,

2:49

what do you think Kenneth

2:51

Rode? Yeah,

2:57

okay, so ny how does the house? I'm

3:01

out of the house right now. I just went in horror

3:04

and check and

3:07

I again.

3:10

Eight murders in four homes. That's

3:12

a nightmare. For forensic investigators.

3:14

Jeff goot Morgan, professor of forensics

3:17

at Jacksonville State University and author

3:19

of Ldendeath My Feet, joins me. Now, Joe

3:21

Scott, how would you handle a crime scene

3:23

like this over four homes? It's

3:26

I got to tell you, Jackie. I've been on several

3:28

scenes like this are similar to this over

3:32

my career, where you've got multiple bodies

3:34

that are scattered over a large area. To

3:38

say that it is a

3:40

logistical nightmare is

3:42

an understatement because I think

3:45

that most most people, particularly

3:47

U Nancy's fans, can probably

3:50

understand that we're very meticulous

3:52

when it just comes to to one

3:54

body, But just multiply

3:57

that and think

4:00

about everything that goes into literally

4:04

processing each body, because as cruel

4:06

as it sounds, each body or

4:09

a body is a is

4:12

your largest piece of evidence that you have

4:14

at a scene. And without

4:16

that body and without the information that it gives

4:18

up, you're lost. You're loss from

4:20

from Jump Street. So the moment that

4:23

you cross that threshold onto

4:25

that scene, you can

4:28

never get that first step again.

4:31

It only happens once. So you

4:33

have to be prepared mentally and

4:36

physically, and logistically

4:39

and every other way before you ever

4:41

set foot inside there, because

4:43

you're you are the

4:45

individual that is going to be annotating

4:48

everything that's going on within there. Now,

4:50

you know, most of time there's a team of us that go in.

4:53

You're going to have crime scene investigators

4:55

who are collecting you know, fiber evidence

4:58

and all that sort of thing and ballistic

5:00

evidence. And you're going to have probably

5:02

a crime scene photographer who's

5:05

their sole purpose is to actually

5:08

be there and document

5:10

everything photographically because you know, like the

5:12

old saying, you know, a

5:14

single photo, you know, it can speak a thousand

5:17

words. So and that's a moment in

5:19

time that you're having to capture that

5:22

maybe you know, six months later

5:24

or eight months later, in this case, five

5:27

years later, it's going

5:29

to tell you about that frozen moment in

5:31

time, and you have to be very careful in capturing.

5:33

And of course you've got the detective that's there,

5:36

that's the lead investigators. He's

5:38

taking notes and making observations. And

5:41

then there's somebody like myself from the Medical

5:44

Examiner's Office who's the medical legal death

5:46

investigator, and we look

5:49

at these scenes like this and

5:53

we try to determine what exactly

5:56

happened to this individual.

5:58

First off, to bring about their death. But sometimes

6:01

sometimes we can get an indication

6:04

as to what was going on prior to

6:06

death. Then in the midst

6:09

of the death, which is something a

6:11

lot of people don't hear about. It's called perimortem,

6:13

which is in the middle of and

6:15

then of course we document what has

6:17

happened to the body afterwards. And

6:20

so you have to be very careful, Jackie, because

6:23

the case literally can

6:25

be one or lost,

6:27

or solved or unsolved by

6:30

virtue of what you do in that one

6:33

instant in time. And

6:35

it's you know, lawyers,

6:38

people like Nancy, they love to

6:40

use the term you can never unring the bell.

6:43

You can't get that soundback once the clapper

6:45

hits inside of that bell, and that

6:48

certainly rings true,

6:51

pardon the pun. In forensics,

6:54

you can't get that first act because

6:56

if you go in and you step on something,

6:58

or you don't pay attention to everything

7:00

in your environment, you're

7:02

ruined from the absolute beginning.

7:05

Well, speaking of that, just got time

7:07

must be an enemy for year

7:12

at a scene like this over

7:15

for home. It takes a lot

7:17

of time to collect this much

7:19

evidence. Does it degrade?

7:22

I mean, it's the possibility of it degrading in

7:24

the amount of time that it takes, and how many

7:26

people would it take literally to process

7:29

this many crime scenes. Well, okay,

7:32

I'll give you an example. Many years ago, when

7:34

I was working in Atlanta, we had a

7:36

tragedy that occurred there that's been since

7:39

referred to as the Buckhead shooting. And

7:42

we had I don't know upwards, I think

7:44

it was something like sixteen

7:46

bodies. And these bodies were spread

7:48

out all over kind

7:50

of a large area. They were in a

7:53

building, but they were on multiple locations.

7:56

And I've had other mass homicides

7:58

that have taken place, and the best

8:01

way to do that is say, if you take

8:03

body A. Okay, you

8:06

take Body A, and you

8:08

assign Team A to

8:11

that body, and they are solely responsible

8:13

for that body. They don't get involved with anything

8:16

else. Their sole assignment is

8:18

to handle all of the photography, all

8:21

of the trace evidence, all of the

8:23

measurements, anything else

8:26

that comes into play, and of course the examination

8:28

of the body. And you know, to your point,

8:31

that creates a kind

8:33

of a steadiness, if you will, because you've set

8:36

the framework you know you're talking about, how you

8:39

know, it doesn't matter what we do that the old

8:41

hands on the clock never stop moving forward,

8:43

do they. And so you can't freeze

8:45

time. You can't say, oh, I want to do over time

8:48

out. It's not like a ball game. Time

8:51

is ticking off that clock. So everything that you

8:53

have in that environment does in fact begin

8:56

to degrade, whether it's blood evidence,

8:58

what a strong wind comes along and blows

9:01

away fiber, or if you've got something, say,

9:03

for instance, that's outside the home, there's

9:05

a rainstorm that comes up and you haven't

9:08

accounted for it. Will rain is one of the worst

9:10

enemies, you know for an investigator.

9:13

But you know, there's even something that's that's

9:15

more um, that's

9:17

more critical than that sometimes, and that's

9:20

that's the effect that time has

9:22

on a body. Because you know,

9:25

we hear about all these terms, and you hear this one

9:27

overarch theme and death investigation.

9:29

It's called the post mortal interval. We talk

9:32

about it all the time. And

9:34

that's that's a very significant thing because

9:36

you know, one of the biggest questions people ask

9:38

me as a medical legal death investigator

9:41

is you know, well, hey, Morgan,

9:44

when when did this person die?

9:47

Well that's a central piece of the puzzle,

9:50

isn't it. And when you have a

9:52

multitude of bodies, you know, at

9:54

a scene, the sequencing of

9:57

all of that, When did they die, in what

9:59

order did they die? How long have

10:01

they been here in this particular state,

10:03

Were they originally killed here,

10:06

were they migrated somewhere? So

10:09

all of that stuff comes into play. And the one

10:11

denominator, the common denominator relative

10:14

to that is time, and then

10:16

you place all your other factors in place. So

10:19

you have to be very attuned

10:22

to this as you move down this line.

10:25

And one of the most important elements

10:27

here is that you

10:30

may have actually heard of before. It's

10:32

an odd terms called algor mortise,

10:34

and what that means is it's actually

10:37

the postmortem cooling of the body.

10:40

You know, how at what temperature is

10:42

the body when you get there as an investigator,

10:44

and by measuring that

10:47

temperature, you can actually

10:49

there's a formula we can plug that into

10:52

to get an idea as to what

10:54

at what rate is the body decreasing

10:57

in temperature. You know, our body temperature

10:59

in life as ninety eight point six. You

11:01

know, as an average, everybody's not at

11:04

that, but you use that as an average

11:07

and you kind of measure that as you move

11:09

through time, and if we should say we show

11:11

up at a scene and we've got a body that's

11:13

at I don't know, ninety five degrees

11:16

okay, Well, dependent upon the environment

11:19

that they're in, we can kind of

11:21

get a guestament that that person's been down

11:24

roughly anywhere from three

11:27

to maybe four and a half hours. Now, you can't

11:29

really tie it down contrary to with see on TV,

11:31

you can't tie it down any closer than that. But that time

11:33

element is very important.

11:36

And here's why, because

11:38

once you're at the scene

11:41

and you're with the body, if a

11:43

body has taken on room

11:45

temperature at that point, it's pointless to take

11:47

the body temperature other than initially because

11:50

that means that you're outside of a twelve hour

11:52

block. Because at the twelfth hour after

11:54

death, all of the energy that we've

11:57

generated in life is

11:59

gone, it's dissipated. So

12:01

it's real important that once you get there, you

12:03

get an initial body temperature and

12:05

that will give us an idea. And you say, well, Morgan,

12:08

that's that's kind of I don't understand that. Well,

12:10

let me give you a great example. Let's

12:12

say the police actually apprehend

12:15

somebody or they're questioning somebody, and

12:17

they have what's called an alibi for where

12:19

they were, or they say they have an alibi. They

12:22

say, well, I last saw them, you know, you

12:25

know, two hours ago, but you know,

12:28

based upon science a temperature, this

12:30

person's been dead for at least six hours, so

12:32

you can kind of with science you

12:34

begin to chip away at that alibi and you say, no,

12:37

you can't see them two hours ago, because I know that they've

12:39

been dead for at least six or seven hours at this

12:41

point. So that's why it's so important. And

12:44

then you get an idea about the sequencing. You

12:46

know, you get a mass casualty event,

12:49

which in this little area

12:52

is you

12:54

look at that and you think, well, in what order

12:57

did these people die? Is there is there any

13:00

variables in the postmortem, the

13:03

postmortem changes that have taken

13:05

place, the stiffness of the body otherwise

13:07

known as ryger mortis or you

13:10

know algor mortis with the body temperature,

13:12

or postmortem lividity, libra

13:14

mortis, the settling of the blood. So

13:17

all of these things are essential when we're trying

13:19

to tell this tale of

13:21

what happened in a mass

13:23

casualty event. And this is, like I said,

13:26

a mass casualty event, because you know, you look

13:28

at someplace like, let's

13:30

just take a big metropolitan area where

13:33

maybe New York or Chicago.

13:36

Now though it is a tragedy, if

13:38

you have eight people dead and one

13:40

of those locations, they're

13:43

going to view that as as

13:45

a mass casually, but it's not going to be as

13:47

impactful there to the resources as

13:50

it is in some place like say rural

13:52

Ohio or another rural

13:54

location in America. Its

13:57

it puts a great strain on the resources

14:00

and how you can respond and how you have to

14:02

process it because, as you can imagine,

14:04

in a in a tiny, little

14:06

Appalachian village

14:09

town, they're not going to have the same

14:12

crime scene investigators or the same

14:14

type of technology for instance,

14:16

that say somebody in a large metropolitan

14:19

area has You're gonna have to wait.

14:21

You're gonna have to wait and call the state police,

14:23

and state police are gonna have to show up. And what's

14:25

happening that entire time, Well, time

14:28

is bleeding off that clock. It's

14:31

just kind of whittling away and going forward

14:33

and forward, and the further you move

14:36

out down that timeline, more

14:39

evidence it's lost, more information is lost,

14:41

and so it's critical to get there as quickly as

14:43

your possible can. Crime

14:56

stories with Nancy Grace Joe

15:00

the Pike County Sheriff at the prime

15:02

Charles Readers said that these

15:05

individuals their lives were taken in the most

15:07

horrific way he'd ever seen, execution

15:10

style. You came in like thieves in the night

15:12

and took eight lives, some

15:14

being children, the

15:19

most horrific way I've

15:22

ever seen in my twenty plus years. We

15:29

are getting closer. We

15:32

will find you. The

15:35

family and the victims will

15:38

have justice one day. We

15:41

are coming. The autopsies revealed

15:43

powder burns on the skin of some of the victims.

15:46

What can you tell us about how these victims

15:48

died? I can tell you if

15:51

what the investigators and sheriff

15:53

are saying, there's a level

15:56

of brutality involved in this case

15:58

that I think that would probably

16:00

classify this is making it very very

16:02

personal because if you're just going

16:05

out to simply execute

16:07

somebody, and I think the example people use

16:10

many times it's like a mob hit,

16:13

for instance, that a lot of people are familiar

16:15

with because of modern media or

16:18

news or maybe movies. You just see somebody

16:20

simply shooting somebody in the back of the head and then

16:23

walking away. There's there's almost an

16:26

economy in the way somebody would do

16:28

that. But when you begin to see what

16:31

I classify as uber violence

16:35

at a scene, then

16:37

that breaks it down

16:39

and kind of ties it back to a

16:42

personal nature. Because isn't

16:46

one stab wound, isn't one beating, isn't

16:48

one bullet? Isn't

16:51

that sufficient to the task? Why

16:53

do you have to go down this road and get

16:55

yourself involved in something like

16:58

overkill? Which gives

17:00

you, I think from a profile

17:02

in standpoint, it gives you a rule at

17:04

least it begins to form a picture

17:07

of the type of person that the police

17:09

might be looking for in a case like that, somebody

17:12

that you had a proverbial axtagron.

17:15

Let's take a listen to what WLWU

17:17

Team News five reporter Brian Hemrick

17:19

had to say about the autopsies when they

17:21

were released. The coroner's preliminary report

17:24

shows Christopher Roden's senior was

17:26

shot nine times, including five

17:28

times in the phase, three in the torso, and

17:31

once in the arm. He appears to be the

17:33

only one of eight with defensive wounds, indicating

17:36

he may have been awake when the attack happened

17:38

and was most likely the first one

17:40

killed inside the same trailer.

17:42

Gary Roden was shot three times in the

17:45

head and face, including one shot

17:47

that left a muzzle stamp on his temple, indicating

17:50

a point blank shot. Next

17:52

to her, A couple shot while in their

17:54

bed with their week old baby between

17:57

them, another child on the floor.

18:00

Frankie Rodin was shot three times in the

18:02

head and face. His girlfriend, Hannah

18:04

Gilly, was shot five times

18:06

in the head and face. One of the shots was

18:09

through her eye. Both baby

18:11

and the young child left unharmed.

18:14

Just down the road, three more killed Dana

18:16

Roden, Chris Senior's ex wife. She was

18:18

shot five times across the

18:21

forehead and in the temple, then

18:23

up through the chin. Chris Roden

18:26

Jr. He Was sixteen shot

18:28

four times, including two through

18:30

the top of his head, and his sister

18:32

Hannah was shot twice in the head

18:35

and in a trailer a few miles away. Kenneth

18:37

Roden he was shot once through

18:39

the right eye. Given

18:42

what you said about the personal nature of this show,

18:44

the corner said, all but one of the victims

18:47

was shot more than one. Two

18:50

people were shot five times, one person

18:52

was shot nine times, shot

18:55

at close range. The evidence showed

18:58

that a couple of the individuals were awake

19:01

when they were attacked. How would we know that there

19:03

is a certain awareness that people have when

19:06

they are being attacked

19:09

as opposed to just slumbering. And I'm

19:11

glad you mentioned that, Jackie. You

19:14

know, again back to a case that

19:16

I worked many many years ago. I had an entire

19:18

family of eight that were killed

19:20

in a very very small home. I

19:23

mean it was tiny. This house

19:25

couldn't have been more than thirteen hundred square feet

19:28

and there were eight people living in that. Can you imagine.

19:31

And one of the one of the one

19:33

of the decedents

19:35

that actually has always stuck in my mind

19:38

with that case was a young girl that was

19:41

thirteen years old at the time, and she was

19:43

laying on a single

19:45

size bed. You know, just imagine

19:48

a tiny bed that you would put your young child

19:50

in. And she was laying on that bed,

19:53

and she had the covers and I'll never forget

19:55

it, she had my little pony blanket

19:58

that was pulled up so that it

20:00

was right at the level of her shoulders,

20:02

and jack you know, she had a perfectly

20:05

circular defect or bullet hole right

20:07

between her shoulder blades, and you know, her

20:09

little head was still turned to the left

20:12

she was layding face down, turned to the left, with

20:14

her arms resting beneath her head

20:17

and sleeping. She had no awareness

20:19

that that was coming to her. So for us,

20:21

when I see a body like that, in

20:24

the case of the thirteen year old girl, I know

20:26

that she did not have an awareness. Now

20:29

in the hallway though in the

20:31

hallway it was a blood bath.

20:34

You had three siblings that were all laying

20:36

on top of one another in the middle of the hallway.

20:39

There was so much blood. Actually, and I don't want to

20:41

be too graphic, but I actually slipped down

20:43

at that scene in the blood. And

20:46

those individuals, because they were up and fighting

20:48

for their life, they knew

20:51

what was going on. But for that little girl, she

20:54

had no awareness. So as an investigator, that

20:56

might say to me, for instance, that she

20:58

was one of the first people were killed. For

21:01

everybody else, the ones that weren't in bed,

21:03

they never saw it coming. So you

21:06

have to be very very careful when

21:08

you observe individuals at scenes

21:11

in the position in which they are initially

21:13

found, and you have to be very careful as to

21:15

how you document that because again that goes

21:18

back to this idea of

21:20

sequencing the deaths in what

21:22

order, because there are no more living witnesses

21:25

in certainly like a case like we're

21:27

discussing. In the cases I've worked

21:29

many times, there were no living witnesses. All

21:32

you had to go on was what the bodies

21:35

were telling us. We had to

21:37

actually in that case, and people have heard

21:39

the set for years and years. We had to let

21:41

the dead speak to us in that

21:43

moment time and tell us their tales

21:46

through the science that they were living behind in their

21:48

clues. With me today is Jeff

21:50

Scott Morgan. He is a forensics professor

21:53

at Jaxable State University and author of

21:55

Blood Beneath My Feet. For more on this

21:57

case and others, go to crime

22:00

online dot com For crime

22:02

stories with Nan Straith. I'm Jackie Howard

22:08

H