Jurors get video tour of Rodhouse home, see more items taken from home during third search warrant

WARNING: This story includes descriptions of explicit violence and graphic sexual content that may be considered profane, vulgar or offensive to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

PITTSFIELD, Ill. — Jurors in the Austin Rodhouse trial, which entered its fourth day in Pike County Circuit Court, watched a video that took them through Rodhouse’s Pleasant Hill home and saw more items that were taken from the home after a third search warrant was conducted.

Rodhouse, who turns 31 next month, is being tried on 19 domestic violence and sex-related felonies.

• 3 counts of aggravated domestic battery, a Class 2 felony with a sentencing range of between three and seven years in the Illinois Department of Corrections. 
• 1 count of criminal sexual assault involving force, a Class 1 felony with a sentencing range of between four and 15 years in prison.
• 4 counts of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, a Class X felony with a sentencing range of six to 60 years in prison.
• 3 counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault, a Class X felony with a sentencing range of six to 30 years in prison.
• 2 counts of child pornography, a Class X felony with a sentencing range of six to 30 years in prison.
• 3 counts of indecent solicitation of an adult, a Class 2 felony with a sentencing range of three to seven years in prison.
• 3 counts of aggravated battery to a child, a Class 3 felony with a sentencing range of two to five years in prison.

Testimony in the trial before Judge Charles H.W. Burch is expected to resume at 9 a.m. Friday. Rodhouse, a Pleasant Hill native, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Jordan Gerard, a special agent with the Illinois State Police, returned to the witness stand Thursday afternoon. He provided details of interviews he conducted with Rodhouse’s wife, identified in court documents as “CC,” on May 8, May 9, May 13 and May 21-22.

He also showed the jury a photo taken Nov. 26, 2022, found on CC’s phone, showing her lying on a couch with one of her sons. She was not wearing pants or underwear. No tattoos on her lower torso were visible, either.

The jury was shown a video of Gerard walking through the Rodhouse home on May 22 before a search warrant was executed. Of particular notice was a room with no ceiling, and a rope was wrapped around a beam. The eight-woman, four-man jury also saw the master bedroom, which had “disco” lighting and a stripper pole.

Gerard then showed some of the items recovered during the search warrant. Among them was a broken cattle prod, a branding iron with the letter R in a circle, a piercing kit, vaginal weights and several bottles of medicine, including Adderall for Rodhouse, Tramadol (a pain medication) that was prescribed for someone with a different last name and smelling salts.

During cross-examination, defense attorney Casey Schnack asked Gerard if the smelling salts were a pre-workout type of supplement.

“I’m only aware of what I was told they were,” he said.

“So you haven’t actually looked at the bottle to tell if they’re a pre-workout type of supplement?” Schnack asked.

“On the side of it,” Gerard replied.

“Do you know what it is? Or do you just know what you’ve been told?” Schnack said.

Gerard said he had not done any testing of the bottle’s contents.

Schnack then asked about the vaginal weights.

“Were those in any sort of packaging when you found them that identified them as vaginal weights? Is it possible that those are fishing weights?” she asked.

“I’ve never seen a fishing weight look like that,” Gerard said.

Dr. Robert Bridge, an emergency room physician, and Christine Tucker, a registered nurse, described CC’s visit to Pike County Memorial Hospital in Louisiana, Mo., on May 3. Both said they were told CC fainted when she bent over to feed the dog in the kitchen of her home. Bridge said CC was “lightheaded,” and Tucker said CC was “tender” in the upper gastric area.

Tucker said when she asked CC if she felt safe in her home, she merely nodded her head. She also said Rodhouse called her after the May 3 hospital visit, asking if his wife’s ribs had been X-rayed.

“He said (CC) was complaining of pain, because he had bumped her against the wall when he lifted her (to get her out of the kitchen after she fainted),” Tucker said.

Bridge said Rodhouse acted like a “concerned spouse.” He said there was no evidence CC had suffered internal injuries.

Dr. Robert Thomas, an emergency room physician at Illini Community Hospital in Pittsfield, met with CC during a May 7 hospital visit. He said she was slow to respond to his questions. She said her back hurt after claiming she fell in a bathtub, but he quickly questioned the inconsistency of the timeline provided by Rodhouse and his wife.

“Asking her further questions, the story kind of changed from falling in the tub to the injuries potentially coming from sexual activity,” Thomas said.

A CT scan eventually found CC’s spleen had ruptured.

“Did you see signs of abuse?” Pike County State’s Attorney Walker Filbert asked.

“There were some concerns, absolutely,” Thomas replied. “It wasn’t any one thing. It was just a coagulation of it all. The various stages of bruising, the inconsistent timeline of their story of how the injury happened, the repeat visit to a hospital, going from one hospital to the next, it was all concerning. The patient did not answer a lot of her own questions, and she failed to make eye contact with me.”

Michelle LaGuardia, a travelling nurse, worked at Blessing Hospital from April to August earlier this year. She said during a Zoom interview in the courtroom that she was CC’s nurse when she was hospitalized May 7-8. She said Rodhouse never left his wife’s side and answered most of the questions about CC’s health.

If CC did answer a question, “she would always look at her husband first, then looked down,” LaGuardia said.