8 Murders, 4 Convictions, 2 Families: The Latest in the Pike County Shootings Case

The Wagner family of Pike County, Ohio, were by no means a normal family.

For starters, they were wealthy, estimated to be as worth as much as $5 million. George “Billy” Wagner III, the family patriarch, described himself as a trust fund brat, his parents having amassed their wealth breeding racehorses and creating the American Mastiff dog breed on their 2,000-acre site.

Billy, his wife Angela, and their two sons,George and Jake were also close. They lived together and made decisions together, relatives and friends said. Bobby Jo Manley would be among the first to discover the extent to which the Wagners would maintain that family bond.

On the morning of April 22, 2016, Manley found her brother-in-law, Chris Rhoden Sr., dead in his trailer, along with his cousin, Gary.

Manley rushed to check on Chris Sr.’s 20-year-old son, Frankie, on the adjacent property. He, too, was dead, along with his fiancée, Hannah Gilley, while their 6-month-old daughter lied between them covered in blood and his 3-year-old son wandered the home.

Police arrived and quickly began to unravel a nightmare. Eight members of the Rhoden family were found fatally shot that day. Chris Sr.’s ex-wife Dana and their other children, Hanna, 19, and Chris Jr., 16, were found in Dana’s home on the same street. Hanna’s 5-day-old daughter was left unharmed. (Hanna also had a 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter who was staying with Angela at the time of the murders.) Further away, Chris Sr.’s brother, Kenneth Rhoden, was found dead in his home.

Pike County had woken up to a massacre.

Police interviewed dozens of people, collected bullet casings and footprints, and chased various leads, including one that said Chris Sr. might have gotten mixed up with a Mexican drug cartel. Each led to a dead end.

But no one suspected the Wagner family.

“We were concerned about the Wagners, too,” Wagner relative Randa Hughes said. “We thought, ‘Something gonna happen to them next?’”

Jake, the younger Wagner son, was Hanna’s ex-boyfriend and the father of her older daughter. Upon the death of her and her family members, Jake received full custody.

In March 2017, the Wagner family moved to Alaska.

The family had talked about moving there for years, and they had expressed fear for their safety staying in Ohio. But when both Billy and Angela’s fathers died, neither of them went to the funeral, further raising the investigators’ suspicions. 

They decided to search the family’s old home. There, investigators found a receipt for two pairs of shoes that matched bloody footprints in Chris Sr.’s home.

Slowly, evidence of the Wagner family’s involvement started to come together. Investigators found the family had access to Hanna’s Facebook account and screenshotted 2015 messages related to her custody battle with Jake. They showed Hanna was dead set against giving up her parental rights.

“They’d have to kill me first,” she wrote.

Financial troubles forced the family to return to Ohio, where the authorities began listening in on their calls. The Wagners' closeness had brought them to murder, but now, authorities heard how the murders had started tearing the family apart.

“You, Jake, you made 90% of our plans,” Angela said in one call.

Through wiretaps and research into the family’s history, a motive started to form. When it became clear in December 2015 that Hanna would not give up custody of her child, the family planned to solve the problem by force, prosecutors said. Killing the entire family would ensure that Jake would have sole custody.

On November 13, 2018, police arrested the Wagners, charging them with 22 counts of aggravated murder, conspiracy, evidence tampering and interception of communications for spying on Hanna’s Facebook messages.

Authorities also charged Rita Newcomb, Angela’s mother, with misdemeanor obstruction, and Fredericka Wagner, the wealthy Wagner family matriarch, for her purchase of bullet-proof vests. Newcomb was sentenced to five years of probation and issued a fine, while Fredericka’s charges were dropped.

At first, Billy, Angela, George and Jake pleaded not guilty. But Jake said he had spoken to God, deciding to testify against his family in exchange for keeping the death penalty off the table for everyone. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Angela followed suit, admitting guilt in exchange for a 30-year sentence.

Their testimony against George helped a jury find him guilty on all counts. He received a life sentence without parole.

A trial date has not been set for Billy, who has maintained his not guilty plea, because Ohio prosecutors want to reopen the possibility of the death penalty for his case. Until it’s resolved, he’ll remain in jail.