PIKE COUNTY, Ohio (WXIX) - The change of venue request filed by Billy Wagner’s defense team has been granted, according to online court filings.

George “Billy” Wagner III, 53, is the lone Wagner family member facing trial in the 2016 Pike County massacre.

The defense team wanted to move the trial to another county, arguing in a previous hearing before retired Darke County Common Pleas Court Judge Jonathan Hein that “the jury pool has already been tainted.”

Given the coverage of the Wagner family cases, the judge said “prejudice is presumed,” and “that no jury could truthfully answer that they have no prior knowledge of the horrendous facts of this case.”

In a Nov. 20 date court document, the State of Ohio wrote that they became aware of previously unknown information following an Oct. 7 court hearing.

The State wrote:

The State argued that Cincinnati’s “viewership coverage” only goes as far north as Adams County.

Judge Hein wrote in his decision that media is more than just over-the-air broadcasts.

“Additional media penetration exceeds traditional over-the-air media distribution as a result of internet dissemination, social media distribution and subsequent ‘crime show’ publicity about this case.

As for where the trial will be moved to, that is still unknown, special prosecutor Angela Canepa tells FOX19 NOW.

In the meantime, the 53-year-old remains locked up at the Pickaway County Jail in Circleville.

He was moved there earlier this year to be closer to his Columbus-based attorneys after being held at the Butler County Jail since he was arrested six years ago this month.

Billy Wagner’s trial is scheduled to begin on Jan. 6.

He continues to plead not guilty to all 22 charges including eight counts of aggravated murder from the execution-style slayings of his son’s ex-girlfriend and seven of her family members in April 2016.

Recent Ruling

Judge Hein announced he was suspending the possibility of the death penalty for Wagner until both his defense and now two special prosecutors come to an agreement over how that will be handled that will move the case forward faster.

“I’m done waiting,” the judge told the attorneys.

‘Why are you trying to sabotage this case right now?’

Special prosecutors and Jake Wagner’s defense team came to a plea agreement in 2022: If Jake and Angela Wagner appeared to testify truthfully against both Billy Wagner and his oldest son, George Wagner III, then the death penalty would be off the table for everyone.

Without that now going into Billy Wagner’s trial, Jake Wagner and Angela Wagner no longer are obligated to truthfully testify against him.

“If you sentence the defendants, what happens legally to the state’s ability to enforce their plea agreements?” One of the special prosecutors, Angela Canepa, asked the judge with obvious frustration.

Only the state, she noted, decides whether the state feels Jake Wagner testified truthfully.

The court, she argued, can’t dismiss death penalty specifications without a motion by the state or the defense.

Judge Hein said in court the state was supposed to have an agreement done by September or October. He later cited a state law gives the court the authority to announce the reason for a judge’s dismissal of a case.

“‘We’re getting there, we’re getting there’ - it was like somebody played a record today,’” the judge told Canepa. “I’m telling you we’re not going forward with trial on a death penalty specification when the defense isn’t ready because the state is not ready. I’m not assigning fault, I’m saying the clock ran out.”

“Why are you trying to sabotage this case right now?” Canepa responded.

“I have a duty to get this case done,” the judge told her.

FOX19 NOW legal analyst Mike Allen said he is not sure the judge could dismiss the death penalty.

“That’s the $64,000 question,” Allen said. ”He is bound by rulings that the prior judge made unless he has some discretion in it and he seems to think he does.”

Canepa later said the court is “demonstrating complete bias in this case.”

She also said she objects to “every single thing” that the judge said during the hearing.

Now, she and newly appointed Special Prosecutor Ron O’Brien have to figure out a new agreement.

O’Brien joins the state’s case with a lifetime of prosecutorial experience, particularly in complex, high-profile and death penalty cases.

He was the longest-serving Franklin County Prosecutor for 24 years and only left after losing re-election in November 2020 to his seventh term in office.

O’Brien also formerly served as an assistant county prosecutor, Columbus City Prosecutor and city attorney.

Billy Wagner’s wife and two sons have all been convicted for their roles in the slayings of the Rhoden and Gilley families and are serving prison sentences.

Two of them, his youngest son and wife, are expected to testify against him just as they did in George Wagner IV’s trial.

It ended in swift “guilty” verdicts on all 22 charges.

George Wagner IV is currently serving eight life sentences and 121 years on 16 other charges.

The life sentences are running consecutively.

The death penalty was taken off the table after his brother and mother testified against him for the state.

George Wagner IV recently filed an appeal seeking to overturn his conviction.

Gov. Mike DeWine has called his trial “one of the longest, if not the longest, trials in Ohio history.”

Estimates from state and local officials have placed the costs at more than $4 million, all funded by the state of Ohio.

Those taxpayer-funded expenses are only going to grow as George IV now appeals, and his father heads for trial.

Families of victims continue to wait for total justice

The victims of the April 2016 massacre were Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40; his older brother, Kenneth Rhoden, 44; his cousin, Gary Rhoden, 38; Chris Rhoden Sr.’s former wife, Dana Lynn Rhoden, 37, and their children: Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, 20, Hanna May Rhoden, 19, Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16, and Frankie’s fiancé, Hannah “Hazel” Gilley, 20.

Two infants and a toddler were spared by the killers and left behind at the murder scenes: a 5-day-old baby girl, a 6-month-old baby boy, and a 3-year-old boy.

Prosecutors have said the motive in the murders was the custody of the young daughter of Jake Wagner and one of the victims he confessed to shooting in the head twice, Hanna May Rhoden.

The young couple began dating when she was 13 and he was 18. She became pregnant with their daughter at 15.

They broke up in 2015 after their daughter was born in 2013.

Jake Wagner testified during his brother’s trial he didn’t want the relationship to end.

Hanna Rhoden had a second child, a baby girl, with another man and was dating another man at the time of her murder.

Her baby was just five days old when the victims were found on the morning of April 22, 2016.

Jake Wagner testified during his brother’s trial that he shot most of the victims, including Hanna Rhoden as she was propped up in bed breastfeeding her new infant.

He said on the stand he positioned her body after he shot her so she could keep breastfeeding her newborn, whose life he spared.

He also testified he picked up the shell casings and cell phones and took them.

But, according to other testimony, he missed one shell casing that investigators found under the baby’s crib.

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