10 years after Pike County massacre, families still wait for closure amid delays, appeals
WAVERLY, Ohio (WXIX) - This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Pike County massacre, when eight family members were murdered in this rural Appalachian region of southern Ohio.
The victims’ relatives are still seeking justice and closure as multiple legal challenges delay the trial of the final suspect and dispute the sentences of three others.
“Our hearts are with the families as they face the anniversary of the day they found their loved ones gone forever,” Special Prosecutor Angela Canepa told FOX19 NOW Tuesday.
“We regret not being able to have delivered the justice they and their loved ones deserve before this monumental milestone in their lives.”
It was a crime that made global headlines and remains the state’s largest and most expensive homicide case to date.
The investigation and prosecution have cost at least $4 million so far - funded by taxpayers, mostly the state of Ohio - to prevent crippling the small county’s annual budget, according to local and state officials.
Most of the victims were gunned down execution-style as they slept in their homes overnight April 21-22, 2016.
They are: 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.
Complete Coverage | Pike County Massacre
‘Most horrific case I’ve dealt with’
One of the victim’s relatives, Dana Rhoden’s father Leonard Maney, died in 2021 and never saw justice for his daughter, laments former Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk.
“This is the most horrific case I’ve dealt with in my entire career. This is the worst thing that I’ve ever seen, and I was a prosecutor for 26 years before I had this job,” said Junk, who is now the county’s common pleas court judge.
“We had homicides and other bad cases, but nothing like this.
“The most important thing to remember is that there are eight victims and their surviving family members. I wish Leonard Many had lived long enough to see these cases through to a conclusion.”
Family of four indicted in killings
Four members of the Wagner family, who were once friends with the Rhodens, were indicted in November 2018.
Three of them have been convicted or pleaded guilty.
The family patriarch, George “Billy” Wagner III, is still awaiting trial amid legal challenges.
He remains in custody at the Pickaway County Jail without bail.
He has pleaded not guilty to all 22 charges, including eight counts of aggravated murder.
It remains unclear where and when his trial will be held.
It won’t be in Pike County, where a jury convicted his eldest son, George Wagner IV, of eight counts of aggravated murder and 16 other charges, following a lengthy 2022 trial.
He is appealing his sentence: Eight consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus 121 years.
Girl’s custody motive for murders: State
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 said the motive in the murders was the custody of a child who was not at the murder scenes: the young daughter of Edward “Jake” Wagner and one of the victims he confessed to shooting in the head twice, his ex-girlfriend, Hanna May Rhoden.
Jake Wagner and Hanna May Rhoden began dating when she was 13 and he was 18.
She became pregnant at 15 with Sophia, who was born in the fall of 2013.
Hanna May Rhoden broke up with him in 2015. He confirmed when he testified at his brother’s trial that he didn’t want the relationship to end.
She had a second child, a baby girl, with another man just days before the massacre.
The Wagner family purposely waited until after that baby was born before carrying out their deadly attack on the Rhodens, Jake Wagner testified.
Sophia was at home with Angela Wagner at the time.
After the killings, Jake Wagner was temporarily awarded custody of the girl.
She was placed in the custody of child protective services when the Wagners were arrested.
Today, she is 12 years old.
Her whereabouts are not publicly revealed to protect her privacy.
Jake ‘knows he’s going to die in prison’
Exactly five years after the slayings, Jake Wagner pleaded guilty to eight counts of murder.
He was also convicted of 15 other charges, including felony conspiracy, four counts of aggravated burglary and multiple counts of tampering with evidence.
As part of the plea deal, Jake Wagner agreed to a sentence of eight life sentences without parole.
His mother, Angela Wagner, also pleaded guilty to her role.
Jake Wagner and his mother also promised to cooperate with the state and testify against Billy Wagner and George Wagner IV.
The state originally sought the death penalty against George Wagner IV despite the state and his defense both agreeing during his trial that he didn’t shoot or kill anyone.
But that sentencing option was dropped after his brother and mother testified against him.
They both took the stand for the state during his three-month trial in the fall of 2022 and told the jury that George Wagner IV planned, participated in, and helped cover up the slayings.
Jake Wagner revealed on the stand that he personally shot and killed four other victims besides the mother of his child.
Under oath and in graphic detail, he described how he also killed her mother, two of her brothers and her oldest brother’s fiancée.
Jake Wagner also revealed he shot and injured her father, Christopher Rhoden, Sr.
He disclosed that his brother was supposed to shoot Christopher Rhoden Sr., but froze, so he took George Wagner IV’s SKS rifle and pulled the trigger.
During a sidebar, Jake Wagner looked at the Rhodens in the courtroom and appeared to mouth to them: “I’m sorry.”
Controversial decisions
At the time of Jake Wagner’s guilty plea deal, his defense attorney, the judge overseeing the case at the time, who has since retired, and the victims’ families all agreed he would serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Jake Wagner “knows he’s going to die in prison,” his lawyer said in court on April 21, 2021.
But in a shock move that horrified Special Prosecutor Canepa and the victims’ families, the judge overseeing the case now, Jonathan Hein, sentenced Jake Wagner instead to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 32 years.
The previous arrangement was not binding, Judge Hein insisted.
“If everybody wants the last judge’s sentencing deal, they should have sentenced him under the last judge,” the judge bluntly said during that January 2025 hearing.
Canepa has appealed the decision to the Ohio Supreme Court after an appeals court failed to overturn it.
Her court filings accuse Judge Hein of abusing his discretion by setting aside the original plea deal.
This was just one of the flurry of filings by the state appealing Judge Hein’s decisions or seeking to have him removed from the case altogether.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy appointed the retired Darke County judge to the case in May 2023 and has not been inclined to replace him.
At the time of Jake Wagner’s sentencing, Judge Hein explained why he rejected the terms of the plea deal and gave the possibility of parole to a man who admitted to gunning down five of the eight victims.
He said he took into account the sentences of other relatives related to the case, including his brother and two grandmothers, along with Jake Wagner’s cooperation in solving the murders.
“Thirty-two years out, you get your chance because you cooperated. Because you did something to acknowledge responsibility for the crime,” Judge Hein told Jake Wagner.
‘You are the spawns of Satan’
That was no consolation to the victims’ families.
“You are the spawns of Satan,” Andrea Shoemaker, Hannah Gilley’s mother, told Jake Wagner.
Jake Wagner said in court he became a born-again Christian since he’s been locked up.
”I’m sorry for what I’ve done, and I am glad that I got caught. I a hundred percent believe that it was Jesus who made me get caught,” he said.
He also said: “There’s no amount of apology I could give today. No amount of an explanation. No thing I can do to help you ease the pain that you have. Loss. Anger. Hate.”
Judge Hein sentenced Wagner’s mother to 30 years without the possibility of parole, including credit for six years served.
Judge abused discretion: Appeals court
Since Jake Wagner and his mother have already been sentenced, it remains unclear now if they will testify again for the state, this time at Billy Wagner’s trial.
Most recently and again over Canepa’s vehement objections and to the horror of the victims’ relatives, the judge removed the possibility of Billy Wagner facing the death penalty if convicted.
Judge Hein, however, cited concerns about trial delays and litigation.
Canepa went over his head again to the appeals court, alleging “judicial malfeasance” and recently won.
The appeals court determined the judge abused his discretion and found that “no sound reasoning process” supported his decision.
Billy Wagner’s defense team is appealing to the Ohio Supreme Court.
They filed a new motion asking Judge Hein to once again take away the death penalty based on Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s unofficial moratorium, which has halted all state executions since 2020.
Canepa claims the governor’s moratorium looks at individual cases and is not a blanket policy.
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