Pike County massacre: Appeals court tosses Wagner sentences
WAVERLY, Ohio (WXIX) - In a rare and extraordinary decision, an Ohio appeals court ordered new sentencing hearings for two people convicted in the 2016 Pike County massacre.
“The trial court abused its discretion” denying the state’s request to delay sentencing Edward “Jake” Wagner before his cooperation with the state was complete, the Fourth District Court of Appeals wrote in a decision issued Friday.
His testimony is still needed against the final Wagner family member to be tried for the May 2016 slayings of eight members of the Rhoden and Gilley families, his own father, George “Billy” Wagner.
Billy Wagner’s trial has been delayed several times due to this legal challenge and others. It remains unclear where and when it will happen.
“There is no authority for a court to revisit a sentence that has already been imposed based on a defendant’s failure to fulfill his obligations under a plea agreement,” the appellate court wrote.
In addition, they reversed Jake Wagner’s conviction and judgment, along with that of his mother, Angela Wagner, who must now also be resentenced.
In a statement to FOX19 NOW, Special Prosecutor Angela Canepa said:
“We are grateful once again for a sound decision out of the 4th District Court of Appeals. This decision restores all parties back to their respective previously agreed upon positions and comes as a great relief to the families of these eight victims as well.”
Jake Wagner pleaded guilty under a 2021 plea agreement to eight counts of aggravated murder and a long list of additional offenses tied to the killings.
Under the plea deal, Wagner agreed to testify truthfully against co-defendants (including family members).
The opinion says the parties and the court understood sentencing would be delayed to ensure his cooperation—standard practice in defendant’s cooperation agreements.
That all changed, however, when Ohio Supreme Court Justice Sharon Kennedy assigned a new visiting judge to oversee the case, retired Darke County Common Pleas Court Judge Jonathan Hein.
Hein began to make a series of controversial decisions that horrified the state and the victims’ families, especially the sentencing of Jake Wagner and Angela Wagner prior to Billy Wagner’s trial.
Sentence different from plea deal
In April 2021, exactly five years after the slayings, Jake Wagner pleaded guilty to eight counts of aggravated murder and all of the 15 counts in his indictment, including felony conspiracy, four counts of aggravated burglary and multiple counts of tampering with evidence.
He and the state agreed he would serve eight consecutive life-without-parole sentences on top of numerous additional consecutive years for firearms specifications, and all of the other charges.
The state took the death penalty off the table as part of that deal.
Jake Wagner “knows he’s going to die in prison,” his lawyer said in court on April 21, 2021.
His mother, Angela Wagner, also pleaded guilty to her role.
Both partially fulfilled their obligation by testifying at George Wagner IV’s 2022 trial and were expected to testify at Billy Wagner’s trial.
But in a shock move, Hein instead sentenced Jake Wagner and Angela Wagner before Billy’s trial.
Additionally, he only imposed the minimum sentence on Jake Wagner allowable by law for each of the eight Aggravated murder charges, and ran them concurrently to one another.
With the mandatory firearm specification sentences, it brought Jake Wagner’s sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 32 years, instead of the agreed-upon life sentences with no chance of parole.
The previous arrangement between the state and Jake Wagner 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.
After the state appealed this, the trial court filed two “nunc pro tunc” sentencing entries, purportedly to fix date errors, according to the appeals court decision.
The entries made multiple additional changes beyond simple clerical corrections—changing legal code citations, removing/replacing authorities, omitting parts of sex-offender advisements, and altering restitution language.
Those entries are limited to reflecting what the court actually decided, not rewriting substantive content, the court decision states.
The appellate court declared the entries invalid and threw them out.
What happens next
The cases now go back to the Pike County trial court for a new sentencing hearing.
However, this time it should be after Jake and Angela Wagner complete their testimonial obligations under the plea agreement.
Meanwhile, last month marked the 10th anniversary of the Pike County massacre.
The victims’ relatives are still seeking justice and closure.
The Pike County massacre 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.
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.
One of the victim’s relatives, Dana Rhoden’s father Leonard Maney, died in 2021 and never saw justice for his daughter.
Complete Coverage | Pike County Massacre
Pending legal challenges
Billy Wagner 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.
Judge Hein sided with a defense request, and his trial will not take place in Pike County, where a jury convicted his eldest son, George Wagner IV, of eight counts of aggravated murder and 14 other charges, following a lengthy 2022 trial.
George Wagner IV is appealing his sentence: Eight consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus 121 years.
On the same day in November of 2024, when the judge announced he would be sentencing Jake and Angela Wagner before Billy’s trial 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 cited concerns about trial delays and litigation.
Canepa went over his head again to the appeals court, alleging “judicial malfeasance” and won that appeal earlier this year.
The appeals court determined the judge abused his discretion and found that “no sound reasoning process” supported his decision.
Billy Wagner’s defense team appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court.
The court has not yet indicated whether it will hear the appeal or not.
Girl’s custody motive for murders: State
Prosecutors said the motive in the murders was the custody of a child who was not at the murder scenes: the young daughter of 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 of the homicides.
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 in November of 2018.
Today, she is 12 years old.
Her whereabouts are not publicly revealed to protect her privacy.
‘I’m sorry’
Jake Wagner revealed on the stand during his older brother’s trial 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 Hanna May’s 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 his brother’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.”
Jake and Angela Wagner’s testimony during George Wagner IV’s trial detailed Billy Wagner’s involvement in the homicides and made it clear that he killed three of the victims and shot two additional ones.
According to Jake Wagner’s testimony, Billy Wagner shot and killed Christopher Rhoden Sr., Gary Rhoden and Kenneth Rhoden and shot Frankie Rhoden and Hannah Hazel Gilley.
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