This week marks 10 years since the Pike County massacre, when eight members of the same family were killed in a rural Appalachian area of southern Ohio.
Relatives of the victims continue to seek justice and closure, as ongoing legal challenges delay the trial of the final suspect and contest 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.”
The crime drew global attention and remains the largest and most expensive homicide case in the state’s history.
Officials say the investigation and prosecution have cost at least $4 million so far—funded largely by Ohio taxpayers—to avoid overwhelming the small county’s annual budget.
Most of the victims were shot execution-style in their homes while they slept overnight on April 21-22, 2016.
The victims were Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40; his older brother Kenneth Rhoden, 44; their 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 fiancée, Hannah Hazel Gilley, 20.
‘Most horrific case I’ve handled’
One of the victims’ relatives, Dana Rhoden’s father Leonard Maney, passed away in 2021 without ever seeing justice for his daughter, former Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk said with regret.
“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 now serves as 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
A grand jury indicted four members of the Wagner family—once friends with the Rhodens—in November 2018.
Three of them have either been convicted or have pleaded guilty.
The family patriarch, George “Billy” Wagner III, still awaits trial as legal challenges continue.
Authorities are holding him without bail at the Pickaway County Jail.
He has pleaded not guilty to all 22 charges, including eight counts of aggravated murder.
Officials have not yet determined where or when his trial will take place.
It will not happen in Pike County, where a jury convicted his eldest son, George Wagner IV, on eight counts of aggravated murder and 16 additional charges after a lengthy trial in 2022.
He is currently appealing his sentence of eight consecutive life terms without parole, plus an additional 121 years.
The Wagner family from left to right: George “Billy Wagner III, Angela Wagner, George Wagner IV and Edward “Jake” Wagner.(FOX19 NOW)
Girl’s custody motive for murders: State
The killers spared two infants and a toddler, leaving them behind at the crime scenes: a 5-day-old baby girl, a 6-month-old baby boy, and a 3-year-old boy.
Prosecutors said the murders were driven by a custody dispute over a child who was not present at the scenes—the young daughter of Edward “Jake” Wagner and Hanna May Rhoden, one of the victims he admitted to shooting twice in the head.
Jake Wagner and Hanna May Rhoden started 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 ended the relationship in 2015. During testimony at his brother’s trial, Jake Wagner confirmed he did not want the relationship to end.
Just days before the massacre, she gave birth to a second child, a baby girl, with another man.
Jake Wagner testified that the Wagner family deliberately waited until after that baby was born before carrying out the deadly attack on the Rhoden family.
At the time, Sophia was at home with Angela Wagner.
Following the killings, authorities temporarily granted Jake Wagner custody of the girl.
Child protective services later took custody of her after the Wagners were arrested.
She is now 12 years old.
Officials have not disclosed her whereabouts to protect her privacy.
A family of eight was killed in 2016 over a child custody dispute over Sophia Wagner in Pike County. Her parents – Jake Wagner and Hanna Rhoden.(WXIX)
Jake ‘knows he’s going to die in prison’
Exactly five years after the killings, Jake Wagner pleaded guilty to eight counts of murder.
Authorities also convicted him on 15 additional charges, including felony conspiracy, four counts of aggravated burglary, and multiple counts of tampering with evidence.
Under the terms of the plea deal, Jake Wagner accepted a sentence of eight life terms without the possibility of parole.
His mother, Angela Wagner, also admitted guilt for her role.
Both Jake Wagner and his mother agreed to cooperate with the state and testify against Billy Wagner and George Wagner IV.
Prosecutors initially pursued the death penalty against George Wagner IV, even though both the state and his defense acknowledged during trial that he did not personally shoot or kill anyone.
However, they dropped that sentencing option after his brother and mother agreed to testify against him.
During his three-month trial in the fall of 2022, both took the stand for the state and told jurors that George Wagner IV planned the killings, took part in them, and helped cover them up.
On the stand, Jake Wagner admitted that he personally shot and killed four additional victims besides the mother of his child.
While under oath, he gave graphic testimony describing how he also killed her mother, two of her brothers, and her oldest brother’s fiancée.
Jake Wagner further testified that he shot and wounded her father, Christopher Rhoden, Sr.
He explained that his brother had been supposed to shoot Christopher Rhoden Sr. but froze, so he took George Wagner IV’s SKS rifle and fired the shot himself.
During a sidebar, Jake Wagner looked toward the Rhoden family in the courtroom and appeared to mouth the words: “I’m sorry.”
George Wagner IV and Jake Wagner are escorted into the Pike County Courthouse. The trial of George Washington Wagner IV resumes Friday, October 28, 2022 at the Pike County Common Pleas Court in Waverly, Ohio. Eight members of the Rhoden family were found shot to death at four different locations on April 21-22, 2016. (The Cincinnati Enquirer)(Brooke LaValley/Columbus Dispatch)
Controversial decisions
At the time Jake Wagner entered his guilty plea, his defense attorney, the presiding judge—who has since retired—and the victims’ families all agreed he would spend the rest of his life in prison without any chance of parole.
Jake Wagner “knows he’s going to die in prison,” his attorney said in court on April 21, 2021.
But in a surprising move that outraged Special Prosecutor Canepa and the victims’ families, the current judge overseeing the case, Jonathan Hein, instead sentenced Jake Wagner to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 32 years.
Judge Hein maintained that the earlier agreement was not binding.
“If everybody wants the last judge’s sentencing deal, they should have sentenced him under the last judge,” he said bluntly during the January 2025 hearing.
Canepa appealed the ruling to the Ohio Supreme Court after an appeals court declined to overturn it.
In court filings, she accused Judge Hein of abusing his discretion by disregarding the original plea agreement.
This marked just one of several filings from the state challenging Judge Hein’s rulings or seeking his removal from the case.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy appointed the retired Darke County judge to oversee the case in May 2023 and has shown no indication of replacing him.
When sentencing Jake Wagner, Judge Hein explained why he rejected the plea deal terms and allowed the possibility of parole for a man who admitted to killing five of the eight victims.
He said he considered the sentences handed to other family members connected to the case, including Wagner’s brother and two grandmothers, as well as Jake Wagner’s cooperation in helping solve 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 him.
‘You are the spawns of Satan’
That reasoning offered little comfort to the victims’ families.
“You are the spawns of Satan,” Andrea Shoemaker, Hannah Gilley’s mother, told Jake Wagner.
Jake Wagner said in court that he had become a born-again Christian while incarcerated.
”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 added: “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 in prison without the possibility of parole, including credit for six years already served.
Judge abused discretion: Appeals court
Since Jake Wagner and his mother have already been sentenced, it remains unclear whether they will testify again for the state, this time during Billy Wagner’s trial.
Most recently, and again over Canepa’s strong objections and to the dismay of the victims’ families, the judge removed the possibility of the death penalty for Billy Wagner if he is convicted.
Judge Hein, however, pointed to concerns over trial delays and ongoing litigation.
Canepa once again appealed to a higher court, accusing him of “judicial malfeasance,” and recently secured a favorable ruling.
The appeals court concluded that the judge abused his discretion, stating that “no sound reasoning process” supported his decision.
Billy Wagner’s defense team has now taken the matter to the Ohio Supreme Court.
They filed a new motion asking Judge Hein to again eliminate the death penalty, citing Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s unofficial moratorium, which has paused executions across the state since 2020.
Canepa argues that the governor’s moratorium applies to individual cases and does not represent a blanket policy.
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