Angela Wagner in court on November 29, 2018. Photo / AP
Six years ago, eight members of the same US family were found shot to death in several mobile homes and a camper in Pike County, a sparsely populated area of rural southern Ohio.
The killings frightened and stunned residents of the county. And when authorities announced in 2016 that marijuana operations had been found near the crime scene, it raised the possibility that the killings might have been drug-related.
But prosecutors have since accused four members of another family, the Wagners, of planning and carrying out the killing of the Rhoden family in a scheme to gain custody of a girl who was 2 years old at the time.
This month or early next month, opening arguments will begin in the trial of one of two brothers charged in the plot, George Wagner IV, 30. His mother, Angela Jo Wagner, and his younger brother, Edward Wagner, pleaded guilty last year to their roles in the killings. Both could testify in the trial. The father, George Wagner III, is expected to stand trial at a later date.
The trial promises to shed further light on the internal dynamics of a family that, according to prosecutors, hatched and carried out a brutal mass murder.
In an interview on Tuesday, Angela Canepa, a special prosecutor in the case, described the Wagners as "insular", saying they home-schooled their children, worked together as truck drivers, "did everything together and kept to themselves for the most part".
She said they held meetings and voted on major decisions, such as whether to move or make a large purchase. "And there was a semblance of that in this case," she said.
At the centre of the case is the younger son, Edward Wagner, who is known as Jake. He began dating a member of the Rhoden family, Hanna May Rhoden, when she was 13, and conceived a child with her when she was 15 and he was 20, Canepa said, in what authorities called an act of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.
When a bitter custody dispute erupted, Rhoden refused to sign papers to share custody of the girl with Edward Wagner, prosecutors said. "They will have to kill me first," she wrote in a Facebook message in December 2015, according to Canepa.
Wagner was also upset that Rhoden, who had begun seeing someone else and was pregnant with that person's child, was exposing his daughter to "people that he believed she should not be around", Canepa said.
The Wagner family, according to Canepa, spent months plotting to kill Rhoden and members of her family. In preparation, she said, they bought ammunition, magazines, clips, a cellphone jammer and parts for building silencers.
They also forged court documents maintaining that Edward Wagner would gain custody of the child in the event of Rhoden's death, prosecutors said. Between April 21 and April 22, 2016, all eight victims were fatally shot in the head, some while sleeping, prosecutors said.
In addition to Hanna May Rhoden, 19, her parents, Christopher Rhoden Sr, 40, and his former wife, Dana Manley Rhoden, 37, were killed. So were Hanna's siblings, Christopher Rhoden Jr, 16, and Clarence Rhoden, 20. The other victims were Clarence Rhoden's fiancee, Hannah Gilley, 20; Christopher Rhoden's brother Kenneth Rhoden, 44; and his cousin Gary Rhoden, 38.
After the killings, Canepa said, investigators found shell casings at the Wagner residence that matched shell casings found at some of the crime scenes, as well as receipts and video evidence of the Wagners buying shoes that matched tread marks left in blood at one of the crime scenes.
Investigators also discovered that Angela Jo Wagner had gained unauthorised access to at least two other people's Facebook accounts, which allowed her to take a screenshot of the message from Hanna May Rhoden saying she would refuse to share custody of the child with Edward Wagner, according to Canepa.
In April 2021, Edward Wagner pleaded guilty to eight counts of aggravated murder and apologised for his role in the killings. He confessed to personally causing the deaths of five of the eight victims, according to prosecutors.
As part of a plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to pursue the death penalty and recommended instead that Wagner, 29, serve eight life sentences without the possibility of parole. Wagner also agreed to testify against his parents and his brother, and prosecutors said that if he did so, they would not pursue the death penalty in their cases.
Greg Meyers, a lawyer for Wagner, declined to comment on Tuesday, writing in an email that the judge had long ago issued a "gag order" in the case.
In September, Angela Jo Wagner, 51, pleaded guilty to charges that included conspiracy, aggravated burglary, unlawful possession of dangerous ordnance, tampering with evidence, forgery, obstructing justice and engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors dropped eight charges of aggravated murder against her and recommended that she be sentenced to 30 years in prison if she cooperated with the prosecution.
"She is going to be testifying in the trial," said a lawyer for Angela Jo Wagner, Robert F. Krapenc.
Mark C. Collins, a lawyer for George Wagner III, said that his client had pleaded not guilty to eight charges of aggravated murder and other counts and that his client would be preparing for his own trial after his son's trial ended.
Lawyers for George Wagner IV did not immediately respond to messages. Lawyers for the Rhoden family were not immediately available for comment.
Canepa declined to speak about the child at the centre of the custody dispute. She said the trial "will be the first time anybody will be able to hear all of the facts", adding that investigators had spoken extensively with Edward Wagner to understand how the custody dispute had escalated into the killing of eight people.
"It's very hard to explain, quite honestly," she said. In most custody cases, she added, "people get an attorney and just battle it out in court".
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Michael Levenson
© 2022 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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