Authorities seek tips about family
Authorities didn’t use the word “suspects” when they distributed photos Monday of four members of one family who had close ties to the eight people killed in the still-unsolved Rhoden family slayings in Pike County last year. But they took the unusual step of saying they need information about them.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said in a written release that they want to know more about George “Billy” Wagner III, 46; his wife, Angela Wagner, 46; and their sons, George Wagner IV, 25, and Edward “Jake” Wagner, 24.
Investigators said they are looking specifically for information on “interactions, conversations, dealings or transactions that the public may have had with these individuals, which could be personal, business, or otherwise.” The release said detectives want information particularly as it relates to vehicles, firearms and ammunition.
DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney said investigators don’t want people to limit the information to those topics, though, and said that anything could prove valuable. He said that even though officials didn’t use specific terms, “We are certainly making it clear that this is in connection to the Rhoden homicides.”
The release said the Wagners are believed to be living in Alaska. Tierney declined to say whether investigators have traveled there. Adams County Auditor’s Office records show the Wagners sold a 71-acre farm on Peterson Road, near Peebles in neighboring Adams County, for $165,000 March 17. It is only a few miles from three of the four Rhoden crime scenes.
That recently sold property was one of three searched May 12 and May 13 by dozens of law-enforcement officers from several agencies. One of the other properties searched belongs to George Wagner’s parents. The search warrants have been sealed by a court.
The Wagner connection to the Rhoden family is this: Jake Wagner was a former boyfriend of 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden, one of eight people shot to death in three trailers and a camper on April 22, 2016. The couple had a daughter together, Sophia, who was 2 when Hanna was killed.
Also killed that night were Hanna’s parents, Dana Manley Rhoden, 37, and Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40; her brothers, Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16, and Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, 20; Frankie’s fiancee, Hannah Gilley, 20; Chris Sr.’s brother, Kenneth Rhoden, 44; and Gary Rhoden, 38, a cousin to Chris Sr. and Kenneth.
Three children, including a newborn daughter of Hanna’s, were found alive with the bodies but physically unharmed. Sophia was not at her mother’s trailer that night. Jake Wagner later told investigators the toddler had been with him.
He also said that he thought he was the father of Hanna’s newborn, Kylie Rhoden, but court-ordered paternity tests ordered after Hanna died showed that wasn’t the case.
After the slayings, Jake Wagner started a GoFundMe page and wrote that it was to help with expenses for him and Sophia.
“I don’t want this whole ordeal about me because it’s not and I feel that if I do some big story everyone will think I’m trying to make it about me,” he told The Dispatch in August. He said then that he had been granted full custody of Sophia after Hanna was killed. A cellphone number for him is no longer in service.
Kelly Cinereski, pastor at Resurrection Bay Baptist Church in Seward, Alaska, told the Dayton Daily News Monday that the Wagner family attended his son’s church a couple hours away from him on Sunday.
Cinereski said he thinks the Wagners are, in fact, moving to the area, something he said they have long been planning to do. He said he has known them for more than a decade.
“They’re just good country people,” Cinereski told the Dayton newspaper. “I think their son went through a lot of hurt over the whole deal. I think they’re trying to move on.”
Anyone with information is asked to call the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation at 1-855-BCI-OHIO (224-6446) or the Pike County sheriff’s office at 740- 947- 2111. A $10,000 reward still stands.