Jurors visit scenes of 2016 Rhoden killings

WAVERLY– Eighteen Pike County residents began their work as jurors in the murder trial of George Wagner IV with a Wednesday field trip, complete with a school bus.

Starting their day in Pike County Common Pleas Court – where Judge Randy Deering asked them to take an oath of office – 12 jurors and six alternate jurors boarded a yellow school bus to tour crime scenes relevant to the Wagner case.

Deering said the tour, called a “jury view,” will help jurors better understand the evidence they will see or hear during a trial that is expected to last six to eight weeks.

But he reminded jurors that they can only judge Wagner’s guilt or lack of guilt by evidence the state of Ohio presents against him.

“What you observe outside the courtroom is not evidence,” he said.

With that, the bus took to narrow, winding country roads for sites in or near Pike County. Joining the jurors were lawyers for both sides, other court staff and about a half dozen armed members of the Pike County Sheriff’s Office and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations.

Even Judge Deering and his court reporter joined the entourage.

The bus, protected from the front and rear by law enforcement vehicles with flashing lights, stopped at six addresses by midday. Jurors walked the grounds at three of them, just after lawyers and other officials had their turn.

By order of the judge, only the court’s bailiff provided information about each stop to jurors.

The first location was the site of a trailer that was home to Christopher

Rhoden Sr., who was shot to death there on the night of April 21-22, 2016. His cousin, Gary Rhoden, was also at 4077 Union Hill Road in Piketon that night and also shot to death.

The trailer home was long ago towed to an impound site. Remaining at the property are a half dozen abandoned cars and two barns.

A faded flyer still hangs on the front of one barn, asking for tips in the murders of Chris Sr. and Gary Rhoden and six other victims of what ranks as Ohio’s largest ever criminal investigation. They include Chris Sr.’s former wife, Dana Rhoden; brother, Kenneth Rhoden; children, Frankie, Hanna and Chris Rhoden Jr.; and Frankie’s future wife, Hannah Hazel Gilley.

From there, jurors walked to a property at 4199 Union Hill, where Frankie Rhoden and Hannah Gilley lived. The trailer home was likewise impounded. The shell of a carport and a partial deck remain, the latter with a child’s ride-on car and household debris.

Jurors stayed in the bus at the third stop, a home at the corner of Hwy. 772 and Union Hill with laundry flapping on a clothesline.

They stayed put at stop No. 4, too, at Hwy. 772 and Bull Hill Road. Harmon Cemetery and Harmon-salt Creek Church sit at the intersection, with the church’s bright red roof visible for miles.

They also stayed on the bus for the fifth stop, where a white two-story barn and tractor sat at Hwy. 312 and a section of Hwy. 22 called Camp Creek Road.

The sixth stop was 3122 Union Hill Road, once the home of Dana Rhoden and the three children she had with Chris Rhoden Sr. Like the other locations, the trailer was impounded. A large red barn with a white garage door remains.