WHO IS GEORGE WAGNER IV?

As trial continues, portrait of the Pike County defendant emerging from witnesses and lawyers

WAVERLY, Ohio – George Wagner IV is not like his family, his lawyers maintain.

He did not like their criminal ways. He bristled at his mother’s controlling nature. He fought with his father. He kept to himself.

And yet, through the time he and his family were charged with killing Pike County’s Rhoden family, Wagner IV’S life was wholly entwined with his family’s. He never lived or worked with anyone else. He hung out with family and people he met through family. He brought the woman he married – the daughter of one of his grandmother’s employees – into the family home.

When that marriage ended, he kept their young son under his family’s roof, even when they all moved from Ohio to Alaska for a year.

As Wagner IV’S trial on 22 charges related to the 2016 Rhoden deaths moves into its sixth week, a portrait of the Pike County defendant is emerging from witnesses and lawyers.

He would have been a different man had he ever left his family, according to his former wife.

“If we’d moved out then we’d probably still be together,” Tabitha Claytor told one of the Rhoden victims in late 2015, according to trial testimony.

That was nearly a year after Wagner IV had filed to dissolve their marriage and about six months before seven Rhodens and one future Rhoden were shot to death in their homes in southern Ohio in

April of 2016. Wagner entered a not guilty plea to eight counts of aggravated murder and related charges in connection with their deaths. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Under family roof until arrest

Wagner IV, now 31, arrives in court each day in blue jeans, a black vest and a long-sleeved buttondown shirt with a tie. He earlier won the right to change out of an orange jumpsuit for court appearances. That’s what he wears in the Scioto County jail, where he’s been held since July of this year, after earlier time in Ross and Montgomery County jails. Each morning, four armed state-employed agents escort Wagner IV to the defense table in the Pike County Common Pleas Court. One holds a device that can ignite a charge in the “shock vest” he wears under his shirt, in lieu of arm or leg restraints. He sits, mostly silent and stoic, between his two attorneys. Occasionally, he whispers to one or the other. Occasionally, he jots notes or doodles on a legal pad.

Born Oct. 6, 1991, the first of two sons of George “Billy” Wagner III and Angela Jo Carter Wagner, his first known address was 845 Bethel Hill Road in Pike County. The family bought the 117-acre property currently valued at about $247,000, through a trust in the name of Billy Wagner’s parents, in 1993, public records show.

The family relocated in 2014, after they torched

Through the time he and his family were charged with killing Pike County’s Rhoden family, Wagner IV’S life was wholly entwined with his family’s.

the Bethel Hill house for insurance money, according to multiple witnesses in the trial.

They moved to 260 Peterson Road in Adams County after that, paying $175,000 for a home and two barns on 58 acres and listing Wagner IV and his brother, Edward “Jake” Wagner, as the owners.

They sold that house in 2017, then lived in Kenai, Alaska, from mid-2017 to mid-2018. When they returned, they took up residence in Scioto County in a home that Angela Wagner’s father, Edward Carter Jr., occupied until his death in November 2017.

Homeschooled by his mother, Wagner IV later attended an auto mechanic program at a trade school, according to witnesses. He hauled cattle and other freight with his father and brother and, when arrested, was employed by R&L Carriers, a Wilmington, Ohio-based trucking company.

He dressed well – Wagner IV and his brother wore only boots and brand names, witnesses have told the jury – and owned a black Dodge Ram pickup when the family left for Alaska.

The family had money, according to father Billy Wagner. “I’m a trust fund brat,” he told agents of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation when they interviewed him about the Rhoden killings in September 2016.

Wagner girlfriend at age 11 or 12

Wagner IV met Tabitha Claytor, now 29, when she was 11 or 12, through her mother. Patricia Ruggles, then and now, works for Crystal Springs Home, a home for persons with developmental disabilities. Wagner IV’S grandmother, family matriarch Fredericka Wagner, owns and serves as chief executive officer of Crystal Springs, located about four miles north of Flying W Farms. That horse and exotic-animal breeding business created much of the family’s wealth.

Claytor moved in with the Wagners when she first dated Wagner IV. She even shared a bed with him at the suggestion of his mother and maternal grandmother, she said under questioning.

They told Claytor that Wagner IV was “not following the Bible” and that “I should sleep in there and comfort him,“she said.

Wagner IV broke off the relationship after a year and Claytor returned to her own family. They began dating again when she was in high school and married in July 2012, after she graduated. Son Bulvine, now 9, was born the following summer.

The marriage soon grew troubled, with all four Wagners, plus Jake Wagner’s then-girlfriend, Hanna May Rhoden, under one roof. According to prosecutors, the Wagners killed the Rhodens to win custody of the then 2-year-old daughter of Jake Wagner and Hanna Rhoden.

“They did not like my family,” Claytor told jurors, later explaining the reason. She’d been sexually abused by her stepfather, according to trial testimony, and the Wagners didn’t want their grandson around him.

Tensions in the household mounted after Claytor admitted to an affair with the father of a friend, she said. In response, Wagner IV took her phone and barred her from retrieving mail or using the home’s landline.

Feud over cleaning the kitchen

The beginning of the end of the marriage came in November 2014, when Claytor failed to clean up the kitchen after lunch. That triggered an argument involving Wagner IV and his mother, which escalated to violence and threats of violence. Claytor fled the home and Wagner IV soon after filed to dissolve the marriage.

That happened in January 2015, with Wagner IV winning custody of their son. The couple’s conflicts continued until Wagner IV was arrested in November of 2018 and Claytor took custody. “It was about a year before I got to see my son because George wouldn’t let me,” she said.

Wagner IV’S parents had an equally strained marriage.

“It was a rocky situation,” Billy Wagner’s one-time friend, Jeffrey Tackett, told jurors. “They argued all the time.”

Tackett said he once helped move Billy Wagner out of the Peterson Road house to the Flying W.

Hadn’t Billy Wagner filed to divorce Angela Wagner?, defense attorney John Parker asked Tackett.

“That don’t surprise me,” he replied. “She was a nagger. Things had to be her way.”

Wagner IV and his brother were “momma’s boys,” their father told investigators. But that applied more to Jake than George Wagner, said witness Samantha Staley, whose father worked for Flying W.

“George would just do his own thing,” Staley said.

Growing up, Wagner IV was “bubbly, always laughing” or “trying to make someone laugh,” Staley said.

He once took her fishing with her then-boyfriend Frankie Rhoden, one of the eight victims, when she was not supposed to be seeing Rhoden.

In December of 2015, Staley told jurors, Wagner IV helped her by paying a utility bill and buying Christmas presents for her children.

About a month after the Rhodens were killed, Staley and her husband invited Wagner IV to fish with them.

“He looked very dead inside. He didn’t have the crooked smile he always had,” Staley said.

He shut her down when she tried to talk about Rhoden deaths, she said. “I was pretty much told to shut the ---- up.”

Camping, hunting, fishing and church

Wagner IV and Claytor married in the Mission Family Church in Piketon, where his grandmother attended and served, as of 2020, as secretary-treasurer.

When younger, Wagner IV attended overnight “shut-ins” in the church, witnesses said. When the family moved to Kenai, Alaska, they became affiliated with a Baptist church. That’s where brother Jake met and later married a church member.

More recently, in 2019, Wagner IV expressed interest in a spiritual life when he asked for a solo cell at the Ross County jail. His lawyer at the time said he wanted to be able to read the Bible without distraction.

Growing up, Wagner IV, like his peers, rode four-wheelers, camped, fished and hunted. He owned at least 16 guns, according to a list investigators found in his brother’s cell phone. He filed tax returns, discovered in a search of the family’s property. Registered as a Republican during primaries, he most recently voted in November 2016, records show.

Wagner considered Frankie Rhoden one of his best friends, defense lawyer Richard M. Nash Jr. told jurors. Hanna May Rhoden was like a little sister, Nash said.

The siblings were two of the eight victims in Ohio’s largest ever criminal investigation. Their mother, father and younger brother were also shot to death, along with their father’s brother and cousin, and Frankie Rhoden’s fiancée.

Wagner IV’S friendship with Frankie Rhoden – downplayed by several witnesses – cooled after Wagner and Claytor split. That happened when he started communicating with Chelsea Robinson, who’d dated and had a son with Frankie Rhoden. Frankie Rhoden thought Wagner IV had romantic interests and didn’t like it, Robinson said.

Prosecution trying to establish complicity

Since the start of Wagner IV’S trial on Aug. 29, prosecutors have presented evidence of shoeprints at two of four crime scenes. They’ve established that Wagner IV’S mother bought shoes that matched the prints just two weeks before the Rhodens were killed. But they’ve presented no proof that Wagner IV was wearing the shoes.

Prosecutors have also presented evidence that shell casings found at two crime scenes match those found at the Wagners’ Peterson Road home and that all were fired from the same gun. But they’ve presented no proof that Wagner IV shot a Rhoden.

They have also brought on witnesses to talk about DNA evidence – confirming that none of it came from Wagners.

From the beginning they have maintained that Wagner IV is guilty of complicity in the Rhoden shootings. During the juror selection process, Special Prosecutor Angela Canepa told jurors that helping with a crime is akin to committing it.

Under the law, she said, “the person that’s driving the getaway car is just as accountable as the person who actually goes into the bank.”

So far, the state’s legal team has presented one piece of evidence that could be considered proof of complicity.

When investigators showed up at the family home with questions about the Rhoden deaths, Wagner IV texted both of his father’s cell phone numbers, lead BCI investigator Ryan Scheiderer said last week. “Don’t come down til I text you,” Wagner IV wrote. “Got company.”

Wagner IV was home the night the Rhodens were killed and learned about the crimes the next day from his brother, his lawyers maintain. The state has no evidence that Wagner IV helped plan the killing spree or shot anyone, they have told jurors.

Marriage might have survived without Angela

Over about five and half hours on the stand, Tabitha Claytor painted the most complete and complex picture of Wagner IV.

She’s now remarried, the mother of two additional children, living in West Portsmouth and working at a nearby nursing home.

Early on, Claytor said, she and Wagner IV did well together, she told jurors last week.

“Didn’t you say that you had a wonderful relationship with your husband, George?” defense attorney Nash asked at one point.

“For the first part of it, yes, I did,” she responded.

Even a year after she left Wagner IV, Claytor still had feelings for him, she told Hanna Rhoden.

“I still love him, I really do. I always have and always will,” she said over Facebook, in messages she was asked to read in court.

On April 21, 2016, the night before the Rhodens would be discovered dead in their homes, she and Hanna Rhoden were talking again via Facebook.

Claytor told Hanna Rhoden she’d just seen Wagner IV when trying to visit their son.

“He keeps saying he only has to wait six more years to get me back because he had to wait six years the last time,” she wrote. “I keep telling him the only possible way him and I could get back together is if he moved away from Angela.”

Where are rest of the Wagners?

Jake Wagner changed his plea in the Rhoden case from not guilty to guilty last year. He was convicted of all 22 counts that his brother is facing and received eight consecutive sentences without the possibility of parole. Angela Wagner also changed her plea to guilty last year, after prosecutors dropped aggravated murder charges. She was sentenced to 30 years, without the possibility of parole.

Billy Wagner entered a plea of not guilty to the same 22 charges and will be tried next year.

Jake Wagner is jailed in Franklin County, Angela Wagner in Delaware County and Billy Wagner in Butler County.

Under a deal to spare the family from the death penalty, Jake and Angela Wagner agreed to testify in Wagner IV’S case. They’ve not yet been called.