‘Light a candle’
Pike County marks seventh year since 8 killed in massacre
Just before George Wagner IV was sentenced in the Pike County massacre case last year, 10 relatives of his victims unleashed their pain and fury in tearful pleas for harsh punishment.
The 11th relative took a different tack, recalling small moments from eight lives ended in a hail of bullets seven years ago this April.
His brothers put their families first, Tony Rhoden said. One nephew couldn’t keep a shirt over his belly. Another needed a tow out of a mudhole. A cousin liked to buy lottery tickets “out of my money,” Rhoden recalled.
As Rhoden ended each anecdote with a note of regret – “their life cut short by the selfish acts of others” – he added to the public memories of the Pike County victims.
Now, on the latest anniversary of the April 21-22, 2016, crimes that shocked Ohio, victim family and friends will mourn in private, with no public events announced.
A’s in school, motors and hunting
Chris Rhoden Sr. didn’t like school as a kid, his brother reported.
“I would have to chase him down and carry him to the bus,” Tony Rhoden said in his victim impact statement on Dec. 19, at the end of Wagner IV’S trial in the Pike County Common Pleas Court.
Chris Rhoden would later earn A’s in school, build playgrounds in his head and host much-anticipated fireworks
parties.
“Chris had the ability to look at a project and bring it to life,” said Tony Rhoden, the middle of the nine Rhoden siblings.
Rhoden offered similar snippets about other victims.
Brother Kenneth Rhoden’s “innocent look” helped him escape punishment for boyhood misdeeds.
Nephew “Little Chris” Rhoden loved anything with a motor.
Niece Hanna Rhoden would let you touch her toys if she liked you.
Nephew Frankie Rhoden liked to talk about hunting. His future wife, Hannah Hazel Gilley, was OK being known as “Little Hannah.”
Sister-in-law Dana Manley Rhoden always spoke her mind. “She would … tell me what I needed to do at my own house.”
Gary Rhoden got a laugh out of filling his cousin’s boots with rocks (and using his money for lottery tickets).
Tony Rhoden’s recollections capped nearly two hours of victim impact statements. Afterward, Judge Randy Deering sentenced Wagner IV to eight consecutive life sentences and 121 additional years for his role in the eight murders.
Two guilty pleas, one guilty verdict, one trial to come
Wagner IV was tried on eight counts of aggravated murder and 14 other charges in the 2016 crimes. After 13 weeks on trial – with no evidence that he actually shot any of the victims – a Pike County jury found him guilty on all counts on Nov. 30. Held in three different county jails since he was arrested in November 2018, Wagner IV has been incarcerated in a state prison in Orient since January.
He is now pursuing an appeal of his conviction, due to the Ohio Court of Appeals by Sept. 12.
Edward “Jake” Wagner and Angela Wagner, his younger brother and mother, admitted their guilt in the Pike County killings in 2021. Jake Wagner, held in the Franklin County Jail, agreed he will accept eight consecutive life terms when sentenced. Angela Wagner, held in Delaware County, agreed to serve 30 years.
Wagner IV’S father, meanwhile, plans to fight the same 22 charges that sent his son to prison. George “Billy” Wagner III, jailed in Butler County, will likely be tried early next year.
Four stops, eight victims
Children have been central in the Pike County massacre case.
According to court documents and testimony, the Wagners hatched the plan to kill the Rhodens to win custody of Sophia Wagner, the then-21⁄2-year-old daughter of Jake Wagner and Hanna Rhoden.
The Wagners had become convinced Sophia was being molested when she stayed with the Rhodens.
Initially, Jake Wagner wanted to kill just Hanna Rhoden to gain custody of Sophia. Then he suggested killing Rhoden and her-then boyfriend Corey Holdren – and attempting to make it look like Holdren killed Rhoden and then himself.
Billy Wagner believed the Rhodens would quickly conclude his son was behind that scheme, his wife said during fall testimony.
“They’ll know and then they come for Jake. They’d shoot him, if not all of us,” Angela Wagner said, quoting Billy Wagner.
Prosecutors laid out this chain of events for the night of April 21, 2016.
The three Wagner men left their home in Adams County sometime after 10 p.m., Billy Wagner at the wheel of a black pickup truck he bought for the occasion and his sons hidden under a sheet of plywood in the bed of the truck.
At the first stop, Jake Wagner shattered Chris Rhoden’s arm with a highpowered rifle. Then, Billy Wagner killed Chris Rhoden, with eight more shots, and Gary Rhoden, with three.
Next door, Jake Wagner shot and killed Frankie Rhoden and Hannah Hazel Gilley as they slept. He spared Frankie Rhoden’s sons – Brentley, 3 years old, asleep in the living room, and Ruger, 6 months old, in bed between his parents.
At the third stop, Jake Wagner shot and killed Dana, Hanna and Chris Rhoden Jr. Uninjured was Hanna Rhoden’s newborn, 5-day-old daughter Kylie.
At the final stop, the Wagners parked in front of the home of Kenneth Rhoden. In testimony, Jake Wagner said his father entered and exited the camper alone.
In between, Wagner said, he saw a muzzle flash from inside.
Sister of slain: ‘These babies are victims’
The three children extracted from the crime scenes made for five minors impacted by the killing spree. Sophia Wagner and her cousin Bulvine, then just shy of 3, were at home with grandmother Angela Wagner.
“All of these babies are victims because of the choices (the Wagners) made,” Wilma Mccoy, sister to Chris and Kenneth Rhoden said after Wagner IV was sentenced.
The whereabouts and well-being of some of the children was revealed during the fall trial.
● Brentley Rhoden, now 10, lives in Portsmouth with his mother, Chelsea Robinson, a prosecution witness in the fall trial. She read his victim impact statement in court. “I’ve been scared since that night. I’m scared that I will lose my mommy,” he wrote.
● Bulvine Wagner, now 9, lives in West Portsmouth with his mother, Tabitha Claytor. The former wife of Wagner IV, another witness for the prosecution, is remarried with two other children.
● Kylie and Ruger Rhoden, now 7 and 71⁄2, continue to mourn for their lost parents, their grandmother Andrea Shoemaker said in court. Her son, Charlie Gilley, is the father of Kylie Rhoden. Her daughter, victim Hannah Hazel Gilley, was mother to Ruger. No fall witness indicated who is raising Kylie and Ruger, however. The Pike County Juvenile Court sealed their custody cases in 2016 and has yet to respond to The Enquirer’s motion, filed last month, to unseal them.
● The current home of Sophia Wagner, now 9, was also not revealed. Jake
Wagner asked the Pike County Juvenile Court to be Sophia’s “residential parent and legal custodian” just 11 days after her mother was dead, a crime he took responsibility for in 2021. He won that status in June 2016 and the case file stops there. Asked about Sophia at a fall press conference, Tony Rhoden said only, “She is very well. Taken care of.”
What’s next
Billy Wagner took the lead in the plot to kill seven Rhodens and one future member of the family, his sons and wife said in Wagner IV’S trial.
He decided what supplies to buy, who needed to die and when to carry out the shootings, they said in testimony.
But like his older son, Billy Wagner is maintaining his innocence and wants a jury to hear his case. Those jurors should come from anywhere but Pike County, his lawyers say, since local candidates have already been overly exposed to the case. The attorneys plan to file a motion for a different venue.
In the meantime, Pike County Visiting Judge R. Alan Corbin last month ruled that transcripts from Wagner IV’S trial be filed in Billy Wagner’s case by September. If the trial remains in Pike County, it will start in early 2024.
A related wrongful death lawsuit is also moving forward in the Pike County Common Pleas Court, with a pretrial hearing set for Aug. 10. Filed by Tony Rhoden in November 2020, the civil suit seeks unspecified damages against the Wagner family.
Private tribute: ‘Light a candle’
Twenty-two miles south of the courthouse, the graves of five of the Rhoden victims sit on a hill in the Scioto Burial Park.
Chris Rhoden Sr. and his former wife, Dana Manley Rhoden, are pictured as a couple, under the inscription “forever together,” with photos of Frankie, Hanna and Little Chris below.
Kenneth Rhoden is buried nearby, in Piketon, beside a son who died of cancer at age 6. Gary Rhoden is buried near his Greenup, Kentucky, home. Hannah Hazel Gilley’s grave is in Otway, Ohio, where several family members live.
Last month, Gilley’s mother said she’d be tidying her daughter’s gravesite, and left a Facebook message for her and the man she planned to marry. “Love and miss you two more than you’ll ever know,” Andrea Shoemaker wrote.
Another Facebook page, maintained by a niece of Dana Rhoden, suggests what might be this year’s only organized memorial to the 2016 Pike County murder victims.
It suggests private tributes. “Light a candle in your home on April 22, 2023, in memory of the Rhodens and Hannah Gilley,” it reads.