Pike County massacre: Angela Wagner says 8 murders were husband’s idea

Angela Wagner, accused of conspiring to kill eight family members in what has become known as the 2016 Pike County, Ohio, massacre case, said in testimony Tuesday the murders were her husband’s idea.

Wagner made the claim Tuesday while testifying against her son George Wagner IV. And prosecutors allowed her to do so without being recorded in Ohio’s most expensive murder trial ever.

She, husband George “Billy” Wagner and sons Edward “Jake” Wagner and George Wagner IV, allegedly shot and killed eight people six years ago, including five members of the Rhoden family and three members of the Gilley family, over a custody dispute. 

“They’ll know, and then they come for Jake. They’d shoot him, if not all of us,” Angela Wagner said her husband told her. He also said the families “had to be murdered,” she testified.

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Angela Wagner pleaded guilty in 2021 to helping plan the ambush. Jake Wagner also pleaded guilty to shooting five of the eight victims — including the mother of his child — to avoid the death penalty. Jake Wagner testified last week that he felt he “had no other choice” but to murder the family members over fears his daughter would be molested.

The Wagner family patriarch, George Wagner, is accused of shooting the other three victims and has pleaded not guilty. He is scheduled to go to trial after his son.

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Prosecutors say George Wagner IV, 31, helped plot the killings and was present for the April 2016 rampage that spanned three separate locations but did not pull the trigger.

The Wagner and Rhoden families had been close until Jake Wagner and Hanna Rhoden split and began battling over custody of their daughter, who was 3 years old at the time. Hanna Rhoden refused to give custody to the Wagners and wrote in a Facebook message sent four months before the massacre that “they will have to kill me first,” according to testimony.

Unbeknownst to her at the time, the Wagners had hacked into her social media account and saw the message.

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Jake Wagner took the stand eight weeks into the murder trial in Pike County court and told jurors the Facebook message was the “tipping point” for him. 

Jake Wagner said he feared his daughter would be subjected to sexual abuse if she stayed with 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden and decided his daughter’s mother had to die. He was unhappy with the men Hanna Rhoden dated and felt they were a threat to their daughter, he said.

After months plotting the murders, Jake Wagner crept into Hanna Rhoden’s room, and she awoke and looked at him before he shot her in the head as her five-day-old old nuzzled at her stomach, he testified. He repositioned her lifeless body so she could continue to nurse the infant she shared with another man, according to prosecutors.

At another trailer down the road, Jake Wagner allegedly blasted Frankie Rhoden and his fiancée Hannah Gilley, 20, as she nursed their 6-month-old son, who was left alive but drenched in his parents’ blood.

The other victims included Hanna Rhoden’s brother, Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16; her mother, Dana Rhoden, 37; Hanna Rhoden’s father, Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40; Christopher Rhoden’s brother, Kenneth Rhoden, 44; and cousin Gary Rhoden, 38.

The mysterious murders baffled investigators. The Wagner family members, who attended many of their victims’ funerals, weren’t initially suspects. They were arrested two years later when new evidence emerged. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.