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Pike County murder trial: Ex-wife of George Wagner IV describes 'strange and controlling' Wagner home

Angela Wagner wouldn't allow Claytor to breastfeed the son she conceived with George. She said the family also had meetings, but she was never allowed to participate.
George Wagner IV trial continues in Pike County
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WAVERLY, Ohio — George Wagner IV's ex-wife, Tabitha, resumed testimony Tuesday morning. George is accused of killing eight people in Pike County in 2016.

George — along with his mother Angela, father George "Billy" Wagner and brother Edward "Jake" Wagner — is accused of shooting and killing the Rhoden family members "execution-style." The family's bodies were found on April 22, 2016. He faces eight charges of aggravated murder, along with other charges associated with tampering with evidence, conspiracy and forgery.

Found dead that day were 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr., 37-year-old Dana Rhoden, 20-year-old Hannah "Hazel" Gilley, 16-year-old Christopher Rhoden Jr., 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden, 37-year-old Gary Rhoden, 19-year-old Hanna May Rhoden, and 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden.

The trial is the first time a person has faced a jury for the deaths of the Rhoden family six years ago.

Tabitha Claytor, George's ex-wife, was called to the witness stand on Monday afternoon and told the jury about how the two met, married and had a child together — and the environment that existed within the Wagner family home.

Prosecution resumed questioning Claytor Tuesday morning as Angela Canepa, special prosecutor, asked about how things were living in the Wagner home.

"Very strange and controlling," she responded.

Angela Wagner wouldn't allow Claytor to breastfeed the son she conceived with George. Claytor said Angela told her she must not be producing enough milk, since the infant still cried after feeding; the boy was formula fed, despite Claytor's objections, she said.

"If Angela made a rule then you had to follow that rule," said Claytor.

Canepa asked her whether she was aware of family meetings the Wagners had on occasion; Claytor said yes, but couldn't speak to the topics discussed at those meetings because she was never allowed to participate. She was asked to leave, and only George, Jake, Billy and Angela participated in the discussion, she said.

Questioning moved to a Facebook account that appeared to be Claytor's, but she said she never set it up; the account showed her name as Tabitha Wagner and claimed she lived in Marion, Ohio and worked at a motel. None of that was true and the account was fake, Claytor said. The handful of friends listed on the account was comprised mostly of Wagner family members and friends.

Initially, Claytor had been able to leave occasionally to visit friends and family, though she said the Wagners still made it clear they didn't approve. She said things became more difficult for her in the Wagner household later, after she admitted to being unfaithful to George.

"George took my phone from me and factory reset it and gave it to his mom," she said. "I wasn't allowed to answer the house phone or check the mail or go outside by myself."

She said she asked George to move out of the Wagner home with her and find a place for just the two of them and their son, but he refused and had no interest in leaving his parent's home.

Then everything changed one day, when Angela told Claytor to clean up the kitchen after lunch while she and Hanna May ran an errand.

Claytor said before she could get the chance to clean up the mess in the kitchen, her son woke from his nap and began fussing; she instead laid down with her baby until he fell back to sleep. When Angela returned to the house and found the mess still uncleaned, the two started to argue, Claytor said.

She left the home, and Angela and George followed her outside, she said; Jake was also outside, working on his truck, she said.

"Before the argument got really...worse, we were outside and we were arguing and he told me I needed to stop screaming or he was going to smack me," said Claytor. "So I screamed louder, so he smacked me (in the face)."

Claytor told him he'd just signed his divorce papers, and she ran inside to get her shoes and belongings.

When she attempted to go back outside, George blocked her way and wouldn't allow her to leave, she said. In response, she said she bit his arm and attacked his genitalia, which caused him to pull his arm away. She was able to push by and ran outside into the yard.

Angela and George both chased after her, she said, and she told them both she was leaving.

Angela responded by throwing a two-by-four at her before telling George she was going inside to get a gun.

Claytor recounted running through the yard, through a fence, and hiding under George's truck. By that time, it had begun to get dark, she said. Canepa asked her why she hid, and she said she didn't want to be shot.

"I assumed they were going in to get whichever gun they chose," she said.

She hid under the truck for a long time, until it was fully dark outside; as she hid, she saw several flashlight beams sweeping the yard. Eventually, she climbed out from under the truck and ran to a barn on the property, where she got her bicycle and pedaled away, she said.

As she was headed up the road to a gas station, intending to call her mother to come get her, Jake and George pulled up in a vehicle, she said. They tried to convince her to get in the car and come home, but she refused.

"I told them that I wasn't going to live with them if they're going to hit me," she said.

She told them she was going to the gas station to call her family, and pedaled away. At the station, she borrowed the cashier's cell phone — since she still hadn't been allowed one herself — and called her mother. In the two hours it took for her mother to get to her, Claytor said all four members of the Wagner family, with Hanna May in tow, arrived at the gas station.

So did the police, though Claytor said she didn't call them and refused the cashier's offer to call them for her. Claytor learned George had called and filed a domestic violence complaint against her.

"That I was causing a big fuss at home and dragging my child across the floor," she said was the explanation police were given, though she wasn't sure who exactly had called law enforcement.

Her mother eventually picked her up, and she went to live with her, never returning to the Wagner's home to live again.

Claytor said George gave her money to pay off a fine associated with the domestic violence call; he dropped her off at the Adams County courthouse, where she paid the fine, but during defense attorney's cross-examination, she learned the charge was instead a disorderly conduct one, and that paying that fine was equivalent to pleading guilty to the charge. She said she believed George had told her charges had been dropped; Richard Nash, George's attorney, pointed out there had been a restraining order filed against her by George. That was eventually dropped, but not the charges against her from the night she fled the Wagner home.

Weeks after that, George filed for a dissolution of their marriage. George hired an attorney, but Claytor said she didn't have the means to procure one for herself. During their dissolution hearing, Claytor said she agreed to sign a custody agreement for their son that dictated the child could live with George, and she could have supervised visitations when both parties agreed on a place and time.

If Claytor moved out of her mother's home and got a steady job, she said George had verbally agreed the custody arrangement would change to one of shared custody, allowing her 50/50 custody of the boy.

"After we got divorced, it was about a year before I got to see my son again," she said.

Multiple attempts made by her to see their son were thwarted, she said. George always claimed the timing was not right, the family would not be home, or the boy was sleeping. Even after scheduling an agreed-upon time, George would often cancel, or Claytor would be unable to see the boy when she arrived at the Wagner home, she said.

"I would ask him what day I can come over and if he did make a day and a time for me to come over, I would either be in the driveway asking where he's at, or I would be halfway there and someone would tell me they're not home right now," she said.

During cross-examination, Nash pointed out that Claytor and several of her siblings had been sexually abused as children by a man her mother was still living with when Claytor left the Wagner home.

"George didn't want his little boy living in the same home ... is that what he told you?" Nash asked Claytor.

She agreed, and said she didn't blame George and didn't want her son living under the same roof as her abuser either — it was why she agreed to allow her son to remain with George until she was able to move into her own place.

"Yes, he was a lot safer there than he was at my house," she said.

Nash implied that, perhaps the Wagner family had a good reason for not liking Claytor's family and for keeping her from visiting them in the years she was married to George; Canepa, in turn, pointed out that Claytor's siblings — also victims of abuse — had also been barred from the Wagner home.

When the Wagner family moved to Alaska for a year, they didn't notify her before they packed up and left, taking her son with them, she said. During the year they were gone, Claytor said she couldn't see her son or speak to him on the phone.

Claytor was asked whether there was a time George offered to bring Claytor to Alaska for several months to visit her son, but Claytor said she declined the offer. Nash questioned her on why she made that choice.

"Because I didn't feel like dying," she said.

The Rhoden family had already been murdered by that point, and Claytor said she didn't feel comfortable flying across the country to an unfamiliar place with her infant daughter, where she had no family or friends.

She eventually gained custody of her son in 2018, when the Wagner family was arrested and charged with the murders of the Rhoden family.

Claytor also recounted two instances where she was at the Wagner home to see her son. After leaving their home at one point, she was pulled over by law enforcement not long after.

"I got pulled over by State Highway Patrol because there was a call that I was waving a gun around and throwing trash out and that I had drugs in my car," she said.

She offered to let the officer search her vehicle, but he ultimately didn't, she said.

On a second occasion, around Mother's Day or Easter in 2016 — not long after the Rhoden family was murdered — Claytor said she was at the Wagner house visiting her son. She brought along her younger daughter, who stayed on Clayton's hip throughout the visit until she needed to use the bathroom. Claytor said Angela asked to see the girl, so she gave her daughter to Angela while she used the bathroom; later, when she parked her car at home, she found her daughter unresponsive.

"My 6-month-old daughter became unresponsive, so we took her to the emergency room where they did tests and found drugs in her system," she said.

The girl had Xanax in her system; both Claytor and her husband took drug tests required by children's services that were negative for all substances, she said. The family didn't go anywhere but the Wagners' home that day, she said.

Prosecutors had Claytor read aloud several Facebook message conversations with Hanna May — and implied those messages were read by the Wagners without either woman's consent. In the messages, the pair seemed to reconcile and discuss their shared experience living in the Wagner home, as well as their similar histories with childhood sexual abuse. Prosecution has alleged the Wagner family were obsessed with keeping control over George and Jake's children because they believed if Hanna May and Claytor's two families couldn't keep them safe, they wouldn't keep the children safe either.

Hanna May and Claytor also discussed custody arrangements, and Hanna's fears that she would have to face the Wagners in court for custody of her daughter. Claytor advised her not to let the Wagners trick her into giving up custody like she herself was tricked. In later messages, leading up to April 22, 2016, when Hanna May and her family were murdered, the two discussed Jake's obsession with claiming Hanna's new daughter, Kylie, as his own, despite her vehement denial that the girl was Jake's child.

During cross-examination, Nash questioned Claytor at length about her childhood abuse, infidelities she'd committed while married to George, and the relationship the couple had as kids.

Claytor said hadn't moved into the Wagner home until she was an adult, but Nash pointed out that, when the two dated when she was 12-years-old, she'd essentially moved into the home for the year they dated. Claytor said she and her sister were introduced to George and Jake at the Flying W Farm — owned by Billy Wagner's mother, Fredericka — and the two were taken to the Wagners for two to three consecutive weekends to stay the night.

Claytor was intended to become close to Jake, while her sister was supposed to become close to George, she said, but it was she who developed a relationship with George and her sister eventually stopped coming in the visits. At first, she only stayed one or two nights with the Wagners, but eventually she never left and participated in her homeschooling in the home, while Angela homeschooled George and Jake, she said.

Nash asked whether Claytor eventually began sleeping in George's bed with him, and she said yes. Canepa later asked whos idea that had been, and Claytor told her it was Angela's. When Claytor and George broke up, she moved out and returned home.

You can catch up on the day's testimony below:

Watch opening statements below:

You can read recaps of each day of the trial in our coverage below:

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