WAVERLY, Ohio — During trial Thursday, the jury heard a recording of the first interview between investigators and Angela Wagner, and her half-brother's thoughts on the Wagner family dynamics.
George Wagner IV — 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.
During trial Thursday, the jury heard a recording of the first interview between investigators and Angela Wagner, and her half-brother's thoughts on the Wagner family dynamics.
Thursday's trial began with attorneys arguing a point that led to court ending early the day before; John Parker, defense attorney for George, requested to play an audio recording of an interview with Jake when BCI agents met the Wagner family at the Montana border with Canada, as they were traveling back to Ohio from Alaska. The request was made during Parker's cross-examination of BCI agent Ryan Scheiderer, but the prosecution objected; Judge Randy Deering opted to adjourn trial early and hold a hearing on the issue Thursday morning.
In the morning, attorneys and prosecution met with Deering without the jury present and argued about whether the defense could be allowed to play evidence the prosecution hadn't yet introduced during a cross-examination of the prosecution's witness. Ultimately, Deering decided to sustain the prosecution's objection, preventing Parker from playing the recording of Jake "at this time," though Deering said the recording could be relevant at a later time.
Scheiderer returned to the witness stand briefly after the hearing, and Angela Canepa, special prosecutor, asked him to clarify statements he'd made Wednesday about the usability of audio from a bug placed on the Wagner family vehicle at the Montana border.
Scheiderer said two things were a factor in that recording being unhelpful to investigators: First, because agents had expected the family to converse with one another after they were all interviewed, but that didn't happen; Second, the ambient road sound was too loud once the vehicle was back on the highway, preventing them from hearing much of the conversations that may have happened.
What they did hear held no evidentiary value to the murder case, he said.
Prosecution next called Jennifer Comisford to the stand, a special agent with BCI who was present for much of the investigation, including during processing the crime scenes, the execution of the search warrants and the interviews at the Canadian border.
Comisford said before the interviews, agents were given files with a variety of documents they were to ask the members of the Wagner family, including paperwork found in the Wagner's belongings inside trailers they packed before leaving for Alaska.
At this point, the Wagners were officially considered suspects and BCI agents "treated it as a custodial interview," said Comisford.
Comisford specifically interviewed Angela Wagner, George's mother, and prosecution played a recording of the nearly two-hour conversation.
The conversation between Comisford, BCI agent Rick Ward and Angela began jovially, as they chatted about the Wagners' time in Alaska and traveling with young children, before Ward gently pivoted conversation toward the murders in Pike County the year before.
Angela said her only real connection to the Rhoden family was through Hanna May, and her relationship with Angela's son Jake. Although Chris Sr. was Billy's best friend, she said she didn't know much about their friendship and stayed out of their interactions.
Jake and Angela were both devastated when Hanna May left and moved out of the Wagner home, Angela said. She'd been close with Hanna May, telling investigators she was like a daughter to her, and often called her "mom."
Angela recounted a time she said she told Chris Sr. that, if Hanna May and Jake ever broke up, the Rhoden patriarch would have to share her because Hanna May "would always be my daughter."
As for Jake, "she was the love of his life," said Angela. The pair had planned a wedding for August 2015, but Hanna May left first, telling Jake she needed a break, Angela said.
That was maybe six months "before the incident," she said, referring to the murders.
She said the murders had been rough on her and the rest of the family, and described a time, while in Alaska, that Sophia insisted she'd spotted her mother at a camp ground. The then-three-year-old also called her mom and her Nana, Dana Rhoden, on her toy phone to talk to them, Angela said.
Jake's relationship with Hanna May was amenable after their breakup, Angela said. Once her son learned Hanna May had been dating other people after their split, he was "over it," Angela said. There were no issues and the two were co-parenting Sophie and had worked out a custody arrangement where the girl spent alternating weeks with each parent.
As the conversation with investigators progressed, though, Angela began noting there were times when Hanna wasn't "keeping up her end of the bargain" with Sophie, pushing the Wagners to accommodate her at the holidays, and switching which days Jake could pick up his daughter from the Rhoden home.
"Can I check on them real quick?" Angela said suddenly in the middle of the interview, referring to Sophia and Bulvine, who were outside the room with other agents. Ward told her he'd heard agents saying they were going to take the kids to get something to eat from a cafeteria on the next floor, and pointed out the building they were in was a safe, federal facility. Angela sounded nervous, but relented.
She went on, answering questions about Jake and Hanna, and their shared custody of Sophia. While Hanna May was pregnant with Kylie, she was often sick, so she'd call Jake to come get Sophia so she could sleep or shower. Sophia is a rambunctious child, Angela said, and so took a lot of energy.
She was asked about the rest of the members of the Rhoden family and said she'd only been to Chris Sr.'s house once, to drop off a trailer he planned to borrow to buy fireworks for his party. She refused to go back, she said.
"I don't like sitting on a couch that has this much dog hair," she said.
Investigators prompted her about the dogs owned by Chris Sr., and whether they were friendly; Angela said they were fine, as long as Chris Sr. was there, especially one named Chance. But Jake had been bitten by Chance several times, she said, when he turned up at Chris Sr.'s to look for Hanna.
Not long before the murders happened, but after she'd given birth to Kylie, Angela said Hanna May came by the Wagner family home, because she wanted them to meet the new baby. Hanna May made fun of Jake, who'd tried to dye his hair a darker brown, but wound up with a color closer to black, Angela said.
Investigators questioned her about the day of the murders and how the Wagner family learned the Rhodens had been killed. At first, she said all four of them were together — she in the kitchen with the kids, and the others elsewhere in the home — and someone began freaking out, so they all sat down to watch the news.
Later, she said Jake wasn't inside the home at all, but had left to do something either in the yard or off the property, and Angela had been in the TV room with the children, who she removed from the room after seeing the news. After the Wagners saw the news, she said Jake went to the hospital, where April Manley had ridden with Kylie so she could be checked out after she was found lying in bed next to Hanna May's body.
Manley testified earlier in the trial that Jake had shown up to the hospital, looking to take Kylie, who he believed at the time was his child. She said Jake hugged her — a move that has haunted her since, because she "had to wonder if he still had my baby's blood on him when he touched me."
Investigators shifted the tone of the questioning after that, asking if Angela had thoughts on why agents wanted to speak with her and her family. She said she assumed it was because of all the rumors and conversations online about the Wagners, speculating on their involvement. She said the family had moved to Alaska, in part for Sophia's sake because they were afraid of people saying inappropriate things to her about her mother's death.
Specifically, George's ex-wife Tabitha didn't like her or the family, Angela said, and was bipolar, refused medication and would likely say bad things about her and the Wagners. Leonard Manley, Dana's father, also didn't like Jake and had been speaking with media about suspicions around the Wagners, she said.
Angela then became frustrated, telling investigators they'd likely ruined most of the family's belongings when they executed the search warrants on the trailers in which their things were stored. She told the agents if they'd simply asked to search the home and their property before they'd moved, she would have gladly helped to avoid anything being damaged or left out in the weather. Angela said she'd been in contact with BCI, calling Ryan (Scheiderer) regularly and speaking with him when he came to their property.
Ward changed subjects, asking Angela again about how custody was going and she described Hanna and Jake's meetings with a lawyer hired to represent Jake.
In the audio-only recording, Ward asked her if something he was showing her was a document drafted by lawyers and she said she didn't remember the document. Agents pointed out it was notarized by her mother, Rita Newcomb, and Angela said she still didn't remember. Ward pointed out a printed date on the bottom of the document indicating it was printed just three weeks before the murders; Angela said she may have printed it off, but wasn't sure.
Angela began to sound flustered, and said she believed it might have been a document she typed or printed for Jake and Hanna May to to take to Jake's attorney.
Ward changed subjects again, asking Angela whether she ever bought clothing items for her sons or her husband. She said she'd occasionally pick something up for them at Walmart if she saw something they needed; Ward asked about whether she'd buy them shoes.
"No, I don't buy shoes," she said, and explained that was because although she knew what sizes her sons wore, every shoe fit differently.
Agents on the recording showed Angela crime scene photos and pointed out, visible in the images, several shoeprints in blood that investigators knew belonged to the killers. They produced a photo of the Walmart shoes that matched the tread print and asked Angela if the shoes looked familiar. She said no, but she'd maybe seen Billy's father wear similar shoes.
"We have a receipt for those shoes purchased by you," Ward told Angela.
"Ok, well, then I did purchase them," she responded, after a brief silence.
She was shown an image of her captured from surveillance footage at the Waverly Walmart and investigators pointed out that image was taken on April 7, 2016, roughly two weeks before the murders. During that trip, the receipt they collected showed she bought two pairs of the shoes, Ward told her.
Angela was silent, before telling agents she didn't know.
"Are you telling me those are the shoes that was used in the murder?" she asked.
She pivoted and told agents she did buy the shoes for Jake and George, but that any shoes used in the murders couldn't be the same as those, because she'd thrown those shoes in the garbage after her sons refused to wear them. She said her sons called them "old-man shoes," and, despite having told her they wanted sneakers, wouldn't wear them.
When asked when she threw them away, she said she didn't know the exact day.
Next, Ward and Comisford changed topics again, and brought up the shell casings collected from the driveway and yard of the Peterson Road home during a search. They told Angela those shell casings identically matched shell casings found at the murder scenes.
"There's no way," said Angela. "I'm telling you there's no way."
The agents insisted, telling her that BCI lab analysts were certain one of the guns used to murder the Rhoden family had been fired in the Wagner family's yard.
Angela argued and said plenty of people came to their house and shot guns, including Frankie Rhoden. Others who hunted with the Wagners would have shot in the yard too, she said.
Angela became increasingly flustered as investigators asked her whether she would tell them why custody documents were printed and shoes matching prints at the crime scene were bought by her family just weeks before the murders, or why the murder weapon was fired in her old yard.
She changed her story, telling agents that she wasn't alone when she made that trip to Walmart — her family had been in the car. Comisford said surveillance footage had showed Angela getting into the back seat of a vehicle in the parking lot before it drove away.
As investigators pushed her on the topic, Angela sounded upset and declared she was done talking until she could have a lawyer present, and the interview ended shortly after.
Next, prosecution called Chris Newcomb, Angela's half-brother, to the witness stand; Angela and Newcomb share a mother — Rita — who also faced charges in the murder case, though many were dropped and she eventually accepted a plea deal.
Although Newcomb is Angela's brother, he said she's 20 years his senior and he grew up with her sons, Jake and George. Canepa asked him to describe the Wagner family dynamics and Angela's relationship with her sons.
"On her part, controlling as all get out," he said. "If she'd tell them to jump, they'd jump. I think that's the politest way I can put that."
Her husband, Billy, was useless and lazy, he said. He said Billy didn't want to do anything productive and was always scheming and running his mouth.
Canepa asked about Angela's relationship with her grandchildren, Bulvine and Sophia.
"I think she tried to be more of a mother than what she should have been, in my opinion," he said.
Newcomb had worked for years buying and selling scrap, guns, vehicles, livestock and anything else he said he thought might turn him a profit; around a year or two before the homicides, he said George came to him and asked him to find him a .40 caliber Glock pistol. Newcomb found a seller on Facebook and set up the purchase for George, he said.
This wasn't unusual; Newcomb said he and George bought firearms off one another fairly often.
Newcomb knew Hanna May and the two had spoken often before she and Jake broke up.
"She was like a little sister to me," he said.
The pair often texted back and forth, but when Newcomb's partner got pregnant and Hanna May left Jake, they lost touch for a bit, he said, but was vehement that Hanna May was a great mother, from everything he'd seen.
Canepa asked Newcomb if he knew what Jake and George's favorite movie was and he said it was Boondock Saints. Prosecution previously said during opening statements that Jake and George had dyed their hair darker just before the murders, to look more like the brothers in the movie.
"They just showed up at the house one day and I told them it looked stupid, or dumb," he said.
Jake laughed and asked if he looked like Daryl, from The Walking Dead — played by Norman Reedus, who also played a brother in Boondock Saints.
"I said 'no, it looks stupid,'" said Newcomb.
Newcomb defended his family after the murders, he said, believing fully that none of them could have had anything to do with murdering the Rhoden family. That all changed in 2021 when Jake accepted a deal and pleaded guilty.
"If I'da had Jake in front of me at the time, I'd have probably beat him within an inch of his life," he said.
The murders were a "monstrous act" that never should have happened and learning his family had been involved after all left him feeling betrayed and enraged, he said. After the plea, he said there were things he looked back on that made more sense after Jake's confession — some things investigators questioned him on after the murders had seemed odd at the time but suddenly made sense.
A profile picture on George's Facebook page — a wolf missing an eye — also felt odd, knowing one of the victims, Kenneth, had been killed with a single shot through the eye, he said.
During cross-examination, Parker asked Newcomb about how similar George and Jake were to one another, to which he responded: night and day. Newcomb said he was always closer to George than Jake, and had more in common with George, though they were all three like brothers.
"He was like the brother I always wanted, Jake was like the brother I wish I'd never had," said Newcomb.
Jake was picky, adverse to dirt and more content to sit inside playing video games all day than hunt deer or ride four-wheelers, Newcomb said. Before he was allowed to get into Jake's truck, he'd have to remove his boots if they were dirty, place them in a bag and put them in the bed of the truck, he said.
After his half-sister pleaded guilty to charges, she called Newcomb from jail; He said he screamed at her and she screamed back and he hung up, blocking the number so she could never call him again.
In the Wagner home, things could be tense, Newcomb said. Jake and George often had bruises on them as kids and he said he suspected Billy abused them; When George got big enough to defend himself against Billy, Newcomb said the abuse became more verbal. George argued with his parents all the time, he said; Jake, on the other hand would do anything Angela asked.
While the family was in Alaska, Newcomb said he still spoke to George on the phone almost every day.
Parker asked if he felt betrayed by George, like he did by Jake and Angela. Softly, Newcomb said "yes."
Parker asked if Newcomb still loved George as a brother; he said he did, but didn't feel the same any longer about Jake or his actual sister, Angela. He conceded that he didn't think he'd ever be close with George as he was before, but that he was the only member of the Wagner family he genuinely missed.
Parker asked if Newcomb would welcome George back into his home.
"That'd be getting a little close," Newcomb said after a moment of hesitation.
You can catch up on Thursday's testimony below:
Watch opening statements below:
You can read recaps of each day of the trial in our coverage below:
- Texts highlight Wagner family dynamic, purchases for possible silencer
- Dozens of guns collected in search of Flying W Farm, but no murder weapons
- Jury shown evidence collected from Wagner belongings
- Evidence collected on Wagner property presented
- BCI agents testified to evidence
- Ex-wife of George Wagner IV describes 'strange and controlling' Wagner home
- Jury hears from George Wagner IV's ex-wife as fourth week of testimony begins
- Family members tearfully describe the day of the homicides
- Bloody shoe prints, cell phone records are focus
- Experts testify about ballistics, shoeprint evidence
- Third week of trial moves on to Kenneth Rhoden's home
- Evidence presented from third crime scene
- Scene where Dana, Chris. Jr and Hanna May Rhoden were killed is focus
- Testimony focuses on second of four crime scenes
- Coroner describes two of eight victims autopsied
- Forensic testimony continues into Monday
- Forensic evidence takes center stage
- Testimony centers on Kenneth Rhoden, final victim discovered
- Emergency responders testify about chaotic scenes
- Witnesses describe discovering their family members' bodies
- Opening statements detail grisly moments in the six-year-old murder case
- Read a full timeline of the Pike County murder investigation
