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Pike County murder trial: Bloody shoe prints, surveillance footage and cell phone records are focus

A judge ruled to allow shoeprint evidence and expert testimony in the case.
Week three of testimony in Pike County trial
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WAVERLY, Ohio — After court abruptly adjourned during lunch Tuesday, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations shoeprint expert Suzanne Elliott will re-take the witness stand to continue her testimony about footprints found by investigators as the trial of George Wagner IV continues.

Wagner — 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.

Elliott opted out of having any of her testimony recorded.

On Tuesday, before lunch, Elliott explained to the jury how footprints in blood found at the first scene, where Chris Sr. and Gary were found dead, were matched to a pair of shoes she found.

Two shoe prints, found in blood amid drag marks in the kitchen of the first scene, were collected by BCI agent Shane Hanshaw in 2016. Matches could not be made between the prints found and any shoe patterns loaded into the BCI database, so Elliott said she went shopping.

She found the print pattern at a Walmart, on a pair of cheap shoes with velcro fasteners and, after checking different sizes, determined the prints were made by sizes 10.5 and 11. Both prints were from a left shoe, she said.

During opening statements, Special Prosecutor Angela Canepa said investigators found a receipt for two pairs of the exact same shoe inside a plastic storage bin when they executed a search warrant on property owned by the Wagner family.

Canepa also said investigators tracked down surveillance footage that shows Angela, George's mother, purchasing two pairs of those shoes at a Walmart in April 2016, not long before the murders were committed.

Trial resumed Wednesday and Judge Randy Deering explained the sudden halt to proceedings was because a juror had to deal with a family emergency; rather than dismiss the juror, court adjourned. The situation is resolved, Deering said, and the juror will continue to serve as planned. The court has appointed six alternates who have been watching the trial from the start, in case a juror needs to be dismissed.

Elliott then resumed the stand to finish her testimony about the shoe prints.

Following Elliott, prosecution called Julia Eveslage to the stand. Eveslage works for Ohio BCI as a criminal intelligence analyst and was assigned to analyze the victims' cell phones and records after the homicides happened.

Eveslage said only three phones were physically recovered by investigators: Frankie, Hannah Hazel and Kenneth's.

For each of the other victims, she had to rely only on their phone records held by cell service providers, she said. Having the physical phone is always better, because investigators can see the content of messages sent, any photos taken and other glimpses into a victim's life before they were murdered, she said.

Eveslage explained phone records from each of the victim's phones, detailing the communications that came and went from their cells the night they were murdered. She said she had no data for Gary Rhoden, who had no active cell phone account at the time.

Chris Sr. — who had two cell phones he used — appeared to speak to Billy Wagner, George's father, for 27 seconds at 8:51 p.m. the night of the murders. He then sent and received texts and calls with Dana, his ex-wife, and Chris Jr., his son. He called Hanna May, his daughter, at 10:47 p.m. that night.

Then, at around 10:52 p.m., Chris Sr. called Billy Wagner. The call lasted just three seconds. Chris Sr. then called Dana again at 10:53 p.m.

The last calls communication from Chris Sr.'s cell phone was at 10:54 p.m. and 10:55 p.m. Both were unanswered phone calls to Billy Wagner.

Dana's phone records mirrored communications with Chris Sr. throughout the evening, punctuated by calls and texts to her son, Chris Jr. Her last incoming text was from Chris Jr. at 11:27 p.m. Her last outgoing communication was a text sent to Chris Sr. at 3:32 a.m. that night.

Hanna May's phone records showed several texts and calls to three people that night: her cousin Kendra, her then-boyfriend Corey Holdren, and Jake Wagner. She texted back and forth rapidly with her cousin from 9:15 p.m. to 9:45 p.m. that night; Just before, from 9:02 p.m. to 9:08 p.m., she exchanged several tests with Jake.

At 9:35 p.m., Hanna May called Jake, but the call had a zero-second duration, which was likely a misdial, Eveslage said. At 9:39 p.m., she sent three texts to Holdren before engaging in another text exchange with Jake at 9:43 p.m.

At 9:50 p.m., Hanna May received two texts from a number Eveslage said couldn't be identified, because the number wasn't registered to a cell phone service company. It was likely a pre-paid cell phone, Eveslage said.

At around 10:00 p.m., Hanna May sent two texts to Holdren, the last communications from her phone that night.

Chris Jr.'s communications records showed several calls and texts with his parents, Chris Sr. and Dana. His final communication was recorded as two outgoing texts to Dana at 11:27 p.m.

Frankie and Hannah Hazel's phones were recovered. Both communicated back and forth with one another for a bit through the night. Frankie also spoke with his ex, Chelsea, who is the mother of his then-3-year-old son. Prosecutors said during opening statement that Frankie had to pick his son up unexpectedly, because of an issue on Chelsea's end.

A forensic extraction of his cell phone showed that the last thing Frankie did with his phone that night was take a photo of his toddler, Brentley, and his months-old son with Hannah Hazel, Ruger, Eveslage said. The photo was taken at 10:59 p.m.

Hannah Hazel's phone also showed an ongoing text conversation with her sister until 12:59 p.m., when she sent one final text.

Kenneth's phone showed he spoke to his son, Luke, at 9:09 p.m. for roughly 4 1/2 minutes. He then texted back and forth with his ex, with his last message to her going out at 9:41 p.m.

Eveslage said investigators tried to obtain location data from the Rhoden phones that were missing, but weren't able to find any.

Next to take the witness stand was Ryan Scheiderer, a special agent with BCI who became lead over the investigation.

Prosecution noted Scheiderer will be a returning witness as testimony goes on, to explain aspects of the investigation as they move through the trial.

Scheiderer said he left his home the morning of April 22, 2016 at around 9 a.m. and got to Pike County roughly two hours later.

"This was a very chaotic day," he said. "This was a big incident."

A case in which seven victims were found in three scenes was a lot, even for BCI, he said; eventually he learned there was an eighth victim in a fourth scene.

Canepa questioned Scheiderer about various different aspects of the investigation that day and the days that came after. First, Scheiderer noted that, despite Eveslage's testimony about phone records, investigators learned many members of the Rhoden family relied on Facebook Messenger to communicate, because it ran on Wifi and cell service was unreliable in the area.

Though investigators did obtain records from Facebook of messaged conversations, Scheiderer said they came in large quantities with no chronological order.

"Facebook does not do a good job of making it easy for you to go through their information," he said. None of the Facebook conversations were presented during Wednesday's testimony.

He also spoke to the shoe print evidence Elliott testified to earlier; investigators searched purchase records and surveillance footage at every Walmart within a 50 mile radius of the crime scenes, Scheiderer said. That revealed that Leonard Manley, Dana's father, purchased the same shoes that matched the bloody prints in the first crime scene in February, just before the homicides.

Manley had purchased size 10 shoes, however; Elliott said the shoe prints in the first scene were sized 11 and 10.5. When asked where the shoes were, Manley told investigators he'd thrown them away, Scheiderer said. BCI agents retrieved them from the garbage, but Elliott said his shoes were too worn from use to match the shoe prints, which showed new, unworn tread patterns.

From there, prosecution played several videos from homes near the crime scenes, where private surveillance cameras on neighbors' properties picked up the movement of two different vehicles along Union Hill Road and Left Fork Road the night of the murders.

Scheiderer said he was working at the crime scenes when someone told him the owner of a home on State Route 772 was at one of the barricades blocking off roads near the scenes, requesting to speak to investigators. Speaking to neighbors had been challenging, Scheiderer said, because police blocking off so many streets pushed many neighbors to leave their homes because of the inconvenience, though some left out of fear. This neighbor had been in Michigan, and told Scheiderer he had surveillance cameras pointed at the road near the crime scenes.

When Scheiderer walked with him to retrieve the data, the camera — mounted on a tree at the end of the neighbor's driveway — was gone.

Investigators successfully collected camera footage from two neighbors elsewhere in the area, Scheiderer said. The cameras were dark and difficult to see, but vehicles could be spotted traveling those roads between 1:00 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. that night. Scheiderer said he could not say that they were the same vehicles passing by the home each time, though he said these were not heavily-traveled roads and, in the case of Left Fork Road, not an obvious road at all.

After the prosecution wrapped up their questions, John Parker, one of George's attorneys, questioned Scheiderer about jurisdiction of the crimes committed at Dana Rhoden's home, which was determined to be over the Scioto County line and not in Pike County. Parker brought this issue up to other witnesses in the past and has raised it as an issue with Deering.

Scheiderer said a "continuing course of conduct" could mean jurisdiction shifts as long as some of the crimes committed were done in the county bringing charges. He added he didn't learn about the county line dispute until after the Wagners were indicted in November 2018, however.

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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