WAVERLY, Ohio — The mother of a man accused of killing eight people in Pike County in 2016 will continue testifying Wednesday, but opted out of being recorded by the media, so her testimony won't be broadcast.
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.
On Wednesday, Angela testified that Billy wanted to build a goose house for his father, bringing materials down and teaching George and Jake how to construct it. She said she didn't know what was in the concrete buckets and was taking care of Bulvine and Sophia, Jake and George's children, while the goose house was being put into the pond at the Flying W Farm.
Billy told his sister no one but him was to touch the goose house, Angela said.
By this point, agents with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations had begun trying to speak with Angela and her family, she said; Billy told her he spoke with officers in their car in a parking lot. She said he told her he'd told them "the truth" and if agents spoke with her, she should do the same.
"We were trying to not tell anybody," said Angela, explaining she hadn't understood what Billy meant by "the truth."
Angela Canepa, special prosecutor, asked Angela whether she'd believed at any point the Wagners would get away with the murders.
"My belief is even if we hadn't ended up in jail or arrested," the family would never "get away with it," because they had to live with what they'd done regardless, she replied.
In April 2017, the family decided to move to Alaska after selling their farm on Peterson Road, but not after discussing it thoroughly, Angela told the jury. Billy was on the fence about leaving, particularly because his father was very sick, and his mother, Fredericka, didn't want him to leave either, Angela said.
Billy's mother "had a very big crying episode" over the idea of Billy moving with the family, Angela said. Fredericka offered to pay Angela $1,000 a month if the family stayed in Ohio, but Angela declined, she said.
Angela said she wouldn't have made the move at all if she'd known how sick her own father was at the time.
She described feeling nervous, worried and upset when the family learned, from Alaska, that BCI agents were searching the Peterson Road farm. She echoed Jake's testimony, telling the jury she was upset in general that agents waited until the Wagners were gone to search, when agents had been to the farm when they were packing.
She also conceded that "when you're trying to hide something," anxiety and worry are heightened. She worried about "anything being found that shouldn't be found" at the Peterson Road home, she said.
Canepa asked whether the family came up with a story they were all to tell law enforcement in case they were questioned about the murders; the story would be that Billy came over to Peterson Road for family night and they all watched a movie, Angela said. However, neither she nor Jake could remember which movie they'd agreed on, she said.
When agents detained and questioned the family at the U.S. and Canadian border on their way back from Alaska, Angela admitted she was caught off guard by questions about the Walmart shoes she'd purchased. She said she didn't remember that she'd left the receipt for the shoes behind; Fredericka later offered to lie and tell investigators the shoes were bought for Billy's dad, but Angela said she declined because she'd already lied to officers about them.
During that interview, Bulvine and Sophia were supposed to be in the hall outside coloring "and then I didn't know where they went," said Angela. When she was released, she found Billy standing at the family's vehicle in the parking lot and the two waited together for their sons and grandchildren to come out.
"I remember just looking at the door and hoping and praying they would come out," said Angela, adding she was concerned her sons would be arrested for the murders that very day.
She fretted over the agents' questions about the shoes, she said, but Billy instructed everyone that their vehicle was likely bugged and told the family not to say anything.
On the road once more, Angela said Bulvine was acting disoriented, so the Wagners took the children to an emergency room in Montana to have them checked out; ultimately, nothing was wrong with the children, she said.
The family stayed in Ohio for just a week, collected their belongings, and traveled back to Alaska. When they got there, they rented a home and put it in George's name, she said.
Eventually, then-Attorney General Mike DeWine issued a press release asking the public for information on Angela, Billy, George and Jake.
"It was devastating," said Angela, telling the jury it made her crazy and stressed out.
She said the release came out before Jake, George and Billy had jobs and she was concerned that it would affect their chances. She would stay up into the early hours of the morning — in June, when the sun was still up in Alaska — scrolling social media and reading the comments people were making about her family — including about the reward money.
"It was very scary, very nerve-wracking," she said.
Billy was stressed too, she said, and had begun drinking; Angela said she was worried that he might attempt suicide.
Canepa moved on to asking about Elizabeth Armer, the woman Jake met and married in Alaska.
"After I got to know Beth, in a mother's opinion, I just did not like her," said Angela.
She added she hadn't told Jake that, but had told him she had concerns about his decision to marry her — but he did anyway and "that was his choice," she said.
Beth later traveled with the family to Missouri, where they were trying to find a home and jobs; the family all stayed in a one-room hotel room in Springfield, Angela said. In one bed, Angela slept with Bulvine in one bed, Jake, Beth and Sophia took the other, with Sophia sleeping at the foot of the bed — until, according to Angela, Sophia was kicked onto the floor.
Eventually, after things didn't work out in Missouri, Angela said the family decided to return to Ohio because the house she'd grown up with, left to her after her father died, was sitting empty and it was a place for them to stay.
Canepa had Angela detail the time BCI subpoenaed her and her mother, Rita Newcomb, for handwriting samples. Billy and Angela spoke to Rita ahead of time — Angela remembered the talk took place in their laundry room, because Billy turned the dryer on to create noise in case anyone was listening in or the room was bugged. Angela said she was worried about BCI's actions at the time — not because she feared arrest or prosecution, but because she was worried that, if BCI continued showing people in the area evidence pointing to the Wagners, the Rhodens would get suspicious and "come and kill Jake and all of us."
Before the handwriting samples, Angela said she tried to describe how she'd signed her mothers name on the forged custody documents.
"I explained to her how I wrote it best as I can remember," she said.
Around the same time this was happening, Billy, George and Jake were subpoenaed by BCI to come in and submit to "something with their feet," said Angela. Canepa said they were made to provide foot measurements and foam impressions of their feet.
Angela said she spoke to George about it, asking what happened because she was worried. She knew there were bloody footprints left at one of the crime scenes, she said, because George had told her he'd attempted to smudge them, but Billy hurried him out of the room too quickly, telling him "don't worry about it, come on."
Later, Canepa asked Angela whether she knew who was responsible for the footprints; she initially responded that she didn't. Canepa asked her to read a transcript of the testimony she gave the prosecution during her plea deal, which Angela said sparked her memory.
She quietly replied that George had told her the bloody footprints at the home where Chris Sr. and Gary were murdered were his.
Questioning pivoted to the topic of Armer's brief stay with the family in 2018, specifically the journals Angela said Armer was always writing in. Armer would burn the pages outside, which made Angela anxious — particularly when Armer burned them in the Wagner's front yard.
Angela said she was worried BCI agents watching their home could see Armer and think she was instead burning evidence connected to the murders; she also worried that Armer could be journaling about the family and, as Jake's wife, would be believed no matter what she wrote — maybe because of her own paranoia, Angela added.
Angela confronted Armer about journal entries she discovered while going through Armer's things, she said, and Armer told her she didn't mean the things she'd written about Angela, she was just expressing her thoughts. Armer said she'd planned to burn those pages too.
"I really didn't want her burning anything, that's how paranoid I was," said Angela.
Angela also worried that Armer would or had already began to spy on the family for BCI, because she'd asked several times about drugs and didn't always announce herself when she was nearby during private conversations.
She also noted that Billy had spotted poles that appeared one day at the end of their drive and the driveway at the Flying W Farm, where he lived. He chastised her for not noticing them, telling her she should have been paying more attention.
On the accusation made by Sophia that Armer had touched her inappropriately, Angela confirmed the girl later admitted to lying but that the damage had already been done; George was concerned about the allegation too and Angela said the entire ordeal was upsetting and traumatic.
"He was worried like I was," said Angela. "I'm paranoid about everything, I guess."
Asked whether she'd ever seen the pick-up truck George, Jake and Billy bought for the murders again after April 22, 2016, Angela said she had, once, at the Flying W Farm. Billy's niece, whom he'd given the truck after the homicides, was at the farm to photograph horses for Billy's sister, Robin. While Katie was there, Angela said her husband got a bucket of bleach water and cleaned the whole interior; when Fredericka asked what he was doing, he told his mother he was detailing the truck for his niece.
After the murders, Angela said she noticed her sons didn't act like themselves; Jake was distractible and unfocused and George wasn't sleeping because he was having nightmares, she said. She approached her husband with concerns.
"I was feeling bad, I was worried about them," she said. "I told him I don't think we should have involved them in the homicides, the planning, any of it."
It's a regret she still carries, she said, "because they're my sons" and she should have protected them.
At one point, as the family became more stressed about BCI's investigation, Angela said George offered to take the fall for the murders. She told him he absolutely wasn't going to do that and, besides, it wasn't likely investigators would have believed him anyway.
Jake's confession in April 2021 was a horrible revelation, Angela said. She'd learned about it from news organizations.
"I felt like my heart was ripped out that day," she said.
Angela also decided to cooperate with the state in the fall of 2021, after both her son and her mother took plea deals. Angela said she made the decision after thinking and praying about it and decided that it was best to accept a plea as well, in the hopes that she could one day be released from prison and be able to see her sons and grandchildren again.
As Canepa began to wrap up her line of questioning, she asked Angela whether she'd been complicit in the murders of the Rhodens; Angela answered that she had, telling the jury George, Jake and Billy were all also complicit in the crimes.
"Do you love your son?" asked Canepa.
"Yes," said Angela.
"Do you believe he loves you?" asked Canepa.
Angela hesitated, not looking at her son, before she responded.
"I hope so," she said.
During cross examination, Richard Nash, George's defense attorney, asked why Angela had accepted her plea deal and she said one of the main reasons was because she'd heard what Jake had been offered and didn't want to force him to testify against her if she went to trial.
Nash brought up a letter Angela wrote to her mother-in-law after she was arrested, asking her to read it aloud for the jury.
"There is so much no one will ever know," read Angela.
In the letter, she'd told Fredericka that everything she'd pleaded guilty to was a lie; Angela clarified this was because, after the deal, she'd forgotten why she faced charges for things like burglary and firearms charges when she hadn't been at the scenes of the murders. She told Nash she reconvened with her lawyers, who explained her charges to her again, which she now understands.
The intent of the writing her mother-in-law, Angela said, had been to try and explain herself to Fredericka, so the matriarch wasn't upset about her cooperation with the state.
Like John Parker had with Jake, Nash questioned Angela about whether she could be believed, since cooperating with the prosecution meant she had to testify to their liking in order for the death specifications to be dropped from the charges faced by the family. Angela pushed back, insisting that regardless of her plea deal, she was telling the truth.
She'd dragged her own mother into an octuple homicide case, Nash pointed out, and made her complicit in the crimes, asking her to lie to police for the family.
"I did not talk her into it, I just did not talk her out of it," said Angela.
It was Nash who elicited the strongest emotional reaction from Angela all day — she teared up and dabbed her eyes with a tissue when she was asked about her childhood, under the abusive thumb of her father, Ed Carter, and when she was sexually assaulted during her time in the military — an enlistment that was forced on her by her father, she said, after he'd learned she'd lost her virginity.
Nash made Angela, like Jake had before her, read the entire description of a GoFundMe page she'd made after the murders. The page asked for a goal of $20,000 to help pay for Jake's attorney fees, incurred while fighting for custody of Sophia after her mother's death. Angela insisted she hadn't been trying to profit off the murders, she'd just seen several people affected by the homicides set up a page themselves and thought it could help offset the family's attorney fees.
"But this is a tragedy you created," said Nash.
"Yes it is," replied Angela.
Before court adjourned for the day, Nash asked Angela about her relationship with Hanna May.
"Hanna was like a daughter to you," he said.
"Yes, she was," said Angela.
More about Angela Wagner's plea deal:
Angela Wagner, Jake and George's mother and Billy's wife, pleaded guilty in September 2021 to charges of:
- conspiracy
- aggravated burglary
- tampering with evidence
- forgery
- unauthorized use of property
- unlawful possession of a dangerous ordinance.
In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop eight charges of aggravated murder and recommended 30 years in prison with no chance of early release. Like Jake's, her plea deal stipulates she will have to testify in the trials of her family members.
She has not yet officially been sentenced.
You can read recaps of each day of the trial in our coverage below:
- Angela Wagner called to stand, opted out of recording
- Investigators describe recovering, testing murder weapons
- Jake Wagner finishes testimony as seventh week of trial wrapped up
- 'I felt I had no other choice than to kill Hanna,' Jake Wagner told jury
- 'I was afraid they were going to kill me,' Jake's ex-wife testifies
- Texts between Hanna Rhoden and Jake Wagner detail ongoing custody argument
- Witnesses describe intertwined Wagner finances and a device found inside a well
- Clandestine recordings made by Jake, Wagner family finances presented
- Wire taps played for jury as court enters sixth week of testimony
- George Wagner IV's grandmother testifies
- Interview with Angela played for jury, Angela's half brother takes stand
- 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
Watch opening statements below:
