April 2, 2026
Who Killed the Rhoden Family? The Wagner Family's Pike County Massacre Explained
Who Killed the Rhoden Family? The Wagner Family's Pike County Massacre Explained In April 2016, eight members of the Rhoden and Gilley families were found shot execution-style across four separate locations in Pike County, Ohio, in what became one of...
Who Killed the Rhoden Family? The Wagner Family's Pike County Massacre Explained
In April 2016, eight members of the Rhoden and Gilley families were found shot execution-style across four separate locations in Pike County, Ohio, in what became one of the most extensive homicide investigations in American history. After two years of surveillance, wiretaps, ballistics analysis, and a homemade silencer recovered from the bottom of a well, the Wagner family of four was arrested in November 2018 and charged with aggravated murder, conspiracy, and related offenses.
What started as a custody dispute over a baby girl became the blueprint for a massacre that took months to plan. The Wagners were not a troubled family in the way most people use that phrase. They were a closed criminal system, run by a patriarch who taught his sons to track police officers on road trips for dollar bills, and a matriarch who regularly accessed her sons' girlfriends' social media accounts to monitor their loyalty. When 19-year-old Hanna May Rhoden wrote in a Facebook message that the Wagners would "have to kill me first" before she'd sign custody papers, Angela Wagner was already reading her messages. This is the story of the eight people they went after anyway, and the family that spent months convincing themselves it was the right thing to do.
#PikeCountyMurders #RhodenFamilyMurders #WagnerFamily #OhioTrueCrime #TrueCrime #TrueCrimePodcast #MassMurder
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1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,000
On the morning of April 22, 2016, law enforcement in Pike County, Ohio told residents to stay inside and lock their doors.
2
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:16,000
In a community where most people never locked their doors at all, that was not a routine announcement.
3
00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:20,000
Eight people had been killed across four locations in a single night.
4
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:23,000
The people responsible were neighbors.
5
00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:45,000
[Music]
6
00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:55,000
Pike County, Ohio, sits in the southern part of the state tucked into a stretch of the Appalachian country where families the foundation everything else is built on.
7
00:00:55,000 --> 00:01:00,000
People know their neighbors, their neighbors' parents, which truck you drive, where you like the fish on the weekends.
8
00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:07,000
Generations of families live close enough to each other that the lines between households blur naturally over time.
9
00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:10,000
The rodents were one of those families.
10
00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:20,000
Christopher Roden Sr. was 40 years old, a laborer who owned several properties in sunfish township and spent summers working at Big Bear Lake Family Resort.
11
00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:25,000
His brother Kenneth, 44, ran utility and lumber jobs across the county.
12
00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:31,000
Their cousin Gary 38 had roots in Kentucky tobacco farming before putting down roots in Ohio.
13
00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:35,000
These were men defined by physical work and deep local connection.
14
00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:42,000
Their lives anchored to demolition derbies, hunting seasons, and the slow rhythms of agricultural community.
15
00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:46,000
The younger generation of rodents was just beginning to find their footing.
16
00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:55,000
Frankie Roden, 20, was a welder who lived for hunting and fishing and the local demolition derby, where his Ford Crown Victoria was a beloved regular entry.
17
00:01:55,000 --> 00:02:00,000
He was engaged to Hannah Gilley, also 20, who had plans to open a daycare.
18
00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:07,000
Hannah May Roden, 19, was a certified nursing assistant and a mother of two, building a life with real intention.
19
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:12,000
Her mother was Dana, 37, working at Hillside, skilled nursing, and rehabilitation.
20
00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:19,000
Known throughout her unit for regularly bringing food for her colleagues, for no other reason than she wanted people to feel cared for.
21
00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:28,000
Christopher Jr. was 16, a fresh minute pike in high school, still trying to figure out what version of all of this he was going to look like.
22
00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:31,000
These were the people at the center of this story.
23
00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:33,000
So hold that in your mind.
24
00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:40,000
About 15 miles away, along the same web of rural roads and the same county routes that the rodents traveled every week,
25
00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:45,000
the Wagner family had been building something very different for a long time.
26
00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:54,000
Billy Wagner, the third, and his wife Angela raised two sons, George and Jake, inside a household built around criminal enterprise from the ground up.
27
00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:59,000
Billy began incorporating his boys into that enterprise at around age 8.
28
00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:07,000
His signature training method was road trip games where he paid each son a dollar for every law enforcement officer they spotted along the way.
29
00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:13,000
Cash payments, starting an elementary school, for identifying and tracking police officers.
30
00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:22,000
But by their early teens, the brothers were running theft operations alongside their father, stealing diesel fuel from truck stops using specialized hoses and pumps.
31
00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:29,000
George later recalled that they specifically targeted diesel because gasoline explodes and diesel does not.
32
00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:35,000
These were children performing criminal risk calculations before they were old enough to get a learner's permit.
33
00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:39,000
Angela Wagner handled the household's internal structure and social control.
34
00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:45,000
She managed chores and laundry methods and dictated who her sons were permitted to associate with.
35
00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:49,000
She committed arson for insurance profit as well.
36
00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:59,000
She ran a fraudulent dog breeding operation, selling mixed breed dogs as purebretts, which is maybe the most Angela Warner thing Angela Warner ever did.
37
00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:09,000
She also routinely accessed the social media accounts of women dating her sons, monitoring their loyalty and intentions with the dedication that most people reserve for things they genuinely love.
38
00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:13,000
That was the standard operating procedure around the Wagner home.
39
00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:17,000
She had built a personal surveillance system around her son's relationships.
40
00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:23,000
This is the household Jake Wagner came from when he began a relationship with Hannah May Rodin.
41
00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:27,000
Jake was 20, Hannah May was 13.
42
00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:38,000
The relationship eventually produced a daughter named Sophia, and when it ended, Sophia became the center of an obsession the Wagner family would spend years translating into something catastrophic.
43
00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:46,000
Investigators and prosecutors described the family as operating under what they call a 100% Wagner ideology.
44
00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:55,000
The belief was that Sophia belonged entirely to the Wagner bloodline and shared parenting represented a permanent, unacceptable threat.
45
00:04:55,000 --> 00:05:00,000
Billy Wagner was the first to articulate what eliminating that threat actually required.
46
00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:03,000
Removing Hannah May alone would be insufficient.
47
00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:15,000
If the rest of the Rodin family survived, there would be legal action, potential retaliation, and a sustained connection between Sophia and the people the Wagner's have classified as adversaries.
48
00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:20,000
In Billy's logic, everyone with a living claim to Sophia had to be gone.
49
00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:24,000
In late 2015, Hannah May sent a Facebook message to a friend.
50
00:05:24,000 --> 00:05:31,000
She wrote that she would never sign custody papers and that the Wagner's would have to "kill me first".
51
00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:37,000
Angela Wagner, who had been reading Hannah May's private messages as a matter of regular practice, saw that note.
52
00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:46,000
For a family that had been already discussing mass murder as a practical solution to a custody dispute, those words served as kind of a confirmation.
53
00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:48,000
Planning accelerated.
54
00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:53,000
The four months leading up to April 2016 looked like military preparation.
55
00:05:53,000 --> 00:06:01,000
The Wagner's conducted what they called "missions" and "drills" in the woods near their properties, practicing movement and coordination.
56
00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:07,000
They acquired a truck specifically for the night of the killings, planning to sell it immediately afterward.
57
00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:09,000
They built homemade silencers.
58
00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:16,000
They purchased phone jamming devices to cut cell signals at each crime scene, preventing anyone from calling for help.
59
00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:21,000
They attached brass catchers to their firearms so no shell casings would be left on the ground.
60
00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:25,000
In the week before the murders, Jake and George died their hair darker.
61
00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:37,000
The inspiration was a movie called "The Boondock Saints". It's a 1999 film about two brothers who carry out what they frame as righteous, family driven justice against people they decided deserved to die.
62
00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:47,000
Jake had developed a deep attachment to the film and his characters. They were constructing an internal story in which everything they were about to do was principled and necessary.
63
00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:52,000
The hair was kind of a costume. The movie was the script they'd handed themselves.
64
00:06:52,000 --> 00:07:03,000
On the night of April 21st, into the early morning hours of April 22nd, Billy, George and Jake moved through four locations while Angela remained home to coordinate.
65
00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:09,000
At the first trailer on Union Hill Road, Jake testified that George hesitated when the moment arrived.
66
00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:20,000
Jake picked up his brother's gun. Christopher Senior and Gary Roden were killed. The group moved to the second trailer on the same road, where Dana, Hannah May and Christopher Junior were sleeping.
67
00:07:20,000 --> 00:07:28,000
Hannah May's four-day-old infant was found beside her body, left alive. Dana and Christopher Junior were shot in their beds.
68
00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:36,000
At the third trailer, Frankie Roden and Hannah Gilley were killed in their bedroom. Their six-month-old baby was found between them physically unharmed.
69
00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:42,000
Kenneth Roden was miles away at a camper on Left Fork Road, and he was shot once in the head.
70
00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:55,000
Eight people across four locations in a single night, and three children left alive. The pattern of who was spared told investigators something very specific about what the Wagner's believed they were accomplishing.
71
00:07:55,000 --> 00:08:02,000
Law enforcement arrived the morning of April 22nd and advised residents to stay indoors and lock their doors.
72
00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:10,000
In a community where people routinely left them unlocked, that announcement landed differently than any other public routine safety message.
73
00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:23,000
Early investigative theory pointed toward a drug cartel involvement. The Rodens had marijuana operations and cock fighting on some of their properties, and the coordination across four separate crime scenes suggested something large and external.
74
00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:28,000
Two full years of investigation would close in on something much closer to home.
75
00:08:28,000 --> 00:08:37,000
The Wagner's initially cooperated, providing DNA samples and sitting from multiple interviews with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
76
00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:50,000
In June 2017, the family relocated to Alaska, citing harassment and lingering rumors. They joined a Baptist church there, and were described by neighbors as "quiet and entirely ordinary."
77
00:08:50,000 --> 00:09:00,000
Investigators followed, wire taps were placed in the family's vehicles, and recorded conversations indicated the Wagner's were actively working to manage their history.
78
00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:07,000
A homemade silencer was recovered from the bottom of a well on a property that they had previously owned in Ohio.
79
00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:13,000
In November 2018, all four members of the Wagner family were arrested.
80
00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:24,000
Jake Wagner essentially said, "You got me. I'm guilty." April 22, 2021, exactly five years after the murders, he admitted to personally shooting five of the eight victims.
81
00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:33,000
George, his brother, stood trial, convicted on all counts and received eight consecutive life sentences, plus 121 additional years.
82
00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:38,000
Angela, their mother, played guilty to conspiracy charges, and got 30 years.
83
00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:49,000
Billy Wagner's trial, as of the latest information, was still pending. At the January 2025 sinencing hearings, one of the victims' family members called Jake, the spawn of Satan.
84
00:09:49,000 --> 00:09:58,000
Jake's own statement to the court described his arrest as "Jesus answering his prayer for guidance toward a straight and narrow path."
85
00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:04,000
Pike County defines itself through the idea that family is what you protect and what protects you.
86
00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:12,000
It's the organizing principle of that region. The Wagner's understood that, but instead of playing protector, they played predator.
87
00:10:12,000 --> 00:10:19,000
[Music]
88
00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:28,000
Thanks for listening to "10 Minute Murder," "Bingeable True Crime Stories." I'm Joe, I'm the host, and here's an email, subject slightly embarrassing habit.
89
00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:36,000
Hi, Joe. I listened to your show while I'm folding laundry, and now I've accidentally trained myself to associate clean towels with homicide.
90
00:10:36,000 --> 00:10:41,000
I pulled a warm load out of the dryer the other day, and immediately thought, "I should put on Joe."
91
00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:52,000
Brains are weird. Stephanie in Wisconsin in the city is, "I don't want to mess it up. EAU Claire." I'm going to attempt it. Is it "Oh, Claire?"
92
00:10:52,000 --> 00:10:57,000
It's kind of like that French dip sub thing, but they've got the "Ajou." Maybe. I don't know.
93
00:10:57,000 --> 00:11:01,000
So first, I'm hearing of that city in Wisconsin. I'm sure it's great.
94
00:11:01,000 --> 00:11:10,000
And Stephanie, yeah, that is kind of weird, but you know, people develop habits. I've got some strange habits that I won't discuss here, but yeah, I get it. Thank you for the email.
95
00:11:10,000 --> 00:11:18,000
Hey, if you're a brand new listener to this podcast, make sure you hit subscribe right now. You can contact me if you want to, "10 Minute Murder.com."
96
00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:24,000
If you're enjoying the podcast, make sure you tell your friends and your family all about "10 Minute Murder."
97
00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:31,000
And that's going to do it. That's your episode for today. Thanks again for listening to "10 Minute Murder." See you next time.
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,000
On the morning of April 22, 2016, law enforcement in Pike County, Ohio told residents to stay inside and lock their doors.
2
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:16,000
In a community where most people never locked their doors at all, that was not a routine announcement.
3
00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:20,000
Eight people had been killed across four locations in a single night.
4
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:23,000
The people responsible were neighbors.
5
00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:45,000
[Music]
6
00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:55,000
Pike County, Ohio, sits in the southern part of the state tucked into a stretch of the Appalachian country where families the foundation everything else is built on.
7
00:00:55,000 --> 00:01:00,000
People know their neighbors, their neighbors' parents, which truck you drive, where you like the fish on the weekends.
8
00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:07,000
Generations of families live close enough to each other that the lines between households blur naturally over time.
9
00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:10,000
The rodents were one of those families.
10
00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:20,000
Christopher Roden Sr. was 40 years old, a laborer who owned several properties in sunfish township and spent summers working at Big Bear Lake Family Resort.
11
00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:25,000
His brother Kenneth, 44, ran utility and lumber jobs across the county.
12
00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:31,000
Their cousin Gary 38 had roots in Kentucky tobacco farming before putting down roots in Ohio.
13
00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:35,000
These were men defined by physical work and deep local connection.
14
00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:42,000
Their lives anchored to demolition derbies, hunting seasons, and the slow rhythms of agricultural community.
15
00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:46,000
The younger generation of rodents was just beginning to find their footing.
16
00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:55,000
Frankie Roden, 20, was a welder who lived for hunting and fishing and the local demolition derby, where his Ford Crown Victoria was a beloved regular entry.
17
00:01:55,000 --> 00:02:00,000
He was engaged to Hannah Gilley, also 20, who had plans to open a daycare.
18
00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:07,000
Hannah May Roden, 19, was a certified nursing assistant and a mother of two, building a life with real intention.
19
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:12,000
Her mother was Dana, 37, working at Hillside, skilled nursing, and rehabilitation.
20
00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:19,000
Known throughout her unit for regularly bringing food for her colleagues, for no other reason than she wanted people to feel cared for.
21
00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:28,000
Christopher Jr. was 16, a fresh minute pike in high school, still trying to figure out what version of all of this he was going to look like.
22
00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:31,000
These were the people at the center of this story.
23
00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:33,000
So hold that in your mind.
24
00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:40,000
About 15 miles away, along the same web of rural roads and the same county routes that the rodents traveled every week,
25
00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:45,000
the Wagner family had been building something very different for a long time.
26
00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:54,000
Billy Wagner, the third, and his wife Angela raised two sons, George and Jake, inside a household built around criminal enterprise from the ground up.
27
00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:59,000
Billy began incorporating his boys into that enterprise at around age 8.
28
00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:07,000
His signature training method was road trip games where he paid each son a dollar for every law enforcement officer they spotted along the way.
29
00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:13,000
Cash payments, starting an elementary school, for identifying and tracking police officers.
30
00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:22,000
But by their early teens, the brothers were running theft operations alongside their father, stealing diesel fuel from truck stops using specialized hoses and pumps.
31
00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:29,000
George later recalled that they specifically targeted diesel because gasoline explodes and diesel does not.
32
00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:35,000
These were children performing criminal risk calculations before they were old enough to get a learner's permit.
33
00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:39,000
Angela Wagner handled the household's internal structure and social control.
34
00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:45,000
She managed chores and laundry methods and dictated who her sons were permitted to associate with.
35
00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:49,000
She committed arson for insurance profit as well.
36
00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:59,000
She ran a fraudulent dog breeding operation, selling mixed breed dogs as purebretts, which is maybe the most Angela Warner thing Angela Warner ever did.
37
00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:09,000
She also routinely accessed the social media accounts of women dating her sons, monitoring their loyalty and intentions with the dedication that most people reserve for things they genuinely love.
38
00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:13,000
That was the standard operating procedure around the Wagner home.
39
00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:17,000
She had built a personal surveillance system around her son's relationships.
40
00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:23,000
This is the household Jake Wagner came from when he began a relationship with Hannah May Rodin.
41
00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:27,000
Jake was 20, Hannah May was 13.
42
00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:38,000
The relationship eventually produced a daughter named Sophia, and when it ended, Sophia became the center of an obsession the Wagner family would spend years translating into something catastrophic.
43
00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:46,000
Investigators and prosecutors described the family as operating under what they call a 100% Wagner ideology.
44
00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:55,000
The belief was that Sophia belonged entirely to the Wagner bloodline and shared parenting represented a permanent, unacceptable threat.
45
00:04:55,000 --> 00:05:00,000
Billy Wagner was the first to articulate what eliminating that threat actually required.
46
00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:03,000
Removing Hannah May alone would be insufficient.
47
00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:15,000
If the rest of the Rodin family survived, there would be legal action, potential retaliation, and a sustained connection between Sophia and the people the Wagner's have classified as adversaries.
48
00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:20,000
In Billy's logic, everyone with a living claim to Sophia had to be gone.
49
00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:24,000
In late 2015, Hannah May sent a Facebook message to a friend.
50
00:05:24,000 --> 00:05:31,000
She wrote that she would never sign custody papers and that the Wagner's would have to "kill me first".
51
00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:37,000
Angela Wagner, who had been reading Hannah May's private messages as a matter of regular practice, saw that note.
52
00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:46,000
For a family that had been already discussing mass murder as a practical solution to a custody dispute, those words served as kind of a confirmation.
53
00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:48,000
Planning accelerated.
54
00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:53,000
The four months leading up to April 2016 looked like military preparation.
55
00:05:53,000 --> 00:06:01,000
The Wagner's conducted what they called "missions" and "drills" in the woods near their properties, practicing movement and coordination.
56
00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:07,000
They acquired a truck specifically for the night of the killings, planning to sell it immediately afterward.
57
00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:09,000
They built homemade silencers.
58
00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:16,000
They purchased phone jamming devices to cut cell signals at each crime scene, preventing anyone from calling for help.
59
00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:21,000
They attached brass catchers to their firearms so no shell casings would be left on the ground.
60
00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:25,000
In the week before the murders, Jake and George died their hair darker.
61
00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:37,000
The inspiration was a movie called "The Boondock Saints". It's a 1999 film about two brothers who carry out what they frame as righteous, family driven justice against people they decided deserved to die.
62
00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:47,000
Jake had developed a deep attachment to the film and his characters. They were constructing an internal story in which everything they were about to do was principled and necessary.
63
00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:52,000
The hair was kind of a costume. The movie was the script they'd handed themselves.
64
00:06:52,000 --> 00:07:03,000
On the night of April 21st, into the early morning hours of April 22nd, Billy, George and Jake moved through four locations while Angela remained home to coordinate.
65
00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:09,000
At the first trailer on Union Hill Road, Jake testified that George hesitated when the moment arrived.
66
00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:20,000
Jake picked up his brother's gun. Christopher Senior and Gary Roden were killed. The group moved to the second trailer on the same road, where Dana, Hannah May and Christopher Junior were sleeping.
67
00:07:20,000 --> 00:07:28,000
Hannah May's four-day-old infant was found beside her body, left alive. Dana and Christopher Junior were shot in their beds.
68
00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:36,000
At the third trailer, Frankie Roden and Hannah Gilley were killed in their bedroom. Their six-month-old baby was found between them physically unharmed.
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Kenneth Roden was miles away at a camper on Left Fork Road, and he was shot once in the head.
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Eight people across four locations in a single night, and three children left alive. The pattern of who was spared told investigators something very specific about what the Wagner's believed they were accomplishing.
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Law enforcement arrived the morning of April 22nd and advised residents to stay indoors and lock their doors.
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In a community where people routinely left them unlocked, that announcement landed differently than any other public routine safety message.
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Early investigative theory pointed toward a drug cartel involvement. The Rodens had marijuana operations and cock fighting on some of their properties, and the coordination across four separate crime scenes suggested something large and external.
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Two full years of investigation would close in on something much closer to home.
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The Wagner's initially cooperated, providing DNA samples and sitting from multiple interviews with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
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In June 2017, the family relocated to Alaska, citing harassment and lingering rumors. They joined a Baptist church there, and were described by neighbors as "quiet and entirely ordinary."
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Investigators followed, wire taps were placed in the family's vehicles, and recorded conversations indicated the Wagner's were actively working to manage their history.
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A homemade silencer was recovered from the bottom of a well on a property that they had previously owned in Ohio.
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In November 2018, all four members of the Wagner family were arrested.
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Jake Wagner essentially said, "You got me. I'm guilty." April 22, 2021, exactly five years after the murders, he admitted to personally shooting five of the eight victims.
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George, his brother, stood trial, convicted on all counts and received eight consecutive life sentences, plus 121 additional years.
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Angela, their mother, played guilty to conspiracy charges, and got 30 years.
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Billy Wagner's trial, as of the latest information, was still pending. At the January 2025 sinencing hearings, one of the victims' family members called Jake, the spawn of Satan.
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Jake's own statement to the court described his arrest as "Jesus answering his prayer for guidance toward a straight and narrow path."
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Pike County defines itself through the idea that family is what you protect and what protects you.
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It's the organizing principle of that region. The Wagner's understood that, but instead of playing protector, they played predator.
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[Music]
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Thanks for listening to "10 Minute Murder," "Bingeable True Crime Stories." I'm Joe, I'm the host, and here's an email, subject slightly embarrassing habit.
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Hi, Joe. I listened to your show while I'm folding laundry, and now I've accidentally trained myself to associate clean towels with homicide.
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I pulled a warm load out of the dryer the other day, and immediately thought, "I should put on Joe."
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Brains are weird. Stephanie in Wisconsin in the city is, "I don't want to mess it up. EAU Claire." I'm going to attempt it. Is it "Oh, Claire?"
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It's kind of like that French dip sub thing, but they've got the "Ajou." Maybe. I don't know.
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So first, I'm hearing of that city in Wisconsin. I'm sure it's great.
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And Stephanie, yeah, that is kind of weird, but you know, people develop habits. I've got some strange habits that I won't discuss here, but yeah, I get it. Thank you for the email.
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Hey, if you're a brand new listener to this podcast, make sure you hit subscribe right now. You can contact me if you want to, "10 Minute Murder.com."
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If you're enjoying the podcast, make sure you tell your friends and your family all about "10 Minute Murder."
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And that's going to do it. That's your episode for today. Thanks again for listening to "10 Minute Murder." See you next time.
