George Wagner IV is set to be sentenced for his role in murdering eight murders of another family over a custody dispute. He is the first of the defendants to be found guilty in criminal court. His brother Jake Wagner and their mother Angela Wagner previously pleaded guilty. That leaves the family patriarch George “Billy” Wagner as the remaining defendant.
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Prosecutors said that the Wagner brothers and their father stormed three residences one night in April 2016, killing eight members of the Rhoden family. Authorities said that Hanna May Rhoden, the mother of Jake Wagner’s young daughter, refused to submit to the control of the domineering Wagner family.
The Wagners targeted several other members of her family and intended to kill any witnesses, the prosecution said. In short, they were going to kill anyone who would know they killed Hanna May, and anyone who saw those other murders: her father Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40, her mother Dana Manley Rhoden, 38, Hanna May’s brother Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16, Christopher Sr.’s cousin Gary Rhoden, 38, Sr.’s brother Kenneth Rhoden, 44, Hanna May’s brother Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, 20, and Frankie’s fiancé Hannah “Hazel” Gilley, 20.
“I told Hanna I did not like Jake”: The daughter of Pike County victim #KennethRhoden expressed how she did not like #JakeWagner. “He would constantly try to be controlling. He would follow her anywhere we went. She was never allowed to be alone,” Kendra Rhoden said. pic.twitter.com/mydFUGP6Cs
— Law&Crime Network (@LawCrimeNetwork) September 30, 2022
George Wagner IV denied wrongdoing, though that obviously did not convince jurors.
[Image via Liz Dufour/Cincinnati Enquirer/Pool.]
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