The morning sun had barely risen over the quiet hills of Pike County when Bobby Jo Manley stepped onto her family’s rural property on Union Hill Road. What she found inside would shatter her community and ignite one of the largest criminal investigations in Ohio’s history.

Inside the modest trailer of her brother-in-law, Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40, lay a scene of unspeakable horror. Chris and his cousin Gary Rhoden had been executed in their sleep. Chris had suffered nine gunshot wounds. Manley, trembling and in shock, called 911.

Panicked, she rushed next door to warn her nephew, Frankie Rhoden. Instead, she discovered a second crime scene. Frankie and his fiancée, Hannah Gilley, had also been murdered. Their toddler stood at the door, bloodied from trying to rouse his father. An infant lay on the bed beside their bodies—alive but orphaned.

The terror continued to unfold.

Manley called her brother, James, urging him to find their sister, Dana Rhoden. When he arrived at her home, he found her and her two children, Hanna May Rhoden, 19, and Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16, also shot to death. Hanna, cradling her four-day-old daughter, had been killed with a bullet to the head. The newborn, miraculously, was unharmed.

Before the day was over, one final victim would be discovered: Kenneth Rhoden, Chris’s older brother, was found dead in his camper miles away. In total, eight members of the Rhoden family were dead. Thirty-two gunshot wounds. Two babies spared. A county paralyzed by fear.

From the beginning, authorities were struck by the precision of the killings.

Most of the victims were shot in the head. There were no signs of forced entry. Shell casings had been meticulously removed. Children were deliberately left alive. These were not random killings. Investigators believed the Rhodens had been targeted—by someone who knew them well.

Speculation swirled. The discovery of marijuana grow operations on the property led to early theories of cartel involvement. But no concrete link to organized crime was ever found. As months passed with no arrests, tension gripped Pike County. Over 700 tips poured in. Still, the killers remained at large.

Then, two and a half years later, a break.

In November 2018, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced the arrest of four members of the Wagner family—former close friends of the Rhodens. The suspects: George “Billy” Wagner III, his wife Angela Wagner, and their sons George Wagner IV and Edward “Jake” Wagner.

The Wagners had once shared meals and holidays with the Rhodens. Jake Wagner had even fathered a daughter with Hanna Rhoden. But according to prosecutors, a bitter custody dispute over that child became the motive for murder.

The Wagners, authorities say, meticulously plotted the killings for months. They bought ammunition and tools to build homemade silencers. They used a cell phone jammer to block calls for help. On the night of April 21, 2016, they allegedly crept into four separate homes, killing eight people—all to gain control of one little girl.

The key break came when investigators found a spent shell casing on the Wagner property that matched one from the Rhoden scenes. That evidence, along with months of painstaking work, cracked the case wide open.

In April 2021, Jake Wagner pleaded guilty to all eight murders in a deal to avoid the death penalty. He admitted his role in the massacre and agreed to testify against his family. He also led police to the murder weapons—encased in concrete and submerged in a pond.

Later that year, Angela Wagner pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated murder. She was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

In 2022, George Wagner IV stood trial. A jury found him guilty on all charges. He received eight life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Now, in 2025, only one suspect remains. Billy Wagner has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

The Rhoden case has been called “the most heinous crime in Ohio’s modern history.” For nearly nine years, its dark shadow loomed over Pike County. But today, the truth has emerged from the silence.