Original subtitles

[soft dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- Eight family members, murdered.

I was in shock.

- I lost my best friend that day.

I lost myself that day.

And I will never be the same because of that day.

- 911.

- I think my brother-in-law is dead.

There's blood all over the house!

[sobbing]

- Who could have killed eight family members

In four locations, execution-style,

In one night?

- The killer left those children

Laying in their mother's blood.

- The rhoden case is one of the worst

Mass murder cases in ohio history.

- Go down on your knees, sir. Hands behind your back.

- You're under arrest right now.

- They kept telling me, we swear we didn't do anything.

I said, ok, I believe you.

They're my family.

- Question that has been asked the most is, why?

Why?

- People wanted to know, who did the planning?

Who actually did the shooting?

- Who was the mastermind behind this whole plan?

- We got to figure out something,

Because we're running on borrowed time here.

- Let's talk about the motive.

Why on earth kill a family of eight?

[ominous music]

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[distant bright music playing]

♪ ♪

- How you doing? - A little better.

- How you doing, buddy?

You doing all right? - Yeah.

- Try the other one. Try the other one.

- Hello? Yeah, that'll work.

So we'll go to this one.

Welcome to the 2023 pike county dogwood festival.

Kyndall rainey will do an opening prayer.

- Lord, I just thank you for bringing us

All together as a community.

- The dogwood festival is a community-based event

Where we all come together every April.

Christ was crucified on a dogwood tree,

So that's the flower that we embrace for this festival.

- Now, for the crowning of the 2023 queen in court,

Mylie burton.

[cheers and applause]

- Piketon's a great little town.

This is a great little festival.

This is what makes america what it is.

- We're about 20 minutes east of union hill road in piketon,

Where the annual dogwood festival

Kicked off just yesterday.

Some people had reservations about

Coming out after the news of the murder spread

Through the small town.

- The whole community is completely stunned, shocked.

- It's a pretty tight community.

So we're all out there, supporting each other.

- People's, you know, concern as to why,

You know, what drove someone to do this.

You don't think of anything ever happening

In this area like that.

♪ ♪

- Pike county, like many counties in appalachia--

People trust each other.

You can meet a stranger on the road

Who will be perfectly willing to help you change a tire.

Or if you were hungry, you could find a meal

If you didn't have a dime on you.

- People will reach out if they're having a bad day

And just let you know that if they know

That you're a faith-filled person,

So that you can pray for them.

And we count on that from one another.

The pike county news watchman is a small local paper.

We cover graduations, school events,

Even down to, like, a grandma making a very special quilt.

But that day, that all changed.

I had never covered anything like this.

- Something bad is happening

On the other side of union road.

I'm trying to get more information on what,

In fact, has happened.

- Live coverage from pike county.

[tense music]

- It was chaos here in town.

The parking lot and our streets were lined with

Network trucks, with the satellite dishes,

And reporters were everywhere.

- Kirsten, don't say nothing.

- Come on.

- I received a phone call from our morning shift dispatcher,

And she told me, corey, you've got to go to union hill.

I said, what's going on?

And she said, I can't tell you, but it's big.

- Authorities have said that there have been

Shootings in pike county.

Wcmh's helicopter bringing us some aerial footage

Of the active investigation as we speak.

- Where would you like me to-- - right here is your hot seat.

- Ok.

- I'm just going to mic you before you sit down.

- Sure.

I've been doing this 27 years.

This was definitely the largest,

Most complicated mass killings in ohio's history.

♪ ♪

That morning, bobby jo manley did what she normally did.

She arrived at chris sr.'s property

To take care of the dogs and chickens.

On that particular day, his door was locked,

Which was definitely odd to her.

Once she entered the trailer,

She quickly realized that something bad had happened.

- [sobbing]

- After finding chris sr. And gary,

Bobby jo was very frantic

And went over to the adjacent property...

To go check on chris sr.'s son, frankie rhoden,

And his girlfriend, hannah gilley.

She knocked on the door.

Frankie's three-year-old son came to the door.

When she asked where frankie was...

[ominous music]

The three year old told her that

Daddy was playing zombie in the bedroom.

She quickly went back to the bedroom to check.

Bobby jo found both frankie and hannah gilley deceased.

Their six month old was alive,

Laying in between them, covered in blood.

Just a horrific crime scene.

- The left-hand side appears to be

At least one of the locations where

They have found multiple bodies.

You can see multiple ambulances.

- When I saw my lieutenant running across the lawn

With a child covered in blood,

Painted in blood,

I knew it was going to be a bad day.

- Hannah gilley's sister called me and said,

Hannah's gone, and frankie's gone.

But the baby is ok.

And I remember, when she said that the baby was ok,

I dropped to my knees, and I just cried.

- My first initial thoughts was I couldn't believe it.

Who would do that to them?

They were so good to everybody in the community.

- Chris rhoden, my cousin,

Was just naturally a giving person,

Not an outspoken person.

You'd have to pry words out of him.

But when he said something, he said something.

He said something worth hearing.

My little brother, gary, was the baby of the family.

It seemed like he was always looking for his place,

And he seemed to find it working with chris.

He worked with him every day, doing construction work.

And I was so happy for--

You know, glad that he found that with him.

I don't know.

I'm sorry, I'm getting a little--

I'm getting a little emotional now.

I'm done for now.

[tractor whirring]

- The pike county sheriff is investigating.

He's in charge of this investigation.

He has called, though, for help from the ohio bureau

Of criminal investigation, or bci.

- I received a call from one of our crime scene supervisors

Letting me know that the sheriff had contacted

Bci and asked for our assistance

Involving a crime scene.

- Ben is leading the investigation, ben suver.

- Two of the locations are within walking distance

Of each other, another one is maybe a mile--

- The complexity of these murders

Does not match anything that I've ever investigated,

Nor have any of my colleagues.

- A couple of guys in what appear to be hazmat suits

Appear to be entering another structure.

- And for the first time, we're seeing

That third possible location.

- We're out here on union hill road,

At the former residence of dana rhoden.

The police found dana in the rear bedroom.

They discovered that she had sustained

Five gunshot wounds to her head.

They moved back up the hallway,

Where they found her son, chris jr.,

In his bed,

And he had four gunshot wounds to his head.

He was only 16 years old.

Just down the hall was dana's daughter, hanna rhoden.

She's got two gunshot wounds to her head.

Hanna had given birth four days prior to a daughter.

This child, still alive, had been laying next to her mother

And was covered in blood.

Fortunately, hanna's other daughter,

Who is two years old,

Was not here the night of the homicides.

- We have just learned that they have found

An eighth body.

Four crime scenes, eight victims in all.

- When law enforcement arrived at kenneth rhoden's home,

They simply found him lying in bed

With a single gunshot wound to the eye.

And they found dollar bills sprinkled all over his body.

If you're investigating this, you're thinking,

Was somebody trying to send a message

About the motivation for this homicide?

[tense music]

- Today, investigators are releasing more

About who was killed and their relationships.

Dana rhoden and chris rhoden, sr., were husband and wife.

Their three children are frankie, hanna, and chris, jr.

Frankie's fiancée is hannah gilley.

Kenneth rhoden is a brother to chris sr.,

And gary rhoden is chris sr.'s cousin.

- It was my brother who called me and said...

Chris, someone has wiped out all the rhoden family.

And I said, you know, what?

I asked my brother, I said, who did it?

He says, no one knows. They just found them.

- I can't find no words to describe how I felt about it.

You know what I mean?

It was devastating.

- First and foremost, I want to express all of our thoughts

And prayers to everyone in pike county today,

With the tragedy that fell upon our county.

At this time, I can confirm that we have

Eight bodies in this county.

All were adults, except for one male juvenile.

Right now, I'm going to turn it over

To the attorney general mike dewine.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

This is a horrible tragedy that has occurred here

In pike county.

Each one of the victims appears to have been executed.

Each one of the victim's appears

To be shot in the head.

I would be more happy to answer any questions

That we can answer.

- Is there any idea about a motive so far?

- None.

- Hello. - Hello, hello.

- Hello, hello. - How are you doing?

- It's so nice to meet you.

Thank you for agreeing to interview.

- This is dolly.

She'll normally just go to sleep as we--

We do the interview, so...

It's just a bizarre story.

[pensive music]

From that first day, those first hours,

Everybody had a different theory of what this might be.

- We are outside the union hill church.

The family has gathered there.

- We talked to a number of the rhoden family

At a local church.

We expressed directly to them our deepest sympathy.

This is a very, very difficult time for this family.

- I remember being at union hill church

In the bathroom stall, and in the stalls around me,

There were family members of the rhoden family.

Some were wailing,

And just the most horrible crying that I've ever heard.

[voice breaking] and I just remember it tore me up.

You know, it doesn't matter if you need

To take a break from grandma selling a quilt,

But you can't take a break from a breaking thing like this.

[sniffles]

[tractor whirring]

♪ ♪

- Come on, guys.

They know what the feed bucket is.

Come on.

♪ ♪

I went to all the funerals.

I was in denial until I walked in there.

You walk into a funeral home with eight people,

Good people, people that I love.

It was like burying my brothers.

- The caskets were all open.

That was hard. That was hard.

I know dana as a coworker

And a good friend.

We were both nurse's aides.

She was absolutely the most caring person,

And she had the most big, infectious laugh.

I miss her laugh more than anything.

And when I think of dana's laugh,

I can also see chris jr.'s little mischievous side.

He was just a fun-go-lucky, you know, teenage boy.

- Hanna--she was so young.

She was starting on a career.

She'd just had two kids.

- Hanna may had a baby with jake wagner.

- Jake lived with his parents, angie and billy,

And his brother, george.

Hanna was just blindly in love with jake.

- I actually messaged jake after the murders.

And his reply was,

This is the most toughest thing I've ever had to go through.

I don't know how I'm going to explain to my baby girl

Her mom is never coming back.

- Jake had full custody of his little girl

After that happened.

And I remember telling jake, I said,

That's who I feel the worst for right there, I said,

Is that little girl.

- The funeral that I attended--

You know, everybody was grieving together.

- Family members leaned on each other

For gary rhoden's visitation.

- And I saw jake wagner,

George wagner, and billy wagner,

Standing outside the funeral home.

[tense music]

- We was concerned about the wagners, too,

Because they were connected because

Of hanna and jake's daughter.

We thought, is something going to happen to them next?

- I am still actively looking for a shooter.

I am not going to rule out the fact

That we do not have someone or some ones

That's out, armed and dangerous.

- We are advising family members

To take particular caution.

- Everybody was in a panic

Because we didn't know where the killers were.

- I've never owned a gun.

I had a gun that day.

- They believe that there is a shooter

Or shooters out there somewhere.

- I thought, man, I cannot wait to start hunting.

'cause we were going to get these guys.

Atic music]

♪ ♪

- All members of the same family

Being killed like this-- it's absolutely stunning.

- I covered the rhoden and gilley murders

From the moment we found out that people had been killed.

- Reporting live in piketon, angenette levy--

In waverly, angenette levy--

In pike county, angenette levy, local 12 news.

I've covered a lot of crime cases over the years.

But to see eight members of one family killed--

That's pretty rare.

- We can confirm that three children survived...

One being four days old,

Six months old,

And three years old.

- The killer left those children

Laying in their mother's blood.

What a cold-blooded, ruthless thing that was.

- As tragic as these eight murders are,

We were very thankful that the children in this case

Were spared.

We believed it was an important clue.

Jake wagner is somebody that we were interested in

Because of the relationship with hanna rhoden.

He was also the father to the child,

Who was in jake's custody at the time of the murders.

So we spent a lot of time exhausting

Whether he was involved or not

And looking at jake's history.

[foreboding music]

♪ ♪

- When I introduced jake and hanna to each other,

She was only 13 years old.

[distant bright music playing]

It was at the pike county fair.

And she was ecstatic over her white bunny.

It was a big bunny, and she kept, pretty much,

Throwing it at jake, like here,

Hold my bunny, pet my bunny.

Like, you're going to hold this rabbit, man,

And this is how it's going to happen.

She was just bubbly, loud, very loud.

Never really seen her cry.

She was the strongest chick that I knew.

- When they began dating, jake was 17.

Jake and hanna were together for two years,

And then she moved into the wagners' home.

And she felt, I think, pretty welcomed by the family.

- Jake's mom, angela wagner,

She reminds me of, like,

One of those moms that you always want to be.

The house was always clean. She always had food cooked.

She was canning. She was sewing.

Everything was like you could lick the floors.

- Angela wagner acted like

She really loved hanna may as a daughter.

The rhodens and the wagners were friends.

- Billy wagner, jake's father,

Was a close friend of chris sr.'s.

- Jake's brother, george, was best friends

With frankie rhoden for years.

- Jake and hanna had planned to get married.

They had tattooed wedding rings

On their left ring fingers.

They did love each other.

There were good times.

But hanna began to realize

Things just weren't quite right with this family.

- The wagners were the rich people of the town.

I used to hang out with jake and george.

Their grandmother, freddy, would spoil them all the time.

- Frederica wagner is billy wagner's mother,

The mother-in-law of angela wagner.

Frederica has got a little bit of flair to her.

She stands in sharp contrast to billy.

- Billy worked for his mother,

And billy was also a trucker.

Angela did work with freddie

To help with her horses and dogs.

- Frederica and her husband, bob, bought the flying w farm.

It's this sprawling 1,700-acre property.

They had a successful horse-breeding business,

And frederica owned rental properties around the area.

There have been estimates that they possibly

Are worth as much as $4 million.

In pike county, ohio,

That's an astronomical amount of money.

[dog barking]

- Warm weather's coming up.

She needs to get rid of all this old fur that she can.

I believe it makes her a lot more comfortable, personally.

- So tell me about this area.

Is it very family-oriented, church-going?

- Nobody knows a stranger around this part of this--

- Around through here, ain't nobody know a stranger.

[laughter]

And as far as family goes,

I'm related to most of this town--

[chuckling] through one way or another.

[pensive music]

This would be the house where my sister, angela,

Spent most of her life.

She wasn't born here,

But she was raised in here, pretty much.

I'm 20 years younger than my sister.

I was a year and 1/2 older than george.

I was 2 and 1/2 years older than jake.

We grew up as close as brothers would.

[tractors whirring]

Me and george and jack, what we'd do most of the time,

We'd go four-wheel riding,

Or we'd go fishing,

Or hunting.

Definitely seemed like george had

More friends than jake did.

Jake was always different. He was the odd one out.

I would say that jake is very controlling.

Now, he said, everything has a place,

And there's a place for everything.

I always thought of hanna like my little sister, you know?

She'd complain to me about jake, how annoying he was,

And how bossy he's getting.

- When we talked to jake, jake presented a relationship

With hanna and the rhodens as very positive,

That they got along with each other.

- On the outside, the wagners looked like

The picture-perfect country family.

But small towns make big secrets.

- This is where chris rhoden sr.'s home was.

It was a mobile home, set right back in this area.

There were old cars that were parked out here.

There was a parking pad where they would work on vehicles.

You wouldn't know it to look at it now,

But lives ended here in a very, very brutal way.

- Tips have been pouring in to investigators.

- 30 people have already been interviewed.

No word on a motive.

- As investigators, we have to keep asking ourselves,

Why kill all of these individuals?

What was the motive?

So it's paramount to us that we do this right

And we collect as much evidence as we can.

- When they began to search these scenes,

Bci didn't turn up a weapon.

But when bci was searching frankie rhoden's home,

They found multiple shell casings

That actually came from a .22-caliber long rifle.

At chris sr.'s house, bci did, in fact,

Collect .30-caliber sks rounds.

They also recovered a single .40-caliber round

That was probably fired from a glock.

- With the different casings,

We speculated that there were at least

Two shooters in this case.

- When the investigators from bci

Arrived here at chris rhoden sr.'s trailer,

There were what appeared to be bullet holes

On the outside of the trailer.

So they knew that it was going to be

A horror show when they walked in.

- The blood trail was evident the moment that you walked in.

One of the most important pieces

Of evidence that was found was two bloody shoe prints.

- Whoever left the shoe prints had walked through the blood.

The investigators noticed that

They were both left-footed footprints

By two different-sized shoes.

They had another indication that

They had more than one perpetrator

In this particular case.

- Our lab scientist is able to treat this almost like

A fingerprint and identify the size of the shoes

As 10 and 1/2 and 11.

- The scientists at the lab also

Determined that the treadwear was from a new shoe.

For an investigator, you're thinking,

Did someone go out and purchase new shoes

In order to facilitate this crime?

- Bci did really exhaustive work,

Going to the local stores

And examining shoes in different sizes.

- A scientist from bci went to a walmart,

And she found shoes that matched

The same pattern that were found in blood

The night of the homicide.

These types of shoes are sold exclusively at walmart,

So that significantly whittles down your field

Of potential perpetrators.

- We had the footprints.

We had the ballistics.

But we did not have strong evidence

To support who perpetrated these crimes.

- You had no eyewitnesses, no fingerprints, no dna.

- We had to seize upon any lead that we could.

- We're learning new information in the pike county

Execution-style murders

Of eight members of the rhoden family.

- Police uncovered a series of marijuana growing operations

On the properties where the family members were found.

- Let me go ahead--

And I think it's ok for us to confirm

That we did find marijuana.

- Near the crime scene or at the crime scene?

- At the crime scene.

- The three grow operations found on the rhoden properties

Was something that the bci agents had to investigate.

- Kenneth's trailer--if you just look back to the right,

There's a tiny shed back there.

That's where he was growing marijuana for sale.

And chris rhoden sr.'s home, that big barn,

Is where marijuana was grown.

And he had a secondary location in the attic.

This is specifically grown

So that you can take it, process it, and sell it.

Well, now, you're into the drug trade.

- The discovery of a marijuana grow operation is only fueling

The rumors that the rhodens were

Connected to some bad people.

- Bci thought that this might possibly

Be a mexican drug cartel.

- People who think that the mexican drug cartels

Don't have a presence in southeastern ohio

And pike county are just mistaken.

For southeastern ohio and pike county specifically,

Us route 23, which is what we're on now,

Is what some people call the "heroin highway."

Typically, what we would see

Would be methamphetamine, fentanyl, cocaine, heroin,

And we will occasionally as well

See prescription medication.

There's the gulf cartel, the jalisco group,

The sinaloa cartel,

Which was led by juan "el chapo" guzman.

We located a mexican national marijuana grow

Within just a couple miles of the rhoden residence.

The reasons that the cartel may kill people--

Certainly, infringing on their territory or their business

Or even the perception that that has happened

Is enough in some cases to get someone killed.

[tense music]

- 90 days into the investigation,

Investigators have reported no new developments.

- So far, there are no persons of interest.

- It's still unclear why eight people were murdered.

- Families of the victims would ask us,

You're not really making any progress.

What's going on?

- We would anticipate that this could be

A lengthy investigation.

A lot of what is going on here

Is just basic, old-fashioned police work.

- I think a lot of people thought, they've got nothing.

- We aren't going to rush into any arrest of any suspect

Without an abundance of caution and evidence.

This is going to be a capital murder case.

We followed many, many leads to their dead end.

Although there were individuals murdered,

Execution-style, in four locations,

We found no credible evidence

That cartel members were involved in the homicides.

- While it was not mexican cartel activity,

This thing could have been local drug activity.

Bci was able to get some good information

That chris rhoden, sr., and billy wagner

Got involved in selling drugs together.

- So billy was somebody that bci wanted to interview.

- They surprised him.

Billy was walking out of a kroger,

And they put him in a car, and they interviewed him.

- Uh-huh.

- Mm-hmm.

- Billy wagner told bci, stop looking at the family.

You're barking up the wrong tree here.

- Mm-hmm.

- Right.

- Bci knew early on

That he was just kind of all over the place.

And I think they probably made the decision

Just to let him ramble.

He thought he was running that thing, but he wasn't.

- Right.

- Billy indicated during his interview

That chris sr. Was brokering deals that were going

To make him a lot of money and make him

A greater threat to the local drug trafficking community.

We later found out that billy, in fact, with chris sr.

Were involved in a $800,000 marijuana drug deal.

- Billy was known to drive large trucks.

And he and chris would take trips together

Where they transported marijuana.

But billy was never charged with criminal activity

Related to drug dealing.

- I don't think bci got anything from billy.

But I don't think that billy did himself

Any favors with that interview.

I think they thought that he was trying to get them

Off the scent of the wagner family

And onto something else, but did it in

A very amateurish way that was not credible at all.

Chirping]

[dog barking]

- I've heard that billy was always scheming.

Can you tell me about billy's schemes?

- Every day.

He'd call me or he'd call my dad.

He'd say, listen.

He said, I know how we can make a couple million

Within two, three months.

There for a long time,

He wanted to open up a bar and a whorehouse

Down there in mexico.

He mentioned something about going to canada one time,

Bringing back a bunch of pharmaceuticals,

Because they're a whole lot cheaper up there

Than they are down here.

- And what did angela think about his schemes?

- She just listened and went along with it.

- When angela met billy wagner,

She really took a liking to him

And the things that I think she believed

His family could offer.

You know, they had a name. They had money.

- Money.

- It had to have been dollar signs.

- She seen money and-- - have you seen billy?

[chuckles] I mean...

He was a certified couch potato.

Looked like a big ogre.

He's about as sharp as a bowling ball.

- In 2017, we found out

The wagners planned on leaving ohio.

They sold their property

At 260 peterson road in pike county.

And then they officially moved to kenai, alaska.

Kenai, alaska is off the grid,

Very rural, not very populated.

- When they decided to move to alaska,

We didn't think anything of it.

They've always talked about moving to alaska

'cause that was their dream place to live.

- They talked about that for years, moving to alaska.

- Yeah, they talked about that for years.

And then they told us, not only it was 'cause

They wanted to live there,

But they were afraid for their life,

That they had to be prepared,

Because somebody was going to come kill them.

- Angela had found a house that she thought

Was just great for the whole family.

It was billy, angela, george, jake,

And jake and george's two children,

Including jake and hanna may's daughter.

- Once they moved to alaska, billy's father passed,

As well as angela's.

They did not return for either funeral,

So we found that to be highly suspicious.

- A large search is happening right now

Near the pike county massacre crime scene.

- Investigators searched a home on peterson road

That was sold in March by jake wagner and his family.

- After the wagners sold their property,

The new owner granted bci access.

- Investigators have wrapped up their search for the night.

They expect to return here tomorrow.

- After going through tens of thousands of items,

We found a receipt from a local walmart

Where the wagners had purchased two pairs of shoes,

Size 10 and 1/2 and size 11.

- This paper item ties back the purchase

Of two pair of sneakers right before the homicides.

This must have been a revelatory moment

For the agents.

- And then, the most significant piece

Of evidence we obtained was video footage

Of one of the wagners at a local walmart,

Purchasing two pairs of shoes--

Size 10 and 1/2 and size 11.

Every piece of evidence that we collected

Took us further and further in the direction of the wagners.

We needed to talk to them.

- At one point, the wagners were

Coming back to the state of ohio

To get some more of their possessions.

Bci stopped them at the border in montana.

- George and jake denied all involvement in the killings,

And billy did not want to cooperate

With our investigation at that time.

- But angela agreed to sit down and talk to our investigators.

- The wagners were starting to feel the heat being turned up.

- They clearly knew that we were hot on their trail.

- Why take out a whole entire family?

- It wasn't until we got the laptop

That we very quickly learned the truth.

- Everybody had waited since 2016 for this moment.