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WARNING - Trial coverage could contain graphic images or language
WAVERLY, Ohio (WXIX) - Jake Wagner is back on the witness stand in his brother’s murder trial for the Pike County massacre and testifying against him for the second day in a row.
Pike County massacre: Complete trial coverage
There was a long lunch break and then another delay while Pike County Common Pleas Court Randy Deering and attorneys on both sides of the case read a decision released earlier Tuesday out of Ohio’s Fourth District Court of Appeals.
The decision ordered the judge to allow all witness testimony to be recorded on camera unless the judge held a hearing first to consider why they should be allowed to opt-out.
Judge Deering scheduled a hearing at 9 a.m. Wednesday to discuss witnesses who do not want their testimony recorded on camera. Then he said they would continue allowing Jake Wagner, a confessed killer who is a co-defendant at his brother’s capital murder trial, to continue testifying off camera.
Earlier Tuesday, Jake Wagner told the jury he and his family never talked about the slayings after carefully plotting and carrying them out April 21-22, 2016.
“No,” he told Special Prosecutor Angela Canepa. “I couldn’t without having immense guilt ...I decided to erase the memory completely.”
On Monday, Jake Wagner nonchalantly described committing crimes such as arson and theft for years with his family and talked just as calmly about gunning down most of the eight members of the Rhoden and Gilley families.
Jake Wagner describes massacre: ‘’She looked up and made a gasping noise and then I shot her’
Prosecutors say the Wagners planned the execution-style murders for months so Jake Wagner could have sole custody of his daughter, Sophia, born in 2015 to one of the victims, Hanna May Rhoden.
The other victims are her father, Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40; his older brother, Kenneth Rhoden, 44; his cousin, Gary Rhoden, 38; his former wife, Dana Lynn Rhoden, 37, and their sons: Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, 20, Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16, and Frankie’s fiancé, Hannah “Hazel” Gilley, 20.
Legal analyst talks latest Pike County trial developments
During a sidebar in court Monday, Jake Wagner looked at several of the victims’ relatives in the courtroom and appeared to mouth the words: “I’m sorry.”
George Wagner IV, 31, is the first of the Wagners to go on trial.
He has pleaded not guilty to 22 charges, including eight counts of aggravated murder, along with his father, Billy Wagner.
Jake Wagner and his mother pleaded guilty to their roles in the massacre last year.
Their testimony against George Wagner is part of their plea deals.
After he confessed to the killings last year, Jake Wagner led investigators to the weapons and vehicles used in the killings, prosecutors have previously said.
On Monday, Jake Wagner told the jury he used a Walther Colt 1911 .22 caliber pistol. His father, Billy Wagner, was armed with a .40-caliber Glock. An SKS rifle also was used in the offense.
He testified Tuesday that he cut at least two of those three weapons in half with a grinding tool. He also used a torch to melt down the firing pins and serial numbers to keep them from being traced back to the crimes.
He said his brother helped him, saying George Wagner is “strong as a bull ox.”
Jake Wagner disposed of the ashes in a Rumpke Dumpster on the Peterson Road property. He said he also burned several items that could have linked them to the crimes:
- The clothes and shoes they wore
- DVR they removed from a marijuana grow house on Chris Rhoden Sr.’s property
- Cell phones Jake Wagner said he collected from the victims’ rooms after killing them
- Shell casings at some of the shooting scenes
Prosecutor Canepa asked Jake Wagner if he planned to destroy the weapons before the slayings.
“I did,” he responded.
He also admitted on the witness stand that he and his brother dug a hole under a new barn on their land, placed the broken up gun parts into a duffel bag and buried it under the barn.
Jake Wagner said he and his father dug the duffel back up later, removed the gun parts and put them in buckets filled with concrete, aong with Jake Wagner’s hunting knife.
He used the knife to try to pry open the door on Frankie Rhoden’s locked trailer, but it broke off, according to his testimony Monday.
The buckets filled with cement were then put into water. They anchored a goose house for Jake Wagner’s grandfather at a lake at the Flying W Farms in Lucasville.
Jake Wagner told the jury his brother initially helped him build the goose house.
The goose house was a Father’s Day or birthday present for their grandfather (Billy’s father).
After Jake Wagner confessed in April 2021, he led investigators to the weapons and vehicles used in the massacre.
Discovery filed in the case in Pike County Common Pleas Court on June 21, 2021, shows the state submitted several items as evidence against George Wagner IV after Jake Wagner helped them.
The items include “concrete bucket contents,” “Glock comparisons,” “Walther comparisons” and reports from dive teams in Franklin and Ross counties who searched the lake at Flying W Farms.
In her opening statement, Prosecutor Canepa briefly touched on BCI gun expert Matt White reassembling the weapons.
More testimony about the evidence and how BCI’s gun expert literally pieced the weapons back together is expected in the coming hours and days.
The jury also will hear 2018 wiretaps of the Wagners that prosecutors say will corroborate their conspiracy charge against George Wagner IV.
His mother, Angela Wagner, will take the stand against him soon.
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