George Wagner IV is a liar whose two-day testimony in his defense does not match the evidence and is in direct contradiction to that of his mother and younger brother, the prosecutor told jurors during her closing statement Monday as Ohio's most complex criminal trial winds down.
For about five hours, special prosecutor Angela Canepa walked the Pike County jury of nine women and three men through evidence and testimony in the mass murder case against Wagner IV, 31. She pointed to bloody shoe prints left at one crime scene, the guns used in the killings and surreptitiously recorded conversations between him and his brother.
She also highlighted key discrepancies between his testimony that contradicted that of both his mother, Angela Wagner, and his younger brother, Edward "Jake" Wagner.
Quoting from earlier testimony, Canepa ended:
"The family has spoken. Jake and Angela have told you everything this defendant did that night and his participation in the aggravated murders and all the other crimes listed in the indictment,'' she said. "We respectfully request you return verdicts of guilty to each count."
Wagner IV faces 22 counts, including conspiracy and eight counts of aggravated murder, in the April 2016 killings of seven members of the Rhoden family and a soon-to-be Rhoden. The motive, Canepa argued, was the Wagner family's unsubstantiated belief that a shared toddler was being molested by a member of the Rhoden family.
The state introduced nearly 5,000 pieces of evidence and called just over 50 witnesses in the case, including state and national forensic experts, several state investigators as well as the ex-wives of both of the younger Wagners, an uncle and one of their grandmothers.
The trial is in its 13th week, with the defense slated to give their closing statement Tuesday. Pike County Common Pleas Judge Randy Deering will then read jurors dozens of pages of instructions before they begin deliberating, which is expected to begin either late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Jurors will not be sequestered.
Canepa called upon jurors to recall Jake Wagner's testimony that put his brother squarely at the scene of the first homicide just before 11 p.m. April 21, she said. He testified that his brother hid with him in the back of a pickup truck, driven by their father, to Christopher Rhoden Sr's trailer on a drug-dealing ruse. Wagner said his brother, armed with an SKS rifle, was supposed to shoot and killed Rhoden and when he didn't, the younger Wagner grabbed the gun and fired.
"I'm not here to say that Jake Wagner is a hero by any stretch of imagination. He is a despicable, vile human being ... There's nothing on this planet that excuses what happened. Nothing," she said. "But the difference between him and his brother is that he at least came forward, and gave the (Rhoden) family "something they did not have before that time."
Jake Wagner, 30, agreed to plead guilty to all the charges facing him in 2021 after prosecutors agreed to drop the death penalty against him and all of his family members in the case. His mother also struck a deal with prosecutors for her testimony: They dropped the murder charges and she agreed to serve a mandatory 30 years in prison.
Canepa told jurors that Angela Wagner did not know what Jake told authorities months before and has never read his statements in the case. But her statements corroborated her younger son's as well as the evidence, the prosecutor said.
She also reminded jurors that Jake Wagner provided details that were unknown, or that investigators had wrong, about the case, lead them to the hidden guns he testified were used in the killings and the truck used that night.
Canepa also asked jurors to consider what Wagner IV did not say during his testimony. She asked them to consider how they would feel if they were wrongly accused in a violent, heinous crime.
"He did not say: 'Yeah, I was really upset that he did this ... I would like to strangle him with my bare hands for lying about me.' " she said. "He didn't say anything. Nothing from the stand about being upset that Jake lied on him or his mom lied on him. He never said that."
Using his own statement that came out earlier in the trial, George told one truth, she said:
"I would submit to you that that the one thing that George said that was the truth is that Jake's honestly gets him in trouble. And, that's exactly what happened in this case."
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