Lawyers in Ohio's most costly and complex criminal trial will address jurors for the last time beginning Monday after more than three months of legal wrangling, witness testimony and tedious outlining of thousands of pieces of evidence.
In her closing statement, prosecutor Angela Canepa will remind the jury of nine women and three men of the evidence in the case and outline why the state believes George Wagner IV, 31, killed eight members of a southern Ohio family in 2016. She is likely to lean on the testimony of the state's two star witnesses: Wagner's younger brother, Edward "Jake" Wagner, 30, and their mother, Angela Wagner, 52. Their testimony, she argued, implicated him in the planning, participation and cover-up the slayings.
One of Wagner IV's defense lawyers will follow Canepa with his closing statement, working to convince jurors that Wagner was not involved in the killings of members of the Rhoden family, whose bodies were found in three separate trailers and a camper on April 22, 2016. Each had been shot to death, many of as they slept — including two young mothers who were nursing newborns.
Defense lawyers worked to portray Jake and Angela Wagner as criminals and liars whose testimony can't be believed because they provided it in order to be saved from death.
Jurors heard from 60 witnesses and prosecutors cataloged nearly 5,000 pieces in evidence in the case that begins its 13th week on Monday. Pike County Common Pleas Judge Randy Deering told jurors to expect to begin their deliberations no later than Wednesday. Jurors will have to determine if Wagner IV is guilty or innocent of the 22 counts he faces, including eight aggravated murder, conspiracy and burglary charges. Prosecutors dropped the death penalty against him a week ago.
Deering's jury instructions, which were 150 pages last week, and will be the last thing they hear before they begin deliberations. It is unclear if the jury will be sequestered.
Wagner IV testified in own defense
Wagner IV stunned prosecutors and onlookers alike in the last week of the trial when he testified for more than eight hours in his own defense. He testified that he did not know of his family's plan to kill after the Wagners grew convinced a shared toddler was being molested by members of the Rhoden family — a claim that was never substantiated.
Instead, he said he was home asleep during the slayings. And in the days and months and years that followed, he said he believed his family was wrong accused and charged in the crime. Even when his brother pleaded guilty to all charges in the case in 2021, agreeing to testify in the case in exchange for prosecutors dropping the death penalty against him and his family members, Wagner IV said he didn't believe it:
“I first thought my brother had just gone crazy sitting in jail."
Under questioning by his defense lawyer John Parker, Wagner IV said he learned of the homicides on the news and was heartbroken because he considered victim, Hanna Rhoden, 19, a little sister, and called her older brother, and another victim, Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden, 20, one of his best friends. Also killed were: their father and mother, Christopher Rhoden, Sr., 40, and Dana Manley Rhoden, 37; their younger brother, Christopher Rhoden, Jr., 16; an uncle, Kenneth Rhoden, 44; a cousin, Gary Rhoden, 38; and Frankie Rhoden's fiancée, Hannah Hazel Gilley, 20.
The Wagner sons testified their parents taught them to steal, set fires to their property to gain insurance money and that they counted money their father brought home as part of dealing illegal drugs.
"I never would have believed my family would be capable of doing something of this magnitude," Wagner IV testified. “Theft is one thing. Murder is an entirely different thing.”
Parker: "And if you’d known, what would you have done?"
“I would have never let it happen. One way or another, I would not have let it happen,” Wagner IV testified.
Inconsistencies and contradictions
During cross-examination, prosecutor Canepa quizzed Wagner IV on inconsistencies in his testimony and statements to police in 2017, more than a year before authorities arrested the family. During much of his testimony, Wagner IV, said he couldn't remember details and what he told police five years prior.
She highlighted that he had earlier told investigators the family watched a "fairy movie" together on April 21, 2016 and they all went to bed around 12:30 a.m. He testified that he went to bed around 10-ish that night.
His mother testified that her sons and husband all left their Peebles, Ohio farmhouse together on April 21 and that she saw all of three of them the next morning at the house. His brother testified that their dad drove a pick-up truck, bought specifically for the night of the killings, and they hid under a false bed he built and left the house around 9 a.m.
The sole purpose, Jake Wagner testified, was to kill Chris Rhoden, Sr., Hanna Rhoden, Kenneth Rhoden and Frankie Rhoden and any other people who were in the trailers at the time. He said the plan was that his brother, armed with an SKS rifle was to shoot Chris Rhoden, Sr, after his father brought him outside his trailer on Union Hill Road. But, Jake Wagner testified, that when his brother did not fire the gun, he took it and waited until his father again brought Chris, Sr. back outside.
Shoe prints and prison sentences
Jake Wagner testified that his brother did not shoot any of the victims, but he said his brother was inside the trailers of Dana and Frankie Rhoden.
Investigators found two shoe print impressions in blood in Chris Sr.'s trailer that crime scene experts testified were left by the soles of Walmart shoes. Angela Wagner testified she bought those shoes for her sons to wear the night of the killings.
Angela Wagner testified that when she asked Wagner IV about the bloody shoe prints after investigators showed them to her, he told her he wanted to "smudge" them but that his father told them it was unnecessary and to leave Chris Rhoden's trailer.
Wagner said she did not know the details of the crimes and never asked. But testified she was complicit with her sons and husband in the killings.
She will face 30 years in prison for her involvement in the case, under a separate plea deal arranged with prosecutors. She said she agreed in the hopes she will one day walk about of prison and see her sons and grandchildren again.
Jake Wagner will never leave prison.
The fate of Wagner IV will rest in the jury's hands. If convicted of aggravated murder, he could face life without parole.
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