WAVERLY, Ohio — For the first time, jurors on Thursday heard from the matriarch of the family accused in the slayings of eight members of a southern Ohio family in 2016.
And they also heard about her, her two sons and her husband from her half-brother.
Prosecutors played a nearly two-hour interview with Angela Wagner who, along with her family, were stopped at the Montana/Canada border on May 21, 2017 on their way back to Ohio after a week-long visit to Alaska. BCI special agent Jennifer Comisford, who testified Thursday, was one of two agents who interviewed Wagner as a suspect in Ohio's most complex murder investigation.
Her son, George Wagner IV, 31, is charged with eight counts of aggravated murder, burglary and conspiracy in the deaths. Angela Wagner pleaded guilty in the case last year. Prosecutors dropped the murder charges in exchange for her testimony in the trials of her sons and husband.
Angela Wagner agreed to the interview, which began jovial, but quickly turned with Comisford and agent Rick Ward began to outline evidence investigators collected over the previous year all pointing to her family. Those included: Walmart shoes she bought that matched bloody footprints left at one of the four crime scenes, forged custody documents signed by her mother, who is a notary, printed out just three weeks before the slayings and finally, fired .22-caliber cartridge casings found at the family's home that matched the same found at two of the four crime scenes.
Wagner, on the audio recording which was difficult to hear at times, denies knowing anything about the killings and when shown evidence repeatedly said she didn't know anything or must have forgotten. When asked her if her sons or husband were involved, she said absolutely not.
Ward: "Can you tell me definitely no?"
Wagner: "Yes .. because my son wouldn't do that. He had nothing against them and even though he and Hanna broke up it wasn't enough for that."
A bit later, Comisford tells her that she can talk to them and said this may be her only opportunity.
Ward is more direct: "I want the truth from you. Did something happen and you were like what the f...?"
Wagner: No.
After a bit more back and forth between the agents and Wagner, she can be heard sighing and says: "I am just going to stop, I am going to stop right here. I am going to get an attorney. That's what I'm going to do."
That concluded the interview.
In the afternoon, Wagner's half-brother Chris Newcomb testified that his sister was controlling, her husband was lazy and his nephews were "like night and day." Even so, he said, he would never believed they were capable of the homicides.
He testified that he was "enraged" when he learned that Jake Wagner pleaded guilty in April 2021 to killing five of the eight members of the Rhoden family.
"And then it made me look like the biggest idiot coming or going,'' he said. "... I felt, I can't think of the right word. Betrayed is about the closest thing I can think of."
George Wagner's lawyer, John Parker, asked Newcomb on cross examination if he loved his client.
"Yes."
Parker asked if he loved Jake and Angela. No. And, no, Newcomb testified.
George, Newcomb added: "He's the only one I do miss out of all of them."
The trial, in its sixth week, resumes Friday at 9 a.m.
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