The Pike County Massacre — also known as “The Piketon Massacre” — is the worst mass murder in the history of the state of Ohio. On the night of April 21 to April 22, 2016, someone murdered eight members of one extended family. The victims were killed in four separate houses — two in one house, two in another, three in the third house and one in the fourth. All of the victims died from gunshot wounds. Six of the eight victims appeared to have been killed in their sleep, while only two of the victims appeared to have been awake.

1. Chris Rhoden Sr, age 40

2. Dana (Manley) Rhoden, Chris Senior’s ex-wife, 37

3. Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, Chris Sr and Dana’s oldest child, 20

4. Hannah Hazel Gilley, Frankie Rhoden’s fiancée, 20

5. Hanna May Rhoden, Chris Sr and Dana’s second child, 19

6. Chris Rhoden Jr, Chris Sr and Dana’s youngest child, 16

7. Gary Rhoden, Chris Sr’s cousin, 38

8. Kenneth Rhoden, Chris Sr’s cousin, 44

The state of Ohio charged four people — all members of another family — with planning and carrying out the murders. They are:

• George “Billy” Wagner, 47

• Angela Wagner, Billy’s wife, 48

• George Wagner IV, Billy and Angela’s son, 27

• Edward “Jake” Wagner, Billy and Angela’s son, 26

As of 2026, the state has convicted Angela, George and Jake Wagner. Billy Wagner, though, is still awaiting trial.

The state drastically changed its story about which Wagner was the driving force behind the murders.

After the state arrested the Wagners, the it fed the media a narrative that Angela Wagner pushed Billy, Jake and George into killing the Rhodens. It painted Angela as conniving and obsessed with controlling her sons and her granchildren.

When it got to trial four years later, though, the state completely flipped its story. At trial, the state pushed a narrative that the whole thing was Billy Wagner’s idea, and that Angela Wagner tried but failed to talk him out of it and played no role in planning or committing the crimes.

Prosecutors were able to keep the news media from noticing this 180-degree change by not allowing Angela Wagner’s testimony to be recorded.

The state of Ohio changed its story about the Wagners’ supposed motive.

When Attorney General Mike DeWine announced the Wagners’ arrests in November 2018, he told reporters that they committed the massacre after a heated custody dispute over the child that Jake Wagner had with Hanna May Rhoden.

DeWine strongly implied the Wagners killed all eight members of the extended Rhoden family so no relatives would be left alive to claim custody.

In the four years after the arrests, the state went further, feeding a media narrative that the Wagners killed the Rhodens because Hanna May refused to sign papers giving Jake 50/50 legal rights to the child. Many podcasts and documentaries ran with this narrative and it became conventional wisdom.

But when the state had to present the case at trial in 2022, it subtly changed its story. Instead of claiming the Wagners did it because Hanna May wouldn’t sign papers giving Jake 50/50 rights, the state claimed the Wagners did it because they feared that, at some point in the future, the Rhodens might fail to protect the child from hypothetical predators.

Virtually none. In a brutal crime committed across four different houses, investigators said they didn’t find DNA, fingerprints, hairs, clothing fibers, cell phone pings or much of anything useful. Investigators couldn’t even say for sure how the perpetrators got in or out of three of the four houses.

When the state eventually settled on the Wagners as the lead suspects, it claimed to have two pieces of forensic evidence connecting them to the crime scenes:

1. A bloody shoe print with a tread that matches a brand of shoe Angela Wagner bought less than three weeks before the murders.

   Investigators never found a shoe with blood on it, though; they could only match the brand of shoe in the print to the brand of shoe Angela bought.

   That brand is one of the most commonly-worn shoes in America: it’s a Wal-Mart sneaker that’s popular with anyone who has a job that requires non-slip footwear.

   The state never explained how it could eliminate all of the many thousands of other people in the region who also owned that brand of shoe.

2. Bullet shell casings that the state claims match casings investigators found on the Wagners’ driveway.

   Prosecutors say their laboratory technicians used a method called “firing pin impression analysis” to match the casings.

   Judges across the country have refused to allow “firing pin impression analysis” to be used in court because of its unreliability, and academic studies have shown it to be a pseudoscience. The judge in George Wagner’s trial, though, allowed it.

   Additionally, the state says it found the supposedly matching casings on the Wagners’ driveway more than a year after the murders, after the Wagners sold their property to a new owner and moved out.

In April 2021 — five years after the murders — Jake Wagner changed his plea from not guilty to guilty. Five months later, Angela Wagner also changed her plea to guilty.

They confessed under threat and after more than four years of highly intense pressure by the Ohio Attorney General’s office and prosecutors.

By confessing, Jake Wagner may have saved his father, mother and brother’s lives. Until the time he changed his plea, prosecutors threatened to seek the death penalty against all four Wagners. As part of Jake’s plea deal, though, prosecutors agreed not to try to execute any of them.

The Attorney General’s office and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation began pressuring the Wagners to confess a little over a year after the murders.

After trying but failing to get confessions during marathon interrogation sessions, it gave the Wagners names and pictures to the news media.