The matriarch of a family accused of wiping another family off the map in execution style killings spoke to the Guardian Thursday evening from her sprawling estate in Pike County.
Fredericka Wagner, 77, owner of “Flying W Farms” and the mother of Billy Wagner, told the Guardian’s Derek Myers that on her 2,000 acres, she barely notices that a team of agents are executing a search warrant with metal detectors and dive teams.
“They’re just outside, looking around, but they don’t really bother me,” Wagner said from her living room on Thursday. She said the agents did not tell her what they were searching for when they knocked on her door Monday and told her they were going to be conducting a 5-day search on her land. BCI agents confirmed that the warrant was in connection to the brutal slayings of the Rhoden family in 2016.
“They’re not under my feet. I hardly see them,” the great-grandmother said of the agents.
Fredericka Wager is worth millions of dollars, according to public records. She reportedly owns the most land in Pike County, according to locals, and property records with the county show that the land she does own is valued at $4 million. That should not be a full calculation of Wagner’s net worth, however. She owns numerous businesses, including the breeding of rare horses and exotic animals, some of which have been big winners in the Kentucky Derby.
Photos from the scene Thursday posted on social media by local news reporters show agents with metal detectors and wearing dive suits searching a small lake on the Wagner property. Fredericka chuckles when asked about it.
“It’s not that very deep,” she said. “They didn’t really say [what they were looking for].”
A self-described woman of God, Wagner said she has her faith and said that it will all be over “in the end.”
“It will all turn out in the end, I have a lot of faith in that,” she said. “I’m innocent. They didn’t have any evidence against me, and also, my children are innocent.”
Wagner was arrested in November last year and held on house arrest until spring, when she was released on $100,000 bond. She was accused of lying to a grand jury in the Rhoden Homicide Investigation. Wagner’s attorneys filed a motion that she be allowed to leave home to go to church, which she had done for more than 40 years, she said.
In June, the charges were dropped against Wagner.
Wagner’s son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons are accused of killing eight members of the Rhoden family. All four have pleaded not guilty.
George “Billy” Wagner III (47), his wife Angela Wagner (48) and their sons Jake Wagner (26) and George Wagner IV (27) were arrested in November and charged with planning and carrying out the eight murders at three homes in Pike County, authorities said. Each is facing eight charges of aggravated murder with death penalty specifications and other crimes.
Jake Wagner had a child with one of the victims, 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden, and their custody fight “played a role” in the murders, then-Attorney General Mike DeWine said.
