WAVERLY, Ohio — The homemade silencer used to kill some of the Rhoden victims — according to prosecutors — was introduced as evidence on Wednesday.
It was the 26th day of trial for George Wagner IV, who faces two dozen charges, including eight counts of murder for the 2016 slaying of the Rhoden family in rural Pike County.
The silencer was homemade and produced using metal washers and a specific flashlight known as a “MagLite.” It was found during a search of the Wagner farm in 2017 after agents used a dive team to check a well inside a barn. The mangled piece of metal was tossed there after the family could not destroy it by fire, prosecutors said. After agents seized it, the silencer was sent off to a federal ATF lab in West Virginia for analysis. There, lab technicians were able to recover a serial number inside the piece of metal, which came back to MagLite. Agents contacted MagLite and found that the piece of metal was part of a flashlight handle and was manufactured on January 13, 2016, just a couple of months before the homicides. With the washer modifications, it became a deadly silencer that would quiet gunshots.
The silencer was shown in court on Wednesday with agents from Ohio’s BCI and the federal branch of ATF breaking down the item. The jury was painstakingly taken through how a silencer is made, how this particular silencer was traced back to being made before the murders, and how the bullets used in the killings likely passed through the silencer.
The silencer was badly damaged and appeared to have been burnt; this would be consistent with Jake Wagner’s confession that he and his family burned the evidence and clothes used in the homicides. When the silencer would not melt under the intense heat the state says the Wagners threw it in the well inside their barn.
Earlier in the day, a forensic accountant with BCI went over the financial records of the Wagner family. As the Guardian has previously reported, the defendant, his mother Angela, father Billy, and brother Jake all face the same charges. The accountant showed dozens of bank statements which painted a picture that the Wagner clan intermingled finances to the point where Angela would use her sons’ credit and bank cards to buy items to carry out the murders, even if her sons did not know exactly what she was doing; they had given her free reign of the cards. Prosecutors said during one point, Angela Wagner bought a cell phone jammer and bug detector, which was used in the killings using her son, George’s credit card. When the purchases were made the fraud department of the credit card company called George, according to prosecutors, to ensure he had authorized the purchase online for a company in China. The state says because George authorized the purchase with the card carrier, he knew what his mother was doing, which makes him complicit.
Credit card statements were also shown which appears that Geroge’s card was used to buy a vehicle oil filter at a local auto part store, which the ATF agent testified was likely to use as a second kind of homemade silencer.
The jury was dismissed after 4 p.m. and will return on Thursday.