WAVERLY, Ohio — The Ohio Supreme Court announced Tuesday it will not hear George “Billy” Wagner III’s appeal of a ruling that put the death penalty back on the table, clearing the last major legal obstacle to a fall trial for the final defendant in the 2016 Pike County massacre.
Justice Patrick F. Fischer was the lone dissenter, casting the only vote to accept the case.
The decision leaves intact a January ruling by the state’s 4th District Court of Appeals, which reinstated capital punishment as a possible sentence after visiting Judge Jonathan Hein removed it in 2024 — one of a string of decisions by the judge that appellate courts have since reversed.
Wagner, the family patriarch, is the only member of the Wagner family yet to face a jury in the slayings of seven members of the Rhoden family and Hannah Gilley, who were found shot to death in April 2016, most execution-style as they slept. He has pleaded not guilty to all 22 charges against him, including eight counts of aggravated murder. His wife, Angela Wagner, and sons Edward “Jake” Wagner and George Wagner IV have all been convicted.
With the appeal resolved, both sides have indicated the trial could begin this fall, most likely around October.
One final hurdle remains: the venue.
Hein granted a defense request to move the trial out of Pike County, citing publicity from George Wagner IV’s 2022 trial, but has refused to disclose the new location. Victim advocates for the Rhoden family say they may appeal that decision once Hein announces the site, on numerous grounds — among them that a distant venue would be too far for some elderly and ill family members who wish to attend the trial. Many relatives attended George Wagner IV’s monthslong trial daily.
If such an appeal is filed, the trial would likely be pushed to 2027.
A status conference is expected in all of the Wagner cases, including Billy Wagner’s, “in the immediate near future and as quickly as possible,” officials with the Pike County Court of Common Pleas said. No date has been set, but it is expected within the next three weeks.
The Supreme Court’s decision comes amid a week of rapid developments in the case. Angela Wagner was transported Tuesday to the Highland County jail — one day after the Scioto Valley Guardian reported that all three convicted Wagners had been quietly moved to undisclosed prisons outside Ohio. She is being held there ahead of a resentencing hearing that has not been scheduled, after an appeals court threw out her 30-year sentence last month, ruling she and Jake Wagner should not have been sentenced before completing their obligation to testify against Billy Wagner.
Jake Wagner has not yet been returned to Ohio, but his transfer back is expected any day.
Prosecutors said the massacre was motivated by a custody dispute over the daughter of Jake Wagner and victim Hanna May Rhoden. The case remains the deadliest and most expensive homicide investigation in Ohio history, costing taxpayers more than $4 million.
