WAVERLY, Ohio — The last defendant awaiting trial in the 2016 Pike County massacre wants his court-appointed lawyers gone.
In a handwritten “Motion to Dismiss Appointed Counsel” filed this week with the Pike County Clerk of Courts — stamped Sept. 18 — George “Billy” Wagner III accuses his defense team of a conflict of interest and asks visiting Judge Jonathan P. Hein for an immediate hearing.
“My current counsel does not believe in my innocents [sic], nor will he file any paperwork on my behalf or do anything I’ve ask of him to file,” the motion states. “I have no faith in him putting forth his full potential in my case as he is proving his own guilt even before my case can be heard.”
The filing closes with the phrase “fruits of a poisonous tree” and a plea: “This is also a request for an immediate hearing please.”
Wagner signed the motion with the notation “(prose)” — a reference to filing on his own behalf, without his lawyers. The filing does not mean Wagner is now representing himself; he remains represented by counsel, and Ohio courts have long held that defendants have no right to “hybrid representation,” acting as their own lawyer while also keeping attorneys. That gives Hein the option of declining to consider the motion at all — or treating it as a formal request for new counsel that triggers a required inquiry.
The single page carries other oddities. The caption lists both the “State of Ohio” and the “City of Waverly” as plaintiff — Wagner is charged by the state, not the city — and a handwritten date of “02/20/26” appears beside the case number, seven months before the clerk’s file stamp. The motion, written in block print on loose-leaf notebook paper with a looping cursive signature, also does not say who put pen to paper. That detail matters: Wagner has acknowledged he cannot read or write very well, and a fellow inmate helped him draft an earlier letter to the court. Jailhouse calls recorded around the time of his November 2018 arrest, previously reviewed as evidence in the case, show Wagner struggles to read and spell — and at one point, according to that evidence, did not know his own age prior to his indictment.
A second cry from the jail
The motion is the second time in a month Wagner, 55, has gone around his lawyers to reach the judge directly. In an August letter to Hein, Wagner asked for a hearing “because no one explains anything to me,” writing that “the only thing anybody tells me is a bunch of lies,” that he is legally deaf in his left ear, and that he cannot read and write well. The letter also vented about a gag order, with Wagner saying he had kept his mouth shut for eight years because he was told anything he said had to go through his attorney. As of early September, Hein had not scheduled a hearing on the letter.
Wagner’s lead counsel is Columbus defense attorney Mark Collins, assisted by co-counsel Thomas Hayes, also of Columbus. The two have represented Wagner since the early stages of the case following his November 2018 arrest — a relationship now approaching eight years, spanning three judges, two jails and roughly a half-dozen scrapped trial dates. Collins has declined to comment on Wagner’s complaints.
How firing appointed counsel works in Ohio
Ohio has a well-established process for what Wagner is attempting, and it starts with the judge. Under Ohio Supreme Court precedent dating to 1969, when a defendant with appointed counsel complains about his lawyers’ effectiveness, the trial court has a duty to conduct an inquiry on the record into the specific grievances. But the bar for actually removing counsel is high: the defendant bears the burden of showing “good cause,” such as a complete breakdown in communication or an actual conflict of interest. Disagreements over strategy, or a client’s general distrust of his lawyer’s advice, are not enough — and substitution ultimately rests in the judge’s discretion.
A capital case raises the stakes further. Under Rule 20 of the Rules of Superintendence for the Courts of Ohio, a defendant facing the death penalty must be appointed at least two attorneys — a lead counsel and a co-counsel — and both must be certified by the Commission on Appointment of Counsel in Capital Cases. Certification requires extensive criminal trial experience, prior murder-trial work and specialized death penalty training that must be kept current, meaning the pool of lawyers eligible to replace Collins and Hayes is small.
Any replacement would also inherit one of the largest case files in Ohio history. The trial of Wagner’s son George Wagner IV alone produced a transcript of roughly 15,000 to 16,000 pages, nearly 5,000 pieces of evidence and some 60 witnesses — material Collins and Hayes spent the better part of a year reviewing, and cited in 2024 when they told the court they “simply couldn’t be ready” for trial. New Rule 20-certified attorneys starting from zero on a decade-old, eight-victim capital case could plausibly need a year or more to get up to speed, all but guaranteeing the Jan. 11, 2027, trial date would collapse.
The case
Wagner has pleaded not guilty to 22 counts, including eight of aggravated murder, in the execution-style killings of eight members of the Rhoden and Gilley families on April 21-22, 2016: Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40; Dana Rhoden, 37; Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, 20; Hanna May Rhoden, 19; Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16; Hannah “Hazel” Gilley, 20; Kenneth Rhoden, 44; and Gary Rhoden, 38. Prosecutors say the massacre grew out of a custody dispute over the daughter of Jake Wagner and Hanna May Rhoden.
His wife, Angela, and son Jake pleaded guilty and testified for the state; George Wagner IV was convicted in 2022 and sentenced to eight consecutive life terms plus 121 years. An appeals court in June ordered new sentencing hearings for Jake and Angela Wagner. Billy Wagner, held without bond at the Pickaway County Jail, is the only Wagner never to have faced a jury.
A judge repeatedly reversed
Hein, a retired Darke County judge appointed to the case in 2023 by Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy, has built a reputation for aggressively guarding defendants’ fair-trial rights in high-profile cases — and for drawing fire because of it. He has repeatedly clashed with Special Prosecutor Angela Canepa, who at one point went over his head to the appellate court alleging “judicial malfeasance.”
The Fourth District Court of Appeals has now undone Hein’s two biggest rulings. The appeals court reversed his decisions sentencing Jake and Angela Wagner before they fulfilled their plea obligations to testify at Billy Wagner’s trial, and his order removing the death penalty as a sentencing option — a dismissal Hein made over Canepa’s vehement objections and to the horror of the victims’ relatives. Wagner’s defense has appealed the death penalty reinstatement to the Ohio Supreme Court, arguing in part that Gov. Mike DeWine’s execution moratorium should take capital punishment off the table.
The one major Hein ruling left standing is his November 2024 order moving the trial out of Pike County over saturation publicity — and that decision has spawned its own fight, as the Guardian reported last month.
Families still in the dark on venue
In an Aug. 18 judgment entry, Hein refused to tell surviving members of the Rhoden family where Wagner will stand trial, ruling that victims are not entitled to know the new venue before the state and defense are formally notified. The entry overruled a motion filed by attorney Morgan Galle on behalf of victim representative Tony Rhoden, who argued that withholding the location violates the families’ rights to notice and presence at all public proceedings under Ohio’s Marsy’s Law — and boxes them out of appealing the venue before time runs out. Hein concluded no record exists showing the victims were denied fairness, respect or timely notice, and noted the family may pursue an appeal or extraordinary writ — a path that could itself threaten the trial date.
Hein has already ruled out adjoining counties, writing that media saturation extends beyond Pike County, and has floated remote attendance for family members who cannot travel — an option the state has rejected as an insufficient substitute for in-person presence.
Whether Hein grants Wagner the “immediate hearing” he asked for this week — and whether the man who says no one tells him anything finally gets to say it to the judge’s face — now joins the venue question on the growing list of unknowns standing between Pike County and the last trial of the Wagner family.
