Editor’s Note: George “Billy” Wagner III is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.
WAVERLY, Ohio — The final defendant in the 2016 Pike County massacre will stand trial roughly three hours from the crime scene, after a visiting judge ended a nearly two-year standoff over where the case would be heard and, in a separate ruling days earlier, refused to let the accused fire his court-appointed lawyers.
George “Billy” Wagner III, 55, will be tried in Seneca County in northwest Ohio, Judge Jonathan P. Hein said in a judgment entry made public Tuesday. The trial remains set to begin Jan. 11, 2027.
Hein picked Seneca County, whose seat is Tiffin, for its rural demographics, agricultural heritage and distance from urban areas, which he wrote mirror Pike County. He also noted the county sits outside the print and broadcast market that has covered the case for a decade, which he said should lessen the taint of prior publicity. The entry cites the county’s secure, ADA-compliant courtrooms, experienced court staff and enough hotels and restaurants to absorb lawyers, witnesses, victims’ relatives and the media.
Defense attorney Mark Collins told The Cincinnati Enquirer he was thankful for the ruling.
The venue decision came eight days after Hein denied Wagner’s handwritten, pro se bid to dismiss Collins and co-counsel Thomas E. Hayes. In a three-page entry filed Oct. 5 with Pike County Clerk Justin P. Brewster, Hein found Wagner’s reasons “inadequate to sustain the motion” and that his “opinion is not supported by facts.”
Two years of not knowing
The question of where Wagner would be tried has been in flux since mid-2023.
Wagner’s attorneys filed an amended motion for change of venue on June 22, 2023, arguing the saturation coverage of his son George Wagner IV’s three-month trial in 2022 made an impartial Pike County jury impossible. Then-Judge Alan Corbin denied the motion on Nov. 20, 2023, ruling the trial would stay in Waverly.
Corbin later left the case, and Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy assigned Hein, a retired Darke County judge, as visiting judge. The defense renewed its request with a supplemental motion. After oral arguments on Oct. 7, 2024, Hein granted the change of venue in November 2024, over objections from special prosecutor Angela Canepa and the victims’ families.
An attorney for the families appealed. On Feb. 14, 2025, the Fourth District Court of Appeals dismissed that appeal, leaving Hein’s order intact but naming no destination.
What followed was more than a year of silence on the location. When Hein set the Jan. 11 trial date during a July 28, 2026, telephone conference, he declined to say where it would take place. In August, a victims’ representative identified in court filings only as T.R. formally asked the court to disclose the venue. Hein denied the request.
Wagner himself complained in an August letter to the court that “no one explains anything to me.”
The motion to fire his lawyers
That frustration surfaced again Oct. 1, when Wagner appeared before Hein and presented a letter detailing complaints against Collins, his lead attorney, and asked for a new defense team.
Wagner argued his lawyers misled him about the practicality of a speedy trial and that he had trouble communicating with them.
Hein rejected both claims in the Oct. 5 entry. He agreed with defense counsel that a trial within Ohio’s statutory speedy-trial window “would not be possible due to the death penalty specifications attached to the Indictment,” and found no showing that the delay had harmed Wagner’s defense. The communication complaints, Hein wrote, were “only vaguely described and equivocal,” adding that some difficulty was to be expected given Wagner’s “remote location” in the Pickaway County Jail.
The judge went further, describing Collins and Hayes as possessing “exemplary criminal defense skills,” each with 33 years of practice, and said he considered it “virtually impossible to find comparable skills to represent the Defendant.”
Hein also wrote that swapping lawyers would worsen the very delay Wagner was protesting, because substitute counsel could not prepare a capital case on the current schedule.
Citing the 1975 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Faretta v. California, Hein closed by advising Wagner of his right to represent himself if he makes that request in a timely, knowing and voluntary manner.
The entry notes that the attorney for the victims’ representative, Morgan Galle, did not appear at the hearing and had not sought leave to be absent.
Death penalty back, co-defendants unsentenced
Wagner is charged with eight counts of aggravated murder and 14 related counts in the April 21-22, 2016, shooting deaths of Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40; Dana Rhoden, 37; Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, 20; Hanna May Rhoden, 19; Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16; Gary Rhoden, 37; Kenneth Rhoden, 44; and Hannah “Hazel” Gilley, 20. The victims were found in four homes in Sunfish Township.
He has pleaded not guilty and has been jailed since his November 2018 arrest, first in Butler County and, since September 2024, in Pickaway County.
Hein had removed the death penalty as a possible sentence in 2025, citing concerns over delay and litigation. The Fourth District reversed that decision, and the Ohio Supreme Court declined to take Wagner’s appeal, putting capital punishment back on the table.
Wagner’s wife, Angela Wagner, and younger son, Edward “Jake” Wagner, pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against him. Jake Wagner has admitted shooting five of the eight victims. Prosecutors agreed to take the death penalty off the table for the entire family in exchange for Jake Wagner’s testimony.
Hein sentenced both before they testified against Billy Wagner, again over Canepa’s objection. In June 2026, the Fourth District vacated those sentences, ruling Jake Wagner should not have been sentenced before completing his plea obligations. Both were moved from state prison to county jails — Jake Wagner to Gallia County and Angela Wagner to Highland County — to await Billy Wagner’s trial and resentencing.
George Wagner IV, convicted of all 22 counts in 2022 and sentenced to eight consecutive life terms plus more than 120 years, has asked for a new trial.
The Seneca County Justice Center, which opened in 2018 at a cost of $14.4 million, has three courtrooms. Jurors will be drawn from Seneca County residents.