Pike County Murders — Rhoden Family Autopsy Reports
The public autopsy reports of the eight victims of the April 22, 2016 Pike County, Ohio murders.
On April 22, 2016, eight members of the Rhoden family were found shot to death across four crime scenes near Piketon, Ohio — the largest criminal investigation in Ohio state history. The reports below are the redacted final autopsy reports, released by the Ohio Attorney General and the Pike County Coroner on September 23, 2016, following public-records lawsuits by the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Columbus Dispatch. Unredacted versions remain sealed by court order.
The Case
On the morning of April 22, 2016, Bobby Jo Manley drove to her brother Christopher Rhoden Sr.'s home on Union Hill Road after he failed to show up for work and wasn't answering his phone. Inside she found him dead — and his cousin Gary Rhoden dead beside him. Her 911 call set in motion a day Pike County would never forget.
When deputies fanned out to check on other Rhoden family properties, the scale of it became clear. Eight people had been shot to death at four separate scenes: Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40; his ex-wife Dana Rhoden, 37; their sons Christopher Jr., 16, and Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden, 20; Frankie's fiancée Hannah "Hazel" Gilley, 20; Hanna May Rhoden, 19; Kenneth Rhoden, 44; and Gary Rhoden, 38. Most had been shot in the head, many as they slept.
Three small children were found alive in the homes — including Hanna May Rhoden's four-day-old newborn daughter, discovered in bed beside her mother, and Frankie Rhoden's young son. They were unharmed.
What followed was the largest criminal investigation in Ohio history: more than a hundred officers and agents from the Pike County Sheriff's Office, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and the Attorney General's office, working the case for over two years without an arrest. Then, in November 2018, four members of the Wagner family were taken into custody — George "Billy" Wagner III, his wife Angela Wagner, and their sons George Wagner IV and Edward "Jake" Wagner.
Investigators said the motive was a bitter custody dispute over Sophia, the young daughter of Jake Wagner and Hanna May Rhoden. Jake Wagner and Angela Wagner later pleaded guilty, with Jake testifying against his own family. George Wagner IV was convicted at trial in the fall of 2022. Billy Wagner's trial is scheduled for January 2027.