Last week, the first trial began in a case that, back in 2016 when I was living in Ohio, exploded into the news headlines, involving a set of horrific murders. In a rural part of the state, eight members of a single family known as the Rhodens that lived in different homes in the region were found murdered, killed while they slept.
The murders were discovered on the morning of 22 April 2016, when Bobby Jo Manley stopped by the Rhodens’ cluster of trailer homes to see her ex-brother-in-law, Chris Rhoden Sr. Entering his trailer, she found the bloody bodies of Chris and his cousin, Gary. Chris’s ex-wife, Dana, was dead nearby, as were their children – Hanna, Chris Jr and Clarence, known as “Frankie” – and Frankie’s fiancee, Hannah Gilley.
The same day, Chris Sr’s brother Kenneth Rhoden, who lived about 15 minutes away, was also found murdered.
The killer or killers had spared Frankie’s three-year-old son; Frankie and Hannah Gilley’s baby, who was found covered in blood, trying to nurse at his mother; and Hanna Rhoden’s newborn. (Hanna and Jake’s two-year-old daughter, the subject of the custody dispute, was staying elsewhere.)
Suspicion focused on Jake Wagner who was involved in a battle with Hanna Rhoden over custody of their two-year old child. But it seemed like more than one person was involved in the murders and Jake Wagner strongly denied that he or anyone else in his family had anything to do with the killings.
But in April 2021 there was a dramatic development.
Then on 22 April 2021, exactly five years after the murders, Jake Wagner stood in a courtroom in Pike county, a hilly corner of Appalachia where everyone knows everyone and families stick tightly together, and told a judge, “I am guilty, your honor.”
…Shockingly, he also agreed to testify against his family. His mother, Angela Wagner, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy, evidence tampering and other charges, but his father George “Billy” Wagner III and brother George Wagner IV, who are accused of participating in the homicides, maintain their innocence. Due to a gag order, no one involved in the cases can speak to the press.
…The investigation even sucked in the family’s matriarchs. Jake Wagner’s grandmother, Rita Newcomb, has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor obstruction charge. Charges against his other grandmother, Fredericka Wagner, have been dropped. Reached by phone at her horse farm and asked if she wished to comment, she said, “No, no,” and hung up.
So what was the motive behind the mass killings?
Jake Wagner allegedly began a relationship with Hanna Rhoden when she was 13, impregnating her when she was 15 and he was 20. In addition to homicide, he has been charged with unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.
After she ended the relationship, prosecutors say, he began threatening her. When she had a second child with a different man, Wagner allegedly pressured her to falsely list him as father on the birth certificate. He and his brother George were also allegedly stalking two other women – their respective ex-wives, both of whom are expected to testify that the Wagners made them fear for their lives.
When Hanna Rhoden refused to relinquish custody of the baby she had had with Jake Wagner, the Wagners were enraged. Jake Wagner allegedly threatened to kill her, but she was determined not to give up her child. In a message on Facebook, she wrote that she would “never sign papers ever. They will have to kill me first.”
That was when the Wagners allegedly decided to eliminate Hanna and her relatives so that custody of the child would fall to them. They allegedly bought ammunition, parts for silencers, “brass catchers” to avoid leaving bullet casings behind, and a truck and shoes specifically to use on the night of the killings.
There are so many things that are disturbing about this case that it is hard to list them all. But what struck me is the charge that an entire extended family, three generations of them, over an extended period, cold-bloodedly discussed carrying out the murders even voting on it.
The Wagners are an insular, close-knit family who homeschooled together and shared their money, according to the Washington Post. Prosecutors say that they planned the massacre for four months and held a vote on going through with it.
…They surveilled the Rhodens to study their habits and sleeping locations, according to an indictment, then killed them under cover of darkness and tried to make the murders appear drug-related.
It is unfortunately the case that child custody battles can end up in violence. But it is usually violence by one of the parents. It is strange to read about an entire family that would agree that mass murder was the way to gain custody for the child of one of their own. When we talk of ‘crime families’, that is a metaphor for a close knit band of criminals, usually used with reference to organized crime. This seems like a literal crime family and the mind boggles that they would come to an agreement that murdering eight people in order to gain custody of a child was a reasonable thing to do.
Are these the “Heartland values” that people like J.D. Vance and others are always saying are so much better than the rest of the nation? I suppose I’m one of those “coastal eeeeeeeleeeete” they’re always whining about, yet child rape, adultery, stalking people, and organized, pre-planned sprees of murder aren’t part of my culture.
What I can never get my head around is what kind of culture is required for this to happen? Even if I were the sort to commit murder, I just cannot see going to any of my close relatives (or anybody, for that matter ;-)) and asking, “Want to join my criminal conspiracy?” Yet they all just went along with it.
In contrast, I’ve seen quite a few Jan. 6 treasonists turned in by close family members.
Parts of this make more sense than I’d like. The homeschool thing while being in an already pretty insular town… I mean, think about it. How many of your chidhood friends came from school? It sounds like a good way to build an echo chamber. If people around you say the same things often enough about who you all are and what kind of people you are, it can start to feel like it makes sense, even if it’s ridiculous gibberish. “We’re a family that .” And once you start with that it can go pretty much anywhere. It’s the petrie dish version of the Q conspiracies or Rupert Murdock’s fake news empire. Or to put it another way, if most of your mental tools are bad, you’re going to build bad ideas with them.
@Katydid: I’ve lived most of my life in the midwest. As far as I can tell the only time someone uses the term “heartland” to describe anything is when they’re trying to sell you something. I’m surprised you’d have even heard of it because as far as I can see it doesn’t get much traction out here. It’s a little too obvious about being BS.
@lanir: those of us not in “the heartland” are constantly being told by the right-wing that we’re not as good as “the heartland”.
Also, on the topic of homeschooling: 15 years ago one of my kids was just not being challenged in certain high-school classes, but needed high school-level classes in other topics. With that one, we ended up using the local community college for some classes and an online homeschool program for others. In our state, if you homeschool, the law says you have to join a homeschooling group, so we did. It was an eye-opening adventure. For every family that was homeschooling for academic stimulation, there were a whoooooole lot of families whose kids couldn’t read and/or were religiously kooky and/or wanted to secede from the USA.
Wow, Katydid, must have been quite the social experience! How much time did you have to spend with them? And how much exposure did your kid get?
We did the homeschool thing for four years; the child graduated simultaneously from high school and community college, then transferred to a 4-year college. We tried to spend homeschool group time with other educationally-minded families--and there were some! I learned about the community college option from homeschool families that were using it. I learned about NASA Space Camp in Alabama and took a historical trip to one of the Frank Lloyd Wright homes (Fallingwater) because of other homeschooling parents.
I also “learned” that dinosaurs aren’t real, that girls don’t need an education because they’re just going to get married and have children (and homeschool them!?!?), and Obama is a secret Muslim Kenyan whose goal is to put every American in a re-education camp (every one?)… I did a lot of tongue-biting.
What I can never get my head around is what kind of culture is required for this to happen?
My guess: A very primitive, isolated, tribalistic culture, to whom any level of social order higher than family is simply not real.
Also compare to “honor killings”.
Not that comparable.
This is nothing about honour, and everything with self-interest and spite.
(I was brought up in the dim dregs of an actual honour culture, I know about that shit)
Jennifer Lawrence was in a movie called Winter’s Bone, based on a 2006 novel by the same name. It tells the story of a teenage girl who drops out of high school to care for her younger siblings and her mother, who’s either mentally ill or clinically depressed and catatonic (I don’t recall if they ever said what her problem was). They live in squalor in a filthy home. Her father is in the drug trade--as is pretty much everyone in the story. He disappears and the police are after him and they will take the house if he doesn’t show, so the teenage girl has to find him. Her extended family not only don’t help, but they beat the crap out of her several times for asking for help and daring to speak to the clan’s patriarch. At the end, her father’s only brother tries to help her but that consigns him to certain death.
Lawrence did an interview where she said she asked her parents (who grew up in the area the movie is set) for help with the character, and they confirm that is what life is like. Clannish, brutal, poverty-stricken, drugs.
I wonder how much of bigotry comes from the family/clan feud dynamic and the fact that we are a species that can prey on itself?
katydid:
Yeah, that stuff doesn’t happen in cities or on the coasts. Oh wait, it does…. So where is “your culture” supposed to be? You’ve got a nice little gated community somewhere, I guess?
Meanwhile, those in big cities constantly tell themselves stories about how rural people are stupid at best, if not unimaginably evil. Also: filthy, uncultured, uncivilized, superstitious, despicably unhealthy and poor, drug-addled, etc. The sense of superiority is palpable. “Subhuman” is probably not too far down the list, but presumably there’s not much need to say such things out loud in polite company. Of course, when any of it applies (at perhaps a slightly lower rate) to people in locations near you, it matters (maybe) but is otherwise unremarkable and treated as ordinary.
Sometimes, they’ll say it’s unfortunate how isolated and underdeveloped those communities are (or at least act like they believe this), but more often than not, they definitely want them to be isolated and underdeveloped and generally to stay as far away from you and your ilk as possible. But if you can figure out a way to exploit them somehow, that’s perfectly fine.
And violent, obviously. Can’t forget violent.
… And an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope….
I’ll come in again.
Wow, #13 -- 15: climb down off the cross; we need the wood for the s’mores fire!
I’m second-generation American, raised mostly all over the world at various military bases and then a career military person myself. I live where I live because it’s where my first career ended and second career is. It’s fine. Not the dystopian hellhole that people like you seem to think.
I do find it hilarious that people like you and JD Vance and a lot of politicians out of the midwest spew all kinds of culture-war hatred continually at the coasts, yet the second anyone points out it’s not all beer and skittles where you live, you come out screaming “Whatabout! Whatabout!” and pointing fingers.
You’re the one who started whining — about “the right wing,” I’ll note, which is distinct from rural people, but you conflated them of course.
If you didn’t want to hear about the hypocrisy of the coastal elites with which you identify, then putting the invitation on the internet was your mistake, not mine.
Military bases do sound like hellholes — you’ve got me pegged there. By the way, yes, those do in fact have their share of rapists, stalkers and mass murderers … and then some. But you have another culture?
Otherwise, I don’t know where you’ve lived (besides “the coast,” apparently) and had nothing to say about it because I don’t care.
Oh, it’s not just this last second. I can attest to that. Out here where people are only marginally useful as objects of disgust/hatred, I can also get the newspapers and books and magazines, and these days we can even listen to the radio, see TV shows and commercials, go to the movies, peruse the interwebs, etc. It’s almost like real civilization, if you didn’t know any better. So believe me when I say they’ve been talking that shit for much longer than I’ve been around. Of course, I already lived here and didn’t need to be told about how shitty it is by someone who hasn’t. But they’ve been repeating it endlessly anyway. When they’re not talking about themselves, which is most of the time, it’s generally about how awful everyone else in the world is. Maybe if they didn’t control practically all of the media that everyone has consumed for decades, somebody else would get a chance (to spew what would also probably be a load of bigoted garbage).
Generalising from such an extreme outlier is not useful.
Wow, #17, that really gores your ox.
The topic Mano introduced was a midwestern farmily that engages in multiple murders, child rape, and a spree of other crimes. Your response seems to be “whatabout other places, HUH? OTHER PLACES HAVE CRIMES!”
The topic was this particular case. And I brought up the hypocrisy of people who get on their high horse about the superiority of the “heartland”. And you walked right into it by…confirming my point. Great job!
Do you know these people Mano spoke about personally? Are you related to them? Because you are really invested in minimizing what they did because hey, something something just shut up that’s why. LOL
No, my response to that story is to think it’s awful and to feel sorry for the victims and their loved ones.
Mano didn’t exactly need to mention the minor detail that it happened in a rural part of Ohio, but it’s understandable that he would relay his geographical knowledge to the reader as a former resident of the state. In the end, it was just one word in the entire article, which says nothing about the rest. So I have no problem whatsoever with it.
For me, the problems start when people such as yourself act like that’s a cue to disparage millions of people who have nothing at all to do with it, while acting like your culture (whatever that is) has no such problems, which is certainly false.
I don’t even know which places are supposed to be a part of that, and I never said anything about how superior my area/region supposedly is, for the very simple reason (as should be fairly obvious) that I don’t think it is.
I was clearly saying that wherever you happen to live is not so superior and isn’t so bereft of social problems as you made it out to be, because there is no such place, anywhere. I was really just asking you to look at your own culture (whatever that is) in the fucking mirror and not just pretend that it’s perfect. I think that if what you see in it offends you, it’s not because I had asked.
First, I’m like JD Vance — barely even know who the dude is … just a name. And now you suspect that I’m related to those assholes. Could you maybe just read the comments for what they are and not focus quite so much on trying to place me in one of your half-baked categories of people to hate?