One of the victims, Hanna Rhoden, 19, shared a young child with ex-boyfriend Jake Wagner, who was one of the Wagners arrested for the murders.įorged custody documents were allegedly found, according to DeWine. Two other Wagner family members would also be arrested and charged with obstructing justice and perjury. In 2018, four members of another family, the Wagners, were arrested for the killings. Investigators now claim custody issues were the motivation for the vicious slayings. “There’s no evidence of all the speculation that this was necessarily drug-related in the sense of the motive.” “There was an undercurrent of drugs,” DeWine said at a press conference. We don’t know whether this is relevant or not, but at this point, everything is relevant,” he said at the time, according to local news station WKYC.Īs the investigation progressed, a drug connection to the deaths was ultimately dismissed by DeWine. “In other words, this isn’t a plant in the window or six or seven plants out in the backyard in a garden or something. "Three of the four houses had, what I would call, a commercial marijuana operation,” former attorney general Mike DeWine told radio personality Bill Cunningham. So, early on in the investigation, police looked into possible motives including a drug turf war or Mexican drug cartel connection, anonymous law enforcement sources told local news station WBNS. Despite widespread speculation in news reports and the surrounding community, investigators insist it wasn’t a drug hit.Īt some of the scenes where the Rhoden family was killed, investigators did find marijuana being grown.