Angela Wagner took the stand Tuesday to testify against her son as stipulated in her plea deal. It’s the first time Angela has been able to lay eyes on her eldest son in four years, since the four family members were arrested.
Almost immediately, Angela admitted she was guilty of helping the family prepare for the murder spree that left eight people dead — and that her husband and two sons were also involved.
Prosecutors asked her to highlight the childhood Jake and George experienced; she described how Billy had taught the boys to steal when they were young, and how they both taught Jake and George how to destroy property for insurance money. She said the Wagner family burned down two different homes, a semi truck and a garage, collecting the insurance money from each.
Angela also said her half-brother, Chris Newcomb, helped Jake and George crash George’s truck to collect insurance money; when Newcomb testified, he denied knowing that Jake was going to crash the truck, telling the jury that he’d been seriously injured in the crash and nearly died.
The Wagners also pooled all their finances together, Angela confirmed. The prosecution has asked several different witnesses, from Jake to BCI agents who analyzed the family’s financial records, about the family’s entangled purchases and bank accounts. Angela said she was able to use credit cards in George and Jake’s names, but she insisted she always asked her sons first.
Angela then had her chance to describe her side of the family’s contentious relationship with Tabitha, George’s ex-wife. She told the jury Tabitha was the one who made the decision to stop associating with her own family, because of the abuse she’d endured as a child; Tabitha previously testified that she’d been unallowed to leave the Wagner family’s home or to speak with her family, until the night she fled.
The day Tabitha fled, Angela said her son’s then-wife “had an episode … she was screaming, yelling, hitting the walls.”
George tried to calm Tabitha, according to the defendant’s mother, but Tabitha was demanding she be given her son — which Angela said she refused to do unless Tabitha calmed down.
“Just give me a gun,” Angela told the jury she’d screamed. “I’m fed up with this.”
Tabitha said that’s when she ran, because she assumed Angela’s next move would be to retrieve “whichever gun they chose” and use it to hurt or kill her. Angela claimed she was just trying to scare Tabitha into calming down.
In the end, Tabitha fled and she and George were divorced; George got full custody of their son, Bulvine, and Tabitha was permitted supervised visits with the family present, Angela said.
Next, Angela moved on to describe how she met Hanna May Rhoden at a county fair, when Hanna was just 13 and Jake was 17. The pair dated, Angela said, and eventually Hanna became pregnant.
After Sophia was born, Angela said she and Jake began suspecting the girl was being abused; Angela told the jury she thought it was one of the Rhodens. The family didn’t take Sophia to a doctor, but Angela said she told Billy to start watching for warning signs when he was at any of the Rhodens’ homes.
“We didn’t believe in the justice system,” said Angela. “We didn’t believe in children services.”
After that, Billy noticed Frankie, Hanna’s brother, being “overly” affectionate with Sophia, kissing the baby on the mouth.
Angela told the jury she came up with the idea to turn Chris Sr. in for his marijuana grow facility, to give Jake the ability to have more custody over Sophia.
“My husband said ‘absolutely not, that’s not an option,’” said Angela.
In January of 2016, Angela said Billy began forming a plan, telling the Wagner family the Rhodens had to be murdered. The prosecution asked Angela why they didn’t plan to just murder Hanna; Angela said Billy didn’t like that plan because the other Rhodens would likely assume Jake had something to do with it and would retaliate.
She said Billy convinced her murdering several members of the family was the only way the plan would work, before he spoke to Jake and George about it.
The four Wagners discussed how to cover up the crimes, including being careful to never speak about it, Angela said. They also discussed items they would need, like gloves and masks, to cover their tracks.
Angela said she spoke to both Jake and George about the murder plot.
“I was asking, ‘are you sure?’” she said. “Nobody wanted to do it … but they had to keep Sophia safe.”
After the murders, Angela said she was shocked when she saw the reports of eight people dead on the news.
“I honestly did not think my husband would go through with it,” she told the jury.
Prosecution concluded questioning Angela for the day and will resume with her time on the witness stand Wednesday morning.
More about Angela Wagner’s plea deal:
Angela Wagner, Jake and George’s mother and Billy’s wife, pleaded guilty in September 2021 to charges of:
- conspiracy
- aggravated burglary
- tampering with evidence
- forgery
- unauthorized use of property
- unlawful possession of a dangerous ordinance.
In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop eight charges of aggravated murder and recommended 30 years in prison with no chance of early release. Like Jake’s, her plea deal stipulates she will have to testify in the trials of her family members.
She has not yet officially been sentenced.
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