Six days after the Rhoden family was massacred, execution-style, while sleeping in their beds, Ohio law enforcement officials have not yet made any arrests or hinted at what could have motivated someone to commit such a heinous crime.
But the details are mounting.
In addition to news that evidence of commercial marijuana growing operations and cockfighting roosters were uncovered at several of the crime scenes, officials have now released preliminary autopsy results for all eight of the victims, who range in age from 16 to 44.
Combined, the victims were shot a total of 32 times, reports the Cincinnati Enquirer. The most gunshot wounds any single victim had was nine; two victims were shot five times, one was shot four times, two were shot three times, one had two gunshot wounds and the final victim was shot once.
Some of the victims were also bruised, according to the Enquirer, confirming claims by a 911 caller that two of the men looked like someone had “beat the hell out of them.”
Most of the victims appeared to be sleeping when they were shot overnight April 22 across four locations in the rural Pike County. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine called the killings “sophisticated” and “pre-planned.”
More than 215 law enforcement officials have contributed to the investigation, which DeWine said he predicts will be lengthy and time-consuming. Since Friday, more than 300 tips have flooded the Pike County Sheriff’s Office and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, according to a news release from the attorney general’s office.
In addition to the 18 “high priority” pieces of evidence already submitted to the BCI crime lab, 61 more items were sent off Tuesday, the release said. Search warrants were served Monday, but the number of warrants and the relevant locations were not released.
The victims were previously identified as 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr.; his 16-year-old son, Christopher Rhoden Jr.; 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; 38-year-old Gary Rhoden; 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; 20-year-old Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden; 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden.
In an exclusive interview with the Enquirer, Leonard Manley, a relative of several of the victims, said he first heard of the marijuana allegations from news reports.
He was fiercely defensive of his daughter, Dana Rhoden, who died along with her ex-husband and three children.
“They are trying to drag my daughter through the mud and I don’t appreciate that,” Manley, 64, told the Enquirer.
Manley’s youngest daughter, Bobby Manley, discovered the first two bodies on Union Hill Road. When Bobby Manley called 911, she told the dispatcher that she had come to the house to feed the dogs and chickens and instead found the blood and the bodies. Six more victims were found after that.
What Leonard Manley can’t comprehend, he told the Enquirer, is why the killer or killers didn’t attack the family’s dogs.
“Why wouldn’t they do that?” Leonard Manley said. “Somebody had to know them dogs.”
In a radio interview with personality Bill Cunningham Monday, attorney general DeWine wouldn’t confirm any theories that the killers were motivated by a drug turf war or that they may have known the family intimately, but he did emphasize that it was clear the victims were ambushed in their sleep in a calculated and careful way.
