Final Pike County massacre trial pushed to 2025

Patricia Gallagher Newberry, Cincinnati Enquirer
Updated ·1 min read
George "Billy" Wagner III is escorted out of the Pike County Common Pleas Courtroom, Thursday, March 7, 2024. During the hearing, visiting Judge R. Alan Corbin ruled in favor of the continuance requested by his lawyers and set the trial for Jan. 6, 2025. Wagner is the final defendant in the 2016 Pike County massacre.
George "Billy" Wagner III is escorted out of the Pike County Common Pleas Courtroom, Thursday, March 7, 2024. During the hearing, visiting Judge R. Alan Corbin ruled in favor of the continuance requested by his lawyers and set the trial for Jan. 6, 2025. Wagner is the final defendant in the 2016 Pike County massacre.

The final defendant in the 2016 Pike County massacre case will not be tried until early next year.

George "Billy" Wagner III, charged in the April 2016 shooting deaths of eight members of a Pike County family, will be tried beginning Jan. 6, 2025, visiting Pike County Common Pleas Court Judge R. Alan Corbin ruled Thursday.

The trial for Wagner, 52, had been set for May 6.

Attorneys for George "Billy" Wagner III, Mark Collins, left, and Thomas Hayes, talk with Wagner after his hearing in the Pike County Common Pleas Courtroom, Thursday, March 7, 2024. Visiting Judge R. Alan Corbin ruled in favor of the continuance requested by his lawyers and set the trial for Jan. 6, 2025. Wagner is the final defendant in the 2016 Pike County massacre.

Corbin delayed the trial at the request of Wagner's defense team. Attorney Thomas Hayes was sidelined by knee replacement surgery last fall and attorney Emily Anstaett is expecting a child in May, Wagner lead attorney Mark Collins said in asking for the delay.

Additionally, Wagner's lawyers are working their way through the transcript, at 15,000 to 16,000 pages, of the fall 2022 trial of Wagner's son George Wagner IV. The younger Wagner was found guilty on 22 counts in the Pike County killings, with his father facing the same charges. Wagner's younger son and wife admitted their roles in the killings in 2021.

"We simply couldn't be ready," Collins said outside the courthouse after the hearing.

Wilma McCoy, sister and aunt to the victims, fled the courtroom after Corbin ruled to delay the case. "I'm not happy," she said through tears outside the courthouse, noting that her family members will have been dead nearly nine years by next January.

Wilma McCoy, sister and aunt to victims in the 2016 Pike county massacre, listens to lawyers for George “Billy” Wagner III outside the Pike County Courthouse, Thursday, March 7, 2024. Visiting Judge R. Alan Corbin ruled in favor of the continuance requested by his lawyers and set the trial for Jan. 6, 2025.
Wilma McCoy, sister and aunt to victims in the 2016 Pike county massacre, listens to lawyers for George “Billy” Wagner III outside the Pike County Courthouse, Thursday, March 7, 2024. Visiting Judge R. Alan Corbin ruled in favor of the continuance requested by his lawyers and set the trial for Jan. 6, 2025.

Thursday was the 15th hearing in the case for Billy Wagner, who has been jailed in Butler County since he was arrested with other family members in November 2018.

Corbin, who took over the case from retired Pike County Judge Randy Deering last year, denied Wagner's request for a change of venue last November

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: When will Billy Wagner be tried?