WAVERLY, Ohio — George “Billy” Wagner III returned to court Monday for the first time in nearly a year, facing renewed prospects of the death penalty in the case accusing him and other family members of the execution-style slayings of eight people in rural southern Ohio nearly a decade ago.
Wagner’s attorneys announced plans to appeal a recent court ruling reinstating capital punishment as a possible sentence, a move that could further delay the trial in one of the state’s most notorious mass killings. Prosecutors and defense lawyers also discussed potential trial dates, jury selection procedures and ongoing plea negotiations during the hearing in Pike County Common Pleas Court.
The 53-year-old Wagner has pleaded not guilty to 22 charges, including eight counts of aggravated murder, in the April 2016 deaths of seven members of the Rhoden family and the fiancée of one victim. The killings, discovered across four trailer homes in Pike County about 80 miles east of Cincinnati, shocked the region and prompted Ohio’s largest homicide investigation…