A well-known Cincinnati area businessman has withdrawn his offer of a $25,000 reward leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons involved in the execution-style murders of eight members of one family last week in Piketon. Seven adults and a 16-year-old boy were found dead Friday at four properties in the hills near Piketon.
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“The essential fact when you kill eight people in one family at four separate locations, clearly this was planned out, particularly when they are in their bed, ” he said in the six-minute interview at the Pike County Sheriff’s Office.
Investigators remain tight-lipped about any suspects or a possible motive.
A preliminary autopsy report showed all but one of the victims were shot multiple times and one of the victims shot nine times, according to the Hamilton County coroner’s office.
“This is the hardest day yet”, she said.
In an interview with WSYX/WTTE, Mongold said he went to the sheriff’s office to clear his name because he knew authorities would want to speak with him. Federal and state officials found three marijuana cultivation sites at one of the homes, but have declined to say whether that might be linked to the deaths.
They were 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden; his ex-wife, 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; their three children, including Frankie, 16-year-old Christopher Jr., and 19-year-old Hanna; and Christopher Rhoden Sr.’s brother, 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden.
Large marijuana operations are common in Ohio’s Pike County, the scene of the killings, and there have been some big seizures of pot plants there.
More than 100 tips have been given to investigators, who’ve set up a number for people to call as police seek information about the crimes.
While the cleanup of a shuttered Cold War-era uranium plant employs hundreds of people in some of the best-paying jobs around town, about one-fifth of Pike County’s 28,000 residents live in poverty, and the area roughly 80 miles east of Cincinnati consistently has some of Ohio’s highest unemployment and drug-overdose death rates. Marijuana is grown widely in parts of southern OH, where the dense forests and rural roads make it easy to hide the crop, and where many people need the money.
Just days after the Pike County, Ohio murders of eight members of the Rhoden family, a frightened surviving Rhoden family member called 9-1-1 in Greenup County Kentucky, claiming he was being followed by at least two men in a auto. “Whoever done this knows the family, because there were two dogs there that would eat you up”. Two of the male victims were also reportedly found lying in “close proximity” of each other.
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“They was good people”, she said.
