Officials in Ohio Link Marijuana Operations to Deaths of 8 Family Members
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Version 0 of 1. Three marijuana growing operations were found on the premises of at least one of the homes where eight members of the same family were killed in a small town in southern Ohio last week, law enforcement officials said Sunday. Eight members of the Rhoden family between the ages of 16 and 44 were killed in four different homes in Piketon, Ohio, in what Attorney General Mike DeWine called a “preplanned execution” at a news conference on Sunday. One of the victims, a woman, was killed while she slept as her 4-day-old baby lay, unharmed, in the same room, law enforcement officials said. Dan Tierney, a spokesman for Mr. DeWine’s office, said that sheriff’s deputies discovered the marijuana operations during a search of the four homes and nearby wooded areas. Video broadcast by WCPO, a local television station, showed investigators walking through woods and searching a ramshackle shed. Mr. Tierney declined to specify if the three operations were found at three different addresses or if they constituted three separate clumps of marijuana plants located in the woods at the same address. Mr. DeWine told reporters on Sunday that the killings would be subject to a “lengthy investigation.” “This was the preplanned execution of eight individuals,” he said. “It was a sophisticated operation. And those who carried it out were trying to do everything that they could do to hinder the investigation and their prosecution.” “This is not your case where someone got mad at somebody else, they shot them, and there’s a witness, or two witnesses,” he added. The Pike County sheriff, Charles Reader, told reporters the investigation was “probably the largest” that had ever taken place in the county, a sparsely populated area east of Cincinnati. “We are working around the clock, 24 hours a day, working on every lead that comes in, all the tips, conducting the interviews,” he said. The attorney general’s office identified the dead on Saturday as Hannah Gilley, 20; Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40; Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16; Clarence Rhoden, 20; Dana Rhoden, 37; Gary Rhoden, 38; Hanna Rhoden, 19; and Kenneth Rhoden, 44. Three of the four crime scenes are on the same street in Piketon, Mr. Tierney said, but the fourth is 15 or 20 minutes away. |