Criminal Mischief

The Piketon Massacre: Bloodline (Part One)

On the morning of April 22, 2016, the quiet farming community of Piketon, Ohio awoke to one of the most shocking murder scenes in modern American history.

Eight members of the Rhoden family, spanning multiple generations, were found executed across four separate homes in a rural corner of Pike County. Some were discovered in their beds. Others had been shot at close range while sleeping. Three young children—including an infant just days old—were found alive inside the homes, somehow spared while nearly everyone around them had been systematically murdered.

It was a crime scene unlike anything investigators had ever encountered.

In this opening chapter of our multi-part investigation, Carolyn Ossorio takes you back to those first chaotic hours through original police interviews, emergency dispatch recordings, and courtroom testimony, reconstructing the terrifying discovery exactly as investigators experienced it.

Who found the victims?

How could eight members of the same family be murdered in a single night without anyone hearing—or stopping—it?

And why did detectives immediately suspect this wasn't simply a murder...

...but an execution?

Part One follows investigators as they identify each victim, piece together the timeline of the killings, and begin searching for a killer—or killers—who have vanished into the hills of southern Ohio.

By the end of this episode, the victims have names.

The crime scenes have been documented.

But the people responsible remain free.

In This Episode

• The quiet rural community of Pike County before the murders.

• The first 911 calls and the discovery of the victims.

• Police body camera audio, interviews, and courtroom recordings.

• The lives of the eight Rhoden family members.

• Why investigators immediately believed the murders were carefully planned.

• The first hours of one of the largest homicide investigations in Ohio history.

Part Two continues the investigation as detectives begin uncovering motives, family conflicts, and a custody battle that would eventually expose one of the most astonishing murder conspiracies in modern true crime history.

🎙️ Hosted by Carolyn Ossorio

Presented by Evio Creative.

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