About this episode

The episode explores the shocking Pike County Massacre where eight members of the Rhoden family were murdered in their homes.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Carolyn Ossorio

Topics covered

• Pike County Massacre
• true crime
• murder investigation
• family tragedy
• law enforcement
• crime scene analysis

Keywords

• Pike County Massacre
• Rhoden family
• murder
• investigation
• Ohio
• crime scene
• execution

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Piketon, Ohio

More episodes of Criminal Mischief

• E|191 The Pike County Massacre - Part Two (Bonus) · July 21, 2026 · 26 min
• E|191 The Pike County Massacre - Part Two · July 21, 2026 · 39 min
• E|190 The Pike County Massacre - Part One · July 14, 2026 · 30 min
• E|189 Deal With The Devil (Bonus) · July 7, 2026 · 30 min
• E|189 Deal With The Devil · July 7, 2026 · 42 min
• E|188 Unfathomable (Bonus) · June 30, 2026 · 32 min

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