COLUMBUS, Ohio — Investigators finished collecting evidence at the four homes in rural southern Ohio where eight family members were fatally shot, but the crime scenes remain under law enforcement custody, a spokesman with the attorney general's office said Sunday.
No one else has access to the properties where seven adults and a teenage boy were found fatally shot Friday near Piketon, about 60 miles south of Columbus.
"We want to keep the scenes preserved in case we do need to go back in there and look at it again," said Jill Del Greco, a spokesman for Attorney General Mike DeWine. The homes will eventually be released back to the families, though authorities are waiting until at least all the autopsies have been completed, she said.
Two of the crime scenes are within walking distance of each other along a sparsely populated, winding road that leads into wooded hills from a rural highway.
The third residence is more than a mile away, and the fourth home is on a different road, at least a 10-minute drive away, said Benjamin Suver of the state Bureau of Criminal Investigations.
Investigators were still trying to find out who targeted the Rhoden family. A search for the killer or killers continued Sunday, and investigators said they interviewed more than 30 people. Authorities refused to discuss many details of the crime, including the search operations.
At a press conference Sunday, Dewine said the slayings were "a pre-planned execution" and "a sophisticated operation."
Investigators sought tips and gave people a number to call if they had any details about the crimes.
"This was very methodical. This was well planned. This was not something that just happened," Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said.