As February 2008 drew to a close, Jocelyn Earnest’s death was officially deemed a homicide by the medical examiner. Investigators Gary Babb and Mike Mayhew drew up an arrest warrant against Wesley Earnest for the first degree murder of his wife and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
The two detectives, accompanied by a Campbell County officer, went to Wesley Earnest’s girlfriend’s home, a single-wide trailer way off the main road in the middle of the country in Concord, Virginia, a rural town roughly twenty miles east of the crime scene.
A thin, attractive African American woman who identified herself as Wesley’s girlfriend, Shameka Wright, answered the door.
“Is Wes here?” Babb asked.
“Yes,” she said. “He’s taking a shower.”
“May we come in?”
“Yes,” she answered, flinging the door open wide and returning to the kitchen to tend to something she had cooking on the stove.
Inside, the investigators found a home that was neat but overcrowded with belongings and furniture. Moments later, Wesley came out to the living room wearing a shirt and a pair of shorts. His hair was wet—his demeanor flat.
“You are under arrest for the murder of Jocelyn Earnest.”
“May I go back and get my shoes?”
“Tell us where they are and we’ll get them for you,” Babb said.
After the retrieved shoes were tied onto his feet, the handcuffs were snapped on his wrists. Wesley was loaded into the backseat of an SUV. Babb sat on one side of him, Mayhew on the other.
The detectives couldn’t question Wesley without his lawyer present. Instead, they talked basketball as they headed up the highway, traveling more than thirty miles west to the Blue Ridge Regional Jail Authority’s Bedford Adult Detention Center.
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The investigators now had sufficient probable cause to request search warrants. They applied for and received the authorization they needed to seek out firearms, ammunition, cell phones, computers, copiers and printers, papers, correspondence, handwritten and printed documents, photographs, biological evidence, and clothing or other apparel from Wesley’s $1.3 million house on Smith Mountain Lake and at Shameka’s more modest Concord home in Campbell County where Wesley often stayed.
At the lake house, officers entered a beautiful home with an open layout, and decorated with antique wooden ship models. The airy interior of the home offered incredible vistas of the sprawling lake and the woods surrounding it. They brought in a locksmith to drill the safe in the garage, where they discovered a box of .38 caliber bullets, not a caliber that could be used in any of the weapons stored there. They also found a manila folder containing ownership papers for the murder weapon (which did use .357 caliber bullets), a $1,000 bill in a plastic case and an assortment of coins. From elsewhere in the house, they took possession of documents containing samples of Wesley’s handwriting as well as financial documents relating to his level of debt and the contentiousness of his divorce from Jocelyn.
At Shameka’s residence, they discovered the case for the revolver that took Jocelyn’s life, as well as the original box that held the gun at the time of purchase. They also took possession of an album labeled “Our Journey Together” that contained photos and mementoes of trips Shameka and Wesley had taken while Wesley and Jocelyn were still living together in 2004 and 2005—to tourist venues in Tennessee, Florida, and North Carolina. Just miles away from the high school, authorities executed yet another search warrant at Wesley’s third identified residence, at an address the school had on file. On December 26, 2007, Wesley’s mother and stepfather, Pat and Mike Wimmer, had delivered their twenty-seven-foot Terry camping trailer to the Chesapeake Campground in the Deep Creek section of Chesapeake for Wesley to occupy for up to the next six months. They’d signed a lease in the name of Wesley Earnest Wimmer.
Law enforcement searched for bullets, LifeStyles condoms, like the ones found in Jocelyn’s home, and any electronic media—computers, CDs, or hard drives. All that was recovered was one spiral notebook.
The day after his arrest, Principal Andrejco suspended Wesley without pay, pending the outcome of his trial. She sent a letter to parents informing them that “Dr. Wesley Earnest, Assistant Principal of Great Bridge High School, has been charged with a serious crime in the western part of the state. Dr. Earnest has been away from the school for some time and that will continue until this matter is resolved.”