For verification, they would obtain another set of prints from Wesley and send all the evidence and findings to another latent fingerprint analyst to confirm or dispute Riding’s conclusions.
• • •
On Monday, December 17, 2007, Wesley had swapped his silver Honda Accord for a maroon Chevrolet Silverado truck, belonging to David Hall, a teacher and wrestling coach at Great Bridge High School as well as Wesley’s friend and hunting buddy. Wesley told David that he needed the truck to move some furniture, and he returned the truck to Dave’s home early Thursday morning.
“Sorry about the floor mats. They’re a little messed up,” Wesley apologized for a bleached-out stain he’d caused when cleaning the inside of the truck. Dave noted that Wesley’s hair was still wet, as if he’d just gotten out of the shower, but otherwise he looked normal, in his usual button-down shirt and tie.
Dave didn’t linger to chat, antsy about being late to work at Great Bridge High, but before he left, he joked to his wife, “If I am late it’s not going to be a big deal because I’m with an administrator.”
• • •
Jesse McCoy, one of Wesley’s former students, was trying to start a car detailing business with his uncle, a Baptist preacher. Wesley agreed to try his detailing service, saying that he’d like to have it done to his Honda Accord the week before Christmas break, and they arranged for a 7:30 A.M. pickup on Wednesday, December 19. Close to that date, Wesley called and said, “Wednesday isn’t a good day because I’m going to be out of town.”
They rescheduled for Thursday at the same time. Early that week, Wesley called again. “I need to push the time back a couple of hours because I don’t know if I’ll be back yet.”
Jesse’s uncle picked up Wesley’s Honda at 9:15 that morning. Wesley handed him the keys and said, “I have a lot of junk in the back. Don’t worry about going back there.”
The uncle returned the vehicle, which he described as “the dirtiest car I’d ever cleaned,” at 4:15 that afternoon. Wesley paid him $120 in cash.
• • •
On January 10, 2008, Wesley borrowed Dave’s truck again. He said that he needed the Silverado to straighten out his trailer. Dave told Wesley that he needed it back by six o’clock, since he was driving the wrestling team to an overnight competition after practice that afternoon. Wesley assured him that he’d have the truck back in time.
Wesley drove to Kramer Tire on Providence Road in Virginia Beach, bypassing the two closer Kramer stores in Chesapeake. When approached in the showroom by Rick Keuhne, Wesley introduced himself as Tom Dunbar and said, “I need new tires.”
“What’s the problem?” Rick asked.
“Well, I’m driving from the Roanoke area and the tires gave me a ride disturbance, shook all the way from there, so I want new tires put on my vehicle.”
“Okay,” Rick said, making a notation on the work order.
“It’s a company vehicle and my employer will reimburse me,” Wesley said.
Rick rang up the sale, left the showroom, and carried the ticket into the shop. The truck was put up on the rack, and Rick could not see anything wrong with the tires on it. He spun each of them, looking to see if there was a belt separation defect, but none of the tires wobbled. He ran his hand across the treads and found them completely even from one side to the other, with no visible indication of anything that would cause a ride disturbance.
When Rick returned to the showroom, he asked, “Mr. Dunbar, are you sure you want me to change these tires because I don’t see anything wrong with them?” Rick explained what he discovered when he inspected them and added, “I really don’t think you need new tires.”
“No, get those tires off my vehicle. I want to get new ones,” Wesley insisted.
Rick went back into the shop and got the work started. An hour later, Wesley paid for his $688 purchase in cash and drove off.
Wesley returned the truck to Dave by 6:15, and Dave headed off to the wrestling competition. Over the next day, as he ferried the kids back and forth from their hotel rooms to the competition site, he complained constantly about his truck’s ride.
On Saturday, he finally checked out his truck’s tires and realized there were Dunlops on his vehicle, and not the BFGoodrich all-terrain radials he’d put on it fifteen months earlier.
He called Wesley and left a message asking about the tire change. Wesley responded, “I had popped the two front tires by running over a board with nails in it. I know I could have plugged them but I felt guilty about ruining them. So, when I saw this deal where I could buy three tires and get one free, I bought you four new tires.”
Dave accepted Wesley’s excuse, but still wished he had the same type of tires he’d had on the truck before.
• • •
Molly Sullivan, a teacher at Oscar Smith Middle School, where Wesley had worked in administration before his current position as one of two assistant principals at nearby Great Bridge High School, had heard through the grapevine that Wesley’s wife had been killed over the holidays. Apparently, she had not been paying close attention to the details or the rumor mill botched up the story because Molly believed that his wife had died in a car accident. She sent him an email the first week in January 2008.
“I’m very sorry for your loss. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you,” she wrote. She knew that Wesley had opened the email soon after she sent it, but she didn’t get a response until twenty-four hours later.
Wes wrote, “What are you talking about?”
Molly responded: “I’m very sorry, please let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
This time, Wesley did not respond at all.
A few weeks later, on January 23, 2008, Molly was driving home from work debating what to do for dinner. She started calling various friends to see who might be available to join her for a meal somewhere. She called Wesley, then changed her mind and hung up before he answered.
Wesley, however, immediately returned her call. “What are you doing?”
“I was going to see if you wanted to grab a bite to eat,” Molly said.
“Well, I’m tied up right now. I’m in Williamsburg,” a historic town, fifty miles north-northwest of Chesapeake. “I’m waiting for a pretty lady.”
“Oh, you’ve got a hot date?”
“Yes, I do. You missed your opportunity.”
“I’ll go home and cook. It’s no big deal.”
They chatted a bit then Molly remembered about his wife and said, “I’m so sorry about your wife.”
In a loud, enraged-sounding voice Wesley said, “What the fuck are you talking about? How many times do I have to tell you I’m not married? Why do you keep asking me over and over again?”
“Whoa, whoa, back off,” Molly said.
“Why didn’t you call me instead of sending me that email?”
“Because my grandfather died over the holidays, too, and I was tired of getting phone calls so I just sent an email. I’m sorry.”
Another Oscar Smith Middle School teacher, Sonya Stevens, had very similar conversations with Wesley. When she, too, expressed her sympathies after hearing the rumors, Wesley blew up at her, too. Neither woman could make sense of his reaction at the time.
• • •
Despite their suspicions about Wesley as a suspect in Jocelyn’s murder, the detectives still had a concern about the feasibility of his involvement. He was living and working on the other side of the state—a three- to four-hour drive from Jocelyn’s home. Was it possible for him to make that trip in the middle of the workweek?
The next day, Detectives Gary Babb and Mike Mayhew drove to Oscar Smith Middle School in Chesapeake, Wesley’s first place of employment in the area. Principal Linda Scott was initially reluctant to talk about a former member of her staff, but once the investigators explained a homicide was involved, she coop
erated fully.
Scott said that she found Wesley to be very arrogant and demanding, particularly in his attitude toward women in the workplace. “If you had something he could use, he was a friend. If you had nothing he needed, he insisted that you call him Dr. Earnest.” She added that Wesley had “hit on” her young adult daughter, who described him as “spooky.”
Again and again, on that trip, the investigators spoke to teachers who believed that Wesley was independently wealthy and that he’d never been married. Detective W. B. Satterfield, who worked at the school in 2005 as a resource officer, a member of the local police jurisdiction assigned to the school to help prevent crime, said that Wesley referred to himself as “a small-time millionaire” who didn’t need to work to make a living. When Satterfield asked why he wasn’t married when he had so much to offer financially, Wesley had answered, “I haven’t found the one.”
Molly Sullivan said Wesley claimed to own a house on Smith Mountain Lake and another property in California. She said he told her, “I’m worth $5 million. I could retire but I continue working because I love education.” Even though at the time she’d considered Wesley a friend, the flaunting of his financial worth still made her uncomfortable—especially since Molly knew he was aware that she herself worked two jobs to make ends meet. Many times, she’d heard him deny that he had ever been married or divorced.
• • •
The investigators also went to Great Bridge High School, where Wesley was employed as one of two assistant principals.
A month earlier, on the day after Jocelyn’s death was discovered, the central office of Great Bridge High School had informed principal Dr. Janet Andrejco, Wesley’s supervisor, that the news media was interested in the death of a woman whom Dr. Earnest knew, and that they might be trying to contact him.
It was the middle of the school holidays, but Andrejco had called Wesley to let him know what she’d heard. Wesley thanked her for calling and expressed his appreciation that she reached out to him. A short while later—right before he first went in to speak to the detectives—Wesley had called her back. “I’m waiting in a parking lot to be questioned,” he said, mentioning something about a divorce attorney. He added, “My wife’s family often makes me look like I’m evil. Her death was a suicide because of a failing relationship.”
Andrejco was confused. She’d thought Wesley was unmarried, yet now he was talking about divorce? It didn’t make any sense. It was beginning to seem as if after working with him for a year and a half she didn’t know him at all. But Wesley got off the phone before explaining anything more about the deceased woman or his connection to her.
Now, when the detectives arrived at the high school on January 24, 2008, they found Principal Andrejco in the middle of a meeting, which was jettisoned upon the arrival of the two men in dark suits. The principal allowed the detectives to use her office to talk to the staff.
School resource officer Wallace Chadwick told the investigators that he’d heard similar stories about Wesley’s wealth and eligible status. Wallace had met Wesley’s girlfriend, Shameka Wright, but when he’d asked Wesley about their relationship, Wesley referred to her as nothing more than “a chick I met in the mountains.”
When the detectives talked to Wesley’s fellow assistant principal, Jim Clevenger, he had a similar impression about Wesley’s net worth. He said, “Wesley indicated in his first year that he didn’t necessarily have to work, that he was not like most administrators who had to limit how much they could invest. He said that the folks downtown”—referring to the school district administration—“were investigating how to coordinate the paperwork so that he could invest a large portion of his salary.”
Jim Clevenger later described how, on the day the investigators visited the high school, Wesley had approached him looking preoccupied and concerned while Jim was in the common area supervising the students at the beginning of the first lunch period. He said, “Jim, what’s going on in the main office?”
“Well, I was in the main office and I saw two gentlemen come in in dark suits. In my experience in high school when two guys in dark suits come in the building, they’re law enforcement. Jan and I had this meeting and immediately, I got pushed aside because she’s going to entertain and have to deal with those two gentlemen.”
“Did Dave Hall come into the office to talk to them?” Wesley asked.
“Yes, I did see Dave come into the main office. But that’s all I know. If I learn any more, I’ll get back with you.”
During a later lunch period, Jim recalled approaching Wesley and telling him, “I haven’t learned any more. I just know there are folks meeting; I don’t know who’s been in the meetings. I’ve looked in the window to see if we can have our calendar meeting but Jan said, ‘That’s not happening,’ and that’s all I know.” At the end of the school day, Jim saw Wesley in the hall looking nervous and tense, moving his shoulders and crunching up his neck as if his mind were somewhere far away.
When the detectives left the high school building just after four thirty that afternoon, Wesley immediately called Principal Andrejco on his cell phone. He started crying as soon as she answered the phone. He told her he wanted a leave of absence. He expressed his concern that law enforcement would leak news of his interview to the media and thrust the school into a negative spotlight. But he didn’t want anyone to think that he’d been asked to leave. “I fear that people would think I’m leaving because of you,” he told Andrejco. “Maybe we could get it clear at a staff meeting.”
But before considering that, Dr. Andrejco insisted upon learning more details about Wesley’s personal background. She knew that he’d worked at Jefferson Forest High School in Forest and Heritage High School in Lynchburg—both schools were close to each other but more than a three-hour drive away from her school, on the western side of the state—but knew nothing of his personal life from that time. Wesley had never spoken about it before their earlier phone call.
For the first time, he told her about his wife. “Four years ago my wife and I split up. Three years ago I came to the beach,” Wesley said, fiddling with the actual timeline either out of carelessness or dishonesty.
Wesley asked Andrejco to give him an opportunity to explain about his marriage and separation to the teachers and other administrators at the school. He wanted to correct the mistaken impressions he’d given to many of the staff in the past.
He continued sobbing through the conversation, his sentences disjointed as if he couldn’t find the energy to connect them together. “I love working for you. Would there be another place I could work that is not visible?”
Andrejco didn’t have an answer for him. She needed time to figure out what she would do.
Wesley continued to plead with her, contradicting himself as he did. “I don’t feel like coming to work tomorrow. I’m sick to my stomach. It is heavy on my heart. People are coming to me. I only talked to police once. Is my career over? That’s all I have to live for. I put a lot into my work and my career. I tried to start a new life coming here. That’s all I have to live for. I don’t have any family except in West Virginia. I don’t have a lot of friends. I don’t date a lot. I thought I weathered the worst of everything.”
The principal was bothered by this phone call. It was obvious that Wesley had intentionally deceived his co-workers. Besides his marital status, what other misperceptions had he propagated about his past? Could he be hiding something even more serious?
She found Wesley’s reaction to his conversation with law enforcement over the top. After all, it was only natural that the detectives would want to question the estranged spouse of someone who died under suspicious circumstances. She suspected that his extreme emotional response likely indicated an underlying problem that was only going to get worse, and her first priority was to prepare for—and try to minimize—any possible collateral damage to the school. She decided to suspend Wesley with pay unt
il she knew whether or not he would be charged with any crime.
SEVEN
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.
Under Cover of the Night Page 4
