Under Cover of the Night Page 5

  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.

  • • •

  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.”

  EIGHT

  The evidence pointing to possible motives for Wesley Earnest continued to build. Investigators Gary Babb and Mike Mayhew pored over the evidence and their notes looking for answers. They spent hours with prosecutor Wes Nance trying to re-create how Jocelyn had fallen and how she’d been moved. They looked into the possibility of suspects other than Wesley but found no compelling alternatives.

  Detectives learned that his affair with Shameka began at least two years before Jocelyn learned of it, hired attorney Jennifer Stille, and filed for divorce in 2006. The legal dissolution of their marriage was still not finalized, as the couple wrangled over the division of communal property. In divorce documents recovered from both of their homes, they learned that Jocelyn had accused her estranged husband of having an affair and of entering her home, after she’d changed the locks, to remove his guns and other property.

  As the investigators gathered details about Wesley’s financial situation from seized documents, red flags flew high. The court had ordered Jocelyn to pay 25 percent of the mortgage on the 7,000 square foot, seven bedroom, six and a half bath Smith Mountain Lake home, but Wesley still had to come up with three-quarters of the nearly $6,000 monthly mortgage payment.

  Making things even worse, Wesley had accumulated more than $100,000 in credit card debt since separating from Jocelyn. Calls from bill collectors were frequent, and Shameka often paid them with her own money.

  Between the lake house and his other financial obligations, it became clear that Wesley was more than a million dollars in debt. In an attempt to solve his financial crisis, he’d put the lake home on the market in 2007, but his timing was awful. The housing bubble had burst and the only offers he received would’ve resulted in a loss on his investment.

  Other paperwork they confiscated included a note that appeared to be something Wesley wrote to his attorney in preparation for his divorce. It was a series of complaints written in third person.

  “Summer 2004, Jocelyn continues to work up to eighty hours a week at GE or Genworth financial.”

  “Memorial Day weekend, Jocelyn worked thirty-eight hours over the three-day weekend.”

  “Jocelyn kept spending increasing amounts of time with people from work, most notably a bachelor named Leon. She worked on special projects just for him while at home—picture framing projects.”

  “June 2004, Wesley was going to a conference for work. The conference was located at the resort called the Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia. Wesley pleaded with Jocelyn to go with him, but she refused, claiming that work at Genworth Financial was more important.”

  “At the June 2005 graduation party, Wesley asked Jocelyn to join him at the lake house for the celebration. This is the last day Jocelyn spent any quality time at the lake house. Jocelyn was distant and nonresponsive.”

  “In late June 2005, Jocelyn completely shut Wesley out of her life by refusing to speak to him whatsoever. Wesley continued to pay all the bills while seeking a job promotion.”

  A typed document contained a list of Jocelyn’s family members and friends with a description of the testimony they might deliver at a divorce hearing. Another handwritten note was a list of dates and travel times between Chesapeake, Virginia, and Smith Mountain Lake, and a pad imprinted with “Wesley’s Organizational Tools” that contained a sentence: “Add Dave’s truck borrowed.” Who was Dave? And why and when did Wesley borrow his truck?

  They also found a copy of the letter that Wesley had written to Jocelyn detailing options for paying off their joint debt. Even more suspicious was another handwritten note that read: “Weather 12/19/07? Gas up over the drive?”

  An additional note in Wesley’s handwriting that had obviously been written between December 19, 2007, and February 27, 2008, read: “Questions of attorney. Death Certificate. Coroner’s report. When can house be freed up. Her W-2’s. Need to file taxes. Status of $52,000 paying in county taxes. Paid for cars—$6,500 not paid. When can I access my account? Want to know if money from 2006 taxes made it into account. W-2’s on escrow. Any updates. If arrested, how? 1482 electrical. Heating. Frozen pipes. Any checking or savings account. Want to know beneficiaries. Will. 60 days limitations.”

  What had Jocelyn’s murder been all about? Was it money? Or was Marcy Shepherd right about her suspicions of Wesley? Had the small physical contact between Marcy and Jocelyn ignited a firestorm of rumors? And if so, did those rumors reach across the state to Jocelyn’s estranged husband and send him into a rage? Although law enforcement had not uncovered any indication that this story was circulating, it was too early in the investigation for them to discount the hypothesis.

  What had happened in the lives of Jocelyn and Wesley Earnest to cause their marriage to culminate in this fatal, tragic end?

  NINE

  Jocelyn Denise Branham was born in the early afternoon of Monday, October 13, 1969, in Morgantown, West Virginia. Her parents, Bill Branham and Joyce DeHaven, had met in high school and were married in 1968. After a long labor at University Hospital, Jocelyn arrived wi
th dark brown hair, measuring about eight and a half pounds and twenty inches long. She was “a big surprise. Bigger than expected,” her mother Joyce recalled.

  Bill, who was a biology major studying vertebrate embryology at West Virginia University at the time, looked at his daughter and thought the shape of her head wasn’t exactly right. The medical staff told him not to worry, that it would straighten out fine. But the first-time father couldn’t help fretting about it until time worked its wonders and put his mind at ease.

  By the first of the following March, Jocelyn accomplished a one-handed, two-kneed crawl. Three months later, she was walking. She learned to brush her teeth one month after her first birthday. Jocelyn was a bright and exceptional child. She potty-trained early and rarely got into mischief. Needless to say, Mom and Dad were proud.

  Once Bill received his master’s degree, his Air Force ROTC obligation sent him and his family to Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas. He went through basic training and took advantage of every opportunity for a family trip. They even went to Six Flags and spent the day at the kiddie rides watching their daughter’s eyes sparkle with each new thrill.

  After three months in Texas, the family spent two months at Vandenberg Air Force Base, situated in California between Los Angeles and San Francisco. In between Bill’s training to be a Titan Missile Crew Commander, the family visited Disneyland, Universal Studios, and San Francisco. They then traveled back east to Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas, where Bill worked as a Missile Launch Technician.

  In February 1974, when Jocelyn was four and a half, the family grew by the addition of a second daughter named Laura. Jocelyn was enchanted with the idea of having a baby sister and proud of her role as big sister—a responsibility she took seriously all of her life.

  Jocelyn and Laura had an exemplary sibling relationship from the earliest years. They watched The Smurfs together and made friendship bracelets; Jocelyn even let her little sister ride on the handlebars of her pink Huffy bike. They razzed and teased each other, but always with love.

  The year of 1976 was one of upheaval for the Branham family. Bill left the Air Force and he and Joyce divorced. For a while, the two separate households both remained in Little Rock, but eventually Joyce and her daughters moved back to Martinsburg, West Virginia.

  Jocelyn’s and Laura’s lives were divided into two parts: the school year with mom, and the summers with dad. Bill would drive down and pick them up when school let out for the year, then bring them back to their mother two and a half months later. At Christmastime, Bill traveled to West Virginia for visits at their mother’s apartment and at Bill’s parents’ home.

  The summer trips were full of carefree travel with Bill, though the arrangements, while enjoyable for the girls, would be frowned upon today. Bill had a camper on the back of his pickup truck with a mattress on the floor. In between the cab and the camper-topped truck bed was an inflatable, rectangular rubber access point that they used to pass things back and forth from the front to the back—and sometimes the girls crawled through it. The girls had room to play and hardly noticed the passing miles.

  They took off in the truck for a lot of tent camping, canoeing, and hiking, often in the company of Bill’s friends and their children. The girls and Bill enjoyed nature hikes, looking for bugs, wildflowers, and wildlife. They visited Willow Springs Water Park. The girls loved to play in the water and were crazy about the waterslide with a little cart that planed out over the water at the bottom of the descent. They also traveled to Lake Sylvia Recreation Area, northwest of Little Rock in the Ouachita National Forest, and Queen Wilhelmina State Park due west of Little Rock.

  Woolly Hollow State Park was also a favorite with the girls where they could swim and ride the paddleboats. The Woolly Cabin, the log-constructed home built by the first settlers, added a historic context to the visit. One year, Jocelyn reached down at something sparkling in the grass and pulled out a diamond ring. Before leaving the park, they stopped at the office and left their contact information in case anyone reported it missing. No one ever did, and Jocelyn got to keep her found treasure.

  Each summer, Bill would take the girls with him for one day to the scientific lab where he worked. He would introduce them to the new co-workers and greet the ones they’d met in previous years. Each time, he’d have a fun day of science planned. One year they played with soap, dry ice, and water; another they observed the necropsy of a rat—no matter the activity, Jocelyn and Laura loved their days at work with their dad.

  One year, Bill and his daughters saw a commercial on television about making ice cream with orange soda and condensed milk. Bill pulled out his father’s old manual ice-cream freezer and they got busy. Bill put the rock salt and ice in the hand crank bucket. Jocelyn and Laura took turns working it until it got too stiff for them to manage and then their dad took over. They had so much fun with that, they experimented with different flavors every week including grape soda, root beer, and cola. They all agreed that orange and grape were best.

  Once they went to a spaghetti supper fund-raiser at a friend’s rural Catholic church. Gambling games were set up with a wheel like roulette. Bill gave money to each of the girls and let them play. Jocelyn couldn’t stop winning—she came home with an armload of stuffed animals including a three-foot-long stuffed carrot, a toy that was a favorite with the girls for years. Bill worried that he’d contributed to a dangerous lesson and was concerned that Jocelyn would think that gambling was an easy way to riches. Still, when they went to Six Flags in St. Louis with Joyce’s family, he didn’t object to Jocelyn playing a ringtoss game—the lucky girl won a teddy bear bigger than she was.

  Another favorite activity was attending the games played by the Arkansas Travelers, an AA baseball team affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals. The small ballpark was a safe, enclosed area where kids roamed freely, exploring and playing together. Sometimes Jocelyn would go outside of the park with a group of other kids waiting for foul balls to come over the fence, and Bill would sit up in the back where she could see him and give her a competitive edge by pointing in the direction that balls were headed.

  Jocelyn was an athletic girl from a young age. She played tennis and volleyball, and was on the all-star softball team as well as the Berkeley County softball league during her high school years. In her freshman year, on the basketball team, she played point guard. She was the team’s star shooting guard, averaging twenty-four points per game in her junior year and twenty-nine in her senior year. She was team captain and the first to earn an all-state honorable mention. Laura often tagged along to basketball practice, softball games, and some of her older sister’s get-togethers with friends.

  In her spare time, she earned a black belt in karate.

  Jocelyn graduated from Hedgesville High School in 1988, and with the help of a four-year full athletic scholarship, she went to West Virginia University where she was a member of the Mountaineer women’s basketball team from 1989 to 1992. She was one of the university’s best three-point shooters ever, despite her average height, and once tried out for a spot on the women’s basketball team for the 1992 Olympics before graduating in 1993 with a double major in economics and marketing. Coach Kittie Blakemore told 48 Hours, “Her smile, her hard work, her motivation to help her teammates will long be remembered.”

  TEN

  Wesley Brian Earnest was born to Roger and Patricia Earnest on May 19, 1970, in a small town outside of Los Angeles. His father was a California Highway Patrol officer.

  Wesley was five years old when the family moved to West Virginia, and twelve years old when his parents’ marriage disintegrated. Wesley stayed with his mother, and his younger brother, Tyler, lived with their dad. Patricia referred to Wesley as “the little man around the house.” He took care of minor upkeep and repairs in their home like changing the locks on doors, and growing up he played nearly every sport there was.

  Wesley entered colleg
e at West Virginia University in Morgantown in 1988 and started his academic career as a civil engineering major. But in the middle of his junior year, he changed his major to mathematics when he decided that he wanted to teach math and coach basketball. It was outside of calculus class in 1991 where he met Jocelyn Branham.

  Something about Jocelyn grabbed his attention right away. He approached her and he introduced himself to her and said, “Let’s go play some basketball.”

  Wesley’s mother described them as a “cute” couple. While they were dating, “both of them would be lying in the middle of the floor watching a ball game together . . . whenever you saw one, you saw the other.”

  Although according to friends and family, Jocelyn was a confident young woman who had been good at anything she tried to do, she always tried to avoid confrontation, and rarely stood up for herself.

  Early in her relationship with Wesley, Jocelyn developed some concern about his controlling and manipulative nature, but it was his anger issues that once led her to break up with him while they were still in college. Jocelyn’s sister, Laura, remembered seeing Jocelyn crying after getting off the phone with Wes. They were “polar opposites” whom Laura could never imagine living together in harmony. But when Jocelyn called it off, Wesley told her, “Well, I don’t know what I’ll do without you. Maybe next time I go skydiving, I won’t pull the cord.”

  Jocelyn couldn’t handle the guilt Wesley’s comment induced, and she backed down. Soon, the couple was back together again.

  When they graduated, Wesley moved to Bedford, Virginia, and took a job as a mathematics teacher and basketball coach at Jefferson Forest High School. Jocelyn remained in West Virginia for another three years, but their relationship grew, and before long, they were engaged.