Jocelyn and Wesley Earnest

0:00 Hi, I'm Rich and I'm Tina. If there's one thing we've learned in over twenty years of marriage. It's some days you'll feel like killing your husband, and some. Days you'll feel like killing your wife. Welcome to love, Mary kill. Hey Tina, Hey Rich. How are you today? I am good? How are you? I am doing well. You're a little hot. You beat me too. I was going to say, is it hot enough for you? A good one. I know it is hot enough for me. It's more than hot enough for me.

0:41 But I think it's nice when it's hot everywhere, so everyone knows what we're talking about, except like our listeners in Australia where it's winter. But I was talking to one of my colleagues in Los Angeles today and he said, it's actually really really not hot at all there. Yeah. I was talking to your sister and she said that too. But you know, in the Midwest, yeah, it's very hot. Europe it's like really really hot. Yeah, that's such a bummer. And they don't have air conditioning like you. It would be unusual for you to go into a store or a business and it not be air conditioned. In the United States, right, and most people's homes are air conditioned. Yeah. I was talking to another person at work today. One of our agencies is in Poland, and they were saying how people are buying like those portable air conditioners and you can't find them anywhere. They're like sold out everywhere.

1:29 It's dangerously hot. Before we get into your case, I want to say thank you to everyone for all your nice comments on the Hannah Clark case. I know that was a really hard case to listen to, so we appreciate your support and it is so important to remember Hannah's story. I am working on a case now that hopefully is going to be a little bit of uplifting. Not uplifting, but you know, most of. The cases, most of the cases we do, are very sad that that Hannah Clark one was probably right up there with the top two. I know when I go to bed at night, when I'm still thinking about the victims and I can't get to sleep, but it's an especially tough one. Every once in a while we like to mention that we have another edition of our podcast, so if you're not into banter on your true crime podcasts, we get it.

2:15 Acts. Yeah, a lot of people feel that way, and that's why we publish a different version of Love Mary Kill called Love Mary Kill Just the Facts, So there's no snacks, no banter at the beginning or the end of the episode. We do still give our opinions about the case, usually at the end, so technically it's not just the facts, but calling it mostly the facts or almost only the facts just didn't have the same ring to it the search for Love Mary Kill Just the Facts wherever you listen. And coming soon Love Mary Kill Just rich Really yeah, I think you should do it a version that's just you. I hadn't heard this news beforeway sometimes never never. I'm very excited about our snack today because a listener sent this in. So Jan was kind enough to send us some Boklova from Saint John's Bakery in Goldendale, Washington.

3:06 I'm very excited to try it. I still choose it does. It looks amazing, Thank you so much. Jam. It looks really fresh too. Yeah, it didn't sit in our mailbox for months like things had before, because you checked it. I did check it and picked it up, So yeah, let's give it a try. What did you think of the Boklova? It was really good. It was just like the loveliest texture and the best flavors, and I thought it was really good, really interesting. Excellent, probably the best baklava I've ever had. It. Looked at the website for Saint John's Bakery and it's Saint john Monastery dot org. They have all sorts of stuff, chocolate, jams, jellies, all kinds of pasta.

3:51 Oh, that sounds great. That sounds like a really good gift idea. Yeah, check it out and thanks again, Jan for sending that. That was so thoughtful. The other day, I was looking around our house and I was noticing all the sweet things that listeners have sent to us, And it's really it still touches me that so many people take the time and effort and the expense of sending us little gifts or snacks. It means so much. Yeah, it really does. We really appreciate you guys. Today we're going to tell the story of Joscelyn and Wesley Earnest. Thanks to Bianca for recommending this case. By December two thousand and seven, Joscelyn Earnest was in a good place, or at least a better place than she'd been in years. The holidays were coming, and she loved this time of year. She had taken time off work, as she always did around Christmas, to shop, see friends, and make cookies. She had family visits to look forward to, and she had recently been offered a new role at work, a promotion that she was genuinely excited about. She had been through a lot, a marriage that had slowly fallen apart.

4:52 Years of tension, mistrust, and heartbreak that she hadn't fully shared with most of the people in her life, but the divorce was nearly final. She was almost through it, and she was looking forward to the future. So when her good friend Marcy Shepherd couldn't reach her, not by phone, text, or email, she got worried. That wasn't like Joscelyn. On the morning of December twentieth, after Joscelyn failed to show up for work, Marcy drove out to her house in Forest, Virginia, found a spare key in the shed by the pool, and let herself in through the back door. A wave of heat rolled out at her, as if the thermostat had been turned all the way up. As Marci's fogged up glasses cleared, she saw Joscelyn on the floor, blood pooling around her head. Investigators found what looked on the surface like a suicide, a note, a gun, a woman in the middle of a difficult divorce, but almost nothing about the scene held up on closer inspection, and the people who knew Joscelyn best had a very different idea as to what happened.

5:54 So the thermist at was turned all the way up. Correct. I guess you're going to tell us why later. Yes, we will definitely get into that later. Joscelyn Denise Branham was born on October thirteenth, nineteen sixty nine, in Morgantown, West Virginia. Her parents, Bill and Joyce had met in high school and married the year before Joscelyn arrived. Four and a half years later, a second daughter, Laura, was born, and from the beginning the two sisters were very close. The family was living in Little Rock when Bill and Joyce divorced in nineteen seventy six. Joyce packed up the girls and moved back to Martinsburg, West Virginia, where Joscelyn would spend her childhood summers. They would go stay with their dad. With Joscelyn being only six at the time of the divorce and Laura only two, the sisters drew even closer together, with Laura looking up to her big sister as a source of stability. From an early age.

6:49 Joscelyn was an exceptional athlete. She played softball and basketball through high school, and by her junior year she was averaging twenty four points per game in basketball, a number that climbed to twenty nine by her senior year. Wow. Impressive, I know, that's really impressive, especially for high school. She was team captain, earned an All State honorable mention, and wore number twenty one, a number she would keep through college. On top of that, she earned a black belt in karate. Her athletic ability was good enough to earn her a full scholarship to West Virginia University, where she played basketball for the Mountaineers from nineteen eighty nine to nineteen ninety two. Despite being of average height, she became one of the program's best three point shooters. She was talented enough that she tried out for the nineteen ninety two US women's Olympic basketball team. In nineteen ninety one, after stepping out of calculus class one day, a tall, athletic looking young man approached her, he introduced himself as Wesley Earnest and said, let's go play some basketball. Wesley Brian Ernest was born on May nineteenth, nineteen seventy, in a small town outside of Los Angeles. His father, Roger, was a California Highway Patrol officer, and the family moved to West Virginia when Wesley was five. When he was twelve, his parents' marriage fell apart. Wesley stayed with his mother, Patricia, while his younger brother, Tyler went to live with their dad.

8:15 Growing up, Wesley threw himself into sports, pretty much any sport he could find. He started at WVU in nineteen eighty eight, initially as a civil engineering major, but by his junior year he had changed course, switching to mathematics with a desire to teach and coach basketball. That was the year he met Joscelyn outside of their calculus class. Was Joscelyn famous around campus? Because you said that Wesley knew who she was? Yeah, I think she was pretty well known. Like even if you look at the WVU sports website now, she's still listed on there all of her statistics and everything. So I think she was probably fairly well known. Once Joscelyn and Wesley started dating, they were inseparable, but it didn't take long for cracks to show. Joscelyn was a confident young woman in many ways, but she also did whatever she could to avoid confrontation. By nature, she was a helper, a problem solver, and a peacemaker, the kind of person who would try to diffuse the tension in any situation. In a relationship with someone easy going, that might not have mattered much, but Wesley wasn't that person.

9:23 Early on, Joscelyn grew concerned about his controlling and manipulative tendencies. His anger issues were serious enough that she broke up with him while they were still in college. Wesley's response was to tell her, I don't know what I'll do without you. Maybe next time I go skydiving, I won't pull the cord. Joscelyn felt guilty and concerned. She backed down and they got back together. Joscelyn's sister Laura thought the two of them were polar opposites and couldn't picture them ever sharing a life without constant friction. She wasn't wrong, but Joscelyn's instinct was always to keep the peace and over time. That meant going along with things that she resented rather than fighting about them. Wesley finished his mathematics degree before Jocelyn was done with her degree. He moved to Bedford, Virginia, where he took a job teaching math and coaching basketball at Jefferson Forest High School. Joscelyn stayed in West Virginia, finishing up her double major in economics and marketing. Despite living five hours apart, their relationship continued and deepened. When Wesley proposed he did it with a metal detector. He filled a box with coins, added a note that said marry me, buried it in the ground, and had Joscelyn find it herself.

10:38 She said, yes, that's pretty clever. She graduated from WVU in nineteen ninety three and joined Wesley in Virginia. They married on August nineteenth, nineteen ninety five. Joscelyn would later tell those close to her that on her wedding day she had been genuinely worried that she was about to make a serious mistake, but friends and family had traveled from far way to celebrate with them, and she didn't want to let anyone down, so she set her vows and hoped for the best. Joscelyn and Wesley settled into life in the Lynchburg area of Virginia. Wesley joined a co ed city volleyball team, where his teammates quickly picked up on something he was not someone you criticized after a bad play. Most players would talk openly with each other about what went wrong, but nobody said a word to Wesley, as he was likely to blow up in anger. Also on that volleyball team was Jennifer Landis, a former basketball player at Virginia Commonwealth University. Jennifer's boyfriend and future husband, Bob Kerns, came along with her, and before long, the four of them, Wesley, Joscelyn, Jennifer, and Bob had formed a tight social circle. They played sports, went out to dinner, and even took vacations together. Jocelyn also grew close to Emily, Jennifer's seven year old daughter from a previous relationship. Meanwhile, both Wesley and Joscelyn enrolled in night classes to pursue master's degrees. Joscelyn earned her

12:08 MBA from Virginia Tech and landed a job with First Colony Life, which was absorbed into ge Capital Corporation. A year later, Wesley earned a master's in education, then kept going, enrolling in night classes at the University of Virginia to pursue a doctorate. In the year two thousand, Wesley took a teaching position at Heritage High School in the Lynchburg City School District. That same year, he finished his coursework and was awarded a PhD in administration and supervision with minors in finance and technology. Where Jocelyn and Wesley were really go getters in terms of education, I mean both Jocelyn had two double major her undergrad got her masters, and then Wesley went on to get his doctorate as well.

12:53 Very impressive, making me feel like a slouch. At some point after they settled in Virginia, Wesley caught Joscelyn off with an announcement he was converting to the Jehovah's Witnesses. Neither of them had grown up in a religious household, so it came out of nowhere. Wesley's explanation was straightforward. He told Joscelyn that faith was helping him get his anger under control. While Joscelyn supported the goal, his conversion created more friction in their marriage. Wesley developed a new social circle through his congregation. Joscelyn didn't attend services, though she would occasionally join him for church functions like picnics. The religious divide showed up most sharply around holidays. Jehovah's witnesses don't celebrate most holidays, including Christmas, Easter, New Year's and even birthdays, because they believe these days have non Christian origins, promote nationalism, or focus on humans rather than God.

13:50 Wesley took those prohibitions seriously. For Joscelyn, who had always loved holiday traditions, this was a big problem. After his conversion, Wesley agreed to go with her to her family's home in West Virginia for Thanksgiving, but when they arrived, he stayed in the car while she sat down for dinner with her relatives. After that, she stopped asking and made the trip to West Virginia by herself every year. Can you imagine how awkward that must have been? So horrible? Why did he even agree to go so he could. Control her and make sure that she wasn't having a good time? Yeah, exactly. The conversion also pushed Joscelyn to a decision that she'd been grappling with for a while. She had always wanted children, but Wesley's temper and his need for control had already given her pause. Now, knowing that he would want to raise any children in his faith, something she was firmly against, she made up her mind. From that point on, she insisted Wesley use a condom every time they had sex.

14:50 This makes me really sad that Joscelyn gave up a lot of what she wanted out of life for Wesley. Like she really wanted kids and she gave that up. She loved how and she gave up you know, having a close family celebration at the holiday season. Yeah, very sad. Wesley had loved Smith Mountain Lake, about forty five minutes southwest of their home, since he was a boy, and at some point the couple decided to build a home there. In two thousand and one, they bought a piece of land, but they had different visions of what to build on that land. Jocelyn wanted something rustic and RESTful, a cabin that fit the surroundings, but Wesley had something completely different in mind. He wanted a home bigger and more impressive than everything around it. Was this a vacation home or more like their forever home.

15:37 I think he had plans to make it more their forever home. Okay, As usual, Wesley got his way. The plans called for seven bedrooms, each with a sunset view of the lake, six and a half bathrooms, a spacious deck, and a three boat dock. So that would be kind of an engineering feat to have seven bedrooms each with a sunset view, right. Yeah. Wesley obtained his contractor's license and served as his own general contractor on the build, coordinating more than eighty subcontractors. Whenever Joscelyn offered an opinion on a design decision, he overruled her. This was his project and he was in complete control. In fact, Wesley was in full control of the couple's finances. He put Joscelyn on a strict shopping budget, which didn't bother her much. She had modest tastes. She was perfectly happy shopping at goodwill, thrift stores, and yard sales.

16:30 That summer, Wesley was too busy to join Joscelyn and their friends Jennifer and Bob Kerns on their annual vocasion to the current's cabin in Canada. He didn't want Joscelyn going without him, but she went anyway. During that trip, Joscelyn opened up to Jennifer about Wesley's controlling, overbearing, and manipulative ways. Jennifer, a former college athlete who didn't intimidate easily, started to see herself as something of a protective older sister to Joscelyn. T thousand and three. Something started to shift in Joscelyn. Instead of always deferring to Wesley to keep the peace, she started pushing back. Wesley convinced himself that Jennifer's influence was behind his wife's new backbone, and even accused Jennifer of having romantic feelings for Joscelyn. The tension came to a head that summer during the annual trip to Jennifer and Bob's cabin in Canada. It was over something small, a soda can or a pop can or.

17:26 A coke can, depending on where you are. One afternoon, Jennifer's teenage daughter Emily and Wesley were both out in the dock drinking diet doctor pepper. Emily came inside and Jennifer sent her back out to grab her can. A bit later, Jennifer glanced out the window and spotted something floating in the lake a crushed diet doctor pepper can. When she pointed it out, Wesley lit into Emily, saying that she was irresponsible, But Jennifer knew Emily had brought her can in, so the one floating in the lake must have been Wesley's. When Jennifer told Wesley that he should own his mistake, he didn't take it. Well, no one's going to speak to me like this, he said, I'm not going to stay here and listen to this.

18:08 He stormed out of the cabin, called for Joscelyn, and sent her inside to pack their things. They drove thirteen hours home that night without stopping. It must have been a really fun drive. Oh, I know. After that, Wesley's hostility towards Jennifer was out in the open. He complained when Jocelyn spent time with her and tried to forbid Joscelyn from seeing her at all, but Joscelyn ignored him. If anything, she became more candid with Jennifer about her struggles with the marriage. I think this story just paints such a picture of Wesley like just blowing up over something so right. Yeah, it just really is crazy. So becoming a Jehovah's witness really had no impact on his temper. Like no they had hoped it would, didn't seem to We'll be back after a break.

19:02 As construction continued, Wesley started pushing Joscelyn to move out to the lake House with him. The project wasn't finished, but his idea was that if they lived there, they could spend every available hour working on it together. Joscelyn had no interest in adding an hour long commute each way to her already long workday or spending her evenings doing construction after already putting in a full day at the office, but Wesley didn't make it easy for Jocelyn to stay at their home on Pine Bluff Drive in Lynchburg. A house two doors down had gone up for sale, and Wesley borrowed one hundred thousand dollars from his father to buy it as a rental property. He initially offered it to his younger brother, Tyler, then rented it to someone else, leaving Tyler with nowhere to go but Wesley and Joscelyn's couch. Joscelyn didn't like Tyler, and she suspected the whole situation had been engineered by Wesley to make things uncomfortable enough that she would agree to move to the lake House just to get away from Tyler. Instead, she started spending more and more time at Jennifer and Bob's place, to the point where she was only coming home to shower and sleep. I'm not sure how long Wesley's brother, Tyler lived there, but he did eventually move on and at Joscelyn ended up spending more time at her home. On the occasions when Jocelyn did see Wesley, he seemed different, more evasive, angrier, and increasingly fixated on money.

20:27 Part of the change in Wesley may have been the mounting financial stress of the lake House project, but it was also because he was spending time with someone new. Wesley met Shamika Wright, a former police officer at the local Big Lots store where she was working as a clerk. Shamika's departure from the Lynchburg Police Department had not been on good terms. She had reportedly been dismissed after initiating a threatening confrontation while in uniform with a woman that she believed was seeing her ex boyfriend. Shamika was a few years younger than Wesley. By mid July, two thousand and four, the relationship was serious enough that they were taking trips together. Early two thousand and five brought a getaway to Florida and that summer the Smoky Mountains. Around the same time, Wesley took a job as assistant principal at a middle school in Chesapeake, Virginia, nearly four hours from Lynchburg. Shamika, meanwhile, had moved into the hr department of Campbell County's government and had begun working on her own doctorate. Despite the distance between them, they still saw each other nearly every weekend. In many ways, Joscelyn and Wesley were now living separate lives. She was at the house in Lynchburg, he was staying almost four hours away in Chesapeake during the work week and spending weekends finishing up the lake House. But they were still married and as far as Joscelyn knew, still faithful to each other.

21:52 But one weekend at the lake house, Joscelyn became suspicious when she saw unfamiliar hairs in the bed and bathroom. She confronted West, who told her that the hairs belonged to his cleaning lady, a woman named Shamika Wright. He told Joscelyn that he had met Shamika through a suicide support group. He felt bad for her because she was struggling to find work and needed money, so he offered her a job cleaning the lake house. He made a point of describing Shamika as overweight and unattractive in an apparent attempt to head off any possible suspicions. Joscelyn was skeptical, but she didn't push it any further for the moment. So they allegedly met through a suicide support group.

22:34 That's what Wesley said. Had he been having mental health issues. I don't know. The only thing I know is that he threatened suicide earlier when Jocelyn tried to break up with him. But I don't know if he was having suicidal ideation or not. And you would think that Jocelyn is living so far away from him that she would be concerned by this, right. I'm not sure if she really believed that was how they met, or if she even believed that Wesley was, you know, in a suicide support group. After that incident, Joscelyn and Jennifer started doing some digging. A Google search turned up Shamika's parents address in Lynchburg, and that summer the two of them would drive out at night and regularly find Wesley's car parked outside. Joscelyn pushed for marriage counseling, but Wesley refused. He said, I'm not sitting and paying some stupid asshole to tell me what I should and shouldn't do. In two thousand and five, Joscelyn's sister Laura came to visit over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

23:31 Joscelyn took her sister for a drive out to Smith Mountain Lake to show her the house. They pulled over on the opposite shore first to take in the view of the house from a distance. Looking across the lake, they could see Wesley and Shamika dancing together on the deck. Joscelyn still wasn't ready to end things. She told Laura she was seventy percent sure she wanted a divorce, but that she could still forgive him if he came back to her and was willing to make an effort. Joscelyn she started seeing a counselor and taking medication to treat her growing depression and anxiety. Wesley meanwhile kept a line of communication open. He would send Joscelyn occasional emails, flirtatious, warm, sometimes hinting that he wanted to get back together. The emails would give Joscelyn hope, but then she would be left disappointed when he didn't follow through. Jennifer saw through Wesley's outreach, telling Joscelyn that he was just keeping in contact with her because he was a control freak. She said, he wants to keep the wool over your eyes while he's hiding his assets and establishing his financial future.

24:38 I'm a little confused. Are they separated? I mean, I think they were living in separate places, right. He moved out, he took a job three and a half hours away. He was spending time at the lake House. So it wasn't like they ever had a moment where they were like, let's separate and you go your way and I go mine. I think it's just that they gradually started living separate lives. And so they weren't seeing each other, not very often. So Wesley would come to Lynchburg on the weekends and he would see Shamika, but he wouldn't see Joscelyn. I think that's true, or maybe Shamika would come out to see him, and maybe just to clarify for everybody the living situation at this point in time. So, Jocelyn was still living in their original house, which was near Lynchburg, was actually forest but near Lynchburg. The Lake House was like an hour away from that location. And then Wesley's job was in Chesapeake, which was like three and a half hours in the other direction, So he was renting an apartment there at the time. And Shamika I think she was living in Lynchburg, but you know, I'm sure they were. She was probably traveling out to Chesapeake sometimes.

25:39 They were seeing each other regularly. I'm sure Joscelyn and Wesley still saw each other occasionally, but probably not very often at this. Point, Okay, so it wasn't like every weekend he would come back to their house and see her. At some point, Joscelyn hired a private investigator to keep tabs on Wesley. The reports came back confirming what she already suspected. He and Shamika were still very much together. Reading the reports only deepened her depression. She knew the marriage was effectively over, but she still couldn't bring herself to officially end it. Then, one night in March two thousand and six, Joscelyn and Jennifer took a drive out to the lake house. Through a bedroom window, they could see Wesley and Shamika inside getting ready for bed. They watched them climb in together and begin having sex. Something snapped in Joscelyn. She walked up to the window and pounded on the glass, shouting, I see you, Wesley. Ernest.

26:34 Wesley and Shamika bolted upright. Jocelyn gave them a moment to register what was happening, and then added having fun, enjoy. Then she and Jennifer ran back to the car and drove away. Jennifer later said that this was what Joscelyn needed to finally make her move. She filed for divorce in June two thousand and six, citing adultery, cruelty, desertion, and separation in excess of one year. Wesley told his lawyer the complaint had blindsided him and that the allegations were ludicrous. His counterclaim denied everything. It was Joscelyn, he said, who had been distant and uncommunicative. He acknowledged that Shamikhah was a friend, but denied having an affair. At the same time, He claimed that Joscelyn had actually encouraged him to be intimate with other women because she had no interest in a physical relationship.

27:25 With him, So when Joscelyn had caught them in bed together, she didn't think to take a picture. I don't think so. No. Joscelyn refused to engage with him directly about any of it. From that point, all communication went through their lawyers. She changed the locks on the house and installed the security system. Her sister Laura visited as often as she could that year. Joscelyn had never been the most meticulous housekeeper, so Laura would pitch in with cleaning, laundry and dishes. One thing she noticed that was different, Joscelyn was now diligent about locking her doors. As the two thousand six two thousand seven school year got under way, Wesley landed a new job at Great Bridge High School in Chesapeake as assistant principal. He and Shamika were still together. Around the same time, he sent Joscelyn a letter as a last ditch effort to manipulate her, quote, I am so very sorry for the turmoil in our lives over the last few years. I want to grow old with you. I am a broken man, ready to get my life back, and I need you, but Joscelyn was not having it. In November eighth, two thousand six, Joscelyn came home from work to find her house had been broken into. The thermis dad had been switched off, leaving the place cold. The pipe to the gas fireplace had been cut, along with the water pipes to the pool heater. A long list of items was missing, a bike, a camera, a shotgun, financial paperwork, a safe, a computer,

28:57 fishing gear, and some of her clothing. Also gone were things that couldn't be replaced, family photos, furniture, gifts from her grandmother, her diplomas, and some of her personal journals. The journals worried her most. They contained her private thoughts, things she'd shared with her therapist, and her plans for ending the marriage. In Wesley's hands, that information could make him more dangerous. Through their lawyers, Wesley claimed he hadn't been there himself, but had hired movers to retrieve his belongings, but it was hard to imagine a professional moving company would have done this sort of damage. Joscelyn tried every avenue to get her possessions back but nothing worked. After that, she became even more cautious. She started doing drive bys for her house before pulling in at night, scanning for anything that looked off. She assembled go bags a change of clothes, copies of important documents, cash, and stashed them in four different locations, her car, her office, Jennifer's house, and her mother's house. She also decided that if the legal process wasn't going to get her belongings back, she'd do it herself. A hearing was scheduled for December fifth, and Joscelyn anticipated the judge would issue orders restricting both her and Wesley from entering the other's property. She wanted to make her move before that happened. On December fourth, she and Jennifer rented a truck and drove out to the lake House, hoping Wesley wouldn't be there, and he wasn't.

30:25 They went through the house thoroughly, but the garage and an outbuilding were locked. They found none of Joscelyn's missing items anywhere they could access, so Joscelyn and Jennifer loaded up a bunch of Wesley's belongings instead, a large screen TV, a DVD player, a wooden trunk, a sofa, a love seat, a recliner, a mattress, tools, a toolbox, a tool belt, a coffee table, a rug, documents, and more. The plan was to use them as bargaining chips. This is a horrible it's really not a good plan. The next day, the judge she issued his ruling. He restricted them from entering each other's properties. He also left Wesley with a financial burden of paying most of the six thousand dollars a month lake house mortgage payment himself, increasing the financial stress on him even more. Six thousand dollars a month, and that's just for the lake house, not his apartment. Yeah, holy moly.

31:21 And their income. Their combined income between Joscelyn and Wesley was around two hundred thousand dollars, which is not nearly enough to pay a mortgage night much but yeah, plus rand plus another house. Yeah, he was in over his head. One evening in February two thousand and seven, Jocelyn called Jennifer in a panic. Wesley was outside her house. She had seen the doorknob turning, then spotted him through a window. She was terrified. Jennifer jumped in her car and headed over. When she arrived, the house was dark. Joscelyn had turned off every light. There was no sign of Wesley outside. Jennifer steeled herself and approached the front door, key in hand. She was reaching for the lock when Wesley stepped out of the shadows less than two feet away, dressed entirely in black clothing, a hoodie pulled tight around his face.

32:11 Jennifer tried to keep her voice steady. Oh there you are. Joss called me and said you were out here. That's why I'm here. It figures she would call you, Wesley replied. Jennifer told him that Joscelyn didn't want to see or speak with him, and that everything should go through their lawyers. Wesley pushed back, saying they were wasting money, the divorce proceedings were going to destroy both of their finances and credit, and that he was just there to talk some sense into her. Jennifer held firm Joscelyn wasn't going to come out, and she didn't want him there. Wesley eventually asked if Jennifer would at least relay a few things to Joscelyn on his behalf, and she agreed. They walked to her car so she could write down what he wanted to say, and that's when she noticed that Wesley had some kind of satchel hanging behind his back. As they talked, he kept moving his hand toward it. She worried that it contained a gun. She wrote down his lengthy message, keeping one eye on the bag. Wesley talked to Jennifer for nearly three hours before finally leaving. Jennifer went inside to check on Joscelyn, still uneasy about whether he might have gotten in somehow, He hadn't. Joscelyn was safe.

33:22 Really strange and terrifying behavior from Wesley. To Joscelyn must have been horrified for those three hours, thinking that her friend was going to be heard. Yeah, well, I think Jennifer was terrified too, because she really probably thought he had a gun there, and he was acting strangely, been talking for three hours, you know, giving her this message to write down for Joscelyn. It's just really scary behavior. A look at Wesley's finances painted a grim picture. His mortgage payment alone ran six thousand dollars a month. He was carrying over one hundred thousand dollars in credit card debt, and calls from bill collectors had become a regular occurrence. All told, he was more than a million dollars in debt, an unsustainable position for someone whose combined household income with Joscelyn had been about two hundred thousand dollars a year.

34:12 Wesley put the lake House on the market in two thousand seven, hoping a sale would help him get back on solid ground. By the time, he couldn't have been worse. The housing bubble had started a burst, and the only offers that came in would have left him taking a loss. In June, he met with a realtor and signed a six month listing agreement, pricing the home at two point one million dollars. WOW. In Chesapeake, Wesley had been renting a room from a man named Neil Phillips. The arrangement ended badly. Wesley exploded at Philip's wife during a disagreement, threatening to break her hand in a door. He reportedly told his landlord bitches like my wife and your wife should be dead.

34:53 Ugh. When he finally moved out, he left the room trashed and carved his initials into his windows. That's a real, real mature behavior. Ah. The weekend before Jocelyn died, she was in good spirits. She had always loved the holidays, and this year was no different. On Friday the fourteenth, she and her friend Maza Monthsey drove three and a half hours to West Virginia to deliver a Christmas gift to Joscelyn's mom new bedroom furniture that's very generous. Sunday, December sixteenth, Joscelyn went shopping with her close friend and co worker Marcy Shephard, picking up gifts for her team at Chenworth and for Jennifer's kids. She and Marcy made plans to get together again on Wednesday evening. On Monday the seventeenth, Joscelyn called her mother, who later described her demeanor as bubbly and laughing, looking forward to the time off work. After hanging up, Joscelyn called Jennifer to talk about getting together to bake Christmas cookies before Joscelyn headed to West Virginia for the break.

35:55 That same Monday, Wesley esta colleague at Great Bridge High School, a teacher and wrestling coach named David Hall, if he could borrow his maroon Chevy Silverado for a couple of days to move some furniture. David agreed, taking Wesley's silver Honda Accord in exchange. Tuesday night, Jocelyn took her entire team out to Logan's Roadhouse for a Christmas dinner and picked up the tab for everyone. Wesley, meanwhile, stayed laid at school to supervise a basketball game. Wednesday, the nineteenth was a full day for Joscelyn. She was at work by seven thirty am. That morning, she drove her colleague and friend, Masa to the Amherst County Sheriff's office to help her resolve a misdemeanor identity theft and fraud charge.

36:40 That charge stemmed from an incident where Mesa used the social Security number of a co worker to have that woman's utilities turned off while she was out of town. The coworker whose identity she stole was dating Masa's ex husband. I'd go into detail on this story only because it will become a little more important later. As maysa it was a little bit shady, like it sounds like she got this woman's social Security number through through work, like through their job, and was out for revenge on her for some reason. Well yeah, because she was seeing her ex husband. Yeah. Not cool. After their trip to the Sheriff's office. Joscelyn and Masa were back at Jenworth by ten thirty. Joscelyn had back to back meetings through the afternoon, then left the office for a six pm appointment with her counselor, Susan row Rich. Susan noted that Joscelyn seemed genuinely happy, more so than she'd seen her in a long time.

37:34 She was believed that the divorce was almost wrapped up. She was excited about a new position she'd accepted in Jenworth's corporate fraud's division, which came with a six figure salary. Marcy had been exchanging texts with Joscelyn throughout the day, confirming their plans for that evening. Just before seven thirty, Joscelyn texted to ask if Marcy was around. Marcy replied yes, but no response came back. After a time, Marcy followed up again, but there was still no response. Marcy put her eight year old son to bed at eight thirty, then sent Joscelyn an email, thinking maybe the text weren't going through for some reason. Still nothing, She drove to CBS, sent another message from the parking lot, and left the store at nine oh eight, she had Joscelyn's Christmas gift in her car, Thinking their plans may have fallen through.

38:23 She swung by the Jenworth office to leave it on Joscelyn's desk so it would she would get it before the holiday break. When she still hadn't heard anything. By nine forty five, Marcy drove out to Joscelyn's house for green Honda was in the driveway, but the house was completely dark. Marcy knocked on the front door, there was no answer and no sound from inside. She drove home and sent another text. She was worried, and she asked Joscelyn to please call her, but Marcy didn't hear from her friend that night. We'll be back after a break.

39:03 Thursday morning, Marcy was up around seven and texted Joscelyn again. When she still hadn't heard back, she set up an alert on her phone to notifire when Joscelyn logged into Jenworth's instant messaging system, an easy way to confirm that her friend had made it safely to work. By ten o'clock, the alarm still hadn't been triggered. She called someone on Joscelyn's team and was told that they were expecting her, but she still hadn't come in. Joscelyn was never late, she was usually the first one through the door. At eleven thirty, Marcy drove back to Joscelyn's house. The green Honda was exactly where it had been the night before. Marcy knocked, then pounded on the front door. She walked the perimeter of the house, knocking on every window she could reach, but curtains and blinds covered them all. She called work again, Still no word from Joscelyn. Then Marcy remembered that Joscelyn kept a spare key in a shed near the pool. Marcy was on the phone with their mutual colleague, Mesa Muncy when she retrieved it. She tried it on the front door first, but it didn't fit.

40:08 She went around to the back door and it opened. A wave of heat rolled out at Marcy, heavy enough to fog her glasses. She called Joscelyn's name. As her lenses cleared, she saw Joscelyn lying motionless on the living room floor. She hung up with Mesa and dialed nine one one. Soon Masa arrived at the house, followed by two Bedford County deputies who entered the house, while Marcy and Masa waited anxious and upset in the driveway. Joscelyn was dressed as if she had just walked through the door, jeans, brown shoes, a sweater and her winter coat. She was lying on her back on the floor, a dark red pool surrounding her head, a revolver lying by her side.

40:51 Joscelyn was cold to the touch, her lips and finger nails blue. She was long past the point where CPR would help. Gary Babb, the sarge in charge of investigations for the Bedford County Sheriff's Department, noticed a sheet of paper between the body and the front door. He put on gloves and turned it over. It read, Mom, I just can't take it anymore. I have tried so hard to be strong, but it's too hard to continue. The ups and downs are too much to deal with. I keep trying to appear as though I am doing fine, but the bad days are so overwhelming and lonely. My new love will never leave the family. Wes has buried us in debt and starting over is too much. I am so sorry, Mom, I am so sorry everyone, Joscelyn.

41:37 The note was typed and it wasn't signed. The name at the bottom was just more typed text that was unusual, maybe the first indication that this was a scene stage to look like a suicide. A couple of things jump out at me, for she has her winter coat on m and the note mentions a new love, my new love will never leave the family. Yeah, this is pretty cryptic, isn't it? And also the use of will never leave the family without pronouns That will become more relevant later. But it's kind of odd that it would be worded that way, wouldn't it? Oh? Is it because whoever wrote the note wanted to imply that she was having a relationship, possibly with a woman.

42:18 I think they wanted to leave it open to either Oh jeez. Walking through the house, Sergeant Bab found the thermostat was pushed all the way to its highest setting ninety degrees down the hall, Joscelyn's beloved black lab Rufus was in its crate, panting heavily from the heat and a lack of water. Her two cats were nowhere to be found. In the primary bedroom, a cabinet drawer was opened three or four inches and an unopened condom package was lying on the floor beside it. In the bathroom trash, there was an empty wrapper for a second condom. The house showed no signs of forced entry. Outside, some of Jocelyn's friends had gathered in the driveway after Marci and Maza started making calls. Bab spoke with Jennifer Kerns, who immediately asked, so he finally killed her? Bab asked who she meant. She explained that Joscelyn's estranged husband, Wesley Ernest, a PhD and assistant principal at a high school in Chesapeake, had been separated from Joscelyn for two to three years, and that they were in the middle of an ugly divorce.

43:22 When investigators reached Joscelyn's sister, Laura, she immediately mentioned Wesley as well. Through her tears, she warned the investigator, you will not break him. He is narcissistic and has a borderline personality. Back inside, investigators took a closer look at the scene. Joscelyn's body didn't look posed exactly, but it didn't look natural either. It appeared to have been straightened. The assistant medical examiner noted that blood had dried, flowing uphill across Joscelyn's left cheek, defying gravity. The only explanation was that Jocelyn's head had been resting in a different position immediate meely after she was shot, and then someone moved her. More telling were her strands of hair. They were spread out and pinned beneath her head in a way that suggested she had been dragged, and a streak of blood across the floor also indicated that her body had been moved by a foot or two. It appeared that the bullet had entered Joscelyn's head from above and slightly behind her right ear, exiting through her left temple near the corner of her eye. A search of the primary bedroom closet turned up a large box of assortied ammunition, forty caliber shells, twelve twenty and twenty two gage shotgun shells, and forty caliber bullets. None of it matched the three point fifty seven revolver found lying next to her body.

44:45 Also found in the house were several handwritten spiral bound journals, pages and pages of Joscelyn's writing in her own hand, which raised an obvious question. If she had written that much by hand, why would her final suicide note be typed. Investigators began piecing together what they believed had actually happened. Joscelyn had likely arrived home around seven point thirty, dropped her bag near a chair, and disarmed the security system. She was running away from her killer when the trigger was pulled. Death was virtually instant. She fell on her side, but the killer turned her onto her back, dragged her body roughly two feet across the floor, wiped down the murder weapon and placed it next to her body. Then he dropped the typed note on the floor and cranked the thermostat to ninety degrees, hoping the heat would make it harder to determine the time of death. Then he left, locking the door behind him. The scene was clearly staged.

45:44 The condoms suggested an attempt to make it look like a sexual encounter gone wrong. The note referencing my new love was meant to further throw investigators off track. Investigators examined both printers in Jocelyn's home. Neither was i operational at the time of her death. A search of her computer turned up no document containing the text of the suicide note. Wherever it had been typed, it wasn't there. No usable fingerprints were found on either the gun or the shell casing. The note appeared clean to the naked eye, but investigators treated it with ninhydrin, a chemical that reacts to the amino acids left behind by human skin. Two latent prints emerged, both from the same finger They didn't match Joscelyn when compared to Wesley's prints. One showed ten points of similarity and the other showed fifteen. While there is no universal minimum standard for fingerprint identification, ten to sixteen points of similarity are generally considered by forensic investigators to be sufficient for a match. The next day's autopsy reinforced that this was not a suicide. There was no blood spatter on Joscelyn's hands, which you would expect if she had shot herself at close range. There was stipling around the entrance wound, but it was not a contact wound.

47:04 The medical examiner determined that the weapon had been held somewhere between two inches and two feet away when it discharged. The medical examiner concluded that death would have been instantaneous. There was no possibility that Joscelyn had moved her own body after falling. Were her hands checked for gunshot residue. That is a great question. I did not read anywhere whether she was checked for gunshot residue or not. Sergeant Bab tried several times on December twentieth to reach Wesley, finally succeeding at seven that evening. He told Wesley that Joscelyn was dead, that he'd like him to come in for an interview. Wesley pushed back, saying he was tired and hadn't been feeling well. Could he come in around nine the next morning. Bab pushed him, but Wesley wouldn't budge.

47:51 They made arrangements to meet the next morning. Wesley never asked how Joscelyn died. In fact, he didn't ask anything at all. This morning, Bab waited. Nine o'clock, came and went. An hour later, his phone rang. It was an attorney named Joey Sanzone, who informed Bab that he was representing Wesley and that he would arrive at five pm that afternoon. When they finally showed up, it was after six. Wesley walked them through his Wednesday. It was pretty uneventful, he said. He went to work that morning, there had been a fight at the school, and afterward he felt tired. And unwell. He left school around four PM, went home and went to bed. He didn't go anywhere that evening, and he didn't talk to anyone. Remember that Wesley worked and lived in Chesapeake, about three and a half hours from Joscelyn's house.

48:43 A timeline was tight, but if she was killed around seven thirty five, the time that her security system was disarmed, he could have made it back. When asked what Joscelyn was like, Wesley said she was the greatest woman, a great person, a great athlete. I broke her heart. I heard her. When asked about their marriage and the claims of Wesley's infidelity, he said that Joscelyn had been fine with him seeing other women. In fact, she had encouraged him to do so. Sure Wesley he acknowledged having purchased a three fifty seven Magnum at some point, but said that it had been a gift for Joscelyn for her protection. When investigators asked what type of vehicle he drove, Wesley appeared to become rattled. The truck that he'd arrived in, he said, wasn't his. He had borrowed it from her friend to move some furniture.

49:32 If your call. He borrowed a truck from his coworker on Wednesday, and he still had it at this point. He agreed to provide a DNA sample and fingerprints, but refused to take a polygraph. Police questioned Marcy Shepherd on Saturday, December twenty second. They had some questions about her movements. She had been to the house the night Joscelyn disappeared, then returned the next day to find her body. Marcy told them what she knew about Joscelyn's state of mind in the weeks before her death, Anne about her fear of Wesley. Then investigators asked about the suicide note, specifically the reference to a new love. Did she have any idea who that might be referring to? Marcy looked down at her feet. She was quiet for a moment. Then she said that was me. I loved Joscelyn Earnest Oh wow.

50:24 Marcy explained that she and Joscelyn had begun working together in August two thousand and five and developed a close friendship over time. Marcy realized her feelings had grown into something more, and she asked Joscelyn if she felt the same way. Joscelyn said no, and Marcy accepted that they would just be friends, but eventually it did grow into something more. After a company Christmas party, Marcy had gone home with Joscelyn and they kissed on the couch. Both were still married at the time, and they didn't pursue it any further. There were a couple of other times they kissed, Marcy said, but nothing beyond that. She said that they had a deep emotional attachment. When investigators asked if they could take her BlackBerry to review the text messages that she and Joscelyn had exchanged, Marcy refused, explaining that she was afraid of Wesley and didn't want to be without her phone. When she did finally give them her phone two weeks later, some text messages between Marcy and Joscelyn from the night of the murder had been deleted.

51:23 Marcy claimed that if anything was deleted, it had been unintentional on her part. Among the most important items recovered from Joscelyn's home were seventeen spiral bound notebooks filled with her journal entries. Detectives worked through all seventeen notebooks, One entry, written in August two thousand and five stood out Joscelyn wrote about her growing fear of Wesley. She addressed her family directly, saying that if she were ever found dead, know that he killed me, because I would never kill myself. My guess is that he shot me and then killed himself. Another entry, she was even more direct if I die, Wesley killed me, and he probably shot me. This was over two years before her death.

52:09 Just so tragic when we hear this all the time in these cases where somebody just they just know that if something happens to them, it was the husband. No. I remember you saying earlier when they had broken into each other's houses, that some of her diaries were stolen. Yeah, So do you think that he had these and then he brought them back or he hadn't. I think she probably had others as well, so I don't think it was the same. On January tenth, two thousand and eight, Wesley borrowed David Hall's truck again. David told him that he needed it back by six and Wesley said, no problem. He took the truck and had it back to David on time later that day. But over the next few days, David realized something about the truck had changed. The right felt different to him. He checked the tires and found they weren't his top of the line b F Goodrich All Terrain Radiant, which he'd put on the truck just over a year before. They'd been replaced with lower quality Dunlops.

53:07 Not a Dunlop. But how rude, I know, really rude. He called Wesley, who explained that he had run over a board with nails in it, and he felt so bad that he bought new tires to make it right. If you steal your friend's truck, you put better tires on it, not cheaper tires. Yeah, that would make sense. But at the same time, I don't think I would notice if someone swapped my tires on it. I think I could drive on it forever and I would never realize that, oh, there are different tires on this car. Well the dummy. If he would have replaced it with the same tires, he might not have noticed. But I would guess, you know, if you're changing the type of tire that it would be more noticeable.

53:47 Yeah. Later, David Hall came forward to let the police know about the incident. They tracked the tire purchase to a Cramer tire shop, in Virginia Beach. The tire store manager remembered Wesley coming into the showroom saying he needed new tires. Although he used the name Tom Dunbar, the incident stood out because when technicians put the truck on the lift, they could see that the tires were all in great shape. They asked him, are you sure you want new tires? These tires are in perfect condition and they're much better than the dunlops. Wesley insisted they replaced the tires. He paid six hundred eighty eight dollars in cash and drove off with the new tires, apparently never expecting that David would notice. Investigators interviewed current and former colleagues of Wesley's to get to know him better. At Oscar Smith Middle School, where Wesley had previously worked, principal Linda Scott described him as arrogant and demanding, particularly toward women. She told investigators that he had hit on her young adult daughter. Teachers there said Wesley had given everyone the impression that he was independently wealthy and had never been married, that he was worth around five million dollars and didn't need to work, but because he loved education, a guy at great Bridge High School, where he'd been an assistant principle for about a year and a half. The story was much the same.

55:09 Wesley had told colleagues he was single and wealthy. Two teachers, Molly Sullivan and Sonia Stevens, both reported offering condolences after hearing his wife had died. In both cases, his response took them aback. What the fuck are you talking about? He shouted, How many times do I have to tell you I'm not married? It's just bizarre, isn't it. Yeah. Meanwhile, the search of Wesley's home turned up a collection of notes that caught investigator's attention. One referenced borrowing Dave's truck. Another read weather twelve, nineteen o seven, question mark gas up over the drive. Question mark the nineteenth was the date the night that Jocelyn was killed.

55:49 There were additional notes that suggested Wesley was already calculating what Joscelyn's death would free up financially. One said when can house be freed up? When can I access my account? By the end of February two thousand eight, investigators decided that they had enough evidence to make an arrest. They went to Shamika Wright's home where Wesley had been staying, and took him into custody. The following day, Wesley was suspended from his job without pay, pending the outcome of his trial. On April twenty first, two thousand eight, Wesley appeared at his preliminary hearing. Prosecutors laid out the primary pillars of their case. The fingerprints on the note matched Wesley, not Joscelyn. The note wasn't printed from her house. Joscelyn's journals documented her fear of Wesley. The medical examiner testified that the gun had been too far from Joscelyn's head to be a suicide, and Joscelyn's therapists tested that she had been positive and upbeat just hours before she was killed.

56:51 The judge found a probable cause. In May, Wesley's bond was set at two hundred thousand dollars cash or four hundred thousand dollars in real estate. He was released on June fifth to await his trial. Had the lake house sold, No, he was not able to sell us. How he was able to put up the real estate exactly. We'll be back after a break. Nearly a year later, on the evening of Friday, March twentieth, two thousand and nine, with Wesley's trial still months away, one of the residents living on Smith Mountain Lake looked out to see Wesley's dream house engulfed in flames. Sixty firefighters responded, but it was too late to salvage the house.

57:39 Nobody could locate Wesley until the next day, when he answered a call from his lawyer. He was driving near Washington, d C. Nearly four hours away, he said. Fire investigators pieced together what they believed had happened. It appeared Wesley had been refinishing furniture, not in the garage, where you would expect that kind of work, but in the great room of the home. Rags soaked in wood stain appeared to have been left to smolder like a slow fuse. The circumstances pointed toward arson. Wesley had gotten a foreclosure notice, he still owed nine hundred and ninety thousand dollars on the mortgage, and his homeowner's insurance was set to expire soon. Despite the suspicious circumstances, the insurance company paid out over a million dollars after settling the remaining loan. Wesley walked away with roughly one hundred thousand dollars, and he still owned the land, which had significant value as a lakefront property.

58:34 I looked up on Zillo. The one and a half acre property, which still hasn't been built on, is currently estimated by Zillo to be worth over seven hundred thousand dollars. I think maybe one of the most shocking parts of this case is that the insurance company paid out a million dollars on this what looked like a really suspicious claim. Yeah, so they never asked for the money back. No, and no one was ever charged in connection with the fire. The trial date was pushed back several times before it finally got underway in March twenty ten. The judge delivered two key pre trial rulings that shaped what the jury would hear. First, Joscelyn's journals the seventeen notebooks, including the entries where she had written that if she turned up dead, Wesley killed her, were ruled inadmissible because Joscelyn couldn't be cross examined. The judge determined that admitting them would violate Wesley's constitutional right to confront his accuser.

59:29 The journals were considered hearsay. The lake house fire was also ruled off limits. Its cause had been deemed inconclusive, and the judge found no sufficient link between the fire and Joscelyn's death to justify including it. I am not a legal scholar, but both of those rulings bother me. I understand you can't confront your accuser if they're no longer alive, but still like it's Jocelyn's frame in mind exactly. And the fire also, while it may not been directly connected, would definitely go to motive where his financial struggles, the position he was in that led him to do that. It was all part of why he killed Joscelyn.

1:00:11 I can see the fire more than the journal. Yes, agreed, the defense strategy was straightforward, The evidence was circumstantial, and investigators had been too quick to focus on Wesley while overlooking people closer to Joscelyn. They pointed particularly at Mesa, muncie, who knew the code to Joscelyn's security system, had stayed overnight at her house frequently and had spent the night the weekend before Joscelyn died. Masa had hoped to get together with Joscelyn on December nineteenth to wrap gifts before learning she had plans with Marci. The defense floated the theory that Joscelyn had learned details about Mesa's identity theft charge that could have put Masa's job at risk enough they suggested to give her a motive. There was one piece of evidence that complicated things for the prosecution. Dried blood drops found in Joscelyn's guest bathroom came from a mail but not Wesley. The sample didn't match any of the twenty five people connected to the case. It was never explained. Wesley's defense team also hammered on the fingerprint evidence, arguing that it was unreliable and even if those were Wesley's fingerprints on the note, he had lived in the house with Joscelyn for years and she had taken a bunch of things from his lake house. Shamika Wright testified that she and Wesley had been in a relationship since two thousand and four and were still together. She said she had spoken to him the morning of December nineteenth, but couldn't reach him that evening. She attributed it to

1:01:42 the spotty cell reception at his apartment. Wesley made an unexpected decision, taking the stand in his own defense. He told the jury he had been at his apartment in Chesapeake on the night of December nineteenth, suffering from seasonal allergies. He hadn't gone anywhere. The jury began deliberate raiding on Monday, April fifth. Less than six hours later, they returned a verdict guilty a first degree murder and a felony firearms charge. The jury set the sentence life in prison, a one hundred thousand dollars fine, and an additional three years for the firearms conviction. In April twenty ten, Joscelyn's mother, father, and sister filed a civil suit against Wesley Shamikha and his lawyers over the insurance proceeds from the Lake House fire under Virginia's slayer statute. They argued that Wesley had no right to profit directly or indirectly from Joscelyn's death. He had used the insurance payments to fund his legal defense. Then, on April eleventh, someone posted an anonymous comment on a local online news article about the case. Person claimed to have served on the jury and was pushing back against accusations from other commenters that they had convicted an innocent man.

1:02:55 The anonymous commenter mentioned reviewing a great deal of evidence during delivery, including Joscelyn's journals. Joscelyn's sister read the comment and immediately understood what it meant. The journals had been ruled inadmissible. They should never have been in the jury room. That's crazy that they got in there. When Wes's attorneys found out, they brought it to the judge, who ordered the Lynchburg News in advance to identify the anonymous commenter. The paper consulted with its lawyers and eventually complied. It turned out that the commenter actually was a jury member. The juror explained what had happened to the judge. The journals had been left in the deliberation room on a table with other evidence. Jurors picked them up and leafed through them. When they found something that caught their attention, they read it aloud to the group. The jurors said that before they looked at the journals, a couple of members had been on the fence about finding him guilty.

1:03:53 Further investigation confirmed that the journals had been mistakenly placed in the wrong box and taken to the jury room along with the admitted evidence. A special hearing was convened, where jurors acknowledged that they had read from the journals and that the contents had influenced their deliberations. Having no other choice, the judge threw out the guilty verdict in July twenty ten and set a new trial date for November. Isn't that crazy? Like just that it's crazy? But don't you think the jury should have known? I mean, if I'm a juror, it would have been weird, like, oh, I never remember hearing anything about these journals, but of course you're going to look they're there. They can only assume that they're.

1:04:33 Supposed to be there. Well, I guess if I was on a jury, Yeah, no, that can't. Be You and I might have a little different experience. But it's just crazy that that mistake was even made. And I think from everything I read, it was just an honest mistake. It wasn't like somebody was trying to try to get them in there. Huge mistake. Huge. The second trial gave the defense another opportunity to redirect suspicion towards Mercy, Shepherd or Mays. A month they zeroed in on inconsistencies in Marcy's account. On the day Joscelyn's body was discovered, Marcy had told police that she'd gone to the house the previous evening around eight forty Later, she said it had been after nine thirty. Wesley's attorney hammered on the discrepancy. There was also text messages sent from Joscelyn the evening of December nineteenth that had been deleted from Marcy's phone. Marcy testified that if she deleted them, it was unintentional. After considerable debate, the judge allowed Marcy to tell the jury about her fear of Wesley. She testified that Joscelyn had warned her directly if Wesley ever found out about the two of them, he would kill them both. Marcy said that she had stopped walking her dog for an entire year after Joscelyn told her that.

1:05:50 It was also why she had refused to hand over her phone to police. The day Joscelyn's body was found, a criminal profiler and forensic linguist took the stand to testify that he had analyzed seventy seven pieces of Wesley's writing two hundred and fifty three pieces of Joscelyn's, then compared both against the suicide note His conclusion was that the writing style of the note was much more consistent with Wesley's writing style than with Joscelyns. The unidentified male blood found in the guest bathroom sync, along with stray hairs, remained an effective argument for the defense. A DNA analyst from the State Forensic Lab confirmed the blood came from a male who was not Wesley. It had been tested against twenty five people connected to the case entered into the CODIS federal and state databases, and still no match was found. Wesley's attorney leaned hard on this, arguing it pointed to a third party, a real killer the investigation had never seriously pursued. I mean, this is very compelling evidence, right, Yeah.

1:06:57 I don't know how big the blood droplets were. There's no sense of you know, they could have been there for who knows how long. But yeah, if I was Leslie's defense attorney, I would have loved hearing this and would have done everything I could to get it out there. The defense also called a new witness who hadn't testified in the first trial, Wayne Stewart, a Taco Bell employee who worked at a location in Chesapeake near Great Bridge High School. He testified that on the evening of December nineteenth, two thousand and seven, Wesley had come through the drive through around six o'clock and ordered a grande meal, ten hard tacos and ten soft tacos. He remembered, he said, because the order had been something of a hassle. If this was true, there's no way that Wesley could have made it to Joscelyn's house, three and a half hours away by the time she was killed, likely between seven thirty and eight pm.

1:07:49 This little detail is just too funny not to take a short pause. You know. I'll admit, like I had to do this a couple of takes because it made me laugh so hard. Well, first, I it's funny that so his claim is that he didn't feel well and he just went home by himself. The energies he didn't have, right, you know, right. But you know you're going home by yourself to not be with anyone else, and you're ordering ken hard. Yeah, it seems a little. Extreme, right, And then everyone knows what taco bell does to you. So that's what made me laugh. But now I'm gonna want Taco Bell later, Yes, me too. On cross examination, though, the prosecutor poked holes in Wayne's story.

1:08:31 It was revealed that Wesley came back to the Taco Bell about a week later after Joscelyn's death and asked Wayne to write a statement about his visit. Wayne did so, despite being fuzzy on the details. Here's a short exchange between the prosecutor and Wayne Stewart. You remember mister Ernest coming through and ordering that. Meal, Yes, sir. You don't know whether or not it's on the nineteenth, though, do you, sir? Not really, sir. Do you remember being interviewed by the Bedford County Sheriff's. Department, Yes, sir. In fact, you told them that you probably shouldn't have signed that statement, isn't that correct? Yes, sir. I thought it was helping him out because I thought he was losing his job or something like that.

1:09:11 If I would have known it was anything like. This, you wouldn't have signed it, would you. No, sir. Wesley took the stand again in the second trial. Just like in the first trial, he held up well under cross examination, keeping his composure through the hours of tough questioning. He repeated his claim that Joscelyn had encouraged him during their marriage to sleep with other women, that it was her idea, not his, and that he had resisted. He testified that he hadn't spoken to Joscelyn face to face without attorneys being present since June two thousand and five, that he no longer had a key to her house, and that he hadn't even known that she had a security system, much less the code. After the first day of questioning, Wesley, the lead prosecutor, went home feeling defeated.

1:09:57 Wesley had come across as relaxed com that and sincere Then during the night, something came to him. Joscelyn had been keeping a detailed personal timeline of her life on large butcher block paper and exercise her therapist had assigned to her. In late August two thousand and seven, she had brought the timeline to a therapy session in a state of fear and anger. Someone had broken into her home and added new entries to it. She felt violated. The added entries appear to have been written by Wesley. He had written them in the first person, assuming Joscelyn's voice. The fabricated entries were all very complimentary toward Wesley and supported his story that Joscelyn had told him to sleep with other women. Here are a few examples. In nineteen ninety five to ninety six. Kept telling Wesley to sleep with someone else and come home to me. Nineteen ninety seven, kept telling Wes, I don't want to be with you sexually.

1:10:57 Nineteen ninety eight, it's okay too. Care of me as always two thousand and one. Very understanding husband with me, spending late hours at work. Two thousand and five. West kept trying to talk to me, but I just shut him out. So are these in his handwriting? I think they were in different handwriting than Joscelyn's writing. I don't know if they ever analyzed the writing or not, but yeah, I think it was pretty clearly hit his writing. The prosecutor decided to confront Wesley about the timeline. Wesley would either have to deny writing the entries or admit that he had broken into Joscelyn's home four months before her murder and forged the entries in her own voice, exactly what the killer had done with the suicide note.

1:11:41 When the prosecutor asked about the timeline and how he'd managed to get inside Joscelyn's home to write those entries. Wesley didn't deny it. Instead, he turned to the jury and smiled, or more of an arrogant smirk, as some described it. He explained that one of the windows in Joscelyn's house had been replaced when he had still lived there, but the locks had never been put back on, which allowed him to slip through the window without Joscelyn's knowledge. Surprised, he admitted that it's shocking. The courtroom went quiet. The prosecutor was stunned. Wesley had just admitted in front of the jury to breaking into Joscelyn's house and forging her personal writing, and he'd done it with a smirk on his face.

1:12:24 Which is so shocking to me. Someone who was obviously very arrogant, very confident in his abilities to win over this jury, would make a blunder blunder like that. The case went to the jury on the afternoon of November nineteenth, twenty ten. Four hours later, they came back guilty of first degree murder and guilty of using a firearm in the commission of first degree murder. Wesley showed no reaction at sentencing. Joscelyn's mother, father, and sister each spoke about what losing her had cost them. Wesley's mother testified on his behalf. The jury then reconvened to consider the sentence. After an hour of deliberation, they returned with the same answer that the first jury had arrived at life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional three years for the firearms conviction. Wesley's attorneys filed an appeal.

1:13:17 A hearing was held in September twenty twelve, and the verdict was affirmed. In August twenty thirteen, the Virginia Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Wesley Ernest, now fifty six, is housed at Buckingham Correctional Center in Dilwyn, Virginia. Wesley and Shamika ended their relationship after the second trial. From his cell, Wesley has continued to assert his innocence and has offered his own account of what he believes happened to him in a pro say petition, meaning he filed it himself without an attorney, to the U. S. Supreme Court. In twenty twenty one, he laid out a series of wild allegations against the investigators and officials involved in his case.

1:13:59 He claimed that detectives colluded with a jail nurse to send a man in a white lab coat and stethoscope into his cell, posing as a doctor to tell him that he was dying, in hopes of extracting a deathbed confession. He alleged that while he was out on bond, detectives deliberately cut the gas line on his impounded car, intending for it to break down so police could arrest him for driving with an expired registration and revoke his bond. He claimed the lead detective got drunk and bragged about planting the fingerprint on the suicide note. And he alleged that in the spring of twenty fifteen, a professional assassination attempt was carried out against his defense attorney, Joey Sanzon, leaving him hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the head.

1:14:45 None of these allegations have been substantiated. It almost sounds like Wesley is sort of losing it a little bit here because these allegations are obviously just crazy, there's no basis in reality, and they're easily disproved. He has nothing to lose, though, right. I guess yeah. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Joscelyn Denise Ernest was thirty eight years old when she was killed. She was a gifted athlete who had spent her life chasing excellence on the basketball court, in the dojo, in the classroom, and in her career. She was loyal to the people she loved, devoted to her family, and, by every account of those who knew her, one of the first people you would want in your corner when things got tough. She had survived a difficult marriage, found her footing, and was looking forward to what was next.

1:15:34 She was excited about a new role at work, planning a holiday with her family, and making cookies with her best friend. She saw it coming, and she wrote it down, but sadly she couldn't stop Leslie Ernest from ending her life. Rest in peace, Joscelyn, just a couple of things I wanted to discuss before we wrap up. First of all, do you agree with the verdict? Yes? I figured I probably knew the answer to that. Do you think there's any possible though that someone else could have done it? I do think like. Marcie, I was going to ask when we were talking about the trial, what would Marcy's motive have been? I think the only motive for Marcie would have been unrequited love, Like she said that she loved Jocelyn and maybe, you know, Jocelyn didn't return that, and maybe that may are angry. She did do a couple of suspicious things, like I think you know, there were deleted text messages, which seems like that would be strange to do that by accident.

1:16:30 So those messages were never. Recovered now as far as I know, they were never. They were just embarrassing to her. Yeah, that could be too. And also we talked about it a little bit, but there were some blood drops from an unidentified male. And you said hairs. A couple of stray hairs I think were found as well. Yeah, I mean, I have no doubt that it was Wesling, but it does give me a little bit of pause. Yeah, it makes me wonder like if you looked in any random person's bathroom, would you find, like, you know, the from somebody that was not identified. Well, they weren't pat hairs, right, because she had a couple of cats and a dog and those were the only those would be the only lives that she would find, like in our primary bathroom.

1:17:10 Yeah, well, I'm assuming the blood that they tested they identified that that was human at least. I'm not sure about the hairs, but but yeah, there were a few weird things like that. But I also have no doubt that Wesley is guilty. One thing I'm wondering about, though, is the printer that they were able to deduce that the printers weren't like any printers that she had access to. What did they test any of the printers that Wesley had access to. Not that I know of. I didn't read anything about that. I think all I saw was that she had two printers, neither of them were even working at that time. So it couldn't it bess very relatable? Yeah, for sure. I do think it's also interesting that they were separated for quite a long time. As we kind of talked about their separation, wasn't It wasn't like a moment in time where they were like we are, our marriage is done. It was more gradual, you know.

1:17:57 He kind of moved into a different house, he got a job further way. But really they were separated for two maybe three years before she was killed. And I know there's no you know, there's no timeline when you're safe from someone like Wesley, but she must have thought like, how by this time, it's got to be you know, I've got to be safe for at least ten And. That's a very good jogame actually, But the divorce wasn't finalized exactly, and you know, even oftentimes when the divorce is finalized, people you know still Yeah, I. Think in this case, his motive was probably more financial, but there probably also was that narcissist control factor as well, like that rage of you know, she's moved on. But it seems like he was the one who kind of chose to move on. He found a new relationship before she.

1:18:45 Did, been in the relationship for literally years. Yeah, exactly, So I think it was probably more financial financially motivated. But yeah, I have. One question for you, and it's a little bit of a silly question, but the Taco Bell order, like the twenty two tacos. Do you think that he actually ordered the twenty tacos? And if he did, did he eat them or was it just no? I know, I'm being a little funny, but was it so someone would remember him? Yeah? Yeah, one single guy ordering twenty tacos. That's a little bozire. It's a great question. I am sure he ordered twenty tacos, not on that day, like probably a day before or a day after that. Maybe he was going to see Shamikha and her family or something, and so he ordered them then. But I don't know. I didn't see any other confirmation of what happened there. I suspect it was more that than doing it intentionally to try to establish an alibi. I think a week later he decided, oh, this could be a good alibi for me, So he went back to the Taco Bell and said, hey, would you sign this statement?

1:19:46 Maybe yeah, we'll never know. We'll never know. I love a Taco Bell, Hardshell, Taco Supreme. I'm such a lowbrow person as one of my favorites. Alright, I'll be right back. Since we launched our new website, Lovemarykill dot com, we can I. Just tell you how much I love our listeners. You're amazing. Well, we've gotten several really nice voice messages. You can go to our website and leave us a voice message, which is so great to hear your voices as well, you know, because here you steering ours. So it's just been really nice. We've gotten a lot of great messages and a.

1:20:27 Few drunk dials too, which those are also great. Those are great, Well, I wanted to. I was trying to think of, like, what could we do that would be fun with this new voice message capability. And I haven't talked to you about this yet, so you might you might shoot it down. But I was thinking we should have a little joke contest. You could tell us a joke on the voicemail and then we can decide which one is the funniest and we can play it on the air. Because when you're telling a joke, you know, you kind of need your delivery of it as well. So I thought that would be fun if people will have their favorite joke, a funny joke that they want to share with us. Okay, I think that's a good idea. Yeah, So go to lovemarykill dot com share your.

1:21:08 Best joke, Okay, try to make us laugh. I am a tough crowd, you are. And you and I sometimes have different opinions on what's funny and what. We really do. It's kind of shocked. We may have to pick two winners. We may have to pick one that I picked and one that. You, oh, is just someone get a prize? I don't know, should we give a prize. We would love giving prizes. I really do. All right, well let's give it. Let's give a little prize to the like. A one time thing, or we'll just do it, just do it once and see how it's I'm not sure how jokes people will do. I don't know either. We'll just see what happens. The last thing I wanted to do before we left, you gave me this idea. So credit to Tina, Well, credit to Anne, our lovely listener. And oh did Anne suggest this? She did. I had thought about doing it and then Anne was like, you guys should do this, and I was like, all right, well, well we'll do it.

1:21:51 Okay. So there is a trend apparently on TikTok right now of saying a phrase or different ways. It's the same phrase repeated for you. Have a phrase and then you you do it with your partner. Yeah, and you do it like once. So the things that I chose to do it are one is a disappointed voice, one angry, one sarcastic, and one flirty. Okay, so this is going to help our acting skills because sometimes we do true crime biter. I need I definitely need help your acting. So I picked a phrase that I thought was good for marriage, like one of the phrases you probably don't like to hear your spouse say, and that is we need to talk.

1:22:31 Okay, I've actually seen couples do this. Oh have you okay? So do you wanna do you want to go first? Sure? Do we need to talk? Disappointed? We're gonna like trade off? Sure you do disappointed that I'll do disappointed. We need to talk. That's pretty good. I'm just gonna say right up front, I'm gonna be terrible at this, but okay, here we go. We need to talk. That's good. All right, you're gonna do angry. I think I'll be good and angry. You know you say that, but you're not an angry person. And even though I am, it's fun to act. I neither was our yellers. Allright, just give it our best shot. We need to talk. Oh that's you convinced me. You sounded very angry there. We need to talk.

1:23:12 That was that was? That was good. I don't like angry. Let's too sarcastic. I don't know how. I don't really know sarcastic either. I'm very sarcastic. I just don't know how to say that sarcastic. We need to talk. It was stupid. Okay, uh, we need to talk. That was terrible. It was that was worse than they were both terrible. All right, let's do flirty. We need to talk. That was very good. We need to talk that way, all right? All right, Well that was fun. That was fun.

1:23:53 It was a little embarrassing because I think I'm a really bad actor actor. I could just do angry. That's the only, the only, uh the only mood I can do, but. No one wants to hear angry Rich though, like sweet, affable Rich. We are so grateful that you're here. Every listen, follow, review, and scher helps us keep this show going and reminds us how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community. So lucky. If you'd like to reach out, we're on social media, or you can email us at Lovemarykill at gmail dot com. And if you want even more content and you want to support us more than you already do, head to patreon dot com slash love Marykill. For just five dollars a month, you get early ad free episodes and a monthly bonus.

1:24:37 Episode until next time. Don't kill your husband and don't kill kill your husband. The topick to