Photos by ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Bedford County Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Wes Nance describes how Jocelyn Earnest was killed by a gunshot to the back of her head. Nance was making closing arguments in the trial of Wesley Earnest (background), who is accused of killing his estranged wife.

Bedford County Circuit Court Judge James Updike talks to the jury during Friday's closing arguments capping nine days of testimony in the Earnest trial.

Defense attorney Joseph Sanzone holds the .357-caliber used to kill Jocelyn Earnest. Wesley Earnest testified he gave the gun to his wife for protection.

BEDFORD -- Jurors in the murder trial of former high school administrator Wesley Earnest are to begin deliberating his fate Monday after a prosecutor used his closing argument Friday to describe Earnest as a "lying, cheating, up-to-his-eyeballs-in-debt, estranged husband."

"To find that man not guilty, you've got to believe a liar," Bedford Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Wes Nance told jurors as he sought to convince them that Earnest killed his wife, Jocelyn, in her Bedford County home and staged her death to look like a suicide.

Earnest was an assistant high school principal in Chesapeake at the time of his wife's 2007 death.

For his part, defense attorney Joseph Sanzone told jurors that investigators have accused the wrong man and they should have been more suspicious of Jocelyn Earnest's friends.

The closing arguments capped nine days of testimony in a case that has caught the attention of the national media, with representatives from CBS' "48 Hours" show and NBC's "Dateline" sitting in Bedford County Circuit Court to listen to testimony.

Jocelyn Earnest's friends reported finding her body on the living room floor of her Forest home on Dec. 20, 2007. She had been shot in the head. A suicide note lay nearby, as did a .357-caliber revolver. Prosecutors have contended for the more than two years since her death that Wesley Earnest left Chesapeake after work at Great Bridge High School on Dec. 19, drove to Bedford and shot his wife.

The deliberations that begin Monday come after jurors learned that Wesley Earnest's fingerprints were found on the typewritten suicide note found on the living room floor by Jocelyn Earnest's body, and the box for the gun that killed his estranged wife was found in the Campbell County home of his girlfriend.

"Those two fingerprints prove his guilt," Nance said. "There is no reasonable theory to explain them. [And] Wesley Earnest is the only person linked to that firearm. Nobody else in this world could have killed her."

Prosecutors also used a steady drip of circumstantial evidence to build their case against Earnest. Among the bits of testimony: Jocelyn Earnest's suicide note was typed, brief and emotionless, in contrast to the 16 notebooks of her journals, written in longhand and rich in the emotional details of her life, according to testimony; the two printers in her house were unplugged, and no copy of the suicide note could be found on either of the two laptop computers she used; her body had been dragged 2 feet or more from the spot where she fell after the fatal shot; and, in his 2003 will, Wesley Earnest listed among his possessions "my .357."

Prosecutors also made the most of testimony that Earnest had borrowed a friend's pickup truck days before Jocelyn Earnest's death and returned it weeks later with four brand new Dunlop tires, even though the BFGoodrich tires that had been on the truck were in excellent shape. The tire store manager who put the tires on the truck said the man who bought them identified himself as Tom Dunbar of Roanoke. Prosecutors argued that Earnest got rid of the original tires because he worried he had left tracks outside his estranged wife's home.

"He tried to cover his tracks," Nance said. "But he picked the wrong people to cover his tracks with."

Prosecutors said Earnest killed his wife of 12 years as a way to settle a contentious divorce proceeding, and with her out of the way he stood to assume control over their contested assets. Earnest was having financial problems and had borrowed more than $125,000 before his wife's death.

"Wesley Earnest told you he never misses an opportunity for advancement," Nance said. "Jocelyn Earnest had become a speed bump on his road to advancement."

While prosecutors have to persuade all 12 jurors of Earnest's guilt, defense attorney Sanzone needs only to create doubt in the mind of a single juror in order to win a mistrial. He tried to sow that doubt by offering an alternative narrative of Jocelyn Earnest's death. According to Sanzone, investigators should have focused their attention on Jocelyn's close friend Maysa Munsey.

On the morning of Dec. 19, Munsey, who worked at Genworth Financial in Lynchburg with Jocelyn Earnest, went to Amherst County, where she was charged with misdemeanor identity theft, accused of stealing another co-worker's Social Security number. Munsey testified that she brought Jocelyn Earnest with her for support.

But Sanzone said Munsey could have wanted Jocelyn Earnest dead because Jocelyn knew of the identity theft and could have had her fired from Genworth because of it. Munsey testified that she and Jocelyn were very close friends, but Sanzone dismissed her testimony in his closing argument by saying, "Miss Munsey is a wealth of misinformation."

Sanzone also noted that an unidentified man's blood was found in Jocelyn Earnest's bathroom sink, and prosecutors could not explain the blood. He also noted that her BlackBerry was wiped clean days after her death, and prosecutors could also not explain that Jocelyn Earnest had used the BlackBerry to communicate with Munsey and her other friends.

Additionally, Earnest testified that he had given the revolver to his wife to use for protection. Earnest said he was home alone in Chesapeake when his wife was killed roughly 200 miles away.

Taken together, Sanzone argued, the evidence cast a reasonable doubt on prosecutors' version of events.

The jury will begin weighing evidence shortly after 9 a.m. Monday.