Investigators say court filings over children and support payments framed the motive in a deadly March shooting.
BATON ROUGE, La. — The homicide case against two Baton Rouge defendants turns on what investigators say was a growing fear that a pending custody fight could change who controlled the lives of two children and the money tied to them.
That family court pressure is what deputies say links Hope Jackson to the fatal shooting of Anthony Wesley Jr., the father of her children, outside his apartment complex on March 22. Jackson is accused of acting as a principal in a second-degree murder, while her boyfriend, Riddick Franklin, is accused of carrying out the killing. Investigators say the motive was not random or immediate, but tied to a custody, visitation and child support case Wesley had recently filed. The stakes now are twofold: a murder prosecution and the collapse of the domestic dispute that investigators say helped drive it.
Before the gunfire, the public record already showed a conflict headed into court. Wesley had filed a petition involving custody, visitation and support, and a hearing was expected in the coming weeks, according to reports that cited court records. Investigators say Jackson saw that proceeding as a threat. In the arrest materials described by local outlets, Franklin told detectives Jackson was upset about child support and afraid she could lose custody. That allegation matters because it gives the state a motive anchored in documents rather than rumor. It also changes how the killing is framed. Instead of beginning with the parking lot ambush, the case begins with papers filed in court, a hearing date approaching and a dispute that, investigators say, spilled out of the legal system and into violence.
Deputies say the violence came just before dawn on March 22 at Jefferson Lakes Apartments on Jefferson Highway. When officers responded, they found Wesley dead on a sidewalk outside the complex. Surveillance footage later reviewed by investigators showed a gunman shooting Wesley from behind after he arrived home, authorities said. The shooter then approached and fired additional rounds while standing over him. Detectives canvassed the area and identified a white Dodge Ram leaving shortly after the shooting. That truck became a turning point in the case. License plate information led investigators to Franklin, who was detained during a traffic stop. Search warrants executed on the truck and at his residence produced a handgun, clothes investigators said were consistent with the video, and his cellphone.
From there, investigators say the case shifted from physical evidence to communication records. Franklin allegedly admitted the shooting during questioning. He told detectives, according to local accounts of the affidavit, that he had gone to see Wesley to “squash the beef” and “cease fire,” but he also said he was tired of being disrespected. Investigators say he later described taking apart the gun and washing his clothes after returning home. More damaging for Jackson were the messages police say they recovered from Franklin’s phone. In one exchange cited in the warrant, Jackson allegedly wrote, “I want him OV,” which investigators interpreted as a call to eliminate Wesley. Authorities also said she warned time was running out and said she would lose everything if Wesley was not “taken care of.” Phone records showed the pair were in contact before and after the shooting, investigators said.
The structure of the allegations gives prosecutors a straightforward theory: the court fight created the motive, the messages showed encouragement, and the shooting carried out the plan. But several questions remain open in public. Investigators have not fully explained how long Franklin was allegedly waiting at the complex, whether any earlier confrontations between Wesley and Franklin had been reported, or what exact evidence from the phone records will be introduced first in court. There is also a difference between what police say happened and what they can prove to a jury. Jackson’s alleged statements, especially the slang cited in the warrant, are likely to become a central point of argument if the case advances toward trial.
Franklin, 32, was booked on second-degree murder and additional charges that include obstruction of justice, illegal use of a weapon or dangerous instrumentality, and possession of a firearm by a person with certain prior felony restrictions, according to local reports. Jackson was later booked on one count of principal to second-degree murder. Both were being held without bond, and hearings were expected in April. Those proceedings are likely to mark the first time the state lays out the chronology in detail and the defense begins testing the meaning of the messages, the reliability of statements and the sequence of calls around the shooting.
What makes the case especially stark is how ordinary its starting point appears in the record: a dispute over parenting time, support and control of a family’s future. What investigators describe next is anything but ordinary. A pending custody matter became, in the state’s theory, the pressure point for a killing outside a home. The children named in the court dispute are not part of the criminal allegations, but their existence runs through every major piece of the case: the motive, the text messages, the timing and the claim that one parent would lose everything if the other remained alive.
The homicide case remains in its early court stages, with prosecutors expected to rely on warrants, video, phone records and family court filings as they move toward the next hearing.
Author note: Last updated April 20, 2026.