WEST LOGAN - Residents of West Logan looked on stunned yesterday as a small army of state police searched the residence of a local man accused of murdering his wife.

Jeffrey Roy Finley, 40, of West Logan was arrested by the West Virginia State Police on Monday a few hours after the body of his wife was found in the Harts area.

Finley was booked at the Southwestern Regional Jail at Holden on charges of murder in the first degree at 6:29 p.m.

Finley is scheduled to appear before a Logan Circuit Judge this morning for a bond hearing according to his attorney Mark Hobbs. He was arraigned last night by Magistrate Leonard Codispoti.

The WVSP officers were already in the Harts area doing marijuana interdiction when they came across the body of Lynn Finley, 29, of West Logan, who had been reported missing earlier by her husband, Jeffrey Finley.

According to police reports, Finley allegedly "did shoot the victim, Lynn Finley ... in the head with a handgun at their home.

"The defendant then instructed his daughter, a juvenile, to assist in removing the body of the victim from the residence by placing the same into a 1999 Pontiac Sunfire. The daughter then drove the aforementioned vehicle to Harts Creek of Mud Fork where the vehicle and victim were left beside the roadway."

"The investigation led back to her husband Jeff Finley," Sgt. C.E. Stump said Monday night, explaining that an autopsy had not yet been performed on the victim. "We are serving a search warrant on the residence and looking for evidence and following up on leads. Trooper P.J. Dick is the lead investigator on this case and we have been assisted by both the U.S. 119 Drug and Violent Crime Task Force and the Logan Police Department."

The troopers and Task Force members were on scene gathering possible evidence for several hours and took many items from the Finley home.

The family pets, a hamster in a cage and a dog were also removed from the residence.

Neighbors had initially thought there was a drug raid taking place at Finley's home on First Avenue in West Logan around 11 a.m. Monday morning when police vehicles surrounded it. Later, the vehicles left for a search warrant, except for one WVSP cruiser.

However, by 4 p.m., more WVSP cruisers arrived, as did the state police mobile crime scene lab with a large contingent of out-of-county troopers who began processing the Finley home.

"I understand they went in looking for the guy this morning," said one neighbor adding the neighborhood was shocked at the story going around that Finley may have shot his wife.

Residents in the area said Finley was a quiet person who had lived there around eight months.

"I never dreamed something like this would happen here," said a neighbor living across the street from the Finleys.