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A man accused of killing a Sanpete County couple nearly five years ago pleaded not guilty to charges on Monday.
Logan Welles McFarland, 28, is charged in 6th District Court with two counts of first-degree felony aggravated murder for the December 2011 shooting deaths of 70-year-old Leroy Fullwood and his 69-year-old wife, Dorothy Ann Fullwood, at their Mount Pleasant home. He is also facing aggravated burglary, robbery and theft charges.
McFarland is expected in court again on Nov. 16 for a review hearing.
Though McFarland has long been the suspect in the double homicide, prosecutors did not file murder charges against him until May 2014, a day after McFarland had been sentenced to spend up to 56 years in a Nevada prison for a crime spree that took place there after the double murder.
Sanpete County Attorney Brody Keisel said in 2014 that he waited to file on the homicides until Nevada authorities had adjudicated their case against McFarland and his girlfriend, 28-year-old Angela Marie Hill, also known as Angela Marie Atwood.
Prosecutors say they will seek for the death penalty for McFarland.
Hill is charged in Utah with the same counts as McFarland, minus the homicide charges. She was extradited to Utah in May, and pleaded not guilty to charges in September. She is accused of burglarizing another Mount Pleasant home with McFarland in the same time period as the homicides.
Hill is set to appear in court again in January for a pre-trial conference.
An arrest affidavit filed in Utah's 6th District Court, which was briefly made public in January 2012 before being sealed, alleges that on Dec. 29, 2011, McFarland drove around Mount Pleasant looking for a home to burglarize.
McFarland apparently selected the Fullwood home at random and, late Dec. 29 or early Dec. 30, had friends drop him off on a road behind the residence, according to the affidavit.
What happened inside the home has not been made public, but the arrest affidavit says the home was ransacked, the contents of cupboards and closets "strewn" around the home. By the time McFarland left, the Fullwoods were dead from gunshot wounds.
A day later, McFarland told a relative that "a mission had gone south" and that he had "dispatched lives" in Sanpete County, court records allege.
On Dec. 31, 2011 — the same day the Fullwoods were found dead in their home — police say McFarland and Hill tried to carjack a woman's car outside a casino in West Wendover, Nev. The victim fought off Hill and sped away, but was shot and wounded in the head.
The couple stole two other vehicles and led police on a high speed chase in the days that followed. They were eventually spotted walking in the Nevada desert by a rancher checking on cattle from an airline and were captured.