A day after he was sentenced to 56 years for the shooting and kidnapping of a Wendover woman, Logan McFarland was charged with the double murder of an elderly Utah couple.
sentencing hear:
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Long called a ‘person of interest’ by San Pete county prosecutors, McFarland was formally charged Thursday for the brutal double murder of Woody and Dorotha Ann Fullwood on New Years Eve two and a half years ago.
The murders and the Wendover kidnapping were part of the same crime spree committed by McFarland and his partner Angela Hill over the 2011/12 New Year’s holiday that their Wendover victim, gym owner Rattana Keomanivong, helped end by fighting back, escaping and reporting the duo to police after being shot in the head.
Law enforcement have long hailed Keomanivong as a hero in the case. The owner of the local gym Animal House, Keomanivong won the Wendover Strongest woman contest the summer before.
“They had already established a pattern of attacking helpless people, robbing them, stealing their vehicles and killing them before anyone knew what was happening” said one detective. “If not for Mrs. Keomanivong they could have been well on their way to Reno or San Francisco with a trail of dead bodies behind them.”
Elko District Judge add her voice to the throng during McFarland’s sentencing calling Rattana Keomanivong “one of the bravest woman” she had ever met.
Despite the accolades, Keomanivong must now live with injuries for the rest of her life. Early hope that she would completely recover have faded. A recent brain scan suggests that some of the damage may be permanent or take a very long time to heal.
In testimony during the hearing Keomanivong recounted the ordeal her life has become since the crime.
The next stop for McFarland and Hill who Porter sentenced to 30 years in prison last year will be Mt. Pleasant, Utah for the burglary of the Fullwood home and the couple’s brutal murder.
McFarland is being charged with the murders while Hill is being charged only in the burglary.
According to Hill’s mother, Abigail Atwood, her daughter has already provided San Pete prosecutors a wealth of information against McFarland in the double murder of the Fullwoods.
In a long, often hostile interview with the High Desert Advocate last year, Atwood said that her daughter would testify against Robert McFarland.
Hills’ efforts to ‘cop a plea’ at the expense of McFarland are not new and in fact date to the minute the couple were arrested after they straggled out of the Pequop Mountains after hiding in the Nevada outback for three days.
According to law enforcement officers present at the time of their arrest, as soon as she was separated from her partner, she accused him of putting her under an almost total mind control. A defense her mother still believes.
“The only reason she went with him to Nevada was because he showed her pictures of our house and threatened her family.” Atwood said. “She never was in any trouble before this and the San Pete police now say she had nothing to do with the murder of the Fullwoods.”
That was not completely true according to San Pete Messenger newspaper publisher Suzanne Dean.
“The police did issue a clarification that the no longer believed that she waited in the car outside the Fullwood home while Robert McFarland killed them,” The publisher said. “Instead she left him off returned to where they were all staying and later picked him up several hours after the crime. She is still a definite person of interest in the crime.”