OGDEN — The Weber County Attorney's Office filed capital murder charges Friday against a man accused of shooting and killing his ex-wife and her mother. The charges leave open the possibility of pursuing the death penalty.
Richard Jeremy Funk, 31, was arraigned Friday on two counts of aggravated murder, both capital offenses, three counts of attempted aggravated murder, three counts of aggravated kidnapping and one count of aggravated burglary. His court hearing was continued until Sept. 12.
Funk is being held in the Weber County Jail without bail.
He is accused of kidnapping his ex-wife, Tricia A. Woodruff, at gunpoint near where she worked in Ogden at about 5:40 p.m. Thursday. Woodruff was taken to her parents' house in Pleasant View where both she and her mother, Pat Woodruff, were shot and killed.
Tricia Woodruff had a temporary restraining order filed against Funk last December and was scheduled to go to court Oct. 10 to make the protective order permanent, said Timothy Blackburn, her attorney. However, he said, no one anticipated Thursday's incident.
"It's a tragedy. I was shocked and saddened," Blackburn said. "The last few months we had no indication something like this would occur."
The hearing to make the protective order permanent kept getting delayed because Funk was charged with assaulting Tricia Woodruff's boyfriend, and his attorney wanted time to review that incident, Blackburn said.
Woodruff also had filed for protective orders against Funk in 1996 and 1997.
Blackburn said the most recent protective order had been working well. The biggest hurdle was sharing custody of their son, who is either 5 or 6 years old, he said.
That conflict was resolved with one parent dropping the son off at day-care and the other picking him up. That way, Funk and Woodruff did not have to see each other, Blackburn said.
While Blackburn said he did not know what led to Thursday's shootings, he said he sent a letter to Funk's attorney Tuesday stating that his client planned to strictly enforce the weekend visitation schedule.
The letter was prompted by a recent incident in which their son was not allowed to accompany Woodruff on a trip to DisneyWorld because it was not her weekend to have him, Blackburn said.
Blackburn said he had no idea why Woodruff was taken to her parents' house.
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