Former Warrenton woman charged in scheme

Michael Martz and Bill Geroux, Media General News Service
Published: August 5, 2008

RICHMOND — What began as an ugly child-custody battle has become something far worse for a Richmond woman charged with attempting to hire someone to murder a Warrenton couple.

Caren Taylor Pressley Brown, 47, an advocate for women who have lost custody of their children, is being held without bond in Peninsula Regional Jail, accused of attempting to arrange the killing of her son’s father and his wife.

According to documents in Williamsburg-James City County General District Court, Brown was arrested Friday by Virginia State Police, who said she paid $2,000 to an undercover policeman to kill the Warrenton couple, whom the Media General News Service is not naming.

The charges shocked people in Warrenton, where Brown had run a successful and civic-minded insurance agency. But she also had been embroiled there in a costly and unsuccessful legal battle to regain custody of her 11- year-son from his father, whom she had never married.

“I don’t think she could ever come to terms with the fact that she could never get [her son] back,” said Elizabeth Haring, who bought the Taylor Pressley Insurance Agency from Brown last year and later had a falling-out with her former friend.

Brown claimed to be executive director of Children Without a Voice, a nonprofit organization founded in 2006 for parents, mainly mothers, in similar circumstances.

However, the group’s original executive director, Karen Estelle, said Tuesday that the organization is essentially defunct and that the leadership was never legally changed.
Estelle said she disassociated herself from Children Without a Voice within six months of its founding because of her concerns over Brown’s behavior and the organization’s failure to accomplish its mission. She feels deep sympathy for Brown, she said, but wants to protect what they set out to do.

“The cause is a good cause,” Estelle said. “I do not want to see the cause damaged in any way, shape or form because of this particular individual.”