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 Richmond Times-Dispatch 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 11year-old 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 yesterday 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."

The organization's Web site names Brown as executive director and gives her address in the 700 block of St. Christopher's Road, across from St. Christopher's School. She and her husband, whom she wed last year, bought a house on Banbury Road in Windsor Farms in February. Efforts to reach her husband were unsuccessful.

The state investigation began after Brown contacted someone she knows and asked to be put in touch with a hit man, according to Nathan R. Green, commonwealth's attorney for Williamsburg and James City County. The person called state police, and the undercover agent met with Brown at a private house in James City on Friday, Green said.

Brown told the agent she wanted the couple killed "due to her custody situation with her 11-year-old son," according to the criminal complaint filed in court. She gave the agent photos of the couple, directions to their home in Warrenton, and instructions that she "wanted it done by this coming Sunday," the complaint states.

Brown was arrested shortly after the meeting and held without bond. She appeared in court on Monday, but the hearing was postponed because she wanted time to hire a lawyer. The hearing has been rescheduled for Friday.

Brown is charged with four felonies: