RALEIGH — A Wake Forest man sought in his wife’s slaying and captured in Virginia was returned to North Carolina Friday night and formally charged with murder.

Sonny Lee Howard, 42, of 14925 Creedmoor Road in Wake Forest was served with the murder charge about 11 p.m. and held in the Wake County Jail without bail.

Howard made his first court appearance Thursday morning in Carroll County, Va. police in Galax had stopped him Wednesday afternoon and found his wife Sherry’s body in the truck.

Wake County sheriff’s deputies put out an alert for Howard’s pickup when they answered a call saying a body was in the back yard of the Howards’ home. They found neither the body nor the truck and issued the alert.