A former actor and movie producer from South Fayette was ordered this week to serve 7½ to 15 years in state prison for attempting to kill his wife as she slept.

John Mowod, 61, pleaded guilty in August to attempted homicide, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and stalking stemming from the Nov. 16, 2022, attack.

“I am devastated by the event that has me here and so very sorry for what I did,” Mowod said at his sentencing on Wednesday.

But the judge didn’t buy it, calling Mowod’s statement “off the wall.”

“It was extremely disoriented, narcissistic, self-serving testimony that was served up in a very crazy way,” said Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Thomas E. Flaherty.

The judge said he understands why Mowod’s estranged wife and their three children are afraid of him.

“He, obviously was a horrible father and was not a very good husband,” Flaherty said.

According to a criminal complaint, South Fayette police were called to Courtney Kotar’s home in the 5100 block of Forest Ridge Drive before 11 p.m. for a reported stabbing.

When officers arrived, they found Mowod sitting on a couch in the family room with dried blood on his arms and legs.

The couple’s 22-year-old son told police he heard his mother screaming from inside her bedroom. He broke through the door and found his father over her on the bed with a kitchen knife in his hand.

The son was able to get the knife away and put pressure on the wounds to his mother’s neck and arm while his 16-year-old sister called 911.

Mowod was charged that night and has been held in the Allegheny County Jail since.

She saw the knife coming

On Wednesday, Kotar, a school bus driver, told the judge she would continue to fear for her safety if Mowod were released from custody.

She said her husband used to stalk her on her routes and show up at extracurricular events when she was working.

Kotar said she’d told Mowod she wanted a divorce in May 2022, but the two continued living together.

That September, Mowod followed her to the house of a man she’d been seeing. He returned to their home and shredded every piece of clothing she owned. She found a GPS tracker on her car.

Kotar got a restraining order, and on Oct. 1, 2022, Mowod was charged with stalking.

On the night of the attack, Kotar said, Mowod had come to their house to have dinner with their daughter.

Kotar said she argued with her husband and went up to her bedroom to go to sleep. She locked the door.

She awoke, she said, to Mowod saying in a forced whisper, “‘Hey, Court.’”

“I could see the knife coming,” Kotar said. “I felt it enter my neck.”

She has nerve damage in her left arm, sustained a traumatic brain injury and now has post-traumatic stress disorder, Kotar said.

“I shouldn’t have to live in a constant state of fear because of John Mowod’s (need for) rehabilitation,” Kotar told the judge. “He doesn’t want to change.

“Please don’t be another victim of his lies.”

Claims to not remember

Mowod, the son of the late Pittsburgh jazz radio broadcaster Tony Mowod, had roles in “Lorenzo’s Oil” in 1992 and “Santa Claws” in 1996. He told the court he has spent the last three years in the Allegheny County Jail attempting to reform.

He has taken classes, worked in the jail, started therapy, led a Bible study and served as a mentor to other incarcerated men.

Among the witnesses he called were two of his therapists. Four corrections officers wrote letters on his behalf.

Mowod told the court that he has PTSD from abuse he experienced outside his home as a child, which he buried for decades.

While he sought counseling for it years before the attack, Mowod said that night Kotar threatened to tell their children about it.

“It felt like a gong hit me,” Mowod said. “I couldn’t talk.”

He told the judge — and a psychologist who interviewed him — that he didn’t remember the attack and came to with his son hovering over him.

“The abuse I suffered … that triggered all of this,” Mowod said. “I have confronted it. I have treated it.”

His defense attorney, Joseph Pometto, argued that his client has worked to redeem himself in the jail.

“There was a triggering event, and unfortunately, Mr. Mowod lost control,” Pometto said.

He asked the judge to grant his client release and parole him to the community to continue mental health treatment.

But Assistant District Attorney Alexa Roberts asked that Mowod be ordered to serve 11 to 22 years in prison.

She called Mowod’s statement during the hearing “an egregious, victim-blaming diatribe.”

“The defendant has still not recognized the wrongness of his actions or taken sincere responsibility for what he’s done,” Roberts said. “The person the defendant presents himself to be … is a facade.”

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