Hyde Park man challenges murder charges in wife's fatal beating

The lawyer for a Hyde Park man accused of the fatal beating of his estranged wife told a Westmoreland County judge on Monday there is insufficient evidence to support murder charges.

Jeffrey Fondrk, 58, was charged with criminal homicide days after his wife, Patricia, was beaten to death in July 2017. Months later, prosecutors amended the charges to include specific counts of first and third-degree murder, offenses that the defense contends cannot be proven.

Assistant Public Defender Greg Cecchetti said the case against Jeffrey Fondrk relies on a short video found after his wife’s death in which Patricia Fondrk pledged to testify against her husband in a pending assault case from nine months earlier.

The defense claims that video is not proof of a future murder, Cecchetti told the judge.

In the video, played in court on Monday, Patricia Fondrk repeatedly told her husband she would testify against him as he denied committing previous assaults.

Patricia Fondrk died after she spent 10 days in a coma following what police said was a beating inflicted by her husband in retaliation of expected testimony against him in his upcoming assault trial. Prosecutors eventually dismissed the assault charges after her death but filed new counts of witness retaliation against Jeffrey Fondrk in addition to the murder charges.

Two months after the video was recorded, Patricia Fondrk was brutally beaten and left on her bedroom floor, Assistant District Attorney Jim Lazar said. He also told the judge that Fondrk later confessed to police and took a polygraph test.

“We are very confident we can establish a crime and the defendant committed it,” Lazar said.

Cecchetti initially sought to delay Monday’s hearing because Fondrk was not present in the courtroom and appeared from by video from the jail. Fondrk, who has been in custody without bond since his arrest, told Common Pleas Court Judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio he did not want to delay the hearing.

The judge said she will rule on the pretrial motion later this year after lawyers submit written legal arguments.