Son describes family chaos in Hyde Park man's murder trial

Chaos is the word that 24-year-old Jeffrey Dakota Fondrk used to describe his upbringing.

He told a Westmoreland County jury Tuesday how he would wear headphones and seclude himself in his bedroom and play video games while his parents abused alcohol and fought and argued nearly every day.

“I tried to shut the door as often as I could to drown out the sound,” Fondrk testified during the first day of his father’s murder trial.

Jeffrey Mark Fondrk, 59, of Hyde Park is charged with first-degree murder, third-degree murder, aggravated assault, witness intimidation and other offenses in connection with the 2017 death of his 50-year-old wife, Patricia Fondrk.

Prosecutors claim Patricia Fondrk was killed by her husband in July 2017, nine months after he was charged with assaulting her. Jeffrey Mark Fondrk said he found his wife unconscious July 7. She still was unresponsive the next day, when he called for medical assistance. She died 10 days later at Allegheny Valley Hospital.

In court Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Jim Lazar said Jeffrey Mark Fondrk had a history of violence toward his wife and claimed a violent confrontation nearly five years ago in the family home led to her death after years of physical assaults and acrimony fueled by alcohol abuse.

Patricia Fondrk sometimes contradicted herself, accusing her husband of domestic violence and also claiming she never was a victim of abuse, Lazar said.

In a video recorded about two months before her death, Patricia Fondrk threatened to testify against her husband, Lazar said. The prosecution showed jurors part of that video Tuesday.

“You abuse me,” Patricia Fondrk said.

“No I don’t,” her husband responded. “I pick you up every day.”

“You hit me first,” she said.

“I don’t hit you at all. Stop saying I do,” he answered.

“Get me another drink and I will,” she retorted.

Lazar said the video was recorded months after Jeffrey Mark Fondrk was charged with assaulting his wife in 2016. She suffered a large laceration to her head. A district judge ordered him to have no contact with her.

Retired Pennsylvania State Police Corp. Owen Leonard testified Tuesday that Patricia Fondrk initially claimed she was beaten by her husband in November 2016 and that he forced her to have sex. She later recanted and testified during her husband’s preliminary hearing in January 2017 that he never hurt her.

Leonard said Jeffrey Mark Fondrk confessed after he was arrested and charged with assaulting his wife.

Defense attorney Ken Noga told jurors Patricia Fondrk’s death was an accident caused by her alcohol abuse.

Noga said there is no physical evidence to support claims that Jeffrey Mark Fondrk killed his wife, or that he injured her during the confrontation months earlier.

“She was an alcoholic and, quite frankly, that day she was trying to drink herself to death,” Noga said.

The couple’s only son testified for the prosecution Monday afternoon, and he unemotionally described his parents’ daily pattern of drinking and fighting. Jeffrey Dakota Fondrk never appeared to look at his father but denied ever seeing him assault or injure his mother. He said he did not see what caused her to become unconscious the day before she was hospitalized.

Jeffrey Dakota Fondrk told jurors his mother was anorexic, bruised easily and routinely stumbled around the house, bumped into furniture and had a history of passing out because of her drinking. He was the person who made the decision to remove his mother from life support at the hospital.

“There was minimal brain activity. I knew she really didn’t want to be kept alive like that,” Jeffrey Dakota Fondrk testified.

The prosecution will continue to present its case when the trial resumes Wednesday.