Al Kudlach outside the Centre County Courthouse.
I am very aware of how difficult it is to determine who might resort to violence against a domestic partner. I spent many months in the same cell block as two men who had been accused (and then convicted) of murdering their wives; they were waiting for their trials at the time. One was Alois Kudlach, who was convicted of shooting his wife three times, killing her, in their home in an affluent neighborhood of State College. The other was Vladimir Podnebennyy, who, a month later, stabbed his wife and killed her in the parking lot outside their home. Besides Al being arrogant, these seemed like two very normal guys. They were, in fact, the block “trustees” who helped the guards serve food, did the block’s laundry and cleaned the block’s common areas after everyone was locked in their cell for the night. No one could believe the friendly old man (Vlad) that didn’t speak English was the guy that had stabbed his wife.
Vlad Podnebennyy outside the Centre County Courthouse.
Of course, it would have been great to prevent these murders, but I don’t know how you could have predicted them. I believe Vlad had a PFA order against him, but I don’t know the circumstances surrounding it. I don’t think either of them had any history of violent behavior; at least none was reported in the media, and they did not seem to have anger issues. That said, as I’ll probably say again, people in jail are not drunk or high, and you never really how drugs and/or alcohol affect a person’s demeanor. I know that every story I heard in jail or in the domestic violence classes I had to take involved at least one of the participants being under the influence of something. Most of the time, both parties were.
The other problem is that the effect of preventative measures is, almost by definition, impossible to measure accurately. You will never have a blind control group with which to compare. This was very clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, as we really have no idea which measures–masks, quarantines, shutdowns, etc.–helped the most, or at all. It’s the same with measures to prevent domestic abuse, and in particular, domestic violence. I will talk about this a great deal later because, as far as I can tell, there has been no real study of how or if Pennsylvania’s Protection from Abuse Act has improved anything. In fact, it seems like there is actually hesitancy to do these kinds of studies because I think there’s a fear that they will show the situation has not improved much, or at all.