After about an hour of testimony, Pottstown District Justice Thomas A. Palladino ruled that Stumpf, a 54-year-old local cable-television personality, should be held for trial on charges of first-degree and third-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and possession of an instrument of crime.
Police arrested Raymond Stumpf Jan. 21 after Steven Stumpf discovered his mother's body lying in a pool of blood in the kitchen of the family's Farmington Avenue townhouse in Pottstown. Raymond Stumpf told investigators that he and his wife had been fighting, but he did not confess to the slaying.
``He was doing the dishes, and they began arguing. She struck him, and he just went wild,'' Pottstown Detective Sgt. John Durkin testified.
Beside the body, Montgomery County Detective John T. Fallom testified, were three kitchen knives, including a serrated paring knife. The wounds in Marlene Stumpf's neck were ``too numerous to count,'' he said.
Yesterday's hearing was held across the street from the store where Raymond Stumpf once hawked collectible dolls and other knickknacks on the TeleMart home-shopping cable show.
A thin man bound in ankle chains and handcuffs, Raymond Stumpf still wore bandages on wounds that investigators say he inflicted on himself the night his wife was killed. He fought back tears as investigators described his wife's death.
When prosecutors showed an autopsy photograph, Stumpf winced, and turned his face away.
Two of Stumpf's three sons, Steven and Robert, both 22, attended the hearing but were not called on to testify. They declined to comment on the proceedings.
It is unclear what Stumpf's defense strategy will be. But it is clear that Eskin, with whom Marlene Stumpf corresponded online and from whom she received a dozen roses five days before her death, will probably be called to testify.
