Santa Clara County prosecutors charge 2 men in separate domestic violence killings

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Two men accused of killing their estranged wives in unrelated attacks over the past week in San Jose will be arraigned on Wednesday, prosecutors said.

The most recent killing happened Monday in South San Jose, when a 49-year-old woman was found bludgeoned and stabbed to death at a home in the 5800 block of Snell Avenue.

Officers responding to a welfare check about 12:45 a.m. found the woman's husband, 55-year-old Shede Mao, walking out of the house. Inside they found his estranged wife's body and a machete in a blood-spattered room, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office.

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Police were alerted by a friend of the suspect, who said Mao had sent him a text that his wife "was all beat up" along with a photograph of her bloody body, prosecutors said. The woman, whose name has not been released, died at the scene.

The second fatal domestic violence attack in recent days was reported on June 11, when police were called about 11:45 p.m. to an apartment on Descanso Drive in North San Jose.

Officers found a woman who had been stabbed, allegedly by her estranged husband. The victim, 45-year-old Maria Liliana Vanegas Parra, was taken to a hospital where she later died of her injuries.

The suspect, 46-year-old Pablo Andres Aguilera Mora, reportedly had a self-inflicted stab wound and was treated at a hospital, authorities said.

Before the victim died, she told investigators that Aguilera Mora was her attacker, prosecutors said.

The suspect previously had been arrested March 18 for allegedly stalking Vanegas Parra, slashing her tires and placing a tracker in her car. Aguilera Mora allegedly sent the victim more than 100 texts and voicemails and tried to get a job at the company where she worked. He had been released while those charges were pending, prosecutors said.

"An Emergency Protection Order was granted and served. Less than three months later, the victim was dead," the district attorney's office said in a news release.

Both men are set to be arraigned on Wednesday in Santa Clara County Superior Court.

Nationally, while the numbers of most types of homicides have dramatically dropped, domestic violence deaths have remained at historically high levels, according to the district attorney's office.

The two deaths in June are the third and fourth domestic violence homicides so far this year in San Jose, prosecutors said. There were five domestic violence murders in Santa Clara County during all of 2025.

A few days before the fatal attacks, a man shot his estranged girlfriend at a Kaiser Permanente medical office building in South San Jose.

That shooting, on June 8, left a Watsonville man dead and a woman in critical condition. Investigators believe it was a murder-suicide attempt with evidence that the motive was domestic violence-related, the district attorney's office said.

"I am heartbroken, but sadness will never stop us from working with victims to get them and their children to safety," District Attorney Jeff Rosen said. "Sadness will never stop us from making sure violent abusers face the strictest justice."