Man who killed daughters was facing charges

The Las Vegas man who stabbed his two young daughters and himself to death outside his family’s Montclair church Wednesday was facing felony domestic violence charges in Nevada and was deeply distraught over the separation with his wife, Montclair police said Thursday.

Investigators believe 38-year-old Josemari Dogoldogol had separated from his wife, Mylene, in early fall, three months before his arrest in the alleged assault on her, said Montclair Police Capt. Chris Weiske.

In December, his wife’s co-workers in Las Vegas persuaded her to call police and report that her husband had injured her at her home, Weiske said. The husband, who worked at a Las Vegas hotel, was arrested and taken to jail that day, police said.

Weiske said it appeared that the couple’s daughters, 5-year-old Mary Jo and 3-year-old Jade, were sent back to California several months earlier to stay with their mother’s parents.

Josemari Dogoldogol was scheduled to be arraigned on felony charges of kidnapping and burglary Jan. 25, according to North Las Vegas Justice Court officials. Kidnapping and burglary charges are common in domestic violence disputes when a partner enters the victim’s home and commits a crime.

Family members told detectives that Dogoldogol was depressed during the holidays but did nothing to indicate he was planning the murder-suicide Wednesday.

Weiske said the wife told police she had never imagined that her husband was capable of harming their children and that she had allowed him to visit them. The girls spent the days leading up to their deaths celebrating the holidays with Dogoldogol and his parents at their home in Ontario.

The last time family members saw Dogoldogol was about 11 a.m. Wednesday, when he said he was taking the girls shoe shopping, Weiske said.

His wife told police that her husband called her about lunchtime to say he’d “had enough” and that she should say goodbye to her daughters. Mylene Dogoldogol immediately began calling her husband’s siblings and family members to find out his whereabouts.

About the same time, Josemari Dogoldogol called his sister to tell her of his intentions and that he was at or on his way to Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Montclair, where his parents were parishioners.

His sister called one of his brothers, who, along with a church worker, discovered the three bodies in the car.

“I think it’s just a matter, probably, of the pending court cases, the fact that his marriage was falling apart and that he felt he wasn’t going to be able to see or have his children,” Weiske said. “There was no note. He didn’t do anything to explain his actions.”

Relatives of the couple declined to comment Thursday.

maeve.reston@latimes.com