Editorial: Deaths remind that violence can hit close to home

   The sense of disbelief at the Monmouth Mobile Home Park is palpable.
   Neighbors said they were stunned that two of their own — Kathleen and Michael J. Maltese — had been strangled to death, allegedly by their son Michael, and buried in a shallow grave in a township park.
   The Malteses, who had lived at 14 Maple Ave. in the mobile home park for two years, have been described as good neighbors and warm people who would open their home to just about anyone.
   Their son Michael, 20, who had lived with his parents since August, has been described by neighbors — both in interviews with the Post and in reports in other newspapers — variously as “troubled” and a “drifter,” but also as respectful of and concerned for his parents, making the crime particularly shocking.
   Mr. Maltese, who was arrested Saturday, faces two counts of murder, hindering his own apprehension, theft and unlawful use of his parents’ credit card in connection with the Oct. 8 murders.
   His live-in girlfriend, Nicole Taylor, 18, is accused of aiding him in the crimes. Ms. Taylor pleaded not guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit murder, theft, unlawful use of the victims’ credit cards and hindering apprehension.
   Prosecutors have declined to discuss the motives for the crime, but acknowledged that the younger Maltese and Ms. Taylor ran up $27,000 in charges on the Malteses’ credit card, including one for an engagement ring.
   Money, therefore, would seem to have played a role, but it is difficult to know, impossible to get inside the mind of the accused or to understand the dynamics of a family from the outside.
   So we are left with more questions than answers. As one young boy in Monmouth Mobile Home Park who knew the accused said to mobile home park owner Arthur Roedel, he “couldn’t imagine how Michael was capable of something like this.”
   Mr. Roedel, who also serves as president of the board of directors of Women Aware, the domestic violence shelter in Middlesex County, called the murders a tragedy and asked for sympathy for the families and friends of the victims and the accused.
   He also hopes that the murders are a reminder that domestic violence can take many forms and strike almost any family and that we have not done enough to prevent violence or help the victims.
   ”I can tell you that our nation is in a state of denial when it comes to domestic violence and we are understaffed and underfunded,” he wrote in a letter this week.
   We agree, though it is questionable whether a more concerted effort could have prevented what happened in the mobile home park this month.
   In the end, we can only hope that justice is served and that the killers of Kathleen and Michael J. Maltese are punished.