Two San Jose men were charged with murder this week in the killings of their estranged wives — crimes that, taken together, mark the third and fourth domestic violence homicides in the city this year and put 2026 on pace to nearly double 2025's full-year death toll.

At the center of one case is a documented trail of stalking, a served Emergency Protection Order, and a man who was back on the street when he allegedly killed. The pair of killings — separated by five days — came on the heels of a third domestic violence attack in the same week. The Santa Clara County DA is calling for strict accountability, but the facts of the Aguilera Mora case raise a sharper question: what happens in the gap between a restraining order and a verdict?

The first case began, in effect, in March. Police arrested Pablo Andres Aguilera Mora, 46, on March 18 after he allegedly planted a tracking device in his estranged wife's car, slashed her tires, flooded her with more than 100 texts and voicemails, and attempted to get hired at her workplace to maintain proximity. A court granted an Emergency Protection Order against him. It was served.

Then he was released while those stalking charges were still pending.

On the night of June 11, officers responded to an apartment on Descanso Drive in North San Jose and found the victim, 45-year-old Maria Liliana Vanegas Parra, bleeding from stab wounds. Before she died at a hospital, she identified her attacker to investigators: Aguilera Mora. He was found nearby with a self-inflicted stab wound and was also treated, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office.

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

Five days after that, in the early hours of June 16, officers answering a welfare check at a home in the 5800 block of Snell Avenue in South San Jose found 55-year-old Shede Mao walking out of the front door. Inside was his estranged wife, 49 years old, in a blood-spattered room with a machete nearby. She had been bludgeoned and stabbed and died at the scene.

Mao had not been silent beforehand either — police learned of the attack after a friend alerted them that Mao had sent a text saying his wife "was all beat up," along with a photograph of her body, prosecutors said. Her name has not been publicly released.

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

The two murders did not arrive in a vacuum. On June 8 — three days before the Vanegas Parra killing — a man shot his estranged girlfriend at a Kaiser Permanente office building in South San Jose in what investigators believe was a murder-suicide attempt. The gunman, identified as a Watsonville resident, died. The woman survived in critical condition. Three incidents of alleged domestic violence resulting in death or near-death, in eight days, in one city.

The cumulative toll is stark: prosecutors noted that the June killings represent the third and fourth domestic violence homicides in San Jose this year. There were five in all of 2025. Nationally, the DA's office said, while most categories of homicide have fallen sharply in recent years, deaths tied to domestic violence have remained at historically high levels.

Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen issued a statement after the charges were announced. "I am heartbroken, but sadness will never stop us from working with victims to get them and their children to safety," Rosen said. "Sadness will never stop us from making sure violent abusers face the strictest justice."

The Aguilera Mora case may test that resolve in court. Advocates for domestic violence survivors have long argued that protective orders are only as effective as their enforcement and that releasing accused stalkers on pending charges places victims in a perilous limbo — documented as being in danger, but legally unprotected. Vanegas Parra had an order. She had given investigators a name. The system had, on paper, responded. She still died.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or thehotline.org.