Man to spend 8 years in prison for stabbing wife

The wife said he was hurting the family’s future.

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — A North Lima man who pleaded guilty to multiple charges in a violent confrontation with his estranged wife last fall is going to prison for eight years.

Rudolph K. Matland, 28, of Market Street, drew the sentence Thursday from Judge James C. Evans of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Matland had earlier pleaded guilty to felonious assault, kidnapping, aggravated burglary and menacing by stalking in the attack on Anne Matland, 25, in her West Side residence in Youngstown on Sept. 30.

In a plea bargain, the prosecution dropped an attempted-murder charge naming Anne Matland as the victim, a charge of disrupting public services charge and charges of aggravated burglary and felonious assault that named his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Walter, as a victim in the same incident.

Matland pleaded guilty to misdemeanor domestic violence in an earlier incident involving his estranged wife.

Police said Matland forced his way into his estranged wife’s residence, stabbed her in the back of the neck and left leg, and dragged her out the front door before she broke free and was taken to a hospital.

Walter was punched and sprayed with tear gas from an aerosol can in that incident, police said.

Later on Sept. 30, U.S. marshals arrested Matland in Stuart’s Draft, Va., and kept him for extradition to Ohio.

James MacDonald, assistant county prosecutor, called for the defendant to serve an eight-year prison term.

But Paul Conn, the defense lawyer, called for a shorter prison term, citing his client’s having come from a broken home and having suffered from alcohol and drug abuse and mental illness.

“The rage that he’s felt his entire life, combined with his alcohol that he imbibed and the crack cocaine that he smoked did not make him think straight,” Conn said.

Conn said Matland has completed his General Educational Development diploma and undergone drug rehabilitation in the county jail. After court, Conn said the sentence would be appealed.

MacDonald read in court a victim-impact statement, in which Anne Matland said the defendant had a bad temper, smoked crack cocaine, wouldn’t keep a job, took all of the family’s money and threatened to kill her.

“He was sabotaging the future of our family,” the victim wrote, explaining why she was forced to give up hope of saving their marriage.

Since the Sept. 30 assault, she and her children have been alarmed by even the faintest of sounds, she wrote.

“Not only has Rudy instilled fear into our children, he has taken away the one thing they very much need in life — a father — and that is something that can never be replaced,” she wrote.

Matland, who made no statement at his sentencing, will be on parole for five years after he leaves prison.

milliken@vindy.com