Woman Beaten, Left for Dead by Ex-Husband

July 23, 2004 -- By all accounts, Teri Jendusa-Nicolai should be dead.

The 38-year-old mother of two recalls the assault that nearly ended her life.

"I remember clunk, and then I remember kind of coming to and I was on the floor. I kind of got up after that, and he hit me again with the bat. … I could just hear the blood in my ears, feel the blood in my hair, and there was blood everywhere."

The man wielding the bat was someone Jendusa-Nicolai once loved, her ex-husband, David Larsen.

When she met Larsen, she thought he was quite a catch. He had a good job as an air traffic controller and owned his own home. After a year of dating, the couple married in 1996. But clues about her husband's violent side began to surface early — on their honeymoon in Hawaii, in fact. After they had what she thought was just a lovers' quarrel, he hit her several times in the head, she says.

Jendusa-Nicolai and Larsen soon started a family. Amanda was born in 1997 and her sister, Holly, two years later.

To friends and neighbors they seemed like a happy family, but inside Jendusa-Nicolai was fighting a difficult and private struggle. She says Larsen was unreasonably controlling and volatile.

She says she stayed in the relationship, hoping she could change Larsen. But during their three-year-long marriage, police responded to several domestic violence calls at their home.

Shared Custody Leaves Woman Vulnerable

But Jendusa-Nicolai says the effects the violent atmosphere was having on their daughters finally made her decide to leave Larsen in November 1999 and file for divorce. But the judge awarded the couple joint custody of their children.

The custody arrangement meant Jendusa-Nicolai was forced to have regular close contact with Larsen, leaving her trapped and feeling the threat of violence was always near.