EAST DUBUQUE, Ill. (AP)—A judge’s decision to reunite two girls with their father three years after they watched him strangle their mother has touched off a new custody fight and public outrage against the judge.

“I guess the bottom line is whether or not it’s OK to kill your wife in front of your children,” says Gene Tranel of Eldridge, Iowa, brother of the 26-year-old victim, Carol Lutgen.

Tranel, who took in his nieces, Tracy, 11, and Dana, 10, while James Lutgen served a 20-month prison term, is fighting to get them back.

But Lutgen’s lawyer, William Schirger, says the case has been blown out of proportion in this small Mississippi River town.

“The kids are not in any danger. Jim loves the girls and they love him. They asked the judge to let them live with him,” Schirger said.

Lutgen, 33, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for the Dec. 21, 1984 death of his wife at the family home in tiny Menominee, in the northwest corner of Illinois.

Two original murder counts against Lutgen were reduced after the court ruled his daughters were too young to testify as witnesses to their mother’s death.

The Lutgens were on the verge of a breakup as the 1984 holiday season approached. “She didn’t love Jim no more,” recalled Lutgen’s mother, Grace. “They were separating the day after Christmas. He was broken up about it.”

The couple’s fatal battle was fueled by Lutgen’s belief that his wife was seeing another man, his mother said, although the fight was sparked by a disagreement over whether to take the girls shopping and skating.

As the girls looked on, the argument turned into a physical confrontation.

“I picked the girls up afterward and they told me … they had seen part of the fight,” Mrs. Lutgen said. “They said they were pushing and grabbing each other around the neck.”

Lutgen was released from prison in October 1986 and regained custody of his daughters last Dec. 29.

The Jo Daviess County judge who made the custody decision, Eric DeMar of Galena, has borne the brunt of the public outcry since Lutgen regained his daughters.