Filling a courtroom, friends and family members of the 21-year-old Transportation Security Administration worker charged with murdering his father last Monday helped paint an image of the victim as a controlling, threatening man who angrily vowed to kill his family in the midst of a struggle over a semiautomatic rifle.

“This house was an explosion ready to happen,” argued defense lawyer Jeffrey Oppleman, describing in his opening argument that Jeffrey L. Luedecke, 51, was so prone to violence that he beat his wife and once threatened to kill his own mother.

A neighbor even kept a log of threatening behavior, Oppleman said, but the conduct largely remained known only within the confines of the home.

Testimony revealed Luedecke, a home repair worker, took some 20 different medications to control anxiety and other behavioral problems and that he was an isolated, paranoid weapons collector who had amassed 33 firearms in the small bungalow-style home in the 8800 block of Midway Road south of Patterson Avenue near Parham Road.