Orlando Guarino told police he fixed his wife and two young children bacon and scrambled eggs for breakfast, argued with her over a text message on her cell phone, and then "just snapped" on a morning that ended in a triple murder in Washington County.

"After [the argument], he decided he couldn't take it anymore," state police Trooper Thomas Kress told a judge yesterday, relaying his conversation with Mr. Guarino. "He was going to try to kill himself."

Mr. Guarino said he tried to hang himself twice using cords that he attempted to tie to doors in the family's Marianna home, Trooper Kress said. When that didn't work, Mr. Guarino told police, he went outside to check on his lawn mower. He discovered the suffocated bodies of 22-year-old Ashley Guarino, 2-year-old Dreux and 11-month-old Orlando Jr. when he returned, he told Trooper Kress.

"He said, 'I think I just snapped ... I know it was me because I was the only one in the house,' " Trooper Kress testified. " 'I don't know what happened. I still love my wife and kids.' "

Mr. Guarino, 38, will stand trial in the slayings, Magisterial District Judge Valarie Costanzo decided yesterday after more than two hours of testimony from police, a forensic pathologist and a witness. Relatives of Ashley and Orlando Guarino listened quietly as the testimony offered new glimpses into what happened in the home July 9.

State police Cpl. Beverly J. Ashton spoke of searching the three-story house on Third Street, of finding Mrs. Guarino lying on her back, bruised and bloody, in the laundry room. Cpl. Ashton said she noticed cuts and bruises on Mrs. Guarino's face. An autopsy revealed that, while Mrs. Guarino died of strangulation, several of her ribs had been cracked, there were cuts on her shins and elsewhere, and she suffered blunt force trauma to her head and torso. There was also evidence of older wounds on her body, and her jeans and T-shirt were bloodstained, forensic pathologist Dr. Abdulrezak Shakir said.

The children were smothered to death, Dr. Shakir said. Cpl. Ashton found Dreux lying on her side in her bed and Orlando Jr. in his crib, diapered and wrapped in a blanket.

A television in a second-floor room blared children's programs, Cpl. Ashton said. On a table nearby, she said, she found a paper plate with a cryptic message written on it in ink: "I'm with my family. Peace out. I love you, YOTE, A.K., R.A., and especially my mom."

Mr. Guarino never said he scrawled the note on the plate, but later identified "YOTE" as his daughter; "R.A." as his brother, and A.K. as singer Ali Khan, Cpl. Ashton said.

Mr. Guarino was "vocal" with police during rides in a squad car to and from his July 10 arraignment in Charleroi, she said.

"He stated over and over, 'I must have done it, but it's not in my character, I'm a good dude,' " Cpl. Ashton said, adding that he was "more sullen" and "downbeat" than when he was met by reporters outside the state police barracks and again in a courtroom before his arraignment. He spoke of "putting on his game face" for television cameras, she said, and in a squad car after smiling for a group of reporters, Mr. Guarino said, "What do you expect me to do, put my emotions out there for the public?"

Hours earlier, state police had cornered Mr. Guarino in Canton, just outside Washington, Pa., after a daylong manhunt and chase, during which a state trooper fired a shot at him.

And two or three weeks before that, one of Mr. Guarino's acquaintances, Jorge Parker, said he was standing outside in his neighborhood one night when he overheard Mr. Guarino talking on the phone to someone, saying, "If [he] couldn't have them, no one would," and he'd "put a bullet in all of them."

Mr. Guarino, represented by Assistant Public Defender Brian Gorman, has a criminal history that includes assault, drug and firearm charges, and he has spent several years in jail. Ashley Guarino had received a three-year protection-from-abuse order against him after he allegedly threatened to harm their infant son.

Mr. Guarino's family declined to comment after the hearing, saying only "he was a good guy."

District Attorney Steve Toprani said his office will decide "in short order" whether to pursue the death penalty against Mr. Guarino.