In another context, they’d look like a good match.

An attractive social worker and a fit, smiling personal trainer she met at the gym.

But now, John Dodd is accused of killing Terry Lee by setting her on fire during an argument at her home in Conroe.

It turns out, Dodd is a registered sex offender reportedly with a trail of two divorces and allegations he harassed and attempted to hurt former girlfriends.

Should Lee have been more suspicious?

Should women run background checks on anyone they go out with? And so, what if they did? Not all batterers have a paper trail of court records.

And in some cases, there may be no history of violence.

“I didn’t think I had, like an abuse problem,” one Houston man said.

One Houston man told 11 News what happened this past New Year’s night as he argued with his wife about what he said was an affair she was having.

“In one of our conversations, I remember telling her I was, you know, ‘so mad I could just kill you,’” he said.

11 News: “Did you mean it at the time you said it?”

Man: “Not literally.”

But as they argued, it did get physical.

“She walked towards me, and I pushed her out of my way,” he said. “She fell over a chair. She wasn’t seriously injured.”

It was, though, a serious matter, and it landed him briefly in jail. Now he attends a battery intervention program. Jaqueline Pontello runs it.

“This is decidedly not anger management,” Pontello said. “Many batterers are capable of controlling their anger in the work place, if you cut them off on the freeway.”

But who are batterers then? Do they fit a particular personality type?

“We know there are at least two different types,” said Ann Coker, a researcher with the University of Texas School of Public Health.

She said batterers can often be just what you might think: aggressive people with a long history of being troublemakers from an early age.

The other type may seem just the opposite: charming, but flawed.

“And those individuals have a sort of attachment disorder,” Coker said. “They are very, very jealous — they can also be very charming.”

But even armed with such knowledge, should someone like Terry Lee have been expected to see danger signs?

“We’re setting ourselves up again to blame the potential victim: if she didn’t do this then she deserves it,” Coker said. “That’s clearly not the message I want to send.”

Rather, she said it’s the batterers that need to be held responsible for their actions; treated if possible or locked up if not.

It’s a widespread problem, and one that research at UT finds is starting early: One-fourth of young dating couples have had incidents of physical abuse.

“They may be throwing things, they may be kicking their partner, and they may be punching their partner,” Coker said.

A pattern of physical abuse that may foreshadow much worse violence to come.