Pamela Vitale

[Sher]

I first want to say that I am putting this story here because this woman is believed to have been murdered. Even though this is a recent happening, I decided to post in this thread.

[glow=red,2,300]I just wanted to put an update in here. At the time of my posting this information, the murder of Ms. Vitale was then unsolved. Now as you all know there has been the arrest of a 16 yr old boy in this case.[/glow]


LAFAYETTE, California (AP) -- Defense attorney and TV legal pundit Daniel Horowitz found his wife's lifeless body in the entryway of the couple's home -- a death that is being investigated as a homicide.

Horowitz found Pamela Vitale dead Saturday night at the entrance of the mobile home they shared on property where they were building their dream estate, authorities said.

"This is a real tragedy. These are good people," attorney Ivan Golde said Sunday. Golde is a longtime friend and co-counsel in Horowitz's current trial, the highly publicized case of Susan Polk, accused of murdering her therapist husband.

Contra Costa County sheriff's deputies said Vitale's death was being investigated as a homicide. An autopsy was planned Monday.

As a lawyer who defended drug dealers, killers and other serious criminals, Horowitz was worried about his safety, Golde said.

Golde did not know of specific threats, but said Horowitz carried a gun and had other weapons. There was a surveillance camera on the property, but the terrain was too rugged and isolated to fully monitor.

"It's only normal to have in the back of your mind, especially when you're dealing with true-caliber criminals," Golde said. "A lot of these people that's the way they are, they threaten people."

Golde, who said he spoke to Horowitz on Saturday, would not give details about Vitale's death but said she was not shot.

After the death, a deputy was stationed at the bottom of the steep driveway leading to the home Sunday and a canopy of trees blocked views of the property on a sprawling hillside estate about 20 miles east of San Francisco.

Horowitz called 911 Saturday evening to report that his wife was dead, sheriff's spokesman Jimmy Lee said. He returned to the house briefly Sunday and shielded his face from news photographers.

Another lawyer friend, Robert Massi, said Monday on NBC's "Today" that he had seen Horowitz earlier Saturday and that Horowitz had an alibi during the day.

"He was with me for a couple of hours and met with his defense team about 11 o'clock on the Susan Polk case," Massi said. "In the afternoon he dropped paperwork off at the hotel where I was staying. "

"Everything was fine. ... It's just devastating to think that nine hours later the man finds his wife like this," Massi added.

Horowitz and Vitale wed about 10 years ago; both had been previously married. Vitale, 52, a former high-tech marketing executive, worked at her husband's law practice, managing databases.

Horowitz, 50, appears frequently on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, and became best known for providing a defense perspective on Scott Peterson's trial in the murder of his pregnant wife, Laci.

Opening statements were presented just last week in the trial of Polk, accused of murder in the 2002 stabbing death of her psychologist husband in the pool house of their Orinda home. Polk's husband, Felix, was her therapist when she was a teenager, and she claims she killed him in self-defense. (Full story)

Vitale sat in the front row of the courtroom last week during Horowitz's opening statement, Golde said. "She was down to earth and she was cool and believed in what Dan was doing," Golde said.

Horowitz also defended former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko in a multicount money-laundering and fraud trial. In May, a judge threw out half of the convictions against Lazarenko, who is under house arrest at an undisclosed location in the Bay Area.

Horowitz also represented Steve Williams, the man who snagged Barry Bonds' 700th home run ball, in a lawsuit to determine who could keep the ball. A judge allowed Williams to auction it.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

[Sher]

Despite fearing for their safety, criminal defense lawyer Daniel Horowitz and his wife allowed easy access to the sprawling hillside compound they were building - even posting a note on the gate that explained how to open it.

The number of people with access to the property - where contractors, neighbors and others came and went - could complicate the investigation into the killing of Pamela Vitale, whose body was found by Horowitz in their home's entryway over the weekend. An autopsy revealed Vitale, 52, was beaten to death.

MSNBC said Horowitz told its legal reporter that his wife had a head wound and defensive wounds on her hands and other parts of her body.

"She fought like hell," Horowitz said in an interview published Tuesday in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Authorities said Monday they had no suspects in custody. They questioned several people, including Horowitz and Joseph Lynch, who sold the couple an adjoining four-acre lot where he had a deal to live for 10 more years in a camper. Both were cooperative, said Contra Costa County sheriff's spokesman Jimmy Lee.

"You could just walk right around the side of the gate, there are countless ways to get in here," Lynch told The Associated Press. "There are too many ways to come in undercover, without being in a vehicle or going on the road."

The couple sought a restraining order against Lynch in June, but they dropped the petition.

The sheriff's office has said they were not focused on any one individual, and were considering a wide range of motives.

Horowitz's co-counsel and friend Ivan Golde said Tuesday he believed police were narrowing in on a suspect. "From what I have heard, an arrest is imminent. It will occur," Golde said on NBC's "Today."

Horowitz was so worried about his safety that he owned a gun and other weapons because of his line of work defending criminals including drug dealers and killers, Golde said. Golde said he was worried about his own safety as well, and that police had warned him to be careful. He wouldn't say why.

Golde and Horowitz were defending Susan Polk in a high-profile murder case until a mistrial was declared Monday because of publicity from Vitale's slaying. Horowitz was not in court.

Lynch, 54, said Monday he has known Horowitz for more than a decade, and that they occasionally clashed. He said the latest incident was this summer, when his young attack dog lunged at Horowitz. Police were called and Lynch said he returned the dog.

In a court filing seeking the restraining order in June, Horowitz accused Lynch of drug and alcohol abuse that made him "delusional, threatening, violent and dangerous."

"Most important to me is that he stay away from my wife, Pamela," Horowitz wrote.

Horowitz, 50, told the Chronicle on Monday he dropped the request for the restraining order because Lynch had started a drug rehabilitation program and was trying to get his life back on track.

"It was mainly my decision not to go through with it," Horowitz said. "Why hit a man while he's down, and why do something that would just stir up his anger?"

Lynch said he was on the property on the day Vitale's body was found, walking his German shepherd and building a door for the dog when he heard the sirens of police descending on the scene.

Horowitz's lawyer, Robert Massi, said his client has an alibi for the hours leading up to when he found his wife. Horowitz had breakfast Saturday with Massi and then spent the afternoon working with colleagues on the Polk case before returning home and finding his wife about 6 p.m.

"My biggest nightmare is that whoever killed her waited and watched for me to leave the house," Horowitz told the Chronicle. "If I'd been home, I would have won that fight."

Horowitz and Vitale were in the process of building a 7,000 square-foot hilltop home on the property, which is surrounded by pasture and a wooded canyon in the wealthy suburb of Lafayette, about 20 miles east of San Francisco.

Horowitz, a television commentator on the Scott Peterson trial, has handled a wide range of criminal cases - from white collar federal crimes to more than a dozen death penalty murder cases. Vitale worked at her husband's law practice, creating and managing databases.

[Sher]

(CNN) -- Investigators arrested a 16-year-old boy in connection with the killing of Pamela Vitale, wife of high-profile attorney and television legal analyst Daniel Horowitz, a law enforcement source told CNN Thursday.

The suspect is from Lafayette, California, where the couple were building an estate in the hills east of Oakland.

Horowitz found Vitale's body Saturday evening in a trailer on the property. Authorities said she had been beaten to death.

"I took it all in, and I knew she was dead," Horowitz told CNN's Nancy Grace in an exclusive interview.

"You scream, you cry. But I just basically sat with her, and I just told her, 'I love you, and you're beautiful'," Horowitz said. (Watch Horowitz describe his last minutes with his wife's body -- 4:50)

After reporting her death to police, Horowitz said he was put into the back of a police car and not allowed to return to the trailer to see his wife.

Horowitz said he found Vitale, 52, when he returned from San Francisco to the mobile home where the couple lived for the past two years while building a 7,000-square-foot Italian-style mansion.

It was Vitale's dream house and she supervised the project down to the last detail, Horowitz told CNN.

Medical examiners have concluded that Vitale died from blunt trauma to the head, said a spokesman for the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department.

Horowitz told CNN he had been in San Francisco preparing for the trial of Susan Polk, accused of stabbing her millionaire husband to death in 2002.

The judge declared a mistrial in the high-profile case because of Vitale's slaying.

Ivan Golde, Horowitz's co-counsel in the Polk trial, told CNN he was "confident" there was no connection between the Polk case and Vitale's slaying.

Horowitz has represented high-profile defendants and appears frequently as a legal analyst on cable television networks, including CNN.

[Sher]

MARTINEZ, California (CNN) -- The teenage suspect in the beating death of a prominent lawyer's wife was described by classmates as a "Gothic" loner who followed the occult and dressed in black from the polish on his fingernails to his trench coat.

The young man is being held as a juvenile in the slaying of Pamela Vitale, wife of lawyer and television pundit Daniel Horowitz. Police say he apparently acted alone.

Horowitz found Vitale's body when he returned to a trailer the couple shared while they built a dream estate on a hilltop in affluent Lafayette, east of Oakland.

Authorities said Vitale, 52, was bludgeoned by a strip of crown molding and fought with her killer. (See video about the arrest -- 4:35)

A Gothic cross was carved into her back. That symbol may be a key link to the suspect.

"He was just really a Gothic kid, and everyone knew who he was just because of his apparel. When you heard the name, you were just like, 'Oh, that kid,' " a classmate told CNN.

"He just definitely stood out in front of anybody in the school," the classmate added. "When he walked by, everybody talked about him -- like, he definitely didn't blend in."

Authorities would not identify the 16-year-old, and CNN is not naming him because of his age. But news outlets in the San Francisco Bay area widely publicized his name after his arrest late Wednesday.

Former classmates told The Associated Press that the teenager drew a pentagram on the ground at school, telling other students he was reading from the book of Satan.

They described him to the wire service as a quiet student at Acalanes High School in Lafayette, where he stood out because of his attire.

"He was really Gothic, always wore a long, dark jacket," Kevin Etheridge, 16, told the AP. "He'd hang out with a few kids, but he was pretty quiet, pretty much to himself."

Another student remembered him in junior high school drawing a pentagram on the ground with chalk and dancing around it with other students.

"He told people the book that he was carrying and reading from was the book of Satan," Keith Kingon told the AP.

The San Francisco Chronicle, citing an unidentified law enforcement source, reported that investigators believe the killing was related to a scheme that involved using stolen credit card numbers to fund a marijuana-growing operation.

The Chronicle's source said the boy had ordered equipment for the operation and mistakenly thought the supplies were delivered to Horowitz and Vitale's home, the newspaper reported on its Web site.

The teen went there Saturday looking for the equipment and got in a fight with Vitale, striking her dozens of times in the head with a piece of molding that was left behind at the scene, according to the Chronicle's source.

The boy, who lived on a remote canyon road down the hill from the estate, had scratches on his arms and legs from a fight, the newspaper reported.

A man at the house where the suspect lived declined to comment Thursday as goats and chickens wandered around the property. A potbelly stove, a bathtub and dozens of baseballs littered the yard, the AP reported.

If the boy is convicted of murder as an adult, he would face up to life in prison. If convicted as a juvenile, he would be freed on his 25th birthday. He is too young to face the death penalty.

www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/10/21/vitale.suspect/index.html

[Sher]

I saw tonight on Nancy Grace, the mother of the teen arrested in the murder of Ms. Pamela Vitale, has been arrested for helping to cover up the murder.

As soon as I can pull up an article on this I will post.

[Sher]

MARTINEZ, California (CNN) -- The mother of a 16-year-old charged in the brutal slaying of an attorney's wife was arrested Thursday on a charge of accessory to murder for allegedly telling her son not to come home because police had blocked off the neighborhood following the killing.

Scott Edgar Dyleski, who will be tried as an adult on first-degree murder charges, was arraigned Thursday. He did not enter a plea.

The hearing was continued until November 9 after his attorney withdrew from the case citing "financial considerations" and a previous association with the Dyleski family. (Watch Scott Dyleski's arraignment -- 2:10)

Dyleski is being held on $1 million bail.

The October 15 slaying of Pamela Vitale, 52, has drawn national attention because her husband, Daniel Horowitz, is a high-profile defense attorney and occasional TV commentator. Dyleski was one of their neighbors.

According to an affidavit, the suspect's mother, Esther Fielding, allegedly told her son about the police presence in the area on the night of the slaying and advised him to spend the night at his girlfriend's house because the road had been blocked off.

Fielding is being held at the main jail in Martinez, California.

In the affidavit, Contra Costa Sheriff detective Cary Goldberg said a friend of Dyleski told police that Dyleski arrived at his home with his girlfriend on the evening of the killing. After about an hour, the "suspect and his girlfriend left and stated that they were going to (her) residence in order to have sex."

The friend, Oscar Timms, told the detective that Dyleski called his mother before leaving.

Gloria Allred is representing Dyleski's girlfriend.

Girlfriend's home searched
District Attorney Bob Kochly Thursday declined to comment on the case.

Thomas McKenna, who represented Dyleski on Thursday, asked Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge David Flynn that he be dismissed from the case. In 2002 McKenna represented the driver of a car that killed Dyleski's half-sister and another passenger. McKenna told CNN that "financial considerations" also were a factor in his decision.

A public defender will be assigned to represent the Dyleski, the judge said.

A hearing on a defense request for a gag order is to be held November 10. Both sides in the case support the motion because of the intense publicity.

Horowitz found his wife in their mobile home near Lafayette, east of Oakland, where the couple lived while their dream home was being built on the property. Dyleski lived nearby.

In an affidavit by Goldberg that was attached to requests for search warrants, he said deputies found the body of Vitale "lying in a pool of blood" on the living room floor. She had a traumatic head injury and multiple wounds on her legs, he said.

The county's crime lab processed a large, bloody shoeprint on the lid of a storage container collected from the crime scene, Goldberg said in the affidavit.

Police found a duffle bag in an inoperable vehicle at Dyleski's home, the detective said. Inside, were several items of clothing, and the lab found traces of blood. A glove also had blood on it, Goldberg said.

Deputies also searched the girlfriend's home and the house of a family member in Walnut Creek, where Dyleski was arrested. No details were available on what may have been found at those locations.

While the crime scene was being investigated, Goldberg said a neighbor, Doug Schneider, told him his credit cards had been stolen and had recently been used to purchase hydroponic growing equipment. Hydroponics is the cultivation of plants in a nutrient solution rather than soil.

The equipment was to be shipped to the Vitale-Horowitz home, Goldberg said, but the supplier denied the purchase, suspecting it was fraudulent.

"Mr. Schneider believed this purchase ... may be related to the murder of Pamela Vitale," the detective said.

According to a law enforcement official, investigators suspect Vitale confronted the boy on her property and that confrontation may have led to the slaying.