Tag: bludgeoning

Friends, teachers say teen murder suspect was polite, nonviolent:

This past Thursday, character witnesses testified on behalf of Scott Dyleski…

On Thursday, teachers and friends of Scott Dyleski took the stand for the defense to say the teenager they knew was polite, sociable and nonviolent.

Dyleski – who is being tried as an adult in the bludgeoning death of Vitale, wife of prominent defense attorney Daniel Horowitz – was a dedicated Ultimate Frisbee player who encouraged incoming teammates, handled conflict wisely and kept cool under pressure, according to Jo Tams, who coached his Acalanes High School team.
Tams said she was so impressed with the “mature thinker” that she named him one of three team captains during the 2004-05 season.

“He filled that role admirably,” she told jurors.

Susan Lane, Dyleski’s graphic-design teacher, testified that he excelled in her class and produced “exceptional art.” She said she was not concerned at all that he focused on dark themes like Satan, noting that 20 percent of her students embraced the Goth culture and created similar images.

That’s all well and good, but how many of history’s most notorious killers were polite, intelligent, and sociable. Ted Bundy? Jeffrey Dahmer? John Wayne Gacy? Eric Harris? And wasn’t Gacy an “exceptional artist”?

Just because a killer was polite and sociable doesn’t make them any less of a killer.

Murder victim’s DNA found on suspect’s alleged belongings:

DNA evidence was presented in the trial of Scott Dyleski yesterday, which the prosecution says links him to the crime scene of Pam Vitale’s murder.

Contra Costa County Sheriff’s senior criminalist David Stockwell told jurors Tuesday that DNA on a face mask, a glove and shoes that Dyleski’s mother had testified belonged to the teenager matched Pamela Vitale’s profile to a certainty of one out of 13 quadrillion Caucasian females.

For the math impaired, that’s this many. 13,000,000,000,000,000. So there is a 1 in 13,000,000,000,000,000 chance that the DNA found on Dyleski’s clothes was not Pam Vitale’s

A possible match to Dyleski’s DNA also was found at the crime scene in traces of blood on the bottom of Vitale’s right foot, Stockwell said, although one out of 43,000 Caucasian males could have the same DNA profile.

Which would mean if it wasn’t Dyleski then someone who has a 1 in 43,000 chance of having the same DNA profile of Dyleski did it. Possible, but not probable.

Dyleski’s DNA, however, was not found under Vitale’s fingernails, and none of her DNA was found on a knife that his mother, Esther Fielding, turned over to authorities, Stockwell testified.

Not surprising since he was wearing a face mask. However, he still could have had scratches on his face.

On cross-examination by deputy public defender Ellen Leonida, Stockwell said one of the DNA samples from the inside of the glove does not match the defendant.

But is that enough to cause reasonable doubt? I don’t think so.

Jurors see crime scene photos:

MARTINEZ – Jurors in Scott Dyleski’s murder trial for the first time Monday morning saw a photograph depicting a symbol that was cut into the back of Pamela Vitale when she was attacked and killed.

Later they saw examples of Dyleski’s drawings that included depictions of gaunt, dismembered people, all containing a similar symbol attached to his signature.

Prosecutor Harold Jewett projected an autopsy picture of Vitale’s back showing a T with a line intersecting the middle that had been cut into her skin — a design similar to one Dyleski’s family and friends had testified that he used along with his name to sign his artwork.

Jurors on Monday saw Dyleski’s symbol next to his signature in an exhibit projected on the courtroom wall of more than 30 pieces of his artwork that investigators confiscated from his bedroom.

Slender, almost emaciated figures dominate the drawings, which used pencil, charcoal and watercolor. Shadows appear like black smears from wet mascara.

One sketch shows a man holding a bearded, decapitated head in one hand and a knife in the other. Another shows a person clutching his or her bloody abdomen.

Dyleski used mostly black and white, often adding red to depict drips of blood.

His writings included lyrics from the industrial band Velvet Acid Christ and a picture depicting 1950s serial killer Ed Gein.

Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Detective Joseph Moore, who found the sketches, read aloud the writings next to each one.

“Before Manson, before Bundy, there was Gein,” Moore said, reading the writing next to a black-and-white face.

In this case, the face appeared to be printed on paper from wood etching.

The symbol with each sketch is a T with a circle at the top, sometimes with a star inside, and smaller protruding lines that create a sort of human stick figure.

The T in the signature symbol is similar to that found on Vitale’s back.

Is Dyleski arrogant or just stupid?

Tearful Testimony By Mother Of Scott Dyleski:

Scott Dykeski’s mother, Esther Fielding, testified this past Thursday in her son’s murder trial. Dyleski is accused of killing Pam Vitale, the wife of noted criminal defense attorney Daniel Horowitz…

Fielding acknowledged warning her son that his room was about to be searched by other members of the household and she also said she later destroyed some of his things, including a box of gloves and pieces of paper bearing credit card numbers and other information. Experts have testified Vitale’s attacker wore gloves.

However, Fielding said repeatedly she only worried her son was involved in a credit card scam and did not connect him to the murder of Vitale, their neighbor in the San Francisco suburb of Lafayette.

Prosecutor Harold Jewett challenged that explanation, noting that Dyleski had acknowledged the credit card fraud some days before Fielding burned the items.

“I didn’t think it out clearly,” Fielding replied. “I just panicked.”

Later, Fielding decided to turn in the things she hadn’t destroyed, giving investigators a computer hard drive and a pair of shoes among other things. According to testimony at a preliminary hearing on the case, investigators found the shoe print appeared to match a partial bloody footprint near Vitale’s body.

The defense appeared to address the inconsistencies pointed out by Jewett in Fielding’s testimony Wednesday.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Ellen Leonida, Fielding said she takes medication to fight memory loss and hadn’t taken it Wednesday.

Not having the medication, “makes things a little foggier,” Fielding said.

Dyleski alibi witness changes testimony:

A housemate of Scott Dyleski’s from what I call “the hippy commune” changed his testimony today…

MARTINEZ – The only person to provide an alibi for Scott Dyleski testified Wednesday he is no longer certain he saw the teenager at all on the morning Pamela Vitale was killed.

“My testimony wasn’t entirely truthful,” Fred Curiel said about his earlier testimony at a February preliminary hearing. Curiel and his wife own the home where Dyleski was living at the time of the Vitale slaying.

Curiel had told investigators on Oct. 20, 2005, and testified in the prior hearing that he saw Dyleski without scratches or injuries sitting on the couch next to his wife at 9:26 a.m. that morning. He said then that he knew the exact time because he had looked at his pager while waiting for his family to get ready to go Halloween shopping.

Under cross-examination by deputy public defender Ellen Leonida, Curiel maintained he and his family started driving away from the house at 10:26 or 10:27 a.m.. He arrived at the Halloween supply store at 10:51 a.m., he said.

Investigators estimate Vitale was attacked about 10:12 a.m. because she performed a final computer search at that time.

Curiel’s wife, Kim Curiel, testified Tuesday that the family left the house at 11:15 a.m. His wife’s account of events would have put her and her husband in the house at 10:45 a.m., when she said she saw Dyleski come home with scratches on his face — a time that fits into the prosecutor’s theory that Dyleski killed Vitale around 10:12 a.m.

Fred Curiel’s time estimate puts the family in the house earlier, and calls into question what time his wife actually saw Dyleski.

After his meeting with investigators, he spoke with his wife to confirm with her that Dyleski was sitting next to her on the couch, Curiel said today.

She confirmed it, he said. But today he testified that he didn’t actually remember seeing him.

“I don’t have an explanation other than my memory is not … I don’t have an explanation,” he said.

Conspiracy theories aside, I wonder what made him change his mind. Maybe going to jail for perjury wasn’t worth getting back at the man.

Dyleski’s girlfriend takes the stand:

MARTINEZ – Scott Dyleski told his girlfriend after the slaying of Pamela Vitale that if he was linked to the killing and a credit card fraud and had to spend his life in jail, he did not want her involved, the girlfriend testified Thursday.

Jena Reddy, 18, also testified that she and Dyleski had “experimented with inflicting pain on each other,” and discussed removing organs from people and torturing children.

“We would talk about it jokingly or hypothetically that if the child was being annoying, the possibilities we could do to keep it quiet,” she said.

Shortly after the killing, Reddy said, Dyleski told her that if he was blamed for the credit card fraud, somehow he could be blamed for the murder.

“(He said) something along the lines of if he was going to jail for life, he didn’t want to involve me … no matter whether he did it or not,” Reddy said.

“Did he tell you he did not do it,” deputy district attorney Harold Jewett asked.

“No,” Reddy replied.

Here’s what’s really scary…

Another neighbor testified Thursday how she got scared when she realized that her credit card has been used to order $2,300 of indoor plant lights that were to be billed to Vitale’s address. She said she was even more frightened when she found out Vitale had been killed.

Dyleski’s neighbor, Karen Schneider, testified that when she found the fraudulent charges on her credit card, she approached Dyleski’s mother, Esther Fielding, at a neighborhood meeting the day after Vitale’s death. Fielding and Dyleski were living at the home of Fred and Kim Curiel, whose house was listed as the shipping address on the order.

Schneider had run over and injured Fielding’s dog a month earlier, and she suspected that Fielding may have been putting veterinarian bills on her credit card, Schneider testified.

“I said, ‘It looks to me like you’ve already paid yourself back, and besides that, you’re trying to kill me,’” Schneider testified.

Did Dyleski kill the wrong person? Was his intended victim Karen Schneider? Could be.

Dyleski’s Friend Testifies Against Him:

The following Tuesday, Oct. 18, Dyleski told Croen he was going to confess to the credit card scheme because he was afraid it would link him to the murder, Croen said.

Croen said Dyleski seemed anxious and was talking fast.

While Croen was worrying about getting caught for the credit card fraud, Dyleski said something strange, Croen said.

“He said the person he had seen on his walk was the person who had been killed,” Croen said. He said that Dyleski had told him that the woman had grabbed his wrist.

“He said he was afraid of being linked to the killing by some kind of DNA evidence,” Croen said.

Croen said that he had been unable to get a coherent answer from Dyleski about how he would be linked to the killing or how his DNA would be found at the murder scene.

Dyleski was arrested on Oct. 19 and Croen didn’t see him again until the preliminary hearing. Croen’s family hired a lawyer and Croen was given immunity in exchange for his testimony.

To me, Dyleski sounds like a little kid who is telling a bunch of lies to throw off suspicion even though it makes him look guilty.

Witness Casts Doubt On Dyleski’s Alleged Motive:

A prosecution witness in the Scott Dyleski murder trial testified Wednesday morning that the alleged plot to buy marijuana-growing equipment, his purported motive in the killing, had been foiled the day before 52-year-old Pamela Vitale was slain in her Lafayette home.

According to prosecutor Harold Jewett, Dyleski broke into the house Vitale shared with her husband, Daniel Horowitz, at 1901 Hunsaker Canyon Road and bludgeoned her to death as a part of a plot to buy lighting equipment for growing marijuana indoors using stolen credit card information.

Jackie Jahoski, owner of Specialty Lighting where Dyleski allegedly attempted to buy the lights, said Dyleski had placed four orders on Thursday, Oct. 13, using two separate credit cards. He requested that the lights be shipped by next-day air.

Jahoski said she became suspicious when the billing addresses didn’t match the shipping addresses. She said she notified Dyleski that she could only ship to the billing address, at which point Dyleski canceled his order.

She said he called back a short time later and asked for the order to be shipped to the billing address, 1901 Hunsaker Canyon Road. The name on the credit card, however, was that of a different Hunsaker Canyon Road neighbor.

Jahoski said she told Dyleski on Friday, Oct. 14, that she would not be shipping the order anywhere because the credit card company had declined the purchase.

That testimony does call the motive into question, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Dyleski was trying to use the victim’s address.

Jury sees Vitale crime scene photos:

Bruises and open cuts on her body showed that Pamela Vitale put up a fierce struggle after an intruder attacked in her home, a sheriff’s investigator testified Monday.

“A lot of them appeared to have been defensive injuries,” said Alex Taflya, a criminalist with the Contra Costa County crime lab, referring to photographs a prosecutor projected for jurors.

The jury in the trial of Scott Dyleski saw for the first time photographs of the victim and the modular home where she and her husband Daniel Horowitz were living on Oct. 15, 2005 while they built a mansion nearby.

During much of Monday’s testimony, Dyleski gazed at the front of the courtroom, watching each witness, occasionally wiping his nose.

He turned his head toward the screen to view each photograph depicting the bloody crime scene.

Vitale’s family members often looked down, averting their eyes, while the prosecutor showed photos of her body. In addition to her children, her parents and Horowitz’s parents were in the audience.

Jewett first showed jurors photographs investigators took outside the house in the early evening.

Porch lights glowed in front of a dark blue dusk sky. Each picture brought jurors closer to the front door, which was open and smeared with blood.

Vitale lay just inside, curled in a fetal position, behind the door. Blood covered the back of it, some smeared by hands covered with gloves, Taflya said.

Other photos showed the home’s interior, depicting tight quarters with piles of papers and books, some scattered after a struggle.

Boxes and papers lay on the floor, spilled and strewn around. A collection of family photographs sat on an end table. A broken coffee cup smeared with blood was in the sink.

Taflya showed the jury a broken piece of pottery found near Vitale. Blood stained the edges of the broken portion, he said.

But he ruled it out as a murder weapon.

“There is not enough blood on the pot,” he testified. “The pot would probably have shattered after a few blows.”

Horowitz takes stand in Dyleski trial:

Daniel Horowitz was just inside his front door when, as he dropped his bags of groceries in shock, he saw his wife lying dead in the home they shared on a Lafayette hillside.

“It was like a crime scene photograph,” Horowitz testified Tuesday, shaking his head. “I knew it wasn’t.”

“Even though I knew she was dead, I reached and touched her,” Horowitz said, placing two fingers against his own neck as if checking for a pulse.

He said a bad feeling crept up on him when he saw his wife’s car parked in the home’s driveway. He had expected her to be at the ballet.

“I didn’t think too much,” he said. “I just knew it wasn’t good.”

Answering deputy district attorney Harold Jewett’s questions about the couple’s life together, Horowitz sometimes smiled, raising his eyebrows with enthusiasm, recounting the mansion his wife was designing and all the paperwork and materials that cluttered their temporary home.

He said he last talked to his wife the night before her death.

“We watched television,” he said. We spoke. I went to bed. She stayed up.”

Under questioning by Leonida, Horowitz said he was unsure whether anyone had compromised Vitale’s credit cards, banking or other financial accounts.

“Truthfully, I haven’t looked at anything,” he said. “I wouldn’t know.”

Interesting that both articles say that the murder weapon has yet to be revealed.

Media interest in Dyleski trial less than expected:

It has all the elements of a sensational trial: the body a popular middle-aged woman is found brutally beaten in her own home on a quiet suburban road.

Her husband, the nationally renowned criminal defense attorney Daniel Horowitz, finds the body while trying to prepare a case involving a woman now convicted of killing her husband not 20 miles from the Horowitz home.

Defendant Scott Dyleski, a teen-aged boy described as “Goth” and fascinated with the macabre, is also accused of carving an arcane symbol into Pamela Vitale’s dead body.

Sensational details promise a lively trial — but Day 1 failed to draw nearly the media and public attention once predicted.

“Some of the networks aren’t here because the news is substantially Middle East driven right now,” said Peter Shaplen, the network consultant helping the court manage press access.

Shaplen has helped other courts develop strategies for accommodating media scrums. Most notably, he kept the courts in Santa Maria and Santa Clara running smoothly during the Michael Jackson and Scott Peterson trials.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of local interest,” he said.

Still, even the amateur trial watchers didn’t show up in force Thursday.

“I think they’ve blown this whole thing out of proportion,” said Rosemary, who refused to give her last name because she took time off work to be at the trail and doesn’t want to get into trouble with her boss.

“It’s not like Peterson where there’s a mystery about the whole thing,” she said.

Occam’s Razor in action.

Prosecutor: Scott Dyleski’s vicious slaying of neighbor ‘wasn’t Goth … it was murder’:

MARTINEZ, Calif. — Gothic imagery, dark poetry and an obseassion with cult murders imbued the mind of a 17-year-old former Boy Scout who is accused of brutally killing 52-year-old Pamela Vitale, prosecutors said during opening statements Thursday in the teen’s first-degree murder trial.

“It wasn’t Goth, it wasn’t even death, it was murder,” prosecutor Harold Jewett said of the nature of writings and drawings that investigators found in a search of the boy’s bedroom.

Oh, hell. They are using the “Judas Priest” prosecution strategy.

The defendant, Scott Dyleski, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Vitale, a mother of two and former Bay Area high-tech executive who was married to prominent California defense attorney Daniel Horowitz.

Dyleski is also charged with the special circumstance of murder during a burglary.

Dyleski allegedly disguised himself in a black ski mask, gloves and trench coat before entering Vitale’s home and making a surprise attack on his neighbor, shortly after 10 a.m. on Oct. 15, 2005.

“Scott Dyleski is not a killer and he did not commit this crime,” said his attorney, public defender Ellen Leonida, who promised the jury that DNA evidence and an inconsistent timeline will show the boy had nothing to do with Vitale’s murder.

Dyleski had multiple scratches and marks on his body and face when he was examined by police. Dyleski says he received them during a nature walk.

Isn’t that convenient?

A member of Dyleski’s household will testify, according to Leonida, that the time was 9:26 a.m. — before Vitale’s death — when the teen returned from his walk.

Leonida tried to bring Dyleski’s gentle qualities to the forefront. She described him as a kind kid, a helpful babysitter, a former little leaguer and Frisbee team member. He may have enjoyed dark music and dress, Leonida told jurors, but he cared deeply for life, and was so harmless that he didn’t eat meat or wear leather.

In my opinion, from the descriptions, I’ve heard members of Dyleski’s “household” are not exactly what I would call trustworthy. And so what if Dyleski is a vegan/vegetarian. That does not exclude him from murder. Hell, most animal rights activists care more for animals than they do for people.

Prosecutor Jewett portrayed the teen as a ruthless killer who stunned and attacked Vitale, leaving her with “26 separate devastating wounds to the head,” dislodged teeth, broken fingers.

“She fought as valiantly as she could, but the attack continued,” Jewett said.

Internal bleeding in Vitale’s brain led to her immediate death, Jewett said, but even after she died from her head injuries, the attack continued.

Vitale was stabbed so viciously in her abdomen, Jewett said, that her intestines were exposed. And then the killer carved a symbol into her back.

“Mr. Dyleski was big into symbols. He signs his name and puts his symbol on his artwork,” Jewett said.

The prosecutor drew a symbol on a white piece of butcher paper that represented the signature Dyleski allegedly carved into Vitale’s back, an H-shaped symbol with an extended T-bar.

Jewett told the jury that he planned to call some 40 witnesses, including Dyleski’s best friend, who tipped off police to the pair’s marijuana-growing scheme that allegedly was the impetus for Dyleski’s run-in with Vitale; the defendant’s girlfriend, whom he allegedly asked to keep a red backpack filled with evidence; and his own mother, a reluctant witness who agreed to cooperate in exchange for escaping prosecution herself after she destroyed clothes, notes and other evidence.

Prosecutors also plan to offer the jury about 100 exhibits, including DNA evidence, bloody clothing, footprints, glove prints, fingerprints, and journal writings and drawings found in Dyleski’s room.

“Listen carefully, in particular to the DNA evidence,” Leonida told jurors, alleging that a third DNA profile was found at the crime scene.

“Scott Dyleski had no motive whatsoever to commit this crime,” Leonida said.

The evidence sounds pretty overwhelming to me. I just hope the prosecution doesn’t screw it up by overplaying the “goth” card.