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Teen to be tried as adult in Vitale slaying

A 16-year-old boy was charged as an adult Friday in the killing of a prominent defense attorney’s wife and was ordered held on $1 million bail.
/ Source: The Associated Press

A teenager described by former classmates as a brooding nonconformist with an interest in the occult was charged as an adult in the murder of the wife of a prominent defense attorney.

Scott Dyleski, 16, was being held in Contra Costa Juvenile Hall after his first court appearance Friday in the beating death of 52-year-old Pamela Vitale. He did not enter a plea or speak as the judge set bail at $1 million.

Defense lawyer and TV legal pundit Daniel Horowitz found his wife’s body Oct. 15 at the couple’s hilltop estate, where they were building their dream home. Dyleski lived with his mother down the hill in the wealthy suburb of Lafayette, about 20 miles east of San Francisco.

Report: Credit-card scam
The San Francisco Chronicle, quoting unidentified law enforcement sources, reported Friday that Dyleski was running a credit-card scam and went to Horowitz and Vitale’s estate trying to track down some marijuana-growing equipment he had ordered. He got into a fight there with Vitale, who was hit dozens of times in the head with a piece of crown molding, the newspaper reported.

According to the Chronicle, when Dyleski was arrested Wednesday he had scratches consistent with a violent struggle. Horowitz has said his wife appeared to have fought her attacker.

“This is a brutal homicide,” Deputy District Attorney Harold Jewett said. “We believe it’s a situation where he is not entitled to protections accorded him under juvenile law.”

Jewett declined to comment on the Chronicle’s report but said it was not helpful to the investigation.

Ivan Golde, a friend of Horowitz and fellow attorney, said Friday that Horowitz had done some legal work for Dyleski’s family but did not know the teenager.

Horowitz “wrote some letters, made a few phone calls, but that’s it, nothing serious, just stuff lawyers do all the time for their friends and neighbors,” he said.

Well-known legal commentator
Horowitz has appeared on cable news networks as a legal commentator for such high-profile cases as the Scott Peterson murder trial. Vitale worked part-time for his law firm.

Dyleski’s arraignment was set for Thursday. If convicted of murder as an adult, he could face up to life in prison; he is too young to face the death penalty.

Former classmates recalled Dyleski, who turns 17 later this month, as a nonconformist who tested out of Acalanes High School early. Some described him as gothic, dyeing his brown hair black and often wearing dark clothes and a long trench coat.

Keith Kingon said that Dyleski told people he was reading the book of Satan and that he once drew a pentagram on the ground with chalk in junior high and danced around it.

Yearbook photos of Dyleski show a transformation from fresh-faced middle schooler to brooding teenager with black-rimmed eyes. But while some former classmates described him as a morose oddball, others who know him insisted he was basically a good kid.

His stepfather, Glenn Hirschberger, described him as a “thoughtful, intelligent young man” incapable of the brutal attack on Vitale.

“Not Scott — absolutely not,” Hirschberger, who was married to the boy’s mother for about four years in the 1990s, told the Chronicle. “There’s absolutely no way he’d be involved in anything like this.”