Horowitz takes stand in Dyleski trial

Contra Costa Times ^ | 8/1/6 | Bruce Gerstman

[SmithL]

MARTINEZ - 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."

The veteran defense attorney took the stand to testify for the prosecution in trial of Scott Dyleski, the teenager accused of killing his wife, Pamela Vitale. He described in vivid detail the blood he saw smudged on the door when he came home the evening of Oct. 15 2005, to find his wife dead

"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.

Prosecutors say Dyleski, 17, burglarized the home the couple shared and murdered Vitale as part of a scheme to credit card information and purchase marijuana-growing equipment. Dyleski's attorney, Ellen Leonida, has said her client was at home at the time Vitale was killed.

Horowitz recounted the events of that day. He told the jury how he had attended two business meetings, gone to the gym, and then stopped at Kinkos and the grocery store before heading home.

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."

Earlier Tuesday, a criminalist unwrapped three pieces of blood-stained molding and two large utility flashlights, covered in blood, and told the jury that Vitale's attacker may have used the items to bludgeon Vitale. None of the items, however, have been identified as the weapon that delivered the fatal blows.

"It may have been used for one or two strikes, but not for the murder weapon," Alex Taflya, a criminalist with the Contra Costa County crime lab said in response to Jewett's questions about each sample.

Under cross-examination, Taflya testified that he did not investigate a purse that left on a table and did not know whether anyone might have rifled through it.

Last week, Jewett presented his theory that Dyleski broke into the home to steal credit card and financial information.

[SmithL]

Daniel Horowitz sits in the shade out in front of the A.F. Bray Court Building in Martinez on Monday waiting testify.