Posted on 10/21/2005 7:34:48 AM PDT by smartin
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
It might be ... but the information in your post #10 makes it clear that the boy never had anything like a normal life. Crowd of adults all doing their own thing. His mother, the "long distance healer," may be nice, but ...
And with all those unrelated people sleeping all over the place, the likelihood that the children were sexually abused is awfully high.
Did you see this?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1506044/posts?q=1&&page=1
Thanks
Yeah, she was using "long distance healing" on her son from the looks of it. But she was described as a nice mom in something I read.
The family friend who frequently visits Hunsaker Canyon and organized a hike in the area earlier this year called Dyleski a sweet kid."I think he resented the fact that his family was not as normal as everyone else's," he said.
Insane people with destructive lifestyles can still be "nice."
I just don't think sweet kids end up murdering people. There's something terribly wrong with someone who can brutally murder someone and then carve something in their back or otherwise mutilate the body.
susie
Someone claimed the guy is a "loner" while an article points out that he was part of a large group. Several times I've seen the term loner used when the perp appeared to be anything but.
yes
Hard to blame him for that.
I haven't seen "real" pictures of his mother.
Goth is one of the dumbest subcultures around. That said, I doubt being goth had anything to do with this guy killing a woman.
It goes much deeper than wearing black.
My father in law is a successful entrepreneurial business owner today in spite of his "tough" life. Mom died when he was 9, Dad became a loser drunk, he and his sibs wound up in the orphanage. Other family members could have taken them in and didn't. Had rheumatic fever and was in bed for about six months in the wonderful state-run orphanage. Eventually they got out and lived in local abandoned shacks and scrounged food from nearby orchards. Dropped out of school in 8th grade and has been working ever since. He's a hopeless redneck in a few respects but he would rather poke pins in his eyeballs than take government assistance or expect anyone to give him anything. After learning what HIS childhood was like I simply don't want to hear any excuses from anyone.
More about this guy:
News of the arrest astonished some, while others thought Dyleski might have been headed for trouble.
Glen Hirschberger said there was no way his former stepson would be capable of such a brutal crime.
"Not Scott -- absolutely not," said Hirschberger, a tool dealer from Sebastopol who was married to Dyleski's mother, Esther Fielding, for more than four years, starting in about 1997. "There's no way. There's absolutely no way he'd be involved in anything like this. He's not a fighter, he's not a violent kid."
Hirschberger said Dyleski, who grew up in Castro Valley and Lafayette, is a "thoughtful, intelligent young man" who once played youth baseball and recently expressed his desire to transfer to a specialty school where he could study sound engineering. The boy is best friends with his mother, he said.
Lynch, who said he was relieved that authorities had ruled him out and glad that deputies had caught a suspect, also voiced surprise that they had arrested Dyleski -- a boy he watched grow up over the past seven or eight years in Hunsaker Canyon.
"I'm beyond shocked by this," Lynch said. "It blows me away that they arrested Scott. I just can't believe he did this. I watched him grow into a young man. I never saw this coming."
But friends say Dyleski had grown troubled in the past two years, beginning about the time his 18-year-old sister, Denika, died in a car crash. Classmates said Dyleski was a bright, outgoing kid during middle school, but his personality changed by the time he began attending Acalanes High School. He became withdrawn, dyed his hair black, wore dark eyeliner and elaborate silver jewelry on his fingers and often dressed in a trench coat.
I agree with you that having a hard beginning does not cause you to grow up to be a monster. I had a rough childhood and I'm a productive member of society. But traumatic beginnings can produce traumatic endings.
Just another fatherless kid with a single mom who has no boundaries or control over her kid! I thought schools had put the skids to the long trench coat stuff after Columbine. From the description from his classmates he is exactly like the Columbine killers profile! Didn't the schools teachers etc see this "misfit" and try to do something? Sounds like he stuck out from the others. I wish people would stop describing killers as "a real nice kid"!!
No kidding. That sounds similar to (only worse than) my own father's story, and yet he managed to stay marrried to the same woman for 50 years (til she died), raised 4 kids (all conservatives!) and has not ever had public assistance or killed anyone.
God Bless your FIL.
susie
I think you're right about having a dress code, but I don't think wearing a trench coat is the reason for what causes this. As for the school and teachers seeing this coming, they must have turned a blind eye to it. And maybe, at one time, he was a real nice kid, but not now if this is true.
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