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 ...
Hey, it's just a lifestyle choice, right? /sarcasm off
Right ;-)
And we learned nothing from Columbine? Not that there was anything much to do with this kid. Do we know were the parents are?
Supposedly, the mom is a nice single mom.
I think some kids are just goners from the start. Obviously having a dad around would have helped, but it may not have solved anything. Therapy? Maybe if it had been started at 9 or 10, but the kid probably wouldn't have cooperated as a teen.
Just a sad waste.
Here's the boy's story:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/12957543.htm
But the former boy scout, ball player and ambitious 16-year-old college student also liked to cook vegan meals for his housemates and guests, took a heavy course load in his first semester at Diablo Valley College and immersed himself in art and music.
Now Dyleski is in Contra Costa Juvenile Hall on suspicion of beating Pamela Vitale, a 52-year-old neighbor, to death and carving a double crossed "T" into her back.
"He's a very bright kid. He just drifted," said a close family friend who spends a lot of time at the Hunsaker Canyon Road home where Dyleski lives with his mother, a long-distance healer who believes that DNA strands can be activated to alleviate disease.
The crowded home, shared by three families and recently, invaded by mice, is just down the one-lane rural road from the modular home where Vitale lived with her star-attorney husband, Daniel Horowitz, next to the palatial house they have been building.
Sheriff's deputies arrested Dyleski on Wednesday night at another family friend's Walnut Creek home while he was waiting for his father to pick him up.
Dyleski and his mother moved from Sebastopol to the Lafayette hills about six years ago and set up a lean-to on her friends' property.
"The lean-to got more and more elaborate as time went on," said another family friend, who agreed to be identified as Marcus.
Marcus took Dyleski golfing and to the movies and tried to be a male role model.
Dyleski slept on a thin mattress on pallets through his middle school years, until the landowners, Kim and Fred Curiel, built a house using ecological materials in 2002 and they all moved inside, Marcus said.
"He never really liked his dad, he never really talked about him," Marcus said.
Dyleski's father, who lives in Antioch was not available for comment. His former step-father, Glen Hirschberger, who lives in Sebastopol, said Dyleski was an industrious kid who helped his mother at the Lafayette bakery where she worked. He wanted to be a sound engineer.
Daniel Curtis, 15, another neighbor, said he met Dyleski about six years ago when he moved into the canyon.
"He was relatively normal when I talked to him years ago, but he kind of started to become gothic-like," Curtis said. "He was part of a pretty big group of people in (Stanley) Middle School that was basically the goth group."
Friends said Dyleski started to change about the time his father's daughter, Denika Dyleski, and a 19-year-old boy were killed in a car crash while driving on Ygnacio Valley Road. A 17-year-old friend was driving too fast and flipped the car on a curve, hitting two other vehicles.
After that Dyleski started wearing dark clothing, entered a gothic, Marilyn Manson phase and stopped talking openly, Marcus said.
"He was very sad for a long time," Marcus said.
Marcus tried to stay in Dyleski's life. He visited the house on Hunsaker Canyon, where Marcus's sister also lives, and in April he and his wife took Dyleski to Disneyland.
Dyleski's interest in the Boy Scouts also waned in 2003 and he dropped out last year, a scout leader said.
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.
There's a recent Supreme Court ruling pertaining to this sort of thing, that needs to be revisited.
Funny.
His attorney will claim kids at school picked on him so it's not his fault.
"a long-distance healer who believes that DNA stands can be activated to alleviate disease"
She sounds a bit whacked out herself.
That you can't wear black? ;-)
Mom sounds like a very stable and sensible influence in her son's life.
So she didn't discourage his trip to an alternate lifestyle.
Uh-oh, here come the DNA activation supporters! ;-)
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