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SAN FRANCISCO -- Scott Dyleski, the teenager convicted of murdering Pamela Vitale in her Lafayette home in 2005, is once again proclaiming his innocence through legal filings and blames authorities for not sufficiently investigating her husband as a suspect, Dyleski's attorneys have announced. Attorneys Kate Hallinan and Sara Zalkin scheduled a press conference Tuesday to announce a habeas corpus petition filed last week asserting that investigators' failure to probe evidence implicating Vitale's husband, high-profile attorney Daniel Horowitz, led to Dyleski's wrongful conviction. Dyleski, 22, is serving a life sentence at Salinas Valley State Prison. The attorneys say in a news...

A federal judge has dismissed the bulk of a civil rights lawsuit that accused Contra Costa sheriff's deputies of traumatizing the housemates of Scott Dyleski as they searched for Dyleski after the killing of Pamela Vitale, the wife of lawyer and television commentator Daniel Horowitz. Deputies had the right to enter the home on Hunsaker Canyon Road without warrants, as they believed Dyleski might be destroying evidence, U.S. District Judge William Alsup wrote in a ruling Monday. Kim and Fred Curiel and their three children, along with Mike Sikkema and his wife, Hazel McClure, and their two children, said deputies...

MARTINEZ - Scott Dyleski was engaged in school, polite in class and his artwork that included gloomy portrayals of emaciated figures, sometimes bleeding, was normal, his former teacher testified Thursday in the teenager's murder trial. "(The artwork is) very much mainstream," said Acalanes High School graphic design teacher Susan Lane. "I'm very accustomed to seeing this kind of artwork." Lane was one of six witnesses who breezed through the courtroom in two hours on the first day Dyleski's defense attorney presented his case. Jurors sat back with pens and papers in hand, but took few notes as teachers, a coach...

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. Prosecutors say the 17-year-old Dyleski killed Vitale on Oct. 15, 2005, as part of a scheme to use credit card information and purchase marijuana growing equipment. He has pleaded not guilty to murder...

MARTINEZ - Scott Dyleski's former girlfriend testified Monday that she, Dyleski and two friends talked about methods of murder after they learned that someone had been killed in Dyleski's neighborhood on Oct. 15, 2005. "We were talking about killing somebody," said 18-year-old Jena Reddy. "If you want to feel more pain, either bludgeon them or beat them." Reddy finished her testimony for the prosecution in the trial of Dyleski, 17, charged with murder and burglary in the killing of Lafayette resident Pamela Vitale, who was bludgeoned to death in her home on Oct. 15, 2205. Dyleski has pleaded not guilty...

MARTINEZ -- Scott Dyleski and a teenage friend exchanged e-mails about how to avoid detection while using other people's credit cards to order marijuana-growing equipment online, a computer expert testified today in the youth's murder trial. "Do not order all at once. Use separate cards for each purchase. The larger the order, prob(ably) the more likely it is to be noticed," Robin Croen, 17, e-mailed Dyleski in September, a month before the defendant allegedly killed his Lafayette neighbor Pamela Vitale, according to the testimony of Phil Venable, a Contra Costa County sheriff's deputy acting as a district attorney's inspector. "We...

As the high-profile murder trial of Scott Dyleski begins with opening statements today in a Martinez courtroom, a number of personalities will take center stage as the jury considers whether the teenager killed his Lafayette neighbor, Pamela Vitale. The trial will pit veteran Contra Costa County prosecutor Harold "Hal" Jewett, known as a formidable adversary in court, against Ellen Leonida, a lesser-known public defender with experience helping the homeless and refugees seeking asylum. Managing it all will be Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga, a former deputy probation officer and prosecutor with more than 20 years on the bench. After a...

MARTINEZ -- A group of people who lived with Scott Dyleski filed a claim today against Contra Costa County, claiming sheriff's deputies traumatized them as authorities arrested the teen following the killing of television commentator Daniel Horowitz's wife. The residents, including two couples and their five children, who lived with Dyleski in the Lafayette home also filed a complaint today with the sheriff's office, saying deputies threatened them at gunpoint during the Oct. 19 raid, used profanity and violated their rights. Sheriff's deputies fanned through the house and, as they encountered occupants, ordered them to "get the f -- down"...

Judge says sufficient evidence provided in preliminary hearing. Scott Dyleski will stand trial for murder in the slaying of television commentator Daniel Horowitz's wife, a case that has drawn national attention since the prominent lawyer, while himself involved in a high-profile murder trial, found her body at their home in Lafayette in October. After four days of testimony, Contra Costa Superior Court Judge Mary Ann O'Malley ruled Friday that prosecutor Harold Jewett had presented ample evidence that Dyleski, 17, probably killed his neighbor Pamela Vitale, 52, on Oct. 15. Dyleski showed no emotion as O'Malley made her ruling in a...

Oct. 27 - ABC7 has confirmed that the mother of the prime suspect in the murder of a prominent East Bay Attorney's wife, is also under arrest. Scott Dyleski's mother, Esther Fielding, was arrested this afternoon as an accessory to murder after the fact. She is being held at county jail in Martinez on $500,000 dollars bail. Stay with abc7news.com for more information on this developing story as it becomes available. Scott Dyleski Appears In Court The 16-year-old accused of killing the wife of a prominent defense attorney and television commentator went to his girlfriend's house to have sex in...

The killer of Pamela Vitale, the wife of prominent defense attorney Daniel Horowitz, not only bludgeoned her to death but left her with a 4-inch-deep stab wound to the stomach and multiple leg wounds, and wore gloves during the attack, investigators wrote in documents released Monday. When Horowitz arrived at his Lafayette home on Oct. 15, he found his wife, 52, lying in a pool of blood on the living room floor of the couple's mobile home. He called the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office at 5:53 p.m. and screamed to a dispatcher, "Help me, she's dead," according to a...

MARTINEZ – 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...

Per Dan Abrams. Confirmed in ContraCosta Times

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...

MARTINEZ-A teenager was arrested in the slaying of a prominent defense attorney's wife, and a newspaper reported Thursday that he allegedly clubbed her to death whtih a piece of crown molding while trying to find marijuana-growing equipment he bought with stolen credit card information.

LAFAYETTE, Calif. — Despite fearing for their safety, prominent criminal defense lawyer Daniel Horowitz (search) and his wife allowed easy access to their sprawling hillside compound — a note posted on their gate even explained how to open it and proceed up the steep driveway. The number of people with access to the property — where contractors, neighbors and others came and went — could complicate the investigation into the killing of Pamela Vitale, whose body was found by Horowitz in their home's entryway over the weekend. An autopsy Monday revealed that she was beaten to death. "You could just...

Investigators have arrested a 16-year-old boy in the slaying of Pamela Vitale, a Contra Costa Sheriff's Office spokesman confirmed today.The boy, Scott Dyleski, was arrested at the home of a family friend in Walnut Creek, where his mother dropped him off Wednesday evening."His mom dropped him off so his dad could come get him," said the friend who asked not to be named.Investigators believe Dyleski struck Vitale dozens of times with a piece of crown molding and another object, a law enforcement source said. She was also stabbed and slashed with a sharp object and the killer carved into her...