Small Town Murder - Murder In The Neighborhood - Lafayette, California

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

This week, in Lafayette, California, a high powered defense attorney comes home to find his wife has been butchered, in their living room. It becomes even crazier when police notice a specific symbol, carved into the victim. Detectives think this may be someone who is angry with the attorney husband, or that the killer may even be the husband, himself. But they end up focusing the investigation on the neighborhood troubled goth teenager, who made some crazy statements to family about the murder. Will the jury believe that he's a cold blooded killer???   Along the way, we find out that any music probably sounds fine, if you've had enough wine. That big time defense attorneys can make a lot of enemies, and that sometimes, when you judge a book by its cover, you may possibly be right!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Donate at patreon.com/crimeinsports or at paypal.com and use our email: [e-mail] Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions!   Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod   Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!

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Ready to get started? Visit night and day, decor.com or call 647-360-6151. That's night and day decor. com. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Smalltown Murder Express. Yay! And choo-choo! Yay, indeed, Jimmy.

Yay, indeed. My name is James Petro Gallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wiseman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another absolutely insane edition of Smalltown Murder Express. And this one, oh boy, it fits the bill perfectly. It's nuts.

It's wild. 10 pounds of murder and a two-pound bag. We'll get into all that and more. quickly, though, top of the show here. Shut up and give me murder.com. Oh, yeah. Get all your tickets there. First of all, tons of new merch there, too.

So check that out. But tickets, tickets, tickets, September the 18th, Pabst Theater, Milwaukee. Not a lot of tickets left for that. So if you want to go to that show, go ahead and get your tickets now. Then the next night, State Theater and Minneapolis, get your tickets for that.

September 19th. Get those now. Milwaukee's currently beating you, Minneapolis. It's fascinating. I know you don't care for that. And you don't want Wisconsin to beat you at anything. So let's up the game there. And then we have Dallas on October 3rd.

And then later on in October, San Jose, Sacramento, and then November, Terrytown, Boston. So that's shut up and give me murder.com where you get all that stuff and more. Also, listen to our other two shows. Crime and Sports. We have a long series going on about the Yahweh Ben Yahweh cult and all their many, many murders. And that's crazy. And then your stupid opinions, come on. You got to hear that.

You got to hear. It's so funny. It's just hilarious. Then get yourself Patreon, everybody. Here we go. Do a favor for yourself. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all the bonus material. All you have to be is $5 a month or above and you get every damn second of that we put out.

Every ounce. Every second. Every ounce. Yeah. We like to measure our output and weight is how we like to do it. Volume. Volume. Pure volume.

So do we do water displacement tests, really, to make it perfect. Yeah. So Patreon.com slash crime in sports, $5 a month or above. You get everything we put out, including as soon as you subscribe, hundreds of back bonus episodes you've never heard before, new ones every other week, one crime in sports, one small-town murder, and you get them all, baby. As well. This week, which you get here is for crime and sports, we're going to do hostage situations,

part two, because the first one was just so damn fun. We were like, okay, we need more. And we had another show's worth on our notes. So we said, let's do that. Then for small town murder, it's prisoner dating game time, everybody. Need we say more? It's prisoner dating game time. You know you want to sign up for that.

Four bachelorettes, four bachelors. I line them up for Jimmy. The only thing they have in common is they're all incarcerated violent felons. For a very long time. He gets to pick it based on just what they say about themselves. And then he gets to find out what they did afterwards. and if he made a terrible choice. So it's a crazy, crazy show in good times.

Patreon.com slash crime in sports. Get every pound that we put out right there. You bet. Right there. And also, you get a shout-out at the end of the regular show. And you get all the shows we put out. Crime and Sports, Your Stupid Opinion, Small-Town Murder, all ad-free. It's not free.

Can't beat it. That said, I think it's time, everybody. Let's do this. Let's all sit back, clear the lungs here. What do you say? Arms to the sky. Let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder.

Let's do this, everybody. Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's do it. Yeah. Going to California this week. Lovely, California. Northern California.

I love Northern California. That's my favorite up there in the Bay Area and like Carmel and all that. It's real nice. This is Lafayette, California. Sure. Well, the Bay Area north and west. You don't want to go. No, no, then you end up in the middle of now.

North Coast, fine. In the middle of nowhere, yeah. Let's stay close to the water is what I'm saying, yeah. Don't get too inland. You don't want to do that. So Northern California, by where we will be, by the way, in October, on the 16th and 17th in San Jose and Sacramento. So get your tickets for that.

It shut up and give me murder.com. But Northern California, it's about 35 minutes to San Francisco. Great. About three hours and 15 minutes over to Reno and four hours to Springville, California, our last episode there, which was episode 667, the most interesting murderer in the world. Remember he had all this, that was a wild one, man. That guy was nuts. This is in Contra Costa County, right, which is very hard to, it's very, Contra Costa County. Area Code 925, population here, only 25,384.

Oh? So it's small to be outside of the major cities, you know, that close to it, 35 minutes, mainly because it's expensive as we'll get into here. Of course it is. Wow. Median household income here, 97,946, which is about 30 grand above the national average. But nowhere near what you need to deal with this house cost here. This is insane. Median home cost here, $1,767,400. million. That's the median.

One and three quarters. Holy crap. That's... Wow. Now, a little bit of history. The country is about a million three short of that. Yeah, no shit. Wow.

So history, it was named after the Marquis de Lafayette. It was a French military officer of the American Revolutionary War, because they were on our side because they've been hating Britain since the beginning of time. So the name Lafayette came. together with the community's first post office in 1857, the owner and manager of a hotel and general store applied for a post office for the community. At first, he wanted to call it Centerville. Yeah. And then they told him there's already a Centerville in California. You can't have that. Yeah, what do you think? You're the first one who thought of that.

You're not even in the center of anything. Makes no sense. Do you want to call it the street that goes right up the middle? Do you want to call that Main Street, too? Is this outside the box idea that you have, this little theory. So he suggested Lafayette and they said, yeah, all right, fine. There's one in Louisiana, but all right. That's fine. Well, his wife was from Lafayette, Indiana. And there's one in Indiana, too.

They went back and forth with the spelling. In 1857, it was La Fayette, but one word, but with a capital F. Okay. Oh, oh. Then in 1864, it was Lafayette, one word. lowercase F. Lowercase. Then, a little bit later, by 1890, it was Lafayette officially changed.

Oh, I'm sorry. Before that, they made it two words, La Fayette. Then they changed it back to Lafayette. Then by 1905, it was back to two words again. Good Lord. And then finally in 1932, the post office was officially changed to one word, Lafayette, lowercase F, and that's what it's remained for the last hundred years or so. So reviews of this town.

It has 4.2 stars on Nitch, which not bad. That's pretty good. There's nothing under three stars. It's all three, four, or five. So here's five. It's all wealthy people that are acting. Yeah. What are you complaining about?

My neighbor's house is bigger than mine. My house would cost me a little bit more than I wanted to pay. Yeah, other than that. With that comes some benefit. Yeah, here's five stars. Lafayette is very good. I like every part of it. I love the schools and lifestyle of,

of everything. Everything is great. No, we've never had that in a review before. Very LEGOs. Yeah, everything is wonderful. Everything is awesome. When you have $1.8 million houses, I guess you go, everything is great. We can all afford to live in fucking $1.8 million houses.

We're all paying for $1.8 million houses every day. We're doing great. Doing fantastic. Here's three stars. We'll do this one quick here. I've never lived in Lafayette, but I went to school in that city, since I was seven years old. Being Caucasian in such a white, rich community was tough at times.

What? I'm talking about it. The only reason I put this review in here is because I don't understand. Being white in a community of rich white people was tough at times. Oh, I know. It must have been brutal for you. Blending in. I mean.

Plending in and all that lack of seasoning. Yes. Yeah. No diarrhea. Just all of your solid. Very plain, boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Yes, I made a few friends in my grade school through high school years, but overall, people are not as welcoming and open to outsiders and newcomers, especially if you don't live there. Yeah, that's how rich neighborhoods are.

Oh, this guy was looking for some ethnicity, it looks like. Wanted some culture. It wanted something here. Academics are excellent, but extracurriculars have their flaws, a lot of favoritism, too much pressure within the children. Parents tend to be too competitive and hard on their children. Yeah, it's rich people. A lot of sailing clubs. Yeah. This person's like, you know, slums of Beverly Hills over here.

Right. Just, you know, on the border of the school district to go to a good school and they know that he's not one of them. That's what it is. Things to do here. Okay, the Lafayette Wine and Arts Festival. Sure. And over last year, 2025, over 75,000 people were there. Fuck.

Over the course of the few days that it goes on. Everybody's fascinated with how rich people live. Yeah. We all want to see it. And this is like, you know, local food and micro brews and wine and all that kind of shit. Like, that sounds like a fun day. It's why we put up with Robin Leach's horrible accent just to see what, how fucking Oprah grills steaks. Yeah, just, yeah, we put up with that.

What is that? Just show me a bar. It's in between. It's a mess. I don't even know what, it's like, it's an abrasive English. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very.

Oh, I'm Robin Leach. He's like, fuck you. It was very throaty. Yeah. Oh, I'm Robin late. She was, yeah. This house cost three billion dollars. This house should make you feel like a loser.

You feel like a, you limp dick, fuck. Look at this house. That's a real man lives there, you pub, you fucking punk. Gargles some salt, Robin. Calm down. There's also music. You get Jimbo Scott and Yesterday's Biscuits. That's a band.

It's a good name. It's a good name. Ship music, I'm sure. I'm sure. The Bell Brothers Band. Yeah. You get Midnight Fire, who was really mad that Midnight Rider was already taken by the Alman Brothers. It's really upset.

Or midnight oil. Or midnight oil. Yeah. They're like, damn it, it's all taken. East Bay mud with two D's. Charged particles. So, ions, basically. Freestone peaches, the big jangle.

Yeah. Maybe my favorite name of all time. Lonesome Eddie and the Stonnell. saddle sores. Oh, and the saddle sores? SORs. S-O-R-E-S.

He's got saddle so. Poor Eddie is fucking blistered ass. Oh, poor Eddie. You poor bastard. So that said, let's talk about some murder here. What do you say? Here we go. Okay, we got a wild case here.

Let's start out in 1994, and then we'll work our way up because the whole murder thing happens a little bit later, 2005-ish. So let's start out with a man, an East Bay lawyer. Daniel Horowitz is his name, okay? East Bay Criminal Defense Attorney. Nice. And always on TV as a, like, talking head legal analyst. He's one of those guys. He's, like, talking about the case and defending the person that's on trial.

Or, like, giving an analysis. Analysis. Yeah, if Nancy Grace is talking about Casey Anthony, he'll come on and talk about the legalities of it and how you defend it and that kind of shit. And talk about how sometimes if you hit a raccoon, it makes you. your trunk stink. That's right. And Henry Hill. I hit a raccoon, Karen, right?

I hit a skunk, Karen, right? So it's not a raccoon, but he could have made it a raccoon. So he defended murderers, drug dealers, you know, criminal defense attorney. Isn't that what she said she hit with that fucking sunfire? Yes, she said she hit the raccoon. Yeah, I just brought it back to Henry Hill, as I always do. I was just making sure I was on the right back. You know, no, no, you had it right.

You had it right for her. Now, this, he became real big during the Scott Peterson. trial because that happened in the Bay Area. Right there. He's a Bay Area defense attorney. Nancy Grace loves him. He's on the show all the time with her. And he's also, poor bastard.

And he's also a regular with Dan Abrams, who I actually think is pretty good. He does a good job. He's the live TV guy. He's a little pompous, but he's good. But he's been doing a lot for, like, you see old clips and you're like, is that fucking Dan Abrams? How long has he been around? Forever.

Sarah has the best nickname. Not young at all. No. That's an old man. And he's the way he's. The way he dresses, Sarah calls him a haunted ventriloquism puppet. She calls him a haunted puppet. And I'm like, that's exactly what he looks like a haunted puppet.

That's perfect. His face looks very plastic. It really does. It's smooth. Yeah, like a ventriloquist dummy. Yeah. So he is, he's very theatrical, very egot-tit. He's a defense attorney, a big-time defense attorney.

Those guys happen usually have a little swagger to them. Sure. He always carries a gun, too, because being a defense attorney, and a high profile one. Yeah. He's got some enemies. Yeah. And then also just people, not even if you don't win.

If you do win, then there's a lot of people mad at you. I want to kill you for getting somebody off. In 1994, he's shopping a screenplay around, which is strange. This is before he was like on TV as a lawyer all the time. True story one? Yeah, I'm not sure. Screenplay. I just picture the warden from around.

Rest of Development. James Lipton there. Pitching his screenplay all the time. So, but that's what he's doing. And he's down in Hollywood trying to pitch his screenplay. Sure. And he meets a lady down there. Hell yeah.

A lady that he really likes about the same age as him here. She's, this is Pamela Vitaly, V-I-T-A-L-E. She is born about 1953. So when they meet, she's about 40 and so is he, you know, about the same age. She is a marketing executive for tech company type things in the Bay Area. What's a jet gal? Oh, no, she's, yeah, she's not a, she's not somebody. Not a Hollywood gal.

Not a Hollywood party girl, not looking for some lawyer screenwriter. She doesn't need that shit. She's got her own shit. She even, she produces independent films as well. She's got like money and interest in that sort of thing and gets into a lot of projects. One of her friends said, Pamela is just the sweetest, nicest, this most selfless woman you'd ever want to know. How about it?

And she's got two kids from a previous relationship, Marissa and Mario. Something tells me she was married to an Italian guy. Yeah, she was not very. It's on her own. Yeah. I know a couple of Vitalis growing up, big fat guineas. So that's how it works. Mario Vitale does not sound anything but.

No, you're a vet. Or Marissa, too. Marissa Vitaly is like, holy shit. Yeah. So, yeah, she has two previous kids. Daniel's fine with that. They're almost grown at this point anyway, and they'll be out of the house soon. So they get together in 1994 and hook up.

And I think 93 they get together. By 1994, they're both married to each other. How about it? They're both from the Bay Area. Why not? High-powered couple is what they are. She does her thing. He does his thing.

By 2005, she is managing databases at his law practice. and her main project and both of their main projects is a house that they're building. Hell yeah. Oh, boy. Nightmare. Oh, man. Yeah, just building it, not remodeling it. Building it.

Redo one room in your house and have a divorce lawyer on. Not even the kitchen. Redo the half bath that's somewhere. Redo that and you'll kill each other. It's horrible. Redo the closet in the room. that has no water. There's no plumbing.

No plumbing. We do the closet and see if you don't want to strangle that bitch and see if that asshole doesn't make you want to put a 38 to his head. Not even an outlet in the closet. No, no electricity. One overhead and that's it. So how about they're building a 7,000 square foot house? That's so much house. That's so much house.

7,000 square foot house overlooking a canyon in Lafayette. They're too great. And it's like an exclusive area of Lafayette. Like they are killing it money-wise. In the fall of 2005 here, though, they were, I guess for a little while, they were living in a trailer on the property while it was being built. Right. They were living as like a manufactured home here. And it was parked right there at the property.

This is on Hunsaker, Hunsacker Canyon Road. And it's big trees and rocks. and it's beautiful. By fall of 2005, Daniel has a high profile trial, a woman named Susan Polk. I never heard of her, P-O-L-K? No. She was in Arenda, California. She was a housewife accused of stabbing her psychotherapist husband to death in 2002.

Holy. Yeah, which is interesting. I can't imagine that relationship goes very easily either. Well, it's the guy deserves something. That's saying he deserves to be stabbed, but they met when she was 14 years old and was sent to him as a patient because she had panic attacks. I don't like that at all. A, 14, even if they met in any other circumstance, not okay. And B, a therapist should never go out with their patient ever, even 20 years later.

You don't do that. It's not ethical at all. That feels very grooming. Yeah. A therapist. That's the most grooming relationship of all time. Totally. Especially since she was so young.

She's 14 and completely under his care. You know what I mean? She's going to stabulate her for this. You have to trust a therapist, you know? Yeah. Wow. And also, if she is, like, lashed out in a fit of psychosis, he should have known. That's your job, man.

He didn't do a very good fucking job of fixing her up, Eddie. Terrible. Terrible. She was still there. So you're a pervert and a bad therapist. So I don't know. And now he's dead. He was stabbed 27 times.

Fuck, that's a lot. She claims self-defense. The prosecution called a premeditated murder for the estate. And it turned into a big giant mess, obviously. And Daniel Horowitz is the guy retained by Susan Polk to defend her. It's a big high profile case. So Saturday, October 15th, 2005, Daniel, he's been doing this for weeks. He's in the middle of this case.

He leaves the trailer that they're living in at 8 a.m. Pamela's still asleep. He gets up. He meets with his team, the legal team. He runs some errands. He goes to the gym. He picks up some groceries as a day, basically. He keeps trying to call Pamela during the day, but she's not picking up the phone.

So he said, oh, who knows, you know, she's going to a ballet that evening. She's probably busy. I don't know. They're both busy people. So if they play phone tag, not a big deal. She's got a lot of shit going on. So 6 p.m. Daniel pulls into the driveway and, you know, long day. He's got groceries and his computer bag. But the first thing he sees is Pamela's white Mercedes is still in the driveway. And she's supposed to be at the ballet right now. Like, definitely gone on the way to the ballet. So he carries the groceries and the computer to the front door and it's closed and he sees smears on it. Oh.

Of what look like blood. Uh-oh. And he's like, what the fuck? Later on, he described, he said he knew in that instant that something was really wrong. Duh. If I see blood anywhere on the outside of my house. Smears of it? I'm assuming there's a problem, you know?

I would think. I called the police because there was blood droplets on my grandfather's patio and nobody was home. The cops showed up and my uncle came home. He had a nose pleat. Well, thank God. I'm glad. Thank you for that. I'm glad you're a co-cat.

Yeah, that's good. I'm glad you're just a goddamn mess with horrible nasal passages. So he said he opened the door. Pam, he sees Pam lying just inside the entryway. Yeah. And he said there's so much blood. He knew immediately she was dead. And he says, he claims he dropped everything, collapsed to the floor and screamed.

Now, neighbor said they heard screaming around 6 p.m. So that lines up. He calls 911 from the house. and then he goes back to her body. Now, this is one of the things he said. He said this to Dan Abrams on MSNBC. He said, quote, he said that he touched her temple. He said to see if she was alive, even though he knew she was dead.

He said he told her a million things. He screamed. He cried and he told her he loved her. And the problem is he didn't really call 911 properly. That's the issue. How do you doing? He should have been telling them some shit. and not her.

Well, he started the, this is a weird thing, and I don't know how true this is, but they say that this is by some account, so I don't even know if this is a fact or not. He started the 911 call through the phone down and then shortly after dialed the regular police phone number, not the non-emergency. Not emergency. Now, not sure if that's true or not or what. We don't know. That's just been brought up later, later, and everything.

Now, police respond. Count Acosta, sheriff's deputies respond here. The spokesman said, yes, a woman's body was found in the entryway. It was a homicide. And there's no suspects in custody, basically, is what they tell the world. Inside the house, Pamela, no sexual assault, number one. No robbery. Anybody could identify, nothing missing, nothing rifled, nothing like that. the autopsy is insane what this poor woman went through.

This is horrific. She died of blunt force trauma to the head. A beating. Well, among other things. They counted at least eight distinct injuries on the right side of her head, 11 on the back, and seven on the left side of her head. This is obliterated. And he said the count was probably low because a lot of the wounds overlapped.

and it's probably less than that. Probably going to hit in the same spot from time to time. Totally. Also, a broken nose, two teeth knocked loose from her upper jaw, defensive fractures to her left hand, so bad that the bone is exposed. Oh, we? Yeah, that's wild.

Bruising on her right foot consistent with trying to kick or trying to kick somebody away. They believe the weapon was a smaller, irregular hard object like a rock. Now, in Hunsacker Canyon, where they are, it's the site of an old quarry and it's nothing but rocks outside. So it fits perfectly with a rock, which is not a real great planned murder weapon to use. No, especially if you're...

I'll just grab a rock. Nothing else was, she's clearly the target was to kill her. And if your idea is to show up to a house and kill a woman and you brought nothing? You just brought a rock with you. Picked up a rock as I walked in? That'll do. Put it in your pocket. Yeah.

No problem. It's a terrible hit man or whatever. That's a bad murderer. Yeah. Now, her back is the really disturbing shit. There are three intersecting superficial incisions. So someone carved in her back, essentially. See?

Not a Zorro here, but two horizontal cuts about four inches long, crossed by a four and a half inch vertical cut forming an H shape. H, okay. Okay. Now, they said this was made while she was alive. Yikes. Yeah. There's also a deep stab wound to the abdomen that penetrated her stomach and bowel

inflicted right around the time of death. Oh, my. Yeah. Now, they called the H or whatever the signal was. The press called it a satanic symbol, calling it a cross of Lorraine. That's what they call A Gothic carving. Yeah.

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There's an overturned plastic storage bin lid by the front door, and on top of that, a shoe print in blood. A fabric print on the bin is consistent with a gloved hand. Oh. I think someone who is wearing gloves. Blood smears on the inside of the door consistent with someone in a long-sleeved garment. but Pam had a short, Pamela had a short sleeve t-shirt on, meaning the long sleeves must have belonged to whoever killed her. Somebody covered themselves up in long sleeves and gloves.

Yeah, absolutely. They're landscaping or murdering, one of the two. Finger marks in blood all over the room with fine linear striations. Fabric, not fingerprints, consistent with gloves worn throughout. A heavy flashlight near the entryway covered in blood. pieces of molding with blood on them, possibly used to beat her with, but not the murder weapon,

just other things. In the kitchen, there's an open water bottle and a bowl both with blood on them. There's a mug with blood on it in the sink. In the bathroom, there's a hand swipe of blood on the far wall, contact transfers on the shower curtain

and hot water knob, but no sign that anybody ran the shower because the smears would have washed away. Right. So this is a lot. This is a scene, man. I mean, there's fucking blood. They went in the bathroom to do something, but their hands were, the gloves had too much blood and they couldn't operate the knob or something?

Couldn't do it or maybe that or they can't figure that out quite of what's going on. Maybe they went in there and thought about it and then said I should probably get out of here first before I start. I should probably just leave. Yeah, maybe one of those. Now, there is a police consultant that NBC uses. And he said, this beating implies something very personal. Yeah, they're mad. Oh, boy, are they pissed.

Doing a lot of shit. And the carving in the back would be, what, to throw somebody off the center or something like that. Now, so they go, okay, what did Pam do this day? So they go back, and it's 2005 so you can forensically look at a lot of digital footprints here. And she was doing real boring shit. She went on her laptop. She's at 807 she got on her laptop. And she's just dicking around.

She surfed genealogy websites. Oh, check out if I got a new cousin that popped up on Ancestry, news sites, you know, current events, just shit like that. Yeah. Also, even just normal shit. She used her computer, just basically was on it for about two hours. And the last keystroke is logged at 10.12 a.m.

Uh-huh. Okay. Now, first thing the cops think is exactly what you said. What are you thinking here? Yeah, somebody showed up to do something really terrible, but they are very, but they brought a knife. Yeah. But she's the target, for sure. Yeah.

Well, the first thing everybody says cops and everybody else is the husband. Yeah. Let's look at him because that's just more likely. That's just a slam dunk. Yeah. So he basically, the first. place you look is there. So problem is he's got stone cold alibis all day. Yeah, he's been gone all day. Friends, coworkers, he's been with people working the case since 8 o'clock in the morning.

So there's no, I mean, besides going to the gym and going to get groceries, which he's accounted for in both of those places. He did go to the gym and he did get groceries. So he's pretty, you know, booked up that day. So Sunday, October 16th, there is an association meeting. of all the people who live on this road. Oh. This is the day after the murder, okay? The HOA meeting. Sort of, yeah, an unofficial HOA.

Now, there's a woman named Karen Schneider who called the meeting. She had reported, the day before Pamela died, she had reported some credit card fraud to the Lafayette police and called a meeting of the association so she could warn the neighbors about the fraud. You think they go, we have bigger shit to worry about now. Fuck fraud. Yeah, but somebody went to Target on me.

This is crazy. Yeah, somebody's ordering a makeup re-up on me. This isn't right. I don't like it. So there are multiple people there. There are Fred and Kim Curiel who will come up in this. And also a woman named Esther Fielding. They all live in the same house and we'll talk about that.

Now, the neighbors talked about the murder. They're like, fuck your fraud. This is a murder that happened on this little street. And they're speculating about who did it. Now, near the end, Esther Fielding yells at Karen Schneider for not taking responsibility for running over a dog. All right. Okay. So, she had ran over a dog recently.

It was Esther Fielding's son's dog, as we'll talk about. Okay. Now, they said what she did, Schneider pulls out faxed order forms. This is where the fraud came from. She pointed out that the orders used the Horowitz's address, used Pamela and Daniel's address and appeared to have been placed by somebody else, but had it delivered there and then picked it up. So Esther Fielding and Fred Curiel looked and they were trying to figure out basically on the papers of the order forms, Esther Fielding's name is on them. on Karen Schneider's credit card thing and ordered to Horowitz house. Yes, and ordered it to the Horowitz house.

So she said that the orders used the Horowitz's address and appeared to have been placed by Esther Fielding, but they said, no, that's crazy. Now, Fred Curiel is a computer consultant by trade. So he gets home and he said, I'm inspecting every computer in the fucking house if it came from here. Okay, including Esther Fielding's 16-year-old son, Scott's. computer as well. The kid with the dead dog. The kid with the dead dog. Him, Scott and his mom, Esther, have been living with the curials because they're kind of have some hard times. So they've been living for a couple years with the curials. Now, the crowd. Hard times living in paradise.

Yeah. Well, before that, it was shitty. I'd never leave either. Yeah. Well, the hard times before they got there. Now it's yeah. But the browser history on Scott's computer had been cleaned, wiped out. But this guy's a computer guy, he knows how to find it anyway. So they find files that show Scott's computer had been used to access a specialty lighting website where the fraudulent orders replaced. Uh-oh. So they're like, oh, that's why Scott's the one who did it. He's scamming. So let's find out who Scott is here.

Scott Edgar, Edgar is your middle name. Dilesky, D-Y-L-E-S-K-I. He's born October 30th, 1988 from San Francisco. His parents are Kenneth Dilesky and Esther Fielding. They split up when he was two, and Scott was basically only raised by his mother here. Basically, to run down his parents, Esther's like a kind of a want, I mean, she's way late for it, but she was like a wannabe hate Ashbery hippie type. Oh.

Wana be like real hippie type, but well after that was done. She showed up around 82. That's what I mean. Yeah, it was strange. Ken was a draft dodger and had a master's in psychology who believed that the government kept a file on him and liked to tell people that he personally helped stop the Vietnam War. Good job. Good job, Ken. He should have done it earlier, you fuck.

It's crazy. He's a real obsessive, crazy guy. Like he did a lot of weird shit, according to his ex-wife anyway, the repetitive, weird. rituals, strange things with food. Like, he was a weird guy. He paid $400 a month for child support and basically wanted nothing to do with Scott, is what the mother said. So they moved to Lafayette here around 1999 when they moved in with their old friends,

Fred and Kim Curiel. And, yeah, so that's how it went here. And they live on the same street as Pamela and Daniel. And they did the same thing, too. They moved in, lived in the trailer while the house was built. and all that shit. Now, the school Scott goes to here is a big affluent school, obviously, in this area. He's going to be one of those kids in the white community that does not fit in.

Caucasian that doesn't fit in the white community. Yeah, he's Caucasian, not white. He's Caucasian, the guy said, yeah, he's not white. So he does not, he doesn't fit in well with there's not a lot of kids that are like poor who live in somebody's, you know, guest rooms. Like, that's not really how it works. Somebody's a late to late teen ward. Yeah.

And, like, he came from, like, basic, he did normal kids shit. He played Little League. He was in Boy Scouts, you know. He's big into animal rights. He went out and hung animal rights flyers at the mall with a girl from school. Don't know if he was into Animal Rights or he was just like this chick asked him. He's like, sure, I'll do it. There's hot chicks into animal rights.

If you're 14, you will be into any cause some hot chick is into. You do not get. What is it? Animal rights? Yeah, great. Fine. We'll go for a steak afterwards. Sounds good.

Let's register them to vote. That's how hard I believe in it. That's, yeah, I want them to have the right, man. So August 2002, Scott's half-sister was killed in a car accident. Jesus. A passenger in a crash. She was a passenger in a crash. It also killed the driver.

Now, that was his dad's daughter. He only saw her when he visited his dad, so they weren't close, close, but it was still his half-sist. And still blood. It freaked them out, too. Yeah. When you're young and someone your age dies, it freaks you out because you don't think it's possible. Yeah, especially when they die of things.

Like, I mean, uh, sudden. Yeah. The sickness thing where they like hang around a while and then they die. Like leukemia for eight years or something. Yeah. That's fucked up and everybody feels bad for them. But the blink where you saw them on Friday and Monday they don't come to school. That's fucked up.

It's fucked up. So at her funeral, um, After the funeral, Scott basically turned into a goth kid, started wearing all black and weird, you know, the goth look, fucking makeup and black nail polish and black lipstick and, you know, black weird hats and shit. He had good grades before. Then all of a sudden he's got D's and Fs. And his mother said that he was quite sullen is what he said. Or I'm sorry, Kim Curiel said that. He's also a little guy in high school, which doesn't help either.

He's five, six, and 110 pounds. Couldn't be more seen. And he's also poor in a rich town. So he is, imagine if you like pluck Damien Eccles out of white trash Arkansas and put him in an affluent area. That's what we have here, basically. Put this dirthead at some expensive school in New York City. Yep. And he's a smart kid.

He's very artistic, but that doesn't really get you anything in the rich crowd like that. He became a vegan during this time, too. he also he got real into 9-11 conspiracies because it's 2005

so I mean that's people that was hot at that time he said that you know obviously he thought

the government attacked the buildings himself and yeah so people didn't like that so they were

you know they people were not they weren't real drawn to him in high school let's just not a big

fan club yeah people said that he was just kind of you know, trying to get attention, people thought maybe,

because he couldn't get attention in the traditional high school ways of being like athletic or popular or handsome or he was just because he's got to try to get. And that's what you do. You come up with a thing. Right. The popular kid at school is the guy that has everything.

And here to have everything, you have to have everything. That's what I mean. You could live in a one and a half million dollar house and people still think you're a loser here. Still think you're a poor piece of shit. Yeah. And people said he was a nice guy, but they were, some of the, like, uppity kids were pretty freaked out about him, you know. He had a lot of artwork, as we'll talk about some of it. One was titled, Live for the Kill, with the words style, Gothic, and hate underneath it. There were drawings of a man holding a severed head and a bloody knife. There was a face with a mouth stitched shut with exes. Just creepy, weird kid shit. I mean, you give a kid a 16-year-old, a pencil, and tell them draw things, and don't stop.

Just draw all that. Just draw what you want. You're going to draw that exact same thing. Weird shit. A razor blade, a swastika, and a knife. I don't think I'd draw the swastika, well. I don't think I draw the line there. And one said, guns don't kill people.

I kill people. Okay. And then another one, it's like a picture of serial killers. And it said, before Manson, before Bundy, there was gain. There was gien. Sorry. So that's true. He's got it right. At least he's got his timeline down. He knows chronology.

He knows the chronology of murders. Excellent work. So 2002, 2003 is when Fred and Kim Curiel build a new house in this neighborhood. Yeah. And until it was finished in April 2003, Scott and Esther lived in a plywood lean to. Fuck. Just they put up literally like a shanty town Hooverville shit. They used the scraps. Flywood.

And made a place. It just made a shelter of some kind here. Shit. They built it, quote, to keep the weather off them. Right. There's no electricity in there. There's no plumbing. They use a porta potty.

Oh, Lord. Full time. That's crazy. No anything else here. Scott maybe showered once a week, usually at his friend's house in Concord. So now he's small, skinny, poor, and stinky. All the ladies are going to swarm to him at school here. So he'd get up at 4 a.m. to work at a.m. before school for a couple hours.

And then, yeah, and then he'd go to work. This is not a good life for a kid. His father called Child Protective Services twice, once in 1994 for general neglect years ago when he was six. And then in 1995 for emotional abuse, according to the probation report that happened with this, CPS never even came out to investigate either claim. Wow. So we don't know what's going on. Now, summer of 2005, he's got a best friend since the eighth grade.

And his name is Robin. Toward the end of summer 2005, they decided they're going to grow weed in Scott's closet. Fuck yeah. So Scott is basically, him and his mom are living rent-free in their friend's house in a beautiful area. And he's going to try to fuck it up any way possible. Let's get us kicked out of here. so we can live in a fucking trailer in Reno. What do you say?

They'll never see it. Don't worry about it. It's in the closet. Yeah, they'll never smell it. It's fine. You're not going to smell that two houses down. Jesus, man. So now it's Robin's job to do, to figure out what lighting to get, hydroponic stuff, you know, websites that sell.

He's going to gather all the info. That's what the lighting's for. That's what the lightings for, the gross shit. What? It's Scott's job to find the money to buy this. That's what they're... Okay. And so he decides, after failing to come up with some money, he's going to steal his neighbor's credit card information out of the mailbox and use it to order the equipment.

Holy shit, that's stupid. That is very dumb. And these are people who... It's a small street in a remote canyon area. Like, this is... It's going to be found. I'm going to steal my computer scientist's roommate's credit card. No, no, no.

Their neighbors, yeah. Their neighbor's credit card. They steal Karen Schneider. and use it in the computer guy's house and have it delivered to a lawyer's house. So on September 17th, Scott ordered a $267 vaporizer from a site called vaporwares using a credit card stolen from a neighbor named John Halpin,

who was out of state for over a month that had no idea what was going on. The invoice billed Halpin would ship to Esther Fielding at their address. He's shipped it to his own house. Idiot. Okay. Um, so Robin, they have emails back and forth. And Robin tells Scott to, uh, he says, quote, keep each car, a charge small to avoid detective, detection.

And, um, so Scott wrote back, quote, stealthiness is my number one priority. Okay. Stealthiness. I don't think he knows what that means. No. So October 1st, 2005, Karen Schneider is the one who hit the dog. This is Scott's dog. His name was Jazz.

The dog had to be put down two days after Pamela was murdered, so it lived another two weeks. Now, Karen Schneider lives right next door to Horowitz and Vital, Vital, here. She didn't really know Scott, but she knew the Curials. Thursday, October 13th at 12.15 a.m., an order is placed online with specialty lighting, a grow light system, is ordered. shipped to Esther Fielding 1050 Hunsacker Canyon Road with the family's real phone number attached.

The billing is to Karen Schneider, who's the dog killing neighbor. But the billing address is listed at 19, is listed at the Horowitz Vitali home. Yeah. So he's using one card to order it in one person's name over here. And so the address for the shipping

and credit card billing are different. Are separate. Okay. So, that's interesting. Now, four minutes later, a second order for more lighting. Eight minutes after that, a third order for cooling gear. Same email, same shipping, same billing. A fourth order that day used Fieldings, the mom's email, but billed the neighbor John Halpin.

And then later on, they'd find another unauthorized charge for a liquid earth starter kit, hydro buckets and pumps. Okay. stealthiness, number one priority. October 13th, 2005. Two days before the murder, Karen Schneider sits down and looks at her bank and credit cards accounts online and finds three charges she never approved from specialty lighting. So she emails the company. The next morning, the owner of the company, email Schneider back and faxes are the copies of the orders and all of this. So they see it's fraud here.

So then the company, apparently they. The company says we won't ship the merchandise then and sends like an email saying it's a canceled order. Then the company gets a phone call from a male caller asking about problems with the orders. And they said that that was bizarre because in this lady's experience, people who place fraudulent orders don't call about them.

They just try something else. Yeah, exactly. And he said they sounded young and the person sounded like they were trying to disguise their voices as an older person. Oh, boy. Hello.

I ordered some lighting for, well, my wife and family where we're growing some herbs in our, you know. Yeah, this is Bill Curtis. This is Bill,

hello, I'm Bill Curtis. I'm Robin Leach. I ordered some lighting equipment to this big fucking house. Can you deliver it, please? There's a hot tub.

It's wonderful. Ah, I need hydroponics to a $2 million dollar house. Two million dollar house. 7,000 square feet Oh God, that guy's a douche So anyway

They said She said You know, it was a weird interaction Friday October 14th 2005 day before the murder 354 p.m. The caller calls the company back And asks

Can you ship to the billing address On the orders? Uh-huh. And the owner says The credit card company Has declined the charges and you've got to take it up with them. So he says, okay, fine.

Both calls, by the way, came from the Curiel's home phone. Right. This is when everyone's still at a landline. The same Friday after school, Scott calls his buddy Robin and tells him that, quote, some of it hadn't gone through and that he was trying to find a way to make it work. I'm trying to call the company. Yeah. I'm going to interruptify this because stealth.

Stealth is my number one option, number one priority. So now back to the current timeline, Monday, October 17th, the day after the community meeting about the fraud. The Curials and Esther confront Scott about the fraud, so his mom and those two. He denies it and said someone must have broken into the house and used his computer. Okay, here we go. Wow. They were the ones for the porn, too. This is, yeah.

Oh, yeah, they like big tits too. Yeah, that's what they're into. I bet they beat off all over the place in here. All over, yeah. If there's anything on there with girls with huge asses, someone must have broke in and looked at that. I guarantee they like thick Latinas. I'm not into it. Zesty Latina mamacitas, that's not me.

I don't look at that. I didn't do it. So he denies it. And Esther is like, she doesn't want to get thrown out. Like, this is a sweet gig for her. It's a nice deal. So she tells Scott he gets one chance to get rid of anything. connected to this credit card fraud and never do it again.

She said she had not even thought about, you know, anything else just trying to, you know, help his, her son. So that's the same Monday. Kim Curiel tells Scott how sad she was about Pamela's death, you know, the neighbor. And Scott replied, quote, well, these things happen. They too. They just happen. You're 16. They don't happen to you.

No. And that made her go, that was weird. Yeah. So then let's go back to Saturday. day, the murder day, and go through what Scott was up to. Okay, Saturday, October 15th, 2005, 10.45 a.m. This is, last keystroke for Pamela was 1012, remember, okay? Scott walks through the Curiel's front door, walks in, and everybody says he looks strange. He said he was walking with an exaggerated step, and he was smiling broadly. And he announced, I had the most

beautiful walk this morning to everybody in the house. Kim notices, Kim Curiel notices his hands are shaking a little bit. She also notices scratches on his nose that are actively bleeding and three or four small scratches on his cheek are also bleeding. He's bleeding right now. Bleeding. Currently bleeding. Well, yeah.

He said that he was walking home from this whole thing and from his, the best walk he's ever had, and he got whacked by a bush. The bush caught him in the face. He says he was looking for a water hole. fall that the family had mentioned. And Kim says there's no water in October, and he says, yeah, I found that out. Okay. So they get some ointment on his nose.

Kim grades a paper because she's doing teaching stuff and leaves with her husband and kids to shop for Halloween costumes at the Spirit Store. Another person that lives there, Michael Sycamma, he's downstairs making oatmeal for his kids. How many people live in this fucking house? Another family lives here. And this is about 10, 20. a.m. He saw Scott come in. He said close to no later than 11 o'clock is what he says downstairs. He says

there was fresh gouge marks on his face that hadn't been there the night before. Scott told the same water stall fall story. Then Scott's mother gets home. Esther, she notices the scratches and a red palm that he has too. And now he says he slipped climbing rocks and grabbed for a branch and hit his hand. That's how that happened. So early afternoon of that day, Saturday, October 15th, Scott talks on the phone to Kim Curiel's brother complaining his hand and wrist are swollen and asking what he should do. He tells the waterfall story, but now he says he fell into a ravine and landed on his wrist. So this story is a beautiful, this walk kicked your ass, Scott. Then his girlfriend, yes, he has a girlfriend. Wow. That's the thing. In high school, there's levels of.

of you're not doing well or whatever. If you have a girlfriend of any stripe, you're immediately in this tier. You're above that tier. Boy who's actively attempting to get his penis touched. Yeah, is doing much better than boy who's not. And she has a car. She picked him up at 2 p.m.

Doing pretty much. They spend the afternoon together. She notices the scratches, the swollen wrist and all that. He tells the same story. Then at 6 p.m. Daniel Horowitz came home. discovers the Pamela. Then at 8 p.m., Scott and Jenna, who's his girlfriend, arrive at Robin's house.

Scott hands Robin $40 to buy weed from him. And he had never bought weed from him before. Now he has $40. Then his mom calls Jenna Sell looking for Scott. She tells him there's a rumor someone in the canyon has been killed, and the police have blocked the road, so he should try, don't try to come home, just stay at Jenna's. Just 16-year-old.

Just stay at your girlfriend's house. Stay out all night. Great parenting. And then Scott starts saying he says that if Jenna takes him home, he said, oh, there's been a murder and there's, you know, he says, if Jenna takes me home, I'll have to be questioned by the police and it'll be too much of a hassle. So I'll just stay here. So the three of them start guessing who got killed.

And Scott says it was most likely at the Horowitz house because, He says Scott Horowitz is a prominent attorney, and he mentions that he saw someone on his walk that morning and wonders aloud if maybe that was the killer. Okay. He also recites a Lizzie Borden rhyme. Oh, the wax thing? Yeah. He says, if you wanted to kill someone, the most painless way would be to shoot them. But if you wanted to cause pain, you would bludgeon the person 36 or 39 times, he says after that.

All right. Pamela had been struck in the head somewhere in that range, by the way. But the number, none of that was public yet. They didn't even know how, the public didn't even know how she was murdered yet. Okay. Then Scott and Jenna went back to her place, watched a show, and drank absinth because they're douchebags. And yeah. So Tuesday, October 18th, okay, this is interesting.

The curials are talking to him about the fraud again, pressing him. He's denying it. Fred Kiriel told him it didn't look like anyone broke into the computer and asked whether Scott understood that using the Vitali's phone number and address could tie him to the murder, even. Use her phone number and address. Then she got murdered. That doesn't look good for you. So Scott said he understood and then he started pacing. And then at some point, Fred said, I'm not saying they're going to think you murdered her, but I'm just saying it's going to cause a questioning probably.

It looks bad. So Scott said, well, what do you mean? and Fred said, I was just thinking out loud, he said, well, if Pamela had struggled with her attacker the way Horowitz told the press that she had, then it was pretty guaranteed there's going to be DNA under her fingernails and, you know, things like that, hair, footprint, stuff like that. So, I mean, you don't have to worry about it because the physical evidence is what matters. Scott just got quiet and didn't respond. He said, oh, yeah. Then Kim said, where were you Saturday morning? Uh-oh.

They're like a parahomicide detective. That's terrific. He said, out for a walk. They said, did you see her talk to anyone? And he thought for a while. And then he said, oh, yes, I did. He said a woman driving a four-door sedan, white, with long, straight brown hair and big glasses. She rolled down her window, stopped the car, reached across and grabbed his arm and said, you've got to believe.

Okay. That's, by the way, an exact dead-on description of Pamela Vitale that he gave. Okay. They said, did you know Pamela or did you know the woman that stopped? And he said, no. And then he said, well, she grabbed me. She grabbed my arm. So she might have my DNA under her fingernails.

And then he showed them fingernail marks on his right arm and said she even left marks. Like the fucking sea hag in Widows Bay over here. He's going to follow you home. Then he said, first he said the woman was driving down the canyon. And Kim pointed out that if he was walking up toward the barn, She'd have had to reach all the way across the passenger seat to grab him. So he said, oh, no, no, I met her coming home. I was heading uphill.

I had it backwards. All right. Then Fred said, well, Pamela was found in a T-shirt and her underwear. She hadn't been out of the house that day. These are the kids that are saying this to him? No, no, this is Fred and Kim, the curials, the people they live with. So they said she didn't leave the house that day. So you didn't see her out there.

And then Scott said, quote, what if my DNA is there? Fred was like, what? So Fred said, if you weren't there, your DNA won't be there. And he said, but what if it is there, Scott said. Fred said, well, that would mean you were there and that would mean you're going to do a lot of time. And then Scott started getting real nervous and shaky. Over the next day, the woman on the road story would move around a bit. Now next day it's a man and a woman in a car, the woman reaching over the man to grab his arm.

He told his mother, quote, I can't believe this is happening. And he told one of the housemates that the whole thing is just a big hallucination. And then he told the housemate's wife, quote, my DNA is on Pamela Vitaly. Oh, my God. Okay. So finally, he admitted that he did do the credit card scheme. And he lied. And he started crying.

Now he's like, if I admit to this, maybe everything will go away. So he said he wants to get it fixed. He wants to get it over with. So he told Robin he's going to confess to the fraud, partly to clear Robin's name and partly because he was afraid of them thinking he was a murderer. And he said that he thought owning up the fraud would, quote, separate him from that. Meanwhile, it makes it worse. He's so bad at this. He's such an idiot.

It's almost like he's 16. Right. When Robin asked what the connection between the fraud and the murder even was, Scott just didn't give a coherent answer. answer, Robin said. So Wednesday, October 19th, here, Robin's father had been told about the fraud. He confronted Robin and got the whole story, hired a lawyer, and went to the police. Nice move. Robin was granted immunity in exchange for information. On Wednesday evening, October 19th, he reported, it's reported that basically Scott gets arrested here. Now, they, you know, they, also talk to the curials who tell them all the shit about the DNA and all that stuff, okay?

Yeah. So they're like, hmm, a sheriff's detective clocks the walk from the Vitaly Horowitz residence to an abandoned van on the curial property where bloody clothing would be found. A little bit later. They say it's about 10 minutes, which gives him plenty of time. Now, the double cross T there, the cross of Lorraine, as the press was calling it, the prosecution, the cops are going to tie this to a bumper. sticker found in Scott's room saying it's the same symbol. Oh. Then Scott's mother flees to her sister's place, and Jenna and her mother drove Scott's backpack

and belongings up to Scott, Esther, Scott's mother. Esther went through the belongings, found scraps of paper with credit card numbers and names, Schneiders, the Halpins, a date book, a box of gloves, clothes, a pair of Scott's shoes, a knife, a book on mass murderers and cult leaders, and empty absent bottles. So what he carries around. Plural. Yeah. Gakes the bottle.

So Esther Fielding throws the papers, the gloves, and the journal into a wood stove and burns them. Why'd she do that? Because she's an idiot. And by the way, that will get her arrested for as an accessory after the fact and have her on $500,000 bail. Fuck yes. But the charge will later be dropped in exchange for her agreement to testify against her own side. Ish. Okay.

But in Scott's backpack, which he didn't burn, was a T-shirt with blood on it. A pair of Lanzan slip-on shoes, the same shoes he'd worn to a Renaissance fair with Jenna the day of the murder. And the general tread pattern of the Lanzan shoes matches the bloody shoe print on the storage bin lit at the scene. A criminalist will later say that Scott's shoes or another shoe with the identical pattern made the print. And then there's the duffel bag. On October 20th, Deputy Search Esther's abandoned Toyota van, a vehicle that sat on the property for years.

And behind the driver's seat, they found a duffel bag. And they said it stood out because it looked newer than everything around it. Everything else has been sitting there for years. This thing looks brand new. Inside it, there's a dark pullover, a blue head mask, a long costume-style black evening glove. Each of them turned inside out and apparently bloodstained. Also, an overcoat identified as Scots with safety pins on the cuff the way Scott wore them, all the goth kids did that. The bag had a 2003 airline tag with Scott's name on it from a trip to

Hawaii. From two years ago. The lab work here found Pamela Vitali's blood on the duffel bag, the glove, the mask, and the shoes. Uh-oh. And on the mask, four of six tests. in areas matched Pamela's blood. Fuck. On the spot corresponding with the wearer's mouth, there's no blood there, but a single source of DNA matched Scott. So he was wearing the mask. Slobber, yeah.

Yep. So there's, they said that the, uh, a profile expected, uh, in roughly one in 780 trillion Caucasians. Oh, no. There's never been a trillion people that have ever lived on the planet all put together, never mind 780. And they said it's rarer still in other populations. Then there's a swab from the bottom of Pamela's right foot, a mix primarily of Pamela

with a minor contributor that's a male, not minor meaning young, minor meaning smaller. A partial profile match Scott, but not a full one on that. So they said to confirm the male component from one man, they sent out for chromosomal testing and all that kind of shit. and across 17 markers, they said that the male component was indistinguishable from Scott's DNA. So there's a lot. Now, at this point, we're in January 2006. They're cleaning up for a party at the Curiel House.

And Fred's brother, David, who now has moved into Scott's old room, they need to have a million people living there. Shoot, yeah. Found five loose sheets of paper. Four had account names, numbers, access codes, addresses, and birth dates, including John Halpin's credit card security code and online passwords all in Scott's handwriting. Wow. Two of the five sheets carried Scott's fingerprint. And in the fifth in Scott's handwriting, there was a vertical list of five points.

One was knockout slash kidnap, then questioned, question, then keep count. captive to confirm pins, then dirty work, then dispose of evidence, spelled with an S instead of a C, by the way. Followed by the words cut up Barry in parentheses. Good Christ. Okay. Now, there's a lot of, there's differing views, by the way, on this kid. People, a lot of people think he's a, the prosecution is saying he's a, you know, a monster.

They talk about invader Zim, which was a cartoon on Nixon. in the early 2000s about an alien who was incompetent in trying to conquer Earth here. And they talk about that a lot. The prosecution zeroed in on his reaction to an episode, Dark Harvest, in which the Alien Zim harvest, human organs to look more human. They say that's his favorite episode. That must mean he's a killer. Scott talked about being curious, according to his girlfriend, about how the human body would work

without certain organs. It wouldn't, Scott. That's how. Yeah. And he also talked about beating and breaking the necks of children, which we've all fantasized about that. Let's be honest. There's a few. So, ever go to a Chucky Cheese?

Yeah. You ever go to fucking fifth grade class? Yeah. I mean, as an adult, though. Yeah. So the defense said they were jokes, just kid talking shit, you know, being silly. By the way, the Susan Polk case, because Daniel had trouble with that. The judge declared a mistrial, citing in the avalanche of news that the killing had triggered.

And Susan fired Horowitz and represented herself. How'd that go? That's crazy. Then publicly blamed Daniel Horowitz for murdering his wife. You can't do that. She said, I'm concerned that Dan was involved in her murder. Oh, my. She also told the jury when she represented herself that she had psychic powers and could have stopped 9-11.

if her husband would have let her. Why didn't you stop the killing of your husband then? Yeah, right? Her own son got on the witness stand and called her, quote, cuckoo for cocoa puffs, which is great. She was convicted of second-degree murder

and sentenced to 16 years to life. Scott's trial, by the way, his first lawyer had to step aside for a conflict of interest because he represented the driver who killed Scott's half-sister in 2002. What are the fucking? fucking odds of that. There's a million public defenders. The guy that defended the guy that killed his

sister? Yes. So he had to pull out. So then it went to a Ellen Leonida for another public defender, and that's a big deal. They try to get a change of venue. There is a million newspaper articles, broadcasts web thing. I mean, this is a big deal in this area, as you might imagine here. Roughly half of the jurors they got in there had heard of the satanic symbol carved and were back. Oh. The judge denies the change of venue. Okay. So the prosecution opening said that, you know, basically he's steeped in death.

Goth art work. He loves, he's obsessed with Jack the Ripper. That's a big thing of his. He knows who Ed Gein is, James. He knows Ed Gein is a small, this is pre-true crime boom of everybody knowing it. The organ harvesting cartoon, the Live for the Kill poem, the bullet point list. You know, they said he was his neighbor, he was. humiliated by a neighbor over a dead dog, the address sitting in his own fraudulent billing

field and mask and gloves and a rock and a knife, going over everything. Scott's own writing, they read to the jury, you raised me to hate and hate I will because now I live, live for the kill. Sounds like a song lyric. That just sounds like a Slayer song, doesn't it? Yeah, I think it's like a metal song. Or he should write metal or something. Yeah. About the symbol, they said, seized from Scott's bedroom, was a bumper sticker reading, I'm for the separation of church and hate. And the H in hate, he was drawn in the exact double-crossed form

of the symbol carved into Pamela's back. So they said that was like his own sign. That's his Zorro, you know? Then they said maybe Scott was there to confront or kill Karen Schneider, the dog killer, but got the wrong house because they're next door. Okay.

Because he didn't know either one of those people, really. because the billing address on the fraud was to that house, not her house. So they said this, that is, ladies and gentlemen, that Scott Dylowski thought Karen Schneider lived at 1901 Hunsacker Road. There's just no other way to interpret that. So they said, even if it is a mistaken identity, it doesn't matter because it's still the same. It's still the same intent to kill. He said he's guilty.

There's no reasonable interpretation of the evidence other than Scott murdered Pam. Okay. Now, the defense, they call him a gentle, small, bullied artsy kid who valued human and animal rights and could never have done this. All right. His own mom testifies against him. So they have to do that. It's, yeah. They ask her also about burning the shit and all that kind of thing. That's devastating, especially in your case.

When mom says she found shit with the victim's blood on it. and throughout, burned a bunch of your shit that's incriminating. She also, in the middle of testifying, sees Pamela's daughter, Marissa, in the courtroom and says, oh, my God, she looks so much like Pamela. And then Marissa started crying more. And she said, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. Don't talk to people from the... The defense case is character witnesses, a teacher who coached him in Ultimate Frisbee and made him team captain.

a graphic design teacher who called his artwork exceptional and noted that roughly a fifth of her students made gruesome art and none of them killed anyone. Friends of a friend's mother who'd never seen him be violent or angry. Scott didn't testify. And basically the prosecution did a four-week case. The defense ran an eight-hour case

consisting of character witnesses and then rested. All right. No experts, no alibi. In the opening, she promised an hour. alibi for Scott and never delivered that. Wow. The defense closing, they showed pictures of him playing Frisbee and said that someone else's DNA was on items attributed to her client.

The blood on Pamela's foot was contaminated, she says, and the case was entirely circumstantial built by a demonizing a kid over his drawings. Zero plus zero equals zero. You can't take a bunch of innocent interpretations and mash them together with the volume of your voice. Okay. 18 hours of deliberation. That's a while.

They find him guilty of everything. Yeah. First-degree murder, special circumstances that it was committed during a robbery, first-degree residential burglary, and a weapon-use enhancement for the bludgeoning. The burglary special circumstances made it a potential life without parole. No death penalty because he's only 16. He's a child, yeah. Victim impact, Pamela's family, her sister spoke.

called him a monster from the depths of hell. Jesus. He said he no longer deserves to be called human. He has lifeless shark eyes. He was there at her last moment of life. All this. I mean, they're pissed, obviously. For mitigation, they bring back the same people they brought in for, you know, for the character witnesses.

They bring in his stepmother who painted a bleak portrait of his parents, talking about emotional neglect and abuse. and all that kind of thing. His former scoutmaster said, I don't believe I could misjudge his character to such an extent that I could say he did it. I don't believe he did it. Scott's mom is not allowed to testify for him here because she already testified against him.

The judge, wow. The judge said she acknowledged that two jurors actually wrote letters asking for mercy because he seemed polite and intelligent and artistic, which she said, I've seen the autopsy photos. She described the deliberate. light about it. Nope, deliberate planning. She told him the only time he showed any emotion was when the autopsy photographs were

displayed, and the pathologist described Pamela's injuries. He leaned forward, mouth open, absolutely fascinated by your handiwork. You, sir. You, young man, may fuck off maximum sentence, life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus a year for the weapon with a four-year burglary term, too. 342 days credit for time served and no good time conduct. Any fines? Yeah, no fines.

On his 18th birthday, he's transferred to San Quentin becoming the youngest inmate in the California prison system at that time because they do youth authority until 21 usually. Jesus Christ. The public defender's office three days later resigns the public defender who defended him to, quote, move on. Now, there's a bunch of appeals here. In 2011, he becomes a Wiccan in prison, which I don't know if you get any special meals or anything like that.

Maybe. 2006, 2009 is the appeal. 2016 is a federal habeas appeal. 2018, there's a new law enacted by California. Senate bill 394 that gives juveniles tried as adults sentenced to life without parole an opportunity for eventual release. He's currently scheduled to become eligible for parole in 2030. It was reduced to 25 years. a sentence.

Oh, that's too early. So that's his first. Yeah, I don't think they're going to let him out. No. Now, there's a guy named Ralph Fernandez, an investigator, former Miami-Dade homicide detective, who thinks he's innocent and has been pushing it for over 10 years. Really? Go into the city council saying the DNA on Pamela's foot, a partial match is not a cold hit.

They argue it should be retested by an examiner with no ties to the county. They also said the broken bloody mug reportedly found in the kitchen carried saliva DNA matching Horowitz, which he could have been drinking it and it got knocked. That's silly. It's in his house. Yeah. There's going to be a lot of shit. The shoe print described by the prosecution's own expert is similar but not a definitive

match. They said that the Lanz-end shoe tread carried Pamela's blood in a way the defense argued was inconsistent with someone who'd worn the shoes through a fairer the next day. The glove and the duffel bag. Basically, he said it's very, he's trying to say he didn't do it. He is putting it. He's saying it's the husband. Really?

He said the husband, they said that, quote, it's very clear he killed her then walked around the house and moved a bunch of stuff. They didn't want to go after the husband at all, is what they said. Okay. So they say it's a third party. This goes on and on and on. There are, they also claim juror misconduct, which that sounds pretty on point. But he is, Scott's currently incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison, which is not nice. And there is a huge group of people that say he's innocent based on a spot of blood on Pamela's foot.

What about all the other blood? How do you get that on him? Why does he have her blood? If he never met her. Why is he full of scratch marks? I don't care about anything on the scene. Her blood is with him. That's unexplainable.

Unexplainable. Unless you're saying he was framed. Unless you're saying he was framed, exactly. So when Daniel Horowitz didn't even know him to frame him, so how the hell would he do that or anybody else? He was cleared. Why is he telling everybody, my DNA is on her? That's the other thing. So there you go.

We ran a little long apologies for that, but this is a crazy case. Oh, boy. Could have gone even longer. So look it up, though. If you look up Scott Diolesic is innocent, you'll come up with a bunch of shit that people believe that, especially go down a Reddit rabbit hole, my fucking God. Wow. So, yeah, people want to compare it to like West Memphis 3, but it's not even close to the same. It's not the same.

They got him because he said my DNA is there, not because he's weird. Because he's got scratches all over him. All over him. So shut up and give me murder.com is where the website is where you get all the tickets to live shows. September 18th, Papp's Theater in Milwaukee, September 19th, Minneapolis, get in there, state theater in Minneapolis. So do that. Then we're Dallas, San Jose, Sacramento, Terrytown, Boston. Get your tickets right now.

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